Podcasts about so andy

The Cubs unveiled a haphazard afterthought of a Hall of Fame, using mostly work done by other people that nobody even knew had been done, and that seemed right up our alley. So Andy and Mike D. decided to break down the 56 inductees, and surely we put more effort into this process than any of them did. From King Kelly to Lee Smith and everybody in between, join us for a look at former Cubs' great, plus Don Kessinger and Glen Beckert. We try to figure out what the process they used to pick the Hall of Famers, predict the next class and try to figure out if they'll do the obvious with Sammy Sosa or just make things worse, like always. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/desipio/message

Andy Heller has been investing in real estate since the 1990s. His career started when he attended a seminar on how to purchase properties from a foreclosure list. However, that strategy was very taxing emotionally. So Andy and his partner modified their initial plan, opting to work with banks once the property has been foreclosed. And if they couldn’t find a buyer quickly enough, they offered a lease option. This strategy was much easier to execute. Moreover, it was scalable. Listen to the episode to learn how Andy Heller makes money flipping real estate in detail. Andy Heller  Real Estate Background: Owner of Regular Riches 30+ years of real estate experience Bought hundreds of properties Based in San Francisco, CA Say hi to him at: www.regularriches.com      Click here to know more about our sponsors RealEstateAccounting.co thinkmultifamily.com/coaching  Best Ever Tweet: “You can’t always assume you’re going to buy a property and flip it because a buyer may not walk in the door. You’ve got to have a backup” - Andy Heller.

After year off, the PGA Tour returns to New Orleans and while there may no longer be walk-up music at this event, the listeners demand that this annual game goes on. So Andy makes a playlist of songs hinting at the inane, insider, and downright specious. Play along as Brendan attempts to guess what Andy is getting at with some of these song choices for a few SGS favorites on Tour. This comes after they run through the schedule for the week, with the LA Open on the LPGA winning event of the week honors. Andy dishes on some of the great features to watch for at Wilshire. There’s some intel from the first ever Euro Tour event in Gran Canaria about roads running through the course that will kick balls hundreds of yards away from where they land. There’s also ample chatter about some of the puzzling partnerships this week at Zurich.

Why Having Someone Else Fund Your Deals is Smart - We Do it Too (LA 1472) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Howdy. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: I think it's sunny is the staple. Jill DeWit: Just leave it as sunny. [crosstalk 00:00:17]. Steven Butala: But it is sunny here, more than California. Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Butala: Today, jill and I talk about why having someone else's deal, why having someone else fund your deal is actually a good idea. In fact, we do it all the time. We actually seek out partners to fund some of our deals, and the short version is, it depends on the deal. Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. And if you're already a member, join us on Discord, it's worth it. Jill DeWit: All right. So Andy wrote, and there's a note here that he's not a member, "In the process of browsing counties, I often come across areas where sorting low to high brings up similarly priced lots, but the acreage of the lots varies wildly. For example, I'm currently looking at a zip code in X state where half acre lots and 20 acre lots all seem to be in the 10 to $20,000 price range. I tend to avoid areas like this because of the huge discrepancy and it throws off my confidence in pricing. It would feel unwise of me to mail the half acre lots, offering 3 to $4,000, and then go on and mail 20 acre lots and offer the same amount. Any thoughts on how divided areas like this or how to get a better read? Do you ever just blanket mail a county with one offer price and then disregard acreage? Any thoughts? I appreciate it." Steven Butala: Always. What's important here is to get the mail out. This discrepancy in data, get used to it. This is one big... If you're a data person in another field or you're a retired pilot, or you got 30 years in public accounting, or you're a mechanical engineer, maybe you're retired. You know what looking at a data set like this and how frustrating it can be. And you've been doing it for decades. Welcome to Land Academy and welcome to real estate investing in general. Andy's already light years ahead of the clubhouse discussion that Jill was involved in this morning. Whereas they drive around and they'd look for dilapidated houses. They write down the address, they find the owner's name and they send them a kind little note saying, "Your house is a pile of crap. I'm happy to... Why don't you give me a call? I'll take it off your hands." Steven Butala: So Andy's already looking at data sets. He's realizing the data's not perfect. It's a little bit wonky and he's trying to figure it out and get into that real estate market through data, not through the actual real estate. So, if you're new and you're listening to these sentences that I'm saying, and the light bulb's going off over your head, this is for you. And expect some weird data because I know exactly where he's talking about him in New Mexico, and I know how I would do it, but it's all based on experience. So honestly, my opinion on this is just based on... Jill and I've done thousands of deals in New Mexico. So, in the beginning, this is frustrating for me, but not really. If you can crack through this data and figure it out, get it in a spreadsheet, go price per acre. Steven Butala: You're going to find similarities. You're going to dig through that data and scrub yourself down to a point where you actually do have confidence that this 20 acre property in this zip code is actually probably worth $12,000. So I'm going to go out. I'm going to offer everybody 2000 bucks. And so you have to just deconstruct the whole thing, chill out, get a good cup of coffee, make yourself a sandwich, turn all the lights off, spend three hours in a dark room,

Episode 026: Nerd Skool: Falcon & Winter Soldier Episode 2: Andy is Professor Seer. So Andy was correct about so much: Isaiah Bradley, Battlestar, Flag Smashers, etc. Andy does some more Tommy Lee Jones. Nerds love to "Well Actually" the heck out of somebody. The faculty brings Joe up to speed on all this. Part of the Queen City Podcast Network: www.queencitypodcastnetwork.com. Music by DJones. Buy his music here: https://djoneshiphop.bandcamp.com/

