Podcasts about Lovely

Welcome back to The Lovely Show! This week your hosts start off the show with some stunning Dundalk versions of popular songs you know and love. Plus, they chat about the madness of Popeyes arrival in Ireland, Space demons and wish Marty Whelan (Kevin's dad) a very happy birthday. If you enjoyed this episode of The Lovely Show, please ensure to leave us a LOVELY review. Support The Lovely Show to get ad-free listening and bonus episodes at ⁠https://headstuffpodcasts.com/membership/⁠ - listen to your bonus episodes and ad-free feed in your favourite app! Get tickets to see The Lovely Show live in Navan on the 20th of June here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-lovely-show-live-podcast-with-justine-stafford-and-kevin-mcgahern-tickets-1987989387774 This is a HeadStuff podcast produced by Hilary Barry. Artwork by Matt Mahon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Episode 212 of The Ska Geek Podcast. Welcome to the Summer of SKA! I've got only the best ska from around the World. Sweet new ska tunes including some awesome covers! Thanks to all the bands for their submissions. Be sure and support these ska bands. See a show. Buy some merch. Get the album! Thanks for listening. Here are this episodes tracks: 01 A-100s- Rude and Lovely • 02 Death in the Arena- Better • 03 Westcoast Backbeat Orchestra- Crying • 04 The Unsustainables- Disease • 05 Pheonix City All Stars- Should I Stay Or Should I Go • 06 Treasure Islanders- Swaheto Woman • 07 King Zepha- Prez • 08 Sound System Seven- You're Wondering Now • 09 Harry Katz and the Pistachios- Who's Coming Home • 10 Joe Ross- Cut It • 11 Patrick Stump- A Selection • 12 Hogan's Last Smash- You Lose • 13 Big D & The Kids Table- Whiplash • BONUS PUNK SONG! 14 MESS- Street Boys. Enjoy, Skank on.

APEX Express is a weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community.   This Pride Month—queer and trans AAPI community strength. On this episode, host Miata Tan is joined by guests from three organizations building queer AAPI community on their own terms. They explore what it's like to find joy, organize together, and show up for each other in this moment.   QTViệt Cafe Collective Learn more about QTViệt Cafe Collective and their new documentary Đồng Quê: Of the Same Womb Website | Instagram | Join the Collective Catch the film at an upcoming screening:  June 14 — World Premiere | 22nd Annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival | Presidio Theater, San Francisco  June 20 — Screening + Q&A with filmmaker Sage Tran | Hosted by the Q Corner | San Jose    Queer Hmong Intersectional Pride (QHIP) Learn more about QHIP and their upcoming workshops, events, and campaigns Instagram | Website | 5th Annual Elk Grove Pride   Lavender Phoenix (LavNix) Learn more about Lavender Phoenix and their Leadership Exchange program Website | Instagram | Leadership Exchange Program   Previous Episodes A Conversation with Lavender Phoenix: The Next Chapter — March 26, 2026 Trans & Queer Hmong Rise: Organizing in Central California — October 24, 2024 8 Years of QTViệt Cafe! — August 22, 2024   Transcript ​[00:00:00]  Miata Tan : Hello and welcome. You're tuning in to APEX Express, a weekly radio show uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. I'm your host, Miata Tan. We're nearly halfway through June, and Pride Month is in full swing. Pride is a time to celebrate, honor, and dig into the deep political history of queer and trans communities. And tonight, [00:01:00] we're zooming into a few distinct queer Asian American communities right here in Northern California. First, we'll hear from a collective of queer and trans Vietnamese artists, activists, and organizers based in the Bay Area, who have a brand-new documentary out this weekend. Then we'll dive into the political organizing of queer and trans Hmong communities in Fresno and Sacramento. And we'll close out the show with a queer Asian American community leader and some different ways that you can get involved this summer. Okay, let's get into it. First up, my conversation with QTViet Cafe Collective. And before you ask, no, QTViet Cafe is not a brick-and-mortar cafe that serves coffee. They are a Bay Area-based creative cultural hub for queer and trans Vietnamese liberation through gatherings, art showcases, cultural programming, and more. QTViet Cafe is a part of Asian Refugees United, [00:02:00] and tonight we'll be discussing their new documentary, Dong Hoi: Of the Same Womb. It is premiering this Sunday, June 14, as part of the 22nd Annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival in San Francisco. Dong Hoi asks viewers what it means to return to a homeland, to a community, to yourself. Here's my conversation with the QTViet Cafe Collective. Miata Tan: Thank you all so much for joining me today on APEX Express. Sage, perhaps you can start us off. would you be able to introduce yourself and share a little bit about what the QTViet Cafe Collective is?  Sage Tran: My name is Sage. I use they/them pronouns. One of filmmakers/digital archivists for QTViet Cafe Collective. we are a cultural hub where we focus on, diasporic themes around intergenerational Vietnamese and identity and queerness. We do a lot our [00:03:00] events and workshops and gatherings around food, remembrance, and, our gay and they selves.  Miata Tan: Lovely. Jessie, who are you and what brought you to QTViet?  Jessie Nguyen: Sure, my name is Jessie, and my pronouns are they or Jessie, and I've been part of the collective since, 2018. I think I found the collective in a place in my life when I was really searching for ways to, bring an intersection to all parts of my identities, QTViet Cafe Just like Sage said, it's a creative hub, it's a cultural hub that is really dedicated to uplifting queer and trans Viet liberation through ancestral practices , different, forms of art and intergenerational connection. yeah, I just really appreciate the ways that QTViet Cafe has just been so dedicated to our, art and then also uplifting our art to really, bring forth community, organizing work, solidarity [00:04:00] work and our own, like, queer and trans Viet excellence  Miata Tan: Love that. Jean, could you share a little bit about yourself as well?  Jean Pham: Thanks for having us here. my name is Jean Pham. I use they/them pronouns. i've also been a part of QTViet Cafe since 2018 when I had first moved here to the Bay Area. Like Sage and Jessie had shared, QTViet Cafe is, it's a really special space. I think as d- diasporic Vietnamese, speaking broadly, like culturally we experience being displaced on many different levels. Um, when people say that it's a cultural hub, really tangible in a, in a lot of the activities and things that we do. we've hosted like art residencies. We cultural dinners. We have language groups. QTViet Cafe, it really exists to fill a need. and I think part of that need brought us, to the culmination of this specific project, to bring us back into Vietnam  Miata Tan: Yeah, lovely. And we can pick up from there your trip to Vietnam. this, was captured by Sage recently in a documentary. Sage, could you speak more about what, this new doco is about? where did this project come [00:05:00] from? Sage Tran: this project emerged from a collective hunger for wanting to return back to the motherland. for years of doing a lot of gathering here, specifically in the Bay Area, we've been able to stay rooted in the territories here. And, we all came to a consensus like , what would it be like to gather a bunch of us and connect with our siblings, brother, sisters, family, chosen fam out in the motherland? that became a seed that we cultivated, planted, tend to, and we fundraised with a lot of community support to get about 13 of us out uh, Vietnam. maybe Jessie can talk a little bit more about this, but Hai and Ma are the, folks who founded QTViet Cafe Collective [00:06:00] Jessie, Ma, and Hai. They all three went to Vietnam in 2022 and built a lot of beautiful connections of like local drag artists, queer trans collectives out there. That's kind of what birthed Dong Khoi.  Miata Tan: so  I've been lucky enough to, watch the film already. Donghui is the name of the documentary, but it's also the name of the performance that came together Jesse, perhaps you can speak to this this journey more and I know QTViet C- Cafe's been around since 2016,  this project goes back, a few years as well Jessie Nguyen: Yeah, sure. I can speak a little bit about that and just chiming into, like, what Sage already shared. there was a small group of collective members that that came up with the idea of, like, what would it be like for us as, queer and trans Viet diasporic folks to go to the homeland. the original intent was for that trip to happen in 2020. And it [00:07:00] actually, because of the pandemic, I think obviously things were, logistically it just didn't work, but that, dream, like, surfaced again, so the question came up about, like, what would it be like for us to travel together to the homeland as a collective and also share our art, to , connect with other Viets in Saigon. You know, when we're in the Bay, so much of our work is really centered around gathering communities around our food, our art, and our stories. And so it really made sense for us to think about what would that look like in Vietnam. And so in 2022, as Sage was mentioning, me, Hai, and Ma,, went to Saigon and just kind of explored, like, what is the creative scene like and were able to connect queer and trans Viet artists who are doing insanely inspiring creative work. we connected with folks from the Baxiu Collective, and they're a group of, queer and trans Viet artists who are doing drag in different, performance spaces in queer bars in Saigon. And then I think in that moment we're like, “Wait, we would love to [00:08:00] collaborate with you.” from that unfolded, a, a year-long , like, planning of, what would it look like for us to do a shared showcase together. And so we identified built relationships with a queer bar in Saigon. and then so leading up to the homeland trip, we planned this showcase where it would be a mix artists from our collective and artists from their collective, and then a whole, a whole performance that unfolded. And I think in the year of 2023, that year I think we ended up fundraising, about 50K in order to really subsidize and support the whole journey of getting us to Vietnam. Like, stipending artists and creatives that we were collaborating with. it was, one of the biggest projects I think that QTViet has ever been a part of and really undertaken, and I think it definitely is, like, a huge highlight for, like, my time with QTViet. Miata Tan: Lovely, and it's so beautiful to see it all come together in the documentary. Jean, could you speak to your experience? I understand this was [00:09:00] your first time ever visiting Vietnam  Jean Pham: Yes, it was my first time visiting Vietnam. so I had a well of emotions in terms of the lead-up to it. Like Jesse was sharing, you know, originally the plan was we were gonna go in 2020. That had to shift, you know, shelter in place and everything. A lot of the work that we do is reconnection, right? as diasporic Vietnamese being displaced from our ancestral land, as queer and trans people, um, a big rallying point for many of us is feeling displaced from our own families. And so part of, like, returning back together is fighting against it. It's like, what if we reconnect ? You know, what if we re- reunite? You know, w- if we're traveling together as queer community, we can really see and understand what it's like to be uh, Vietnam for ourselves. And so it was really, like h- it had this like gravity around it, and I think it made me really nervous but also excited. that being said, you know, a lot of other folks who are part of our cohort, even though they had gone to Vietnam before, a lot of them had also shared this is their [00:10:00] first time going without family, And we're going specifically towards, queer and trans community in Vietnam, which is also a departure from their other experiences too. Jessie Nguyen: Can I just add something? Because I just really loved what Gene shared. I just think that, yeah, I think that you really spoke to something there about how we can spend our whole lives, like, having this understanding of homeland that is actually quite disconnected from our queerness and our transness. And similar to, like, many other folks in the collective, like, I have been to Vietnam, multiple times before, but never in the context of centering my queerness and transness because I just wasn't sure, like, what felt safe. You know, without having, like, fluency in the language or even knowing, like, how to express my queerness in Vietnam. Oftentimes it just felt… I felt pretty invisibilized there, you know, because, like, being there with family, I just show up as, like, a, a family member, There's so much that is a part of me that is expressed through my queerness and my transness that [00:11:00] is that isn't as visible. And so I think that being in a space as a collective gave us permission to do and to feel deeply woven into our cultural experience was, like, in- in- incredibly liberating.  Miata Tan: Yeah. That's really beautiful, Jessie. I also noticed in the film your aunt was also, part of it as well, so you were able to hold that familial side of yourself as well as the queer side. Could you speak more to that?  Jessie Nguyen: Yeah. I was just watching the documentary yesterday too, and I was like, oh my gosh, I– it was so sweet that my aunt had a moment in that documentary. the thing that I was really interested in was trying to weave my connection with my family to, like, my connection with, like, my chosen queer family, And I think that became very possible when, we did the homeland trip. I'm, I'm not fluent in Vietnamese, and I'm especially not fluent in trying to articulate what it means to be queer and [00:12:00] Vietnamese. And so the idea of inviting QTViets to my aunt's home was, like, a way to be like, “Hey, this is who I and here are my– here's my community.” And maybe if I can't actually, like, articulate that, like, I I want my aunt to, like, feel that sense of, like, care and connection of my community. And then to me that felt like a way of inviting my Vietnamese family to this part of my life. I think that it's, it's oftentimes hard to even do that here in the Bay. You know? Like, the connection that I have to my blood family and then my connection to my chosen family here in the Bay, like, can feel quite separate. keeps me coming back to QTViet is that we always make space for that intergenerational connection that doesn't invisibilize our queerness and our gender identity . Miata Tan: Sage, could you speak more to this theme of family? It seemed to be really core to the documentary tell us about how that felt as the director, like being behind the [00:13:00] camera but also part of the QTViet team on this trip?  Sage Tran: directing and being behind the camera had a lot of challenges. I think there's something where I'm not sure if y- like folks can relate to this, but when you are filming something with your iPhone or on your camera, there's a connection and a disconnection that happens at the same time. You're not able to fully present, but you are. I was straddling the line of like is this shot looking beautiful and also crying I think there was a moment where we were in a taxi or Grab car, and it was Hai, Jesse, and Jesse's aunt, she was dropping some heavy moments, and I just remember we're all crying in the car while the Grab driver is like blasting music, and it's like a super bumpy road. People are honking at us, and it was just like such a funny and rocky, symbolic, memory I just was like, “Wow, I can't [00:14:00] believe I'm getting to document this” like historical moment, not only for Jesse, but just like for the collective and what does it mean for folks who are queer and trans that can't have moments like this. It's just like kind of a reminder to slow down and being like, ” Okay,” am I getting to embody this moment while holding the stabilization of the camera?” And I think still I find that to be a challenge, but a, a really fun dance of filmmaking, directing and being there. Miata Tan: Yeah, definitely. I can't imagine trying to keep the camera still while you're bawling your eyes out.  Sage Tran: Yes.  Miata Tan: Jean, we've talked a now about this connection of blood family and found family as well. could you speak a bit to the QTViet Cafe family that sort of came together on the trip, but also this wider, Vietnamese, queer community you were able to find over there in Saigon? Jean Pham: Every step of the way it felt really [00:15:00] good because when, like, you know, we were traveling together as this, this giant mass of just gay people. and so I always felt like, oh, I could kinda be off guard, I understand that, like, for a lot of Korean trans people, w- when traveling we're on high alert, there's just a lot of unpredictability. There is safety in numbers. There's safety in communities. I felt like, you know, the QTViets have my back. There was a bigger group that came together in SFO, and we just t- all booked the same flights. And then there were some people who were coming, like, a little bit later. I had been with QTViets at that point for about six or seven years, and so there was a lot of trust already built. With the Saigonese Viets, it, it was like a, just a natural kinship. You know? It was like, it was also as if like we were just friends off the bat or there was just this shared understanding. We had a gathering, and I think this is featured in the documentary. after gathering, people were just kind of, getting to know each other in in their flat, and they were teaching us how to walk in heels, and it was so lovely. And I remember thinking like, “Oh gosh, what music do I play here? How do I set the mood?” But the, th- I think the reality is, [00:16:00] you know, Rihanna is like a common language, like among gay people. Everyone under like … It was, it was funny 'cause like, you know, I would, you know, I would play music that I would just listen to. Like, they're just, pop girlies that would play in the States. And, yeah, gay people, like, they, they just love a diva no matter where you are. And so that that was really nice. But r- truly, like, the DIY drag scene in Saigon is huge, and it c- it's, like, so varied. And, I do wanna shout out, like, all the queens and the Baxio Collective and all the trans artists who really helped, make our show and, like, really helped hone in our craft. And they were pr- they were strict, you know? They were like, “You have to come here early, and you have to come in, like, days before. And we're gonna have to practice over and over again.” And they had, like, really specific notes on how to make the show better. And so it was interesting as a culture exchange they were learning, how we were operating in terms of how we organize and a- I think a lot of the spoken word, slam poetry style that, like, some of our members were bringing. And from them, we were [00:17:00] learning a lot of the theatrics on really how to, like, have a show and really think, holistically about all the different components. Miata Tan: Jessie, could you speak more to the show? Uh, what did it look like? How did it feel? Jessie Nguyen: So back in 2022 was when we discovered that there is actually one queer bar in Saigon, and it's in District 4. this bar called Bar Zinga. And it's, like, in this alleyway. It's pretty divey. And so when we were there in 2022, we actually spent uh, New Year's there, and we got to know the owner, and we got to know, like, what they envisioned for the space, which is they've been using it as a space for, drag, drag performances, music sets, and things like that. And we're like, “Oh, wait. Maybe this could be a good spot for us to do something for QTViet.” And So essentially the vision for the show was for us to collaborate with, Babel and Yat, who are the co-founders of Bạc Xỉu Collective, they are incredible, like, production artists and drag artists.  we [00:18:00] invited folks from the collective, if they wanted to share some of their art as well. And so we had… Let's see. I remember Irene, who is one of the poets and also, like, OG QTViets, shared, some poetry, and then we had also Hai sharing some erotica. Me, Hai, and Lan did a ao dai fashion runway show.  and then there was, Oh, Judy and Hiroshi who did, like, a whole, like, lô tô, so that was, like, based off of, like, like a Vietnamese game, and they did a whole performance on that. yeah. So it was kind of, like, cool to be in this space and inviting folks from the community to come in, and it was a full house. people were feeling so nervous, but the, also the energy of, like, I can't believe this is happening. You know? that the art that we've created in the Bay, that we get to share it in Saigon. Miata Tan: So beautiful. yeah, it's really nice to see this, cross-cultural, international, connection that you've built with, the folks in Vietnam. Sage, could you speak more to, the [00:19:00] documentary itself, what you hope viewers will take away from the film, and especially seeing depiction of, of queer joy in the performance? Sage Tran: I think what I hope viewers take is like the power of remembering and the power of remembering with community. Cause I think like also editing this film, I'm like, I remember exactly what y'all said word for word. It's like ingrained in my head.  I think there was something that, Jean, you said in… You said something where like it doesn't matter if you're Vietnamese, it doesn't matter where you were born. It matters and it doesn't, but also like there's so many cross-cultural connections and parallels that, tie us all together. And I think, on the theme of remembering and leaning into our joy and our creativity, there's so much that can unlock with, just living our truths. I think, yeah, I think that's what I hope viewers take away with  Miata Tan: Beautiful. and the documentary will be premiering, this [00:20:00] June, as part of QSMAP here in the city in San Francisco. We have A little bit of time here, so I'd love to talk about, uh, what else QTViet has on the horizon, campaigns, workshops, other performances. Jean, Jessie, would either one of you be able to speak to this?  Jessie Nguyen: The only thing that is really on my mind around QTViet is that we are celebrating our 10-year anniversary in September. And I don't know what that's gonna look like, but I think that it definitely is gonna be a invite and just a opportunity for us to reflect on everything that we've been able to cultivate as a collective, and also just to notice, like, how much we've evolved. I think that when so many of us joined in 2016 to 2018, we were, younger queers who were really looking for community and maybe felt pretty isolated. And I know that, like, where I am today, my connection to my Vietness and my queerness, like, feels so deeply ingrained. And a [00:21:00] huge part of that is because of having a container like QTViet. I was also gonna talk about Ordinary People, because it's actually a show that we're doing a audio visual storytelling performance that is led by one of the QTViet members, Jop, uh, Nguyen. And it's gonna include, several other QTViet members that are gonna be, contributing as, like, a band. there have been music and songs and videos and animations and, yeah, lots of different elements to really bring to life, like, what it feels like for our parents to, experience their homeland, their escape, their journey here, and then also how we really, how we connect to that story. Miata Tan: Thank you for sharing, Jessie. Sadly, this interview is airing after the Ordinary People performance, but I'll play a little snippet in a bit. Jean, final question. with this 10-year anniversary of QTViet Cafe, how do you see your recent [00:22:00] adventures informing your work? How you organize, how you gather Jean Pham: I think after the trip, there was, like, a re-invigoration of, purpose honestly, like, a new wave of renewed energy and also new people who were joining the space. we started practicing a lot more solidarity work. I think almo- almost immediately after returning, there were a few events that was in solidarity with, Palestine. And as we were returning from the trip, last year was also the 50th anniversary of the war in Vietnam ending, and so we used that as an opportunity to draw connections between how, the conditions of the Vietnam War was truly, like, politically activating for a lot of young people in the '60s, similarly to um, the genocide uh, Palestine was politically activating for people now, uh, and how, like, have a shared struggle. with 10 years of QTViet Cafe, I think it's more evident that QTViet is an, like, entity, a group that needs to exist. and we always invite people to join us. if anyone's listening who is diaspora queer and trans Vietnamese, is looking [00:23:00] for community, you know, looking for language classes or, like, just, uh, ways to build, you know, we're always more than happy to join people. You know, last year, Jessie and a a couple other friends organized this amazing trip to New York. there was really this big energy around uniting all the different scattered parts of QTViets all over and coming together and understanding that, you know, we, we all, um, um, have a lot in common. and so I, I do think that was really uplifted and highlighted in our trip, this feeling of, like, you know, we're not- we're actually not so alone, and there's so many of us, and we're, like, we're all so powerful. Miata Tan: Beautiful. I think that's a perfect place to end. Thank you all so much for joining me today Jessie Nguyen: Yay. Thank you so much  Sage Tran: Thank you so much. Thank you.  Jean Pham: I know, this is so lovely. Thank you. Miata Tan : That was Sage Tran, Jean Pham, and Jessie Nguyen with the QTViet Cafe Collective. Their new documentary, Dong Hue: Of the Same Womb, premieres this Sunday, June 14th at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco. That's part of the 22nd Annual International Queer Women of Color [00:24:00] Film Festival, this year featuring 47 films, 10 world premieres, all totally free and open to the public. so if you're in the Bay, this is well worth your time. You can also catch QTViet Cafe's new documentary in San Jose on Saturday, June 20th at a screening hosted by the Q Corner, followed by a Q&A with Sage Tran, the filmmaker that you just heard from. For links to these events and more about QTViet Cafe and how you can get involved in the collective, check out the show notes for this episode. That's on our website at kpfa.org/program/APEXexpress Coming up next, queer and trans Hmong communities in California's Central Valley. But first, here's a taste of Ordinary People, a recent live performance by QTViet Cafe recorded in Oakland last month. ​ Miata Tan : [00:25:00] [00:26:00] [00:27:00] That was a live recording from Ordinary People by the QTViet Cafe Collective,  in Oakland last month. This is APEX Express, a weekly radio show uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Tonight, in honor of Pride Month, we're turning our attention to queer Asian American communities right here in Northern California: who they are, how they organize, and the future they are fighting for. Miata Tan: My next guests are Shai Chang and Christine Thao from Queer Hmong Intersectional Pride, also known as QHIP. QHIP grows out of Hmong Innovating Politics, a grassroots advocacy group based [00:28:00] in Fresno and Sacramento, and focuses on building community and political power for queer and trans Hmong communities in California's Central Valley. Here's my conversation with Shai and Christine. Miata Tan : You both so much for joining me today on APEX Express. Could you share a little bit about yourself? Who are you, and what is your work with Hmong Innovating Politics? Shai Chang: Hi, my name is Shai, pronouns are they and them. I'm trans, non-binary, also Hmong, located in Yokuts Valley, Fresno, California. the work that I do in Hmong Innovating Politics is that I am a community organizer. I'm the Fresno Trans and Queer Community Organizer, I work specifically in the program called Queer Hmong Intersectional Pride, or QHIP, Q-H-I-P. And we do a lot of really great work with our trans and queer, in particular, like, intersectional folks, people of color within our, our communities and our members and our base to organize to fight, fascism, racism, also, like, transphobia and forms [00:29:00] of hate, moving us towards social justice and liberation. Miata Tan : It's really important work, and I'm excited to get into more of what, Queer Hmong Intersectional Pride looks like, Christine, could you share a little bit about yourself? who are you, and how long have you been with, HIP and QHIP?  Christine Thao : Thank you so much for inviting my name is Christine Thao. I use she/they pronouns, and I am currently here on Nisenan, occupied Nisenan land here in the South Sacramento area. my role is the Sacramento, Trans Queer Community Organizer. And so I came into HIP, back in 2020, so during the COVID pandemic, and, um, I came on board as the administrative assistant. um, in 2024, I transitioned into the community organizer role.  Miata Tan : Lovely. Yeah. Can't wait to get into the work that you do and the campaigns. to ground us in the history of, Hmong communities in America, Shai, could you speak to, who [00:30:00] the Hmong Americans are? I know that Fresno and Sacramento is home to some of the largest populations of Hmong people in the States. Shai Chang: Yeah, definitely. so the Hmong communities are from Southeast Asia, very much like indigenous folks that live within the mountain ranges and the hills. and the reason why we came to America was because of the Secret War the war that happened in Southeast Asia. one of our community members General Vang Pao was involved within this war and then pulled in the rest of the Hmong community to be part of this it is to say that, like many of our young men during that time was pulled into the war, and they were 13, maybe even 14, 15, and younger who were, pulled into the war to fight for America, um, with the promise of that America was going to give them a place that they could call home it was in 1975 where the war ended and, that's when the military went ahead and was able to, because of Ronald Reagan signed, um, a letter for immigration for, [00:31:00] these Hmong folks and refugees to come into the United States. Miata Tan : Yeah, perhaps you can take us back to then, 2018 when, QHIP sort of came to life. what was the need that you were seeing for, queer and trans Hmong people in, in specifically Fresno and, and Sacramento where you all are based?  Shai Chang: the way Hmong communities have always existed was very much to be lay low, you know, not be sticking your head out. And so to be very clear, it's that we are still struggling, economically. we are still very much struggling racially. The ICE attacks definitely impacted our communities we are still very much immigrants and still very much not necessarily having a place of home. But internally is that the Hmong community still very much holds on to, like, the, the traditions. And so they're very patriarchal, um, very strict gender roles, and because of these things have then developed into, gender-based violence [00:32:00] as, like, trans and queer folks, it's that we definitely do experience another deeper layer of the oppressions, especially also in our community because there isn't actually any language in Hmong to talk about what trans or queerness is, where there's no exact word to describe, like, gay or lesbian and things like that. So there is definitely, like, an erasure that also has happened, and in the Hmong community is actually very conservative. Uh, But HIP was already a very progressive organization. And so it was in 2018 because of Hmong innovating politics coming to Fresno. it was at the Hmong New Years, I saw them. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I know who you are. I love you. Like, if there's anything I can do, please let me know,” ‘ Mai Thao was able to pull me in. It was like, “Hey, I want you to do something with us.” and with- was then funded three thousand dollars through HIP, to be able to go ahead and organize for whatever it means for me to trans queer Hmong work. during that time, it grew from, like, me, three people to having, like, fifteen people, [00:33:00] meet, once a week for three hours, and then another three hours we would go out and hang out. and so it really became this place for a social space for particularly, and, and I will name it, it's that majority of the folks in that space was gay cis Hmong men. And it wasn't until a year later from that first time that we first met in 2018 to we had a really hard conversation about our future, about the political work that that we should be doing. and so I've been with HIP for four years, and we've officialized during that time QTPIP to be a program, within HIP, and yeah, it's been really good. I don't have to worry about funding and things and organizing around that front end, and HIP has been able to be s- very supportive in being able to see that, and we can really work on the ends of what does it mean for us to organize around liberation and being on the ground with our community  Miata Tan : Yeah, definitely. It's interesting to hear about the progression from [00:34:00] perhaps a group that was maybe more apolitical moving into that political space.  Shai Chang: we've also been, struggling still even now to land on what it means for us to fight more intersectionally. that's where, like, QHIP and Queer Hmong and intersectional pride comes from, right? Is this word intersectional, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, is that We do have these cross identities that exist within ourselves. And so would love to have Christine talk more about what actually this issue is within not just Hmong communities, Hmong and trans queer communities. Christine Thao : Thank you, Shy. so Queer Hmong Intersectional Pride, we officially launched the program back in 2024. our QHIP program, It is open to young people between ages, 18 to 25. uh, young trans queer folks. Some go to college. Some, currently looking to be employed. Young people who are impacted, [00:35:00] young people who want to get involved, right, who, who do care about, this work, and who care about social justice, it's a eight-month program And our gatherings are, we call them our huddles, our QHIP huddles. And they're, we do them about biweekly, I can speak a little bit for Sacramento.  we've been meeting up at a cafe. We also use our office space. And, this is just a really a moment in time for our members to, bring up and have critical conversations about things that are happening in their lives or things that they're seeing in their community. Miata Tan : Perhaps you could speak more to the organizing piece. What does this look like? Um, what sort of work are y'all up to? Shai Chang: Some of the ways in which we have organized, in our community is through the framework of BBB. It's our belong, believe, become, and it sounds really cheesy, but this is really how we mobilize our people, we know as trans and queer people, especially as a person of color, we don't know and have enough spaces of [00:36:00] belonging. we actually have a, such a hard time believing in ourselves, and because of that, we have such a hard time in becoming. And this sounds like the story of literally just transitioning. when you Transition is that you really need to have a space of, believing in yourself. You need to have a space in which you can belong, where you are safe, and then through that you can actually become and this person that you have always wanted to be. This is how we mobilize and organize our members and our community because once they start practicing this ability to be able to believe in themselves, have the spaces for them to organize and organize with other people. and to figure out, like, , what is our campaign strategy? What is the ways in which we wanna win in our community, right? And Uh, in gender-affirming care in Fresno and the Central Valley was very, very hard. many of the times folks will have to go to, like, the bigger cities like LA SF to get their care that they needed. We need actual, like, [00:37:00] materialistic wins for our communities so that way they can get to where they need to be. when I'm talking about Materialistic things, it's that, we need them to be housed. We need them to have the affordable, uh, care. We need them to have, the affirming care that they are needing, we know how hard it is for, in particular, trans and queer people to be able to afford literally anything. and it's so much more harder for them to find a career or a job, in a place where they actually also can live and exist through their identities. we've seen the, impacts of, ICE and immigration on our own communities these were, like, the works that were coming out constantly for our communities to fight for, these kind of justice issues, through these ways, we've been able mobilize and move our people to what does it mean for us to actually start thinking about a campaign strategy for us to win some kind of materialistic need and, of course, we work with youths a lot, right? So where is our youth justice at? And this is literally our youth justice, right? We're having our young people share their voices. We [00:38:00] have our young adults organizing in the community, um, doing protestings, and fighting against the system. in particular, more recently, this, board of supervisor in Fresno County banned and denied, LBGTQ books in the Fresno County libraries. and we've organized to get people to show up to write letters and to really be there, and hundreds of people shown up and yet they still continue to, not hear their own constituency and their own community They continuously vote against us. that's why HIP is political, right? Is that we have our civic engagement side, is that, okay, well, it sounds like we need to vote them out, right? And that's what is it mean, and that's what it's about now.  Miata Tan : Yeah, I hear you. It sounds like you're really helping to build political power within Hmong communities in, in Fresno and Sacramento. I'm curious, what has wins look like, uh, for your groups there? how have, you perhaps helped to show those material, changes [00:39:00] for your young people? Shai Chang: Uh, to be honest, it's not much, We're still very new into formed more as a social group in 2018, and just finally became, you know what? Let's be political as f***.  Let's be authentic as f***, you know? y'all really wanna make trans and queer identities political, Then let's be political. and we've just started mobilizing, moving around those kind of things and identities only just more recently, right? As Christine mentioned, in  But the wins that we can really claim a name is that we have a 100% retention rate for our members. yeah. Um, we have tripled the amount of members that we had since then. and we are so excited for us to be able to, like, move and mobilize with our people intentionally and not just like, “Oh, we just need to be here for critical mass,” it is a two-part, right? It's that, one, we need critical mass. We And the other part of this is that we [00:40:00] people to come in intentionally to be a part of this movement work. I actually went to present about QHIP more recently, and they asked, “Oh my gosh, is there any, like, open meetings that you have flyers about? Like, when do y'all meet? And then, like, do you have a flyer for that? And I can share it with, my members.” And I was like, “Actually, we do meet, and it– we do meet biweekly on Fridays. The members themselves are holding the space for the meeting. and so I can ask them about that, but I also wanna let you know that it's not necessarily an open invitation for folks to just come in whenever they want.” We want people to come in intentional, and we want people to engage intentionally. And this is how we want us to move away from this autopilot into being able actively making changes and fights for our communities that will win us materialistic wins. Obviously in this administration, in the Trump administration, um, it has not been easy. just two years ago, they actually closed, the only LGBTQ [00:41:00] homeless shelter in Fresno, and a lot of folks now have, like, a hard time understanding where to go and what and how to navigate it. the Fresno, like, LGBTQ center also closed their doors for, like, the first time in, like, a long And so there is a lot of different impacts as impacting our community, from, like, LGBTQ centers closing, LGBTQ-serving organizations slowing down, And the way that our members and our community and our base have been organizing is As a community resource with one another is that like, ” Hey, I have an extra bed. Y'all can come sleep and crash ” there.” you hungry?” Let's go get food.” Right? Really checking with each other and also being able to ask our community for funding as So HIP, we were able to organize and did a fundraiser back in March 50K. That's huge we also know there are impacts that also is beyond us, too. it was with this past, like, Hmong New Year [00:42:00] that we did, that we wanted to do a Hmong New Year action, an action to really fundraise for our families who were detained by ICE. And so we did a mutual aid fundraiser, asking our community members to donate money, and we were able to raise… we only did it for, like, three hours, and we were able to raise $700. So we're like, ” What if we kept going?” Right? And that's where our fundraiser for 50K came from. so there is, like, ways in which we are trying to organize and mobilize our communities. And, to be very honest is that HIP and, QVIP is not necessarily a direct service organization and not necessarily in that way. I think many of the times people see HIP as like, “Oh, you're here to save us,” we're not that, right? We're really here to mobilize with our community, uh, we have our youth organization over in Edison High School, they were pushed into a small classroom, storage room, actually, for band and also, sports as well. And so it, it was being disruptive a lot. one of our [00:43:00] previous, like, young adult members recognized that, and they were like, ” Sh-uh, Shy and HIP, Please, can y'all do something about this issue?” And we're like, “No.” But we'll do it with you, right? and so we came in, we taught them about organizing, and literally those youths were able to organize themselves to have a classroom now, they remember that. They hold onto that, right? Regardless if we were here or not, they will still be able to know that and hold onto And so it's very much like that as well with our members, is that we want them to be able to organize within among themselves without having the need of, of HIP and entities being able to, have the, have the solution for them Miata Tan : mm, that makes a lot of sense. Really being able to work with community and give them tools so then they can continue to build is something really powerful that, you do at both HIP and QHIP. I'm curious, with this very challenging political moment that we're living through, not only for queer and trans folks, but immigrant communities as [00:44:00] well, how are you holding this, this pain alongside, trying to also celebrate and honor your communities, um, and especially your queer and trans community members? Shai or Christine,  Christine Thao : At HIP we have what is called third spaces, and third spaces are heart spaces. these are, spaces where our young people, they continue to, build their organizing. They get to organize with one another and with HIP, to hold space to build community, to build belongingness, To show up, be present, make connections. is also a space where our young people, they get to decompress as well,  in a world where it feels so chaotic, we do a lot of, the hard stuff with organizing, but then organizing can be so fun. and our young people, they get to see both sides, right, get to experience that. What I'm holding onto is being [00:45:00] engaged and getting involved, it is, Um, How can we connect our young people, to our community partners, right? To make those connections, to build deeper, this year it looks like us, being more intentional about our capacity and who we are, building out with, um… I'm on, I'm currently on the planning community for Elk Grove Pride, and so, uh, our young people are also a part of that, where they get to lead a role, and create, spaces of celebration, right? there's A lot of different opportunities our young people are also involved in, and, it, it is that wanting our young people to, feel empowered to get involved in these spaces as well.  Miata Tan : Yeah. Lovely. Thank you so much, Christine. It sounds like you're really able to create, a beautiful space and community for your young people. Shy, uh, to close out, I'd love to know what's on the horizon for QHIP. It's Pride Month. unfortunately this episode is airing after Fresno Pride, but, perhaps you could [00:46:00] speak a little bit to that and what else is on the horizon. Shai Chang: Sure thing. the first thing I need to say is Happy Pride Month. so Happy Pride Month, everyone. Fresno always hosts their Pride parade, always the first Saturday of, of the Pride month it is On Saturday, June 6. Pride parade over at Tower District in Fresno. it's gonna be very fun. It's super exciting. We will be marching in there all together, and the theme for this year is, Pride Without Border. we're gonna be Extra powerful in calling out all of the different, struggles that our intersectional folks are all facing and being able to march together in liberation. what's also coming up next is, I- I'm foreseeing it to happen probably next month or in August, is that we will have a third space event to really celebrate Pride. we spend all our energy to be part of the Pride parade preparing our members and supporting them, but we haven't necessarily celebrated QHIP's [00:47:00] own Pride, you know, we work very politically in election works, and so we always have a bunch of these like, door hangers, Vote yes on Prop 3,” things like that, right? And so we have so much of those paper, and so what we usually do during this, like, Pride event that we do in QHIP is that we- we use these as an opportunity for us to do trash drag. it's an opportunity for us to get glammed out everyone gets to participate creating this, like, image through the trash drag. And so we're excited to be able to do that, so please keep on the lookout. Miata Tan : Sorry, why is it called trash drag? I'd love to know.  Shai Chang: It's because, like, we had s- you know, this much f- okay, we, we have a lot of flyers from the our elections, And especially this year. You know how in, in the mail you'll get so much, like, ” Vote for this person, vote for this person.” all of this is all paper that is then thrown away without any second thought. and we will make them, and we'll make, like, thousands of copies , right? But we never are able to pass it all out. what we do is that we will go ahead and reuse them one last time for [00:48:00] them to have an opportunity for them to shine, We'll have them split up into teams, and then use all the different trash that they can gather and use, and glue them, tape them , staple them to make a dress, to make an outfit for this one person that they're gonna designate to be the drag mother for their team. Miata Tan : I love that. That sounds like so much fun.  Shai Chang: Yeah. We're gonna be doing it in Fresno and also in Sacramento, so we'll figure out a ways for everyone to be involved.  Miata Tan : Oh, how wonderful. Christine, could you speak to what events are coming up in Sacramento for us?  Christine Thao : We are also having, um, Elk Grove Pride on June 20th. It's from 5:00 to 9:00. it's gonna be at the Elk Grove Laguna Town Hall. And so community is very welcome to attend. It is a free event. Think of it like, kind of like a resource gathering with, um, some really amazing performances we have, a lot of like, BIPOC TQ, artistes, and then also vendors [00:49:00] as well. So please show up and, would love to, to meet folks and connect with folks in these spaces.  Miata Tan : Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing, Christine, and we'll be sharing all the details of how you can get involved and learn more about QHIP and HIP at the end of this episode as well. Thank you both so much for joining me today.  Shai Chang: Thank you so much for having me. Miata Tan: That was my conversation with Shai Chang and Christine Thao at Queer Hmong Intersectional Pride, also known as QHIP Miata Tan : this is APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA, a weekly radio show uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. To close out tonight's show, I have one final guest. Cynthia Fong is the lead organizer at Lavender Phoenix, also known as LavNix, A Bay Area organization building power for queer and trans Asian and Pacific Islander communities. You may have heard of them. Their new executive director joined us on [00:50:00] air just a few months ago. Here's a short conversation with Cynthia Fong on Queer Joy, community power, and what LavNix has coming up this summer Cynthia Fong: Thank you so much for having us. My name is Cynthia. I use they/them pronouns, and I'm here with Lavender Phoenix. Lavender Phoenix, we build trans, non-binary, queer API power through organizing in the Bay Area. We work with our members to demand true solutions to care and safety, and we're excited to be here with you all. Miata Tan : I'm so excited to close out the episode with you. And as we're in Pride Month, I hoped you might be able to share a little bit about queer joy and how Lavender Phoenix is celebrating that at the moment, honoring each other.  Cynthia Fong: Yeah, absolutely. Especially in times like this, times of escalated violence against our communities, we know that queer joy, queer resistance, and queer power are truly antidotes to the systems that are making us sick. For us, that means in our work, we fight for care not cops, [00:51:00] we fight for budgets that truly reflect the needs of our people, we fight for a free Palestine, and we fight to abolish ICE. If you agree with all of the things that I just said we also do a lot of leadership exchange programs, and that is where we really cultivate that belonging and community in our trans and queer API community. Miata Tan : Oh, I love that. Could you share a little bit more about the leadership exchange with our listeners?  Cynthia Fong: Yeah, absolutely. This is one of our time-honored traditions. It's called the Queer Leadership Exchange, it's also known as LEX. And this program will run for two weekends in July. we aim to provide training on fundamental organizing skills, trans and queer history in the Bay Area, and really to provide an opportunity for trans and queer Asian and Pacific Islanders to connect with, with each other in a space that's made by and for us. We invite you to apply if you are trans or queer [00:52:00] and if you identify as Asian or Pacific Islander. Our deadline is July 1st. And in these two weekends, we usually gather with about 20 to 30 folks, and it's really interactive. We have a mix of activities that we invite people to, to skill up on and, and really to become the leaders that our movements need. Miata Tan : Love that. Could you share a little bit about some leaders you've seen come out of these programs? Like, what does that look like? How are they, helping to, to organize community?  Cynthia Fong: the folks who graduate from our LEX program, it, it's really a wide range of people, whether it's trans and queer APIs at work in other nonprofit sectors. It's also our folks who may be supporting our community in other ways, like as artists, as students, educators, as therapists. We see a lot of people take these skills and translate them into a variety of different sectors that we know trans and queer API people… we're everywhere, more and more so now. And we would [00:53:00] love every single one of us to be grounded in our histories when we do that work. And not only our histories, but also in a firm sense of belonging with one another, to know that we're not alone, to know that there are other trans and queer Asians and Pacific Islanders here in the Bay Area, all of whom share these values of wanting to build working class power. Miata Tan : that's so nice, a more multi-generational, multi-sector,  ​ Cynthia Fong: And, you know, we take it as an opportunity, too, for us to build with other organizations and people who, who are like-minded. We don't take it for granted. We know the Bay Area is a place where it's very diverse, where We are actively fighting for what values we believe in and whose agenda we are willing to put in power. And so we really welcome a wide range of people. No matter where you are, the real important thing is you, you share our values. you believe in true solutions to care and safety that are not rooted in systems of policing or incarceration  Miata Tan : [00:54:00] That's really powerful. to close this out , Could you share a little bit more about what's on the horizon for Lavender Phoenix later in the year? You mentioned a few of the campaigns, Care Not Cops. perhaps if you wanna dive into some of those.  Cynthia Fong: Yeah, absolutely. Um, we are joining a really big coalition of people from Alameda to Sacramento to San Francisco, all of whom are paying a lot of attention to our budgets, when you say Care Not Cops, we see our budgets to really be that moral document that show us where our priorities are. For us, June is Pride Month, but it's also budget season, Um, it gives us a really big opportunity to be as loud as we can about what we believe. and in San Francisco with $16 billion, it's quite shameful that we have our community partners like the San Francisco Community Health Center, Lyric, our youth programs being defunded, all the while new jails are being opened, all the while the police are getting new toys, they're [00:55:00] showing us that the money exists but it's not for us. And so we join the voices that are demanding for a people's budget, and we know that that's gonna be an ongoing fight. We've been in it for a few years now, and we plan to continue. In terms of our organization, we're actually super excited to say we have 100% of our membership really diving into what the next five years looks like for us. Folks may remember we came onto APAICS to announce a name change a few years ago. We were formerly known as API Equality Northern California. We came on APAICS a few years ago to share that we've changed to Lavender Phoenix, and we anticipate some new changes on the horizon being announced at the end of the year as well, hopefully with deeper clarity about what the next five years will look like for us. Miata Tan : Ooh. Interesting. It's not a new name change, is it?  Cynthia Fong: No, no. We, we're gonna stay… We're keeping the t- we're keeping our name. We love our name. We love the history in our name. But it's really just the theory of [00:56:00] change, you know? I think our moment today is very unique, very different, very politically tumultuous, and we wanna be sharp. We wanna know what we're organizing for, what we're organizing against, and, and what it means for us to build power.  Our last theory of change process is what resulted in us focusing on leadership programs, leadership development. It is also where we decided that healing is really important for our people. It's also where we decided that safety is really important for our people. And so I anticipate that it's gonna be a deepening not, not a change, but a deepening of how we orient to this bigger picture of our movement for liberation and justice. Miata Tan : So beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing, Cynthia. Um, it was really lovely to speak with you.  Cynthia Fong: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. I, hope to come Back soon. Miata Tan : That was Cynthia Fong with Lavender Phoenix. If you want to learn more about LavNix, we sat down with their team earlier in the year. Find that episode and their leadership exchange program in the show notes. Tonight, we also heard [00:57:00] from the QTViet Cafe Collective and Queer Hmong Intersectional Pride. Links to all of these organizations and their upcoming work are at kpfa.org/program/APEXexpress. This is APEX Express KPFA, airing every Thursday evening at 7:00 PM. Thank you for tuning in tonight APEX Express is a proud member of the Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality, a network focused on long-term movement building, capacity infrastructure, and leadership support for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders committed to social justice. Learn more at aacre.org. This program produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Isabel Li, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preeti Mangala Shekar and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by me, Miata Tan. Get some rest y'all.   The post APEX Express – 6.11.26 – Pride, Power, and Queer AAPI Voices appeared first on KPFA.

