Podcasts about Myanmar

Following the murder of the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, two other MPs, Joanna Cherry from the SNP and Rupa Huq from the Labour party, tell us about threats they have received in their working lives. Also on the programme, Min Aung Hlaing, the army general who seized power in Myanmar, has been excluded from an ASEAN meeting. Will this have any effect in Myanmar itself? And New Zealand pushes hard to get 99% of its population fully vaccinated against Covid 19. (Picture: Floral tributes to the murdered MP Sir David Amess in the town of Leigh On Sea. Credit: Reuters / O'Brien)

For more than two years, a UN-appointed team of 59 people has been collecting and analyzing more than two million pieces of evidence about possible human rights violations in Myanmar. The team of professionals are formally known as the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, (IIMM) or Myanmar Mechanism, and was created in 2018 by the Human Rights Council. In an extensive interview with UN News, the head of the Mechanism, Nicholas Koumjian, explains the importance of preserving this evidence before it is potentially lost.

West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy is Now Open! 8am-9am PT/ 11am-Noon ET for our especially special Daily Specials; Blue Moon Spirits Fridays!Starting off in the Bistro Cafe, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe won back his full pension as part of a settlement of the lawsuit arising from his vindictive political firing by Trump.Then, on the rest of the menu, nursing schools see a rise in applications, despite COVID burnout; the Texas abortion law is shutting down an avenue to the courts for teens; and, the wreck of a storied military ship that served in two World Wars, and at one point was captained by the first Black man to command a US government vessel, has been found.After the break, we move to the Chef's Table where the lawyer representing Myanmar's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi said authorities have imposed a gag order on him; and, seized guns have been melted down and turned into a children's playground in Peru.All that and more, on West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy with Chef de Cuisine Justice Putnam.Bon Appétit!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy profession, and a large number of its practitioners spend many nights drowning their sorrows in Ouisghian Zodahs.” ― Douglas Adams "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Show Notes & Links: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/15/2058182/-West-Coast-Cookbook-Speakeasy-Daily-Special-Blue-Moon-Spirits-Friday

Triều Tiên, Hàn Quốc đua nhau phô diễn vũ khí thông qua triển lãm quân sự; Mỹ giục Campuchia minh bạch về hoạt động của Trung Quốc tại căn cứ hải quân; ASEAN cân nhắc không mời lãnh đạo quân đội Myanmar dự hội nghị thượng đỉnh; Việt Nam: Công an triệu tập các thành viên hội truyền giáo ở TP.HCM về cáo buộc lây lan COVID-19.

It's the start of Fresh Tunes Friday, where we showcase a musical guest every third Friday of the month. We kicked things off with Sydney's own Bryan Estepa, a Filipino-Australian singer-songwriter, who just released his Back To The Middle EP. What's it like recording music in lockdown? Listen in to find out!Other stories include:Indonesia finally confirms 19 eligible countries as Bali reopens to foreign tourism today | Come Saturday, Bangkok can stay out till 11pm | Man who murdered taxi driver was psych patient, once threatened mass shooting | Mounting calls in Indonesia to ban new Superman comic featuring bisexual character | Legoland Malaysia reopens theme park tomorrow | LOOK: Over 100 rescued by Philippine Coast Guard from floods due to ‘Maring' | Singapore Telegram channel attracts claims of vaccine magnetism | Let's go to the movies? Junta wants to reopen Myanmar's cinemasThe Coconuts Podcast delivers impactful, weird, and wonderful reporting by our journalists on the ground in eight cities: Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Manila, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Yangon, and Bali. Listen to headline news and insightful interviews on matters large and small, designed for people located in – or curious about – Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

Dr. Leana Wen joined us this week to explore her personal history and its revelations, laid out in remarkably candid detail in her newly released memoir, Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health.  And to speak to the most pressing current challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Her childhood struggles, as a young immigrant Chinese girl living amid insecurity, taught powerful lessons about poverty, race, and health. Her tenure as Health Commissioner in Baltimore, operating in close partnership with the late Congressman Elijah Cummings, opened the way to confront opioid addiction, stigma, maternal and infant mortality, and the acute vulnerabilities of youth. In her new life in the print and cable mediascape, she follows the advice of former Senator Barbara Mikulski: “do what you are best at – and needed for.” The Biden administration needs to up its game with the public: “It's not enough just to get the science right.” It is about values, communication, and public trust. America's hardened polarization -- surrounding vaccines, masking, and distancing -- is too advanced to fix: it is best to focus on engaging individual by individual. Listen to learn more.  Dr. Leana Wen is an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University. She is a contributing columnist at the Washington Post and a CNN medical analyst. She's served as Baltimore's Health Commissioner.  

For those hoping the coronavirus pandemic was under control in Asia, the summer has been a nasty shock. A resurgence of Covid-19 across Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia and elsewhere, mainly associated with the spread of the Delta variant, has put paid to the idea the region was nearing the end of the health crisis. Even in countries like China, where the virus seems to have been restrained, the way forward is not clear. Almost two years into the pandemic, as economies reel and populations chafe under continuing restrictions, questions are mounting over how sustainable a hardline approach may be.Joining us to discuss the current state of play in the region are Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Peter Mumford, a political risk analyst who is now the practice head for South East and South Asia at Eurasia Group in Singapore.As usual you can find more information at our website, asiamatterspod.com 

What would you do, when your dead neighbor dropped by to say "hi"? This episode we have a story all the way from United Kingdom that confessor shared with us on her experience about a surprise visit! Followed by an uncle that loves his place so much, even after he is gone, he still comes back to have a look! 3rd confession features a story which ends with a question, "is she from Myanmar?", leading to our Know Your Hantu which tells us a little bit more about an entity named Ma Phae Wah and a few more other spoooooooky confession.

Napoleon picked up the crown with his sword. Who really runs America? The Deep State has destroyed our democracy. Subjects, not citizens. Notes on the indispensability of President Trump. The unique set of skills. Excerpts from Trump's massive rally in Iowa last night. Analogizing Trump with the persecuted Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar. Is it finally making sense? Walt Whitman on the "roughs" of America. Jon Voight on faith. Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald discuss the Deep State. Getting to the central point of our predicament. Plus, notes on JD Vance and the struggles of Southwest Airlines. Let's Go Brandon! With Listener Calls. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One night in March, Hla Hla and her husband, Yan Min Aung, were on the rooftop of their condo as part of a neighborhood watch group, where ordinary citizens banded together to protect themselves—not from common criminals, but from those supposedly charged with protecting them. That evening, the police arrived to take down some barricades, and she took out her cell phone to film them. They saw the light of her camera, and started shooting.  That experience and others caused Hla Hla and her family to flee the country. Choosing to leave Myanmar represented not only the end of a life and community in their home country, but also the realization that the innovative company they had started there, a fun, augmented-reality learning app known as 360ED, would be severely impacted as well. Hla Hla had combined her professional backgrounds in tech and education to create a service that could bring learning opportunities to those marginalized groups often left on the sidelines. And as they knew that many of those who would need the service most wouldn't necessarily have reliable or inexpensive internet, much of the app can function even when offline. After nine years of product development, they launched in Silicon Valley in 2016, but moved operations to Myanmar as part of the “re-pat” movement, in which exiled Burmese settled back in the country during the stable and optimistic 2010s transition period. And, it was remarkable that they chose to establish their company there, essentially bringing one of the world's most innovative and cutting-edge technological learning tools to a country that had only recently gotten on-line at all. In other words, when the coup broke, 360ED was well on its way to becoming Myanmar's first true tech start-up success story! Of course, all this came to a crashing halt in February. Their team members began to go into hiding, and with the educational system in complete disarray, it became apparent that collaborating with school administrators would not be possible.  While many outside observers have been following the daily terror and pervasive human rights violations that are now sadly commonplace in Myanmar, stories like these often slip through the cracks, and thus, the extent of the damage and disruption being unleashed by the Tatmadaw is not fully known. In the case of Hla Hla and Yan Min, this meant not only trauma in their personal life, but at least the temporary end of their technological and educational dream in Myanmar as well.  Support this podcast

‘Post COVID' clinical definition aims to boost treatment: WHO  Troop and weapons deployment in Myanmar, spark attack fears Peace prize winners recognised for efforts to safeguard democratic rights 

Tidligere i år fik en medarbejder hos Facebook nok. Nok af hemmeligholdte kritiske rapporter. Om hvordan Facebook fremmer had og spreder misinformation. Om hvordan folkemordet i Myanmar delvist blev organiseret på det sociale medie. Og om hvordan Instagram - der er ejet af Facebook - kan føre unge kvinder ud i psykisk sygdom.Hør historie om Frances Haugen, whistlebloweren, der har sendt Facebook ud i sin største krise nogensinde. 

Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton discuss shady Facebook "whistleblower" Frances Haugen and how her testimony only helps US spy agencies, justifying further government censorship while demonizing Washington's Official Enemies, from China to Iran, Myanmar to Ethiopia. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ilOl9bLfFgc

This week, we spoke with Coconuts Manila's own Samatha Beltran about the queerphobic reactions to Beatrice Luigi Gomez being crowned Miss Universe Philippines 2021. Gomez identifies as bisexual and she's the first openly queer winner — something that unfortunately didn't sit right with some in the devoutly Catholic and pageant-crazed country.Other stories include:BREAKING: Bali airport to start welcoming foreign travelers on Oct. 14 | ‘We don't care anymore': Bangkok bar reopens to sell newly legalized drug | Hong Kong just saw its hottest September on record | Bras are a ‘source of deceit' and should be ditched, Islamic website asserts | Penang dessert cafe lets patrons play ‘Squid Game' | PH's pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai showcases the best of contemporary art | COVID-19 self-test kits ‘moving fast' due to ‘elevated' Singapore demand | Trial delays to cost Myanmar heartthrob another 6 months in prison: lawyer The Coconuts Podcast delivers impactful, weird, and wonderful reporting by our journalists on the ground in eight cities: Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Manila, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Yangon, and Bali. Listen to headline news and insightful interviews on matters large and small, designed for people located in – or curious about – Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

Facebook and its family of apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, were inaccessible for hours on Monday, taking out a vital communications platform used by billions and showcasing just how dependent the world has become on a company that is under intense scrutiny. Facebook's apps — which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus — began displaying error messages around 11:40 a.m. Eastern time, users reported. Within minutes, Facebook had disappeared from the internet. The outage lasted over five hours, before some apps slowly flickered back to life, though the company cautioned the services would take time to stabilize. Even so, the impact was far-reaching and severe. Facebook has built itself into a linchpin platform with messaging, livestreaming, virtual reality and many other digital services. In some countries, like Myanmar and India, Facebook is synonymous with the internet. More than 3.5 billion people around the world use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp to communicate with friends and family, distribute political messaging, and expand their businesses through advertising and outreach. Facebook is also used to sign in to many other apps and services, leading to unexpected domino effects such as people not being able to log into shopping websites or sign into their smart TVs, thermostats and other internet-connected devices. Only one ticket sold for Monday night's Powerball drawing matched all five white balls and the Powerball to win the $699.8 million jackpot, according to the lottery website. It is the fifth largest Powerball jackpot won. The winning ticket was sold at the Albertsons supermarket at 730 Quintana in Morro Bay, California, according to the state's lottery website. The retailer will receive $1 million for selling the ticket. That's NOT Christian is a podcast by four urban believers who discuss current events and push the envelope on traditional religious subjects with a touch of humor. ►Merch Store: https://thatsnotchristian.com​​​ ►Donate: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/thats... ►Listen to That's NOT Christian Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3tGrB3G... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... ► Telegram: https://t.me/thatsnotchristian​​​ ► Music by Ryan Little SPOTIFY: https://spoti.fi/2MmjRru​​​ ►Follow the Squad ANT: https://www.instagram.com/aptop25/​​​ JAY: https://www.instagram.com/jayacosta/​​​ JIMMY: https://www.instagram.com/jaeisla/​​​ SWITCH: https://www.instagram.com/switch_in_h... ►Podcast Equipment Canon M50: https://amzn.to/2NP7s3G​​​ Logitech C920: https://amzn.to/36odZJ9​ Samson​​ Q2U: https://amzn.to/3tcv2aW​​​ Ring Light: https://amzn.to/3tbxApJ​ Light​​ Stand: https://amzn.to/2NKbg69​​​ Smart Lights: https://amzn.to/3aeU5kW​ Gaming​​ Chair: https://amzn.to/36nnFn0​​​ DISCLAIMER: This video and description may contain affiliate links which allow us to receive a small commission when you click on a product links. This helps support the podcast and allows us to continue to make videos like this. Thank you for the support! #thatsnotchristian #facebook #powerballwinner --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thatsnotchristian/message

Today’s Guests Forrest Norman – Attorney Forrest recently participated in a public forum at his local Board of Education meeting. He spoke during public comments about what he considered highly inappropriate material given to children. Later, he had two people who called themselves “investigators” come to his door and ask him questions about the situation. […] The post Standing Up for Your Children in Spite of the Cost | Continued Struggles in Afghanistan and Myanmar appeared first on The Reconnect with Carmen | Engaging Culture from a Christian Worldview.