Be sure to connect with Anthony over at his website here: https://www.anthonymeindl.com/ Brandon Handley 0:00 4321 Hey there spiritual dope I am on today with Anthony mondo. He is an award winning director, writer, actor, acting coach, entrepreneur, author and inspirational speaker. As an acting teacher. He's known for revolutionising a more modern understanding of acting training. He found it Anthony mine does actor workshop in 1998 and now has the largest scene studio study studio in Los Angeles and locations and nine other cities around the world, New York, London, Vancouver, Toronto, Atlanta, Santa Fe, Sydney, Chicago and Cape Town. As a filmmaker Anthony has received a number of awards and acclaim. His latest feature film, where do we go from here is available on Hulu. The film premiered at outfest won Best Screenplay award at q films Long Beach and the Jury Award at nycs East Village queer Film Festival. He's the author of five books, including the bestsellers at left brain turn right and book the fucking job. his memoir, you knew when you were to release in September, which I got? Yeah, that's how we connected. And thanks for being here. I'm super excited. Anthony Meindl 1:09 Yeah, my gosh, I was like gonna fall asleep during that intro Jesus. My Suppose, Brandon Handley 1:17 you know, I had to cut some things out. I was like, I was like, is this gonna I wanted to include though your I wanted to include? For sure your you know your film, right? Because I think that's, that's pretty big. Right. And that's got to feel good. Especially going through your memoir, it's got to feel really good for you to have that out and have won those awards. So yeah, thanks for being here. Anthony Meindl 1:38 Well, thanks for having me, Brandon. Like, I mean, I don't know how spiritually dope I'm going to be today. But I will try to be my dopest. And we'll Brandon Handley 1:45 find out we'll find out. Yeah, so how I like to start these right is, you know, universe speaks to us, right. And this podcast amplifies what we're saying. And there's gonna be one specific listener out there today, that's going to hear the message coming from you. That's through source. What is it? Anthony Meindl 2:08 What's the message? Yeah. You know, I think acceptance is really a very strong word. And really is to me, the walk, we're all walking on life, right? Like, because in life, because at the end of the day, there's nothing else right? Even if we fight against, like, we can use COVID as an example, even if we fight against COVID it is what it is. And it's here. And, you know, if everybody looks at their own journey, the things that they've maybe railed against, or fought against, is oftentimes like a misuse of energy because, or maybe it's necessary then to get to that place of surrender, or acceptance or letting go or, you know, so I think that the, the point that life is often trying to show us is how do we exist with what is and fighting against it is what causes a lot of suffering. When I'm not, you know, when I teach, or I talk about these things, I'm not saying I'm the master of it. I mean, I definitely know these things, more than just being concepts. I do practice them in my life, but I get triggered and challenged. And it's it is also what it is, you know, I went for a walk yesterday, and I heard a little girl, she was like, near her fence, and she just shouted, Let it go, let it go. And I was like, Oh, my God, this is a sign from the universe because I was in my head about stuff. And I was like, This, is it accepting and letting go letting these burdens go? They're a burden, because we make them so often, you know what I mean? Brandon Handley 3:42 Absolutely not. I love it. Right. So acceptance and surrender, I think are some of the big ones there. And the idea of COVID is here, right? Like this is this is what are you going to do about it? Right? And if you don't have an impact, like, if you can't impact it, then just just let it be. Right. So let's, let's dig in to your, well, you know, what, actually, to it reminds me of one of the lines in your books to write of the I guess there was some, you know, spiritual master, who was a master, but he's like, I don't want to die. Right, right. Like and so just like you're saying, like, even even though you are, you know, novice Dave itches, right? Like, hey, you know, everybody's fine. And I feel good, but there's still gonna be the days that you get angered. So talk to us a little bit about that. So knowing that, you know, all these things, but still feeling these other feelings. Anthony Meindl 4:36 Yeah, you know, also burning Can I just I want to say one other thing about acceptance, because sometimes when people hear that they might mistake. The first meaning of that to them might mean Oh, well, that just means we're supposed to accept injustice or accept. You know, people dying of COVID No, no, no, it's not about inactivity. It's not About inaction. It's not about pretending that something isn't there. It's really about having this awareness that I think the point about acceptance is we have these constructs in our mind constantly about what we think life should be. And in particular what our lives should be, when I get married, it will be this, when I get successful, it will be that or today, I should be having this because I want blah, blah, blah. And then when that doesn't happen, it creates so much strife and internal and sometimes external conflict, right. And so a more Buddhist understanding of acceptance, when I say that word is understanding that this is what it is. And then from this point, how do we invite that thing in to be a part of something that we also have to deal with? Because it's happening? I actually think it's the rejection of things that cause us to be in so much pain, right? Like, whether it's the social justice movement, or things that we climate change, things that we have not addressed, eventually are going to make us contend with these things. So I just want to make sure that acceptance doesn't mean like, pass this pass entity. And I think that also leads to the question just asked is, like, I think, I think we battle our ego. And I think that ego is necessary. It's part of what gives us the distinction of being in this body. But we also are something other than I always love the iceberg analogy, right? Like two thirds of the iceberg is under the water that we don't see. And we only see a third of that. And so that's like, maybe comparable to ego, right? Like we were missing the the soul of the spirit that is hidden from us. And so we're operating from just what we see all the time. Brandon Handley 6:50 Well, yeah, it's funny, you bring that up? Because that's it exactly. I think I had this conversation twice, yesterday, once with my wife and another with a client. Just the whole iceberg analogy. I mean, one part, right, you don't see all the all the struggle that goes into what's on the exterior. Also, you know, the reverse thing being happiness precedes happiness. Right? So like, what's inside here? shows up outside there, right? But from the outside, say, you're looking at me, and you're like, you know, he's got all the things. And he did it by those actions. But that's not really it wasn't those actions. It was like the intention behind those actions. It was, you know, the thoughts and the feelings, right? That kind of built up to all those. But I love I love though, you know, acceptance is not passive, right? acceptance is, like you're saying invited in. And I also like, the idea of the the things that we're pushing away are kind of taking all the energy away from us, right? Have you? What's your take on Shadow Work? Have you done Shadow Work is that something is running with? Anthony Meindl 8:05 interesting that you say that? Because I, in my teaching of actors, right? I I've often talked about the shadow self. And I've given many lessons on like, light and, and shadow and, and without going into too much detail. But somebody wants to do some time came up to me and said, Do you do Carl young? Is it young work that you do, you know, young Ian work? And I was like, No, I've never I mean, I've been to therapy. And I've read Carl Jung, but I don't really remember it. Right. And, and she said, because this is very young in what you're doing. It's all he was all about shadows, the shadow self. And, and so I mean, not consciously, you know, I think I tap into the universal pneus of things when I teach, like, a lot of people are like, were you ever in a and I was like, I wasn't I'm not I don't drink, you know, but like, I definitely tap into the principles of sort of, I think, these universal spiritual messages. And, but I mean, I think that's a great segue that we all are channelers at some level, and that the universal principles are alive within all of us. And they're, you know, encoded in us. And they're also decoded, if that's the right word, like, each person interprets the information differently. And I think, again, to have a practice that helps us have access to that more often is kind of part of being here on the planet. Brandon Handley 9:31 What's your biggest one acting or do you have something else? Right? Anthony Meindl 9:34 No, it's interesting, because when I when I work with actors, Brandon, I definitely feel like I channel like I go to I mean, that's it's such a, whatever that word means to people, but I definitely am. So in the moment. I don't know what I say. Oftentimes, like today I was coaching somebody and he could see here I just, he was like, Oh my god, you got to write that down. I was like, I don't know what I said that he would tell Really good. Because I was like, it's brilliant. Because I don't think I'm saying it's right. And the person meeting the moment and me with them observing it gives the insight as to how to unlock the person. And so that is a lot of shadow stuff, too, is like, I do think it's scary. But I think COVID is a great reminder, going into the underbelly of stuff that is very scary and confrontational is necessary for us to get to the other side of what is our purpose? Why are we here? What is this mean? Who are we like, but but if we, if we continue to go on living, like I think, especially as we had been, I think we're, we're really asleep at the wheel. You know, what I mean? Brandon Handley 10:47 Not 100%, I, you know, I hate to say that, you know, with with all the deaths, and all the lock downs and how life is, is a good thing. But like, it's also been kind of this good thing, where now we've got more people who are taking this time to go inside to really take stock of what's important to them, right? The example I use all the time, my wife quit her job, so that we could, you know, homeschool our children so that they weren't exposed to, you know, the possibility, right. And, and there's no need to live in fear. But like, why subject yourself to that possibility when there's an alternative? Right. And and what it's done for us is, bring us closer together as a family really see? What had been put on us x from the exterior, right, and like, so we're doing this from the inside out. Anyway. So, you know, it's been a good thing. And sometimes it's hard to see that right in the middle of it. Right? Anthony Meindl 11:48 Well, when you're in it, for sure. Right? That's comparable to when you're going through a divorce or a breakup or something tragic is happening, and, and you have to hold on, like, I'm always saying, you gotta hold on for dear life while letting go at the same time. Right? It's both. And, and and then I think when you get to the other side, you you are like, Oh, my god that was so essential and necessary. And I think what you're speaking of is absolutely correct. I think, yes. You don't want people to suffer and you don't want, you know, so many lives that were lost. And we also understand that to be from a governmental place, not having things in order, like they could have been like a lot of these deaths could have been prevented. But beyond that, I think I find it interesting that the universe is always course correcting that maybe not at this epic scale that we're experiencing right now. But like an individual experience, like you often find, like tragedy or upset occurs in our lives to wake us up to this other life. Yeah, you know, Brandon Handley 12:51 yeah. 100% So, again, thanks. Thanks for sending me the book, right. Oh, yeah. I love that. I love I love that got the where's it so i got i love that. And, and I really enjoyed, you know, kind of gone through I had no idea what to expect. Right. And, and are to let you know, like, there's so many pieces of it really, really touched me. Right. Just kind of, especially the piece like about your father, even at the beginning. Like there was some great laughs right, like, you getting shoved down the laundry chute. Yeah, I don't want to give too much away. I don't want it too many spoilers, Anthony Meindl 13:26 right. boiler I survived it. Unknown Speaker 13:31 Yeah, right. Brandon Handley 13:32 The there was a lot of fun takeaways. Lots of underlining lots of just kind of, you know, gone through it. And just the way you told the story was a lot of fun. Right? And it wasn't it wasn't, it wasn't boring. Like it was fun, right? And it was it was genuine. And you could tell that it was like 100% you. And so I just want to share that with you because I haven't written an Amazon thing yet. So I'll just have to go back and type this out. Anthony Meindl 14:04 The best review you give me on Amazon was it wasn't boring. Brandon Handley 14:09 Just didn't suck Unknown Speaker 14:11 the way Brandon Handley 14:14 so let's talk a little bit about how you know you went from you've got a couple other you know, bestsellers and you're you know, doing acting and what makes you want to become a writer and then what led you up to saying, hey, now's the time for a memoir. Anthony Meindl 14:28 I know like I do feel I do you have a birthday coming up next week. I feel pretty young to have a memoir. But I you know, I guess we call it a memoir, but it's more short stories of my life. And like, you know, I maintain one of my biggest principles in my teaching for all creatives is that we all have a story. And that story of our life is the greatest expression of art, you know, waiting to be shared with the world. And it manifests differently for each person, right? It could be you're a cook in New York City. Or you're a ballerina, you're an actor, you're a writer, or whatever. And I think the, the interesting thing is the things that we have experienced in our life, at a literal level, and then at an artistic level, are are all essential on the journey of our life. And it's like what you just said, when you're in it, sometimes it's really difficult to see it. But if you look back at the Mosaic, or the jigsaw puzzle of your life, and pieces starting to come together, you see themes, right. And I just for me, in my work with with artists is trying to take that autobiography out into the world in on whatever Canvas, they want to, you know, share it. And for me, it comes in many forms, whether it's the films I'm making, or the writing I'm doing or teaching or acting myself, or, you know, but I think we do do that unconsciously. I'm just trying to, you know, how you engage with the world is a part of your autobiography, it's been influenced by the things that Brandon has experienced how you and your wife make a dinner together. I know, it sounds so highfalutin, but it's not it's really infused with who we are. And I think we and, and I'm not saying these tasks aren't also sometimes mundane. You know, writing is sometimes really boring, and I hate it. But, but I also know that it's, it's purposeful. And so that's what I try to teach people is how to honor their autobiography. Because so many people Brendan, I think your listeners and and like you were saying earlier about people that you know, see the external or we don't, especially in our media obsessed culture, we see somebody who is successful. And we don't, we are only getting like, they're, you know, they're they're opening night, we don't see the dress rehearsal. So we're comparing our lives that we often think is like a train wreck to something that's presented to us as law. And we then then we link, I think, do a snow job on ourselves thinking, I suck, I'm untalented, I'm stupid, I'm not worthy. My story, nobody cares. And that's when I think we, we lose sort of the, I don't know, connection to the magic of our autobiography. We cannot compare. That's just the problem. Brandon Handley 17:19 Right? Right. Well, it's, it's the whole idea and is the cliche, life is what you make it right. Like when you're talking about, hey, when you come into the kitchen, and you're and you're cooking with somebody else, then it, it can be an amazing moment. You can make that a miraculous moment. Or it can be right or it can be like, right, yeah. And so, but in the end there, too, what you're talking about in my mind, right? I love to like, you know, make you purposeful, and living your biography. But you get to this point where you start to, you're like you're talking about why would anybody want to read my thing? Why would anybody want to participate? You're making yourself small in that moment, right? Yeah. And that doesn't serve anybody. Right? Like, where I didn't really find in your memoir, and maybe it's because reading too fast, but I don't really find the space where you decided that acting was kind of like your purpose. And you felt like you needed to be on the stage to share all of who you were. So where was that? Anthony Meindl 18:27 I mean, I maybe, you know, in this, I'm writing other stuff. You know, maybe I will revisit that. Like, I'm just curious. Yeah, no, no, it's a great question. I, because I remember distinctly, I remember hat going out for dinner with my parents and telling them I wanted to be an actor. And, you know, they were like, Huh, but then they were like, Okay, my dad again was like, if that's what you want to do, you know, he was like, go and do it. You know, they've always been really supportive. But I think, I guess in answer to that question, I just have always felt like not an entertainer, but like an expresser. of, of things. And I feel even more than being an actor. I've always been a teacher. Like if I go back and look at my own spiritual life as a child, and like, just the things that I was interested in. I and in my role in the family, I've always been the mediator, even though I'm the youngest one. All my siblings, and my parents kind of come to me as the sort of what did they say? And you know what I need? Right? So it's interesting that I've always kind of, and I was always obsessed, you're too young to know this but all your lives nobody will know this. But when I was in high school, I took this class call. It's so it's so hilarious. Anyway, it was called I, oh, gosh, I think I can or something like it was I can't No, it was called. I can clap. Oh, wow. I hadn't thought about this forever. And it was written by it was a class about having a positive mental attitude about life. And it was the teachings of Zig Ziggler I love Zig. You you've heard of Zig right? I love Brandon Handley 20:03 Yeah. Yeah, I'm newer. Anthony Meindl 20:05 Right? And so born to win. Yes. I will never forget, I was in the 10th grade. And I took I took the class because like, it was a pass fail. And it was I could get out of math and take that class. Right. But something deeper must have made me want to take it. And since then, I've always been obsessed with this sort of, yeah, dawning consciousness of what it means to think our way into the world, you know, not mind over matter. Its mind into matter. You know what I mean? I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Brandon Handley 20:42 I love that. The Zig Zig has a lot of fun. Right. And and I think that he was, he was kind of before his time. Oh, right. In this space, yeah. And this face. And he's actually, that's actually probably how we're talking today to be to be quite honest with you. So it was through a book of his that I read and ended up down this this path. Anthony Meindl 21:07 Oh, see? Yeah, that's, that's funny. It's interesting that you start to find these, you know, connective tissues throughout our lives. Right. And you're right, yeah. That the whole wellness movement and meditation movement, and he was one of the original thought, you know, forward thinking people about, you know, how to live our best life. It's interesting. Yeah. Brandon Handley 21:31 Yeah. So the, the, the, a lot of the a lot of this podcast is based off of, you know, finding your spirituality, right, how you found your spirituality, and how have you leveraged that, like, for your success, or found a more fulfilling life because of it? Right. So why don't we talk a little bit about how you, you know, became the spiritual guy? Anthony Meindl 21:54 Well, you know, I also, I think it's a great moment, Brendon, to tell people like, our spirit is innate. Like, it's, I think, I think, again, with social media and like anything, if we, sometimes when I like, will watch somebody talking about spirituality in a certain way that I like, I sometimes I find it challenging because it can, again, create this sort of schism in ourselves thinking, we're not doing spirituality the right way, or I don't always feel love for God, or mean, or I want to just say, fuck you, you know what I mean? Right, right, right. Oh, that's all that's the real spirit. The real stuff is right. With it, and we our culture, loves to live in this sort of, like, you know, they call it on social media like oh my god, something positivity, like toxic positivity. Yeah, there's Brandon Handley 22:53 that there's that I've got. I've got answers for that, though. Okay, but well, so my answer for the there Yes, there is. Toxic positivity. That's the, you know, like you were talking about earlier, in the acceptance piece is just like, oh, not taking action, right? Same, same thing. But positivity doesn't mean like, hey, everything's fucking great. Positivity simply means we're moving forward, there is a positive space here was like, all this shit just went down. Guess what? We're gonna keep moving through it. Right? And, and the thing that you're talking about here is not in my mind. It's like, the genesis of spiritual dope is that spirituality is gritty, right? Like, there is a certain like, element of, you know, you are washed up, beat up, dried off, and you are coming back together, like kind of, you know, hopefully stronger than you were before, or whatever. But like, you get to it, you get through a certain point in a degree. It doesn't have to be like that. But then here's what happens. people forgot like, who they were, like, you know, maybe two months ago, right? Like, you were the person like two months ago, like, you know, I don't know what I see some I saw somebody like saying, Hey, you know, we used to, I used to, you know, do cocaine and ecstasy and lick like, whatever off my wife's nipples or whatever. Now we're getting mad at each other because I lied to the dog was a meme that I saw. Yeah. So spirituality is just that they're like, you forget, like, where you came from? You're like, hey, yeah, you know, you did all those fucking things. And you were, nobody's saying or even. Not a mess now. Right? But you've got like, I love the moment. So share the moment where you truly, at least in the book, right, you connected like with spirituality right before a book fell on you. Anthony Meindl 24:35 Yeah, I think like what we're talking about, of like, you know, grappling with, again, the questions why we're here. How do we, how do I make meaning of this life? And there's got to be something more right. And I was always searching with those things. And the shorts or I had an acting teacher who asked me Do I meditate after a scene one time and I was like, No, and she's like, and I literally had, like, No, I mean, grapple with these things. But I didn't have an outward process or practice of spirituality, right? She's like, I want you to start meditating. And I was like, how and she's like, I don't know, take a candle do what you ever want. So I started with, you know, I was just like, oh, and I was like, This is so boring. Then my friend but that's this is the funny thing is when you know, the pupil is ready that the the guru appears kind of thing. So weirdly enough, my friend gave me a book around that time, and up until then, he knew him to be very spiritual, but he'd never really know engaged with me maybe that way. So he gave me this book by paramahansa Yogananda. And I was like, What's this? It's like, 500 pages. This is way too long and boring. And I was like, Okay, thank you. And I put it away, cut to I moved to LA and I took that book and everything for I was living in New York City at the time, right? When I moved to LA, and I was like, in my place, my apartment at the time, like three or four months. And I was I literally, that book fell off the shelf. And it's weird, because it wasn't even it was in the back of my shelf. I don't even know how it happened because it was buried with books. Like, I'm never gonna read this. It's never, and I picked it up. And in that moment, I was ready to read it. And I read it. And I was like, Oh, my God, what's happening to me? Right, and it was just an awakening and opening an aha, like, my heart was very full. And I talked about it in the book. Like, I felt a tremendous amount of love that I it was, like a real thing. And then it disappeared. I was like, Oh, my gosh, how do you get that again? Brandon Handley 26:40 Right. Right. Right. Okay, so I so 100% that I identified with that so hard, because I went through a similar experience. Right. And, and, and, and so it was great. It's always great when you're like, Hey, I'm not the only one. Right. Right. And then and then the other thing that I found very interesting was, I haven't read that book yet. But I just watched a just watched a documentary on him. Anthony Meindl 27:10 The Netflix documentary? Yeah. Brandon Handley 27:14 Yeah, it was one of them. Right? Like Netflix, or Gaia or whatever. You know, Anthony Meindl 27:19 it's called, um, you're the name of it. Not into the light. Brandon Handley 27:27 I don't remember the name of it. Anthony Meindl 27:28 Okay. But but it's worth watching. It's a beautiful documentary. Brandon Handley 27:32 It was really yeah. So it was really well done. But you know, so the my biggest takeaway, though, was wasn't just about him. And it was so awesome. Right? was super cool. Was that Steve Jobs left that book behind. Right, his funeral. That's right. So Andy, and like, you know, since we're in this