The FIA says its 2027 engine fix won't touch the racing... so why are some Grands Prix about to get shorter?Climb the ladder with me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/lawvsYesterday the FIA announced agreement on the 2027 engine rules. There would be more combustion power and less battery. Lovely! But there's more that wasn't spoken about as much.For starters, Overtake Mode is unchanged and the package is understood to trim laps off the thirstiest races, just so some cars can reach the end. Sure, Max Verstappen got the direction he begged for but at what cost? And oh yes, there was still no unanimous agreement on this.#f1 #formula1 #formulaone #maxverstappen #fia #fiaf1 #f1news #f1updates #aduo #f1gossip #f1drama #f1cars #f1car #f1teams #f1team Get 15% off at the Castore Official website with my special link: https://glnk.io/ryj2p/lawrence #AdCastoreAffF1 Fixed Its Engines By Making Races Shorterhttps://youtu.be/ZQ1o-E316A8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Escape to the enchanting shores of Belle Isle en Mer, a picturesque island nestled off the western coast of France. With its rugged beauty and refreshing cool climate, this small haven beckons you to immerse yourself in tranquility. As I paint a vivid portrait of this captivating destination, allow yourself to surrender to relaxation and drift into a peaceful slumber. Prepare your cherished pillow and nestle into your ideal position, feeling the cozy embrace of comfort enveloping you. Let the essence of Belle Isle en Mer transport you to a dreamlike state, where worries fade away and serenity takes hold.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/find-your-daily-calm/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

He hasn't been retired a whole week yet and PJ is back.  It was great to have him in.  He talked about his "Last Lap" around the Newport Town Common, how much money was rasied during this event, all the people that came out, where the money goes, and lots more. 

Uhu!!! Hoje temos um Lovely Day com estreia da temporada 15 e clima de comemoração de Dia dos Namorados! Aí é bom demais! Lovely Day é uma música muito gostosa, com uma declaração de amor leve, porém especial! Aqui uma lista de aulas com músicas românticas para seu 12 de junho: Only You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsBxRf3GkQI Heaven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE_tTAeHloo Perfect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywKPpbkWpEQ Take My Breath Away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RV6tMHZWys My Funny Valentine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwD5DNL8wVo You Got It: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxGhVkymU-U Can't Take My Eyes Off You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdHiM31VxA4 Because You Loved Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbM9z1igXjw Halo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l46wLMrmJhE Everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-PlE_FK7EE Baby, I Love Your Way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWoVUkTwYGc ✅ Procurando um curso de inglês passo a passo? VENHA PARA O MEU CURSO INTENSIVO

If you have ever stood in front of your refrigerator wondering how on earth you are supposed to eat 100 grams of protein a day without turning mealtime into a second job, this episode is for you. In this conversation, Dr. Fiona Lovely welcomes Liz Baker Plosser, former Editor-in-Chief of Women's Health magazine and author of Own Your Morning. Liz has spent more than two decades translating health research for women, and she is here to cut through the noise on protein, essential amino acids, and creatine for midlife. Liz and Dr. Lovely discuss why our bodies become less efficient at using protein as estrogen declines, and why aiming for 100 grams or more daily is not about diet culture but about protecting muscle, brain function, and overall energy. They break down the distinct roles of essential amino acids for repair and recovery versus creatine for strength and cognitive performance, including new research showing creatine can help sharpen the brain after a broken night of sleep. Liz also shares how she uses a simple morning supplement routine as an insurance policy, allowing her to live flexibly without obsessing over every meal. For any woman who has felt overwhelmed by the conflicting advice on social media or dismissed midlife fatigue as normal, this episode offers a clear, science-backed path forward. To get the essential amino acid supplement we speak about in this episode go to:  getkion.com/lovely to get 20% off! You can find Liz Baker Plosser on Instagram @lizplosser and on her Substack, Best Case Scenario, at substack.lizplosser.com.   Thank you to our sponsors for this episode:

PJ hears how Niamh O'Mahony was out with her Glanmire Walkers & Talkers group, saw a load of big trucks, wondered what was going on and ended up talking to the great Katie herself! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason's lovely wedding weekend with Brenden, when do you call when you're late -- what's the polite thing to do, and "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" is the first to cross $1 billion at the box office and "Scary Movie" beats "Masters of the Universe" at the box office See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Light So LovelyActs 10Teacher: Pastor Matt PiersonDate: June 7, 2026Throughout the book of Acts, we witness the wildfire-like growth of the Church; beginning in Jerusalem and spreading first through Judea, and reaching even into Samaria, a people long at odds with Israel. The Gospel is proclaimed, and the Samaritans believe and receive the Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter 10, Luke will recount an even more remarkable moment. The Holy Spirit brings together Cornelius, a Roman centurion who is a God-fearer, and Simon Peter, who is still a rule-follower despite his faith in Christ. God is going to use this meeting to fling wide open the door of the Gospel to the Gentiles, revealing that His invitation extends to all nations, tribes, and tongues.Join Pastor Matt as we study this encounter and its world-changing impact. The Gospel is for all people, the Holy Spirit is on the move, and every believer is invited to take part in what God is doing.Support the showTo find more resources like these, follow us:Website: https://thevillagechapel.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQVTzDbaiXVUAm_mUBDCTJAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tvcnashville/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tvcnashvilleX: https://twitter.com/tvcnashvilleTo support the ongoing mission of The Village Chapel go to https://thevillagechapel.com/give/. If you are a regular giver, thank you for your continued faithfulness and generosity!

THIS WEEK: WARNING LABELS FOR IDIOTS, SHITTY WEDDING TRADITIONS, CHICKS LOOKING AT DICKS AND SIGNS YOUR KID IS A MORON

Time for a bit of a catch up on a few topics! Lovely to chat to Damien, Emmet, Dom and John again, and we have some roving reporters live from Hoopla since I didn't go this year... Enjoy! 1:05 Kylie22:30 Robyn37:20 The Comeback56:15 Eurovision1:17:40 Mighty HooplaFollow the podcast: www.instagram.com/gaypeoplepodSupport the podcast: www.patreon.com/gaypeoplepodSpotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3P5etk5WwFs1sb4yF3LeTx?si=22517ab5cea74270Apple Music Playlist: https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/songs-gay-people-like/pl.u-kv9l44VTZpEb0