Hai nhà nghiên cứu chất xúc tác hữu cơ đoạt giải Nobel Hóa học 2021; Tổng thống Biden nói Mỹ, Trung Quốc đồng ý tuân theo thỏa thuận Đài Loan; ASEAN thảo luận việc không mời lãnh đạo quân sự Myanmar dự hội nghị thượng đỉnh; Người dùng Facebook ở Cần Thơ bị bắt về cáo buộc ‘nói xấu Đảng, Nhà nước'.

Carmen Paun, a dynamic, fresh media voice on global health in Washington, shares her personal and career journey from Romania to Brussels, and on to her arrival in Washington D.C. one year ago, amid the pandemic, to launch POLITICO Global Pulse. This past summer, while visiting family in a small village in the Romanian countryside, she was “shocked” to discover only 10% vaccinated at that time, the pandemic seen as “all just a conspiracy.” The pandemic was the trigger in creating POLITICO Global Pulse. In its first year, it did find its audience and voice quickly. What to make of the U.S. Global Covid Summit? It re-established that “the U.S. was in charge,” now the challenge lies in execution. Faith in American leadership has diminished, while African officials remain frustrated by slow delivery and the West's export restrictions. Will the EU-US Task Force bring great transparency and accountability? “Hard to say… How fast is this going to happen?” The turn to boosters likely creates “a vicious cycle” that could leave low and lower-middle-income countries still struggling to access vaccines. Will Africa be left far behind? No. Vaccines are finally arriving. India is reopening exports. Don't expect the push by South Africa and India to suspend intellectual property to succeed. Her overall prognosis? “It is hard to be optimistic” Give a listen to learn more. Carmen Paun is a health writer at POLITICO and author of POLITICO Global Pulse.

It’s not like displaying a large red cross protects doctors from attack anymore. Yesterday’s Covid heroes are today vilified by some. Across the globe, health care workers have become routinely targeted. For example in Myanmar, since it is not an The post From Heroes to Targets: Medical Workers Under Attack appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.

Join us to discuss the popular uprising in Myanmar and its global repercussions in labor, feminist dynamics, and for ethnic minorities. A panel of women will discuss three specific aspects of this momentous upheaval: labor struggles, the feminist dynamic, and the role of ethnic minorities. Since February, an uprising has been in progress against a military coup in Myanmar. The military, which has been in power since 1948 when the country became independent from Britain, declared the coup to overturn the results of a legitimate election in which the National League for Democracy gained a majority of seats in the parliament. Over 1000 protesters have been killed, over 4000 arrested and 20 sentenced to death since the coup. The majority of the population have been denied any type of COVID care or vaccination. A general strike involving most sectors of the population has been ongoing. Women, who have been explicitly challenging misogyny and the second-class status of women in Burmese society, have come out in support of the uprising. Various oppressed national minority populations, including the Rohingya, have also joined the uprising. The opposition National Unity Government is now calling for a federalist alternative to the military-civilian government that ruled from 2015 on. The combined might of the capitalist state-army, which promotes ethno-religious chauvinism and misogyny, and the important strategic role which Myanmar plays for various global powers, makes its military government hugely powerful. Authoritarian powers around the world are also learning from the coup for their own fascistic purposes. The struggle in Myanmar and similar struggles around the world cannot move forward without global grassroots solidarity to oppose the military government and to give voice to Myanmar women, striking labor activists and ethnic minorities. Speakers: Debbie Stothard is an active promoter of human rights in Burma and the ASEAN region. During her 32-year career, she has worked as a journalist, community education consultant, governmental advisor, and trainer in Malaysia, Australia, and Thailand. In 1996, she founded the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (ALTSEAN-Burma) and was elected Secretary-General of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in 2013. She developed the first women-specific human rights training program for Myanmar in 1997, an initiative which is ongoing, and has supported many local and national young women leaders in Myanmar. Yasmin Ullah is an independent Rohingya social justice activist. She was born in the Northern Rakhine state of Myanmar. Her family fled to Thailand in 1995 when she was a child and she remained a stateless refugee until moving to Canada in 2011. Yasmin has served as the President of the Rohingya Human Rights Network, a non-profit group led by activists across Canada advocating and raising public awareness of the Rohingya genocide. Myra Dahgaypaw is the Managing Director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma. She is a Karen human rights activist from Karen State, Eastern Burma. She was an internally displaced person and a refugee prior to resettling in the U.S. at age of 13. Myra has played a strong role in her community as an organizer and a human rights advocate. Previously, Myra worked as a human rights advocate at the United Nations with the Burma Fund United Nations Office. Moderator Frieda Afary is an Iranian American librarian, translator, and activist. She produces the blog Iranian Progressives in Translation and writes about the Middle East and the politics of solidarity for a variety of publications, including New Politics magazine. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/hyXXPJxnq6Y Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

How can we best understand ethnic armed organizations on the borderlands of Myanmar? Why did the Karen embrace the military-initiated peace process in 2012, shortly after the Kachin had rejected ceasefire proposals? How can ethnographic fieldwork inform studies of insurgent movements? And what does the February 2021 military coup mean for the future of ethnic conflicts in Myanmar In this wide-ranging conversation, David Brenner – a lecturer in global insecurities at the University of Sussex – discusses these questions with Duncan McCargo, director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. He makes the case for an understanding of insurgent groups based on their specific internal political dynamics, which cannot be readily reduced to rational, economics-related incentives and obstacles. Rebel Politics: A Political Sociology of Armed Struggle in Myanmar's Borderlands (Cornell UP, 2019) analyzes the changing dynamics of the civil war in Myanmar, one of the most entrenched armed conflicts in the world. Since 2011, a national peace process has gone hand-in-hand with escalating ethnic conflict. The Karen National Union (KNU), previously known for its uncompromising stance against the central government of Myanmar, became a leader in the peace process after it signed a ceasefire in 2012. Meanwhile, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) returned to the trenches in 2011 after its own seventeen-year-long ceasefire broke down. To understand these puzzling changes, Brenner conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the KNU and KIO, analyzing the relations between rebel leaders, their rank-and-file, and local communities in the context of wider political and geopolitical transformations. Drawing on political sociology perspectives, Rebel Politics explains how revolutionary elites capture and lose legitimacy within their own movements and how these internal contestations drive the strategies of rebellion in unforeseen ways. Brenner presents a novel perspective that contributes to our understanding of contemporary politics in Southeast Asia, and to the study of conflict, peace and security, by highlighting the hidden social dynamics and everyday practices of political violence, ethnic conflict, rebel governance and borderland politics. Interested in this topic? You might also like these recent NBN podcasts: Karen Sanctuaries: Memory, Biodiversity and Political Sovereignty Ruth Streicher, "Uneasy Military Encounters: The Imperial Politics of Counterinsurgency in Southern Thailand" (Cornell UP, 2020) Duncan McCargo is an eclectic, internationalist political scientist and literature buff: his day job is directing the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Learn more here, here, here, and here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

How can we best understand ethnic armed organizations on the borderlands of Myanmar? Why did the Karen embrace the military-initiated peace process in 2012, shortly after the Kachin had rejected ceasefire proposals? How can ethnographic fieldwork inform studies of insurgent movements? And what does the February 2021 military coup mean for the future of ethnic conflicts in Myanmar In this wide-ranging conversation, David Brenner – a lecturer in global insecurities at the University of Sussex – discusses these questions with Duncan McCargo, director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. He makes the case for an understanding of insurgent groups based on their specific internal political dynamics, which cannot be readily reduced to rational, economics-related incentives and obstacles. Rebel Politics: A Political Sociology of Armed Struggle in Myanmar's Borderlands (Cornell UP, 2019) analyzes the changing dynamics of the civil war in Myanmar, one of the most entrenched armed conflicts in the world. Since 2011, a national peace process has gone hand-in-hand with escalating ethnic conflict. The Karen National Union (KNU), previously known for its uncompromising stance against the central government of Myanmar, became a leader in the peace process after it signed a ceasefire in 2012. Meanwhile, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) returned to the trenches in 2011 after its own seventeen-year-long ceasefire broke down. To understand these puzzling changes, Brenner conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the KNU and KIO, analyzing the relations between rebel leaders, their rank-and-file, and local communities in the context of wider political and geopolitical transformations. Drawing on political sociology perspectives, Rebel Politics explains how revolutionary elites capture and lose legitimacy within their own movements and how these internal contestations drive the strategies of rebellion in unforeseen ways. Brenner presents a novel perspective that contributes to our understanding of contemporary politics in Southeast Asia, and to the study of conflict, peace and security, by highlighting the hidden social dynamics and everyday practices of political violence, ethnic conflict, rebel governance and borderland politics. Interested in this topic? You might also like these recent NBN podcasts: Karen Sanctuaries: Memory, Biodiversity and Political Sovereignty Ruth Streicher, "Uneasy Military Encounters: The Imperial Politics of Counterinsurgency in Southern Thailand" (Cornell UP, 2020) Duncan McCargo is an eclectic, internationalist political scientist and literature buff: his day job is directing the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Learn more here, here, here, and here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

My HoneyDew this week is Ari Shaffir! Ari Highlights the Lowlights of his experiences backpacking through international countries! Being stuck in a restricted area of Myanmar, hiking through South East Asia with no connections, and getting paired with an unfortunate partner along the way! SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE and watch full episodes of The Dew every toozdee! https://www.youtube.com/rsickler  SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREON, The HoneyDew with Y'all, where I Highlight the Lowlights with Y'all! You now get audio and video of The HoneyDew a day early, ad-free at no additional cost! It's only $5/month! Sign up for a year and get a month free! https://www.patreon.com/TheHoneyDew  SPONSORS: - Visit https://ritual.com/HONEYDEW to get 10% off during your first 3 months. -Get 15% off your Raycon order at https://BUYRAYCON.com/honeydew. - Go to https://JoinCrowdHealth.com/99 and enter code HoneyDew at sign up to get your first six months for just $99 per month. - If you're thinking about buying a home next month, next year, or in five years, listen to the "How to Buy a Home Podcast" today!