synchronistic kind of space, right, I've read I wrote an article on just that. This past week. And that was like, the day before I read that chapter. I was like, shop. So and, and and so So did you move out there then? And have you been to the US and our house? Anthony Meindl 28:07 Yep. So I went to Yeah, I've done every I mean, I went to India and I spent time in one of his ashrams there, and like, you know, I wasn't really I didn't convert to like, Guru is, um, you know, I've been very cautious about, you know, because you you read, or you watch documentaries about major cults, and you're like, Oh, my God, that could have been me, you know, it's like, I'm always like, Oh, my God, by grace. And and I'm not judging these people, because they come to that aspect with such an open heart and these things that we're talking about seeking and wanting to know more and but, you know, with Yogananda was very practical. It was like, there is a way out of this suffering. Just do your practice, get over it. Like, it's really, you meditate, you get your butt in the chair, and you do it. And I'll say to the great thing about when people come to me and ask about Yogananda, or about any kind of meditation, what I always advocate because he says this, and I found it to be true for myself. After I read that book. I did not I didn't just sort of go to him only I it opened me to I did have a passionate retreat. You know, I did everything I did. I Alaska, I went on the journey of finding what felt right for me. I went to India a couple times. And so I think when somebody is is open, then you just have to I did tm, like I did, you know, you try many different things, and then you'll find, like, what feels right. So that's been and it changes and it can change, you know? Brandon Handley 29:44 Yeah, no, absolutely. I agreed, right? It, it speaks to resonance. And I hate I hate I hate resonating with anything but it's the truth, right, like you'll find you'll find exactly the kind of, this is the space you should be in right now. And this resonating with me the strikes a chord my body's like, it feels this feels amazing. Unknown Speaker 30:05 Right? Right. Right. Yeah. Brandon Handley 30:06 So the I wasco was was actually pretty funny too Unknown Speaker 30:12 loud. Yeah. It's funny. Brandon Handley 30:14 I mean, tell us tell us a little bit about like, I mean, would you recommend somebody who's a seeker? Does the same trip that you did like down down to? Where do you head down to? I Anthony Meindl 30:24 think, yes, I did it in Brazil. Also, I have a good friend, who also teaches with me, she did it in Peru A number of years ago. But you know, it's interesting reading because this was way before I Alaska has become what it's become, like, I don't know which coast you're on or where you are. But I'm on the west coast and like, they're, they do Iosco ceremonies here, technically, illegally, like, all the time, it's become very, I think it's great. Like, why not, however, comma, you know, I think it you kind of, and I'm not a purist about everything, because everything changes and to have access to ceremony. And to that wisdom is great, right. But I do think, for me, I was going through a horrible breakup, and it was in a lot of pain, in a way I had never experienced and my friend recommended. So this was only got 2008. So how many years ago is that? Right? So 12 years ago, 13 years ago, and I, I just I literally she told me about it, I went online to the place, she said, I booked it without even knowing what it was. And then I did a deep dive into what it was. And I was like, Oh, my God, and I was like, I gotta get my money back. So I could literally call the guy and I was like, um, you know, and I don't think this is my thing. He talked me off the ledge. I'm glad he did. Right. And then I went there. And I had this whole amazing experience of being in nature and the shaman was from that area. And so I think there's something to be said about doing it. You know, it's like anything like going to India? You can't find anything that replaces India except the experience of India. Right. Right. Brandon Handley 32:06 Yeah. Yeah. So it's just diminishes the kind of the truth of it, Anthony Meindl 32:12 maybe, yeah, maybe. And I know that there's, I'm sure there's some great healers and and, and teachers of Iosco that have moved to LA or whatever. And so it's fine. Just I want people to make sure that they know, you know, just make sure you know, the source, that's all. Brandon Handley 32:27 Yeah, no doubt, no doubt, right. Definitely, you definitely don't want to take away from it. So how do you feel then? You know, when, when you went through, like kind of this and awakening process, right, there's about the same time that you started your school? Right, is around that? Well, Anthony Meindl 32:46 yeah. I mean, I started my school, literally, around the time that book fell off my shelf. So in 1998, Unknown Speaker 32:53 yeah. So, Anthony Meindl 32:54 I mean, I've been teaching, you know, prior to them, but it really kind of coalesced there. And I just, I felt a very strong message to at the time. Now, when I look back, I was not, I don't want to say ahead of my time, I was in the right place at the right time, because the message that I was teaching was all kind of like conscious awareness through our work. And it was very spiritual and very much about presence essence, the moment, The Power of Now, all of those things before they've become so much, you know, they're, they're so cultural now. But I and I was kind of like an outcast at first, because it was very Mooney, still in the 90s in the early 2000s, you know, what I mean? And now that work, the work has caught up with itself. And I am very blessed to have been teaching this for 25 years, because I do find that this is, this is where we are heading, you know, you know, well, I think culturally look at this is a great conversation we're having you have a podcast called spiritual dope, you know, like, I teach from a very spiritual place and, and there's no shame around using the word soul or spirit or consciousness as our real and it's hard to I also think it used to get a bum rap, but it was so like a llama dama ding dong, and like airy fairy, it's science. Now we know what our brain does. When we meditate. We know what happens when we reduce stress levels and reduce cortisol release from our body, you know what it means? So it's, it's those things that were fringe during Steve Jobs time, right, right, are are not fringe anymore. And to have a language around it is it's a real thing. So it's exciting. Brandon Handley 34:36 It absolutely is very exciting. What do you think the future of it is for us in this area? Anthony Meindl 34:43 Well, you know, I'm sure. You know, every prognosticator has so many things to say about 2020 and 2021. And I'm like, Jesus, I mean, Brendon, here's my thought about I Oh, I'm feeling like I'm gonna cry. I do cry a lot. Don't worry. It's just tears of joy. I do feel I don't know. That's the first thing. Nobody fucking knows camera should Unknown Speaker 35:06 say that. Yeah, you're right. Anthony Meindl 35:08 Maybe maybe a guru in India knows but I don't know, I think Unknown Speaker 35:13 my Anthony Meindl 35:15 where I take some sort of have peace I read this book during COVID or a couple months back called, oh my god, it's called kindred and it's about our Neanderthal on Neanderthal cousins, right? And just what the planet was like, during their time and how they were not these brutish, you know, brutes, you know, unsophisticated and uncultured. And they were actually, like, I don't know, quite advanced, really, you know what I mean. And, to me, it was a watershed moment, in a way because I, I kept thinking about during there, and I wrote a piece about this recently, but how during their time, there was no an early homosapiens, there was, there was no destination. Being on this planet, there was no ending to get to all of life was only journeying. And we still in our DNA, we are journey men and women, we are nomads, right? It is in our, our system to want to travel and to keep migrating, right. And I think for me, reading that book made me Just think about the the constant journey that we're all on. It's an and I guess my point, sorry, I was gonna say was like, they wouldn't have even known what the word destination was, because it was all journeying. And it was all uncertainty. And that, to me, is so powerful to live in that place. Because we as a modern culture, because of the modern conveniences that we've become sort of asleep, because of we have fallen asleep to the truth that we are still in uncertainty, we are still in the unknown, we are still on the great journey. I don't care that you can go to the target and buy yourself, you know, underwear for $9 it you at Target isn't a real thing in the big scheme of things. What's target you're aiming? Like we're journeying? Yeah. And there's you you we have successes and milestones. And those are all things to be celebrated. And I love that we have technology that that creates so many things for us. And yet, we don't want to lose sight of the journey. Brandon Handley 37:44 Yeah, no, I love I love the idea to have, you know, it's it's all uncertainty, right? and always has been, always has been, and you know, COVID prove that out. Right? Like COVID is like, Hey, Unknown Speaker 37:57 hello. Yeah. Anthony Meindl 37:59 On a rock spinning in the middle of dark matter. Brandon Handley 38:03 Right, right. Yeah, good luck, guys. Uh, and, and the idea to, you know, when you're talking about, like, all these things that are being mass produced, you know, getting something from Target that's being mechanically produced, it just kind of makes me think a little bit to have the experience, right, like, you can go I can maybe I can go out to LA maybe find somebody like, you know, off the streets and and, and, you know, have that iOS experience. But am I gonna have to deal with fucking snakes? Am I gonna have to drop off like, you know, go through a couple plane hops go to the river, you know, deal with the tarantula and all that other shit? No. And I mean, there's, there's something lost in in that actual journey. Like, if it's super accessible. Yes, the joy in that, like, you know what I mean, it kind of diminishes the I don't know, it. Well, Anthony Meindl 38:51 that speaks to our disconnect from journeying. The, the uncertainty that is the truth about existence, being too reliant on like, our phones and things and buildings, and like what we've become accustomed to right. And also, I think it speaks to the biggest challenge we're facing is, is our disconnect from nature. And so that's again, we're part of that that's, that's an impulse and a pulse inside us. And I think we're at to our detriment, we're seeing how we have separated ourselves from this matrix, if you will, the nature matrix, and that that's one thing that I think people are not aware of. The planet will be fine. Yeah, it will, again, turn into another been six or five other mass extinctions and it will turn into something else. Right, you know, but it's interesting to really think about Wow, we've made the thing that isn't real real. Brandon Handley 39:54 That's fair. That's fair. I enjoyed your your what you took the piece of Want to pay you to the toilet paper roll? And you did that? Oh, you saw that? Yeah. How long? How long have we been here? We're like, you know? Like, not even nothing, Unknown Speaker 40:07 right? Nothing, right? Brandon Handley 40:09 I'm pretty sure the dinosaurs weren't like, hey, they'll never get rid of us. Right? Anthony Meindl 40:13 And then in a flash were gone. Right? Isn't it crazy? Brandon Handley 40:17 Maybe they just packed up and flew off, though. Come on, we don't know nothing about him. He don't know. Don't know, we don't know. So let's talk a little bit about like, you know, how, how is acting, you know, kind of beneficial during even like COVID uncertain times or just in in a in a matter of finding yourself in flow and being able to express yourself. Tell me a little bit about that? Well, Anthony Meindl 40:42 I always say, and I guess maybe I should just march to Congress and do it myself. I wish somebody could hook me up with, you know, a congressional page or someone, I feel like I should go teach an acting class to everybody in Congress, because the art of acting is the art of empathy and compassion. And what we've lost, you know, again, it makes me really sad, is this ability to stand opposite someone we may not agree with, or be in conflict with, but still see their humanity and still, to let them in? And I think acting does that, that you that actually through conflict, you have resolution. So I think conflict is really an important. And it's, it's kind of what's evolved us, as you know, as a species as from organisms to it's not been easy for anybody or anything, you know, that to be alive on this planet is churning, constantly churning to evolve into something else. So there is going to be conflict, but conflict does not have to necessarily mean what's it's not a pejorative, I guess you know what I mean? In other words, like, I guess I heard the other day that it's, it's thinking more in terms of like, even, let's say a lion attacks a zebra, right, and kills the zebra high conflict. And it sounds like one person, one animal wins, the other doesn't. But if you then step back and see that it's all part of the system, it's actually a cooperation. It's it's like, it's all part of this thing. But I think if once we become fractured, and we don't see that opposing views are also part of a thing. That's why we are, I think, in trouble. Because it's not black or white. It's not republicans are bad. And democrats are correct. It's not. It's really about. We need both. It's Yin and Yang. You see what I'm saying? its shadow in light. Yeah. So I don't know if that answered your question. But I don't know. I did. It didn't. But I guess my point is acting is the exploration of all of that. And I think everybody should take an acting class, because you're more in tune with, I think it's the scariest thing for many, many people. I teach a very well known. WW. How many W's are there WWF? Or www f whatever? Brandon Handley 43:14 The rescue? Yeah, I think two Yeah, two dogs. Anthony Meindl 43:18 Or maybe he's a famous boxer. Lightweight by godsey is terrible. I don't know those sports. But anyway, he either you would know. And then I can tell you when we're done. But I mean, I've interviewed him for my podcast, so it's fine. I can name names, but um, but he even said he was the world lightweight champion, or whatever category class he was in. And he said, Tony, being an acting class with you was scarier than fighting for that crown. And, and I think it speaks to having to be vulnerable and exposed and to share ourselves. So that's why people should take class, Brandon Handley 43:58 to be able to connect with that right to be able to connect with themselves and and to put them out there and share that right. I think it's that sharing part that really holds a lot of people back, how's acting help, you know, helping that person get over that? Anthony Meindl 44:13 Well, I think we've become less self conscious about ourselves. And also, we have so much shame Brandon around, you know, we have so much shame around our feelings, our thoughts, behaviors, our past, the mistakes we've made people we've hurt, and again, realizing it's also part of the journey. If we're contrite, and we've learned and we've made amends. It doesn't define it's one part of a chapter, you know, it's not even a chapter, it's maybe a paragraph, you know, but I think we were in a shame based culture. Sometimes we don't have a we don't have a relationship to that stuff. That's also an important conversation to have the shadow stuff. So instead, we go underground with it, which then becomes more toxic and more painful. It leads to you know, there's no doubt That these things then lead to unhealthy expression whether that's opioid abuse or, you know, whatever, it's the toxicity it finds its way. Brandon Handley 45:12 Yeah, look, I mean, it's gonna make its way out each each thought is a seed, right? You know and and, and you know if you look at you know you you live in LA right you walk down the street cement is broken by grass seeds right that type of thing so I'm in a seat is a seat it's gonna find its own way to express itself right and you know, we're humans that's what we do we express that's we show up to express and it's really interesting how that shows up. So, di di Did you find anything writing this book about yourself that you had forgotten about? You weren't aware of? Were you able to share something through this book that you was like a major release for you just curiosity? Yeah, yeah, Anthony Meindl 45:56 I mean, I think I've always been on this journey of like, for me, I was bullied a lot. And so I think that everybody has suffered from bullying in one form or the other. Even the bullies that perpetrate the bullying are really probably victims of either their own self bullying or are scared of or threatened by the people that they bully, you know what I mean? And so nobody escapes it and and and yet, so it's caused a lot of damage, but it's also put me on this path of healing and teaching and, and also seeing that it's created my art it's really helped me have a voice and and hopefully help inspire people in finding their voice through their pain and their struggles. And, and so I think, I think for me, it's been all these things help heal. And and yeah, I had a lot of epiphanies. When my editor told me, she's like, I told her when I was in therapy, because at one time I complained to my therapist, I was like, is everything you have to do with our childhood? Oh, my God. And I had great parents, as you can probably guess, by Unknown Speaker 47:00 reading the book, like your mom Brandon Handley 47:02 says, I want to know more about your mom, though, too. Like, she just seemed like the badass. Right? Like, yeah, Anthony Meindl 47:07 yeah, she's very private, like, but but but but even having great parents. Like, it's funny, because they say having read the book, they weren't too happy at first, because they thought it depicted them as terrible parents. Wow, I was like, Oh, my God, you guys, it's a love letter to you. It just goes to show you our stuff doesn't help us see things clearly. Right? So my editor said, I want you to whatever you're talking about in therapy, when you have an image of a story that comes to you, I want you to start writing it down. I was like, Do I have to? Just like, yeah, so that's how the genesis of the book occurred. So we all have stories, Brandon, that's my point. Brandon Handley 47:48 Not I love that. I was just curious if there was like anything that really just um, you know, jumped out at you that, you know, you hadn't thought about for years or, again, was able to just you were able to just really release something. Yeah, Anthony Meindl 48:00 what can I say? I've said this, I had the guy have a lesson about it. One person's tragedy is another person's Tuesday. Because this is true. That's a good quote. I've never said that way before. I'm going to use that. But I think I have it in my book. Because my brother, one of the things that I realized is when I wrote the book, and I shared with my brothers some of the things, my brother is that an amazing human being, and we're very close. But we, you know, I was this gay, little kid that didn't even know what being gay was. And so he made fun of me, like any brothers would, you know, beat up or make fun of their younger brother. Right? Brandon Handley 48:35 Especially during that time, right? Like, that was a very nice times. Yeah, that's Anthony Meindl 48:38 right. And so I in the book, I have a really haunting story about an event that occurred with my brother, you know, making fun of me or bullying me in a way about being gay. And it affected me so much. And yet, when I shared with him about it, he's like, Oh, God, Tony. I don't even remember that. Yeah. Right. He was so apologetic. So it just made me realize, like, oh, gosh, for me carrying that around. That was like a really intense moment. And for him, it was just a Tuesday. Brandon Handley 49:12 Yeah. Yeah, but so sounds like you had an opportunity to kind of release that right. Oh, for sure. And that that was no, it's amazing when you get to release something like that. Just how much lighter you feel? Anthony Meindl 49:24 Yes, absolutely. And forgiveness and, you know, all kinds of things. Brandon Handley 49:29 So I'm gonna move it back into spirituality just for a second. Yeah, you use that for you know, that's that's basically your coaching, right? Like your coaching is your spiritual practice. You know, you've gone to India you've had chased, you know, you've done the soul searching, you've been the seeker. But without spirituality without you know, kind of developing and honing your practice. You wouldn't be as fulfilled as you are now safe to say. Anthony Meindl 49:57 I mean, it's impossible to answer random because There's only been this unfolding there is a you can't put that back in the bag. I've got a friend of mine, Brandon Handley 50:06 a friend of mine, he goes, is he could use the acronym Tina, there is no alternative. You know, but you know, if you look at, you know, I guess the kind of the pre the pre awakening and pre spiritual Tony versus, you know, novice a Tony? Unknown Speaker 50:26 Ah, Anthony Meindl 50:26 I mean, I think that they still are so interconnected. You know. And I think again, I think the thing for our your listeners is to remember that spirit abides within us whether we have a conscious relationship or dialogue with it, it's there. And it's there to be awakened whenever you're meant for it to be awakened. And so for me, it was always something that was a part of my experience, even if I didn't know how to label it. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I Brandon Handley 50:54 agree with that. Right? Isn't? You said it a couple times. It's in a right. It's everybody. It's in everybody. Right? is and what I like, though, what you just said there was like, addressing it consciously. For me, I did, right? for 40 years, I was like, I was like, I got all this other shit to do. Right? And then then my spirit was like, I was like, Well, what do you want? Right? I'm very similar to your, you know, your moment, like there was like this. You know, days, maybe weeks, I forget exactly how long like you've got this kind of natural, vibrant body. Hi, you're like, I didn't miss anything. I didn't take anything. And so what's happening right now, you know, in my mind, after talking to several people, it could only be one thing. Right? So but it's it's inside of everybody. And having that conscious conversation with it, I think is the important thing, and not giving up who you already are kind of really loose back into this too. Because, like you said, You're not separate from who you ever were just because like, you know, you have this spiritual moment. It's not changing yourself either. Right. And we talked about like the the grittiness, allowing it to still be gritty, like, I mean, yeah, it's okay. Anthony Meindl 52:12 It's work, right? I mean, it is work. It's a relationship like any other. I also think though, as I've gotten older, I have a birthday next week. And I, I, when I look back at those stories I told or when I think about even my 30s, cuz I'm gonna be 53. I'm like, whoa, I'm a completely different Tony. And if, if you follow science, right, they say, cellularly, your body is regenerated every seven years or something like that, or so I am, like, at a atomic place, I am completely a cellular place, I'm different. But also your awareness and your evolution. If you do work on yourself, you are changed. I don't even really identify with that, Tony. So every decade or every year, really, you're a different person, which is so cool. That also speaks to how people can change even though I know there's the saying that you can't change someone, but we do change. Brandon Handley 53:05 Rod, you had a great line in the book too, about realizing in a relationship that, you know, you can't change somebody realize you can't change anybody that the only thing is leftovers, like love or something like that. That was like a really good was a good line. It's right. And it is and then the other part, too, that you mentioned there was your awakening was a Saturn, you know, rebirth away, you know? 29 so I'm in I'm in one of those this year, I think. So, which is also just more entertainment value for me as I'm reading the book. Anyways, listen, I you know, I identified with it, you know, you know, it must have been a challenge, you know, sounds like it was a challenge, especially growing up gay in the Midwest, right? I'm actually from San Francisco, born in San Francisco in the 70s. I was back out there in the 80s. And, you know, I always I embraced gay, you know, growing up, right, like, I wasn't gay, but I was like, it was there. So it was just like, hey, right, that's just part of part of life. Right. So, but then to, you know, kind of, you know, be able to express that run your business and and, you know, fully express yourself. I think that's super awesome to be able to see who you are and to Yeah, well, thank Anthony Meindl 54:15 you, Brandon. I feel like I've known you and I, it's so great to have this talk about I'm so inspired. Like, I feel like I can I have to go teach it a little bit. But I feel like oh my god, the class tonight is gonna get an extra dose of spiritual dope ism. Now. That's right. That's right. Brandon Handley 54:31 Get your head. Right. So get your commercial dope, Tony. Thanks again for being on Where should I go and send? Is there anything else that you want to you want to cover anything else you want? Unknown Speaker 54:42 covered at all? Awesome. Brandon Handley 54:44 Where should we send people to go hang out and find you? Yeah, Anthony Meindl 54:48 I mean, I guess if they're interested in my work, I guess, acting related or otherwise, you can go to our website www dot Anthony meindl memd elle.com and then you can always find me on Instagram, just Anthony meindl I'm on Twitter, but I don't really use Twitter. I just, it's too much so but so but I am on Instagram because I like photos. So, you know, you can always hit me up there and, you know, I really do try to answer people's questions if they DM me and I try to be in service as best I can. So, Unknown Speaker 55:24 yeah, awesome. Thanks again. Unknown Speaker 55:27 Thanks, man. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