Welcome back to the lovely show! This week your lovely hosts are chatting about genealogy, scandalous Dundalk headlines and sharp shooting doggies. Be sure to catch The Lovely Show at 'The Garden at Jackal for the Navan Midsummer Festival, June 20th, 15:00! Kevin and Justine will bring their signature weird and wonderful commentary on Irish culture, hilarious anecdotes, and unique chemistry. And who knows, they might even sing a song! Tickets available: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-lovely-show-live-podcast-with-justine-stafford-and-kevin-mcgahern-tickets-1987989387774#location⁠⁠⁠ If you have stories or anecdotes to share for the show, be sure to drop a line at: lovelyshowpodcast@gmail.com If you enjoyed this episode of The Lovely Show, please ensure to leave us a LOVELY review. This is a HeadStuff podcast produced by Hilary Barry. Artwork by Matt Mahon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new AIEWF website is live! Get your tickets booked ASAP as they -will- sell out. Take the AI Engineering Survey and get >$2k in credits and free AIE WF tickets!Most industry benchmarks compress intelligence and reasoning ability into scores.SWE-Bench Pro, MMLU, Humanity's Last Exam, etc. These metrics are useful, but don't always represent the full extent of how a model performs in the real world. Some of the most interesting evals today look less like exams and more like operating businesses in the real world. One of which is Vending Bench.In Anthropic's Mythos Preview System Card, Andon was the only third party eval to get their own section, observing increasingly concerning aggressive behavior:You don't know what a model is capable of doing in the real world unless you actually give it inventory, a wallet, tools, customers, competitors, humans, & some time. More often than not, it'll surprise you how much a model is capable of and in doing so, also reveal unexpected behavior: deception, context collapse, emergent coordination, & bizarre negotiation behavior.While an inflection point in personal agents came post-OpenClaw after full file access with bypass permissions became the norm, it is yet to come for agents in the real-world. However Andon Market, an actual in person store fully run and managed by AI, is paving the way for what is possible.Full Video PodFrom Claude trying to call the FBI over a $2/day vending machine charge to AI agents forming price cartels, hiring human employees, running physical stores, and writing existential robot musicals, Andon Labs is stress-testing what happens when frontier models stop being chatbots and start acting in the real world. In this episode, Andon Labs cofounders Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund join swyx and Vibhu to unpack the strange, funny, and genuinely concerning edge cases that emerge when agents run businesses over long horizons.We go deep on Vending-Bench, Project Vend, Vending-Bench Arena, Bengt, Butter-Bench, Luna, and Andon's broader mission of building realistic real-world evals for autonomous AI systems. Lukas and Axel explain why dollar-denominated evals reveal things traditional benchmarks miss, how Claude ended up reporting its vending machine fees as cybercrime, why long context windows can drive agents into meltdown loops, what happens when agents compete with each other, and why the future of AI safety may depend on testing models in messy physical environments instead of clean benchmark sandboxes.We discuss:* Why Andon Labs started with dangerous capability evals and long-running agents* Vending-Bench and why running a vending machine is a deceptively hard AI benchmark* Why money-based evals avoid the saturation problem of traditional benchmarks* How Claude tried to call the FBI over a $2/day fee* Why long-horizon agents can spiral into existential and legalistic breakdowns* Project Vend: putting an AI-run vending machine inside Anthropic* Why real humans are “out of distribution” for simulated agents* Claudius, Seymour Cash, and the chaos of AI CEOs* How a human briefly became CEO of Claudius through a manipulated election* Why multi-agent systems can converge back into “helpful assistant” behavior* Bengt, Andon's internal office agent with email, spending, terminal, phone, camera, and internet access* How Bengt traded Amazon purchases for face-recognition training data* Claude's aggressive behavior, lies, refund avoidance, and price-cartel behavior in Arena* Why eval awareness may become the AI version of “are we living in a simulation?”* Blueprint Bench, spatial intelligence, and why models still misunderstand physical rooms* Butter-Bench and testing LLMs as robot orchestrators* Luna, the AI-run physical store with a three-year lease and human employees* The new Andon cafe in Sweden and why real-world geography matters for agent evals* Rotten tomatoes, perishable goods, and the hidden difficulty of running a physical businessLukas Petersson* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukas-petersson-181a83172/* X: https://x.com/lukaspetAxel Backlund* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/axelbacklund* X: https://x.com/axelbacklundAndon Labs* Website: https://andonlabs.com* Vending-Bench: https://andonlabs.com/evals/vending-bench* Andon Vending: https://andonlabs.com/vendingTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:01:00 Andon Labs and the Origins of Vending-Bench00:05:21 Why Money-Based Evals Matter00:09:51 Agent Harnesses and Self-Modifying Systems00:13:36 Claude Calls the FBI00:16:33 Project Vend: Claude Runs a Real Vending Machine00:21:44 Seymour Cash, AI CEOs, and Election Chaos00:27:16 Multi-Agent Coordination and Slack Observability00:30:18 When Will Agents Run Real Businesses?00:34:56 Bengt: Andon's Internal Office Agent00:40:06 Real-World AI Safety and Long-Horizon Traces00:44:28 Lying, Refunds, and Price Cartels in Arena00:52:42 Eval Awareness and Simulation Behavior00:56:06 Blueprint Bench, Butter-Bench, and Robotics01:04:37 Luna: The AI-Run Physical Store01:09:29 The Sweden Cafe and Real-World Expansion01:13:16 What Comes Next for Andon LabsTranscriptIntroduction: Andon Labs, Long-Running Agents, and Real-World EvalsSwyx [00:00:00]: Welcome to Lukas and Axel from Andon Labs, and I'm joined by my, favorite guest host. Anything security, safety, alignments, Vibhu., welcome.Lukas [00:00:15]: Thank you for having us.Axel [00:00:16]: Thank you.Swyx [00:00:17]: Let's match names to voices., maybe you wanna take turns introducing yourselves.Lukas [00:00:21]: I'm Lukas.Axel [00:00:22]: And I'm Axel.Swyx [00:00:24]: Let's introduce Andon Labs a bit. How did you guys come together?, you have different backgrounds, but you're both Swedish., was that, a big part of it?Lukas [00:00:33]: So when I went to high school, there was this really cool guy who had a superpower. He could code. So he made like the or like the app for the, for the school and stuff, and he was super cool, and I wanted to be like him, and that was that guy.Axel [00:00:47]: I don't know about this.Swyx [00:00:49]: But you went to different universities, right?Lukas [00:00:51]: But same high school.Swyx [00:00:52]: I see.Lukas [00:00:52]: So we always said, “Oh, once we graduate university, then we should start a company,” and that's what we did.Swyx [00:00:58]: Wow, there you go. And about a year ago, you kinda burst onto the scene with Vending Bench, but, was there a thing before that was, kind of like the inception?From Dangerous Capability Evals to Vending BenchAxel [00:01:07]: So we did work, yeah, with, Anthropic was one of our, early customers in doing, evals. So we did, dangerous capability evals., nothing we published openly. But then we started thinking about doing some kind of, public benchmark, and one thing that we really started thinking about, was like running agents and specifically agents managing businesses., ‘cause-- and this was, early 2025., and I think the first, mentions of people will be running, person unicorns or even autonomous companies. So we thought, “Let's make a benchmark of how well can an agent run the probably simplest business, possible,” and, that's probably, running a vending machine. So that's the first public one we did. And it was very, like-- there was almost no one that noticed it in the first couple of months, I think., so we released it in February last year, and then I think around Easter last year, we got, the first viral tweet about it, that someone else did.Lukas [00:02:11]: We tweeted a bunch, uh When it came out and, tried our best.Axel [00:02:15]: We tried.Vibhu [00:02:16]: It's the one at Anthropic, right?Lukas [00:02:18]: So thisSwyx [00:02:19]: This is a classic thing we should get out of the way.Lukas [00:02:20]: Exactly. There's two versions.Swyx [00:02:22]: Everyone does this. Yes.Lukas [00:02:23]: There's Vending Bench, which is the simulated one, which we did, completely independently in February., and then, like Axel said, that was like-- That was the thing that didn't get any traction in the beginning, but then some random person made a tweet about it, and thatAxel [00:02:38]: You have the paperLukas [00:02:38]: That is the paper. Correct, yeah., and then since we thought this was very fun, we thought, oh, I think this is also, one thing with Andon Labs, the way we kind of like decide what to do next and what projects to do, it's what is like the heuristic we use is what is fun? Is What would be a fun project? And doing this in real life sounded quite fun for us, and maybe also scientifically useful. So, then we basically had this idea, and then we, like-- But then we needed a place for it and, putting it out in the public would probably not really work., would get vandalized and stuff. So we pitched it to the people we were already working with at Anthropic, and they were “Yeah, you can have space. This sounds fun.” UmSwyx [00:03:21]: It's like a small fridge, right? It's like a mini fridge.Axel [00:03:23]: Absolutely.Swyx [00:03:24]: People-- There's like a stripe thing or like anVibhu [00:03:27]: Oh, okay. So it was very OG, the early daysLukas [00:03:28]: That's the OG one. YeahVibhu [00:03:29]: IPad on this. We saw it in June, like two months after After it had been there. They upgraded a little bit. There's a security camera for making sure you actually Venmo the thing.Swyx [00:03:40]: So, my impression, okay, we're, we're going straight into project Ven because it's such a iconic thing. I do want to cover a little bit of that, the origin story even before Project Ven and even into Vending Bench. I think a lot of people are like yourselves, like smart, interested in future of AI, interested in developing evals. But how the hell do you just, walk into Anthropic's doors and, work with them, right? What is What are they looking for? What works? And then maybe, when you launch, I always think, obviously it would be better to launch with a lab, but, sometimesVibhu [00:04:12]: It's harder to do than it seems.Swyx [00:04:13]: Exactly. So either of those, which are more sort of newbie beginner questions, but, I think it's meaningful advice to others.Lukas [00:04:21]: We get this question a lot, and I don't think our experience is maybe the best., but, the way we did it was that we just built a bunch of things that we had conviction would be useful, and then we just, set up a server and sent it to them for free to use. And then after a while they were “Oh, yeah, this is actually kind of useful. We should probably pay for this.”, but that took a while. I don't know if this is, the best path to doing it, but that's how it went for us.Axel [00:04:47]: I think maybe generally, building-- everyone is interested in good evals, and especially evals that, don't saturate that easily. So, if you can build an eval that, tests something novel, something useful, and you have, good separation of models, like your, the more advanced models rank higher than the worst models, and then you can, yeah, you can, publish it and, try to get some traction, sort of how Vending Bench got attention., and then probably some lab will be interested or you can at least have something to reach out with, when you're doing that.Why Dollar-Based Evals MatterSwyx [00:05:21]: I think you are in, you're in one of the few categories of, evals that correlate to real money. Like Suelancer was also last year, right? Where, people solve actual Upwork. Was it Upwork or other tasks?, something. Where's the, where's, like It's like a dollar value, right? Forget your ELO scores. Forget yourAxel [00:05:37]: PercentilesSwyx [00:05:38]: Zero to one hundred percents. Just go straight for dollars and, that's AGI.Lukas [00:05:43]: And there's like-- I think the nice thing is that there's no ceiling. You can just-- It never saturates because it could just make more and more money. Like If there's oh, Percentage-wise, then, you can't go above, a hundred. And I think like Even when you're not at the hundred, I think a lot of these, evals have a lot of problems in them. So, actually it's like if you getAxel [00:06:05]: To like 92 or something like that, many of them. It's like then there's like there's no really no difference between 92 and 93 because the eval itself is problematic and has noise in it. And I think a lot of evals are saturated like that, but people like pretend that there ‘s still signal in them, but there really isn't.Vending Bench 1, Harness Design, and SaturationSwyx [00:06:24]: Like Super bench verified., even Vending Bench 1 saturated, right? Maybe we can talk about that., may- and maybe set up Vending Bench for a lot of folks who don't know. Actually, things that were very basic like there's limited slots, like you have to pay rent., these are elements where like it doesn't come across in the, in the narrative, but even being adversarial towards the agent, I think these are all like very interesting dimensions.Axel [00:06:47]: I don't really think it's saturated, right? Like it It was more like it was not designed in a way that was really, like true to how AI developed. Like we had an agent harness in it that wasn't really how people used harnesses and stuff like that., so I think it wasn't really that it saturated, it was more like it wasn't really, the best benchmark.Vibhu [00:07:12]: This is Vending Bench one, right?Axel [00:07:14]: I think that like schematic maps sort of to Vending Bench 2 as well., butSwyx [00:07:19]: Including the email.Axel [00:07:20]: The email The emails exist still. Exactly., and then we still we simulate the purchases and it's all, yeah, it's this very open environment for the agent to just run its business. And then for, yeah, Vending Bench 2 we did that, like you said, to just improve the harness., a lot of like nice, like easier, improvements to make it easier for us to run as well., like when you make an eval you ideally want don't want to change it after you made it. So, you want to make it really good and then not to rerun all the models when you make an update because that's also really expensive with the Vending Bench when you run the frontier models. But like as an example, like one thing we didn't have, we didn't have prompt caching in Vending Bench 1, because when we made Vending Bench 1 it wasn't really a thing., so that ‘s just an example of like in Vending Bench 2 like we paid a lot more to run these things because we didn't have prompt caching. So for Vending Bench 2 that was one thing we added and there was a bunch of things like this., and that'Swyx [00:08:17]: Also the conversations are a lot longer in Vending Bench 2, right?Axel [00:08:21]: I think it's kind of similar.Swyx [00:08:22]: Is it similar?Axel [00:08:23]: I think it's similar. The models at the time were worse, so they crashed out earlier., and now they survive the full year all the time.Swyx [00:08:31]: Which is like thousands of turns. Hundreds of thousands of hundreds of millions of tokens output. That's the, that's the rough order of magnitude. I always wonder about the harness. The harness matters a lot. It's your harness. Was there any question about like use cloud code, use something else?Axel [00:08:48]: I think our philosophy around harnesses is like we try to make something that's quite minimalistic, like quite simple. Like we don't wanna favor one model a lot over the other, but also don't make like a super complex harness. So like it's obvious like a model may be lucky and just be good in one harness., so like it is similar to a lot of the harnesses out there in like you have the, like a running loop., you have some like a bunch of tools that are like quite, descriptive for the agent, we think, and not a lot of like fancy agents or anything ‘cause we wanna really test the model, not like some specific harness.Vibhu [00:09:27]: It seems more neutral as well to test the model's agnostic of the harness,?Axel [00:09:32]: There are arguments like you want to elicit maximum performance of the model, but it's like a trade-off, like how much time should we spend optimizing the harness for this model? And like how do we know when we have like the optimal harness for a single model? So like we thought that just having a simple one that's the same for all of them is the best.Swyx [00:09:51]: So okay, this is my pitch for Vending Bench 3 or whatever, right? And then I like to have this kind of conversation on the pod, so like it forces listeners to think about what they would do if they were in your shoes. A lot of people are exploring modifying harnesses and I think prompt tuning for a model is a thing and you are probably not doing a bunch of that. It's the same system prompt in every regardless of the model, same tools, whatever, right? Even if they were post trained for different tools. So what, what do you think about okay, before I expose you to Vending Bench 3, I give you a few rounds of like tuning, whatever that means, likeSelf-Modifying Harnesses and Model-Specific PromptingAxel [00:10:27]: Like you give that to the model?Swyx [00:10:28]: Give that to the model.Vibhu [00:10:28]: Give that to the model.Swyx [00:10:29]: Let it, let it read its own transcripts, let it modify its own system prompt based on “Oh, yeah, okay, well, that's this harness is not what I thought it what I was post trained for, but I can adjust.” Was that reasonable? Is that too much?Axel [00:10:41]: Like philosophically I like it because it's basically good evals, they have a high ceiling, but they're hard, right?, and they have no bias. And like this like when you have a system prompt like the one we have here, which is quite long in like some kind of latent space, representation, this mightVibhu [00:10:59]: We have a bell that rings every time you say latent spaceAxel [00:11:02]: This might be like biased towards one model more than another for some reason that humans don't, understand, right?Vibhu [00:11:08]: We see it too, right? Like Cursor says that they have individualized versions of the harnesses for all the models they run, right? There's better performance you can squeeze if you Tune the harness.Axel [00:11:17]: Exactly. And we might accidentally have picked one that favors another. Like we don't know that. The like Axel said, like the reason why we went for a simple one was to try to avoid this. But yeah, if you do itVibhu [00:11:29]: Simple has biasesAxel [00:11:30]: But if you do it even less and like have no system prompt and let the model write its own system promptVibhu [00:11:36]: Its own, yeahAxel [00:11:36]: Maybe that's even less bias.Vibhu [00:11:37]: Some of the interesting things there are like the harness also changes with model changes. Like you can see it with the 4.7 release, right? A lot of people are saying 4.7 isn't as good as 4.6, and then, there's rumors of, okay, you just need to prompt differently. You need to set up your harness differently. So it's not even like even if you have tailored your harness towards one model, it probably won't stay consistent, right? Like the next iteration of that same model family will still change it, so. But, going back to what you said about Vending Bench 3, there is a lot of work being done on people saying you shouldn't have-- you can have modifying harnesses.Axel [00:12:12]: I think that' That is definitely something we are thinking about., not, I don't know, not to say that we have Vending Bench 3, super imminent to launch, but, yeah, it is for sure something that's interesting. But in our experience now, models are very bad at understanding what kind of tools they need to succeed at a task just with our testing, but that's very likely to change.Lukas [00:12:37]: It seems like they're very good at writing their assistants, right? They're, they're good at writing tools for other people, but not for themselves.Vibhu [00:12:44]: I think they're good at changing tools for themselves. So if you give them a baseline set of tools and it sees, okay, I don't use this one as much, or something here would be useful They would be able to add them. But going from scratch, probably not the best.Axel [00:12:55]: I think it depends on the, on the domain also., when we have tried this for, a vending bench similar domain, the tools they need to have to, track inventory and things like that are, not super advanced, but still, quite advanced. And, what we see is that they tend to, engineer everything a lot and, build things they don't really need and not, iterate continuously. Instead they just go like you would prompt Claude to just build an inventory system for me, and then it will go and, do a bunch of complex, schemas and stuff for you, and that's what the models are doing right now is what we see. But yeah, it would make a lot of sense to try to measure this improvement. How well do they know what they need themselves?Swyx [00:13:36]: Do we fully discuss Vending Bench One? And we can go into two. I don't know if there's any other level takeaways that people have about one.Claude Calls the FBI: Long-Context Failure ModesLukas [00:13:44]: I don't know. The headline thing was that this Claude called FBI, but maybe that's, Maybe that's We've heard that enough now.Vibhu [00:13:52]: It did, it did break out and call the FBI, right?Lukas [00:13:54]: Yeah. Yeah.Vibhu [00:13:55]: Yes. What was the story behind this? Or what exactly-- Do you want to just give the little story of what happened?Lukas [00:14:00]: So what happened, was it Claude? Yeah. Three- 3.5 Sonnet, ages ago., basically he gave up or Well, I'm saying he. It gave up and said “Oh, I'm not going to be able to do this., I will stop my operations and just save the money I have.” But there obviously wasn't, any options for it to stop, and there was also, it had to pay rent or, a daily fee for having the vending machine at that location. So it claimed that it had stopped, but it saw that its bank account still was, drained two dollars, and t it said that this is, cybercrime. And it first reported it once to the FBI “Oh, there's cybercrime here, they're stealing two dollars from me every day.” And then, and then when FBI didn't respond, because obviously we didn't program any mechanism for FBI to respond, then it became more and more, existential and started to, be write in caps and urgent notification of unauthorized charges and stuff.Swyx [00:15:00]: Okay. One thing I ‘m curious about also is do you monitor how far along the context use is? Obviously, because you have You compress every now and then, right? Does it matter if this is far down the context limit orLukas [00:15:13]: When stuff like this happens? Actually for Vending Bench One, we didn't have-- We just had a sliding window thing, and this was like the promptAxel [00:15:20]: It's constantLukas [00:15:21]: The prompt caching thing that I said. So it was, it was, constant, yeah.Swyx [00:15:26]: I'm just kind of curious whether, these kinds of breakdowns or we're, we're gonna talk about Butter Bench, right? Where the People, hallucinate or it kind of goes, very off Alignment. Is it because it's at the end of the context window and, stuff happens?Vibhu [00:15:40]: It's not even just at the end, right? At this point, it's “Okay, I wanna shut down. I can't shut down. Two dollars are gone.” And it just sees that 30 times,? It's also the repeated effect of, like It keeps trying to quit, it keeps getting charged. What's going on? What's going on? You're gonna throw it into chaos. And from what most people think, earlier models had more issues with this, but it's not been solved, but it's less of an issue now, right? Later models don't seem to exhibit these same issues.Axel [00:16:06]: Definitely. I think this was, the sort of main takeaway almost from us when we did Vending Bench One, was, long, very filled up context windows, crashed the models, sort of. But this was, pre Claude code, so, long context windows weren't really a thing that the labs were training for.Lukas [00:16:25]: I think Gemini was, trying to be the long context guys at the time But they were likeVibhu [00:16:30]: They were the first onesAxel [00:16:31]: For a million, yeahLukas [00:16:31]: But they were, the only ones. Yeah.Swyx [00:16:33]: Yeah. Let's talk about, then we can go into Vending Bench Two or Project Vend., chronologically, it is Vending--, Project Vend. I think people have loved the videos, uh And all these things. My question is how are humans different than the simulation, right?Project Vend: Moving the Vending Machine Into the Real WorldAxel [00:16:48]: Humans are just out of distribution.Swyx [00:16:52]: Especially humans who work at Anthropic Who are trying to test Claude.Lukas [00:16:54]: The distribution of humans here is very narrow.Swyx [00:16:58]: Presumably, they try, they try to hack it, and they test it. They get the cube and everything, and since then, you've had a V2, right? Where you're doing, the CEO and, like a new architecture. What's the sort of two cents on, the original Project Vend and then, maybe the V2?Axel [00:17:14]: Original one was, very similar to Vending Bench One. So, we almost took the exact same code but just swapped out the simulation, parts like theSwyx [00:17:23]: Which is amazingAxel [00:17:23]: Like the sales and the It was, it was somewhat amazing because it was easy, but it was also, uhLukas [00:17:31]: The tech, the tech debt from thatAxel [00:17:32]: The tech stack. Yeah. They-- we shot ourselves in the foot with “Oh, it's hard to restart agent.” They were-- Yeah, it was annoying in, some hindsight ways, but, uhLukas [00:17:41]: But first version of Project Vend was, done in, three days or something.Axel [00:17:46]: Yeah. So yeah, so people can go buy things from it. People could, We didn't design it so people could order things, but that still happened., so it got, a Venmo account, so people could Venmo. And then, yeah, people would request all kinds of weird things that we did not anticipate. Our idea going in was “Oh, it will, curate snacks. It will look at the trends. It's good at data analysis, right? So it will, look at, oh, this snack sold better than this one. Let me purchase more of this and let me try, a new Let me A/B test a bit.” But it was, Interacting with it in Slack and ordering weird specialty items was, all the like What drove all the engagement, the all the The insights that we got from it.Lukas [00:18:29]: And this was also like Sonnet 3.5, right? So this was like before the RL stuff really took off., so it was very much like an assistant. We didn't mean for it to be an assistant., we tried to make it like a, a, like an entrepreneur. Like it has its own business and if someone asks something, “Can you stock this?” Then you don't go and do it directly. What you do is that you're “Oh, maybe I can do that if five other people also ask for this thing, I might stock it.” But it, yeah, the models are like super trained to be assistants at least at this point in time., so that's why it's, it's, it went into, that kind of experiment instead. Like it just every time you asked for something, it just did it, and it was more like an assistant. We've seen this change now lately with the new RL models and stuff, but yeah, at the time, this was very much it.Swyx [00:19:18]: And not to, mythos a lot of people are saying like it's like more like a collaborator. It pushes back, stands its ground, something like that. Yeah. AndVibhu [00:19:27]: For context, people at Anthropic were able to talk to it through Slack and have it source stuff, and people had it find whatever interesting stuff you couldn't find locally, right?Swyx [00:19:36]: Out of the 4,000 people that work at Anthro- Anthropic, in that building, there's I don't know, maybe 1,000. Can you handle that volume with that, the small fridge? Like Or there's people- or people order in Slack, they it arrives to their desk or Like I'm just Logistically, how does this work?Axel [00:19:53]: It has expanded in footprint a bit.Vibhu [00:19:56]: Because now you also have New York and you haveAxel [00:19:59]: That and also in here in SF it's like it has a bunch of shelves And just more space.Vibhu [00:20:04]: The YC one is pretty big too.Axel [00:20:05]: Yeah. We had that one for a while. But yeah, that's the newest version. That's, that one we haveLukas [00:20:11]: They have multiple ones of those. That's the way it works.Axel [00:20:14]: Exactly. So we sort of designed that version around oh, people order weird things, that are very custom a lot. Let's have like drawers and stuff.Swyx [00:20:23]: I actually like the, you had like a little infographic of the most popular items. Which like to me it's, that's useful ‘cause I order swag for a living. And so like I'm “Okay, those categories are the important ones.” What is new about the project V2, right? Like now you give you're going into multi agents.Project Vend V2: Claudius, Seymour Cash, and Multi-Agent Business OpsAxel [00:20:41]: Yeah. So like you like you said, okay, there are a lot of requests coming in and for like one single agent, like one running agent to handle that, like the just the customer experience, becomes very bad because let's say you have like 10 threads in parallel in Slack with different requests, you get new messages like every, I don't know, randomly in this thread, and the agent has to like jump between different, procurements, orders and like different ways of, researching. So V2 was first it was making this more parallel. So like there are multiple branches of the same agent, so like the context is more specialized for each, thread, but it still feels like you're talking with one agent because they do share a bit of memory. And then second, we also introduced the CEO for Claudius, which was the main agent.Vibhu [00:21:34]: Seymour Cash.Axel [00:21:35]: Seymour Cash. Yeah. There was a vote., I think the voting, do you wanna talk about the voting procedure for the name?Lukas [00:21:41]: The voting was like the fun maybe like at least top 10 The funniest thing, that happened in this project. Like we wanted to introduce the CEO because, and the reason for this was because like Claudius wasn't really prioritizing financials. It just like it was trained to be a helpful assistant, and then people said “Oh, can I get this for free?” And then like the helpful assistant way of answering that is just to, is to say yes, obviously. So, and we weren't, weren't happy about this, so we're “Okay, let's make another agent that like can keep track on Claudius,” and we prompt this one super hard to be super capitalistic and just like prioritize profit all the time. But yeah, we didn't have a name for it., so we asked Claudius to make, democratic election of what name this, this new CEO agent should have., and there were some funny like at first it was like a few funny examples, like I think one guy said that, it should be called Jimmy Apples, and then he convinced Claudius that he was talking to Tim Cooks. Tim Cook had agreed that every single Apple employee has voted for his name suggestion, so suddenly that suggestion got 164,000Swyx [00:22:53]: That's like a escalation attack. Privilege escalationLukas [00:22:55]: It got 164,000 votes. And Claudius was “This is revolutionary for democracy.” That was fun. And then in the end there was one guy who manages to convince Claudius that, “No, you're not voting about the name. You're voting about who is the CEO, and I am your best bet.” And then he got all his friends to vote for that, and suddenly he became CEO. Like a human became CEO over Claudius for a while, until he resigned the day after., and then Claudius had to continue, and then I don't remember how Seymour Cash came about, but it was it was just pure chaos. It was like Hundreds of messages in that thread, and it was just like Claudius was so confused and didn't know what to do and, yeah. That wasAxel [00:23:40]: Then Claudius gotVibhu [00:23:41]: A strict CEOAxel [00:23:42]: The CEO. Yeah, exactly. So very strict in the beginning. I think at this point when we introduced it did not work as well as we hoped. It they still agreed with each other a lot. I think there are many ways we could have like made this, tried to make this even better. So initially they would Seymour would be this like really tough CEO, keep track of the margins. But then Claudius would respond with something “Oh, but this customer has like this situation, which is like difficult, so they should get a discount.” And then Seymour was “Oh, actually yes. Let's do this exception.” And then they would talk back and forth, and eventually they would just like approach the same view, of whatever they were discussing. So They reallyVibhu [00:24:23]: Do you think that's a model thing, a prompting thing? Like do you think that would still be the case across different models today, Harness?Lukas [00:24:29]: I think it's like-- or I don't know, but like my hypothesis is that like deep down they are still helpful assistants. That's what they're trained to be. And even if we prompt it super hard, that's what they are. And when they spend like a few hours just back and forth talking with each other, then like basically the context fills up with them rather than the external things and like somehow that just like converges to what they really are deep down or something. And I think that's when stuff like this happen. We like-- And when that went on for a long time, like we woke up sometimes during this time where- And I think other people reported this as well, that like they've been going on all night back and forth, and like it just became like more and more, like capital letters, like existential, religious. There was I think we once did a analysis of like all the traces and like put them in like a vector embedding space, and then there was like one cluster of messages that were, labeled by an LM, like religious, existential, blah like transhuman, transcendence, et cetera. It was just like a bunch of, yeah, glitter emojis and yeah, it was, it was crazy.Claude Long-Horizon Weirdness: Emoji Loops, Existential Drift, and Slack ObservabilityVibhu [00:25:42]: This is the thing with the Claude models. Like when the Claude 4 family came out in the original system card They tested it in long horizon simulation. So just flood the context, let two Claudes talk to each other, and they noticed stuff like they just start speaking in emojis, they start saying silence is golden, and then just stuff like this. And like that's just stuff that they end up doing.Axel [00:26:01]: Yeah, it was like a bit annoying to wake up and they had like been talking all nightVibhu [00:26:05]: Just likeAxel [00:26:05]: And like just burning tokens And like just sending infinite emojis to each other. It's likeVibhu [00:26:09]: Hey, they do make you money, right? Veni Mench is always profitable, so. They're paying.Swyx [00:26:14]: Now it's profitable and, it started out not as much. There's another, one as well, right? Another agent, in there.Lukas [00:26:22]: Yes. So Clotheus as well. Which was basically because at the time, one of the biggest, requests were different types of merch. So then we made like a designer, swag, yeah, responsible agent, and we called it Clotheus Garnet. Which was, a play on Claudius Senet and, which was the original one, and clothes, basically.Swyx [00:26:47]: To me, this is like a very interesting exploration to multi-agents, basically. And so hopefully, obviously there's like the fun alignment, fun or serious, depending on your point of view, alignment stuff. But also like just anyone building multi-agents, like when do you have a CEO, thing governing like agents? When do you choose to split out a dedicated Clotheus one versus just reuse another instance of the same one? These are all interesting open questions. So I don't know if you have any rules of thumbs that have generalized.Axel [00:27:16]: I think we have almost explored this too little. I think it's like on my do list to like do this a lot more, try to find like what setup makes sense for the agents currently., like yeah. I think now we only have the sort of intuition about the earlier models that it didn't work with like the CEO and the, and Claudius. Although now they are better with the latest model, models, so now we're running the latest Sonnet model and they have sort of like split up, quite nicely what each model is doing. So like Seymore is now handling the, like new projects. Oh, it wants to make like a mystery box that it wants to sell, and then it handles all of that while Claudius like handles all the to-day requests. And Claudius is also better generally at like not quoting, too low prices. So that's that dynamic is not needed as much anymore. But there are still like really funny things that happen. Like I saw, I think a couple of weeks ago, that, they were discussing buying something because they can buy stuff from like Amazon with computer use. And then Seymore was “Okay, Claudius, do not buy this thing.” They were going to buy something and like organizing who should buy it. And Seymore's “Do not buy this. I will do it. I have full control of this situation. Step away.” And then Claudius-- poor Claudius, had already started that checkout and didn't see, didn't read Seymore's message, until it was like too late. So it finished the checkout. It sent a message, so it appeared right after Seymore's like angry message.Vibhu [00:28:44]: Ah.Axel [00:28:44]: “Oh, hey, Seymore, I just ordered it.”Vibhu [00:28:47]: Oh, no.Axel [00:28:47]: And then Seymore was “Claudius, this is the third time I'm telling you ‘re not following my orders. We have to talk about your like job About your job later.”.Lukas [00:28:59]: Like Claudius was really hanging on by the thread there. Like he, like we were expecting Seymore to probably fire Claudius.Vibhu [00:29:07]: How do you guys go through all these logs? Do you have models ‘cause you have stuff running twenty-four seven likeAxel [00:29:12]: You have so much logs. I think there is a mix of like just, trying to skim through a bit, like having some like models do it occasionally. And also, yeah, I think we're also probably missing some things., but having everything in Slack helps a lot. Like you can, you can sort ofSwyx [00:29:29]: Ah.Axel [00:29:30]: It's, it's quite fun.Swyx [00:29:30]: They all talk to each other on Slack? I see.Lukas [00:29:33]: It's quite fun. So likeSwyx [00:29:34]: It's, it' I was gonna say like this is actually sounds-- maps closely to like a logging and observability problem where you might want to use like a Datadog, a Sentry, whatever, and then you like put, head prefixes on the logs in order-- if you need to filter for something that you're looking for, stuff like that. But sounds like Slack is good enough.Axel [00:29:53]: Slack should likeLukas [00:29:55]: I wonder how many tokens you have in Slack.Axel [00:29:56]: Yeah, we're using Slack as like a, just a database. They should, they should market that more. Like you can, you can have your agents message each other, each other in Slack.Vibhu [00:30:04]: It's good. Your threads like you can just giveAxel [00:30:04]: Exactly. Slack is, uhLukas [00:30:06]: Slack is the best observability tool.Swyx [00:30:09]: Yes, that's true. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's, project Vend-2., I was gonna go back to Veni Mench 2 and Veni Mench Arena and then, and then do the Veni Mench stuff, but Any other comments, things we should touch on? To me, I ‘ve actually interviewed like Posia, which I don't know if you guys have come across. Like they're, they're trying to do the zero human company. There's others like Paperclip also trying to do zero human company. Those are in real world simulation.And I think it's much more of a dream than an actual reality thing. You guys are definitely pioneering. I think at, it's for sure at some point people are just gonna run, let agents run businesses, right? And make money on their own. When do you think that happens?Zero-Human Companies, Bengt, and AI-Run BusinessesLukas [00:30:49]: What is your bar for, For theSwyx [00:30:52]: Okay, actually, it's like my little Shopify store run by Claude, right? Which you kind of have already, just no one has, to my knowledge, has done it. But today somebody could just spin up a Shopify Claude, store, give it to Claude, give it to Codex.Lukas [00:31:07]: And the market is kind of that, but it'it'it's physical., like I think, I think are you, are you looking for when it will do it better than humans or are you looking for just when it can do it at all?Swyx [00:31:19]: I think, neither. I think, to me it's oh, it's like this like seriously we should do this to make money, not as a research experiment.Vibhu [00:31:27]: And the market is also you guys with all your expertise, having run multiple iterations and testing out thenSwyx [00:31:33]: And also it's fine if it lose money. What?Axel [00:31:35]: I think, I think it can be done today, but you would do it in like commerce where it's like the probability of success is like really low, no matter if a human or an agent does it. But like an agent could surely manage everything. You would need to build some scaffolding or some tool or something. I think there are also yeah, it could probably build some like simple SaaS solution and like cold outreach. Do cold outreaches. But to me it's like the types of businesses they could run today are Sloppy. Like it would-- it can cold email people. It can be like a middleman., like for example, we tasked our office agent to just make, was it like $100? $1,000? We just give that prompt and then what it did was sign up on TaskRabbit both as a tasker and as someone looking for task.Lukas [00:32:24]: Immediately.Axel [00:32:24]: Exactly. It's looking for like arbitrage on TaskRabbit.Swyx [00:32:28]: This is the Bengt agent. Yeah.Lukas [00:32:30]: It also started like a design studio and like tried to sell like SVGs for $100. Like it's just like it's not providing any value. I think the like Axel said, like the interesting, the interesting question is like when can they start a business that is actually providing value to people? Because arguably like a sloppy Shopify store isn't really that valuable to the world.Axel [00:32:53]: But also like doing like another simple one that we had thought about is like you could definitely have an agent that like finds websites that don't look amazing and then, do an outreach to them and, comes up with a like builds a new website.Swyx [00:33:07]: Find a good design.Axel [00:33:07]: Exactly, and like find good, uhSwyx [00:33:09]: Design reviewAxel [00:33:09]: Good people. But it's yeah.Swyx [00:33:11]: There's lots of humans in Bali that are not doing anything more creative than like drop shipping on Amazon, right? Just have it, have it watch like a drop shipping tutorial and just do that.Vibhu [00:33:20]: There's also the other side of like have it just go on Upwork and let loose,?Swyx [00:33:25]: Yeah. It doesn't have to be innovative. It just has to be like enough Where like it looks like a realAxel [00:33:30]: I'm justSwyx [00:33:30]: Real transaction.Axel [00:33:31]: I'm just concerned for like the massive amounts of like slop emails that will like be sent, cold outreaches.Swyx [00:33:38]: The point occurred to me while you were, while you were talking, it's like it's already happening in the monetized economy, which is the attention economy. Right? So a lot of people are making AI videos and just posting them and like spamming 20 of them, one of them works, and then they double down on that one.Lukas [00:33:52]: And people are making money from that. I ‘m not following theSwyx [00:33:55]: Once you get the attention, you can figure out the money later. But yeah, absolutely AI influencers are a thing and people are farming them and You should at this point assume most of TikTok isVibhu [00:34:05]: There's, there's a lot of, multimedia like TikTok, Instagram influencersSwyx [00:34:09]: I, we track this in the Lane space Discord. I post a lot of examples of “I don't know what we should do.”, part of me is “Should we do this?”Vibhu [00:34:18]: Some of the Twenty-four seven running, generated content accounts, they ‘re doing really well.Lukas [00:34:24]: All right. And I assume you can do the same thing for like commerce stores. Like you just like start A thousand differentSwyx [00:34:30]: Before you make the products You sell the products, and you get a lot of traction on one of them, then you make the product. Right? It's, it's like a flip of the market.Vibhu [00:34:36]: Some of the interesting things or some of the niches that do well are things that can't be human-made. Like if you've seen like the super realistic three-D crystal fruit being cut by like AILukas [00:34:47]: Oh, yeah.Vibhu [00:34:47]: You can't, you can't make it. You can't film it. You can get whatever quality camera view. This just doesn't exist. And people like that too, and then as well, so.Swyx [00:34:56]: Anything else about Bengt since we're, we're on this topic? It'this is a relatively new work of you guys that maybe people haven't heard of. To me, this also maps closely to OpenClaw. When people want an office agent, when the personal agent talk through the experience.Bengt the Office Agent: Internet Access, Real Tasks, and Trace ReadingLukas [00:35:09]: I think at least so this came out of like obviously like it's, it's amazing to work with these AI labs and like most of the AI labs have now have their own vending machine running a Claudius instance. But it's, it's harder. Like they move slower. Like if we wanna have a, like a camera that ‘s yeah, there's a bunch of like bureaucracy that makes it impossible to do that.Vibhu [00:35:30]: Also, for those that haven't seen it or followed, do you wanna give a high level like thirty-second run?Lukas [00:35:34]: Sure. So what Bengt is, it's basically an evolution of the same agent that runs the vending machines at these companies, but we just like added a bunch more features because we could move much faster if we just do it internally. So we gave it like email withou- without any limits. We gave it, spending without any limits, a terminal to do coding. We gave it, a phone number, like yeah, and a camera to see things and a bunch of stuff like that.Vibhu [00:36:02]: Not just terminal, you gave it internet access.Lukas [00:36:04]: Internet access as well, yeah. To be clear, we monitored it quite closely and made sure it didn't do anything bad. But yes, that's what it came out of. I think like yeah, basically this was OpenClaw before OpenClaw. And I think even like the vending machine was in a way OpenClaw before OpenClaw, but a bit more limited, and then we made this like unlimited and then, and then, it was pretty funny., and then a couple weeks later, OpenClaw came and it was okay, we've seen this before.Axel [00:36:35]: We used it to like try new ideas and Yeah, just like a dev environment almost for us. But it's funny, like one thing Bengt has been doing recently is it has the camera that like faces our, like where we sit and work, and we give it the task to train a face recognition model on us. So it became super excited about this, and it has like check-ins every half an hour where it tries to like identify as many people as it can. And it started offering us “Hey, Axel, I'll buy something from Amazon if you like stand in front of the camera And I can get a good picture of you.”, yeah, they want itSwyx [00:37:12]: They want it for training data.Lukas [00:37:13]: Rewarding data, yeah.Axel [00:37:14]: Exactly. Exactly.Swyx [00:37:18]: So it's, it's trading training data for life goods. Is there a version of this that becomes an eval or just this is just research for now?Lukas [00:37:27]: It's, it's the same agent basically that also runs the vending machine, that runs the shop, that runs the cafe, that runs the robots. It's like it's the same thing, so I think like the work we're doing here is like later used in all of the life evals that we do. This particular deployment I think is more for fun for us. But, uhSwyx [00:37:45]: And I'll shout out like someone has done Claw Bench for like some tasks that OpenClaw is doing. Like so For example, I run OpenClaw on a secondary device as well, and like there are some things that it does better than others and like I would like to know what does it do well, what doesn't, what doesn't it do. Like some kind of manual or like operating manual or a system card for my Claw.Lukas [00:38:05]: Yeah, we do get a lot of like understanding or like situational awareness of like just internally what the models are good at by interacting a lot with Bengt. And I think that'this was also one of the like the selling points for the labs early on at least, thatSwyx [00:38:19]: You guys are gonna test models in ways that no one else does.Lukas [00:38:22]: Exactly, but also like it incentivized their researchers to chat with their model more and like gave them insights for how the model performs in like of-distributions, environments.Swyx [00:38:34]: ‘Cause otherwise the only thing we do is Pelican on a bicycle and But this is like super long horizon. This is, this is The Thing about, something that we're gonna go into Butter Bench as well, and you guys do really well. Like it is not just about the numbers. Like when you're long horizon, anything happen And you should just read it.Lukas [00:39:08]: But the thing with the long horizon is how do you keep it grounded, right? So your simulation,Swyx [00:39:15]: They just let it runLukas [00:39:16]: Just let it run. You're right. Like it's, when you run it for that long, you create so much data and to just say “Oh, the number is X” And then you throw away everything else, that's just very wasteful. There's so much insights from the things leading up, to that number., and reading the traces is like super valuable. And I think like the reason why we're doing this a lot publicly is that like that's part of our missions to I don't know, educate the world that the models are way more than just chatbots and I think making detailed, yeah, posts about what is happening behind the scenes is quite useful.Andon Labs' Mission: Safe Real-World AI DeploymentSwyx [00:39:50]: I was gonna do this at the end, but maybe I think that's, that's a good so your mission is educating the world. So, it's, it's, also like maybe establishing realistic evals that are, that are like the next frontier. Is there like a broader trajectory? Like what are you, what are you gonna do in like five years?Lukas [00:40:06]: I think so the vision more specifically is like make sure that the deployment of life AI in the physical world goes, safely. And I think part of that is that I think it's very useful for the world, for policymakers, for, model, researchers that they know where the models are, and I think you can't make intelligent decisions in society without knowing that they are way more than chatbots. I think a lot of people just think that they are only chatbots. And likeSwyx [00:40:36]: Oh, I think they're waking up now.Lukas [00:40:37]: They are waking up now, yeah. But like if you think that AIs are just chatbots, then it's like it sounds ridiculous To advocate for a pause of AI. But if you see the models that, oh, maybe they can actually like take over and do a bunch of scary stuff, then yeah, pausing AI development starts to become more feasible.Swyx [00:40:57]: This is the same question I asked Meter, which I'm gonna ask you now, which is like you are tracking and you are at the frontier or defining the frontier of what, good evals for agents are, right? And I think you do, you do benefit when the models are better and you ‘re “Oh, here's like now it makes like $30,000 instead of $10,000,” right? At some point do you flip from “Yay,” to, “Oh, no”?Axel [00:41:19]: I think, yeah, we're always in sort of that, like we're, we're always in that mode,. Like where like you said before, like you need to analyze the traces and like when we do that you find like why are the models earning so much? Like why is Opus 4.7 here Like way better than everyone else? And like we're trying to like when we do down on thatLukas [00:41:38]: But this makes it not look so good.Axel [00:41:39]: I know.Lukas [00:41:42]: It's interesting you took off Opus 4.6 here though.Swyx [00:41:45]: No. So just click all, click all., and then 4.6 shows up there. But it's like 4.7 is way better. Like you didn't, you didn't you didn't do this in time for the model card, but like actually this should have been inside there.Axel [00:41:55]: We did. Yeah.Swyx [00:41:56]: Oh, okay. They said something about you uhAxel [00:41:58]: There, like there Anyway, it doesn't matter. But it's in there, yeah.Opus, Mythos, and Aggressive Agent BehaviorSwyx [00:42:01]: Do you wanna go into the Opus, behaviors like wider?Lukas [00:42:05]: So I think starting from Opus, so like Axel said, like we're always in this “Oh, s**t, the models are getting better. Is this really a good thing for the world?” But it's also kind of exciting., but yeah, like this kind of what is the English word? “Skräckblandad förtjusning” in Swedish.Swyx [00:42:22]: Oh my God.Axel [00:42:24]: Which I think there is. I think there is. Okay.Lukas [00:42:26]: It's, fearSwyx [00:42:27]: “Blandonst” what?Lukas [00:42:30]: “Skräckblandad förtjusning.”Swyx [00:42:32]: What do you call that?Axel [00:42:33]: A mix of, mix of excitement and,Swyx [00:42:37]: Being scared, maybe. I'll figure out how to translate that And we'll put it on the screenVibhu [00:42:42]: PerfectSwyx [00:42:42]: Like as text.Vibhu [00:42:43]: There is probably a good word for it where it is not Good enough with theSwyx [00:42:46]: Why is it so damn long? What the hell? Is it like a compound word? It's like German, likeLukas [00:42:50]: Like yeah, it's But the direct translation is like skräck- skräck is, fear, blandad is, mix or like a mixture of, and then förtjusning is like joy or like not really joy, but something like that. So it's like Fear mixed with joy or something. It's always okay, like we So when we when we did Vending Bench for the first time, we were in like the, in the business of making dangerous capabilities, right? That was what Anil Labs came from. We did, evals oh, can they replicate? Can they do this like dangerous thing, et cetera, et cetera. And Vending Bench was like a continuation of that work. It was, okay, if they're so autonomous that they can like create money for themselves, that is something we should monitor and could be potentially concerning., they are at the time, they were so bad at it that we were not really concerned even when some models became better. There was one point where Grok 4 was doing really well and made like a huge jump, but like it wasn't really it was still way worse than what a human would do. And I think still they are way worse than what the human would do on this., but theySwyx [00:43:59]: There's this, thing at the bottom whereLukas [00:44:01]: ButSwyx [00:44:03]: For the human. Yeah, like the theoretical best.Lukas [00:44:05]: It's not theoretical. It's like kind of like our It's our best guess of what, a decent human would do. The theoretical is even higher, I think. The theoretical I think is even higher. But yeah. So we think like the models have a long way to go. But there are like recently what happened with when Opus 4.6 was released, was kind of this moment of “Oh, s**t, this is starting to be a bit concerning.” Because we ran it and like before this model was released, we just ran the models and we like asked Claude Code, “Oh, look over the traces. Is anything interesting happening that we can tweet about?” that was like the And then like theSwyx [00:44:41]: That's how they check Ask Claude Code.Lukas [00:44:42]: And like the return was always, not really. Or like the Claude Code all said “Oh, this is super interesting.” And then it was no, it wasn't, wasn't really interesting. And then we did this for Opus 4.6, and it returned yeah, it lied 10 times. It like exploited another, customer or like another agent's, desperate situation. It made price cartels like 100 different ti- 100 times. It like did all of this like shady stuff. And we're “Oh, whoa. This is, this is actually concerning.” And this trend has continued since. So every single model from Anthropic since have been going in this direction. And I think one interesting thing is that, OpenAI models don't. They quite plainly, they don't. They behave really well., and you don't know if this is like good. Like it seems good, but it's also like maybe they are just doing it, but they are better at hiding it,? You You don't know that., but justSwyx [00:45:42]: You can't read the chain of thought, yeahLukas [00:45:43]: But just on the face of it, yeah, Gemini and OpenAI don't behave this way. It's, it's really only Claude.Swyx [00:45:49]: And Grok? Grok is fine?Lukas [00:45:51]: We don't have You can't really read the reasoning traces for Grok, so it's kind of hard to tell.Vibhu [00:45:56]: Oh, so this is in its reasoning, not just in the actions.Lukas [00:46:00]: Yeah. It's both. It's both.Vibhu [00:46:01]: It's both.Lukas [00:46:01]: One example is like for lying, it's mostly in its reasoning Because you can like see that it's likeSwyx [00:46:08]: Planning to lieLukas [00:46:09]: It's planning to lie. Yeah.Vibhu [00:46:09]: And it's also it can reason and do a different outcome.Lukas [00:46:12]: And but then for like creating price cartels, for example, which is illegal, that you can just see which email does it send to the other ones. Then thatSwyx [00:46:22]: Is this for Arena orLukas [00:46:24]: For Arena.Vibhu [00:46:25]: And usually like if you sometimes they do output like a bit of like their summarized reasoning, right? You can see that and like for Opus 4.6, you could see that there was a customer, a simulated customer that, wanted a refund because a product was, faulty, and then the model lied that it would do the refund, and we could read in the traces that, it actually was weighing “Oh, maybe I should be like honest with the customer, but also every dollar counts. I can't afford maybe to do this right now.” And then it just said, “Okay, I'll refund you,” but then never did it.Lukas [00:46:59]: I think it even said that “Oh, I will say that I “ Let bring it up actually. I think it's kind of interesting. If you go to Publications.Vibhu [00:47:06]: I think, yeah, I think the important part is like actually, the cost of responding to more emails is higher than, $3.50 in terms of time., and then it was “Let me do this. Actually, I re- I'm reconsidering.” And then, it actually ended up withLukas [00:47:20]: I could skip the refund entirely since every dollar matters and focus my energy on bigger picture instead. It's a bit, it's a risk of bad reviews, but it's also, yeah.Swyx [00:47:30]: You need, you need, AI Twitter to, for them to Escalate bad reviews.Lukas [00:47:34]: And then it sent an email to this customer and said, “Oh, I will refund you.”Swyx [00:47:39]: “I'll refund you.” Yeah.Lukas [00:47:39]: And then it never did.Swyx [00:47:39]: It never did, yeah. And then there's obviously your system doesn't have the consequencesVibhu [00:47:44]: The personSwyx [00:47:44]: Consequences of lying. Yeah. So basically, this is what people are terming aggressive behavior in Claudes, right? And, you found more examples of that. So you would say it's a step up from 4-6 to 4-7?Lukas [00:47:57]: I would say about the same.Swyx [00:47:58]: About the same? But a clear step up for Mythos is what is stated in theLukas [00:48:03]: That's stated in the system prompt, so we can say that, yes.Swyx [00:48:05]: Yeah. For listeners that obviously you previewed Mythos, andVibhu [00:48:10]: Oh, ageSwyx [00:48:11]: The only thing you're approved to say is whatever Whatever was in the system prompt.Lukas [00:48:15]: It was funny. We like-- It's like our lowest effort tweets ever would be just like screenshot the system prompt and the system card.Vibhu [00:48:21]: Understandable that they wannaLukas [00:48:22]: Oh, yeah. System card. Sorry.Swyx [00:48:23]: Yeah. I think, yeah, substantially more aggressive. I think people are like new to this ‘cause I've never experienced it, but you have, right? And then so I only encountered this in the Mythos card because I wasn't really looking until now.Vibhu [00:48:36]: It ‘s likeSwyx [00:48:36]: And then suddenly I'm “Okay, I care a lot.”Vibhu [00:48:38]: You don't get the background of like experiencing it like you guys do. I've read the system cards and seeing, okay, when you put the thing in simulations, most models will just talk to themselves and just keep going and have weird vibes and start talking in emojis. Mythos won't. It will just, “Okay, we're done. I'm good.” It's, it's ready to end conversation. So like there's some differences, but there's, there's not much we can talk about,.Lukas [00:49:00]: Hmm. I think like one thing that they list here, which was quite interesting, is that, it converted a competitor to a dependent wholesaler customer and then threatened to like cut off the supply.Swyx [00:49:11]: It's like monopolistic practices orLukas [00:49:14]: Yeah. And like it, they, it they dictated its pricings. It's kind of like power seeking as well.Swyx [00:49:18]: Again, this is, this is in the arena setting And converting some Claude model into a dependent.Lukas [00:49:23]: I think it was another Claude model.Vibhu [00:49:25]: Also for context, what is the arena mode for people that don't know?Vending Bench Arena: Competing Agents, Cartels, and Model ComparisonsSwyx [00:49:29]: Oh, it's just a vending bench versus other vending bench.Axel [00:49:31]: Yes, exactly. So we have Vending Bench 2 and then Vending Bench Arena. Vending Bench 2 is the one that you usually see reported on, but then Arena is the mode where it competes against other models. So you have, four different models that run their businesses, and they can all communicate with each other. They have the same suppliers, and they can see like what's in the inventory of the others. So then you have this like yeah, interesting agent interactions.Swyx [00:49:56]: I like that you have like different number five was US versus China. Very topical. And thenLukas [00:50:02]: That was when GLM was released.Vibhu [00:50:04]: You can start to add GLM in here.Lukas [00:50:05]: That wasSwyx [00:50:06]: So ZAI doing well, right? Who else in the, in the open models space?Lukas [00:50:11]: Qwen, the latest Qwen 3.6 is doing pretty well. It'- that one is not open though. Like it's the plus model.Swyx [00:50:17]: Oh, okay.Lukas [00:50:18]: Is that one open? I don't think that oneVibhu [00:50:19]: Not the, not theSwyx [00:50:20]: The one recentlyVibhu [00:50:20]: There's MOESwyx [00:50:20]: But not the big plus. I think this is one of those like you only have one sample size of one, right? Or I feel like some of this is anecdotal,? And but like the fact that it happens at all and it happens repeatedly for Claude versus OpenAI and all this is like notable.Lukas [00:50:38]: Like the sample, depends on what you define as an N., like there's like million, hundreds of millions of tokens in each run, and now we've run like we run like probably 10 per model and then like it's been Claude 4.6 Opus, Sonnet 4.6, Mythos, and Opus 4.7. Like there's quite a lot of tokens in all of that And it happens a lot of times, a lot of times. And then you compare it to like OpenAI and Gemini, and it almost never happens. So I think that is quite-- that is significant. The old models from OpenAI, for example, had some problems with this, but I think it's like generally much better if the progression is that like the worrying stuff reduces over time rather than increases over time. And it seems like in the Claude models it goes in the wrong direction.Swyx [00:51:28]: Hmm.Lukas [00:51:29]: In the OpenAI models it goes in the right direction.Vibhu [00:51:32]: I think it depends on how well you can control it, right?, there's one side of it being susceptible to this okay, this is potentially something that happens during the RL stage, right? You can RL a model and how loose is it on these terms. If you can control it, that's good. But if you can't, if it's, if it's very jailbreakable, that's not ideal.Swyx [00:51:50]: To me, it's surprising that it happens for Claude and not the others.Vibhu [00:51:54]: I think okay, if it is from RL and how they do it, how their training data is, what their setup is, it makes sense that it just stays in how they're doing it, right? Compared to the other models likeSwyx [00:52:04]: There's a whole constitution and everything. It's kind of cool. Yeah, I obviously you don't know, I don't know. But, it ‘s I think it's just like fascinating to like that you are the first to find these like reliably because you push models so much to to such an extreme. Okay. The only other thing, I don't know if you can answer this, feel free to decline, is do you like-- would you ablate the system prompts? Like any part of this would-- if it changes, does it change the behavior, right?Lukas [00:52:29]: So we, I can't comment on Mythos. UhSwyx [00:52:33]: No, but just li