La condanna a 13 anni di carcere dell'ex sindaco di Riace Mimmo Lucano, la proroga dei sussidi europei alle energie fossili e la crisi economica in Myanmar

David Eubank, who is originally from Texas, lives in the jungles of the Karen state near the Thai-Myanmar border, along with his wife and children. The Karen people have been fighting the Myanmar military for decades, in the world's longest civil war. Since the military coup on 1 February, the Karen Nation Union has sided with a people's uprising demanding democracy is restored, and has launched attacks on the military. The army has responded with bombings that have displaced tens of thousands of people. David has seen first-hand what has happened. Hundreds of young protesters have fled to ethnic areas, including into the area David is working in. His group, The Free Burma Rangers, has provided survival and medical training to some of these young people who want to continue fighting to restore democracy. He is also part of an underground railway helping to smuggle out politicians, artists and activists who are on the military's wanted list. David takes us on a mission through the jungle to get aid to civilians caught up in the conflict. (Photo: Sahale walks by a burning shack and opium field on a mission. Credit: Free Burma Rangers)

Thailand has responded to a tough economic outlook with new special visas aimed at attracting "wealthy global citizens" to move to the country's beaches. Myanmar's humanitarian, security and economic siutation is worsening, meanwhile Laos is opening up to cryptocurrency mining in a bid to monetise its massive hydro electric dams. And a Duterte dynasty is emerging in the Philippines rise ahead of next year's presidential election with both president Rodrigo Duterete and his daughter Sara in the mix.

Varias agencias de la ONU han emitido un comunicado conjunto pidiendo a los Estados que no expulsen masivamente a los haitianos. Al menos 43 defensores y 14 excombatientes de las FARC han sido asesinados en Colombia este verano. Un Comité contra la Desaparición Forzada pide a España que apruebe lo antes posible el Proyecto de Ley de Memoria Democrática

‘Urgent' international response needed in Myanmar after coup - UN chief  Comprehensive support needed for Haitians facing expulsion in Americas  COVID-19: 15 African nations meet 10 per cent vaccination threshold  

Triều Tiên chạy đua tên lửa siêu thanh trong vụ thử mới nhất; Tiền Myanmar mất giá 60% trong 4 tuần, kinh tế suy sụp, chính phủ bất lực; Anh hướng về Thái Bình Dương, siết chặt quan hệ quốc phòng với Nhật Bản; GDP quý 3 của Việt Nam giảm hơn 6% vì tác động của đại dịch.

Telenor svarer på kritikken fra over fire hundre organisasjoner som frykter for hva som blir konsekvensene av at telegiganten nå selger seg ut av Myanmar. Kjøper er nemlig et omstridt libanesisk forretningsselskap - hva skjer med dataene på alle de tidligere kundene? Titusenvis av vaksinedoser kan risikere å havne i søpla fordi de går ut på dato. Gi de eldre en tredje dose, foreslår immunolog og møter et noe mer betenkt FHI. Mens Norge åpner, fortviler mange som jobber med opera, teater og orkester, de får ikke begynt å jobbe igjen på grunn av langvarig teaterstreik de ikke er en del av. Og en profilert folkerettsforsker roper varsko om at hver fjerde forsker i Norge er fra utlandet - våre universiteter er ikke forskningshoteller, sier hun. Velkommen til tirsdagens Dagsnytt 18 - med Espen Aas. Der vi også skal snakke om studenter som fortsatt må følge undervisning fra hybelen.

In a recent New Yorker ‘Letter from Biden's Washington,' Susan Glasser delivers a stark indictment: Trumpists and Republican leadership are consciously keeping enough people resisting the Biden administration's efforts to control the virus “to keep the disease wreaking havoc.” Why that conclusion now? “It is no accident” that 1 in 500 Americans have died, now totaling over 687,000. It's becoming obvious that President Biden cannot inoculate Americans against Fox News. In the meantime, the Biden administration, “on both foreign and domestic fronts, remains a jumble of aspirations and retains a haze of uncertainty about how to achieve them.” That directly shapes its international approach to Covid-19, including the recent Global Covid-19 Summit organized by President Biden on the margins of the UN General Assembly. It is “a statement of the obvious” that nearly half of the country is dedicated to the failure of the Biden administration. When a “flaming dumpster fire” pandemic continues in the United States -- the fourth wave fueled by vaccine refusals – the resulting domestic crisis gravely limits the ability of the United States to be a world leader on Covid-19. On the pandemic as well as Afghanistan and other foreign policy priorities, the administration is taking an approach that is far less multilateral, alliance-focused, and consultative than expected. Why? The answer is not yet clear: if the administration is simply overwhelmed by demands, or if this approach is a conscious internal “predilection.” Does she agree we are drifting inexorably towards a US-China cold war bifurcation of the world? “Yes, I do.” Do we urgently need a national commission on the pandemic? “Absolutely.” “You cannot escape history.” Please listen to know more. Susan Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker, author of Letters from Biden's Washington

We're launching our fall season with J. R. Ching '01, the chief financial officer for Yoma Strategic Holdings. We asked J. R. to join the show to help us understand the military coup in Myanmar and to hear how his company has managed the ongoing crisis as the Delta variant continues to surge throughout the country. CreditsThe music for this episode was produced and contributed by Nicholas Byrne '19 of Arts + Crafts.Nicholas is a producer, guitarist, and singer, and a graduate student at the Parsons School of Design in NYC. The alumnus earned his bachelor's degree from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media with a minor in music. Follow Nicholas @art.sandcrafts on Instagram or on Spotify.This episode also featured intro music by Scott Hallyburton '22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul. An audio clip of protests used in this episode was contributed by YouTube user Bendobrown. You can watch the full video here.How to listenOn your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.Catalyze is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll for the Morehead-Cain Foundation, home of the first merit scholarship program in the United States and located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on Twitter or Instagram at @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.