We'd already recorded next weeks episode and then Disney go and drop an absolute, galaxy-sized bombshell of their upcoming film and TV on us. So Andy and Stu sit down to disect the HUUUUUUUUGE news from Mickey.

Not one to shy away from controversy, Dr. Tommy Wood has worked with some of the highest performing athletes in the world. From Formula One to Ironmans, what are some of the key takeaways Tommy had on behavior change from that experience? You would be surprised at how little free time these people have. I also get the chance to pick Tommy's brain on the problems with nutritional epidemiology, genetics, and how to evaluate nascent supplements and compounds where little research may exist. Who is Tommy Wood? Tommy Wood is a Research Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the University of Washington Division of Neonatology. The majority of his academic work has focused on developing therapies for brain injury in newborn infants, but also includes adult neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases, as well as nutritional approaches to sports performance.Tommy received an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge before obtaining his medical degree from the University of Oxford. After working as a doctor in central London, he moved to Norway for his PhD work, and then to the University of Washington as a postdoc. Alongside his academic training, Tommy has coached athletes in a dozen sports, from weekend warriors to Olympians and world champions. He is the outgoing President of the Physicians for Ancestral Health society, a director of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, and sits on the scientific advisory board of Hintsa Performance, which includes researching performance optimization strategies for F1 drivers.Tommy’s current research interests include the physiological and metabolic responses to brain injury and their long-term effects on brain health, as well as developing easily-accessible methods with which to track human health, performance, and longevity. He and his wife Elizabeth share their home with two energetic (and goofy) boxers, and in his spare time, Tommy can usually be found cooking, hiking, reading, or lifting something heavy. Highlights[7:21] Bad science and nutritional epidemiology[12:03] Are direct to consumer genetic tests a joke?[32:05] How can we improve the research on cannabis?[40:10] Behavior change in Formula One drivers[47:55] Sacrificing longevity for short term performance[51:30] Traumatic brain injury[1:00:08] Is there hope for exogenous ketones? ResourcesCHEMEX CoffeemakerAeroPress Coffee and Espresso MakerHigh Protein Intake Is Associated with Lower Risk of All-Cause Mortality in Community23andmeWhen Brains Collide by Michael LewisBehave by Robert SapolskySponsorsBLUblox What brands of blue light blockers do I recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go-to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters. If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.TroscriptionsOne of my favorite tools for cognitive enhancement, especially after long plan rides, is Blue Cannatine. The delivery mechanism is unique (buccle troche). It is especially effective for me on improving short-term memory, focus, and verbal fluency.It’s the closest thing that I found to NZT and I think you guys should try it out. Get yours at troscriptions.com. Plug in the code BOOMER for 10% OFF your “Limitless” experience.Full disclosure: I am involved with the company (I like the product that much).Continue Your High Performance Journey with Dr. Tommy WoodWebsite https://www.drragnar.com/Twitter https://twitter.com/drragnarInstagram https://www.instagram.com/drtommywood/Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today our expert guest is Andy Storch, an author, consultant, coach, speaker, and facilitator on a mission to get the most out of life and inspire others to do the same. He is also the host of two podcasts — The Talent Development Hot Seat and The Andy Storch Show — and the author of “Own Your Career, Own Your Life,” which is designed to help professionals stop drifting and take control of their futures. When Andy was on the show back in episode 115, just a little over one year ago, this book wasn't really on his radar. But as he got more into personal development  — by way of Hal Elrod, like myself — he realized that he already had a message he wanted to put out into the world. He just hadn't put it all in one place yet. A big part of Andy's message is contrary to a lot of what you'll see in the self-development space these days, which often emphasizes the personal freedom unlocked through entrepreneurship. And that's true, to an extent, but being an entrepreneur isn't for everyone — and it's not necessary to live a happy and abundant life. So Andy endeavored to create a resource that was applicable to anyone who has been told that you can't have it all, or that you have to put your time in and then you can have a good life in retirement. This is a resource to help anyone put in the priorities, boundaries, and systems that will allow them to, as the title says, own their lives. This may not be the right time to burn all the ships and charge forward with a grand new venture, this might not be the right time to tell your boss where to stick it. But there are still ways to take back control, and Andy has some practical strategies to help you do it.   The Biggest Helping: Today's Most Important Takeaway “I want you to think about where you've been drifting in your life, letting other people or society dictate how you live and what you do for work and in your career. Where can you really flip a switch and start to take ownership, start to take responsibility, stop playing the victim, and set a course and really start moving towards that. Stop putting things off, stop procrastinating.”  Where can you take ownership today? Where can you really dive in and own your future?   --   Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.   Resources: “Own Your Career, Own Your Life” Top 5 Career Mistakes andystorch.com Instagram: @andy_storch LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/andystorch “50. Elevating Consciousness, One Miracle Morning at a Time | with Hal Elrod” “93. The Rise of the Youpreneur | with Chris Ducker” “115. Taking Responsibility For Your Career & Personal Development | with Andy Storch” “127. The Two Decisions That Guarantee Success | with Hal Elrod”   The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media