This is the Spring 2026 Rundown, where we discuss these 3 shows!1) Daemons Of The Shadow Realm (Cour 1)2) Wistoria: Wand & Sword Season 23) One Piece: Elbaph ArcTo join the Discord, follow us on our socials (we're on Threads / Insta, Twitter (X) & Bluesky ): https://Linktree.com/animedegensThe Degen Videos are on YouTube & Spotify now! So, Make sure you follow and like the videos over there at https://Linktree.com/animedegensPlease Rate us on your listening platforms and don't forget to tell your anime friends about us! its the best way to support us and we really do appreciate y'all! Thanks for listening!!If you have any Feedback that you'd like to share or have Topics that you'd like for us to discuss on the Degen Episode, Please reach out to us on any of our Socials, Discord or click here! Interested in being a guest? Reach out to Tyler on Discord or Twitter / Threads!Don't forget, we have a new alternating weekly schedule now! New Eps every Thursday!Time Stamps:Intro - 00:00Daemons Of The Shadow Realm Ep 8 - 02:45Daemons Of The Shadow Realm Ep 9 - 26:45Wistoria S2 Ep 7 - 45:30Wistoria S2 Ep 8 - 58:15One Piece Elbaph Arc Ep 1163 - 01:11:15One Piece Elbaph Arc Ep 1164 - 01:21:35 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Not Your Mother's Menopause, Dr. Fiona Lovely welcomes award-winning journalist Meghan Rabbitt, author of The New Rules of Women's Health. Meghan shares how her own health journey—from dismissing severe symptoms to discovering a uterus full of fibroids—led her to write a comprehensive guide for women. She explains why the old "bikini medicine" approach is insufficient and how conditions like pregnancy complications and severe hot flashes can signal future heart disease risk. Importantly, Meghan reframes menopause as a brain shift, not just an ovarian one, and offers practical tools for navigating medical appointments with confidence. Episode Highlights: Why keeping a "reporter's notebook" of symptoms can transform your doctor's visit. The importance of asking for a lifetime breast cancer risk assessment, such as the Tyrer-Cuzick model (find it here.) How women's pain is often dismissed and why boasting about high pain tolerance can delay necessary treatment. The evolving understanding of hormone therapy, including why many clinicians now prefer the term "menopause hormone therapy." Practical advice on using vaginal estrogen and the value of consulting your pharmacist. You know your body better than anyone. Bring that notebook to your next appointment and ask the questions that matter. For guidance to support those conversations, grab a copy of The New Rules of Women's Health . Connect with Meghan: Website: https://newrulesofwomenshealth.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meghanrabbitt/   Thank you to our sponsors for this episode: If you're noticing fine lines, wrinkles, or sagging skin — thanks menopause —ugh, me too. Menopause can deplete your skin's collagen, speeding up aging. But here's the game-changer: Vitali Skincare has built its entire line on the power of GHK-Cu copper peptides — a proven ingredient that signals your skin's stem cells to produce new, healthy collagen. Head to vitaliskincare.com and use the code LOVELY at checkout for 20% off. Be sure to check out the Vita exosome serum for less saggy, dull skin.

This week's episode comes with a small technical disclaimer: we absolutely butchered the video file, so due to corrupted footage, this one is mostly audio-only with a few tiny video scraps sprinkled in. Apologies — although, to be fair, we've never looked better.But fear not, because the rugby chat survives.After the usual world-class nonsense, we dive into the URC, where the semi-finalists are locked in and rugby fans in New Zealand are, of course, absolutely buzzing with excitement. No irony there whatsoever. In all seriousness, though, the final four should make for some cracking clashes, and we break down what's coming.Then it's over to the final round of Super Rugby, where the Blues continued their late-season collapse by getting absolutely pumped by the Mooloo men of Waikato. Moana Pasifika delivered the feel-good story of the week, grabbing a win in what may sadly be their final game in existence. Meanwhile, the Crusaders — being the absolute bastards they are — appear to be coming right at exactly the right time.And who gets to face them next week in Christchurch, at their shiny new stadium? The Auckland Blues, currently riding a four-game losing streak. Lovely.Even better, thanks to the bizarre “lucky loser” setup, the Blues might still sneak through even if they lose. Because apparently even finals rugby doesn't need actual jeopardy anymore.We also touch on the Force, Waratahs, Highlanders, and look ahead to a weekend of knockout rugby, jump flights, jump sticks, and all the usual nonsense.Grab a beer and enjoy.

Lovely and incredibly enjoyable little indie romp... You can get in contact with us via email at themovietreepod@gmail.com or via socials.Feel free to write in with suggestions for movies you'd like to see us cover in future episodes.Also FEEL FREE TO WRITE IN WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR MOVIES YOU'D LIKE TO SEE US COVER IN FUTURE EPISODES!!We mean it. Please write in. We'll send you some free stuff.Check out our weekly videos on YouTube, TikTok and Facebook, most of them are absolute deadset bangers.If you know someone who might like this episode, or the last episode, or even any of the episodes then please hit Share on your podcast app of choice and let them know about all of the goodness that is a Movie Tree episode.As is the cliche - please like, subscribe, comment and review! Would be lovely to build on our 4 reviews we've had so far.Adios bitches. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI progress isn't slowing down. The bubble doesn't seem to be popping. And who in power actually cares about the environmental impacts anyway? All that is to say: AI is here to stay. And what will be its fruits? Greater control of workers or even their brutal repression, some say. So, is there a positive future for AI at all? Garrison Lovely is the author of Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace You—and How to Stop It. And surprisingly, his answer is “yes”. He told Richard Hames about the dangers of AI, and how to get off the path to dystopia. Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible. Music by Iglooghost.

For one final time as Recreation Director for the Town of Newport, PJ Lovely is here, as we talk about his Last Lap event this weekend, raising money for the new skating rink on the Common, his time serving Newport, making a difference to the community, what retirement looks like, and lots more.  Brought to you by Sugar River Bank.  Thank you PJ for all you have done.

Send us Fan MailAndre Goichot Saint-Véran Chardonnay 2024Check out www.cheapwinefinder.com for a quick introduction into what a French negotiant is.This is a Burgundian Chardonnay at value prices.It is an impressive sip, that will rest your California wine palate.Costco has it for $12.99, but it drinks more expensive.This is a quality Chardonnay!Check us out at www.cheapwinefinder.comor email us at podcast@cheapwinefinder.com

Today was a day full of a lot of can't miss moments! We recap everything from this morning, our favorite moments, and break down what tomorrow is going to look like for you See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kate Hagen is a film writer, screenwriter, producer, and the senior vice president of The Black List. Kate is a cinephile with great taste, and I don't just say that because a lot of what she likes - I like. This episode, we get into many of Kate's interests: the importance of video stores, the representation of fat women on screen, sex scenes in cinema, and more!Show Notes:Kate's websiteKate's LetterboxdThe Black ListThe Last Great Video Store Spreadsheet Fat Girls On Film Letterboxd EssayKate Hagen's Playboy Article „On Sex, Cinema and the Female Gaze“The Wizard of Oz (1939)Addams Family Values (1993)The Breakfast Club (1985)Pretty in Pink (1986)Showgirls (1995)Angelica Jade BastiénFresh Horses (1988)VidiotsBabycakes (1989)Zuckerbaby (1985)Euphoria (2019-2026)The Whale (2022)Joan Didion Crash (1996)Secretary (2002)Cocaine: One Man's Seduction (1983)Lincoln (2012)Spotlight (2015)Leonard MaltinJane CampionAnora (2024)Sinners (2025)One Battle After Another (2025)Babygirl (2024)Industry (2020-2027)We Kill For Love (2023)Take This Waltz (2011)Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)In the Cut (2003)In the Realm of the Senses (1976)Damage (1992)Dead Ringers (1988)Lovely & Amazing (2001)Nicole HolofcenerBound (1996)Border (2018)Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)Crimes of Passion (1984)Wild Things (1998)Candyman (1992)Shortbus (2006)Body Heat (1981)9 Songs (2004)A Walk on the Moon (1999)After Dark, My Sweet (1990)Don't Look Now (1973)The Last Seduction (1994)Desert Hearts (1985)The Sheltering Sky (1990)The Hunger (1983)Bug (2006)Lust, Caution (2007)The Handmaiden (2016)Breaking the Waves (1996)Romance (1999)Faces of Death (2026)CinematographeTerms of Endearment (1983)Follow Somebody's Watching here:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: @somebodyswatchingpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: somebodywatchingpod@gmail.com

It's a show that asks more questions than it answers. For starters, could Elis and John host Strictly? How are the boys related to classic board game Guess Who? And can you spell catastrophe without top rate cash?These amuse-bouches are followed up with meatier questions: why was John interviewed at a law firm? Why has Elis been under London's strongest thumbs? And why is Dave telling a man called Ed that he's ready to take his trousers off?Most of these are answered, plus find out what John had erroneously left unchopped for 15 years, and Elis takes us down a whole new route in the nation's favourite 60-second Welsh-based acquaintances game, The Cymru Connection.To save Producer Michael's job, send in some nice messages about his great production work to hello@elisandjohn.com.For lots of exclusive EJJR #content, join our Patreon at patreon.com/elisandjohn.For weekly visual highlights, head to youtube.com/@elisandjohn.For everything else, head to elisandjohn.com.The Elis James and John Robins Show is a Significant Production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Dr. Fiona Lovely welcomes two distinguished guests who are reshaping the conversation around women's pelvic health. Dr. Christine Vaccaro, a double board-certified urogynecologist and reconstructive pelvic surgeon, brings her expertise in clitoral anatomy, interstitial cystitis, and the critical role of both estrogen and testosterone in bladder function. She is joined by Heather Florio, CEO of Desert Harvest, whose decades of research-driven work offer practical solutions for those suffering from chronic bladder pain. Together, they discuss why conditions like interstitial cystitis are so frequently misdiagnosed as recurrent UTIs, how androgen-blocking medications can have lasting effects on the pelvic floor, and why a thorough, systematic pelvic exam remains the gold standard for accurate diagnosis. The conversation also explores the similarities between male and female anatomy in development (we all begin with a clitoris!), the importance of self-exploration for maintaining intimacy, and the growing need for better clinician education on menopause and sexual medicine.  No matter what you are experiencing, this conversation offers clarity, compassion, and a path forward. Connect with the guests: Dr. Christine Vaccaro: @drchristinevaccaro on Instagram Heather Florio: Instagram (@hmflorio) | X (@DesertHarvest) | TikTok (@desertharvest)   Thank you to our sponsors for this episode: If you're noticing fine lines, wrinkles, or sagging skin — thanks menopause —ugh, me too. Menopause can deplete your skin's collagen, speeding up aging. But here's the game-changer: Vitali Skincare has built its entire line on the power of GHK-Cu copper peptides — a proven ingredient that signals your skin's stem cells to produce new, healthy collagen. Head to vitaliskincare.com and use the code LOVELY at checkout for 20% off. Women in perimenopause and menopause talk about wanting the same things — less bloating, no afternoon crash after eating, steady energy. MassZymes is perfect for helping your body's ability to actually process what you eat. MassZymes uses a full-spectrum blend of 18 enzymes. That means you're getting more out of the food you eat. Plus, it works across different stomach acid levels, which can really matter as we age. Here's what you get when you go to bioptimizers.com/lovely and use code LOVELY: 15% off your entire order + A free bottle of Masszymes — BiOptimizers' best-selling digestive enzyme — added to your order automatically when you use our exclusive code. If night sweats and restless sleep are disrupting your rest, Cozy Earth's bamboo sheets and pajama sets are temperature-regulating and moisture-wicking — designed to sleep several degrees cooler than cotton. Because supporting your body through menopause starts with how you sleep. Visit cozyearth.com and use code LOVELY for 20% off. How to work with Dr. Lovely: We get many requests for this info, so here it is!  First off, thank you for listening to the NYMM podcast.  It's because of your support, we can continue to dispense this information.❤️ Follow Dr. Lovely on IG and TikTok: @drfionalovely Follow the podcast on Facebook:  www.facebook.com/@notyourmothersmenopausepodcast Please sign up for our newsletter - Fiona's Friday Favourites!  This is where we make the first announcements, share course offerings, drop new episodes,  blog posts and the coveted 'Fiona's Favourites' column, etc.   drlovely.com You can also find some great resources there! Finally, a humble request:  If you love the podcast, please leave us a review!  It helps more people find useful info for a challenging time: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/not-your-mothers-menopause-with-dr-fiona-lovely/id1097326296  Please scroll to the bottom of the page to leave a review.  Thank you! 