Jake Steiner claims he is just another guy from the internet, but for the past 20 years, he's been successfully pioneering natural myopia (nearsightedness) control and built a global community of people seeking to do the same through his website endmyopia.org where he offers a plethora of resources, articles, and courses for free. Prior to his journey of scientific exploration Jake Steiner was very nearsighted with minus 5.00 diopter's of high myopia, on a path of his vision getting progressively worse, with no end of wearing lenses insight. Today Jake no longer wears glasses, has 20/20 eyesight, has corrected his myopia without the use of eye vitamins, eye exercises, or surgery, and is passionate about providing guidance and resources for other myopes to do the same. One thing Jake touches on a lot in this conversation is screentime. Screen time has become so prevalent and woven into our everyday lives that we consciously need to counterbalance and mitigae its effects to prevent strain on our eyesight and Liver Qi. In TCM the Liver meridian is connected to the eyes and supports blood circulation and the flow of Qi through the eyes. It is the main meridian responsible for healthy vision. Mason and Jake discuss the fundamentals of myopia, lifestyle factors that affect our eyesight, the massive wholesale to retail lense markup, herbs to nourish the Liver, and empowering people to take back control of their health, no matter what the diagnosis. Tune in.    "The muscle spasm I talked about, you can measure it. You can measure your eyesight, and you can find out that it's very variable. You can buy or print out an eye chart, hang it up somewhere, measure out the correct distance you need to be from the chart, and see which line you can read? And then have a four-hour Netflix binge and try that same thing again. You're going to be kind of surprised that you probably can't read that same line anymore".   - Jake Steiner     Jake and Mason discuss: Pseudomyopia. Screen addiction How diopters work. Lens-induced myopia. Natural myopia control. Measuring your eyesight. Acupuncture for eyesight. Eyesight muscle spasms. The Liver-Eye connection. Herbs to nourish Liver Qi. Screen addiction and eyesight. Lifestyle habits that affect eyesight.    Who is Jake Steiner? Jake Steiner began his journey to reverse his -5.00 diopter myopia 20 years ago. Through a great deal of experimentation, and trial and error to apply theoretical concepts found in clinical journals and peer-reviewed studies, eventually, he was successful in getting back his natural 20/20 eyesight. Over the years, Jake has cataloged the many tools, resources, and experiences that made his myopia recovery a reality. Much of it exists now as part of the resource that is endmyopia.org. Jake created endmyopia.org to help share and connect with his fellow myopes so that more people could get their natural eyesight back.    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Shisandra Beauty Blend End Myopia Website Shortsighted Podcast Jakes 7 Day Free Course To Fix Eyesight Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Jake, welcome, man.   Jake Steiner: (00:01) Thanks for having me, Mason. I appreciate it.   Mason: (00:03) Yeah, no, absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure. Bangkok treating you well?   Jake Steiner: (00:09) Bangkok is treating me amazing, actually. I can't complain.   Mason: (00:14) We had a little bit of a jam, I'm enjoying lockdown way too much in my quiet little South Golden suburb, but I've got... I know I shouldn't say it too, I've got too many friends in Melbourne and Sydney and other places in the world who are not enjoying it. Let's not go into that. I don't mind if you want to go into how awesome Bangkok is, though. That'd be cool to hear a little bit of... we'll get into that. But I want to hear about just eyesight, glasses. I want the whole shebang. Where did you start out? Digging into this, when was your moment when you realised you'd... or did you feel like at some point, was it the feeling of being hoodwinked by an industry or something that got you spurred on? Or what was your motivation to start restoring your eyesight?   Jake Steiner: (00:59) You're getting me in a totally different angle on this now. So I started wearing glasses when I was maybe 12-ish, somewhere around there. I'm super old, so I lived in a time before screens. So I didn't get into glasses till school, till well into school. And so maybe 12-ish, somewhere around there, my parents took me to an optometrist, optometrist said, "You need glasses," I got classes. And from there every year or two or so, I got stronger glasses. And when I started out, I played water polo, which I've really enjoyed. You're in water that's too deep to stand in, so you're treading water, and you're throwing and you're catching a ball that you're only allowed to touch with one hand. It's somewhat intense and it requires decent eyesight, you got water splashing around, stuff's going on.   Jake Steiner: (01:51) And as my eyes got worse, the ball turned into just more of a yellow outline that just kept getting bigger because it's just a blurry thing. And I was trying to kind of aim at the middle of it, because you got to catch it with one hand. Eventually I couldn't play anymore, because you can't really wear contacts and glasses doesn't work. And I turned into more of a introvert nerd type in retrospective. Because kids wouldn't pick me for sports because once I started getting into glasses... once you wear glasses, you get afraid of balls flying because you don't have peripheral vision. You can't see stuff that comes flying at you from the side nearly as well. And if a ball hits your face and your glasses go flying, you just can't see anything. So it makes you kind of vulnerable and you act more afraid of your moving environment. And that sort of reflect in how you just behave.   Jake Steiner: (02:47) So I went from just being a kid to being more of an outsider because glasses. On hindsight. At the time, I didn't realise. I started reading a tonne, got into a lot more of the "nerdy stuff," computer stuff, that started merging. And then I worked glasses till I got to minus five and I was stock trading and doing just screen stuff a lot. And then one day I found myself in... somewhere in Asia and looking for taxi and I couldn't see, and I went back to the optometrist and they said, "You need stronger glasses," and I said, "Why?" And they said it's genetic. And that was just a moment where I was like, it can't be genetic. Because it's a problem that didn't exist to this extent 50 years ago. My parents don't wear glasses, my grandparents don't wear glasses. The genetic answer doesn't make sense. So I went to library and I started researching and I found out that short-sightedness, nearsightedness, myopia is not at all a genetic condition. It's a 100% environmental and all the glasses thing, all my youth that I spent in glasses was completely pointless and unnecessary.   Mason: (04:00) I mean, a lot of things are jumping out at me, but the one that really annoys me the most is when a professional, a doctor, an optometrist in this setting, that they're so confident in the talking point that they've been given from their professors or their institution and they don't get the severity. And just how irresponsible it is to spout something that they don't actually know for themselves is true. And they just say, "No, it's genetic. Literally, this changes your whole life. You're crazy. You think you can do something about this?" Well, do you know it's genetic? "Yeah, yeah, of course. My institution told me. I paid heaps of money to be there. And they're really smart people. I'm not looking into it myself." That happens so much and so many people's lives goes... it's a curve ball because of it, unnecessarily.   Jake Steiner: (04:52) Yeah. It's amazing. And my parents are both medical doctors, and I'm generally not against modern medicine in a lot of ways. There's amazing stuff that they're figuring out. But when it comes to not acute symptoms, like long-term just stuff, so often there is the profit motive runs away with the story, right? Glasses, the wholesale cost for lenses is like 2 to $5. Hundreds of dollars in a retail store. They make on average about 5000% profit on selling glasses.   Mason: (05:28) Far out.   Jake Steiner: (05:31) It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy.   Mason: (05:33) That's insane.   Jake Steiner: (05:33) It's crazy. People pay 200, 300, $400 for glasses. It costs nothing. It costs the optometrist nothing.   Mason: (05:41) Wow. I mean, not to say there's an inherent corruption there in people, like it's a thing that you trust your institution, you trust the entire medical institution's good-willed, et cetera, and probably morally and ethically you probably get in and you go, "Oh, it's just the way it is. And that's just the benefit. This is how I get my payday after putting in so much energy to become a doctor and become an optometrist and pay the service to society." But if you were able to get rid of the survivalist in nature, like, "I need this to pay for all this stuff I've gone and... I need to pay my kids and my family and all these..." If you take all that away and you just look at it objectively, very unethical doing that.   Jake Steiner: (06:30) Yeah. And okay, here's the weird thing, and before we fall too deep into the rabbit hole, I always recommend people go to Google Scholar. If anybody's not familiar, scholar.google.com is the Google search engine that only shows you clinical research studies. If you don't want to look at normal internet where who knows what you're getting for results, it doesn't mean that a scientific study is correct, it just means you're only looking at those. You're looking at peer-reviewed studies. So whenever I hear a podcast with a crazy dude from the internet claiming that a whole entire trusted institution is wrong, I always go there first. Because I'm like, "Is there any basis to this at all?" Super helpful, because there's so much stuff out there that is maybe a little bit kind of crazy, who knows? So Google Scholar, super handy. Just go over there, type in pseudomyopia, P-S-E-U-D-O myopia. That means not real near-sightedness.   Jake Steiner: (07:33) And that tells you, if you just spend five minutes, see there are 20,000 plus search results of all clinical studies that say your near-sightedness starts out as a muscle spasm. And it's kind of mind-blowing and you don't have to, but you can certainly, dig into studies that tell you there's a round, circular muscle around a lens in the front of your eye that shapes the lens. So the closer you look at something the more that muscle tightens up and the more it bulges the lens out that you get clear, close-up vision, focuses the light in the back of your eye on your retina. And the further you look at something, the more that muscle relaxes and what happens, super short version is, if you're a kid studying in front of a book for many, many hours or now people just living in front of screens, that muscle gets stuck. It's just a muscle spasm. It's not designed to be in this super tight mode that it's in when you're looking at a phone for countless hours every day. And it doesn't completely relax.   Jake Steiner: (08:37) So since it controls that lens, it not relaxing means the lens doesn't go back into full distance vision. It's just like if you turn off the autofocus on a camera and leave it in close-up and then you point the camera at a distance and things are blurry. That's exactly what happens in your eye. If the optometrist at that point said, "Go camping for a weekend and then come back," you'd have a better result after the camping. And it's super important because myopia is not genetic. It starts out as pseudomyopia. Google Scholar, easily 20,000 search results explaining this in fish. I don't know how they figured that out fish, in birds, in monkeys, and in humans, anything that has our kind of eye has that same response. I just wanted to put that out upfront. So when people are listening, they're not dragged into this not knowing what's going on.   Mason: (09:34) Yeah. I mean, and before we go into your... I don't even know whether protocols is the right word, but all the insights and the work that you do, which I'm really... it's been a few months or a couple of months since I really dived down through your website and was like, "Oh, holy shit, this is my..." Because I've had a lot of people who have come and have wanted to be on the podcast. I think we reached out to you. I think Alex found you and reached out to you. Didn't want to make everyone think that you were out there reaching out, when I think we did it. A lot of people though, reaching out to be on the podcast with eyesight healing techniques. And I know it's always, it's always pretty stretching and do the eye movements and all that kind of stuff, but yours was... I'm looking forward to getting the refresher, it's going to kind of be new, but I remember looking into it being super impressed and kind of excited. It was just very... I don't know, it had a connectivity to life rather than just being this isolated treatment that was completely packageable and sellable in a course or something like that.   Mason: (10:40) But just put out there again, I realise, we're talking about the optometry industry, and I know that even though we're going to go into some solutions right now, I know there are people who are just kind of happy to have glasses and just grateful for that opportunity when their eyesight goes. Even if it is something that you know is lifestyle based or environmentally based, it's not just an inevitable deterioration of your genetics. So gratitude there for everything that's possible and the support that that can can give. But man, that realisation, do you think is it scary for most people? Do you think realising that it is inevitably your choices and the way that you've just fallen into living that has determined the deterioration of eyesight and that you have... it's fully within your capacity to get it back on track? What do you think is the biggest thing that stops people there just jumping in straight away and doing it? Is it daunting, don't believe it, you know?   Jake Steiner: (11:41) Okay, somebody explained this to me one time that finally made sense, because I don't talk about this even to my friends, because I know people don't care and it makes me frustrated. But this guy said, make a list of the 10 most ongoing important things in your life, pressing, that you're doing, or you have to do, or you really wish you could get done. He's like, 10 things. And he's like, the first three is how far are you going to make it. And maybe that's extreme and maybe that's not right, but it stuck in my head as eyesight is number 15, right? Like you'd love to run a triathlon and you'd love to pick a painting and you'd love to travel to New Zealand. For you I guess that's not that far. And then, yeah, sure [crosstalk 00:12:33]-   Mason: (12:32) I'm pretty far at the moment, man. [crosstalk 00:12:35].   Jake Steiner: (12:36) [crosstalk 00:12:36]. Oh man. Yeah. But so it's like, it would be interesting to do, but you know what? You get up in the morning and it takes you exactly 40 seconds to pop in your contact lenses. And that problem, number 12 on the list, is solved. It'd be nice not to pop them in, but it's not that big of a deal. The alternative I'm suggesting is you learning about biology a little bit and questioning your day-to-day habits a little bit and coming up with better things to do with part of your free time and becoming aware and sort of biohacking a thing that's just always been neglected. And that's kind of a big undertaking for, "I'm saving those 40 seconds in the morning." You know what I mean? I think that's kind of the, "I already fixed that." [crosstalk 00:13:27]-   Mason: (13:27) I think the gravity of it though... I completely get it. I mean, it's something I'm constantly doing. There's things that are obviously massively important to me and to my health and I berate myself that I don't... I'm not creating space for this one little aspect of my health. But got kids, got a kid and another kid on the way, business is going off. But I think the complete sympathy for people, or empathy, if that is the case, but I just think this is a great reminder to be like, "Don't let go. Just hold onto that number 14 and really create a structured... within your life. Make sure you're not just getting stuck, washed away within your life just grinding." If you can get to that point where you can automate particular things, get down that list, and make sure... and have faith that there's going to be a point where you go like, "Ah, okay, I'm ready. I'm really ready. And I've got the space to kind of nail this now."   Mason: (14:27) I mean, just hearing you talk about the difference as a child and just that that's... I'm sure that's altered the way that you operate in the world, the way that you think the way you relate to your body, due to maybe not engaging in sports and being as active for particular reasons. Not for particular reasons, for that reason. I think the gravity and just the opportunity of doing things like this is, it comes down to everything, is like with our herbs that we have at SuperFeast, it's like if you start to engage with the capacity, you actually have control of how the chi in your organs flow, and you can, with your lifestyle and herbs and movement, you can generate your own energy. You do not have to be reliant on external sources of energy. And just that's like too huge for some people to take on and it takes them a long time to come to terms with that. To come to terms with something like the eyesight, being able to turn your eyesight around, I mean, it's exciting, but yeah, I can completely imagine why people don't sink their teeth in immediately.   Jake Steiner: (15:36) Okay, for example, I've poked around your website and I'm like, that made it on my list of, "That would be interesting, but will I ever get there?" You know what I mean? Realistically, I'm like, "Okay, I'm in Thailand, shipping, understanding how much of it makes sense? How will it affect my life?" Who knows, right? It's in the same spot on the list, where I'm like, I'm sure it could make a difference but how big is my motivation? And when it comes to eyesight, I'll throw this in there, one part is it changes who you are. In just simple examples, if you wear glasses, when you're walking outside, you're looking at the ground because you don't have peripheral vision, you can't look straight ahead.   Jake Steiner: (16:22) A person without glasses, or if you have contacts you can, you can see the ground from your periphery. So you're walking in the world, not necessarily staring at the ground. If you wear glasses, you're walking, you're looking at the crowd. Your experience of the things in front of you is the ground. You don't think of it because that's just your life, but it would not be the same if you're not wearing glasses. If you're talking to people, your eyes look through the centre of the lens, because that's the optical centre, that's where your best vision is. So your eyes are trained just to look just through that one point. Versus people who don't want glasses who have a much more fluid eye movement and neck movement. So when you're talking to people, you appear to be kind of stiff and weird, just slightly, just so slightly that nobody's consciously aware of it, but people treat you differently because you are a little bit weird behind the glasses. Potential tendency to make you a little bit more introverted, potential tendency to view yourself differently because you are different because you kind of have a weird... you're not right in how you're interacting.   Jake Steiner: (17:31) Another thing, for example, I spend three months of the year kite surfing. Not now anymore, apparently, but I used to. Since I don't wear glasses. And I still catch myself going, "Unbelievable that my body can do that." Because I was so believing that I'm clumsy and fearful and I don't have the athletic ability because the lenses, no peripheral vision, my eyes are stuck looking through the centre of the lens, that I don't have the confidence to move. The fine motor control, your brain just goes, "Whoa, careful." None of this works very well. Going from there to not wearing glasses, I spent years paragliding. I lived in Nepal, paragliding. Crap I would have never done, never, ever, ever, ever. Because I don't believe that I can. Now I'm fine. But it took a lot of years and habit changes and just exploring how does it make my life different, that made this journey of going from glasses to no glasses, super worth it. Because it's like, I got a second life. I went from this nerdy dude who lived behind screens, trading stocks, to having all sorts of interesting physical, outside experiences that are super amazing, that I would have probably never had.   Mason: (18:53) After you went to the optometrist and they said, "It's genetic, you're getting worse. You need," whatever, thicker glasses, whatever the terminology is, what was the first thing that you went and did when you were doing research and you started putting a technique to action or something like that, or an insight to action? What was the first thing you did that then actually yielded results and started putting real faith in you that you can do this?   