Overwhelmed and daunted by horse racing? Football presenter Andy Goldstein was. So Andy quizzed the king of British racing Paul Nicholls about the similarities between the two sports ahead of the Betfair Chase. Read the latest insights and tips on Racing & more at betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/ 18+ Please Gamble Responsibly. Visit www.begambleaware.org

About the podcast and community  Welcome to the Remote Work Life Podcast, where real-world remote work CEOs and leaders talk about how they hire, network, collaborate and thrive. Join me and more than 5000 followers in customer success, marketing, product and engineering to learn skills you need to work online from anywhere. I am your Host, Alex Wilson-Campbell - I’m Interview Coach and Tech Recruiter on a mission to help you gain clarity and direction in your career AND uncover hidden jobs through one-to-one and group coaching.   And On Today’s Episode …  In this series of podcasts, I'm going to share brief outtakes from my various conversations with remote thought leaders and future of work experts.  So listen in to see how real-world remote work leaders make the most of workday to strike a balance with their day to day life. In today's episode, I share the thoughts of my guest Andy Tryba.  He's a respected future of work expert and owner of multiple businesses.  And in this segment, Andy reminds us of the speed with which the work is changing which prompts the question, 'what are you doing to keep up with this evolution?' It's quite easy to become detached from the world of work if you don't make an effort to deal with your self-development.  So Andy's outtake serves as a timely reminder that we need to be deliberate about how we go about continuing our learning. 

You know the drill, it's Compliance Content Corner Tuesday. We've had a lot of questions from clients recently regarding their goods being refused entry and returned from FBA. So Andy is here to cover 3 vital aspects of shipping to Amazon that do have some regulations surrounding them that require adhering to. 1 - Importer of record 2 - Pallets Differences: UK and Euro 3- Boxes For more information on the correct FBA shipment creation process check out the video at the below link. https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/help.html?itemID=200249180&productpacking That refers more specifically to the pallets and packing the goods, whereas the below link will focus on how to prep specific products... https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/02/images/FBA-Prep-Matrix_UK_EN_final.pdf Hopefully this will help clear up any confusion you may be having regarding this aspect of your expansions and ensure you do not encounter the same problems as our clients asking these very questions...

Let's decode anxiety with board-certified psychiatrist and neuroscientist, Dr. David Rabin. Dr. Rabin eloquently explains why anxiety is something most feel, how gratitude helps interrupt anxiety, psychedelics, and why he created the Apollo. Who is Dr. David Rabin? Dr. David Rabin, MD, PhD, is a neuroscientist, board-certified psychiatrist, health tech entrepreneur & inventor who has been studying the impact of chronic stress in humans for more than a decade. He is the co-founder & chief innovation officer at Apollo Neuroscience, which has developed the first scientifically-validated wearable technology that actively improves energy, focus & relaxation, using a novel touch therapy that signals safety to the brain. Dr. Rabin has always been fascinated by consciousness and our inherent ability to heal ourselves from injury and illness. As such, he has specifically focused his research on the clinical translation of non-invasive therapies for patients with treatment-resistant illnesses like PTSD and substance use disorders. Dr. Rabin is the co-founder and executive director of the Board of Medicine, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of physicians and scientists establishing the first peer-reviewed, evidence-based clinical guidelines for the production and safe use of currently unregulated alternative medicines, including plant medicines. The Board of Medicine trains and certifies healthcare providers, as well providing quality control standards for complementary and alternative medicines to support high-quality clinical research and best practices in harm-reduction. In addition to his clinical psychiatry practice, Dr. Rabin is currently conducting research on the epigenetic regulation of trauma responses and recovery to elucidate the mechanism of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and the neurobiology of belief. Highlights[4:46] Anxiety in our modern society[12:05] Pattern interrupts that cause anxiety[17:51] The Gratitude interception[20:06] Take control of the ego[26:10] Psychedelics and anxiety[32:23] Self-medication addiction phenomenon[36:22] Developing the Apollo touch therapy device[40:43] Dr. Rabin answers the Superhuman rapid-fire questionsResourcesApollo NeuroscienceIn the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor MatéFood of the Gods by Terrence McKennaIn Search of Memory by Eric KandelSponsorsBLUbloxWhat brands of blue light blockers do I recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go-to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters.If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.B Strong I’ve been fascinated by blood flow restriction training for a very long time. B Strong made great innovations on this technology. I use it almost every day: high reps, low number of sets, a few exercises. In 20 minutes, I have a fantastic workout which is triggering an anabolic response.If you want to get your B Strong blood flow restriction device, head on over to https://bstrong.training/ and use the code BOOMER, and you’re going to get yourself 10% off.Continue Your High Performance Journey with Dr. RabinDrdave.ioApolloneuro.comBoardofmedicine.orgFacebookTwitterInstagramLinkedin Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Happy Monday loves!! Hope everyone had a beautiful weekend and got outside and enjoyed it! Today I am stoked to have back Andy Mant the Ceo of my FAVE Bluelight glasses, BLUBLOX!! You guys literally see me wearing these all the time on my social media and always talking about them and I've gotten so many questions about them so I wanted to have Andy back to chat more and talk light hygiene and why bluelight protection especially right now with us all being home way more is so important. We are all sick of zoom meetings, social media constant scrolling and more, I know! Same here!! So Andy shares some healthy ways we can really take care of ourselves always, but especially in this time and WHY BluBlox is SO AMAZING We talk light hygiene ( that's a real thing), all the benefits of blocking blue light from our body, diets, hormones, natural rhythms and so much more! Andy also gets deep and shares how our ancestors had all this right and then we screwed it all up! Haha! No but really like we went from a society that didn't have any of this technology or blue light to it massively being in our faces and consuming us, and it's a problem for our health and mind! Andy shares simple ways to improve your light health & hygiene, digital strain, and seriously just everything we need to know with Blue light! Andy and Ali talk wellness, why this is SO much more than a Trend and needs to become part of our every day lifestyle and habits Andy shares the amazing new products coming down the line, not just glasses, light bulbs, eye masks, and more! If you haven't checked out BLUBLOX yet you're missing OUT!! I wear mine every day, so does my hubby Justin and now my father in law is HOOKED!! Ya'll know me, if I LOVE a product I SHARE it!! You can Use MY CODE ALILEVINE15 https://www.blublox.com ( PS Andy was having storms abroad, so if there's little cut outs we apologize!) Follow Andy and BluBlox at: https://www.instagram.com/blubloxofficial https://www.instagram.com/iamandymant https://www.blublox.com/blogs/news/what-is-blue-light ( check out the amazing blog with all the Blue light facts and stats!) And check out the new super CHIC Blue Light glasses collection that drops this week!! AND HERE'S ALI: www.alilevine.com Instagram.com/ALiLevineDesign Twitter.com/AliLevineDesign Linkedin.com/AliLevineDesign Pinterest.com/AliLevineDesign Please follow our podcast Instagram too!! https://instagram.com/striptddownpodcast !! We are always updating fun news and clips there from the show! If you're loving STriptd Down, please leave us a 5 star review, and leave us some LOVE why you love this podcast! WE love you and appreciate the love!! DM Ali @Alilevinedesign and say hi and follow! Ali LOVES to connect with her guests!! If you ever have feedback, guest requests, or just want to send some love our way, email below! Strippeddownproduction@gmail.com Xox --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ali-levine/support

This podcast is part of a series focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is exposing a deep flaw in the country's food system, namely stunning levels of food insecurity, but also the transformation of emergency food assistance into what some have characterized as an industry as food charity become big business. Andy Fisher, our guest today is a leader in the Food Security and Food Justice Movement. He founded and led The National Community Food Security Coalition and led Federal Legislation campaigns to gain more than $200 million for community-based food security and farm to school projects.   Interview Summary   So Andy, you wrote a book with a very provocative title, "Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance between Corporate America and Anthony Anti-Hunger Groups." What are you hoping people take away from the work that you did on this book?   Sure, so the book was both an expose and a vision. It was expose of those relationships between mainly the food industry, but a little bit broader than that and anti-hunger groups especially food banks. So exposing what I call the hunger industrial complex or those connections that keep us in a place of maintaining hunger rather than solving hunger. And it presents a vision of how to do things differently and identifies a number of examples and models of projects that are engaged in public health advocacy, have a public health perspective that foster economic democracy, and that also support economic justice or support kind of addressing the root causes of hunger and addressing poverty and racism in the light.   So Andy, when you look at the anti-hunger groups, food banks and other such organizations, what most people see is a well-meaning group of people trying to provide food for people who are in desperate need of it. And I think what you're saying is that there's kind of a complicated picture back behind the curtain and once one open, so you see some things you wouldn't know otherwise. Tell us what you see back there.   The first thing I want to say is that folks who are working in emergency food system, they're all good people. They're good people who are trapped in a bad system. That system has been going on since more or less the early 1980s. And it's a system that nobody expected to continue until 2020 and to thrive and grow. I think extent it has. I mean, before the pandemic hit, emergency food system and network of charities have a 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and soup kitchens where people get access to food, we're serving over 40 million people with about $5 billion worth of food. So it's grown exponentially, it's institutionalized, it's industrialized, but it hasn't solved the problem. If you look at food security data that the USDA has been collecting since 1995, back then 12% of the population was considered to be food insecure, which meant that they had issues or concerns or experiences which meant that they couldn't feed their families or feed themselves. If you look at 2018 data, you'll find that we have almost exactly the same percentage of people who are food insecure, 11.8%. So the numbers go up, the numbers go down. As a nation, we've been treading water for the past 25 years or so on this issue and even longer. Food banks aren't solving the problem. They're in many ways institutions of community caring, but they're also have their collateral damage and they also have their issues that hold us back from solving the problem at its root causes rather than just putting a bandaid onto it.   How does corporate interest figure into this picture?   In many ways, food banks are a downstream appendage of the food industry. And by that, I mean that most of the food that is coming into the food bank industry, so it's post-retail, it's post-processing. For a lot of folks that make sense, that idea of not throwing food into the garbage is a great thing. But if you look at the quality of some of that food, it's certainly pretty atrocious. It's getting better, but there's still a lot of junk in the system. But in general, there are more early preferable ways for industry to get this food out. One good way of looking at this system is through Walmart. Walmart is the nation's largest retailer. Walmart has committed to donating over $2 billion worth of food and cash to the emergency food system. And it's more than met those goals over a five year period, but it's doing so in a way that benefits its bottom line. It's paying its workers sub-living wages, encouraging them to go to food banks, encouraging them to get onto the SNAP program as a way to make ends meet. And then it's donating money to food banks and to anti-hunger groups to do SNAP outreach and to support their programs. But it turns out that it's also the single largest redeemer of food stamps in the country. One out of every five or one out of every six food stamp dollars goes into the coffers of Walmart. So it's double dipping and triple dipping, but it's also so using that philanthropy, that charity as a way to build it's reputation as a hunger fighter, rather than a hunger causer. So it uses that strategically to help it build its access into desserts markets. Walmart has a few dozen of it. Executives are on the boards of the 200 food banks around the country and they along with other industry players are instrumental in keeping the food bank industry in a very politically neutral place where they do not advocate for higher minimum wage or do not advocate for affordable housing or universal healthcare. All of those issues that are essentially causing people to show up at their door.   So how sizeable is the amount of money in food given to food banks coming from industry? Do they pretty much rely on these sort of contributions to exist?   It's less cash than it is food. I don't know the exact percentages because it varies food bank by food bank, but roughly 70 to 80% of food in the food banking system is coming from private sector. About 20% comes from the government. Increasingly food banks are buying more food and they're buying more food from farmers and buying healthier food. But corporations are at the center of where the food is coming from because they're at the center of the food system in our country.   So I'd like to come back at the end and ask you about equity issues in particular. And you alluded to some of these in your remarks before. Let me ask this question. So there've been much attention in recent months to mass amounts of food waste and the diversion of some of what might've been food waste into food charities. What does this say about our food system in Europe?   Well, I mean, I think what's happening now with the pandemic is with the closures of restaurants and of colleges and schools, we have a bifurcated food system, one of which is serving retail institutions and one of which is serving food service. That food service sector obviously closed down in the spring because all those institutions closed down the market. Their markets went dry. So you saw a lot of waste. You saw, there's zucchini is rotting in the field. You saw pigs that were not able to get processed through the slaughter houses. You saw milk being dumb, things like that. So people's natural inclination is not to want that food to go to waste. They want to go to people who are gonna eat it, which has its very positive community-oriented implications as well. Prior to the pandemic in the past few years, USDA committed about $5 billion worth of what they call tariff mitigation foods. They bought an extra $5 billion worth of food from farmers and donated it through the emergency food system as a way to kind of shore up farm prices in a way to support those farmers who are hurt by the tariffs that the Trump administration put on China and China's retaliation.   So you have that system and now you're seeing about another $4 billion worth of food that the government is buying to support that industry. So you're seeing that essentially nutrition policy is downstream to agricultural policy. And this is just one example of a long history that goes back to the 1930s when the food stamp program was created to bolster farm beef prices. The food industry has been instrumental to the maintenance and the growth of Federal Nutrition Programs since the 1930s and the food banks are just one aspect of that. In some ways it's been couched as an alternative to the SNAP program but it's very much tied into farm surplus in our country.   So Andy, with an estimated 40 million people recently unemployed, there have been pictures of miles long line except food banks, doesn't this mean that the emergency food system is more needed than ever and that we're well-positioned to address people's needs?   On one level it does, and one level it's become the safety net under the safety net. So I think you have to rewind a little bit to February before the pandemic really took hold. Many food banks were operating near capacity even though we are in an economic boom, they were still serving 40 million people. They was pumping $5 billion worth of food. They were still filling their warehouses and getting them out. And you saw generally a growth model within the food banking industry where they measure their success and the number of pounds that are distributed. And it's a very easy and intangible way to measure what you're doing. This year we wanna put out 5% more poundage than we did last year and we're more successful and we're doing our job because of that.   So we were at this high point anyway, we weren't starting from zero. Food banks are starting from 80, 90% of capacity, whatever it might be at an individual level. And when the pandemic hit and 40 million people became unemployed overnight, essentially you saw huge pressure on this food banks to distribute the food, but you also saw that because the administration has been very reluctant to increase the SNAP program, there's been a lot of pressure put on them to increase SNAP benefits by 15%. And they're very reluctant to do that because there's a reluctance to kind of buy into that entitlement mentality, that entitlement type of program that is, more of a rights-based program than a charity program as food banks are.   So the food banks have become the last resort as the government abdicates its responsibility to the public, to the poor, can make sure that food is a human right, in a sense, and tells them to go to the food bank and supplies those food banks with more and more food. You see strengthening of policy away from an entitlement program towards the charity program. That's really a public private partnership. That's been alternative way for the government to support nutrition programs, but much more cheaply and much less in a justice-based framework and the core USDA nutrition programs.   What positive changes do you see in the food bank world? And are there ways to accelerate those changes?   Food bank world is really changing in a very positive fashion. There are many food banks who are doing some excellent work around community development around food systems, around supporting farm to school, about supporting job training. Some are advocating for minimum wage. For example, in Rochester, New York Foodlink is doing some great work around building a community economic development model of buying local food and using it to cater school meals and to support community gardens.   There's a growing network called Closing the Hunger Gap based out of a group called Why Hunger in New York city. That's a network of four or 500 individuals in groups that are identifying how to accelerate that change and how to make that change more mainstream.   Places like England and Scotland, for example, have a poverty truth commission where they're mentoring, especially women who have lived experience of hunger and poverty and helping them to train politicians to break down those myths about poverty, where they're actively trying to reduce reliance on food banks in that country. A group in Toronto and Ontario called Freedom 90 has been organizing volunteers at food pantries to make claims on the provincial government to increase social assistance programs.   So there's lots and lots of great examples all around the country. It's a growing movement, really of how to change, how we do food charity, it needs to be accelerated, it needs to be supported, needs to be made more of the norm than what we're doing now.   Oh, it'll be so interesting to see where this goes in the upcoming years. So let me ask one final question. How does the charitable food system impact racial equity?   In writing this book, I realized I had never volunteered at a food pantry before. So I was like, "I think I should do this." So I called up my buddies at the Oregon Food Bank. They pointed me to what they thought was one of the best food pantries in Portland, where I live. And it's a choice pantry, which means like half of the pantry is set up as a waiting room, the other half is set up as kind of like a grocery store with coolers and shelves. And you get to go in and shop basically, to choose what you want rather than get in box of food. And I get an orientation from this teenage girl who tells me in my role is to be across between the security guard to make sure that people don't take too much because there's rules on which you can take and then be somebody's personal shopper and walk them through the system.   So I got it, I'm doing my shift. It's a four-hour shift. I'm halfway through, I come up on my next set of clients and it's an elderly, African-American couple who's been waiting there for two hours and they're looking tired and dejected. And I grab a shopping cart and talk to them a little bit and find out how many people in their household and start taking them down the aisle. And I start telling them what they can take, few cans of beans, a can of tuna, some pasta, whatever it is. And as they're shopping, I realized I'm watching what they're putting into their shopping cart. And I catch myself and try to give them some space, but I still find myself doing that because I find myself in this very uncomfortable position as a white middle class guy watching this elderly African-American couple, make sure they didn't take an extra can of tuna.   I realized that there's just this really uncomfortable power dynamics in that food pantry that were replicated time and time again during my volunteer stint. I think that's endemic of the kind of the racial injustices within the system. Again, it's not right-based, it's charity-based. It tends to be kind of a white savior mentality. It's really a system that's based upon structural violence and that does nothing to address that structural violence. It does nothing to help people build wealth, to help people get out of the streets in which they're in. I mean, some do, I shouldn't be so extreme about that. But in general it is not helping people to address the needs that they have to get out of the system. It keeps them trapped in that mentality, in that modality.   Again, things are changing and things are not as black and white as I think I'm portraying. But I think what we're seeing is that capitalism and racism are very much interconnected. And this is a system that they're very much based upon putting a band-aid on that extraction of wealth from brown and black people and from American general and it does nothing to address that racial implications. But in many ways, like my example, it furthers those, it further deepens those relationships that are very uncomfortable.  