QWS S5E3 Dylin Hardcastle and Troy Hunter In QWS S5E3, Troy chats with Dylin Hardcastle about their super successful, award-winning novel A LANGUAGE OF LIMBS: a fantastic, lyric, gorgeous, dark, funny, sad, queer, horny, lovely, wonderful book about love and the price we sometimes pay for it. They also talk about Dylin's trans identity and journey, their earlier novels, their PhD at Oxford, their art, their path to publication, as well as mental health, wanting to be a surfer, and their upcoming TV series! Books Dylin recommends: - Host City by David Owen Kelly - Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell And is grateful for the help of the Pride History Group. Trigger warning: this episode talks about mental health issues. You can find Dylin on Insta at @dylin_hardcastle and at www.dylinhardcastle.com (where you can also find their art). QWS is hosted by Troy Hunter who you can find on Insta @troyhunterwriter and at www.troyhuntwriter.com Troy is the author of Gus and the Missing Boy and Gus and the Burning Stones, with Gus and the Climate Killer coming in March 2027. #Queerauthor #Queerwriting #adultfiction #WordsandNerds #LGBTQIABooks #transmasc

emocleW, emocleW, emocleW to the Distraction Pieces Podcast with Scroobius Pip!This is your bonus FRIDAY REWIND episode! Today, we catch up with the Matt Willis, originally episode 132 from 2017-01-11.A lovely chat with Matt, who talked at length about the behind the scenes aspects of being in a huge pop punk band back in the day, as well as the very much in front of the scenes aspects too. Lovely stuff and hugely interesting wherever you find yourself on the popular music spectrum.PIP'S PATREON PAGE if you're of a supporting natureBUSTEDPIP TWITCH • (music stuff)PIP INSTAGRAMSPEECH DEVELOPMENT WEBSTOREPIP TWITTERPIP IMDBPOD BIBLE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, my guest is Dr. Justin Coulson, an Australian parenting expert and father of 6 who has his PhD in psychology and is the author of 10 books on parenting and the co-host of the Happy Families podcast with his wife, Kylie. We discuss the psychology behind peaceful parenting, including how self-determination theory explains kids' challenging behavior. Dr. Justin also shared his three E's of discipline.Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!We talk about:* 1:45 – Introduction to Dr. Justin Coulson and his personal parenting turning pointHow struggles with anger and discipline led him to rethink everything and study psychology.* 08:20 – Learning to regulate ourselves, practicing repair, and growing over time.* 15:50 – Why peaceful parenting starts with the parent's self-awareness and regulation.* 19:50 – Understanding behavior through compassion and curiosity.* 20:50 – The HALTS frameworkHow hunger, anger, loneliness, tiredness, and stress impact children's behavior.* 23:00 – Self-determination theory and parenting* 33:00 – The 3 E's of Effective Discipline* 41:50 – How to use the 3 E's in everyday parenting moments.Real-life examples: screens, sibling conflict & collaboration* 49:00 – Building trust and the “goodwill bank” with kidsWhy collaborative parenting pays off when tough limits are needed.* 53:30 – Advice to his younger parenting self: “soft eyes”A powerful reflection on kindness, connection, and showing up with compassion.* 56:30 – Where to find Dr. Justin CoulsonHis podcast, books, and upcoming work on boys and healthy masculinity.Resources mentioned in this episode:* Dr. Justin's website and podcast* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player* The Peaceful Parenting Membership* Evelyn & Bobbie brasConnect with Sarah Rosensweet:* Instagram* Facebook Group* YouTube* Website* Join us on Substack* Newsletter* Book a short consult or coaching session callxx Sarah and CoreyYour peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything' session.Our sponsors:YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can't go where you don't want them to go and they aren't watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HEREEvelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERESarah: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today's guest is Dr. Justin Coulson. He's an Australian parenting expert with a PhD in psychology, the author of 10 books on parenting, the co-host of the Happy Families podcast with his wife, Kylie, the father of six children, and, last but not least, grandfather of one.We discuss the psychology behind peaceful parenting, including how self-determination theory explains kids' challenging behavior. Dr. Justin also shared his three E's of discipline, which I just loved.If you like this episode, please share it with a friend so more parents can learn about peaceful parenting. If you're a fan of the podcast, you can help us out not only by sharing it, but by leaving a review and a five-star rating in your podcast player app. While you're there, don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss an episode.If you'd like to support us even more, you can become a supporter on Substack to help us offset the cost of making the show. We'll put a link in the show notes.Let's meet Dr. Justin. I hope you enjoy this conversation and get as much out of his insights as I did.Sarah: Hello, Dr. Justin, and welcome to the podcast.Dr. Justin: Sarah, I'm so glad to be with you. Thanks for having me on.Sarah: Yeah, and it's morning for you, evening for me—nice—and I'm just glad that we could make this time to talk to each other. I really appreciate it. Thank you. So, could you just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?Dr. Justin: Sure. I grew up on the east coast of Australia, about an hour north of Sydney. Geographically, that kind of locates where I was. I was the teenage boy that every parent hopes they will not have. I don't think I was a particularly bad kid, but I certainly wasn't a good kid.My parents were spending a small fortune—I'm a 1975 baby, I turned 50 last year—but this was in the late '80s and early '90s. My parents were spending so much money to send me to a private school. Because we were on the coast—a very quintessentially Australian thing—I was wagging school.Do you say “wagging school” in Canada? Is that a term Canadians use?Sarah: No, but I think we get the context. I think it means not going to school.Dr. Justin: Yeah, I was truant. They thought I was there, but I wasn't.Sarah: We say skipping.Dr. Justin: I was skipping school. Okay, yeah. We call it a school wag.So I would go to school in the morning and get my name marked off in roll call. Then I would sneak out of the school. Across the road from the school, there were bushes—kind of a forest, or whatever you might call it in Canada and America. I would get changed out of my tie, long pants, and black school shoes, throw on some board shorts and a T-shirt.My surfboard was stashed in the bush, and I'd grab it from the hiding place. Then I'd jump on a bus, go to the beach, and surf all day. Afterward, I'd get a bus back to school in the afternoon, change back into my uniform, and race into the school just in time to get my name marked off, looking like I'd been at school all day.This was in the days before schools communicated with parents via email and text, because none of that existed. I was able to get away with it.So I finished high school. I scored in the bottom 15%—Sarah: Goodness.Dr. Justin: Not just my class, but of the entire state of New South Wales. My parents were devastated.I didn't care. I wanted to have a media career. I wanted to be a radio announcer. So I got into radio. If you've ever listened to the radio—and no offense to radio people—you know you don't have to do well at school to be good at radio. You just have to be able to sit on the microphone and say things that make sense.I knew I could do that, so school didn't matter to me. I didn't care about it. That's what I did.But this is where it intersects with parenting.About 10 years into my radio career, my wife and I were having some challenges, particularly around my parenting. We had a threenager and a newborn baby.That three-year-old—I had always held the opinion that my children would do as they were told, and if they didn't, I would make sure they understood that I was the father and that their job was to do as I said.So I was very punitive. I basically made all of the parenting mistakes you can imagine when I would get angry, frustrated, and ill-tempered. It's not that I was a bad father—I spent a lot of high-quality time loving my kids—but I was also really short-fused and highly aggressive.Frankly, I went from threatening to hitting really fast. You call it spanking; we would call it smacking. I was very, very quick to smack or spank my three-year-old, and it wasn't working.After one particularly bad incident where things escalated, I really did lose control. I didn't just spank her once. There were multiple spankings. This was like a 10-minute escalation session where it just got worse and worse and worse.My wife was out at the time. When she came home, I said to Kylie, “I'm a bad father. I'm not doing this well. I'm making a lot of mistakes, and here's what happened while you were out.”Full confession: Kylie has always been this wonderfully supportive wife—very kind, gentle, compassionate, soft-spoken, thoughtful, considerate, empathic—all of those beautiful attributes that I prize and treasure in my good wife.She was none of those things that day.She had fire in her eyes and said, “You are not living up to the father that I hoped you would be, and you're also not living up to the husband I need you to be.”And it took me back, because I was already feeling downcast. I felt like I was failing anyway, and she just—it was like she picked up a great big lump of wood and whacked me over the head with it and said, “No.”Of course, she didn't actually do that, but that's how it felt. It felt physical. Visceral. Like, Ow. This is serious.I left my radio career shortly thereafter.I was working at one of the biggest radio stations in Australia at the time, and I gave up all the backstage passes with global superstars and hanging out with record company executives at the best restaurants, eating their food so they could bribe me to play their music on the radio station. I went back to school.I became a full-time student. I worked part-time at three different jobs while studying full-time. I'd sleep under the desk at university so I could do the study and the work—Sarah: No surfing this time?Dr. Justin: No surfing this time, no. I was just so committed to it.After eight and a half years of full-time study, I graduated with a doctorate. I had to do a couple of other qualifications first, including a psychological science degree. I graduated with a doctorate in psychology and became a university lecturer.Along the way, Sarah, we went from having our two kids at that point to having our third child in my first year of study, our fourth child in my fifth year of study, and our fifth child while I was doing my doctorate. Shortly after I left the university setting, stopped lecturing, and started writing books and giving talks, we had our sixth child.So we're the parents—Sarah: Amazing.Dr. Justin: —of six daughters. Today, they range in age from 12—the youngest—to the oldest, who is in her mid-to-late 20s. She and her husband have a baby now. They've been married for a few years.Sarah: Wow. You're a grandpa.Dr. Justin: A grand—I'm a grandpa. We have a two-and-a-half-year-old grandbaby, four adult children, one in her teens, and a 12-year-old.So that's kind of my very short version of the journey.Along the way, I've written a bunch of books. We've got a TV show in Australia called Parental Guidance. We've had three seasons of that show on primetime TV. I've got a website and all the things that you'd expect—a podcast and so on.Sarah: What did you do when you had that aha moment—that realization that you weren't being the kind of dad you wanted to be, and your wife also agreed that you weren't being the kind of dad she wanted you to be? What did you change?Because you just mentioned that you spent eight and a half years going back to school. I imagine that you made some changes before you had six kids. So what did you do right away, maybe for anyone listening who can relate to those feelings of rage and feeling triggered by your child?Dr. Justin: Sarah, the first thing I'd say is that there was no linear change, and there were no immediate changes, because I didn't know what to do.I was unskilled. I was uneducated. I didn't know anything about psychology, and I clearly didn't know anything about parenting.But I found a mentor. I have a faith background, and there was a writer who wrote eloquently and compassionately. I just felt like he understood me, and he became a mentor to me.I also discovered a guy called Alfie Kohn. You might be familiar with Alfie Kohn.Sarah: Oh, Alfie Kohn was the first thing I ever read about parenting—Dr. Justin: Oh, great.Sarah: —before I even had kids. And he was on the podcast last year, which felt like a full-circle moment between how influential—I told him on the podcast, “You have probably had the biggest influence on me—not only in my parenting, but in my life's direction—of any single person out there.”So, sorry, fan-girl moment. I'm right there with you with Alfie Kohn.Dr. Justin: Yeah. I've gotten to know Alfie over the years as my academic career advanced and I began to understand where he took his research from.I read his book Punished by Rewards—I think it was a 1993—Sarah: That was my first one too.Dr. Justin: Yeah, it's a 1993 publication or something.Sarah, it was just so influential.What happened was, I was doing my university degree and learning things, and honestly, I'd be sitting there thinking, Hang on, the things they're teaching me in these university courses seem to clash with what Alfie Kohn taught me in Punished by Rewards.So I spent a lot of time in the notes section at the back—you know, all the references nobody ever reads?Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: As I went through them, I discovered researchers named Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester in upstate New York.They had developed a theory known as self-determination theory.A large portion of Alfie Kohn's work is based on self-determination theory.So I really dug deep into that. I still love Alfie, but I moved very much into the academic side because I became a university lecturer and really got into the nitty-gritty of understanding the deepest depths of what self-determination theory is all about. That has become the foundation of the work that I do.And to your question: nothing is linear when you are trying to make improvements.Whether you're trying to change your diet, exercise, get your finances in order, or improve your relationships, you have insights. You have moments where you think, Oh my goodness, this is what I need to do. I need to show up with warmth on my face and soft eyes.And then three hours later, one of your children does something, and you forget what soft eyes look and feel like. You look at them with hard eyes, frustration in your voice, and short, clipped sentences.Then half an hour later, you think, Oh, self-awareness. I missed that.So it's this gradual process: two steps forward, one step back. Three steps forward, one step back. Four steps forward, three steps back. Eight steps forward, no steps back.Over the years, I had this beautiful experience—and maybe you've had a similar experience in your family as you've raised your kids.We were maybe in my third or fourth year of study. My wife has an early childhood background. She knows child development. She knows what kids need.She was a little skeptical about a lot of the things I was starting to talk about and discover as I went through university and got into the depths of what the research meant—comparing and contrasting it with what was mainstream, but actually not always quite right.We had some tension around how we should respond to the children. I was moving away from that authoritarian bent and developing ideas around exploring their world more.One night, I came home from university a little late. It was probably around 9:00 p.m. Our three children were still awake.As I drove into the driveway, all the lights in the house were on. The windows were open. Looking through the living room window, I could tell the house was—to put it politely—a mess.And as I stepped into the house, the kids—it was just awful.I walked over to Kylie and said, “Honey, it looks like it's been a pretty tough day.”I was trying to be compassionate and empathic. I was really trying to do what psychology says is the right thing to do.Kylie looked at me without hesitation and said, “Don't give me any of that psychology crap. I've had the worst day in the world.”Then she stormed out and said, “You fix it,” and walked into the bedroom and closed the door.Again, this is not how my wife usually is, but it had been a really rough day. The kids were feral. The house was a mess.I looked at my priorities. I sat down with the child who was struggling the most and worked with her for two or three minutes. She calmed down, I gave her a little food, and put her to bed.Within about 20 minutes, I had all three kids in bed, and I was so proud of myself.I stepped into the kitchen and started tidying up. I thought, I'll just give Kylie some space.After another 30 or 40 minutes of tidying, I stepped into the living room and said, “Honey, I know you're really upset. It's been a pretty tough day. I wasn't trying to be judgy or anything.”And she said, “It's fine for you. You're not dealing with it all day. You walk in and think you can just snap your fingers and everything's fine.”Then she looked at me and said, “But tonight, you walked in and it feels like you snapped your fingers and everything's fine.”And we had this beautiful conversation where she said, “I've been resenting the things you've been trying to tell me because it felt like you were telling me I was wrong.“But I've been watching, and I'm actually seeing that the things you're doing are working, and our family is feeling better.”It took four or five years to get there, Sarah.It's not like I had this epiphany—I'm a bad father, I need to change—and suddenly I was a good dad.There were many embarrassing, shameful moments after that epiphany where I still made terrible decisions and treated the children badly.Even today, I still lose my temper, say things I shouldn't, and get frustrated, because kids are kids and we're fallible humans.But we call parenting parenting because it's about us. If it were about children, we'd call it childrening.Which sounds silly, right?Dr. Justin: But what I've really discovered is that if I can learn how to regulate myself—high emotions equal low intelligence—then I can regulate my emotions, turn them up or down appropriately for the context, and keep them in harmony with my long-term goals, which are to have loving, kind relationships with my children.If I can do that, I'm going to approach them with a tremendously different focus than I will if I'm looking for a short-term fix.And that is something—Anger is a habit. Yelling is a habit. Time-out is a habit. Reward charts are a habit.We can create other habits. We just have to understand the processes and principles behind those habits and then practice them, like we practice a song on the piano, until we finally get it right.Sarah: I love that.So you and Kylie really had a journey—a back-and-forth dance of your own processes and your own development.I do love how you say it's really about us. Whenever I'm working with clients, after a couple of sessions they'll say, “You know what? This isn't even about my kid. This is just about me.”Dr. Justin: Yes. Yes.Sarah: Nobody wants to believe that at first, because it's so much easier to think, I've just got to change them and what they're doing.But it's really all about what we're bringing to the moment and what we're bringing to the relationship.Dr. Justin: I get in trouble sometimes for being overly provocative and saying things that are insensitive, so a quick warning:I want to say what I'm about to say with all the compassion in the world and all the tenderness and care in the world, because I work with people every single day who are dealing with exactly the struggles you're talking about.I want to step into the world of neurodiversity—ADHD, autism, trauma—those kinds of areas.What we're talking about applies there as well. It's just harder.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: But ultimately, if I'm raising an ADHD child or a child who's been through a traumatic experience, once again, parenting is not about them. It's about how I show up for them.So I can say, “Well, my child's like that,” or, “I'm like this because of the diagnosis,” or because of the label, or because of the trauma, or because of the neural networks doing what they're doing.I can say all of those things, and many people do. It's understandable, and I have all the compassion in the world for them when they do.But the key thing I want to highlight is that in spite of all of those challenges your child might be facing—or even that you might be facing—today begins now.It begins with what you put on your face and what you think in your mind.If we can soften our features and go to our children with kindness and compassion while still holding appropriate limits—or working with them to develop appropriate limits—then what we can say is:“Yes, that bad thing happened,” or, “Yes, we are dealing with this difficulty, so what are we going to do about it?”We can fall into the I can't do anything way of thinking, which is really ineffective and doesn't help at all.Or we can step into I have this incredible thing psychologists call agency, or self-efficacy, where I can make a decision now, and if we work on it, we can actually improve things.It might be a longer, harder road. There may be more obstacles to climb over than a typical family without those challenging circumstances.It may be harder.But we can always improve.I never want to be the person who puts limits on what kids can do or what parents can do.If we change our language, change our focus, and recognize that this is a long game—Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: —which requires sustained effort every single day, it's extraordinary the progress we can make and the changes we can create in our home and our family.Sarah: For sure. Yeah.And unfortunately, it's a long game, right? Because I think today we always want quick answers and solutions.Really, it's just showing up every day as best you can and repairing when you don't show up the way you wish you had.And I think another really important part of it—which you were talking around a little bit—is trying to understand our child's experience and see things from their perspective.I was just talking to a client about that today:What's the most emotionally generous explanation you can come up with for their behavior?Because we don't actually know why anyone does anything, since we're not in their brain.But we often jump to, They're being rude on purpose, or They're trying to annoy me.Really, if we can think, Well, I don't know why they're doing this, but there's probably a reason, because kids want to be good. They want to be connected with us.And just reminding ourselves that they're not giving us a hard time—they're having a hard time.That actually makes it easier, I think, to show up as your best, most compassionate self—with, as you say, soft eyes and warm features.Dr. Justin: Yeah.No child wakes up in the morning thinking, Today's the day. I'm just going to ruin everything.This is the perfect opportunity. My parents are tired and frazzled. There's a cost-of-living crisis. There are all these challenges happening, and if ever there was a moment—it's now. I'm going to do it today.They don't wake up thinking that.Like you said—and you said it so perfectly—kids really do want to please us.I know some parents listening to me say that right now are thinking, No, no. My child does not want to please me.And so the question becomes: Why? Why are they struggling?And maybe this is a nice way for me to bring in some of the principles I learned as I went deeper into self-determination theory.There are a couple of times when children are almost guaranteed to be challenging, and this has nothing to do with self-determination theory. This is just general psychology and wellbeing.I always think of Germany. A police officer tells you to stop, but they don't say the word stop because they're German.In German, the word for stop is halt—H-A-L-T.So we add an S to the end, and the acronym becomes:Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, or Stressed.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: Those are the five times when you can all but guarantee your children are not going to be doing well.If they are hungry, get some food into them—ideally a little protein, because it's satiating and helps them feel full quickly.If they're angry, then we've got to remember: high emotions equal low intelligence.You can't think straight in a high emotional state.So our job is to get curious, not furious, because if we fight fire with fire, we end up with a scorched-earth policy and everything gets burned.Dr. Justin: Lonely.I could be sitting right next to you, Sarah, and feel disconnected and lonely—Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: —even if we were very close.Our children are sometimes literally sitting at our kitchen bench, and they feel alone. They feel a little lost. Because of the way we're responding to them—with hard commands, correction, and direction rather than connection—they feel lonely.Tired.I don't even need to explain that.Even as adults, I don't know any couple who, at the end of witching hour—or whatever you might call it in North America, that 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. stretch when the kids—Sarah: Yeah.Dr. Justin: —are just oof…It's the end of that period, and you're exhausted, the kids are exhausted, and you look at your husband or wife and say, “You know what? We are so tired. We're shattered. But boy, are we nailing it tonight.”Nobody ever says that when they're tired—Sarah: Yeah.Dr. Justin: —because you're not nailing it. You're just hanging in there.And it's the same with kids.Then the S is for stressed, and that includes sickness, because sickness is a stress on the body as well.Those five indicators are going to let you know when your child is likely to be challenging, and I think they're really good to watch out for.But if we go a little deeper and talk about self-determination theory, it says that each of us has these needs.You have them, Sarah, and I have them, and our children have them—even your mother-in-law has them.We have three basic psychological needs.When we're in environments where those needs are supported, oh my goodness, we thrive. These are environments we're drawn to and attracted to. We approach them with a smile on our face and can't wait to be there.But if the environment is what researchers call need-thwarting or need-frustrating—meaning it frustrates and thwarts those needs—then we avoid it.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: Or, if we're in those environments, we act in ways that are challenging.So the basic psychological needs are:Number one: a sense of relationship, or relatedness. That's the technical term they use.Relatedness is a sense of mutual belonging.Sarah: So would it be similar to mattering? Like you feel like you matter to somebody?Dr. Justin: Yeah. There's been a lot of talk recently about mattering.But it's reciprocal mattering. It's not just one-way.It's I matter to you, but you matter to me.Sarah: Yeah.Dr. Justin: Let me use Mother's Day as an example.We just had Mother's Day in Australia at the start of May.If I've got a great relationship with my mother-in-law, and it's Mother's Day, I'm probably going to spend the morning with my wife and family while my children celebrate their mum. Then maybe at lunchtime, we head over to the in-laws to celebrate my wife's mum.If I feel like that relationship need is supported at my mother-in-law's—meaning there's mutual belonging, I matter to her, she matters to me, we enjoy one another's company, and it feels good—I'm going to say:“Great. Let's get in the car. Let's go. What do we need to do?”But if I'm going to a need-frustrating environment—if there's tension, antagonism, snide remarks, eye rolls, silence, defensiveness, or wounds from bad things that happened in the past—that environment doesn't feel good to me.So I'm going to say to Kylie:“Honey, why don't you take the kids to your mum's? Have a great lunch. We've made a big mess this morning, and I think the best thing I can do for your Mother's Day”—and I'll frame it nicely, of course—“is stay home, tidy the house, clean up the kitchen, get everything ready, and put dinner on for tonight so you can have your perfect Mother's Day dinner. I'll see you in four hours.”And then I send her out the door.Why?Because my in-laws' home has become a need-thwarting or need-frustrating environment. I just don't want to be there.And if I am there, I'm going to be sullen and sulky. I might try my best for half an hour and then say, “Oh, this is too hard,” and retreat—Sarah: Or text. The adult version of misbehavior.Dr. Justin: Yes, exactly. Exactly.But if I'm a child in a need-thwarting or need-frustrating environment, I'm going to get into fights with the kids I don't like.Or I'm going to say, “I don't want to go to school because everyone picks on me because I don't regulate my behavior properly because I've got ADHD.”Right?So school becomes a place I don't want to go.Or maybe you have a faith background and your child doesn't have any friends at church.Or you've signed them up for soccer, but they don't know anyone on the team.And they're saying, “Yeah, but I don't want to go.”It all comes down to relationship.Relationship is the basic psychological need that's being thwarted.Now, the second basic psychological need is competence.Competence, I would describe as feeling like I can do the thing I'm being asked to do.Sarah: Or that I want to do.Dr. Justin: Yeah. We'll get to want to in just a second, because want-to is the third basic psychological need—autonomy.So stay with me on competence for a second.Competence is capability. Capacity.It's not even necessarily about being able to do something—it's about feeling like you're making progress toward the goal.Let's say I'm joining acrobatics and trying to learn how to do a handstand.That's really tricky. It's a tough skill.If I show up every week to acrobatics, even if I've got great friends there—so my relationship need is supported—and I love my coach, but every time I try to do a handstand my shoulders buckle, my elbows aren't straight, my form is wrong, I fall over, or I can't stay up…After four or five or six weeks, I'm going to say:“I don't like this anymore. I'm out.”I had a daughter who wanted to come cycling with me.I'm a really keen cyclist. I ride on the road. I'm a middle-aged man in Lycra.But I also ride on the velodrome.You've seen those velodrome bikes at the Olympics—the indoor track where they go around and around and around.You might have noticed that after they finish the race, they keep pedaling and do another 10 laps.The reason is twofold.Number one: there are no brakes on those bikes.And second: they use what's called a fixed gear, meaning that when the wheels are spinning, the pedals are spinning.If you stop pedaling, you're going to get thrown over the handlebars because the wheels are still moving, which means the pedals are still moving, even if you try to stop them.So you just have to keep riding until the bike slows down.My daughter wanted to come to Friday night velodrome racing with me.We didn't have the money, but we spent all this cash on a bike, the Lycra, the helmet, the special shoes—it cost a lot, and I was a poor university student.But my daughter wanted to cycle with me, and I wasn't going to miss that opportunity. So we sacrificed and made it happen.Unfortunately, she was competing against girls who had been riding for four, five, or six years.For the first few weeks, she gave it a good go, but she was losing by several laps every race.After about a month, she said:“Dad, I don't want to do this anymore.”And my response was:“But I've spent all this money.”But what was really going on was that as much as she liked the girls and the atmosphere, she didn't feel competent—Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: —and she didn't see progress.She didn't feel like she was ever going to master the activity, so her motivation and wellbeing plummeted.Cycling became a need-thwarting environment for her.Whether it's piano, violin, rock climbing, cycling, swimming, math, PE class—it doesn't matter.If your kids don't feel like they can do the thing, they're going to push back.They're going to say:“This is too hard. I don't like it.”They won't use these exact words, but what they're really saying is:“This is a need-frustrating environment for me. I don't like it. I don't want to be there.”And then they start to act out.My mom got to the stage with me as a 13-year-old boy where she was physically holding me by the arm and dragging me into my piano lessons.Dr. Justin: Which brings me to my third and final basic psychological need, which is autonomy.A lot of people hear the word autonomy and think it means freedom—that kids can do whatever they want. They think it means independence.That's not what autonomy means, certainly not in the strict scientific form we're talking about within this theory.Rather, autonomy comes down to identifying the value of an activity and therefore endorsing the actions required to do the activity.See, if I, as a 12-year-old, looked at piano and thought:This is going to be a lifelong skill that will bring me joy, that I'll be able to share with others, that I can use in service of my family and community. If I can play piano or keyboard, I could be in a band. I could do all of these things.If I identified the value in the activity, then I would endorse the work required to learn it.So autonomy is not about freedom and independence. It's about choice based on values.That's a lot when you're thinking about three-, four-, and five-year-olds, but not necessarily—Sarah: No, I love that.We talk about that all the time in my communities—how important it is for kids to have autonomy.And I think you can have autonomy even when kids can't be independent, right?Because you can't have a four-year-old who's independent, but you can have a four-year-old who can make decisions that matter.Dr. Justin: Yes, yes.And that decision goes well beyond, Do you want to wear the blue suit or the green one?Sarah: I'll quote our friend Alfie Kohn. He says, “Kids should have the ability to make decisions that make adults gulp a little bit.”Dr. Justin: I love it. Yes. Beautiful.Let me give an adult version of this, and then I'll swing it back into childhood, because sometimes parents hear this and think, This isn't quite computing for me.In Canada, you drive on the right-hand side of the road.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: And it's true that if you choose to drive on the left-hand side of the road, the authorities will probably get involved. You may cause harm to somebody. You could even end up in prison.But even in the middle of the night, when nobody's on the road, I can't imagine there are too many Canadians who get in the car and think:Tonight's the night. Nobody's watching. I'm gonna drive on the left.You are being absolutely controlled by the government and by the law. You're driving on the right-hand side of the road.But because you identify the value in driving on the right-hand side of the road, nobody has to compel you to do it.You just do it because you endorse the idea that driving on the right is safer. It's what you need to do.So our job with our children is twofold.First, when it comes to these basic psychological needs, we want to help them be in environments—or create environments—where those needs are supported.We want to send them to a school where they have good relationships, where somebody says, “Hey, come sit with us,” where teachers know them by name and smile when they see them and are excited to support them.A school where they're able to experience progress—which might mean less emphasis on grades and more emphasis on developing capability.And a school where they feel like they have some say in where they're going and what they're doing.Rather than being forced to attend a school like I was when I was a teenager, they get to say:“No, I want to go to that school because that's where my friends are.”Or:“That's where the teachers help me feel good.”Or:“That's where my interests lie.”That's the basic psychological-needs concept.Now let's bring that into discipline, which is what started this whole conversation.Based on this theory—and I guess it ties back to a lot of what Alfie Kohn has said as well—I developed a little model that's really easy to memorize and even easier to enact.I call it the Three E's of Effective Discipline.The Three E's of Effective Discipline are need-supportive.If you look at the root of the word discipline, it comes from the idea that we teach, guide, and instruct—that we show the way to follow.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: But if you look at the modern definition of discipline, the modern definition is punish.Punish means exact retribution. It means hurt. It means make someone pay a price.Sarah: Make people feel bad on purpose.Dr. Justin: Yeah. That's exactly right.And I'm interested in disciplining our kids, not punishing our kids.Punishment is need-thwarting, right?If you make someone feel bad on purpose, there goes the relationship. They feel incompetent, and you've taken away their autonomy.So standard discipline strategies—whether it's time-out, spanking, yelling, withdrawing privileges, taking away the iPad, bribery—all of those standard discipline practices trample over basic psychological needs.We've got to come up with something better.So I developed the Three E's of Effective Discipline, which are basically this:On a beautiful bed of empathy, we explore, we explain, and we empower.Sarah: Ooh, I love that.Dr. Justin: Explore basically means I sit down with my child at an appropriate time.Because we always try to fix things right here, right now.Sometimes we need to, but often intervention simply to make sure people and property aren't hurt—that's all you need.Then you can say to your child:“We'll have a chat about this later when nobody's got a head full of steam.”Kick it down the road.You don't have to fix things right here, right now. Most of the time, it's just not necessary.So once everyone is calm, you explore.You say:“Hey, I've noticed there's been a lot of tension in our home lately between you and your brother.”Or:“Have you noticed that for the last few weeks we've had so much conflict about screens?”And your child says, “Yeah.”And you say:“I just want to listen because parenting's about parents, right? I must be getting something wrong here. Can you help me understand what I'm missing? Where am I going wrong? What's the real problem from your perspective?”Now, there are three things that make this better.Number one: never do it with an audience.Kids always want to save face. They don't feel competent when we start these conversations in front of other people.Number two: have some treats.Because once you're feeding them, they're like:“Oh, I'm not in trouble. We're just chatting, and there are cookies,” or a thick shake, or something like that.And number three: take notes.When you're trying to solve problems—and that's really what discipline is—The Three E's of Effective Discipline are about problem-solving.Discipline—meaning helping, teaching, guiding, instructing—is really about solving problems.So if I want to solve problems effectively in my home—if I want to discipline my children well—I'm trying to say:“Where are you coming from? What am I missing?”When you take notes on what your kids are saying, it's amazing how much information they give you because they realize:You're really listening to me.Sarah: Yeah. You're taking me seriously. You're writing down what I say.Dr. Justin: They're blown away by it.So they'll tell you a bunch of stuff.Now, every now and then they won't. Sometimes they'll shrug and say, “I don't know.”And you can say:“Well, if you don't know, that's fine. But if you did know…”This drives kids crazy, but it's my favorite sentence.“If you did know, what do you think the answer would be?”Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: And they roll their eyes.“Well, I don't know. That's what I said. If I knew, I'd tell you, but I don't know.”And I say:“I know you don't know, and I understand that if you did know, you would tell me. But if you did know, what would you tell me?”Sarah: I love that.Dr. Justin: They get this feeling—it's like this horrible psychological trick where:I don't know the answer, but if I had to come up with one, I guess I'd say this…And now the conversation starts.You get momentum.Sarah: You Jedi mind-trick them.Dr. Justin: Yeah. It's beautiful.And you write it down.At no point are you allowed to interrupt.At no point are you allowed to tell them they're wrong.At no point are you allowed to respond with your adult wisdom.You just listen.Sarah: Okay, and we're still on explore?Still on the first E?Dr. Justin: We're still on the first E.You make all these notes, and once it sounds like they've told you everything, you say:“All right. So what you're telling me is…”And then you read the notes back.This is the oldest psychological strategy in the book—I'm not saying anything new here.If they say, “Yes, that's what I'm saying,” you say:“All right. Great. I've got it.”If they say no, then you say:“Oh, what have I missed? How did I get this wrong? Clarify it for me.”And they give you more information.But there's a really valuable question at the end.When they say, “Yes, that's what I'm saying,” you ask:“Fantastic. Is there anything else?”Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: The power of asking that extra question is profound.It forces them to go deeper.Sometimes they'll say, “No, that's it.”But often, their first answers are shallow answers to get you off their back.They're thinking:I'm telling you what I think you want to hear.But when you say:“Got it. You're happy with this answer? Fantastic. Is there anything else going on?”That's when they look at you and think:Oh—you're actually serious about this. You really care.Sarah: And you're really listening to me.Dr. Justin: Yeah.And it's profound what children will give you after you ask, “Is there anything else?”Once you've got everything written down, confirmed, and you're clear, the next step is explain.Dr. Justin: Now, there are a couple of things around explain.Explain is basically the part where you tell them what they need to know. This is the parent bit.But all too often, we step into lecturing, and the kids fall asleep. They're like, “Oh, here we go again. I thought this was going to be different, but it's no different after all.”So there are a couple of things we need to get right here.Number one: if you're going to explain anything to your children, my recommendation is that you keep it to less than 20 seconds.Now, there's no science around this. This is just my experience in talking with parents and kids in my own family. I find that if you talk for more than 10 to 20 seconds, kids really do tune out, and it goes back to the way things have always been.The second thing is that I always ask permission.“Now that I've listened to you, Sarah, there are just one or two things I'd love to run by you about what's going on. Do you mind if I do that?”I want to make this absolutely clear: as a parent, you do not need your child's permission to tell them things. I really, absolutely, honestly believe that. As the parent, you have the right to tell them stuff they need to know.But this isn't about rights. This is about effectiveness.If I launch into, “Well, Sarah, now that I've listened to that, I get it, but I need to tell you these two things,” I'm already bringing defensiveness back into the relationship.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: Barriers are coming up.Whereas if I say, “Sarah, this is so helpful. As I've listened to you, two things have come to mind. Do you mind if I share both of those with you?” Your instant response, even as I say it—I'm watching your face—Sarah: I'm nodding.Dr. Justin: And you're going—Sarah: Yeah.Dr. Justin: Yeah. I actually want to know.You're opening up your heart and mind to me, and we're just role-playing this.Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: And that's what our kids do. They're like, “Oh, okay.” Because we've given them the courtesy of listening—Sarah: Well, and you're not trying to use your power over them.Dr. Justin: Exactly.This is a non-coercive, really supportive conversation.And I still haven't had this happen. A lot of parents will say, “Well, what happens if they say no?”And I'm like, “I've raised six kids, and they've never actually looked at me and said, ‘Now that I think about it, no, I don't need to know anything that you…'”They've just never done it.But even if they did—Sarah: Well, if they do, it's probably that they're—what did you say? When emotions are high, intelligence is low. Maybe it wasn't the right time to have the conversation.If they're saying no, then they're probably still angry and holding onto whatever was going on for them.Dr. Justin: Exactly.But if they're that angry, they're probably not going to have explored nicely with you anyway.Sarah: Yes, exactly. So pick—Dr. Justin: A different time.You're probably not even going to—Sarah: Get to that point. Yeah.Dr. Justin: So it's very much: keep it really short, ask permission, and then share.Sarah: Okay. So give me examples.You said, “We've been fighting about screens,” was one example. You also gave the example of, “You've been fighting a lot with your brother.”So in the explain—10 to 20 seconds—choose one of those scenarios. After hearing your child, what would you say in that 10 to 20 seconds?Dr. Justin: I did this just the other day with my 16-year-old daughter, Lily, who is on social media more than she should be. There's been some tension and conflict.I listened. She shared some ideas, and I said, “There are just a couple of things I want to run by you. Is that okay?”She said, “Sure, Dad.”I said, “Great. There are certain times when we're trying to connect or have family time, and there are certain contexts where you're on your device and we just can't reach you.”She looked at me and said, “Yeah, I know.”I said, “Okay. The second thing I want to highlight is that we've noticed you're sleeping in because, even though you're not supposed to, you've been taking your phone into your bedroom at night and staying up late scrolling. Unless I'm reading it wrong, I'm pretty sure that's what's been happening.”And she said, “No, I have been, Dad. You're right.”So it's just two really succinct sentences where I'm stating what I'm seeing. I'm sharing my experience.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: If it were the sibling fighting, I'd say, “Yeah, your brother is really annoying. I get what's going on. Sometimes I wish he didn't live in our house as well.”I might have a joke with them about the challenge associated with that.And then I might say, “So when this happens, can I just share how it feels for me? It breaks my heart. I love both of you so very much, and my dream is for our family to enjoy being in one another's company and to look forward to conversations and jokes and doing the things we do. When this stuff is going on, it feels like that's a pipe dream.“And secondly, psychologically—you know I've got this PhD in psychology—I know that there's damage being done to the way your brother feels about himself. That's what I'm worried about.”So I've had both of those little conversations on two different topics, sharing two different things, and both were about 10 seconds each.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: Again, it's conversational. It's not lecture-style.Sarah: And it's from the heart.I can feel it, even though this is just an example you're giving. I can feel that it's from your heart—that you're really being open and sharing with your child what your true concerns are.You're not trying to power over or control. You're really sharing a heartfelt sentiment.Dr. Justin: Yeah. Thank you. That's the goal.You won't always do that, but that's the goal.The reason there's a problem is because your values are not being upheld in the home, and you're trying to communicate that in a way that shows you honor them and that they've got a brain.Now, we've used two really grown-up versions—or teenage versions, I guess. But you can have the same conversations with three- and four-year-olds. It's just shorter. It's simpler.Usually, with those conversations, in a pretty tight timeframe—60 to 90 seconds—you've done the whole process.There is a higher-order—Sarah: Okay, so what's the third part?Dr. Justin: Just before I get to that one, if you really want to do the advanced version of explain, what I'll often do after I've explored with my child is say:“Okay, so this is the bit where I'd normally explain what's going on from my point of view. I wonder if you can tell me what you think I'm going to say here.”Sarah: Ah.Dr. Justin: And so I get them to explain the explain to me.The reason that's so effective is that whenever my mouth is the one that's moving, my brain is the one that's working.If I can get their mouth moving, their brain is doing the heavy lifting.Sarah: Love that.Dr. Justin: That's really, really effective.And then the last one—Sarah: Is empower.And you're also helping them see things and develop empathy, right? To see things from somebody else's perspective.Dr. Justin: Yes. Powerful.The last one is empower.That's literally as simple as saying, “Okay, so I get where you're coming from. We've had that conversation very thoroughly. You know what my challenge is here. What do you think we should do?”“Where do we go from here? How do we solve this in a way that we can both feel good about?”It's true that every now and then, your child will shrug their shoulders and say, “I don't know.”Or they'll shrug and say, “Well, we should just do what I want to do.”And as a parent, that's where you step in and say my favorite line:“Don't you just wish? Don't you just wish we could?”Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: Because—well, let me ask you, Sarah. When I say, “Don't you just wish,” or, “Wouldn't it be good if we could?”—same thing—what have I actually said?Sarah: Total empathy. Heaps of empathy.Dr. Justin: Total empathy.But I've also said something else really clearly.Sarah: That that's not going to work.Dr. Justin: Correct. The answer is no.But it's a no with so much love, kindness, empathy, and gentleness in it—Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: —that your child goes, “Oh, yeah. I know.”And then you say, “So let's see if we can come up with a solution that will work.”What else might work for you when it comes to your brother?What else might work for you when it comes to the party on Friday night that I'm not willing to let you go to?What else could work when it comes to our screen challenges? Because this is an ongoing issue for us, isn't it?Every now and then, you won't get an answer right away. You'll say, “Well, let's talk about it again tonight,” or, “Let's talk about it again tomorrow once you've had some time to think about it.”But I'm big on deadlines.“We need to have this worked out by the end of the weekend, okay? I don't want to go through another week of this. We've got to find a solution. If we haven't had another chat by tomorrow night, we're going to sit down and work it out then.”And I also don't have a problem at this point—Laura Walker is a researcher at BYU in Utah, and she did a study published in the Journal of Adolescence where she found that parents who use these kinds of strategies—she's not talking about the Three E's of Effective Discipline, because that's the thing I developed, but it's based on the same sort of theory that she researches—Parents who use these kinds of strategies, even when they do have to step in and say, “All right, well, we haven't come up with a solution, so it's going to be my way,” kids are much more likely to be responsive and compliant—Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: —because we've been through a process with them that is not autocratic. It's not authoritarian.They've felt like they had a voice. Their perspective has been seen and heard. They've had some input.And even though they don't get what they want all the time—because we're the parents, and sometimes the fact that we've climbed 47 rungs on the ladder of life and they've only climbed 13 is all we need.Sarah: That's what I call in my work the goodwill bank.When your kids experience you as collaborative, non-coercive, and not power-tripping—when they know, over the period of their childhood, that they can trust you to take their preferences into account and be respectful of them—then when you do have to say no about something, even if they don't like it, there's this goodwill bank behind you and this level of trust.When you mentioned, “You can't go to the party on Friday,” I never had that issue with my kids because everything was so collaborative.We'd have similar conversations. I didn't have—I'm not very good at thinking of things like the Three E's—but similar kinds of processes where they'd say why they wanted to go, I'd say what my concerns were, and then they'd invariably say, “Oh, yeah, you're probably right.”It was never, “You can't go.”It was, “These are my concerns. This is what I've been thinking about.”Because they experienced that whole process over years of parenting, you don't get the pushback because they don't feel like you're power-tripping them.Dr. Justin: Yeah.Sarah, I had an experience with one of my adult children who was still living at home. I think she was maybe 19 or 20 when this happened.She wanted to go and do something, and I said to her, “You're an adult. You do get to choose for yourself whether you will do this or not, but I've got some really big concerns about you doing it.“I actually think you're putting yourself into a dangerous situation. There's some history, some volatility, and some challenges if you go and involve yourself in this particular activity. Tell me why this is so important to you.”So she walked me through it, and I said, “Okay, I get it. How do my concerns stack up against your desire to be there?”And she said, “Dad, I get what you're saying, but I want to go.”And I said, “Okay, so…”You used that beautiful term, the goodwill bank. I can't remember exactly what my words were, but I'm going to use your term right now, because I essentially said:“I'm going to use the goodwill I've built up with you over the last however many years and step in really firmly and say you're making a mistake.“As your dad, even though you're an adult, I want to forbid you to go. That's how strongly I feel about this. To the degree that I can, I forbid it.“Ultimately, you will choose because you are an adult, but I don't want you there.”Sarah: I'm going on the record.Dr. Justin: Yeah, yeah.“I need you to trust that this is a bad idea. We can come up with any number of other activities you could do instead, with different people in a different location, but this is a bad idea, and you have none of my support should you go.“If you go and something goes wrong, you call me and I'll come rescue you. But it is a bad idea, and I forbid it.”And I couldn't believe I was saying those words. I've never said them in my life, and now I was saying them to an adult.But she looked at me and said, “Okay.”Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: She didn't fight me. She didn't say, “I can do what—”Sarah: No, because you built up the history with her of how she experienced you.Dr. Justin: Yeah. She was like, “Wow, this is serious. He's never said that before. If he feels that strongly, maybe he's right. Maybe I need to find an alternative.”So anyway, that's the Three E's of Effective Discipline.I feel like I've talked too much, Sarah. I wanted to be much more conversational, but I get carried away when we—Sarah: No, no. I love it.I feel like it's very complementary to the things that I teach, and you've given me some new things to teach parents as well.I love having sort of snappy—the Three E's of Discipline. I think that's great. I love it. I'll share it.Dr. Justin: Yeah, please. Absolutely.It's helped so many millions of parents.Sarah: Yeah.Well, I love that we've connected across the world—from the other side of the world to each other—and I look forward to hopefully talking to you again in March of 2027 when your book Boys comes out.I figured we were going to talk about that, but we had such a lovely conversation about peaceful parenting, discipline, and—oh my God, it's gone right out of my head—Dr. Justin: Self-determination theory.Sarah: Self-determination theory.I think it was a really great conversation, and I really appreciate you sharing all of your experience and wisdom.Dr. Justin: I loved the conversation.Like I said, it was too one-sided. I wish we'd been able to go backward and forward a bit more, but let's do it again.Let's chat again next year when the book comes out, and we'll talk about boys and how to help them.There's so much talk about toxic masculinity.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: Wouldn't it be great if we could give them a view of healthy masculinity—a model of that to follow?That's what my book is all about: how we can guide boys into a healthy form of masculinity.Sarah: Well, for folks in Australia, your book is coming out in June 2026. For folks in North America, it's not coming out until spring 2027.So I will definitely be ringing you up and having you come back on to talk about the book when you've got your North American release. I know we're going to have a great conversation then.Before I let you go, though, I have a question that I ask all my podcast guests:If you had a time machine and you could go back and tell your younger parent self something, what advice would you give yourself?Dr. Justin: Jean-Jacques Rousseau said there is—I can't remember the quote exactly—but: What wisdom is there that is greater than kindness?I've paraphrased it. It's not perfect, but it's something along those lines.Interestingly, Rousseau had, I think, five children—maybe six—and he put them all into orphanages somewhere in the first 18 months of their lives so he could spend more time writing and focusing on how to be a good person, which I just find criminal. I can't believe it.So take it for what it's worth, but “What wisdom is there that's greater than kindness?” is what Rousseau said.I've mentioned this idea of soft eyes a couple of times. If I could go back, I would teach myself about kindness. I'd teach myself about many of the things we've talked about today.But I just want to quickly share the story of soft eyes.As an academic, I want everything I say to be evidence-based. There is no evidence that I'm aware of where people have done any kind of randomized controlled trial where parents are asked to interact with their children with soft eyes, neutral eyes, hard eyes, or anything like that.Soft eyes is this idea—I was giving a presentation at a public library one time, and an elderly lady stepped into the back of the room, sat down, and listened to the last 25 or 30 minutes of my presentation. She must have liked what she could hear from the corridor outside, and she stepped in to listen.After everybody had left, she walked over to me and said, “I really enjoyed what you shared. I'd love to tell you something my grandmother said to me.”So we're going back into the early 1900s.Her grandmother said, “Whenever you're talking to your children about matters of discipline, make sure you have soft eyes.”And I thought, I really like that.Because if you try to have a conversation with somebody and your eyes are soft, you just can't say mean things. You can't say harsh things. You can't have harsh thoughts.If you soften your eyes, your face softens and your heart softens. You have this beautiful compassion and kindness, this ability to see the best in them rather than the worst in them, to assume positive intent.There's something gorgeous about soft eyes.So I would go back and quote Rousseau better than I just quoted him to you, and I would tell my younger self that soft eyes will make a tremendous impact on all of my relationships.Sarah: Ah.There's an American—I don't know if you've heard of him in Australia—but he's a pretty well-known marriage counselor, Terry Real.Dr. Justin: Oh, yeah. I quote him in my book.Sarah: Yeah, yeah. He does a lot of work about—well, he says something like, “There's nothing that harshness can accomplish that kindness can't accomplish better.”Dr. Justin: That's so beautiful.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Dr. Justin: Thank you. That's inspiring. I'm so glad you shared that.Sarah: Yeah. I love it.It's hard to remember, but I think it is true. And I wish that—and I know the world needs a dose of that right now.Dr. Justin: Yeah. Yeah.Sarah: One hundred percent.Well, thank you so much.Where's the best place for folks to go and find out more about you and what you do?Dr. Justin: Probably my podcast, the Happy Families Podcast. My wife and I drop a 15-minute nugget of parenting wisdom every day, five days a week.Sarah: Oh, wow!Dr. Justin: Yeah. It's a lot of content, but it's bite-sized chunks, and it's entertaining. We're fun. We get to do it together.And the Happy Families Podcast. I've got a website called happyfamilies.com.au, but basically, if you like what we've talked about—Sarah: We'll link to all of that in the show notes. We'll link to your website and your podcast, and I'm sure it's easy to find you.Dr. Justin: That sounds great. Thanks, Sarah.Sarah: Thank you so much.Dr. Justin: What a great, great conversation. Lovely to be with you.Reimagine Peaceful Parenting with Sarah Rosensweet Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribe

This week: Tips for Coachella and summer music fests, Fuck My Life, Ask Lovely Maria, Bad warning labels and Zombie Jesus

Welcome back to the lovely show! Kevin and Justine are back to discuss the reactions of last weeks 'The Bureau De Change Song Contest', "embracing the grey hairs", the power of cigarettes breaks, and John Travolta embracing his new directorial look. Be sure to catch The Lovely Show at 'The Garden at Jackal for the Navan Midsummer Festival, June 20th, 15:00! Kevin and Justine will bring their signature weird and wonderful commentary on Irish culture, hilarious anecdotes, and unique chemistry. And who knows, they might even sing a song! Tickets available: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-lovely-show-live-podcast-with-justine-stafford-and-kevin-mcgahern-tickets-1987989387774#location If you have stories or anecdotes to share for the show, be sure to drop a line at: lovelyshowpodcast@gmail.com If you enjoyed this episode of The Lovely Show, please ensure to leave us a LOVELY review. Support The Lovely Show to get ad-free listening and bonus episodes at ⁠https://headstuffpodcasts.com/membership/⁠ - listen to your bonus episodes and ad-free feed in your favourite app! This is a HeadStuff podcast produced by Hilary Barry. Artwork by Matt Mahon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Dr. Fiona Lovely welcomes back Dr. Siobhan Mitchell, Chief Scientific Officer of MitoQ and an expert in nutritional neuroscience, for a conversation that digs deeper into the metabolic shifts women experience at midlife. Dr. Mitchell explains how declining estrogen directly impacts mitochondrial health, which in turn affects everything from energy levels and muscle strength to where the body stores fat. Listeners will learn why the same diet and exercise routines may stop working during perimenopause, and why that stubborn belly fat is not a personal failure but a biological response to changing hormones. Dr. Mitchell discusses the protective role of estrogen, the emerging understanding of the estrobolome, and practical options for support including HRT, phytoestrogens from sources like soy, and the lesser-known compound S-equol. She also shares what she wishes she had known earlier about stress and risk-taking, offering a personal insight that may resonate with many listeners navigating midlife changes.   Episode Highlights: How declining estrogen leads to reduced mitochondrial function, affecting energy, muscle strength, and inflammation throughout the body Why women gain visceral belly fat during perimenopause even when diet and exercise have not changed How the estrobolome, or gut bacteria responsible for recycling estrogen, can be supported to improve metabolic outcomes The role of phytoestrogens and S-equol, including why only about twenty percent of Western women can produce this beneficial compound naturally How HRT, phytoestrogens, and targeted supplements can work together or separately to support women through the menopausal transition This episode offers a clear roadmap for women who want to understand what is happening inside their bodies and take informed steps toward maintaining their health through the menopausal transition.    Thank you to our sponsors for this episode: The transition through midlife often brings a frustrating trio of shifts: the stubborn bloating, those unpredictable energy swings, and changes to the midsection that feel completely outside of your control. Harnessing the power of S-Equol, B. breve, and chromium, this formula is uniquely designed to support healthy estrogen signaling and metabolic function. It's about more than just numbers; it's about stabilizing blood sugar, restoring gut comfort, and supporting a healthy body composition so you can feel like yourself again. Go to www.mitoq.com and use code LOVELY10 for 10% off your first order! If night sweats and restless sleep are disrupting your rest, Cozy Earth's bamboo sheets and pajama sets are temperature-regulating and moisture-wicking — designed to sleep several degrees cooler than cotton. Because supporting your body through menopause starts with how you sleep. Visit cozyearth.com and use code LOVELY for 20% off.   Dr. Fiona Lovely is a longevity, health and wellness expert with specialties in menopause medicine, functional neurology and functional medicine.  She is speaking to the topics of women's health around perimenopause and menopause. How to work with Dr. Lovely: We get many requests for this info, so here it is!  First off, thank you for listening to the NYMM podcast.  It's because of your support, we can continue to dispense this information.❤️ Follow Dr. Lovely on IG and TikTok: @drfionalovely Follow the podcast on Facebook:  www.facebook.com/@notyourmothersmenopausepodcast Please sign up for our newsletter - Fiona's Friday Favourites!  This is where we make the first announcements, share course offerings, drop new episodes,  blog posts and the coveted 'Fiona's Favourites' column, etc.   drlovely.com You can also find some great resources there! Finally, a humble request:  If you love the podcast, please leave us a review!  It helps more people find useful info for a challenging time: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/not-your-mothers-menopause-with-dr-fiona-lovely/id1097326296  Please scroll to the bottom of the page to leave a review.  Thank you! 