Jake Steiner: (19:20) That was a long time. First, I bought everything that was out there. I bought the books, whatever courses. First I found pseudomyopia. So there's two things I found. One, I found pseudomyopia, it's a muscle spasm. The cause of your near-sightedness is a muscle spasm. It's not a question. This is in optometry journals. It's weird that the retail optometrist doesn't know what the academic optometrist writes about. This is-   Mason: (19:54) Just conveniently doesn't know, just be like, "No, no, just don't even let it in. I just want to be happy over here selling my 5000% increased product."   Jake Steiner: (20:07) Not to knock all optometrists. There are awesome optometrists, for sure. There are helpful optometrists, optometrists that know this, there are optometrists that are willing to support you. Some of them are in a tough spot because the regulatory boards don't let them talk about this. That's a whole big topic. They're not bad people. It's just I hold a grudge because that really put me in a direction. so I found pseudomyopia and then I found another terrible thing, terrible, terrible thing, on Google Scholar. You type in lens-induced myopia. And that will piss you off a little bit because as the name suggests, once you start using the treatment they sell you, your eyesight will get worse because of the treatment. Not because of genetics, not because blah, as soon as you start wearing the glasses... and I can explain if you want, but that's kind of a long biology topic, your eyesight will get worse because of the glasses. Again, [crosstalk 00:21:07]-   Mason: (21:07) Because of the spasming? Are we still on spasm? Or does it deteriorate in any way?   Jake Steiner: (21:12) Worse. Much, much worse. The eye is like a fluid-filled ball, right? And it's not solid, it's not like a bone, so it's never perfectly round. And you've got the lens in the front and the retina where the signal is received in the back, and between there's fluid and a skin basically. And it's not a perfect one, it's just held together. It has a mechanism built-in that adjusts its length, like how much distance is between the lens in the front and the retina in the back. And when you're a baby, you start out hyperopic, like the eyeball is too short, you can't see up close clearly. But then that mechanism, that works throughout your whole life, adjusts the eyeball in length that you have perfect vision. And that Megan doesn't always works. And there's a few different things that run it, pretty well understood in science. When you put on glasses, what happens is, glasses moved the light further back in your eye, because you have a muscle spasm, you're stuck in close-up mode, the light focuses just in front of the retina because it wants to be in close-up. And what the lenses do, is they just move the light back a little bit. So it's basically... it's making it so despite the muscle spasm, the light focuses in the right spot for distance.   Jake Steiner: (22:28) Problem with that is it's not perfect. Glasses are not... they're 16th century technology. So some of the light focuses behind the retina and that is the signal that tells the eye that it's too short. It's called hyperopic defocus. You can look it up on Google Scholar. So a little bit of the light focuses behind the retina and then the eyeball, that mechanism in the eyeball, "Well, crap, I'm too short," and the eyeball physically elongates. And that's why a year later you need new, stronger glasses because the eyeball has compensated for the lens.   Mason: (23:06) So [crosstalk 00:23:08]-   Jake Steiner: (23:07) Literally you're selling new glasses. Because of the glasses, you're selling more glasses.   Mason: (23:17) I mean, that makes sense. I'm sure for a lot of people, that's a bit of a shock, but it makes sense. If you don't use it, you lose it. And it's just, I think it's kind of coming out more in... well, consider the alternative, but even in some circles around healing body and trauma to the body, broken bones, [inaudible 00:23:39] like strains, rather than do complete mobilisation, those people that are getting the best results are using... obviously they're putting... they're not just taking the cast off and letting it go wild. They're putting some care into it, as I'm sure we'll hear about your process here, but it's like, no, don't just mobilise the thing that needs healing that needs to move. And then you get the chi moving in there, you get the blood flow going in there, you can eventually heal it. So it sounds like it's a similar connection that you're making there. All right, so you're discovering all these things and I'm sure you're feeling very good about what you've been told so far on your eyesight journey?   Jake Steiner: (24:18) It was unbelievable because I found all this stuff and I printed stuff out and I went back to the optometrist. I'm like, "What is this?" And the second one I went to just kicked me out. Literally, they were just like, "Out of here." I'm like, "This is your journals. Literally this is..." And they were just like, "Out. Out." And from then I just kind of... a lot of Endmyopia is a bit of a grudge I had.   Mason: (24:46) I can imagine.   Jake Steiner: (24:46) I bought all the books. I bought all the books, I bought all the stuff. I was travelling a lot at the time because I was sort of retired. I tried eye acupuncture, I tried eye exercises, I did the Nepalese healers. Tried all this stuff because I assumed, understanding that my eyes are not broken, that somebody figured this stuff out. I don't even have a cool beard, right? On the website a claim I do, but it's a total lie. You have a cool beard.   Mason: (25:15) Yeah. Sorry, I can't be with you on that one.   Jake Steiner: (25:17) Yeah, I know. I'm screwed. So I tried all this stuff and it wasn't working and because of my background, I analysed stuff. From what I do, is the only way you make money is if you really, really, really understand what is going on. And I'm like, "Okay, cause. How do these ideas, how does this book, address the cause? I figured out the cause already. How does it address the muscle spasm? How does it address the lens, the lens-induced myopia part?" And when I started looking at it that way... because first I wasn't. The first year, I was just like, "Yay. Let's try all this stuff." Is how does the acupuncture address muscle spasm and the lens making my eye longer? It doesn't. And then how does the eye exercise, how does this Bates method thing address it? It doesn't.   Mason: (26:09) Bates, I was going to ask you about.   Jake Steiner: (26:11) Yeah, so the problem there for me, as a weird German, analytical, boring guy, I'm really not good at not being able to connect the cause and the treatment. I want to understand. You have to understand it, because how can you treat it without understanding what's wrong in the first place? And I couldn't find a thing that started with, "Here's the cause." I couldn't. And it's weird, and I feel weird, because I have imposter syndrome to some extent. Because it can't possibly be that my dumb ass... I'm not a doctor, I'm just barely... I wasn't even good at stock trading, I was just... whatever, it was a good market. I don't know anything. How can it be that there is no... I'm never going to figure this out. There was a period where I was just like, "Ugh."   Jake Steiner: (26:59) But the logical idea is that the mechanism in the eye is the name of the game. Like, my eye just got worse because I put on the lenses, eye got longer. There are studies that show that the elongation of the eyeball is not a one way thing, the eye just adjusts. It gets shorter, too. So my thought was, if I wear weaker glasses, slightly, slightly weaker glasses, then instead of the light focusing a little bit behind the retina, it focuses just a little bit in front of the retina, and that same mechanism is going to shrink my eyeball back to the correct size. Giant leap, right? But there was plenty of science showing that the elongation is permanent, it's just an adjustment. It's not growing longer, it's just changing like a football shape. But both ways. And that thing works your whole life.   Jake Steiner: (27:49) So I started wearing weaker glasses and I didn't know what I was doing. This was almost 20 years ago. It's like the first guy discovering that lifting weights makes you stronger. It was like that. I just wore a weaker glasses. And they were two weeks in hindsight, like I went from minus five to minus three, couldn't see shit. I remember I went to Laos with those glasses. I threw away the old ones because I'm just like that. Couldn't see anything. It was terrible. It was a stupid idea. But I kept wearing those because I'd thrown away the stronger ones, and eventually I remember I was sitting in a subway somewhere, Hong Kong, I think, one day, and I'm sitting there and I could read the map on the other side. And it was just a sudden realisation that I could do that. I never was able to do that before. And I was like, "Crap, this is working."   Jake Steiner: (28:39) But there was a big period where I just kind of... I don't know why, I just kept weighing those minus threes, life, it sucked. My vision was just... it was not fun, but somehow I couldn't get myself to go back. And there was just that moment that was like, "Well, this crap is really working," and then from there, some friends got involved. And from there, in the intervening 20 years, so many people tried different variations of this, that by now we have a system that one diopter a year. Every three to four months, you can buy a weaker set of glasses and that's all you need. And your vision just improves. Super short, that's the answer to the whole thing. This is why there's not really anything to sell. There's no money to make off of it because the solution... it's a theory, right? It's an unproven theory. Because testing the eyeball length is not cheap, doing it consistently is not cheap. We've done it in the past, but there's not enough evidence for me to go definitively, right?   Jake Steiner: (29:38) I'm saying, you could try this and play with it, I'm not responsible for your result. But tens of thousands of people have done it. We have a huge Facebook group and forum and all kinds of stuff. And I'm super simplifying, there's tonnes more little details, just like lifting weights makes you stronger, there's more details. But it boils down to just small adjustments to the strength of your lenses.   Mason: (30:02) Okay. Because I still have no idea of the structure of what you're offering, but I do remember now that you had a community and that's always... I think that's a good sign. How many people did you say is in the Facebook group?   Jake Steiner: (30:14) 22,000 or so, thereabouts.   Mason: (30:17) Yeah. I mean, Facebook is savage. To have a group with that many people, you've got to like... I like hearing that because having a group like that revolving around distinctions, it might be somewhat of a system, but I like what you're saying. It's kind of the same way we do herbalism, tonic herbalism. I'm like, I don't want to be a clinical herbalist. This is a herbalism style, like a folk style of herbalism for the people that isn't rigid, so rigid instruction that it doesn't fit into the romance of the lifestyle and the kitchen and so on and so forth. And I feel like, that's what I'm hearing there that it's just... take the edge off. It makes it more accessible. But you've got free guides and stuff that people can go get, right? Just to start getting them into biology and see the studies and all that?   Jake Steiner: (31:10) It's free. We have a few courses that nobody needs to buy. If you want to support the resource, I'm trying not to pay all the bills. It's not that cheap actually to run out of pocket. It doesn't make me happy if I have to. That is more structured where I offer support, but they're not necessary. I've written like 1,200 articles on the site. Nobody needs to spend money to do this. And the basis is simple, the practical approach takes a little bit of... Once you dive into it, you're going to end up having a lot of questions, like, "I have astigmatism. I have presbyopia. I have this, I have that." That's why I've written a tonne of stuff. So all the things I've figured out with the help of lots of other people, the last 20 years is on there, it's free. There's no paywall, there's no nothing.   Jake Steiner: (31:56) And then you dig into that a little bit, and then you pop up in the Facebook group, which is super active. We've never manipulated stuff, it's just the people in there are the people that found it. And we have a big forum that's bigger than the Facebook group where people are having discussions, trying other stuff. [inaudible 00:32:16]. And so it's an evolving, ongoing thing.   Jake Steiner: (32:18) For me, the most interesting thing is once you dig into it, you start going, "A big problem is that I'm addicted to my stupid phone." I have replaced all of the fun things I do with playing on my phone. Eventually, and people don't need to, but the fun part of this whole thing is going, "I need distance vision time to improve my site." I pop on slightly weaker glasses or contact lenses, but now I need to go do something. Birdwatching, tennis playing, bike riding, something that is going to be less fascinating than just picking this up and scrolling through it.   Jake Steiner: (32:52) And to me, I think the funnest part, and who cares because addiction is not my topic, but people slowly going, "Well crap, I do spend six hours on my phone, it says. And I don't have any hobbies anymore. And I could..." And for me personally, that's kind of the super fun bit, if you stop in the forum, sometimes people are talking about how they're rediscovering the boring-ness and fascinating-ness of life that starts with not turning on a screen.   Mason: (33:23) I've got a friend, Jake, he's been on the podcast before. He teaches bushcraft and survival skills and he's an activist as well. But he spends a lot of time in town. And then he was just telling me every now and then he goes bush for however many weeks, three weeks. Whenever I'd talk to him after he was doing that, or if he'd be giving a little update every few days, he's just like, he goes, "The first thing I noticed is all my senses come back online." And he goes, "And my eyesight, all of a sudden, starts becoming sharper, I didn't even realise how fuzzy it was spending all that time." And he's not even a big computer or a phone guy, but even just for him, he gets into the bush and... I mean, that's what walkabout is, you go and you look and you just walk for as long as you need to release the tension from your body. Which of course is going to be connected to the eyes as well.   Mason: (34:25) And so they say, they just watch that breeze move the trees up on the mountain, on the ridge line, or we'll just watch the waves and just watch the sand on the horizon, and eventually that... My indigenous mates who talk about that, they talk about that pulling out the trauma as you go along, because you're looking at things that your brain goes, "I don't have to remember this," but so as you start spitting up... in this walkabout state, you start spitting up all the traumatic memories that create the tension for you, that natural vista that's off in the distance plucks off all that trauma. And that can release the tension from your body. And that just ties exactly into what you're talking about here. And what a gift to give people, remembering just the importance to balance out all that close screen time with getting out there into something where you're looking far away.   Jake Steiner: (35:21) I'd love to do that. I'd love to do that. We should do that. My audience is so diverse and from so many different places, there's... I spent a fair amount of time in Hong Kong, or I used to before Hong Kong became a forever locked island. There's nowhere to go. Real estate is so expensive you live with your parents or you live in this tiny hole. And then every time I go there, people are on the phone, on the subway, on the bus, walking to the subway to the bus. They're on the phone in the bar, in the restaurant with friends, they are just glued to those things. And then when I have people that participate from Hong Kong, they go, "Man, I am feeling like an alien. I put my phone down and I'm the only one with their phone down. And I'm just alone in the city, surrounded by people on the phone." And I'm like, that's kind of traumatising. So being in a place where you can have a walkabout, for one, that's a brilliant start.   Mason: (36:24) It's literally going for a walk and looking into the distance, right?   Jake Steiner: (36:28) Yeah. Yeah.   Mason: (36:31) When you boil it down, I'm sure there's many little techniques and things that pop up in the forum or in... I mean, you've got a bunch, I'm looking at the courses now. Child myopia, prevent and reverse, myopia post-LASIK, there's some pretty chunky ones in there, like 14 week programmes-   Jake Steiner: (36:56) Not available for the most part though.   Mason: (36:58) Is that because of availability of spots?   Jake Steiner: (37:01) Because I do support and I've got... especially this year, I'm super busy. In that whole course thing, there's only one or two that are actually available. Again though, you don't need any of them. There's a seven day free email guide that kind of... because it's such a thick topic, like where do I start? And the website has so much stuff on it that it kind of walks you through start with understanding why. And people get mad at me for this because they just want the steps. But I'm like, the reason you wear glasses is because you just trusted a thing. I'm not looking that trustworthy and I don't try to make it about trust, so I'm like, understand the cause first, take 10 minutes, an hour, a week, however much you need to understand what's up with the biology. And then people get pissed because they're like, "Just give me the steps. I believe you."   Jake Steiner: (37:52) But I'm like, get what it is. And so the seven day guide walks you through the here's what's going on and here's how you can question this whole thing in the first place. And then here's the basic stuff. And then I release you into the wild of website and community and stuff. And that's really all you need. So I'm kind of anti-selling the courses, but I really don't think that's where you need to start. It's more of a slightly weaker pair of glasses. And I have a podcast, but I only do improvement stories. Whenever there's somebody who surfs, for example, on there, I'm like, that's going to be good. Because if you surf, you have motivation to rid of those stupid things, because contacts out there, you lose a contact lens, it's a lot less fun experience coming back. And those people improve really quickly and really consistently, because there's no excuse. If you're in the bush, if you're doing that kind of thing, if that guy wore glasses, I promise... well, I shouldn't promise, but he would take to something like that so easily because he needs the eyesight and he uses it.   Mason: (39:05) And I know what you mean by promise. I mean, you're probably just watching that there's a pattern. If people apply themselves, you see the pattern of improvement. Weaker glasses, time off the myopically looking at a screen or books or video games or whatever it is. Are there any other little cool add-ons that you're like, maybe they're not the Big Kahuna in the protocol, but just little things that help improve? I'm thinking as well, there're a lot of people listening, wanting to... like the prevention. This is just something beautiful, even though you're preventing eyesight from deteriorating or becoming myopic, there's a beautiful... these are all just beautiful things to add into a lifestyle anyway, to keep you sharp and loving life.   Jake Steiner: (39:51) True. You can measure your eyesight. The real starting point... and that's the seven day guide thing, too, the difference between hearing this and being like, "Huh, that's an interesting topic," and then forgetting about it a half hour after you listened to it, and having an experience, is you can measure your eyesight. The muscle spasm I talked about, you can measure it. You can measure your eyesight and you can find out that it's very variable. You can buy or print out an eye chart, hang it up somewhere, measure out the distance that you need to be at the right distance from the chart and see how your eyes... Which line can you read? And then have a four hour Netflix binge and try that same shit again. And you're going to be kind of surprised that you probably can't read that same line anymore.   Jake Steiner: (40:40) That experience of going, "Well crap." Or if you eat a big pizza and drink a Coke and get a giant insulin spike, try to read that chart and see what happens. Or be stressed out and angry and read that chart and see what happens. If you do that and if you get really into it and you just keep a little log, because you're going to forget. What line could you read and what was the connecting... where were you at in that moment? You notice that your eyesight is connected to your diet, is connected to your mood, is connected to your interactions, everything. And if you start doing that... and for example, if somebody wears glasses and their glasses are just giving them perfect vision, you can take them off and the way diopters work, so the strength of the glasses is just a distance measurement.   