Episode 41 - May 31th, 2020 Topics *Intro - part of the Beyond the Blast Doors Network *Special guest for the evening is Michael Condon @toomedtoo *#showmeyourcollection - John @awesomegeekshow and @favstarwarsfig has an amazing Star Wars collection. Article and photo gallery can be found at beyondtheblastdoors.com. John’s favorite item is probably a 12-back carded Darth Vader. Many con pics of John interacting with Star Wars people/characters.
*There are new Black Series figures available for pre-order on our website. Rebels animated figs and some classic figs including a Camino Clone Trooper and a Beskar Mandalorian. *Black Series 6” vs The Vintage Collection (TVC) 3.75” debate and poll. *Josh received a box from entertainment earth and has no recollection what he ordered. So Andy opens it up and shares it! The Holochronicles Podcast is devoted to the collecting of Star Wars memorabilia/toys, old and new.  Hosts Josh Most and Andy Lemiere share each of their 20+ years of experience collecting all things Star Wars, as well as discuss topics ranging from the movies, books, fan theories/ideas and what’s next for Disney/LucasFilm. Links: Twitter: @holochronicles Instagram: Holochronicles Facebook: Holochronicles YouTube: Beyond The Blast Doors page Website: Beyondtheblastdoors.com iTunes, google play, soundcloud, stitcher, spotify, etc: Holochronicles Podcast Intro music by us. *If you enjoyed the podcast, don’t forget to Like, share, rate and review us on any of the major podcast platforms or on YouTube.  For those that feel so inclined, we now have a Patreon account through our network. Just go to Patreon and search “Beyond the Blast Doors”. We’d love to interact with you so feel free to get ahold of us on social media or email us at: holochronicles@gmail.com Thank you for following us and thank you for sharing with a friend.

Do we take the blue pill or the red pill?(0:4:44) Go Go Astros: Did you know that the most important moment in Minute Maid Park was a meaningless Albert Pujols homer? According to the MLB it is. So Andy and I look at the MLBs decision to erase the Astros from history and provide some other moments that maybe would have fit better.(0:31:37) The Big League Chew: Scott and I look at the 65 plus page play to reopen baseball. Sheesh. Tt's a lot. (O:56:23) Oppo Talko: Andrew Nelson went to "Nopening Day" for the St. Paul Saints. (1:00:21) Lights, Camera Play Ball: Brockmire is over and we're all a little worse for. Great show. (1:03:34) Closing it Out

Breaking stereotypes and biases of psychedelics through a wide-ranging and science-backed conversation with Paul Austin, a responsible use psychedelics advocate. Paul talks about the applications of MDMA, ketamine, psilocybin, and LSD.Who is Paul Austin? Paul F. Austin is an entrepreneur, public speaker, and educator. He has founded two companies in the emerging psychedelic space, The Third Wave and Synthesis.Within The Third Wave, Paul leads a team of creatives, engineers, and coaches to develop a comprehensive educational platform that serves the psychedelic ecosystem.Currently, The Third Wave offers in-depth psychedelic guides, online courses, and 1-on-1 coaching.Because of his pioneering work at the intersection of microdosing, personal transformation, and professional success, Paul has been featured in the BBC, Forbes, and Rolling Stone.Highlights[6:10] Paul’s introduction to Psychedelics[14:52] Going back: the History of Psychedelics[20:54] Microdosing for Performance[25:47] Risks of Microdosing Psychedelics[32:00] Benefits of Micro dosing Psychedelics[43:09] High dose psychedelic experiences[45:36] Overcoming trauma through psychedelics[51:53] Use cases of MDMAResourcesTim Ferriss on PsychedelicsSynthesis: Legal Psilocybin Retreat in AmsterdamSummer of Love in 1966Psilocybin research paperThe Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der KolkThe Psychedelic Explorer's Guide by Jim FadimanHow to Change Your Mind by Michael PollanConsciousness Medicine by Françoise BourzatWalden by Henry David ThoreauSponsorsProviThorMicrodosing magic truffles have shown positive effects on cognition.One of them is better performance in both convergent and divergent thinking. These are two vital cognitive processes in creative thought.Microdosing can also help cope with anxiety and make meditation practice more accessible.If you want to try truffle mushrooms, which have been effectively bashed in microdoses for you, you can head on over to provithor.com and give them a try. And yes, they do deliver worldwide legally.So head on over to provithor.com and use the code BOOMER for a nice little discount.BluBloxWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters.If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.Continue Your High Performance Journey with Paul AustinWebsiteInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInDisclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Round 2 with Dr. Scott Sherr. Our first discussion was focused on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. This discussion is a deep dive on nootropics and Blue Cannatine. Who is Dr. Scott Sherr? Dr. Scott Sherr is the Founder of Integrative HBOT, a worldwide consulting, education, and advocacy telemedicine practice. He is also the COO of Health Optimization Medicine (HOMe), a nonprofit education company that is using a foundational approach to shift the conversation away from illness and into health. Dr. Scott also has the first HOMe clinic in the US, based in San Francisco. Dr. Scott is also an independent provider of Integrative HBOT who runs a worldwide education, consulting, and advocacy telemedicine practice. He is of the few HBOT medical professionals in the country who develops personalized treatment plans for patients.He is also the COO of Smarter Not Harder, a product development company. Their first product for cognitive enhancement, Blue Cannatine, was released in early 2020.Highlights[4:13] Dr. Sherr’s journey into Nootropics[7:30] Cognitive Enhancement through Caffeine[13:51] Caffeine Cycling[17:13] Benefits of Methylene Blue[30:21] Benefits of Nicotine[39:37] Nicotine and addiction[42:39] Hemp Oiil Crystals capabilities[44:29] Drug Interactions in Blue CannatineResourcesThe Hyperbaric Oxygen Episode with Dr. Scott SherrNicorette sprayStalking the Wild Pendulum by Itzhak BentovIllusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant MessiahBlue CannatineSponsorsBluBloxWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters.If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.Blue CannatineOne of my favorite tools for cognitive enhancement, especially after long plan rides, is Blue Cannatine. The delivery mechanism is unique (buccle troche). It is especially effective for me on improving short-term memory, focus, and verbal fluency. It’s the closest thing that I found to NZT and I think you guys should try it out. Get yours at troscriptions.com.Full disclosure: I am involved with the company (I like the product that much). Continue Your High Performance Journey with Dr. Scott SherrWebsiteInstagramDisclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Bisu CEO Daniel Maggs talks about the importance of capturing the highly-valuable data from our urine. Daniel explains the differences between ketones, tracking electrolytes and other biomarkers, and the advantages of looking at magnesium, sodium and potassium data. He shares his excitement for where home health and wellness is going in general.Who is Daniel Maggs? Daniel Maggs is the Co-Founder and CEO of BISU. Bisu is a startup that helps people unlock the data in their urine to optimize their health and fitness and avoid chronic disease. Daniel was previously a product manager, tech banker and lawyer. He is currently based in Japan and is fluent in Japanese. Daniel spoke at the 2019 Biohacker Summit in Helsinki on theme of "biohacking in the bathroom".Even though Daniel originally trained as a lawyer, he has worked super hard to understand the details around the health and wellness space. You will be surprised by his depth of knowledge and expertise, particularly as it relates to biomarker testing. He has built a pretty incredible team and works with some amazing advisors in the bio tracking industry.Highlights[4:45] What is BISU[6:46] Taking the leap from Investment Banking to Startups[11:05] The idea behind BISU[17:10] What urine can tell you about your health[19:48] Biomarkers that are tracked with the device[24:14] Dietary recommendations with BISU[34:47] Feedback Loops and Integrations with other technologies[40:13] Accuracy of collected data[44:02] Winning Market Innovation AwardResourcesBISU WebsiteBISU App RenderingsThe China StudyEverything Raw by Mike SnyderBiohacker Summit HelsinkiThe Second Bounce of the Ball by Ronald CohenSponsorsVielightVielight combines science and engineering ingenuity to develop unique devices that deliver photons to the brain and inner systems. Their mission is to create photobiomodulation devices that are safe and effective – to help improve one’s quality of life. The Neuro Alpha is a staple in my stress resilience and sleep improvement routine. I get better sleep, better focus, and less anxiety around public speaking. And… increased ability to drop into flow.Go to vielight.com and use the coupon code BOOMER to get 10% off on your purchase.BLU BloxWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters.If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.Continue Your High Performance Journey with Daniel MaggsWebsiteLinkedInFacebookTwitterDisclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lately, the biggest news in the golf world has revolved around topics that Golf Channel contributor Geoff Shackelford knows better than anyone. So Andy met up Geoff to get his thoughts on the bombshell USGA/R&A Distance Insights report, which represents a major shift in the governing bodies' rhetoric about golf's distance problem. They also discuss the emergence of the Premier Golf League as a potential disruptor in professional golf. Geoff broke this story two weeks ago on his blog geoffshackelford.com and continues to report on fresh revelations about the proposed world tour.

‍In this episode we talk to Andy Bilinsky, Founder and CEO at Lensabl. They make it really easy for you to update prescription lenses for your existing frames.This isn't Andy's first launch. He launched a Warby Parker look-a-like before Lensabl. That's where he first formed the idea to de-couple the purchase of frames and lenses online. Instead of jumping into a saturated market, they launched the first ever lens replacement service online.As they evaluated entering the prescription lens space, one of the most glaring bits of information was the sheer size of the market, in comparison to the frames-only market. Glasses used to be purely a medical device—you own one pair becuase they were expensive. But now, they're a fashion accessory. And you can buy many pairs at a reasonable price off resellers like Amazon.Did you know that frames and lenses have completely different supply chains? The materials are different. They come from different places. On the lens side, there’s different functionality of lenses for different types of prescriptions and different requirements. It was key for Lensabl to get this right. And they did. That's partly why they felt so comfortable launching their second product, frames.The frames-only product was a customer idea. Not everyone had a replacement pair to use after sending their main glasses in to Lensabl. So Andy and team thought this was a big opportunity to improve conversion on the lens replacement product, and offer some new and affordable.Andy has raised some VC money, and he's using it to grow their existing and most successful channels. The team is also working on some new and exciting stuff for 2020. Andy shared one bit of news—they're expanding their lens replacement product into Canada.If he were to launch a new brand, one bit of advice he would have for himself is to stay narrowly focused. Make sure that you become a master of one before you start to look outside that. Time is so precious, and the requirements to do one thing incredibly well are so, so high.Wondering what DTC brand Andy looks up to for inspiration? Check them out here: drinktrade.com and takecareof.com.Learn more about Lensabl’s lens replacement service: lensabl.com  To learn more about the DTC Growth Show and #paid, visit hashtagpaid.com/dtcThanks for listening. If you prefer reading, we have the full transcript below.-DTCGrowth Show team.