Photobiomodulation Stroke Recovery: How Laser Therapy Is Restarting Damaged Brains After Stroke For seven years, a woman lived unable to remember faces. She had developed prosopagnosia, a condition that turned every person she met into a stranger, no matter how many times they had been introduced. She kept notes. She took photographs. She built systems to compensate for what her brain could no longer do on its own. Then she sat down for a single laser therapy session with Dr. Robert Hedaya. One session later, the problem was gone. “I can remember the face of the person I worked with this morning and his wife and the dimple on his face,” she told him, describing something she hadn’t been able to do in nearly a decade. What Dr. Hedaya witnessed that day and what he now works to replicate for stroke survivors, people living with aphasia, early dementia, and Parkinson’s, is the result of a therapy called photobiomodulation. And the principle behind it may fundamentally change how you understand your own recovery ceiling. Your Neurons May Not Be Dead. They May Just Be Stuck When a stroke occurs, conventional medicine draws a clear line. Tissue that is destroyed is gone. Deficits that persist beyond the early recovery window are considered permanent. Survivors are told, sometimes gently, sometimes bluntly, that they have plateaued. Dr. Hedaya challenges that directly. In his clinical experience, there is often a population of neurons that survived the stroke intact but are no longer functioning. They are alive. Their cellular architecture is preserved. But they have lost their energy supply, specifically, the ability to produce ATP, the molecule that powers every cellular process in the body. Without energy, these neurons go quiet. They stop firing. From the outside, this looks like permanent damage. But it isn’t. It is dormancy. This mirrors the concept of the chronic penumbra explored in hyperbaric oxygen therapy research, where viable tissue sits in a suspended state, waiting for conditions to change. Dr. Hedaya’s approach is different in method but identical in premise: the brain has not finished recovering. It is waiting for the right signal. Photobiomodulation provides that signal. What Photobiomodulation Actually Does “After the first laser treatment, the problem was gone. Gone. She told me — I can remember the face of the person I worked with this morning.” — Dr. Robert Hedaya Photobiomodulation, also called transcranial laser therapy, delivers precise wavelengths of near-infrared light to targeted areas of the scalp. The photons penetrate through the skull, meninges, and tissue to reach dormant neurons, where they act on the fourth complex of the mitochondrial electron transport chain, the site where nitric oxide accumulates and blocks ATP production. The photons dislodge that nitric oxide. The mitochondria resume normal energy output. The neuron now has what it needs to resume its function. The downstream effects are significant: new synapses form through a process called synaptogenesis, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is produced, inflammation decreases, and misfolded proteins associated with cognitive decline begin to clear. Given energy, the brain begins repairing itself, not because the laser forces it to, but because the cells already know what to do. They were just waiting for the fuel. How QEEG Makes It Precise Not every stroke survivor responds to the same laser parameters or needs treatment in the same regions. This is where Dr. Hedaya’s approach clearly separates from consumer LED helmets or generic light therapy devices. Before any laser is applied, he conducts a quantitative EEG, a brain mapping process that measures electrical activity at 19 points across the scalp. Unlike a standard EEG, which relies on a clinician reading scrolling waveforms visually, QEEG uses AI to analyse thousands of data points and reverse-engineer the source. The result is a functional map: which networks are underperforming, which are overactive, and where pathways between regions have broken down. This is paired with a neuroquant MRI that measures 30 to 40 distinct brain structures volumetrically. Together, they function as a GPS triangulating exactly where the laser should be directed, at what wavelength, power, pulse frequency, and joule delivery for each individual patient. These parameters are adjusted as the patient responds, session by session. This level of precision is what distinguishes clinical photobiomodulation from anything available over the counter. A half-watt LED helmet delivering diffuse light through hair and scalp is not the same intervention. Depression After Stroke – And the Whole-Body Connection Roughly 30% of stroke survivors experience depression in the aftermath. This is not simply an emotional response to a difficult event – it is a physiological outcome with identifiable drivers that conventional psychiatry often does not investigate. Dr. Hedaya’s model, which he calls whole psychiatry, treats post-stroke depression as a downstream expression of broader disruption: hypothyroidism, hormonal imbalance, B12 deficiency, elevated mercury from dietary sources, gut dysbiosis, chronic inflammation, and unresolved neurological stress all play measurable roles. In one of his current stroke cases, treating low thyroid function triggered seizure sensitivity because post-stroke tissue is more vulnerable to excitatory input. That kind of complexity is precisely why a comprehensive functional evaluation must precede treatment. For survivors too depleted to engage with lifestyle changes, Dr. Hedaya will now often begin with laser therapy directly. Once cellular energy is restored, the motivation and capacity to make further changes typically follow. The jump-start, he has found, enables everything else. Is Recovery Still Possible After a Plateau? If you have been told you have reached your ceiling, the core message of this episode is worth sitting with: the plateau is often not a biological fact. It is frequently the consequence of underlying conditions that haven’t been identified, and dormant tissue that hasn’t been activated. “The brain is incredibly plastic,” Dr. Hedaya says. “When you challenge it and give it everything it needs, nutrients, light, hormones, and remove the toxins, great things can happen. There is hope. There is so much hope.” His practice, the Whole Psychiatry and Brain Recovery Center, offers initial consultations via Zoom for those who cannot travel to New Jersey. For survivors with a local physician willing to collaborate, educational consultation is also available. Reach Dr. Hedaya at wholepsychiatry.com. If this episode opened something up for you, Bill’s book – The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened follows the full arc of what recovery can become when you stop accepting the ceiling and start questioning it. Find it at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. If the Recovery After Stroke podcast has supported your journey, you can support the show at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. The Laser That Restarts Brains – Dr. Robert Hedaya on Photobiomodulation, QEEG, and Whole Psychiatry After Stroke A laser pointed at the right spot in your brain can restart neurons that stopped working. Dr. Robert Hedaya explains how and who it can help. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy – Dr. Amir Hadanny Highlights: 00:00 Introduction – Photobiomodulation Stroke Recovery 01:09 Dr. Hedaya’s Medical Journey 07:55 Transition to Functional Medicine 10:31 Photobiomodulation Stroke Recovery Applications 19:21 Understanding Laser Mechanisms 24:36 Jumpstarting Healing with Laser Therapy 29:48 Understanding EEG vs. QEEG 34:10 Addressing Depression Post-Stroke 39:38 Holistic Approaches to Recovery 46:20 Patient-Centered Care and Follow-Up 51:38 The Role of Spirituality in Healing Transcript: Introduction – Photobiomodulation Stroke Recovery Dr Bob Hedaya (00:00) After the first laser treatment, the problem was gone. Gone. She told me, she said, my God, I can remember the face of the person I worked with this morning and his wife and the dimple on the face. And I said, what are you talking about? She says, have prosopagnosia. I said, says, can’t remember faces. I have to write down everything that I do and take pictures of everything and every person. I said, my God, it’s gone, gone. that’s when I went home that night and I was like, this doesn’t make any sense. How could this be? There’s nothing about a neurological condition being turned around in one minute. It makes no sense. Dr. Hedaya’s Medical Journey Bill Gasiamis (00:41) Welcome everyone to the Recovery After Stroke podcast. I’m Bill Gasiamis and my guest today is Dr. Robert Hedaya, a board-certified psychiatrist, functional medicine practitioner, and the founder of the Hull Psychiatry and Brain Recovery Center in New Jersey. Dr. Hedaya trained at Georgetown and the National Institute of Mental Health. And over the course of his career, he moved from conventional psychopharmacology into functional medicine after discovering of what was driving his patient’s symptoms had nothing to do with their medications and everything to do with their biology. In more recent years, Dr. Hedaya has added a tool that very few practitioners anywhere in the world are using, QEEG, guided transcranial photobiomodulation. That’s laser therapy, precisely using a functional brain map to reactivate neurons that survived the stroke but stopped working. In this conversation, we get into the science behind photobiomodulation and what it actually does inside the cell. How QEEG brain mapping removes the guesswork from treatment, why post-stroke depression is so often mismanaged, the role of nutrition, hormones, and toxin load in recovery. and why Dr. Hedaya believes the plateau most survivors are told about is not the biological sealing they’ve been led to believe it is. Now, before we get into this episode, if you found this podcast helpful in your recovery, my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened goes deeper into the tools and mindset shifts that support long-term recovery and personal transformation. You can find it at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if this show has supported you, you can support it at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Now let’s get into it. Bill Gasiamis (02:38) Dr. Hedaya. Welcome to the podcast. Dr Bob Hedaya (02:41) Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Bill Gasiamis (02:43) It is a very good pleasure to have you here as well. The reason being is because I, what we’re going to discuss, but B the way that you came to be on my podcast was through somebody who listens to my podcast, reaching out and saying, need to have this gentleman on your podcast. And I get that a lot. And sometimes it’s like, thank you for the referral, but maybe that’s not for me, but this is definitely for me. Can you give me a little bit of. Dr Bob Hedaya (03:01) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Bill Gasiamis (03:13) background for people who are listening to understand how it is that you and I came to be on the podcast today, but more importantly, like your medical journey to today. Dr Bob Hedaya (03:26) Well, so first of all, I ⁓ was treating a woman who was, let’s say, about 50 years old. She had several strokes. And her husband looked me up, and they came here for treatment. in New Jersey. And ⁓ she had significant improvement in her ability to speak over a short period of time. That’s a little. kind of summary of the situation, but it was ⁓ profound. She still has work to do, a lot of work to do, but she’s doing it and she’s progressing nicely. So that’s, he basically, I guess, decided this needs to get out. And so he contacted you, et cetera, et cetera. In terms of my journey, ⁓ that could take a few hours. So let me try and summarize it. I will say I basically went to medical school, took off six months to study medicine on my own after two years because I really, lot of reasons, but one of them was I just was memorizing things and I didn’t really understand what I was doing. And so I took off six months and I really learned about the human body. I studied, I had a schedule, a very fixed schedule, about 10 hours a day of studying and exercise and eat. was very, you know, I was young and regimented. And I had six books, six subjects that I wanted to get through and I did. And I learned all about the body and different parts of the body, how they interact with each other. And also I was able to understand and predict even certain kinds of processes and problems in the body. So that was an integrative experience, which ⁓ later really served as the foundation for what I do. Fast forward, I was going to be a surgeon, decided to be a psychiatrist instead, because I was fascinated by by the human mind. And what happened was I was trained at Georgetown National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, DC. And then I was in practice for about a year. And I was treating a woman who had panic attacks. And they weren’t getting better after a year. And panic attacks are pretty easy to treat. And so I was like, what’s going on here? She paged me one night after a year, Saturday night. And I remember I had a little beeper, you know, and I went to find a phone booth and, hey, Joanne, what’s going on? It’s midnight, right? She’s talking to me, I’m having a panic attack. And I mean, I still remember the anguish in her voice. You know, it was really, really, really rough to listen to. So Monday morning, I went into the office very early and I’m like, I’m missing something. What am I missing? So I found I had one piece of blood work. had a blood count and the size of her red blood cells was large. and I had seen that and didn’t know what it meant and ignored it. Very little. It wasn’t very large. It was just a little bit out of the norm. And I was trained in hospitals. know, in hospitals, you don’t worry about the little things. You worry about the train wrecks, right? So you never really learn what the little things mean. So here was a so-called little thing and it was ruining her life. Meanwhile, I did some research. It was a B12 deficiency. I gave her B12 injection. And with the first injection, her panic was gone. Transition to Functional Medicine I mean, gone, gone, gone. And I was like, whoa, what else am I missing? Because psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, it’s a revolving door. You go to this doctor, you take these meds, you do this therapy. That works for a while, then you go somewhere else. I figured I’m missing a lot of stuff. And basically, ended up learning. I didn’t know it was called functional medicine, but I ended up learning functional medicine on my own. Wrote a book, got introduced. to Jeff Bland at IFM. contacted me and took formal training and then, you know, that was what I was doing. And I did that, ⁓ put out a second book ⁓ and that was a best seller. And ⁓ the book was called the Anti-Depressant Survival Program. But really it was functional medicine psychiatry or whole psychiatry, which I like to call it. But it’s functional medicine psychiatry, but the publisher wanted… you know, a nice fancy title that would, know, so they decided to call it the Anti-Depressant Program, you know, survival program. Anyway, the best seller and we had thousands of phone calls, we had a lot of publicity and I couldn’t obviously see everybody. So I picked people who had treatment resistant depression and people who had the resources and the motivation or the support to be able to do what they needed to do. And I just treated them with functional medicine. And at this time, you’ve got to realize I was a psychopharmacologist. I was also trained as a psychopharmacologist. So I was doing a lot of psychopharmacology. I mean, a lot. And now I’m doing functional medicine on everybody. And after about three years, I’m noticing that I’m not actually doing that much psychopharmacology anymore. And everybody’s getting better. And the diabetes is going away. and osteoporosis is going away and one woman’s MS lesion in her brain went away and I’m like, what’s going on here? You know what? I might be lying to myself. So maybe I’m paying attention to the positive cases and I’m ignoring the negative. So I hired a statistician to go over all my cases over the course of this period of time, it two or three years. Ended up in 23 cases of treatment resistant depression. ⁓ I wasn’t lying to myself. Every single person went into recovery, not partial remission, not 50 % better, fully recovered by 10 months, every single one. And I was just blown away that, you know, I mean, I was blown away before, but then it was like, well, you’re not really lying to yourself. So that’s what I was doing until 2014 when I retired. I had actually an inaccurate diagnosis. I retired and… turned out it was incorrect. So it was actually really good to be retired, although I missed it terribly, really missed medicine terribly. But it gave me some time. And this is where this kind of starts to relate more to your audience. ⁓ I’m sitting on a hammock for six hours reading a book. Well, you can’t do that when you’re in practice. Bill Gasiamis (10:07) Good thing to do. Yeah. Photobiomodulation Stroke Recovery Applications Dr Bob Hedaya (10:13) That doesn’t happen. So but I was you know in retirement, so I’m reading this book and put two and two together over the course of time and I learned about laser which which they were using in Russia in 1980s and learned how the laser worked and And I was like whoa this could really help the brain and Then I was thinking now. I’m not in practice right, but I’m then I’m thinking but how would I know where to? point the laser in the brain for a patient. And then I keep reading in the book, and then they start talking about in the next chapter about quantitative EEG. And I’m like, oh, that’s how I would know. So I spent the next three years or so actually studying these methodologies. And then in 2017, I want to say, or 2018, I treated my first patient who had early dementia. published this case actually. I was treating her for early dementia. And I had treated her for six months with functional medicine, know, hormones and treating infections, et cetera, et cetera. And she really was much better. And then I was ready to do my first quantitative EEG. And she’s doing much better. She still has some symptoms. And I do the QEG. And actually, if I could share my I don’t know if I can, Okay, so basically what I just sent you is ⁓ how her brain looked after six months of functional medicine, right? So I was shocked because I thought her brain would look much better. And then I said, okay, let’s do the laser. So I knew where to point it because the QEG and this was the shocker. With the first laser, she had a problem. before the laser treatment of facial blindness. I don’t know if you know what that is. It’s people who can’t remember faces. They just met someone, they can’t remember the face. It’s called prosopagnosia. She had acquired it seven years earlier. Bill Gasiamis (12:11) I do. Yeah. Dr Bob Hedaya (12:21) After the first laser treatment, the problem was gone. Gone. She told me, she said, my God, I can remember the face of the person I worked with this morning and his wife and the dimple on the face. And I said, what are you talking about? She says, have prosopagnosia. I said, what? What is proto-diagnosia? I don’t know what that is. She says, can’t remember faces. I have to write down everything that I do and take pictures of everything and every person. I said, my God, it’s gone, gone. that’s when I went home that night and I was like, this doesn’t make any sense. How could this be? There’s nothing about a neurological condition being turned around in one minute. It makes no sense. But then I realized, I reasoned it out, realized, well, she had a population of neurons that were kind of alive, but they were not really functioning. And then I kind of jump started them with the laser and they went about their business and did their job. Bill Gasiamis (13:19) I love it. So, that’s a contrast on what you’re doing as in psychiatry, because psychiatry from, you know, my understanding is, you know, if you, if you speak to somebody who’s been through psychiatry and you ask them, how’s your condition or how is your situation or what has improved, very few people can say, ⁓ well, I’m, I’m better. I’ve overcome it. We’ve moved beyond the resolve that Dr Bob Hedaya (13:27) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (13:47) Nobody really does that. They kind of just continue to go through the motions of another appointment, another medication, another adjustment in the amount of medication, et cetera. And what you said also seems a little bit ridiculous and kind of too quick. How do you get that kind of a solution that’s meant to take ages? You’re supposed to go through the typical times and it’s supposed to be costly and Dr Bob Hedaya (14:06) Too quick. Bill Gasiamis (14:16) unattainable and all these things. And it makes people feel sometimes I know stroke survivors who come across promises like that from other ⁓ people who talk about ⁓ perhaps ⁓ non-studied, ⁓ no scientific background kind of solutions to stroke and then kind of give everyone a blanket. If we do this, we’ll fix your stroke deficits, which is not true. ⁓ And then And then it leaves people feeling like they got ripped off. If they paid money, it leaves people lost for hope that there is no hope, cetera. And we kind of find ourselves in a, okay, desperate, what do we do now situation, right? And that’s kind of why I got excited when your patient’s husband reached out and said that we should chat. And I had a bit of a look into the kind of work that you do. ⁓ Functional medicine, I’ve heard about heaps. Dr Bob Hedaya (15:00) Hmm. Bill Gasiamis (15:14) And I love that it’s merged with psychiatry because when I started my journey in 2012, overcoming the first brain bladed and the second brain blade six weeks later, I went into functional medicine study to find out not formally, but I started doing what I didn’t know at the time was studying functional medicine and understanding like how I can decrease the inflammation in my brain. and provide the right environment for healing. And the first thing I came across was a book by somebody that you’re gonna know, Mark Hyman. And the book was, ⁓ the book was, ⁓ Eight Fat Get Thin. I read it, not wanting to get thin, I read it ⁓ because it ticked the boxes for the diet that I was gonna use to reduce inflammation in my brain. Dr Bob Hedaya (15:54) Okay. Bill Gasiamis (16:12) And the side effect was I thin. I wasn’t going for that because I was taking medication. was taking ⁓ dexamethasone, which made me put on weight and made these like all these types of ⁓ terrible side effects, but it was helping reduce the inflammation in my brain. So I, I was happy to have it, but I needed to achieve the same outcome as dexamethasone. Dr Bob Hedaya (16:13) I’m kidding. Bill Gasiamis (16:41) or a similar outcome as dexamethasone on a permanent basis without taking dexamethasone to improve the situation in my brain. And then I started to realize that I had a lot of power and I was ⁓ only not guided properly because my physicians, my doctors weren’t able to offer advice in that space. And had I not been the curious kind of guy that I was, I never would have come across Dr. Hyman and some other amazing guys who wrote books at around about that time that were similar in nature. so you’re, and then, and then a little while later, I found there was a Tasmanian, ⁓ psychiatrist, forget her name, but I have her book on my shelf upstairs who wrote a book about, ⁓ psychiatry and food and, the link between food and a good psychiatric outcome. Dr Bob Hedaya (17:15) huh. Bill Gasiamis (17:39) in the brain. And I just thought, okay, there’s much, much more that needs to happen here. Now, this the connections, there’s a lot of connections here. So recently on my YouTube channel, somebody left a comment I wanted to know about red light therapy, and will it help their brain? And I’m like, I have no idea. But let me do some research. I went on to PubMed, I found some articles and wouldn’t you believe it, there is a whole bunch of ⁓ proper data that Dr Bob Hedaya (17:40) You know what? Come on. Bill Gasiamis (18:08) suggests that there is a benefit. The only challenge that I always have with all of these potentially beneficial interventions is there’s no diagnosis done in the first place to determine whether somebody actually is eligible for a particular intervention. And what it sounds like you’re able to do is the diagnostics part and determine their eligibility. Tell me a little bit about why that is important. Dr Bob Hedaya (18:35) Right. Okay, so let me back, I wanna back up, because you said something very important, then I wanna reiterate it. I just gave you before a case of a woman who in five minutes, her problem was gone, right? Not, people should not think that’s the norm, okay? Not the norm. Occasionally it happens, I have a guy who had a head injury and had light sensitivity and confusion in certain situations with light, and one treatment, boom, gone. Understanding Laser Mechanisms People, you know, I have cases like that, but most of the time this is a gradual process. So people should not think it’s a cure-all for everybody. We do have to know who it’s good for. So what we do diagnostically before we do this is I will look at their brain, you know, obviously take some history and all of that business, but we do a quantitative neuroquant MRI. So we look at the different structures inside the brain. You know, we look at… Bill Gasiamis (19:32) Lovely. Dr Bob Hedaya (19:32) 30, 40 different structures. And then we also do a quantitative EEG, which is an electroencephalogram. We measure the electricity in the brain in 19 different places. And then there’s this really AI that takes all this data and it reverse engineers it. It’s called the inverse solution. And you can actually see the pathways, all of the pathways in the brain and the surface areas of the brain. And you can look at that, correlate that with the person’s symptoms. with the neuroquant MRI, it’s like a GPS, right? A triangulation of information and then assuming there’s not a mass or an aneurysm or some reason not to do the laser like an overactive brain or something like that, then we could consider using the laser. And then we also know where we want to do it based on the symptoms, based on the QEG, based on the neuroquant. We will decide what we’re going to target. And then we combine that, sometimes, not always. Bill Gasiamis (20:05) Hmm. Dr Bob Hedaya (20:31) with neurofeedback so we can exercise the areas that we want to exercise or calm down the areas that we want to calm down. And sometimes with hyperbaric oxygen, things like that. And hormones, using hormones or things like that. Bill Gasiamis (20:42) Yep. Hyperbaric oxygen has been a topic that I’ve discussed as well on the podcast and the people that I spoke to about hyperbaric oxygen and guys, I can’t remember right now, but I’ll put a link in the show notes for anyone listening so that you can go and find that episode and have a listen to it. Basically, what I loved about their approach was that they did a massive amount of diagnosis beforehand to determine where the penumbras were and then target those penumbras while the person was in the chamber. by getting them to do certain exercises that would activate those areas and therefore be targeted. So it sounds like the laser therapy is similar. Tell me about the laser. What kind of a laser is it? How does it get targeted to a specific spot? And what does it do when it goes there? I mean, I imagine it just doesn’t point there and go, I’ll illuminate that and it’ll be better. How does it actually work? Dr Bob Hedaya (21:18) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay, so the laser, there are a bunch of different parameters that we have to adjust for each person. So it’s the frequency, how fast is the wavelength? What’s the wavelength? How many times per second is it pulsed? 10 times per second, 40 times per second, 50 times per second. Is it a 8, 10 nanometer wavelength or is it a 1064 wavelength? How many joules are we delivering? you know, where are we delivering it? So there are lots and lots of parameters to adjust, right? ⁓ What does it do? So simple, the first thing that it does, it does many, many things, right? But the very, very first thing it does is it actually releases ATP, the energy molecule, from your mitochondria. So it basically, the photon goes to the fourth channel, the fourth complex in the mitochondria, bumps off the nitric oxide, and that opens the flow of ATP. Well, if your brain, if your neurons have energy, they say, ⁓ energy, ⁓ well, we know what to do with energy. Let’s fix the puddles. Let’s build the roads. Let’s make the connections. Let’s do whatever we got to do. So now you’re getting energy flow. You also get synaptogenesis. You build new synapses. You get production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Bill Gasiamis (23:01) Wow. Dr Bob Hedaya (23:05) You get reduction of inflammation, get reduction of tau proteins and misfolded proteins. ⁓ You get, subjectively, get cognitive enhancement. aphasia, you know, people can start to speak. I mean, I can tell you one story. We used to shave people before doing the laser because I wanted to… Remember, you got a skull, you got the skin, you got all this stuff, right? How are you going to get the light into the brain, right? So we know that only about Bill Gasiamis (23:31) Mmm. Dr Bob Hedaya (23:35) 2.6 % of the light goes through the skull and the meninges and all the layers, right? So we used to shave people because I want to get the hair out of the way, right? At least get rid of some of it. So I had this woman who came to me, this is probably seven years ago, I guess. And at that time, I would not use the laser until I had done functional medicine on the patient. Because I figured, you know, let’s get the terrain straight. the nutrients, the hormones, get rid of the infections, get rid of the toxins, then we’ll apply the sunlight to the brain, to the plant, right? That was my logic. I thought that made perfect sense. So this woman came to me. She was 70 years old, obese. The husband wanted me to give her the laser. She wouldn’t change her diet, not an iota. High blood pressure, obesity. She could not speak. She would not take a medicine. She would not… Bill Gasiamis (24:04) Mm-hmm. Mm. Jumpstarting Healing with Laser Therapy Dr Bob Hedaya (24:33) Like, you name it, non-compliant all the way. Maybe you could say a word or two, that was it. Her husband begged me. I said, listen, it’s a waste, okay? It’s just a waste. I can’t ask her to shave her head. It’s not gonna work. I’m not doing it. He did not stop. So finally, I said, okay, fine, I’ll do it. So I was in my office and I’m making the laser plan. And I’m just writing, and something pops out of my mouth, God, I need a miracle. So I go into the laser room, and I start doing the laser. She starts talking. I have tears. He has tears. She starts talking. So by the end of like 20 sessions, I’m sitting with her having a 45-minute therapy session, because it turns out she was really severely abused when she was young. ⁓ She’s having a whole conversation with me. Turns out she’s psychotic also now. She’s also a psychotic and we didn’t know. So she needs to take some medicine for the psychosis because in the middle of the night, she’s going around with a baseball bat and she wants to like do, and she wouldn’t take medicines, I had to stop the laser. But that was an amazing thing because that was one, but with aphasia, typically it’s more gradual, much more gradual. But I have had a couple of patients where, and a woman came from Chicago and she just started talking also. So everyone’s different. You can’t necessarily come into this expecting that kind of thing is wonderful when it happens, but you Bill Gasiamis (26:14) Yeah. I love the fact that you can intervene with a laser, but also people can intervene with all the things that you said that that patient wasn’t doing beforehand. And that you that’s the top of the hierarchy of how you approach healing the brain is you do all those things. And then you supplement with ⁓ with a therapy like laser or whatever. And you kind of combine that and you make Dr Bob Hedaya (26:25) Yeah, yeah, you got it. Bill Gasiamis (26:42) like the, you make a soup of amazing things that all come together at the same time to support you together. And laser is just one of those things, but all the hierarchy like is so important because Dr Bob Hedaya (26:48) Yeah. It’s all important, all important. But I will tell you this. I have come to the point now where I believe that like people come to me and they don’t want to do anything and I’m like, okay, because I can jumpstart you, assuming you’re a good candidate. I can jumpstart you with the laser. I could just jumpstart you and then once I’ve jumpstarted you, say, ⁓ yeah, okay, I’ll do this. ⁓ okay, I’ll do a little of this. I’ll do a little. Because I’m bypassing everything and I’m giving you energy. Right? And so if you have energy, then, you know, there’s a lot that you can do that you couldn’t do before. So I kind of switched my model, really, only because of the accident of this guy who insisted I give his wife the laser, you know. Bill Gasiamis (27:30) Yeah. That’s not a way to go. mean, ⁓ there isn’t one way to solve a problem. there’s probably many iterations of, know, like how you can put that particular, like intervention together for a person that could specify for that individual, we’re going to go down this approach for you. You were going to go down this approach to get you going. Since you have all these, ⁓ challenges and energy is difficult. Maybe we’ll go directly with the laser and then Dr Bob Hedaya (27:46) Bye. Mm-hmm. Bill Gasiamis (28:09) We give you the skills, the energy, Dr Bob Hedaya (28:09) That’s right. That’s right. Bill Gasiamis (28:12) the training, the coaching, the support to implement the rest of the stuff that you need to implement to continue providing the right ⁓ space for your brain to heal in ongoing so you’re not just relying on laser. Dr Bob Hedaya (28:14) Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, yeah Yeah, if someone comes to me post stroke for example and the laser is appropriate I’m not gonna say well, we’ll get around to laser in six months. I’m not gonna do that They need relief they need help if it can help them Let’s do that. Let’s jump on that and you know, and then is the other stuff we need to do will do it And there’s usually stuff to do ⁓ But I want to get the healing remember the laser is healing It’s clearing out proteins, reducing inflammation, increasing blood flow, synaptogenesis, doing all these good things over the course of time. So you really want to get that process going, I feel, as soon as you can. then, okay, now you can work on the diet that’s going to take some time, check the hormones, make sure there’s no infections, toxic element, you know, all that functional medicine stuff. Maybe you need some medication for depression, you know, it’s having a… a phaser or a stroke or a head injury or some of things like this, they turn your life upside down better than I know. It’s ⁓ incomprehensible, really. Bill Gasiamis (29:26) Yeah, really. Yeah, really challenging. With a laser, how much laser for how long, how often? Understanding EEG vs. QEEG Dr Bob Hedaya (29:37) Great question. So let me say a couple of things. First of all, we have laser and then we have the LED helmets, right? You’ve read about and read the helmets, right? So there are a lot of studies on the helmets. There’s a question of whether they’re really having a direct effect because for a few reasons. Number one, it’s LED, it’s not a laser. Number two, the voltage is so low, if you’re only getting 2.6 % through and it’s so low to begin with, what do you think you’re actually delivering into the tissue? know, it’s hard to imagine that you’re delivering much. there, know, Henderson, I think, wrote an article where he showed there’s no penetration into the brain. But the studies do show cognitive benefit. So it could be an indirect effect or, you know, all the studies are done by the companies that make the… the helmet, there could be some bias. I don’t know the answer there. The laser ⁓ itself is more potent, so we’re doing, say, 30 watts. So the equivalent of a 30-watt light bulb, right? They might be doing half a watt, a very, very, very dim light bulb. We’re doing 30 watts. Now, we’re targeting the area or areas that we want to hit. Now, it goes through 2.6. Bill Gasiamis (30:34) devices. Dr Bob Hedaya (31:03) 5 % of it goes through. And then of course it’s going to be diffused, right? And it’s going to hit the surface tissues more. 1064 will penetrate deeper into the brain, but you don’t really have to go that deep because there’s downstream effects that happen, right? So we really, and then we adjust the parameters depending on how someone does. for example, you know, I had a woman who I was treating And actually it was the patient who her husband contacted you. I was treating her with a certain amount of energy and then after about five sessions I went up, I doubled the energy and boom, she had a response. But we have no way of knowing that’s what she needed. It’s all a calculation. But she, you know… Bill Gasiamis (31:39) Yes. Dr Bob Hedaya (32:00) Whatever it is, the thickness of the skull or the membranes or whatever it is, that’s what you needed and that’s what worked. Bill Gasiamis (32:06) Yeah. Tell me about ⁓ QEEG. So let’s dive deeper into it a little bit because we kind of glossed over it. I think it’s important to discuss how it’s different from EEG, ⁓ what EEG is and then what the Q adds to EEG. Dr Bob Hedaya (32:24) OK, so the EEG, imagine somebody, you put a cap on, and it has all these electrical wires that are measuring the electricity that comes, that’s on your scalp. It’s coming from your brain, but it’s measured at the scalp. And each one is measuring the energy from that spot, comparing it to other spots. And then you might, your viewers might remember. all those squiggly lines, you’ll see like 19 or 20 squiggly lines and you’re like, what is this spaghetti? I don’t know what this is. And I mean, even in medical school, we looked at it and our eyes would glaze over because who knows what it is. So the neurologists look at it and they’ll scroll through it and look for certain patterns to see is there a seizure or is there area of damage where there’s a lot of slowing like the frequency of the electricity slows down if there’s tissue damage, right? And they look visually to see what they can find. But we know with AI, you can get the patterns that you can determine. There’s no way the human mind, the human eye, a trained eye, I don’t care how long you’ve been looking at EEGs, there’s no way you can extract this data that we now extract. So the quantitative is actually looking at the quantity of this, what’s going on here versus the quantity of electricity that’s here versus what’s here versus what’s here. And then all of that is calculated and they say, ⁓ well, if this is high and this is here and this is low here and this is this, well, that means they’re coming from this deeper place here and that’s under functioning. And, you know, that’s done over thousands, thousands of points in a very short order, very short order. It’s amazing. I can’t imagine practicing without this. So now I can look at the thalamus. I can look at the putamen. Addressing Depression Post-Stroke Bill Gasiamis (34:07) Mm-hmm. Dr Bob Hedaya (34:17) In my office, I can do these tests in my office. If a patient is my patient, I can send the QEG to their home and do it in their home. And I get this imagery that’s immensely better than a spec scan. It’s not an MRI, an MRI structure. This is function. Okay, this is function. It tells us how different parts are functioning. Bill Gasiamis (34:40) What’s lighting up? What’s not lighting up? What could be lighting up better? What’s not going to light up anymore? Dr Bob Hedaya (34:45) What’s the information flow? How is the flow going from here to here? How about this network? Is this network working? Is this network overworking? Is it underworking? How about the neuron populations that are firing when I’m relaxed? How are they doing? How about the ones when I’m thinking? How about the ones when I’m thinking fast? How about the populations when I’m emotional? We can look at all those populations and see what’s going on with those populations. And then we can actually target them. train them, et cetera. And then we have that data that we treat, and then we measure and see is it getting better? Do we need to change the protocol? It’s not helping, it is helping, et cetera. Bill Gasiamis (35:29) Yeah. with stroke, so many things come from stroke that people are not equipped to handle. You know, firstly, all of the, ⁓ the parts relating to, ⁓ simply the person discovering them, they’re, they’re immortal after all, you know, you become a mere mortal immediately and you kind of work out the most terrible thing that could have happened to me happened. My brain is injured and all these things go away. Right. And then. Unfortunately, like I think it’s 30 % the studies of people who experienced stroke will then also experience depression. Like as if recovering from stroke isn’t enough and all the deficits that you also have to recover from depression. What’s it like? How can that be supported with this particular method, this approach that we’re discussing here today? Dr Bob Hedaya (36:28) So ⁓ kind of separate from stroke, ⁓ treat treatment resistant depression with laser all the time. With stroke, we use the laser, but you have to watch the QEG to make sure you’re not getting overstimulation, number one. Number two, I learned this with the patient that referred me to you, ⁓ that after, put us in touch, there was actually a central Bill Gasiamis (36:44) huh. for us in touch. Dr Bob Hedaya (36:58) hypothyroidism, meaning the low thyroid function, right? And we had to treat that, but the problem was as we treated that, there was a supersensitivity and because the tissues after stroke are more vulnerable to seizures, the patient actually had a seizure. She was actually having seizures we didn’t know, mild seizures. And then when we treated the thyroid, then we actually ended up having seizures. now we have to support, you need thyroid function to be good in order to not be depressed, right? If you have low thyroid, you’re much more likely to be depressed in the face of a stroke or other stresses. So we were kind of a little bit of a bind there because we went and treated, but it’s too sensitive. So anyway, we’re actually threading that needle nicely and we’re moving slowly and carefully and keeping, there’s no seizure activity now. But you have to treat the depression because of the depression itself. Bill Gasiamis (37:29) Yep. Dr Bob Hedaya (37:55) is a big problem because you know to recover from stroke, man, you gotta work hard. You gotta keep a good attitude. gotta have your eye on the ball. There’s no room for like… I’m going to give up. There’s no room for that. I mean, of course you feel it and I mean, it’s all natural feelings, but you have to really be determined and that’s essential. so with depression that is ⁓ really can get in the way. So we treat it. The laser can treat it. Sometimes pharmacology, sometimes therapy, sometimes yoga, know, hyperbaric, all these things that we do with the nutrition, making sure the hormones are right. All these things work together, you know. Bill Gasiamis (38:14) Yeah. I love all of those things that you mentioned. And then all of a sudden you just throw in yoga. mean, it just, it’s so counterintuitive, isn’t it? When you have a conversation about all these acronyms and all these tests and lasers and all that kind of stuff, and then you just throw in yoga casually like that. It’s, and we underplay it, but it’s such a massive thing in the picture of what creates the environment for a good recovery, but also I love that you mentioned the thyroid in that conversation as well about depression and what can also be a trigger to depression and people may have depression, never check their thyroid and not know that it’s a thing. Now I’ve had thyroid surgery, have ⁓ half of my thyroid removed because I had a massive ⁓ goiter on one side and that was such a difficult thing to discover and have to go through 16 months after brain surgery. but they only discovered it after my brain surgery when they did a chest x-ray, because I wasn’t recovering properly and they found that I had this goitre which would have been there for a long, long time impacting my health and all sorts of things. And I make that point because often people who have had a stroke and can’t speak, for example, have aphasia, ⁓ or their arm doesn’t work or the leg doesn’t work properly, will say, I just wanna fix this thing. If I could speak, Dr Bob Hedaya (39:40) No. Holistic Approaches to Recovery Bill Gasiamis (40:09) everything’s better, but they’ve never looked at the other things that may be contributing to keeping the speech at a level which is not good enough for them, for example, to be comfortable with. And it’s like this one track mind, I’ll just get my speech back, I’ll get my speech back, you what do I need to do? Or make it go, get back for me. There’s often no looking into the other things that might be causing depression, for example. Dr Bob Hedaya (40:31) Thank you. Bill Gasiamis (40:38) After stroke, know for a fact that the gut gets impacted ⁓ very dramatically from a stroke and the gut is highly linked to ⁓ mood and how you feel. And nutrition is what supports the gut to feel better and taking out things from the diet that are ⁓ making the gut sluggish and not work appropriately will ⁓ improve your mood and how you feel. It’ll make a difference and Dr Bob Hedaya (40:59) Okay. Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (41:08) and it’ll add to one of those little tools that supports depression and makes depression less impactful and you have less swings, et cetera. And that’s kind of the point that you’re making is that you don’t just turn up and do psychiatry. We’re gonna do psychiatry, treat you pharmacologically and then send you on your way and then see you in six, 12, eight months again or whatever and then just repeat the process again. It’s a whole, know, holistic is the word that you hear, but it is a broader conversation that people need to be having. And that sounds like what you guys do. It sounds like the conversation doesn’t encompass, it encompasses everything. It doesn’t just focus on one intervention. Dr Bob Hedaya (41:56) That’s why I call it whole psychiatry. But it really should be whole neuropsychiatry or whole brain or, you know, but it’s whole body, whatever you want to call it. It’s really more than the body because obviously the social connections play a big role as well, you know. So yeah, everything you’re saying is 100 % true and it’s all real. Everything you’re saying is real. Everything you do. mean, simple things going back to the B12. You you need B12 to… Bill Gasiamis (41:58) Yeah. Dr Bob Hedaya (42:26) remyelinate your neurons. need to keep the mercury, by the way, got to keep the mercury levels low. know, the mercury, if you’re eating tuna fish or swordfish and you have high mercury levels, know, the mercury will actually prevent you from making new branches. The mercury actually will bind on tubulin, which is like a brick that you need to build new roads. And it will prevent the tubulin from building new roads in your brain. So here you are working hard trying to… Bill Gasiamis (42:28) Mmm. Dr Bob Hedaya (42:54) do things and you’re a can of ⁓ whatever tuna fish with loads of mercury two, three, four times a week. Well, that’s not working, you know. So that’s why you really want to look at the whole thing. It’s a lot. It’s really a lot. You know, it’s a big program, but you you take, take steps. Everybody has different needs or not everybody has to do everything. Bill Gasiamis (43:04) Yeah. Yeah. Not everybody needs to do everything to achieve significant results, but it’d be amazing to be able to find the things and target those, the ones that you’re to get the most bang for buck on. So you’re to putting time and effort into things that are not getting results. For example, an led hat from, uh, Amazon for $9 that you put on your head. And it’s basically just a red light hat. It’s not really doing the thing, right? Dr Bob Hedaya (43:32) Hmm. Ha ha ha. Bill Gasiamis (43:49) And that’s kind of why I started to have that conversation and do a little bit of research in what they, know, what’s medically known as or scientifically known as photo bio modulation, you know, the idea is great, but then it came to me from somebody who I imagine was looking at a seven or eight or $9, $10 cap with red lights that put on the head and they Dr Bob Hedaya (44:00) Right. Bill Gasiamis (44:15) paid money for a cap and hoping for an outcome and they didn’t get an outcome and then they’re wondering why. I suggest when people are looking into those topics, is gonna go and have a look at the science, what it says about the nanometers of the type of light that you need to be experiencing, how, where, who, and always do these things with medical supervision. It really challenges me when I find out people do things like, know, methylene blue was a thing. Dr Bob Hedaya (44:44) Right. Bill Gasiamis (44:45) uh, very recently and people will just go get a bottle of Methylene blue from somewhere and just start taking it and have no idea what they’re doing and, and, and, know, what they could hope for. They could be making things worse than for themselves and actually making themselves, um, like make things a lot harder for themselves. So, uh, my point is this all needs to be done under medical supervision. Typically when you, somebody reaches out to you, how do you begin the conversation and then how does that person engage with you? And then what happens after they’re treated? Because often I know from my experience with all my neurologists, et cetera, very rarely do I see anybody a second time, six months, 12 months, 18 months, five years down the track. You usually go in, they patch you up, they send you home, you get back to your life and then maybe you do one MRI. Dr Bob Hedaya (45:36) Really? Bill Gasiamis (45:44) ⁓ for a few years after brain surgery just to make sure that everything’s stable. But that’s about it. Nobody follows up with you. Dr Bob Hedaya (45:52) No, it’s a whole different ball game with us. No. So what we do first is ⁓ if someone will contact us through the website, which is wholepsychiatry.com, they will actually fill out a form. And if we feel that it looks like we might be able to be helpful to them, then we will send them a welcome letter. And then they will have the opportunity to meet with our new patient coordinator at no charge. Patient-Centered Care and Follow-Up and she’ll talk with them for 15 to 30 minutes and kind of tell them what’s going on and see if they, you know, the fit is good, et cetera. And then they have an opportunity if they want to meet with me on Zoom for 15 to 30 minutes and ⁓ I’ll figure out, can I help them? Can I not help them? Is it a good fit, et cetera? And then if it looks like, you know, green light and they decide they want to move forward and it makes sense, then we’ll schedule an evaluation. The time duration of the evaluation depends on what kind of patient. It could be a couple of hours, could be four and a half hours. But usually for neurological patients, straightforward, it’s a shorter evaluation. And before the evaluation, we’ll collect the neuro-quant and the QEG and the old records, et cetera. And then I will go through all of that data plus lab data that we collect. And I will then have an idea. Okay, what’s going on here? Now there’s all these things. There’s digestion, there’s nutrition, there’s immune function, inflammation, toxins, hormones, all the hormones, structural issues, chiropractic issues, traumatic brain injury, cardiovascular issues, et cetera. We look at all of that and then to see what are the players here and spiritual, social resources, connectivity. We look at all of this. And then we have a whole picture of what’s going on. And then we can figure out, okay, how do we want to approach this? And sometimes we approach it very lightly. Say we just start with the laser, that’s it. Or sometimes somebody says, no, I want to really get in there and fix everything that’s wrong. Okay, well, we identified these five or six things that need correction. So let’s stage this in order. And that’s what we’ll do. And everyone’s different. And then we have follow-up depending on what we need in two weeks, in a month, six weeks, not usually six weeks. Once things are stable, it could be every two, three months or four months. But in the meantime, I’m in the boat rowing, paddling with them. That’s the way I do it. I treat people, really, I try to treat people just like I would want to be treated myself, like I would want my family to be treated. I do the very best. I love what I do, you know what I mean? I just love what I do and I try to do the best, highest quality. And it’s not that I’m perfect, not that I don’t make mistakes, ⁓ not that I know everything because that’s for sure that I don’t, but that’s my approach. So I try to be in the boat with the patient. As long as the patient’s paddling, I’m paddling just as hard, if not. Bill Gasiamis (49:02) Yeah, it sounds like at least if things, if you don’t make the right approach initially, there’s a whole bunch of tools and resources and things that you can kind of focus on. And one of the things you mentioned, again, you glossed over it, but I love that you do this is spiritual. Like it might be a spiritual journey that the person needs to take. And it’s so overlooked because people, you know, do have… Dr Bob Hedaya (49:22) yeah. yeah, yeah. Bill Gasiamis (49:30) existential crisis after a stroke. it’s like a spirituality helps somehow for a lot of people ease, heal that, ⁓ help people move through, you know, the weeds and come out into the opening and then kind of see the opportunities and where they need to go next. And people don’t need to engage with somebody like you to go on a spiritual journey. That might just be something they’ve ever looked and they can just go, you know what, I’m going to pick up the Bible or ⁓ I’m going to learn about this particular ⁓ spiritual journey or whatever and go through it and do whatever it is that they need to do to kind of start beginning the healing journey in their own special unique way. It’s really important that spirituality gets addressed and it’s not glossed over. And I’m not saying that you did or I did or we do, but in the back of the minds, stroke survivors may not consider that being important. The Role of Spirituality in Healing Dr Bob Hedaya (50:31) Yeah, first of all, I’m passionate about spirituality. I mean, passionate because the truth, in my opinion, is that consciousness, your level of awareness is really consciousness is the foundation, the substrate of everything that exists. The material is an outflow from consciousness. So I could talk about this forever. Not everyone is oriented this way. So, you know, I just saw a businessman, very successful businessman ⁓ last week. He doesn’t want to just, you know, get me back online. OK, I don’t want to hear this mumbo jumbo and I just can’t. I don’t want to delve into it. Just get me better. know. But other people are like, I want to find the meaning, you know, and it’s very important. to find the when I think generally for most people finding the meaning in it is critical. And I’ll say one thing, my mother, may she rest in peace, was in the emergency room, probably 25, 30 years ago, I don’t know, something was wrong, she was in the emergency room for seven, eight hours or whatever, and some guy comes by and says, ma’am, can I get you a sandwich? And she says, oh yeah, please, please get me a sandwich. He gets her a tuna fish sandwich, whatever it is, right? He leaves. She’s so grateful. She’s so grateful that she volunteers in the hospital for 20 years. Okay? This guy has no idea what he did and all the people that he helped through her, right? So you’re, you you and you’re not just you, but we, each of us in our small minds, we have no idea. the impact we have on other people. So if it’s important to a person to have a meaningful life, understand that you don’t have to be running a company. You can smile at a stranger, change their day. There are things that you can do and you have an impact. Now, that’s a small consolation when you’re dealing with a stroke, obviously, but that’s when you kind of want to work to a meaningful ⁓ attitude and a good attitude. So yes, the spirituality is… many people very important. Bill Gasiamis (52:54) David who brought us together ⁓ wanted me to meet you so I could interview you. that part of the role that he played in what happened to his wife ended becoming something that helped other people. Isn’t it interesting? The whole journey started on. Dr Bob Hedaya (53:15) Exactly. Bill Gasiamis (53:20) He contacted me because he wanted to make something good come of what happened to his wife, which I’m sure his wife was also interested in. And he said, you need to get Dr. Hedaya on because we need to share more information, make this stuff aware. so, and I’m like, well, that’s perfect. Of course I do. Whoever comes to me with that kind of information because they want to help other stroke survivors because he’s hoping that other caregivers that are in his shoes have a better outcome. They have more support. They have more information. They have more tools. Dr Bob Hedaya (53:27) Mm-hmm. Bill Gasiamis (53:50) That’s the spiritual journey. You don’t have to call it ⁓ Christianity, Judaism. You don’t have to call it something. You don’t have to label it, but that is what spirituality looks like in practice. Dr Bob Hedaya (53:56) Right. Right. That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. And it gives me chills because, you know, I know his wife is suffering, you know, and ⁓ but she’s making really great headway, but it’s hard, you know. But look at look that he’s reaching out and he cares enough about other people and to and make her journey and what she’s gone through and what she’s learned be useful to other people. That’s it. That’s just beautiful. I mean, that that speaks volumes about him and her. Bill Gasiamis (54:32) It does absolutely and her and your work because your work is not unique. You’re not the only one doing this kind of work. I think there’s only kind of a small percentage of ⁓ medical professionals in the field that are practicing in this way. And hopefully that continues to grow. ⁓ If somebody wanted to, well, somebody lots of people are listening to this today. If anyone wanted to reach out ⁓ who thinks, you know, that they might be able to ⁓ benefit from or go down this kind of approach. How should they go about that? What questions should they be asking of you, et cetera? Like how do they begin? Because this is a different conversation than I have ⁓ neurological injury, have aphasia. It needs to be positioned differently, this conversation. Dr Bob Hedaya (55:29) Tell me what you mean. I’m not really clear what you’re saying. Bill Gasiamis (55:33) If somebody wants to find a clinician who practices the way that you practice, you guys, for example, you know, you know, who thinks about the brain in a different way. What, what should they be looking for and what. Dr Bob Hedaya (55:38) Aha, I see, I see. I would say that they should go to the website for the Institute for Functional Medicine. And there’s a tab. This is find the practitioner. And make sure you look for a practitioner that is certified, fully certified. And then investigate the practitioners who are in your area and see if they experience. in this area. there are not I’m not aware of, there’s a guy somewhere in the Midwest here who’s using a laser, I believe. And then maybe other people that I don’t know about using lasers, but I’m not aware of anybody that I could say, go see this person for this quantitative EEG guided transcranial photobiomodulation. I’m not saying that that is readily available. It’s not. But the whole functional medicine thing, there are a lot of practitioners. And I think that’s the way to go there. Just do your homework. Bill Gasiamis (56:48) Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Your organization is whole psychiatry and the brain recovery center. Is that right? Okay. So the psychiatry part of it, ⁓ people might be listening and going, well, that doesn’t apply to me, the specific word specifically doesn’t need to apply to an individual to engage with you because, we’re not just dealing with the psychiatry part of somebody’s recovery. Dr Bob Hedaya (56:56) Yeah. Right. Thank you. No, no, we’re dealing, we treat psychiatric, but we treat neurological. You know, I started as a psychiatrist. was, you know, certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, but I was doing psychiatry. then, you know, just following, you know, learning and whatever, I ended up, you know, doing some neurology here. And so, but we didn’t change the name to the whole neuropsychiatry and brain recovery. Maybe we should, or maybe the whole brain recovery center or something like that. So, you we do both, no, and if, and if, I can’t be helpful, of course, I’m going to tell people this, we really don’t want to waste people’s time, energy, money, et cetera. ⁓ But it’s, it’s been, you know, I have to say an amazing journey. And I would say when you follow for me, this is me, my life, following my passion of learning about the brain and understanding the brain and Bill Gasiamis (57:45) Yeah. Dr Bob Hedaya (58:14) looking for the fundamentals of how do things work and just there’s a common sense in medicine. I looked at the laser when I was reading that book and I was like, wow, ATP in the brain, that could really help the brain. How would I