Jake Steiner: (41:30) And I don't want to get too far into that, but it's just, if you take a book or a screen and you just put it... how close do you have to put it for it to be perfectly sharp? And then how far can you get it from your eyes to where it's still perfectly sharp? And then once you start to see the tiniest bit of blur, measure that distance, however many centimetres, 100 divided by the distance equals diopters. So if you can see 50 centimetres, 100 divided by the 50 is two. You need glasses that are two diopters to have perfect distance vision.   Jake Steiner: (42:06) So if you are a two diopter person, you're going to see the 50 centimetres perfectly. But now eat the pizza or now try to do that in a nice, natural, full spectrum light, you're going to see 60 centimetres. Try to do that in a shitty lit fluorescent room, you're going to see 40 centimetres. The numbers are not exact, but it's going to vary that way. And you're going to be like, "Fluorescent light is shit for my eyes." Because you're going to be able to measure the... And once you get into that rabbit hole, then it's tempting. Because then you're like, "Oh crap. I don't have to go to the optometrist. I don't need to get measurements there. This thing is variable. And it's another way for me to quantify how I'm doing with my body."   Mason: (42:52) And it is all connected. Always. I was curious when you brought up acupuncture, whether you've ever had someone dive in with you about that connection between eyes and sight and muscle tension and the liver much. Because it's like, it's been popping up in my mind a little bit.   Jake Steiner: (43:12) My mom loves acupuncture, which is funny because she's a paediatrician, medical doctor, but she's also into that stuff. With eyesight, everything is connected.   Mason: (43:22) Right, right.   Jake Steiner: (43:26) I've been on podcasts where first the host is like, "Your topic has nothing to do with us." And I'm like, "Body, it's all one thing. It's all connected together." The thing that improves eyesight and makes the eyesight worse is close-up and glasses.   Mason: (43:40) Yeah, right.   Jake Steiner: (43:40) It's the main thing. If you want to fix that stuff and you just want to fix it, that will fix it. But there are lots of other things also. Trauma can absolutely affect your eyesight. I do blood tests two, three, four times a year because all this stuff works together. If you have messed up blood values, if you're lacking stuff, it's going to affect your eyesight also, definitely. Everything plays together. I'm just focusing on what's the way that's just going to fix it for most people in most cases.   Mason: (44:13) Yeah, absolutely. And I like it. I get asked about eyesight a lot and I know there is that connection of the liver Meridian ending at the eyes and sight is that sense connected to the liver. But at the same time, sometimes I get people reporting an improvement in vision when they get onto certain liver herbs, but it's not... it's kind of like, "Yeah, but I can't..." What you were saying at the beginning, where's the actual, down to the wire, causality and do I know there's actually going to be enough of a connection there or there's not going to be all these other things in the way for most people that you're really not going to get that much improvement if you just get onto the herbs, but-   Jake Steiner: (44:52) But try it. But try it. You know what I mean? Address the big elephant first. If you have screen addiction, no amount of herbs are going to fix your eyes. But if you're taking care of every else, I'm all for it. You know what I mean? Because especially because you can measure and you can experience and you can go, "Okay, what does this do?" And I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm a big fan because I'm into this topic. If you've got herbs for eye stuff, I'm like, "Send me herbs, I'll try some."   Mason: (45:18) I'll send you the Beauty Blend because that's the only one with schizandra and goji in there that are known to bring brightness to the eyes. They go through and get the chi of the liver flowing. And a lot of the time what creates the tension is an excess of liver yang. And if there's an excess of liver yang, then what is regulated by that, the whole liver [inaudible 00:45:40] system is the peripheral nervous system as well. And so you're going to get a tightening up through the entire nervous system, lose that smooth flow in the muscle and a smooth flow of chi. And I can see you, there's probably a connection there with tension in the eye, but... Yeah?   Jake Steiner: (45:55) That and floaters, people bring up a lot. People get floaters, don't know if [inaudible 00:46:01]... And especially in the forum, because we have such a wide audience I'm boring, because I'm just like, "Just give me the thing that works and how simple can I make it?" But at the same time I'm interested in these things, A, and B, there's a lot of audience that leans into a different direction from here than I do. You know what I mean? You talk to me about chi, I'm like, "I don't know. I don't know."   Mason: (46:28) I don't know either. I think it's just fun thinking about it. [inaudible 00:46:30] with herbs, I don't offer any of these formulas, but just that the [Plerium 00:46:36] blends, like Free and Easy Wanderer, these are the herbs that smooth out the flow within the liver. That's the one I think for people, but like these plerium blends and formulas, I think would be really nice addition for a lot of people, especially to hopefully smooth out some of the excessive emotions that come out of the liver sometimes or with anything. In any process like this, I'm sure you see people go through all manner of emotional processes going through this.   Jake Steiner: (47:04) For sure. And that's why I'm like, especially in the forum, there's a lot of people who are a lot more into this side of the topic who would love that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? And I'm super open-minded about, "I'm not right, I just figured out one little sliver of one little thing. You have a whole other thing." And I'm learning. There's so much interesting stuff that people figured out that isn't mainstream, isn't easily packaged and sold in every grocery store. You know what I mean? I like to make that connection. So if you have stuff like that, I'm always interested.   Mason: (47:40) Definitely send you some Beauty Blend, man, couple of other things. But I mean, as I said, I like having this, a podcast resource like this, because when we get asked, it makes me feel so much more secure and comfortable going, "Yeah, hit this first." And then you start adding in all the other things and it just becomes this massive bonus. But there's an actual technique here that's somewhat proven, anecdotally even, with tens of thousands of people at this point, which is nice to have anecdotal evidence getting to those numbers. And then can't hurt, can't hurt, add the Beauty Blend in there, get the liver chi flowing. The ancient Taoists said that this is how you keep the eyes sparkling. It sounds fun. Other good shit's going to happen when you're doing it anyway, so just go and enjoy yourself.   Jake Steiner: (48:32) And also speaking of herbs, I have a house in Myanmar, which is currently not in a good situation, but they only do herb stuff. They use this stuff on their skin, right? They draw these circles on their skin with bark, it's bark from some kind of tree. You do not get sunburned. Your skin doesn't even get dark. Everybody uses it. It is some magic stuff. And it would put sunscreen companies out of business, because it's a tree bark, you just rub it up, you put it on your skin. It looks cool. It keeps your skin smooth. No sunburns.   Mason: (49:08) Wow.   Jake Steiner: (49:09) It is amazing. Yeah. And all Burmese, that's how you can recognise Burmese people in Thailand because they draw these things on themselves. But that's that tree bark. And they've got this for all kinds of different things there. And because I live there and I have a fully off-grid house, and when I get... something funky happens, they always bring out some herbs and the herbs always work. So I've learned like there's certainly an art there that's getting lost a little bit in our pharmaceutical world.   Mason: (49:39) Yeah. It's called thanaka, T-H-A-N-A-K-A, apparently.   Jake Steiner: (49:45) Yeah, that's right.   Mason: (49:45) Is that it?   Jake Steiner: (49:45) Yeah, yeah, yeah.   Mason: (49:46) Yeah, cool.   Jake Steiner: (49:46) Yep.   Mason: (49:47) Looks amazing. I mean, I'd love a lot of those... Yeah, look at it. Look at the designs that they pop on their checks, everyone going like... Yeah, if you just write, if you write thanaka, or I've just written Myanmar bark sunscreen and then gone to images. Beautiful. It looks great. That's the goal. Because here, that's what we do with... we had an auntie up north who's from [Moranbah 00:50:13], and she's just like, "Yeah, use ochre. That's what you guys should be using. You just put ochre all over you." And so when got it, just pop that on our daughter. It doesn't like... sunscreen, we weren't going to use like a zinc based anyway, but it's so more badass as well.   Jake Steiner: (50:28) That stuff is cool. And people use it. This is not an old ancient thing that is no longer in use. Right now, you go to some island in Thailand, you want to figure out which are Thai people are Burmese, look for the ones that have things drawn on them. It's cute.   Mason: (50:44) Man, this has been so rad. I hope people jump over to your website. Easiest way for them to find you?   Jake Steiner: (50:52) Endmyopia.org.   Mason: (50:56) Endmyopia.org. You do have a crap load of resources on there.   Jake Steiner: (51:03) It's many years of stuff.   Mason: (51:07) I can tell. A lot of resources. There's apps there. Gosh, I mean, Shortsighted Podcast in there. I mean, yeah, I can see you've got a Discord going as well. Is that still happening?   Jake Steiner: (51:23) Yeah. A lot of that stuff is community stuff. I'm not on Discord much, but somebody said we need Discord, and so yeah, they're talking on there.   Mason: (51:33) It's a movement, you can tell. You've started a movement, which is awesome. It must feel good. I hope you feel good.   Jake Steiner: (51:39) Yeah. I feel like an imposter mostly. It's weird for me to be the... You know what I mean? If I had a cool beard for a start, then you know-   Mason: (51:47) Maybe. Maybe that's the first... because it's the same thing. In all only imposter stuff it's the same as the eyesight, it's just environmental. It's just what you're putting around yourself and what you're saying to yourself, it's a process. I kind of still feel it. I recently just figured my way through it and finding my place in the whole herbal world and the health education world. I had to just embrace a little bit more of my full spectrum of self. Like a full spectrum of eyesight. I had to kind of get a little bit more into my comedy career, put less pressure on myself to kind of be a know-it-all in the health and herbal space. And I feel like I'm slowly have an appropriate... All of a sudden that impostor feeling has an evolution to being a much more appropriate emotion or feeling that actually gets some momentum behind me rather than... I definitely know that feeling of being stuck in that... Excessively.   Jake Steiner: (52:41) If you have suggestions, I always welcome them because that's definitely a weird problem I have. Because it feels like I can't possibly be that dude. You know what I mean? There's a lot of jokes on the site. I constantly joke about my imaginary beard and being the last living eye guru. Because I'm like, how is it possible? It continues to be the thing and I like talking about it and I think it's important. But at the same time it should be somebody more wise or with the right titles or something.   Mason: (53:08) Yeah. For me, I was always in the back of my mind... it wasn't an actual threat. I was just like, I was worried, I knew the things, I could call the things out about myself that were gaps in my knowledge and where I knew that potentially someone could... there was a in my armour and someone could call out my lack of experience in this element of what I do or in this element of what I do. And I've had it in the past when I've been a bit more overt and bravado about my expertise, which weren't there and had that person who was a big gift now, but you know, kind of whack me down on social media and be like, "Here, how about some facts? You want to back it up? You want to be able to do this, then let's go at it." And I'd get really angry and, "How dare you pull me down?" And then my housemate at the time was like, I was telling her, I was venting about it. And she was like, "Oh wow, this guy's really helping you sharpen your pencil. You're really reacting to this and showing your hole." And I was like, "Oh, shit. Yeah, they're definitely... Yes."   Jake Steiner: (54:09) I love those. I love those. Especially in the forum. I don't sensor stuff. So when people come and say... There's a thread in there now of some guy who said he got massive amounts of floaters and I didn't say it and it was because of me, and I welcome those because whatever my imposter feeling is, I'm like, please do point it out. Just bring it. You know what I mean? Because it's such a weird topic. Nobody needs these things in front of their eyes and it makes us less... it makes us timid and it makes us hide behind screens and books and it stops us from expressing and experiencing and I am not the dude to tell that story, in a way. Right? Because I'm just a dude.   Mason: (54:51) Well, but you obviously are. I don't know. I reckon you're probably on the path anyway and something will pop eventually. Because you're calling yourself out. As long as you're calling yourself out in a progressive... in a way that it progresses forward. That was my big thing. I started pulling all the herbalists and the acupuncturists onto the podcast and I just-   Jake Steiner: (55:10) Oh, cool.   Mason: (55:11) ... started owning my position. I started owning my shortcomings, all the things I thought if I kind of admitted to and mentioned that everyone would just go, "You're a fraud." And everyone was like, "Yeah, we know mate. We know you're only this." And I'm just like, "Yeah, I'm just the herbal scallywag and I'm making my own formulations. And I work within tonic herbs, which are super easy." Everyone can do it. I have a certain amount of experience, I understand patterns, I understand how to formulate, I understand how to source because that's just my passion. I used to call myself out in a really self-deprecating way and I used to kind of joke about it, I'd be like, "Yeah, I can't do this and I can't do that."   Mason: (55:49) Now, I feel like I'm more in a position where I'm just like, " I need to put boundaries up, need to have good boundaries around my capacity and make sure that I state what my capacity is and my want. I'm not going to go and study more. So don't expect any more from me than this." And then I just kind of went into cultivation and within those boundaries, I just owned it. This is who I am, having so much fun doing this and I'll go to the experts and I just started... like you do as well I guess, just started, "Well, I don't know that bit. I actually don't know how to answer that bit, but I'm going to start pulling in experts and start getting really curious."   Mason: (56:28) I started getting really curious and started becoming a student again. I really owned my expertise and what I do well, and it's like, "Screw it. I'm going to own it." I'm sure I can feel a lot of relatedness with you there. And then going off and going, "I'm going to continue to learn." And yeah, I'm just going to continue to learn. Be a student.   Jake Steiner: (56:45) I like that. And I like that, especially because I think we spend so much time online with these things is trying to figure out where's the scam, where's the catch? That's always my first thing. I'm like, "Ah, what is this crap about now?" I really like when somebody goes, "Let me just tell you." Like, when you said this is my expertise and this is the limit of it, I'm like, I'm already a fan. Because you're not forcing me to go find a whole... because you're not happy until you go, "What's the real..." Everything has a certain amount of bullshit in it. I do that probably too much, because I'm probably... People who randomly show up at the website are like, "What is with this fool?" But I'm like the librarian of this thing. People bring what works and what doesn't work and I just collect it all and I put it all in one place and that's it, right?   Mason: (57:41) I feel you, man. It's a trippy feeling knowing that there's like... when you start getting like website traffic and you start knowing there's heaps more people having that initial reaction, "What the hell is this?" I tripped out about that a lot and wanted to control that a lot. That's kind of shifted. I just started getting into more comedy stuff on my personal Instagram, and that kind of, for some reason that just alleviated the pressure valve for me. And that was where I got to practise going, "All right, they're going to come and they're going to see this, and this is the one thing they're going to see and they might not get the whole backstory and I haven't had time to explain myself and that..." I'm going, "All, I'm going to just accept it. This is me being vulnerable." And so I just started becoming really prolific, for me anyway, prolific in that rather than perfect. And it-   Jake Steiner: (58:32) I want to see that. I got to go check that out. I like it. Yeah.   Mason: (58:38) masonjtaylor.com. No, masonjtaylor, @masonjtaylor. Masonjtaylor.com, don't go there anyone, that website is very out of date.   Jake Steiner: (58:45) That's cool. I like that. Especially when you're like, "I didn't explain it clearly." I think there's something to just letting go of some of the veil of perfection and just being like, "I'm making a thing and it's an ongoing experiment in evolving it, making it better."   Mason: (59:04) I think it'd be really nice for it to happen more and more. Because I mean, you've provided so much, it'd be nice to see... it would have to go. I'm sure every business or offering or charity or whatever it is, it's always going hit a point where it's like, "All right, things need to change. And it needs to take on a new way of being... new way of being structured or professional," or whatever it is. I can imagine yours is with that many people behind it, you could step it up and take it to another level. It's just going, "All right, cool. Do we just sit, let it be here or do we jump into the unknown once again and take it forward?" Either way, I think the resources and the offering is magic. It'd be awesome to see it continue to evolve and grow into the world so people can have that place and make this more of a norm, make the knowledge more of a norm and the insight that you can actually restore your vision, a norm as well.   Jake Steiner: (01:00:02) Yeah. Just be happy, the people that listen to your podcast and enjoy your approach, to maybe look at their eyes and go, "Maybe I'll take care of these things a little bit."   Mason: (01:00:16) We're doing all HR stuff and at the moment, like that's where our structure is coming in, bringing more and more love to everyone working in the business and this is the one of the resources... we have blue blocker glasses and things that people can wear, but just start putting this... because we're growing, put this into the fabric of the... a bit more into the fabric of the workflow. And for everyone, taking pride and this leads a little distinctions of how to ensure that our eyeball doesn't become elongated and we don't start deteriorating the health of the fluid within it, and just these little things you've mentioned, it's just like, bang, I'm on. I'm on. I'm implementing that right now. Some people are wearing glasses, I'm going to send them this just as an option. But for those that don't... I feel it right now, I've been staring at the screen all day. I'm like, "Jeez, the blurriness."   Jake Steiner: (01:01:09) Buy an eye chart. Buy an eye chart. Hang it up somewhere in your house, and just mark a spot that's the right distance from it. And sometimes when you walk past it, just stop there and look at it. And start noticing how that goes up and down. Because that prompts action, then you're like, "Well, maybe I'm going to not do four hours, maybe three hours." Because there's also a time where the muscle starts to lock up, for me that is three hours. I spend more than three hours in front of a screen, I can't see the small line on the eye chart anymore.   Mason: (01:01:38) Wow.   Jake Steiner: (01:01:39) The muscle just locked up. And then if I take an hour walk, I can see that line again. So I know what my screen limit is before that muscle just gets stuck for the rest of the day. An eye chart is super handy just as a quick reference of, can you read the thing still or can't you.   Mason: (01:01:56) I mean that immediate feedback, as well. Where do we get the eye chart? Is that just something we purchase in our local area?   Jake Steiner: (01:02:04) Yeah, or you can print it out. I have some somewhere, but I don't know where. It should be easy to get, just buy it online somewhere.   Mason: (01:02:11) We'll have a look, see if we can find it on your site and put it in the resources for the podcast, otherwise like you said, I'm sure it's just one of those things that's easy to order online. But that's good. I'm definitely doi