True informed consent means your doctor tells you about everything that could go wrong before giving you a drug or vaccine. Parents are not being made aware of all of the potential dangers. Polly Tommey is giving a voice to thousands of parents who were not given true informed consent and now have children who are permanently injured, disabled, or dead. Polly Tommey's sites: Follow Polly on Periscope and on Social Media: https://vaxxedthemovie.com/live-streams/ www.vaxxed.com www.vaxxedthemovie.com http://www.autismmediachannel.com http://www.autismfile.com/ http://www.autismcenteraustin.com/index.php/takeaction-home/ https://www.theautismtrust.org.uk/   Polly Tommey And Ashley James https://www.learntruehealth.com/autism-activist-polly-tommey-gives-voice-parents Highlights: What regressive autism is No eczema, allergy, asthma in the unvaccinated Effects of getting Gardasil HPV vaccine on teenagers Various effects of vaccine injury on the parents, siblings and those around them Dangers of vitamin K shot What Vaxxed movie is about What informed consent is   In this episode, Polly Tommey shares with us her family’s story about vaccination and autism. She shares the benefits of not vaccinating and also the effects of vaccinating from hearing different stories of families who have either vaccinated or not vaccinated their child. Lastly, she also talks about the movies Vaxxed and Vaxxed 2.   [0:00] Intro: Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 403.   [0:00:14] Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s guest. We have with us Polly Tommey, who’s a mother and an activist and a producer of documentaries that have blown my mind. I am kind of pinching myself talking to you today because watching you in the Vaxxed documentary, I was crying most of the time — a lot of tears of inspiration. A lot of tears of shock and sorrow, but at the end of that emotional rollercoaster, I walked away thinking that the entire world needs to see the movies that you’ve produced and that everyone needs to have this information. What I love about your message is you’re not fear-mongering, you’re shaming. You are empowering. So thank you so much, Polly, for the work that you do, and thank you for being here today to share your story with us.   [0:01:05] Polly Tommey: Thank you so much for having me.   [0:01:08] Ashley James: Absolutely. I’d love for you to start by sharing your story, your personal journey with autism and becoming an activist.                                                                                              [0:01:16] Polly Tommey: Yes. Well, to start with, my husband and I were extremely pro-vaccine when we had our first child, Bella. We vaccinated her. Of course, you must remember this is 25 years ago. So we did not have the schedule that you have today. This was in England. We have an even less schedule, vaccine schedule than you do here. So, it was really almost one at a time because that was the schedule. So we were very pro-vaccine. We had our second child very close behind our first. So we didn’t think twice, of course about vaccinating. Now, in the morning that I took my son Billy at 13 months into the doctor’s surgery to have his MMR, just that vaccine. I went and had a coffee just so that I could be the first one to tick the box on the book to be the perfect mother, which is what I wanted to be. I wanted to do everything perfectly. So vaccinating was part of that for me. My friend warned me. She said, “Did you know there’s been this odd thing on television about the MMR? There could be a problem with it.” I said to my friend, “There’s just no way this is true because the doctor would, of course, tell me if there was a problem. So I’m going to go with the doctor’s advice. He’s got a medical degree, and I’m going to go ahead and vaccinate my son.” So we vaccinated Billy at 9:00 that morning. By 5:00 that evening – and after the vaccine, he was fine but just very very very sleepy. So I just let him sleep and gave him Tylenol and all those things that you’re told to give him. At 5:00, my husband when in to get him from his crib, and he was having a seizure. It was really bad. His eyes were rolling back. He was convulsing. His back was arched. So we rushed him into the emergency room in the hospital. We told them, “What’s happening to our son?” They said, “What have you done today?” We said, “We gave him the MMR.” They said, “That’s it.” They told us. The medical professionals told us that it was the vaccine. So, they said he would be fine, give him some antibiotics. I mean, it all sounds crazy really back to you know, talking to you about it because I can’t believe how naïve I was. Yes, we gave him some antibiotics and lots of Tylenol, and he never got better. He never woke up. He got more and more sick and ended up with an autism diagnosis at 18 months. So, that made me so angry, so furious and we started looking into why on earth would the doctors say these vaccines are safe and effective? Why didn’t they tell us that our son could have a seizure? It’s on the insert. So we started our journey really telling other parents and going on the British television, media in England talking about the MMR vaccine, which was okay for a short amount of time and then suddenly the descend ship started. That’s when we knew we had a much much bigger problem.   [0:04:10] Ashley James: How were you censored?   [0:04:12] Polly Tommey: Well, they would come and interview us about our son’s story and autism because we were big autism advocates at that time and the MMR section would be cut out of the whole. So everything would be in the interview we got them on television but not the MMR bit. A South African film rages about the vaccine but when it aired, all of it were taken out. That’s when we thought, “Yes. Oh, gosh. There’s something much deeper.” Because the minute they start censoring you for something, there’s much bigger problem behind it.   [0:04:42] Ashley James: Why become an advocate around autism?   [0:04:46] Polly Tommey: Well it started because when we were told that Billy had autism, we didn’t know what that was. Billy is 24 now and he was diagnosed at 18 months 20 odd years ago. There was no internet like we have today. It was just big old computer things. We weren’t really good on that. So went to a library to look up the word autism and it says worse form of mental illness and your child will be institutionalized. We couldn’t find anybody who has autism. Now of course everybody knows some that’s got autism or you see it down the street. Anyway, after doing an interview we got inundated with parents wanting answers to autism. How do you look after your child? How do you stop the tantrums? How do you stop from smashing their heads against the wall? How do you deal with the medical issues? Because I tell you this, autism that I live in, the world I live in and most of the parents that I meet, it’s no gift. It is no all these people that wear t-shirts saying, “Autism is a gift, embrace it,” “I love autism.” I don’t love autism. I hate autism. My son is my gift and autism was some ghastly thing that happened to him following a vaccine, following a seizure. His brain swelled. His head swelled so much. He got encephalitis and he never recovered from that. So basically, he has brain damage. Autism is a word. Regressive autism is the word that medical professionals give our children after they are injured by vaccinates. That I know for sure. The confusing thing for all the people who believe, some parents both people I’ve met their child was born with autism. That’s fine but that’s not the same condition that my son has.   [0:06:25] Ashley James: That’s a really good point that you bring up. I’m about to be 40 and when I was a child it was 1 in 10,000 had autism. I had some cousins that were born with it and they were non-verbal. So I inquired to learn more about it just to understand what was going on whereas now it’s something like 1 in 40 or 1 in 30 children but it’s not the same. They’re saying it’s a spectrum. It’s kind of a blanket statement for some form of brain damage. I interviewed a doctor, Dr. Klinghardt, who helps to “reverse autism” and help heal their brains. He says, all their symptoms are the same as autism once we detox the heavy metals and we do all these natural wonderful medicine and their symptoms gets better and better and better. Let’s say their symptoms completely go away. They’re no longer diagnosed with autism. Was that ever really autism or are we getting most of the people nowadays misdiagnosed? What do you think? Do you think it’s now a misdiagnosis and that they’re using this terminology just because the symptoms are the same?   [0:07:37] Polly Tommey: I think that they didn’t know what to do. I mean my son was only ever diagnosed back then as autism-like symptoms because they really had never seen anything like it. The autism that’s described many many years ago started from birth. So when you get those parents – I’m a great believer in the parent knows best. The parent knows it child best so if the parent says, “This is not from vaccine,” or the parents say, “My son was born with it,” or “My daughter is born with it.” Then they know. We need to respect that. The regressive autism was never around before. This is a new autism that has come from vaccines. I’ve interviewed over 8,000 parents not all about autism but from vaccine injury. I can tell you that every single one of those parents that has an autistic child all the same things as me. That their children were perfectly fine before that vaccine or that group of vaccines went in and brain-damaged them. Because that’s what it is. It’ brain damages.   [0:08:38] Ashley James: I watched one of my friends bring their one-year-old that was walking. He was walking at like nine months and he was so brilliant. Brought him in for his jabs, his one-year vaccines. He got a fever and he started to become limp and lethargic. Then he stopped walking for six months. By the time he was something like two and a half they diagnosed him with autism. She went to naturopaths and changed the diet, got him on supplements, did all kinds of things and he started to – it was like the fog started to lift. He was able to communicate again and connect again. He still has struggles. She sopped vaccinating after that. She saw that he was clearly vaccine injured. I’ve interviewed a pediatrician in Portland, Paul Thomas, who talks about in his 30 years of practice, he has zero cases of SIDS and all these vaccine injuries because he attracts parents that don’t want to vaccinate. Half of his practice doesn’t vaccinate but the other half that does choose to follow his altered schedule. The second he sees that a child has any vaccine injury he sops immediately. He says, “This child is no longer a candidate for vaccines because they’re showing signs of vaccine injury by one vaccine.” He wrote a book I think it’s called Safe Vaccines, the idea that he proposes that everyone should follow an altered schedule if they’re going to choose to vaccinate. Now I love the latest movie you’ve come out with, Vaxxed 2. Like I said, I cried. I couldn’t believe I was crying so much but tears of inspiration. It was really a beautiful movie. All the people that you interview traveling across the United States. I know you’ve traveled to many countries interviewing parents, showing what happens and what can happen and what has been happening. That these parents have been silenced. What’s so beautiful is you’ve given them a voice. Can you take us back and share with us what happened to how did you create the first movie, the fist Vaxxed movie?   [0:11:01] Polly Tommey: Yes. So the first film Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe was directed by Andrew Wakefield, produced by Del Bigtree and I’m also a producer on that. My passion has always been the parents because I am one and because I lived it. So, even in the first film I interviewed Sheila Ealey who’s the African American mom. We have a very powerful interview in there. I was always the person who really was the parents’ go-to. Now, following Vaxxed when Vaxxed was going out of Tribeca Film Festival if you remember that. That gave us a platform that we could never have dreamed of that money just can’t buy. Because what they did by censoring us, yeah, I mean they censored us so much that it actually started trending. So suddenly we were on tour going to Q&As around the country. What happened really quickly is that there were huge lines of people wanting to talk to Andy, Del and myself tell us there story of what happened to them. So Andy and Del had to talk about the science. That was their thing and I ended up listening to the parents’ stories. Then I thought, “Well, this is pointless.” They’re all talking to me and that’s not going to get anywhere. So I found Periscope, a live platform to go and very very quickly it grew and grew and grew. Then we started going live on Facebook too and these stories has got shared. Now we have a huge community around the world that the minute I press the live button, they’re right there wherever I am listening to these stories. The bus became the iconic thing. It wasn’t us the people who made the film, it wasn’t the people in the film. It was the bus. People would come up to the bus they would start crying. They’d want to tell the story whether they were a medical professional, whether they were a parent, a teacher, anybody. Everybody had a story. To this day, we’ve just come back from California. The bus is parked in California now ready to go on the 4th of January. We’re going back out on tour. We’ll be going out all of next year because the demand for people to tell their stories is huge.   [0:13:07] Ashley James: How do people follow you on Periscope?   [0:13:10] Polly Tommey: So, if you go to Periscope you go to @TeamVaxxed. It will say PeepsTV, P-E-E-P-S TV, PeepsTV. You’ll see us there. You’ll see all the stories. Now there are a few fake ones. I ask you to be careful that you don’t get through on the wrong one but we are PeepsTV. Once you sign up, when I go out live, you will go out live with me when we hear every single story. It gives the person telling the story great comfort because I show them all the hearts and the love that they get around the world. It’s been a really very successful thing. What we’ve uncovered on the bus has been more fascinating than anything else.   [0:13:52] Ashley James: When I saw – so watching Vaxxed 2 you show that. You show footage of you going live on Periscope and filming these parents sharing their stories. Time and time again you can see that they were so isolated. That they felt so alone. That they felt guilty, ashamed. They haven’t been listened to. They haven’t had a voice. They haven’t been heard. Then they got to go to the bus, the big Vaxxed bus that has what is it? Over 8,000 signatures.   [0:14:32] Polly Tommey: Nearly 9,000.   [0:14:34] Ashley James: Sorry.   [0:14:35] Polly Tommey: Well, we’re approaching 9,000.   [0:14:37] Ashley James: Each signature represents either a parent or a victim, someone who has been vaccine injured. Is that correct?   [0:14:45] Polly Tommey: Yeah, or has died. Yes. Vaccine injured or has died. There are many many people that contacted me saying, “Please put my name or my child’s name on the bus,” which we do not do. We listen to every single story between myself and the other hosts around the country that are trained up to do this. We all validate by listening to the stories. So they can’t accuse us of just randomly writing anything on there. We really do listen to all of them. We know there’s way more out there. Following Vaxxed 2, it’s just like gone crazy. Everybody wants to tell the story. It seems to me, I will tell you this, it seems to me that if you had a vaccine of any kind you now have an injury of some kind. Because I have never ever heard of eczema, allergy, asthma any of those in the unvaccinated, which is one of the biggest things that we have uncovered around the bus is the undeniable health of the unvaccinated. Including in that is the vitamin K. The vitamin K seems to be a bigger problem than any of us ever thought. I mean all my children had the vitamin K. I remember thanking their midwife thinking that she was just giving my new beautiful baby some vitamins but if you actually do your research on the vitamin K, and we’ve got people testing it right now, there is synthetic full of aluminum. It’s got a black-box warning on it. It’s a really dangerous thing to be giving our baby. I’m just a parent reporting to you from the people of the world who have severe injuries and death following just the vitamin K shot.   [0:16:16] Ashley James: So you said just the aluminum and for those in the United States it’s aluminum although I love the British saying of aluminum. Aluminum sounds so much more beautiful. So you’re saying that there are heavy metals in the vitamin K shot that they give to newborns that are between six and eight pounds. These tiny newborns that they’re injecting it right into their bloodstream aluminum?   [0:16:41] Polly Tommey: Aluminum and everybody can do this research themselves. You don’t need to be a scientist or a doctor to do this. You got to get hold of the insert. The real insert not the fake insert that they give you at the doctor’s surgery and at those pharmacies. Those really are not the real insert. You can actually get it on the CDC website. They have to put it up there. They’re very very big, very long. You will need to google a lot of those words. You will be horrified once you understand what is going into the body of yourself or your baby what it is it’s actually going. It makes sense. I can’t believe that none of us did that research. I can’t actually believe that the pediatricians, the people on the front line that we trust so much do not know either about the ingredients in the vaccines. They don’t know. They had no training as what you saw in Vaxxed 2. Every single one including professor Dr. Moss and various other high high ranking doctors, they also say the same thing. Absolutely no training in vaccines other than they’re safe and effective. Here’s the schedule and they’re the saviors of mankind. That’s it.   [0:17:45] Ashley James: It’s so frustrating because like you said you felt like you’re such a good mother being the first in line, being early for the vaccines for your children wanting to make sure that you’re doing everything to help them and then trusting 100% that our healthcare providers all they need to know for our health. But they have also had information withheld from them. Who’s responsible? We got to hold some people accountable. There’s so many vaccine-injured children. Like you said, there’s even deaths. I really appreciated that you covered Gardasil. You covered the HPV vaccine in Vaxxed 2 that hundreds, hundreds of teenagers have died. That is unacceptable. Then many of them have been left paralyzed and you’ve interviewed several of them, many of them. Can you share some of those stories?   [0:18:48] Polly Tommey: Yeah. I mean absolutely tragic. When we set out on the road in 2016 on this bus, I didn’t even know what Gardasil HPV vaccine. I even never heard of it. Maybe briefly but I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t even know how to spell it. We went on road and by day two we had our first Gardasil story. After we went live with that we were inundated with people at the bus. I remember at one stop, I open the door 15 teenagers standing in front of me. I said, “Are you all here to support someone?” They said, “No. All of us have Gardasil injuries.” So one of the things that you do not see in Vaxxed 2, I mean there’s a lot of that we saw on the road that weren’t in the film. That’s mainly because you can’t put everything in an hour and a half. But a lot of young young girls 15, 16 years old following the HPV vaccine gone through menopause, their ovaries have shut down, they will never have children as they could’ve done before. Lot of girls claiming that they got the HPV, a cervical cancer following they had pap smears before the vaccine absolutely clean. Following that nine months later, they’re showing up with cervical cancer and of course the paralysis. The absolute brain on fire, the burning to their bodies. Many of these girls have committed suicide. One boy following this vaccine through the utter pain and being told that they’re psychologically ill. I just never seen anything like it. I really describe going out on that black bus around America is going into a war zone. It’s just a blood bath of vaccine injury. How people are living, it will just break your heart. These are people that work in good jobs. They get married. They want to be great parents. They want to start a life. They’re excited about life and they follow the system. They do as they’re old and then their life is ripped from them just because of one needle. It doesn’t just affect those two parents. It affects the other siblings. It affects the grandparents deeply. You just see poverty from what was a family that was coping going into absolute poverty because the parents have to be carers. Then of course you get the parents and the family members who then hit the alcohol or hit the psychotropic drugs or whatever it is because they can’t cope with the pain. You’ve just lost a whole load of people that could’ve contributed to this amazing country all because of a vaccine one moment in time.   [0:21:16] Ashley James: My frustration lies in how polarizing this topic has become and I feel as though they’ve weaponized this topic so that we would just fight amongst ourselves and not rise up to demand change. If you look on Facebook, I have lost friends. I try to be neutral, no one is ever neutral but I try to just stand in the middle and say, “Listen. Can we at least have a discussion? Can we at least bring the information, look at both sides?” What I see is that there are people who, I’ve lost really good friends because of this because I’ll share something that just brings into question vaccine injury for example on Facebook. I’ve had friends and family members get very angry and feel like they need to defend the pharmaceutical industry. They need to defend vaccines. I am somehow a really bad person that wants children to die of polio.  They’ll say these kinds of things, “Do you really want people to be an iron lungs? It’s so ignorant of you to question vaccines.” Anytime I’m seeing this, anytime someone wants to just question it or go, “Hey. It’s not right that there are vaccine injuries. Why aren’t we addressing this? Why aren’t we talking about this more? That it becomes a very polarized topic and then they get attacked. One of my friends, Green Smoothie Girl Robyn Openshaw, who has a really large holistic following is now being attacked online by I guess it’s called pro-vaxers. That she is being harassed. I’m like, “Why can’t we just ask questions safely? Why can’t we have these open discussions?” I imagine you have been attacked since this is such a polarized topic now.   [0:23:24] Polly Tommey: You know, it’s really interesting. The people who attack me are the people online. I’m out on the bus right there in open view and then there’s no one around. Where are you? Where are all these people that threaten me and they’re all hiding behind computers. Now, of course we get the odd family members and we get the odd really good friend. It’s so sad when they throw the iron lung thing at you. First of all, let’s address the iron lung thing. If you see Vaxxed 2, you’ll see Colton’s story in there. This is 2019 and we don’t have big iron lungs like we don’t have big old computers anymore. Things have advanced. They’re called ventilators, respirators. If you look around you, what is polio? Polio is this so-called crippling disease where you’re in an iron lung or you’ll get somebody say, “My father had polio and his ankles were really skewed or his legs a bit not made or he had to wear braces for two years.” Look around at the children today. There’s never been so much disability, children in wheelchairs, children crippled over with legs that don’t work. All these things parents claiming from vaccine injury. I’ve actually interviewed two people with polio, both of them said they got it following the polio vaccine. Now, of course if you do your research on that you will see that that’s probably where the majority of this has come in the first place. You really have to look down. It’s not even conspiracy theory anymore. It’s right there in front of your face. I think this is why they’re panicking the other side. Also you’ve got to remember that those doctors, take the doctor that shout and scream at us and say everyone’s going to die because we’re not vaccinating.” They’re also living with immense guilt just like family members who have vaccinated are. If you’re telling me, Polly Tommey, if you’re telling me that vaccines are as dangerous then that means I, the doctor, have potentially harmed a great deal of people. That means I, the mother, as potentially harmed my children. I don’t want to hear that from you Polly Tommey so therefore I say, “Go away and I’m going to block you and I never want to speak to you again because you want polio to come back.” That’s basically how the argument goes because no one can get their head around the fact that this is probably the biggest lie that I ever told. The doctors are being lied to. The parents are being lied to. So that’s why we have to do our research. We have to be brave and we have to tell the truth. The truth is that these vaccines are killing and hurting people. We know that not just from the parents’ stories. We know that when we look at the unvaccinated families or the families with the same parents who stopped vaccinating after the injury. So you’ve got the same parents, same genetics. First child may be fully vaccinated and autistic or brain-damaged in some way, paralyzed. They partially vaccinate the second child who has asthma, allergies, eczema maybe a bit of ADD and then they stop. They report their following children, absolutely none of those whatsoever. But remember, minus the vitamin K. The ones that are vaccinated with the vitamin K at birth, they still have injury. You’ve got to have a clean child for no injury.   [0:26:27] Ashley James: You interviewed, was it thousands of unvaccinated families or unvaccinated children? It was a lot. That’s why I’d like to go with Vaxxed 2 is that you showed the first half of the movie is interviewing so many families with vaccine injury. Then you started meeting all the families that had no vaccine injury or like you painted the picture of like five or seven and some of them were vaccinated and then the rest weren‘t. The difference is outstanding. That the children never are sick, never have asthma, never have food allergies and have never needed to see a doctor other than a wellness visit but have never needed to go in for antibiotics or ear infections over and over and over again.   [0:27:15] Polly Tommey: Unbelievable. We have one unvaccinated child. On my travel I had antibiotic for an infected toe and that is it. It’s quite unbelievable and it’s things like I’m really shocked at the allergy things. Allergy is a huge problem in this country. We are not seeing any allergies in the unvaccinated families, again minus the vitamin K shot at birth which isn’t a vaccine so it’s not part of a vaccine. The ones without that, zero allergies, zero. Unbelievable what we have uncovered. The reason why we knew the vitamin K was a problem is because I was reading the facts on Vaxxed studies, the ones that are actually out there that they refuse to publish or they published and then retract. Something wasn’t right. They were still reporting that the unvaccinated had allergies and that was not what we were seeing on the road. We looked into it more and we found the vitamin K being a huge problem. As I said, we’re nearly days of looking into that with some scientists but we are thoroughly looking into that because again, those poor parents having their beautiful newborn overthinking the vitamin K is the most important thing that they can give their child from their first day of life. We’re seeing the opposite from the roads of America.   [0:28:27] Ashley James: So you have two movies Vaxxed and Vaxxed 2. For the listeners who haven’t seen either one of your movies, can you tell us a bit about the first one, Vaxxed? What would we take away from that? Maybe share some lessons from your first movie.   [0:28:43] Polly Tommey: It’s about William Thompson, the scientist at the CDC. It was really concentrated on the MMR and him being reported without his knowledge by Dr. William Hooker in California. Oh no, he went out of California, excuse me it’s very important so it’s all legal. It’s really the breaking news of William Thompson confessing to how there was a big cover-up at the CDC. So that was the first film and of course some parents’ stories woven into that. Then a lot of parents coming in for a collage montage saying, “Hear us well. Please hear us well. My child was fine before I had this vaccine. My child has autism following vaccine.” So that’s really the essence of the first film. I think the reason why the first film was so successful wasn’t the story itself, which is good but what happens since that is these parents coming forward. If it wasn’t Tribeca and the big drama they made over that it probably would’ve another little DVD that was made and people saw in a community but that’s what happened from that. Again, from that censorship the parents saying, “I’m here,” around the world. I have traveled England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. I’ve traveled around those countries recording those families’ stories and I tell you they’re exactly the same as they are here in America just with different accents but the same outcome everywhere. It’s undeniable.   [0:30:08] Ashley James: In Vaxxed 2 you show clips near the beginning of the film interviews with Robert de Niro. I was laughing so hard because you’re saying at the beginning of Vaxxed 2, you and Andy Wakefield were saying, “That was it. They were pulling us a few weeks before we were supposed to have our big debut at the Tribeca Film Festival.” That Robert de Niro got so much pressure to pull it. I’m like, “Where’s the pressure coming from? Is big pharma really that scared of this information coming out? This little film at this little film festival that they had to put so much pressure on him. Then every time he was interviewed for the Tribeca Film Festival on local news or on the morning news or whatever news show he was on he would bring it up and he’d say, “I hope people see it. I wanted people to just get the information, decide for yourself. Just listen, see it, decide for yourself.”  The people who were interviewing him were saying, “Yeah. Yeah. You should watch it.” So I was just laughing because obviously it wasn’t him. He wanted people to see it. Have you ever talked to him or met him or heard what he thought about your films?   [0:31:35] Polly Tommey: Well, I’ve only seen the correspondence. He’s a friend of Andy Wakefield’s, I’ve only seen the correspondence between them. Andy was a director of that first film. Obviously Robert de Niro thought it was a good film otherwise he wouldn’t have allowed it to be in his film festival, Tribeca Film Festival. He says, Robert de Niro, that he just everyone to see it. Of course, he knows there’s a problem with these vaccines just like many many other celebrities and people know that there’s a problem with these vaccines. Many that do speak out don’t work again or I mean, Rob Schneider. Take him the actor. He started speaking out about these vaccines and he lost loads of contracts and lost most of his work. So people are afraid but I say to you people, you cannot money before these people before mankind. You’ve got to stand up otherwise we’ve got no future if you don’t stand up and tell the truth. Because if you look around right now, there’s very few people that are really really really healthy. Most people are sick with something and there’s got to be a reason behind that. What we’re saying is we’re not saying any of this. I interviewed a woman the other day on the Vaxxed bus with four generations of unvaccinated people in their family. She’s a chiropractor. Of course the chiropractor is one of the healthiest groups of people in the world. He told me of 200 of those members, only people have died of cancer both of them were very heavy smokers. They had no eczema and no allergies in the family. Everybody lived until they’re old aged and nobody of the 200 have been on antibiotics. Don’t you think that needs to be looked into?   [0:33:15] Ashley James: It just boggles the mind because we’ve really been raised from birth to believe that vaccines are the reasons why we don’t have outbreaks of illnesses. That if it wasn’t for vaccines everyone would have had polio or measles or chickenpox which now we’re afraid of apparently because there’s a vaccine for it whereas when I was a kid we had chickenpox parties and it was no big deal. So it’s really frustrating because there’s so much disinformation. There’s so much emotions around it because people who are anti-vax and people who are pro-vax actually want the same thing. We all want healthy children and we all want our children to live a long life. We all don’t want our children to die of something horrible. We all actually want the same thing. So we should stop fighting each other and we should start just looking at the information and looking at the positives and the negatives and weighing them and looking at what’s the best outcome. Because maybe the doctor that I talked about, the one I interviewed in Portland who wrote that book Safe Vaccines, maybe altered schedule is the best thing and his altered schedule. Maybe that after we do research maybe that is the best thing or maybe it isn’t. Maybe like your chiropractor showing that three generations without vaccine over 200 people, that that’s the best way to go. Until we stop polarizing the subject and until we start asking to all work together to respect each other and to just let’s look at the science and let’s look at the results and let’s look at the safety for our children instead of bashing each other, instead of fighting each other, instead of calling each other names. Let’s come together, pro and anti-vaxers, let’s come together and go what can we do for the benefit of our children and the future generations? It’s undeniable that these parents have seen vaccine injury. After watching your two documentaries, it’s undeniable that there is a problem. So I’m always confused when people are saying there isn’t a problem because that is taking away the voice from the parents who have seen that there’s a problem. I love that you have given a voice to these parents who feel so isolated. Who day in and day out are taking a child who’s non-verbal, who’s beating their head against the wall, who has seizures, who is in a modern iron lung as you show in Vaxxed 2. You’ve given a voice to these parents who struggle every day and have been told time and time again that they’re wrong and that it wasn’t a vaccine injury when they saw hours after a vaccine that their child begin to have seizures, begin to turn blue. I mean just really scary things. I feel for these parents. I also can get in the shoes of people who are very angry, the pro-vaxers who are very angry at the anti-vaxers because they feel threatened. I imagine they feel threatened. So, I wish we could all come together and instead of fighting each other we could actually all ask the same question, what can we do to create health for our children? Let’s look at the science. Do you have any advice for us? What can we do as individuals to help?   [0:37:05] Polly Tommey: Well, I think first of all, I don’t see the parents all the people out there fighting. I don’t see that. I take most of them are pharmaceutical paid trolls. There’s adverts everywhere for them. I could go and be one for them tomorrow if I would pass the test of who I am. But most people can. You can just sign up. You would get paid really to fight online for the sake of herd immunity or whatever online. I mean, I just ignore these people, block them. Look, the bottom line is we’re not here to fight. These parents aren’t here to fight. They’re here to warn. They’re here to say, “Look. This happened to us. We vaccinated our kids. We are pro-vaccine. You can’t call us anti-vaccine. We vaccinated ourselves and our children. We’re simply here to warn as a person standing in front of another person saying look, be careful because there’s nothing more heartbreaking if you go down the road I just went down.” Do your research. The best research you can do is go on the ground yourself and speak to those families that did vaccinate and didn’t vaccinate. Make that mind up yourself. That’s the best science you’re going to get. Most of the science studies out there are funded by pharmaceuticals. Did you know that the medical schools that the medical doctors are funded by the pharmaceutical companies? You just have to work it out yourself. Okay, we know Google is taken by big pharma, we can see that. If you google any of our websites now you have to go through the World Health Organization all that kind of thing but you can still do it by talking. There’s no better expert on what’s happened to their child or to themselves than other human beings. So go figure it out. Look at the ones that or pro-vaccine and said, “My children are fine,” and you look at them and they’re not. They’ve got eczema. They’ve got allergies. They’re carrying around inhalers. They’re on medication. That’s not okay. Go and talk to the families that didn’t. Are those children on medication? What is their family like? Which way do you want to go? Get on the ground and do your own research. You don’t even need to look at the scientific studies anymore. Scientific studies are the people that have lived it.   [0:39:10] Ashley James: Beautiful. Now, starting in January, you’re going back out on the road. For those listening who want to follow you or participate and meet-up with you, how can they do that? How can they follow the Vaxxed bus and potentially come and meet you?   [0:39:25] Polly Tommey: Okay. We’re starting off in California in Modesto. California lost a lot of its rights and can’t go to school unless you’re completely vaccinated. So we are going down to California to talk to the parents that have been injured and the unvaccinated who have been thrown out of school and to discover that. So we’re starting off in Modesto in the fourth of January. If you go to Vaxxed 2 the number 2 so Vaxxed2.com, the bus tour will be put up on there. AMC theatres were showing our film Vaxxed 2 and have just pulled it under pressure, of course like everything else. So we will be putting the film online. So watch out for that. It will be going out on the Brighteon site Mike Adams health ranger. He will be screening Vaxxed 2. We don’t have a date for that right now but that will be early in the New Year. Of course DVDs for those that still have DVD players. You’ll be able to get those on February, I think. So the world will be able to see this. They can’t stop it. They’re trying very very hard to stop it. They can’t. If you are on Facebook, we do go out live on We Are Vaxxed it’s called. That is our only official site. We go out live on there. We go out live on Periscope, PeepsTV. Periscope is where we go out live on more than anything else because it’s the most uncensored. We’re still shadow banned but you’re still be able to find us if you’re clever.   [0:40:49] Ashley James: Have you interviewed any parents who have fought this system or sued the pharmaceutical companies and won?   [0:40:57] Polly Tommey: Yes. Actually in Vaxxed 2 you remember that very tragic story of Christina Tarsell who had the Gardasil vaccine. She didn’t feel very well after the vaccine. She went back to school. She just did in her room on her own and they found her dead on her bed. We actually have that image that the police took of that girl when she was found by the police dead in bed. You will see that on Vaxxed 2. So be careful taking your children. I advise all parents to see that film first before they decide whether they want their children to see it because there is this girl that’s dead in the bed. The reason why we use that photograph and we allowed that to go out is because she won in court. They said, “Yes. She is injured by the Gardasil. We’re very sorry. One in a billion chance.” Usual sort of stuff. She’s awarded $250,000 for her daughter. But if you look at that photograph of her, you can see that is a very toxic death. It looks like a noble death, foam coming out of her mouth. It’s really really – anyone who see that section, the Gardasil section of Vaxxed 2 movie will not want. As Bobby Kennedy says in the film, “You got to be insane to give that vaccine to yourself or anyone you love.” When you read the clinical lecture or spoken to the parents, it’s just a very dangerous vaccine. History will very soon I think be able to say, “Yes. I’m sorry. We made a mistake. That’s a bad vaccine.”   [0:42:23] Ashley James: Absolutely. When we look at the invention of x-ray machine, they used to have x-ray machine in shoe stores so we can get x-rays to see if our shoes fit correctly. Our feet fit in our shoes and then they soon found that was causing a lot of damage and they stopped doing that. They took lead out of the gasoline when they realized that was hurting us. They used to spray children with DDT, which actually caused polio-like symptoms. I had a chiropractor on the sow share this, Dr. Wolfson. She shares that she believes that most of the polio was all of a sudden was eradicated back in the 40s, 50s, 60s was actually they are removing DDT. They stopped spraying that on the children. First they sprayed the children then they had this uprise in polio symptoms. They didn’t realize that it was actually DDT poisoning because it caused the same paralysis, the same issues. Then when they stopped, when they finally realized that they were causing a huge damage that they stopped it. I’ve heard from a naturopathic physician who has been a midwife for 30 years that there’s a part of Washington state where I live where the miscarriages, late late pregnancy miscarriages and then also children having injuries at birth or being born with injuries rises like one hundredfold during the spraying season. That if a mother in a particular part of Washington State is near the farms. Doesn’t even have to live on a farm but near the farms. Whatever they are spraying now is causing huge injuries. It’s silent. They’re all able to cover it up but 50 years from now we’ll hear about it and it’ll be history. It’ll be history by then. The victims aren’t being heard now. So I love that you are giving a voice to people and you’re also spreading this information. We should question everything. We should question absolutely everything. We should question at what’s – look at Flint, Michigan and now they’re testing water across the United States and finding that many municipalities have a really really poor quality water. That there’s a heavy metals in the water. We have to understand that we need to advocate for our own selves. We have to test our own water. We need to understand that our food isn’t necessary, we can’t just trust our food is safe just because some company made it and packaged it. We have to do our own research, advocate for ourselves and we should absolutely advocate for ourselves. Whatever we put in our mouth whether it’s a supplement, a drug, food, water we have to be the quality control. We cannot go blindly through those world and trust that these companies have our best interest at heart. There’s over 80,000 chemicals now, man-made chemicals that have been introduced into our food supply that many of them are banned in other countries and banned in the UK and in European Union and yet they’re still safe, apparently they’re safe here and also in our cosmetics. So we have to just advocate for ourselves, question everything and also support those who have a voice so that they can be heard. So, Polly, you have such a beautiful mission because you just want to give parents a voice and let them be heard. I thank you so much for the work that you’re doing. Is there anything else you’d like to say? Anything you want to make sure listeners know? Any websites or any resources that are really important for parents especially parents that have vaccine-injured children?   [0:46:27] Polly Tommey: Yeah. Actually there are. I would like to say something actually. The saddest thing really, most of the stories when the parents talk to me about the injury is that they and their gut knew something wasn’t right before the vaccine was going into their baby or themselves but they were bullied. You mustn’t, you can get off and walk out of that doctor’s surgery and say, “You know what? I’m going to go think about it. I’m going to do my research but I will be back to discuss this with you.” So don’t let them bully you. Don’t let them tell you your baby will die if it doesn’t have the vaccine. Don’t let them say these things. You go and do that research yourself because that’s where all the trouble started from the bullying of the medical professionals to have you vaccinate your child or yourself. So please, you are in control yourself. You’re in control of your baby and your child. You’re the expert on yourself and the baby and the child. So take control. We’ve got to all stand up and be much stronger than we’ve been and not allow these people to bully us. That’s what I would say.   [0:47:27] Ashley James: I love it. Thank you so much Polly. I really encourage listeners to watch your movie. Watch Vaxxed and watch Vaxxed 2 when it does come out soon. Follow you on Periscope. You just download the app Periscope and go to the PeepsTV@TeamVaxxed.  Also, all the links to everything Polly does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. Regardless of whether you consider yourself pro-vaccine, anti-vaccine, or what I like to say is pro-kid, I think that your movies are empowering, Polly. I think that all my listeners want to become empowered. We want to absorb information and make the best decision for ourselves so I think that it’s in our best interest to educate ourselves. The fact that big pharma doesn’t want us watching your stuff that’s kind of scary. The level of censorship is showing us that we have to watch it. Whatever the big corporations don’t want us to see is what we need to see. We need to be allowed to see everything. We have a right. We have a right to all these information and they want to take our rights away. We have a right to our health and making the best choices for ourselves. I believe in informed consent. The doctors I’ve had on the show believe in informed consent. Informed consent meaning knowing all the facts and then making a choice. Choose to vaccinate, choose to do altered schedule, choose not to vaccinate. It’s a choice that you should be allowed to make after you have received all the facts. That’s what informed consent is. So I also encourage my other listeners to check out my other interviews that share more information about this. I’m going to be having Andy Wakefield and others on the show in the New Year to give more of the science. This interview, Polly, was so great because I know that parents out there needed to hear your story, needed to hear this information from another parent. So thank you so much for coming on the show today.   [0:49:40] Polly Tommey: Thank you so much.