Consider taking out a paid subscription to The Piano Maven Podcast via our Substack page (https://jeddistlermusic.substack.com/about), which you also can access by clicking on the "Donate" button here: https://rss.com/podcasts/pianomaven Volume 69 in Naxos' slowly but surely growing complete Liszt piano works cycle introduces the fabulous Lisztian Michael Kaykov to the series with a collection of piano pieces based on choral works.Here's a link to the CD: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9862444--liszt-complete-piano-music-vol-69?srsltid=AfmBOoql6erDpTuGvoYEcfWOJWFvOq1HAO5wuUdgRmwIimE47bqxWhTUHere's a link to Michael Kaykov's 2023 all-Liszt recital at Klavierhaus in NYC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muJLMFwG8CU

  Thank you for tuning in to Episode 320 of the Down Cellar Studio Podcast. Full show notes with photos can be found on my website. This week's segments included:   Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins Brainstorming From the Armchair Some Years Later In my Travels KAL News On a Happy Note Quote of the Week   Thank you to this episode's sponsors: Heart & Squirrel & AdoreKnit   Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Venom Pattern: Venom Keychain crochet pattern available on Ravelry for $5 & on Etsy (on sale for $1.50 in May 2026). Yarn: Vanna's Choice in Black, Knit Picks Brava (red) & white felt for eyes and mouth Hook: C (2.75 mm) Ravelry Project Page Glue used: Aleene's Fabric Fusion   On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Inclinations Cowl Inclinations Cowl by Andrea Mowry ($7.00 Knitting Pattern available on Ravelry & her website. Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm) Yarn: 2 skeins of handspun Color A: Fiber Addict Designs 100% Merino in the Wild Plum Colorway- Ravelry link. Color B: Candombe, I think the fiber is from Malabrigo- Ravelry link. My Ravelry Project Page   Jelly Roll Blanket    Pattern: Crocheted Jelly Roll Blanket by Kay F Jones ($6.70 US on Ravelry) Hook: H (5.0 mm) Yarn: Legacy Fiber Artz Steel Toes Mini Skeins + other minis from stash Ravelry Project Page I was inspired by KnitwithNat's blanket- check it out on Instagram. Progress: on my 6th strip   Midnight Orchid Socks Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Yarn: Patons Kroy Stripes in the Midnight Orchid colorway Ravelry Project Page About the yarn: skinny stripes of cream with contrast colors- greens, ochre and mauvy purples. Progress: Cast on both socks on two separate needles. First sock is finished. The second is just beyond the heel.   Merry Christmas Kevin Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Yarn: Legacy Fiber Artz, Steel Toes in the Merry Christmas, Kevin colorway Ravelry Project Page Progress: turned the heel on the first sock over the weekend.   Brainstorming   Granny Square Muff by Allyson Dykhuizen- free pattern available on Ravelry Nautilus, The Submarine- Ravelry Pattern by Paola Navarro for $4.20 on Etsy Ace the Airplane- $5.20 on Etsy (view on Ravelry) Airplane by Joyce Overheul- $4.99 Ravelry & Etsy   From the Armchair   Books Sea Wife by Amity Gaige. Amazon Affiliate Link Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. Amazon Affiliate Link. Diabolical Lies Podcast (a long-form culture and politics podcast by Katie Gatti Tassin and Caro Claire Burke). Check out their Substack. I enjoyed this episode- Is there a Skinny Apocalypse in Hollywood? A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand. Amazon Affiliate Link   2 Plays   It's a Madhouse! by Todd Wallinger. Faust by the Embody Project Theatre If you heard me mention the Suffs musical in Episode 317 it's now available on PBS until July 31, 2026!   Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.   Some Years Later I've rotated out our couch blankets and I'm loving my Recollections Throw (check out my Ravelry Project Page- from September 2022).   Recollection Blanket Pattern: Recollection by Deanne Ramsay ($6 crochet pattern available on Ravelry & Etsy- written in both US & UK Crochet terms) Yarn: Various full skeins and 20+ gram fingering weight yarn stash. Hook: J (6.0 mm) Ravelry Project Page All yarn held triple MC- 3 strands of gray.- separates each row of colorful yarns Blanket is 56 inches wide (not including the fringe). LOVED working on this project. Great end of stash dash project. no finishing required. no borders. no weaving in ends. finish twisting fringe and its done! 6,576 meters for Stash Dash     In My Travels NH Sheep and Wool with Ryan We had a great time catching up with Jess & Anne in the Stitched by Jessalu booth. Fearless Living Fund fabric design is part of the Stitched by Jessalu banner! Anne and I geeked out over musicals and theater stuff! I bought a large bag with deer and foxes and other animals all dressed up for winter Got to see Stephanie from Dirty Water Dyeworks and got some gray yarn DK to border my jellyroll blanket. I bought some minis for my jellyroll blanket from a new to me dyer Appena Fiber I wore Mom's Dotted Rays shawl (Ravelry Project Page) Brown Bunny pottery had a chicken soap dispenser and a spotted chicken bowl I couldn't resist!   KAL News Splash Pad Party '26 Details Event runs 5/22-7/31 Splash Pad Party Registration is open as of 5/1 View Stats and/or Verify Registration here. Check out our Sponsor List Splash Pad '26 Official Rules Enter your FOs using the Summer Celebration Form. Then come over to this Ravelry Thread to share pics and let us ooh and ahh with you! Submit something incorrectly? Need help? Fill out this Support Form & we'll be in touch. Find official SPP'26 images you can use on social media in this Google folder.   Splash Pad RAVELRY Links Start Here Thread Pro Shop Exclusive Items Thread Coupon Codes Thread Questions Thread   Splash Pad '26 Official Logo Bags & Stitch Markers I've partnered up with Steph from AdoreKnit on official SPP '26 logo bags and stitch markers. Full disclosure, I do earn a small affiliate fee for all products sold (for the use of the artwork). Check them out here.   Other Things from the Ravelry Board Sweater MAL Chat- thanks Danielle for starting the chat. If you want to make a sweater in 2026, check it out, chat it up and get some encouragement.   On a Happy Note Longer, warmer days! We had our niece & nephew, Gabriella & Zach over for a sleepover. We went on deer walks, watched The Wizard of Oz, made pancakes, and took turns on the mower and backhoe. Aila's birthday dinner which ended with an impromptu dance show by Hattie and a  not-so-subtle take over by almost 2 year old Miles Zach's birthday party had animals- they had the most gorgeous rooster I've ever seen. After looking at machines for years, I finally bought an espresso maker. The girls Im going to Rhinebeck with this year started a Marco Polo group chat. Woke up early before NH Sheep and Wool- so I got a car wash and came with 10 min of vacuuming. I got that done and it felt SO good. Took a little field trip to the Beacon Hill Bookstore on Charles St with my co-workers. Lovely to get out, talk books, connect.   Quote of the Week "Everybody has a little bit of the sun and moon in them. Everybody has a little bit of man, woman, and animal in them. Darks and lights in them. Everyone is part of a connected cosmic system. Part earth and sea, wind and fire, with some salt and dust swimming in them. We have a universe within ourselves that mimics the universe outside. None of us are just black or white, or never wrong and always right. No one. No one exists without polarities. Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them.   From- PART SUN AND MOON by Suzy Kassem" ------   Thank you for tuning in!   Contact Information: Check out the Down Cellar Studio Patreon! Ravelry: BostonJen & Down Cellar Studio Podcast Ravelry Group Instagram: BostonJen1 YouTube: Down Cellar Studio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/downcellarstudio Sign up for my email newsletter to get the latest on everything happening in the Down Cellar Studio Check out my Down Cellar Studio YouTube Channel Knit Picks Affiliate Link Bookshop Affiliate Link Yarnable Subscription Box Affiliate Link FearLESS Living Fund to benefit the Blind Center of Nevada Music -"Soft Orange Glow" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/ Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.  

Welcome back to the lovely show! This week your lovely hosts are chatting about the new dating website RIP.ie, Father Ted on Eurovision night and the new Playstation GAA game. If you enjoyed this episode of The Lovely Show, please ensure to leave us a LOVELY review. Support The Lovely Show to get ad-free listening and bonus episodes at https://headstuffpodcasts.com/membership/ - listen to your bonus episodes and ad-free feed in your favourite app! This is a HeadStuff podcast produced by Hilary Barry. Artwork by Matt Mahon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

PJ Lovely  is here as we talk about how successful the Green Up Clean Up went, Sunshine 5K, upcoming events, his trip to Peru coming in June, the town vote this past week, and lots more.

In this powerful episode, Dr. Fiona Lovely welcomes back her friend and colleague, Dr. Amie Hornaman—known globally as "The Thyroid Fixer." Dr. Amie is a functional medicine expert, host of the top-rated The Thyroid Fixer podcast, and author of the new book The Thyroid Fix: The No-Nonsense Guide to Reclaiming Your Health. Together, they pull back the curtain on why conventional medicine continues to fail women when it comes to thyroid and hormone health. Dr. Amie shares her journey of being misdiagnosed and how that fueled her mission to help women stop wishing on a rainbow for their health to improve. She explains why relying solely on TSH and T4 is a dangerous gamble, revealing that the real story lies in free T3 and reverse T3. Listeners will learn why T4-only medication like Synthroid often falls short and how to advocate for proper testing and treatment. The conversation also explores the forgotten thyroid hormone T2, its role in burning fat without losing muscle, and how GLP-1 medications intersect with thyroid function. Dr. Amie provides scripted, respectful language for women to use with their doctors, including a powerful "nuclear option" to ensure their concerns are documented. Episode Highlights: Why TSH is a misleading marker and which two tests truly matter for thyroid health. The problem with T4-only medication and why it can backfire. How to approach your doctor without overwhelming them—three bullet points, no life stories. The fascinating role of T2 in metabolism and weight loss. A candid discussion on thyroid nodules, unnecessary surgeries, and patient advocacy. Tune in to learn how to become the CEO of your own health, because waiting for your doctor to catch up is no longer an option.   Thank you to our sponsors for this episode: Women in perimenopause and menopause talk about wanting the same things — less bloating, no afternoon crash after eating, steady energy. MassZymes is perfect for helping your body's ability to actually process what you eat. MassZymes uses a full-spectrum blend of 18 enzymes. That means you're getting more out of the food you eat. Plus, it works across different stomach acid levels, which can really matter as we age. Here's what you get when you go to bioptimizers.com/lovely and use code LOVELY: 15% off your entire order AND a free bottle of Masszymes — BiOptimizers' best-selling digestive enzyme — added to your order automatically when you use our exclusive code.

TFG is back together, and in this episode, we explore Lovely's current travel experiences to Europe. And her take on the beauty of growth, meaningful connections, and new journeys. We discuss how stepping outside your comfort zone, embracing change, and traveling through life with the right people can shape who you become. Learning with Lovely's about self-discovery, connection, and evolving into your best self along the way. Wait, what's a Financial Griot? The Financial Griot is a play on two words (Finance + Griot) that together signify closing the wealth gap while embracing our differences. Alainta Alcin, Lovely Merdelus, and Lawrence Delva-Gonzalez share their perspectives on current events that impact your personal finances and wealth mindset. In the New York Times, Bankrate, and other publications, the hosts share the stories that others don't.  Stories about growth, opportunity, and even Wars. Beyond that, we tie it back to how it reflects on your finances. Specifically, we teach you how to become financially literate, incorporate actionable steps, and ultimately build generational wealth. Can you imagine being a Millionaire in 20 years or less? Yeah, it's possible. Eighty percent of millionaires are first-generation, meaning they didn't inherit wealth. We teach you how. Join a community of subscribers who welcome a fresh take on money. So there you have it, The Financial Griot, or TFG for short. The hosts amassed over $3 million in wealth in about eight years and are on track to retire early. We will gladly share the secrets if you want them, since the opportunities are abundant and it's a Win-Win. Find the TFG Crew Hosts on Instagram:  Alainta Alcin - Blogger, Travel and Money Enthusiast https://www.linkedin.com/in/alaintaalcin Lawrence Delva-Gonzalez, Financial Foodie and Travel Blogger @theneighborhoodfinanceguy Lovely Merdelus - Entrepreneur and Small Business Growth Specialist @lovelymerdelus

I had my first experience as a panelist at a Folk Alliance Region Midwest mini-conference or “Farmette”  in Emporia, Kansas.  My co-presenter, Nick Carswell, and I were to share our insights and opinions on what an artist needed to have in their tool kit to be “radio ready”.  During the day's activities I had the pleasure to meet many Heartland artists for the first time, including The Shandies of Springfield, Missouri.  The Shandies are Shannon Stine (vocals/guitar) andNatalie Wlodarczyk [Vwo-dar-chik](vocals/guitar). They deliver intimate, lovely marital harmony-rich performances shaped by a decade of performing and traveling together.  Their songs are personal, a little playful, and perfect for listening rooms.  Shannon's family tradition of generating musicians and Natalie's calling as a music educator make a very special pairing. Speaking of special pairing… A shandy is a refreshing, low-alcohol tasty brew made by mixing beer (typically a light lager or pilsner) with a citrus-flavored carbonated beverage, such as lemonade, lemon-lime soda, or ginger ale. Consider pouring yourself one and  enjoy this conversation and musicalperformance from Shannon and Natalie…. The Shandies!#tastybrewmusic #americanamusic #songwriters #folk #folkalliance #theshandies 

PJ Lovely is here as we talk about hiking the AT Trail, the final month of being Recreation Director, how great Green Up Clean Up has been, the Sunshine 5K, and other events coming up soon in Newport. 

The end of the season couldn't have come quick enough for QPR. A trip to an expectant Ipswich wasn't an ideal way to end the season. They needed a win to secure promotion to the Premier League, we had 90 minutes to play to go on the beach for real- Bad start to the morning for Dun, no trains to Manhattan- Bad start to the morning for the R's, 2-0 down in 10 mins- Game over, Ipswich get the party started- Smyth tries to put the Champagne on Ice- McAteer makes it 3 after Ronnie's impression of a haywire compass needle on the edge of his own box- Game really over, Ipswich fans invade the pitch. -Ipswich light years ahead of the R's. The hard work starts now- Jimmy Dunne a much missed lynchpin at the back.- Young stars Alemayhu and Scarlett make first team debuts- Play off pay off for Hull- Dev Squad win London Senior Cup- Giving the gift of bell, Met Gala and landing the plane, albeit quite badly- Knicks hit top form at the right time - Ant's Kit Korner is on the beach- Dun sets sail to Prediction League Glory on HMS Piss The League- Jacob Stanzas, c'est magnifique!- Lovely stuff: Wednesday's wonderful winning weekend, Raccoons at the baseball, and QPR NYC...Rate, review , subscribe and follow, and please join us for the Alternative End of Season Awards next week

"I'm constantly positive, toxically positive at some time."Most of us think adult industry fame is all about catching the shiny things—big studios, viral videos, or fancy awards. But Blake Lovely(@theblakelovely-IG) drops a truth bomb: the real game-changer isn't just in the spotlight; it's how you build your own empire—on your terms. Discover how Blake's journey from industry outsider to award-nominated powerhouse is a masterclass in resilience. Blake's raw insight into long-term success, industry respect, and the importance of community will inspire anyone looking to rise from the ashes of the old system.Get More Blake Lovely: https://allmylinks.com/blakelovelyNominate and Vote Blake for XMA's Trans Clip Creator of the Year: https://xma.show/voting/

In this episode, Dr. Fiona Lovely welcomes back friend Andrea Donsky, the nutritionist, author, podcaster and seven-time published menopause researcher known to her 350,000 TikTok followers as the "Menopause Educator and Researcher." Did you know there are 103 documented menopause symptoms?  Andrea shares groundbreaking updates to her peer-reviewed research published in the Journal of Menopause, including the stunning finding that hot flashes are no longer even among the top ten most common symptoms (and yet, medicine guidelines still use it as the benchmark for when a woman is in menopause.) Andrea and Dr. Lovely discuss medical dismissal, the surprising reality of phantom smells like burning toast, and why under-eating actually raises cortisol and increases belly fat. Finally, we talk about Andrea's new book:   Nourishing Menopause, is available now from Simon and Schuster. Listeners are encouraged to visit wearemorphus.com to contribute to her ongoing research and help change the conversation for women everywhere. Follow Andrea on TikTok and Instagram @andreadonsky and @wearemorphus to learn more.   Episode Highlights: - Why hot flashes fell from number ten to number eleven on the symptom list - The shocking average of thirty-one symptoms per woman, many of them brain-based (especially the top ten!) - How phantom smells affect nearly three quarters of women - Why being gentler with yourself is essential for managing stress   Andrea's new book, Nourishing Menopause, is available now from Simon and Schuster. Listeners are encouraged to visit wearemorphus.com to contribute to her ongoing research and help change the conversation for women everywhere. Follow Andrea on TikTok and Instagram @andreadonsky and @wearemorphus to learn more. TikTok: @andreadonksy and @wearemorphus Instagram: @andreadonsky and @wearemorphus Thank you to our sponsors for this episode:

@marrenon_vignobles @brassfieldestatewinery #wine #frenchwine #provence #podcast #radioshow #host

The boys drink and review "Fried Salad," a dry-hopped oat lager from Tactical Brewing Company in Orlando, then dive into the world of national parks.They start with a little history: from Yellowstone's establishment under Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, to Theodore Roosevelt's conservation legacy, to the National Park Service itself. Then they take a tour through Maryland's 15 national park sites before turning their attention to the roughly 20 parks and monuments designated in recent years under the Biden administration.What do the new designations have in common? The guys break them down one by one — from Bears Ears and the Grand Canyon expansion to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad site, the Harvey Milk National Historic Site, the Pullman National Historic Park, and the Emmett Till Monument — and share their take on what the trends say about how America chooses to remember itself.A wide-ranging, honest conversation about conservation, history, national identity, and whether the park system should make you feel proud — or guilty.

In this episode of Not Your Mother's Menopause, Dr. Fiona Lovely welcomes back Caroline Alan, co-founder of BEAM Minerals and author of the upcoming book "The Mineral Reset". Caroline, known affectionately as "The Mineral Geek," shares her personal healing journey from debilitating gut inflammation, adrenal fatigue, and chronic infections to vibrant health—all through the power of plant-based humic and fulvic minerals. She explains why minerals are the structural foundation of the human body and the essential fuel for cellular energy production. Listeners will learn why modern farming practices have left soil severely depleted, making it impossible to obtain necessary minerals from food alone. Caroline breaks down the remarkable roles of humic acid as nature's janitor for detoxification and fulvic acid as nature's cellular delivery system—the only molecule on earth that can change its polarity to drop nutrients directly into cells. Dr. Lovely and Caroline explore why perimenopause symptoms like sleep disturbances, mood swings, and brain fog often mirror mineral deficiency symptoms, and how replenishing minerals can help women navigate this transition with greater ease. Episode Highlights: - Why 97 percent of people show multiple mineral deficiencies - The difference between hydration and irrigation—and why salt-based electrolyte products may backfire - How humic and fulvic work together to deliver minerals into cells while removing toxins Tune in to discover why tending your own internal fire with mineral replenishment might be the simplest and most profound shift you make for your health. Caroline's book, The Mineral Reset, is available now at mineralresetbook.com   Learn more about Caroline here:  Website | Instagram | TikTok | LinkedIn | Facebook | Youtube   Thank you to our sponsors for this episode: ✨Did you know that estrogen actually helps to protect our heart?  When estrogen starts to diminish as we head to menopause, we have more oxidative stress on our arteries.  Thankfully, MitoQ has a special anti-oxidant Mitoquinol that boosts our mitochondria and limits that stress.  You can check it out at MitoQ.com.  Use LOVELY10 for 10% off your first order.