Ma Thida is a major figure in the struggle for democracy in Myanmar.  A surgeon and writer she was initially happy to go to prison to gain experience to write a prison memoir.  However after years in solitary confinement it was only mindfulness meditation and books she had smuggled into jail that got her through.  She speaks to Earshot for this special series marking the anniverary of PEN International from an undisclosed location she has fled to after the February coup in Myanmar.

Joe Handley leads Asian Access, a ministry to train and equip church leaders—including many working in countries where Christians face persecution for their faith. Listen as Joe shares the story of an imprisoned Christian in Myanmar who found a way to be a blessing, even from inside prison. Joe will also talk about training up leaders in hostile and restricted nations—and especially helping them learn to abide in and rely on Christ. Hear how Christians in Sri Lanka reached out to those opposing them, and the way it opened a door for the gospel in a formerly-closed village. And learn how the gospel is advancing in India, in spite of persecution. Don't forget: the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, coming up November 7. Get free resources from VOM to help you and your church pray. Never miss an episode of VOM Radio! Subscribe to the podcast.

Adam Alexander is on a mission to save rare vegetables and put them back on menus all over the world. Adam is a seed guardian at the UK's Organic Garden Heritage Seed Library, which has over 500 rare, endangered, local and heirloom vegetable varieties. He has saved over twenty endangered varieties himself, grows around seventy different vegetable varieties every year for collectors, and those keen to conserve genetic food plant diversity. A rare Catalonian pea is just one variety which might otherwise be no more had Adam not intervened. A seed detective, Adam joins the dots on mysteries like why a South American broad bean is meaningful in Myanmar. When he's not in the seed beds Adam is a filmmaker, traveling the world cultivating relationships with growers and vegetables along the way. Adam tells Kathryn he's a pea nut.

“Myanmar people are very resilient,” Meredith Bunn says at the start of the conversation.“They have the older generation who lived through so much already. And very luckily, in a way, those people have explained to them, ‘Well, this is what we used to have to do. Let's do this again.'” As much as Meredith has witnessed countless examples of the Burmese people's courage, she still encounters scenes evoking a horror that is hard to describe. From children so hungry they are literally eating dirt, to young girls mysteriously disappearing, to the military deliberating sending COVID-infected patients into high population areas to intentionally spread the pandemic, to depriving oxygen for infected patients literally suffocating with the illness. It doesn't end. As someone so deeply connected to a country and a people enduring this suffering, she is clear on who she holds responsible. “I don't hate the Tatmadaw. I don't hate everyone in it. I hate Min Aung Hlaing…I hate the puppets that he has inside.” And while she understands that not every soldier is courageous enough to defect or refuse commands, many are engaging in acts of deliberate cruelty for which there is simply no excuse. While Meredith appreciates any foreigner who has decided to stand with the Burmese people, she has also found herself uncomfortable when those living in safety have arrogantly opined on what Burmese activists should or should not be doing to respond to the carnage there, made even worse if they have not researched the situation and show little interest in listening empathetically to better understand the context. She is equally concerned by what she characterizes as “voyeurism,” beyond just opinionated judgments. With all this, Meredith certainly has her hands full, but her mind and her heart are clear, and the Burmese people are fortunate to have such a person on their side. Support this podcast

Đài Loan lo Trung Quốc cản trở việc gia nhập hiệp định CPTPP; Cao ủy LHQ giục quốc tế nỗ lực hơn về Myanmar 'trước khi quá muộn'; Các nước đang phát triển khẩn nài các nước giàu chia sẻ vaccine; Việt Nam lên tiếng việc Trung Quốc cử máy bay vận tải quân sự cỡ lớn ra Trường Sa.

World News in 7 minutes. Friday 24th September 2021.Help us with our testimonials page! send7.org/testimonialsTranscript at: send7.org/transcripts Today: UN general assembly. US donates doses. Argentina relaxes. Japan next PM? Myanmar fighting. Sri Lanka shaman dies. Switzerland gay marriage referendum. France Australia relations. African leaders criticize. Morocco weird dinosaur.Send your opinion or experience by email to podcast@send7.org or send an audio message at send7.org for us to broadcast. With Stephen Devincenzi and Khadija Tahir.SEND7 (Simple English News Daily in 7 minutes) tells news in intermediate English. Every day, listen to the most important stories in the world in slow, clear English. This easy English news podcast is perfect for English learners, people with English as a second language, and people who want to hear a fast news update from around the world. Learn English through hard topics, but simple grammar. SEND7 covers all news including politics, business, natural events and human rights. For more information visit send7.org/contact

In this week's show, UN Secretary-General António Guterres talks about Afghanistan and other big problems that require international cooperation to fix them; details from UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet on Myanmar's continuing spiral of violence, and corruption in South Sudan that's impacting terribly on the country's people – although there is a little bit of good news from there too, thanks to a UN mission UNMISS initiative, as we'll hear.

This week, we got the chance to sit down with avid angler and adventurer Jeremy Wade, whose 40-year-long career proves that good things come to those who bait (okay, that's the last of the fishy puns, we promise). We chat about his new show Unknown Waters with Jeremy Wade, in which he explores river systems in Iceland and The Amazon to find some pretty elusive fish.Unknown Waters with Jeremy Wade premieres Monday, Sep. 27 at 10pm SGT in Singapore on National Geographic and will be available on Disney+ Singapore on Nov. 3.Other stories include:Indonesian influencer arrested in Bali for masturbating live on social media | Arrest of Thai OnlyFans porn couple sparks online fury | Love napping on the bus? A Hong Kong travel agency has a tour for that | Graft convict smears feces on face of blasphemy suspect in Indonesian jail | Malaysia among 55 countries where authorities investigate social media posts: report | So what was so bad about martial law? | Quit clowning: School sorry for terrorizing Singapore with child-luring clowns | Myanmar actress held by junta wins ‘best performance' at German film festThe Coconuts Podcast delivers impactful, weird, and wonderful reporting by our journalists on the ground in eight cities: Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Manila, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Yangon, and Bali. Listen to headline news and insightful interviews on matters large and small, designed for people located in – or curious about – Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

Myanmar crisis escalating towards civil war, warns UN rights chief   G20 need to scale up food aid to Afghanistan's rural population  South Sudan plagued by violence and corruption, Human Rights Council hears 

In September-October 2021, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts exploring the role that research plays in understanding and advocating for human rights in Southeast Asia. Maternal and child health is the cornerstone of a life lived healthily. Healthy women grow healthy children, who then go on to have healthy children themselves. In resource poor settings, healthy families can influence the wider community. In this episode, Dr Thushara Dibley is joined by Associate Professor Camille Raynes-Greenow to discuss how research focussed on interventions in the (mostly) perinatal period can improve outcomes for women and children. Focusing primarily on Myanmar, Associate Professor Raynes-Greenow highlights the universal appeal of research that aims to improve maternal and newborn health, but also reveals that it can encounter challenges in contexts of severe wealth inequalities and political censorship. About Camille Raynes-Greenow: Camille is a perinatal epidemiologist, at The Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney. Her research aims to reduce the burden of perinatal morbidity and mortality and improve the health of women and babies particularly of those most vulnerable. Camille was part of the research team that first identified the risk of maternal supine sleeping for stillbirth in Australia. The project funded through the CRE that Camille is working on, is aiming to improve health literacy around reducing stillbirth risk for women not born in Australia. Camille is also leading a large cluster randomised controlled trial in Bangladesh of an intervention to reduce household air pollution to assess the effect on pregnancy outcomes, particularly stillbirth and neonatal mortality. Camille is Director of the Masters of Global Health program, and co-leads the Global Health and Nutrition Research Collaboration in the Sydney School of Public Health at The University of Sydney. For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre's website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

First, Shubhajit Roy joins host Snigdha Sharma to discuss the Quad Summit and why there are talks of the AUKUS pact impacting it. Shubhajit also explains why the the SAARC foreign ministers' meeting was cancelled this year.Next, Anand Mohan J takes us through the big takeaways from the police's chargesheet in the case related to the murder and rape of a 9 year-old Dalit girl in Delhi. (13:43)And finally, we go over how a Myanmar town near the Indian border is seeing an exodus as thousands flee fighting in the country. (18:58)

Dr. Monica Gandhi toured the landscape with us. The recent recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom has bipartisan roots, in dissatisfaction with the “lockdown mentality” that closed playgrounds and parks, and kept San Francisco's schools shuttered for 18 months. It was to a significant degree a “referendum on the illiberal liberals.” Once “the power of vaccines” came into force, however, California pioneered mandates, passports, and expanded testing; achieved over 80% vaccine coverage; and drove cases and deaths to exceptional lows. The future? “Immunity is the path out” to achieve control over Covid-19. Big concerns? Confused messaging around boosters terrifies the vaccinated and makes the unvaccinated believe less in vaccines. We are also witnessing rising intolerance: in our politically polarized debates over schools, vaccines, masks, and boosters, scientific discourse has lost balance and nuance.   Dr.Monica Gandhi is Professor of Medicine and Associate Chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital. She also serves as the medical director of the HIV Clinic at SFGH, the famous “Ward 86.”

We're doing something different this week: host Ryan Heath will be bringing you snapshots from the field at the United Nations General Assembly, where prime ministers rub elbows with the world's biggest business and nonprofit leaders. Starting Tuesday morning, Ryan and producer Olivia Reingold will share quick dispatches with global insiders during the most important week of their year. Ryan Heath is the host of the "Global Insider" podcast and newsletter.  Olivia Reingold produces “Global Insider.”  Irene Noguchi edits “Global Insider” and is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.  Linda Thomas-Greenfield is the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.   You can subscribe to Ryan's “Global Insider” newsletter here. And check out POLITICO's other newsletters:  China Watcher West Wing Playbook Playbook Nightly Corridors EU's Brussels Playbook Morning Tech Morning Energy Weekly Shift

Nearly all U.S. Ambassador posts are unfilled. As the Biden administration struggles to get nominees confirmed, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., has been thrust into the spotlight while leading Presidential delegations around the world. She opens up to host Ryan Heath about the possibility of the U.S. recognizing the Taliban, the Ted Cruz holdup, and what “gumbo diplomacy” really means. Ryan Heath is the host of the "Global Insider" podcast and newsletter.  Olivia Reingold produces “Global Insider.”  Irene Noguchi edits “Global Insider” and is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.  Linda Thomas-Greenfield is the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.   You can subscribe to Ryan's “Global Insider” newsletter here and Alex's “National Security Daily” newsletter here.  And check out POLITICO's other newsletters:  China Watcher West Wing Playbook Playbook Nightly Corridors EU's Brussels Playbook Morning Tech Morning Energy Weekly Shift

Two governments claim to run Myanmar. Will the United Nations accept Myanmar's widely despised military regime or will it recognize a new revolutionary government that has massive public support? Also, Finland has two official languages: Finnish and Swedish. Now, the mayor of Helsinki wants to declare the capital an English-language city, but not everyone agrees. And renowned soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the world's most physically fit athletes. Ronaldo's clean-food living has inspired his fellow players to skip dessert on at least one occasion. 

Protests are the the biggest show of defiance since the militant group took power in Afghanistan. Also: supporters of Myanmar's deposed civilian government call for a mass uprising against the military government, and Bitcoin becomes joint legal tender in El Salvador.