Today’s episode is curated by my listeners as I’ll be answering questions from people on social media. I’ll share my holiday meals survival strategy, the way that I prepare for those and what I do to prevent overstuffing. And I finally answer the Superhuman six questions I ask all of my guests. Highlights[3:00] What do you do to survive holiday meals?[5:36] Stimulating digestive enzymes before a meal[7:40] Stop eating two hours before you go to bed[8:20] I answer the Superhuman sixResourcesX3 barFlow for the masses with Siim LandTranscranial and intranasal photobiomodulation with Dr. Lew LimInbox ZeroAtlas Shrugged by Ayn RandThe Code of the SamuraiOur sponsor today is BLUbloxWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters.If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Show Notes:Connect with Marites online in the following places:www.maritesrealty.comInstagram: @mariteskliemHosted by: Andrew BracewellProduced and Edited by: Justin HawkesFull Transcription of this Interview:Andrew 00:01 This is the podcast that finds the most elusive people, the everyday amazing kind that you know nothing about. I’m hunting these people down and exposing their beauty to the world. I’m Andrew Bracewell and this is every day. Amazing. And so my life is linked to shell. And then real estate is kind of like the commercial thing.Andrew 00:25 Mary tests. Hello, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me today. I am very excited to be chatting with you in my living room. This is, this is quite the thing to be doing and very cozy. I got my blanket. Well, we’ll have to make sure to take pictures of you cause you do look cozy. I’m just hoping you don’t fall asleep. We’re gonna try not to. We gotta we gotta keep you gotta keep you awake while we try to dissect your brain and learn all that we can. Um, so is it, is itMarites 00:53 clean or climb? It’s cleam. I know. I have a very difficult first name and then even a harder last name. So I’ve, I was at a wedding once and I was singing, they’re like, all right, please welcome Mariah to kill them. I was like, I think that’s me. I thinkAndrew 01:11 yeah, right. Just kill them. So confession, um, I always like to start confessions. I feel like, you know, he get something off your chest. So we’ve worked together in the same company for quite a few years. I think you’ve been around for 12 years.Marites 01:24 Uh, I’ve been at Remax only F uh, maybe seven or eight, but,Andrew 01:29 Oh right, okay. Sure. License 15 but so we’ve, we’ve been in each other’s lives without actually being in each other’s lives for quite some time cause we’ve only recently started to spend some more time together. Um, but when I started to see your name, I had no idea what to say. Like I don’t, I don’t know how to pronounce that. That’s great. There’s a couple of times that I did do Hey to you, I don’t know if you remember. And so, and then there was another couple of times where like, I actually avoided interaction because of that awful embarrassing. Like, you know, you get that sometimes where it’s like, you know, either forget the person’s name or you don’t know how to say it. So I’m just going to avoid, I’m that person. I’m the avoider walking down the hallway if I don’t know where is it.Andrew 02:07 I was like, Oh, I gotta pee, I gotta go just hard left, turn into the bathroom. Uh, but at some point in time I learned it was married test, but I’ve also wondered the clean climb thing. So now we know it’s, it’s, it’s claim and claim is okay. So you’re, I mean, this is clearly your, you’ve, you’ve taken on the, the name of your husband. We’ll, you know, we’ll get to more a little bit later. Yeah. But it’s clean. Is this German or whatever background? I married a German guy. You married a German guy? Yeah, my life boy. Well you made your Filipino parents.Marites 02:37 He’s, he, you know, you think of white guys would be like taller Filipinos. Like, Oh, we’re going to get like a tall grandkids. Like, no, my husband’sAndrew 02:44 does seem as me. Yeah. Yeah. He’s not playing basketball or volleyball. Basketball. He says it’s a right vertically challenged sports. Right. That’s very true. So, uh, you know, we stumbled into family talk here, so why don’t you just I don’t know, take a few minutes. Tell us who you are, what life is and um, yeah, start there.Marites 03:05 Yeah. Okay. So I’m, I’ve been married for about eight years now to my husband Tyson and I’ve got two little boys that are two and three years old. So too little monsters. What are their, what are their names? Leo is the oldest one. He’ll be four pretty soon. And Bennett is the youngest.Andrew 03:23 And for anybody who’s ever encountered you on Instagram, they see your, you have two of the most endearing boy. They are amazing. Well, we’ll talk more about that, but my God, I’ve laughed so many times watching them. Yeah, keep going. Sorry I interrupted.Marites 03:39 Um, yeah, and so we live in the Fraser Valley and uh, I grew up in Richmond. That’s where my real estate career kind of started. And yeah, now I sell real estate here in the Valley.Andrew 03:50 So how did you end up in, like, what’s your, your, um, your family background? How did you land in Richmond? Let’s go back a little a little further.Marites 03:59 Okay. So my parents moved here from the Philippines in the 1970s and they landed in a small logging camp in the queen Charlotte islands. So my dad had these sideburns. My mom looked like she was 12 years old, but early twenties. They were newlyweds, pregnant with my oldest sister at the time.Andrew 04:22 So married in the Philippines and then yard themselves out too.Marites 04:27 The queen Charlottes. Yeah, I know. Well, I think they just knew that Canada was a good place and there was lots of opportunity for kids, um, for their kids to have better education and, and so I think that’s why they made the move.Andrew 04:41 So were they given a, I dunno, I mean this is maybe a total infant question, but were they given the option of where to go or are you just told, congratulations, you’re welcome to Canada, here’s where you must,Marites 04:52 no, I think my mom’s brother had gone first and worked for this company, um, in the Charlottes. And so then he sponsored him to come. And so my dad didn’t know anything about queen Charlotte islands. Uh, like my mom thought snow grew on the ground because that’s all she’s seen. It does. Um, and so my dad was just telling me the other day how the first day he landed, they threw him in into the forest basically with a shovel and he had to dug, dig the snow outs for the loggers and that was his job. And so he had gone from like 90 degrees to like negative 10, and he said his lips just chap like instantly. And they were so badly blistered. And uh, he lasted two and a half days and they’re like, okay, you’re slowing down their production team, we gotta pull you outta here. So they threw him into the office, made him a part time a timekeeper, and then he actually continued on to do his, um, has accounting designation with them. And then like 40 plus years later, he retired with the same company.Andrew 06:03 My goodness. What a story. So lands in Canada starts with one company and finishes a, that’s amazing. Yeah.Marites 06:08 So he’s very, very loyal and, um, really hard worker. And then my mom ran the little commissary shop, the postal store, um, kinda typical Asian running the convenience store for the camp. Wow. Yeah. And so I feel, I feel very fortunate to be here in Canada. I think that my parents sacrificed a lot. He, my dad tells me the day that he remembers they left the Philippines and he was at the airport looking at my mom through the glass and there she was, his new bride, pregnant with my oldest sister. And he’s like, I’m, I’m leaving my home, I’m leaving my family. I’m leaving my country to set up for them to come and for us to have a better life together. And so I feel very, uh, grateful too to live here and to have the opportunities I have and I feel like my opportunities that I have were bought at a price by my parents. And so I don’t feel entitled to anything that I, I think a lot of my peers may be feel sorta entitled. The millennials get a bad rep for having, um, that stereotype of like, Oh, we’re owed. Yeah. Yeah. But I don’t, I don’t really struggle with that feeling. So do you,Andrew 07:25 do you feel a, um, a duty because you know, because your parents, let’s use the terminology, you know, paid for your opportunity. Do you then you carry that through life and is that, that’s part of your, like you wake up every morning, it’s like, well I don’t, I, I don’t feel good. I don’t want to do this. Shut up Mary Tesco, get your ass out of bed. Go do that. Is that, is that part of your,Marites 07:47 your your mantra? Yeah, I think, I think my parents were very heavily involved in my childhood and, and they drove us to do really well in school and any passions I had, they invested fully in. Um, when I was doing music and acting, my mom would drive me to all over the lower mainland and when the car all night long while I did my thing. And then, um, so I feel indebted to them for sure.Andrew 08:12 For those of you listening that heard Mary test say music and acting, don’t worry, we will get to that. We’re not, we’re not, we’re not passing over that. I’ll get you on that in a minute. So, um, so you are, I, I’m, I’m uh, I’m an infant in this conversation. You’re then a second generation immigrant. Is that, what, is that how you’re classified cause your parents immigrated and you were born here? I don’t, I’m not sure. I might be first, first generation Canadian. Yeah, these are, these are things we’ll have to look up and, and educate ourselves on.Marites 08:42 SoAndrew 08:43 um, you’re born then and the queen Charlottes or you’re born in Richmond?Marites 08:47 I was born in Richmond and lived in the queen Charlotte’s for the first couple of years cause we didn’t have a hospital there. There was only there, I think there’s 400, 500 people there. So, um, andAndrew 08:56 then after we live in the shots for a couple of years, my sisters grew up there, but then they had no high school system. So then we had to move. So I was raised as a city girl. Got it. City girl and you come across that way. I don’t, I don’t see you, you know, with an ax out in the Bush. That’s not,Marites 09:15 yeah, I don’t hike camp. Oh, you don’t care. We should talk about this. Okay. You know what, my parents worked too hard to get me into a country where I don’t have to poop outside. I will not camp.Andrew 09:26 See, you know, I think subconsciously my spirit knew that I loved you. Even though we haven’t talked about these things, I don’t understand it. I don’t know. Like I, and you know what, as a child I camped like I, and I really kept my dad and my parents, we went out in like shitty tents that had holes and we weren’t properly equipped and we actually cooked over the fire. And more often than not, camping, uh, was cold, wet, you know, uncomfortable, constipated, like whatever. Like life isn’t normal and I just don’t understand. Like we, people, we have like, you know, the world has developed like Weston’s and Fairmont’s and, and I don’t, I don’t understand why you would choose to, to not do that. And then the argument where people go, well it’s, it’s inexpensive, it’s cheap. That’s a load. Because I mean I expensive. I understand that what my parents did with me was cheap and inexpensive because they had no money. But then what I observed people doing today that is not inexpensive, all of the equipment and crap that they buy is, is very expensive. So anyways, we share that together. That’s, yeah, that’s phenomenal. So you never camped as like an adult human.Marites 10:35 I think my sister took me once and I hated it. I’m like, never again.Andrew 10:39 Yeah. Kindred spirits. Amazing. We’re going to get, you know that we’re going to get glared at by peopleMarites 10:45 I know. I know my friends love camping and they all go together and I never get the invite and I’m like, I’m not offended. Knock your socks off. I’ll be in my warm bed.Andrew 10:55 Th this causes conflict in my marriage because my wife loves that. The whatever that she would love to camp more and do that kind of rough ed or you know, whatever, whatever people call it. And we’ve done it and she’s done it even with friends. But it’s just, it’s hard to get me motivated to, uh, to want to do something like that. Just leave me at home. So, okay. So you’re not camping as you’re growing up. Yeah. You’re in, you’re in Richmond doing whatever. Just the regular Richmond kid thing. I would presume. And you alluded to something, which is, I never knew this about you. I only learned this about you, I think when we were talking about doing the show together. Um, you actually had like a childhood pop star career like that. That’s not misrepresenting. I’m not calling you Brittany Spears. I know you’re not Brittany Spears. Yeah. Talk about that a little bit.Marites 11:48 So my entertainment career started when I was about eight years old. I was,Marites 11:54 I grew up doing karaoke and kind of, that was part of our cultural upbringing. And so I was used to being in front of the, uh, entertaining people. And so my, my, uh, people would always tell my mom, you should put her into acting. She do really well on acting. And so we booked an appointment to meet with an acting coach. But before we did that, I was walking and Steve and some people approached my mom and they’re like, we need your daughter for a commercial right now. And my mom is paranoid Filipina lady, like they’re trying to kidnap my daughter. She’s like, no way. And they’re like, yeah, you got to get in our van. We’re going to go do. And she’s like, no, no, no. And they’re like, we’ll give her $2,000. And she’s like, okay, goAndrew 12:33 know. Apparently, apparently Steve stuns known for childhood Filipino kidnappingMarites 12:39 real thing in my, in my upbringing. That was a thing that we had to be afraid of. And so it was legit. It was a commercial for Canada’s 120 fifth birthday. And I had to just like run up to the camera and then, uh, yeah, I can’t remember exactly. It was 2000 hours, but I got paid a lot, really for being eight years old. It was a lot of money. And then I went to my acting agent and I said, I’ve already done a commercial. So she’s like, great. So, yeah, I did some acting and then, um, yeah, did like a dozen or so TV commercials, a couple TV shows, just, you know, two or three lines, not nothing major. And then I transitioned to doing music. So, um, I recorded some songs. We had them on the radio. They were on the beat 94.5.Andrew 13:23 Okay. Okay. You’re not, you’re not blowing over this quickly. We need Lena. I could even see it in your body language. I did. I did some, I did some songs and then it’s nothing. No. I want the name of the song, how much it was played. Like come on, give us the details here.Marites 13:42 Okay. So I recorded a song called back in the day.Andrew 13:45 Yeah. You wrote it. No, I didn’t write it. I was a pop star. Like the typical pop star. I just went in there. This sounds amazing. Shout out to all the pop stars out there. We know you don’t write your own ship. Okay. Oh man.Marites 14:00 Okay. So yeah, it was, it was on the radio and it was in heavy rotation, meaning every couple of hours it was on. So I’d be walking inAndrew 14:07 hold on. What year is this? Is everyone’s trying to think back in their life right now? I need to remember who I was dating, what car I was driving, whether or not I’ve made out to you. No, I was probably married at the time. This was like early two thousands Oh perfect.Marites 14:26 I think I started recording. I was about 1516 so quite a quite a while ago. Okay. So the name of the song was again back in the day. It was since we had a falling out with the producer and so they eventually rerecorded it and rereleased it. So it’s hard to actually find, cause I know as soon as they tell people they like try to Google it. I’m like, good luck. This was before like YouTube was really big and all that.Andrew 14:47 You do know that we’re going to get it and we’re going to play it out at the end of this podcast. That’s amazing. Our producer Justin, he should, nobody can see him and he’s not on the mic, but he’s just absolutely loving. This is writing notes right now. Get song. That’s fun.Marites 15:03 Oh yeah. Yeah. So then I performed in nightclubs. I, the weirdest thing that happened was I was on vacation in the Cayman islands sitting at a bar and the bartender recognized me and he was like, I know who you are. And he’s like, I listened to your song. I’m from Edmonton. I was like, Whoa. That was pretty bizarre for me.Andrew 15:25 Wow. Okay. So, so that’s, and then so the music was more, what was your bigger, was it music or acting that you were more passionate about?Marites 15:34 Probably music. Yeah. To this day I still like music. I still like to sing at church and stuff like that. Acting. It got to a point where I was just a cute kid and I could say a couple of fun lines, but then as I got older, they’re like, Hey, you have to invest in lessons and actually dive in. I was like, nah, I don’t really want to do that. Music’s more of a, my karaoke roots coming out. I feel like that’s something,Andrew 15:59 like, I’ve heard you say, make that Filipino karaoke reference number of times. And I’d be lying to say that I’d never thought that before this point in my life. But it’s also something I didn’t think I was allowed to say.Marites 16:10 Oh, it’s, it’s so stereotypical, but it’s, it was literally a part of my upbringing. Like how kids play softball. I karaoke like we karaoke when I was sad, when I was happy, when we had a birthday party, when there’s a funeral, like it doesn’t matter any opportunity to pull out the magic Mike, we did it.Andrew 16:27 You know what, in this, in this environment, uh, in the world we’re in today, you know, sometimes stereotypes are, you know, not supposed to talk about them or you know, they’re, they’re offsite or whatever. But I, some of them are real and they’re not. That’s right. Totally honest. So we, one year, uh, Kristen and I, my wife Kristen, where we are, we’re in Maui. I can’t, we’ve been to Maui a few times. I can remember what year it was, but it was, you know, probably somewhere prior to 2010 maybe after, I have no idea. She’ll listen to this later and she’ll correct me and it’s fine. Um, but we go to this, uh, we go to the sushi restaurant and I think we had read that there was karaoke there if I remember correctly. But like we needed to eat and I wanted to check this place out. I’m a big Japanese food and nut and the place had great reviews so, so we walk in and it was clearly karaoke night and it was clearly dominated by Filipino people on the Island of Maui at a sushi restaurant. Why is everybody Filipino here? But like they were just there to crush it. Like, and watching them was unbelievable.Marites 17:30 This is not like the way that like white drunk people do karaoke. It’s like we’re really given her, you sing with billings,Andrew 17:38 right? You stay with feelings yet. Yeah, no, it’s a, there’s no comparison. This is what will watching them. It’s, it’s like you wonder like, okay, how much did you practice for this? Cause this is clearly not, like you said, the drunk white guy who just stumbled onto the stage and doesn’t know what he’s doing. These people have put effort into the performance. It’s quite a young age. They train us and it’s quite amazing. So yeah. Anyway, so that is a stereotype. I believe we should be allowed to talk about embrace cause it’s, it’s fantastic. So you, okay. Uh, we’re growing up in Richmond. You’re, you became a pop star. You got recognized at a bar. And where was that? Barbados. What’d you say? Cayman islands. But fast forward a bit. So you’re today you’re, you’re married and you have a couple of kids. Um, how does that, how does that story come to be?Marites 18:23 So when I met my husband, this was 2011, we got married in 2011 and he got a job opportunity in Abbotsford. And at the time I lived in Richmond and when we were dating he said, Kay, Mary, Tess, I’m a pastor. So that means God could call me anywhere like Abbotsford. And I scoffed. I said, ha ha, I’m never moving to Abbotsford. Like ha ha ha ha. Kind of thing. And then of course he gets a job opportunity and we pray about it and we’re like, okay, I think, I think I’ve got to go to it’s bird. Wow. Yeah. From Richmond. Yeah. Which you might as well have been Toronto like I was for just seemed like,Andrew 19:03 like so foreign. So that’s like 2007 eight something like that. 11. Okay. Okay. And we got married like that next month we moved. Okay. So you start life out here and you’ve got to, you’ve got a couple boys, Leo and Bennett and they’re not old like what? Two and three? They’re little and they are absolutely wild. So wild is an amazing,Marites 19:27 I just fill them all the time and throw them on my Instagram stories because it’s pure entertainment. They save like the fun kids say the funniest things. It’s so true. Like I watched your this morning last night and he, he took a liking to this woman with blonde hair and he was just like so infatuated with her and he’s like, can you please fart on me? You know? And I’m like, and then she’s like, does your mom ask you to do that? And he’s like, no. I’m like, well thank God. He said no, because it’s like, I don’t know these people very well. And so he’s just like, and then today, I’m like, why did you ask that woman to do that? And he’s like, it’s my job to ask girls to fart on me, mom. Like, so matter of fact,Andrew 20:05 that is unbelievable. You know what I, in fairness to you, it’s probably the German side coming out in them. It’s, you know, the Filipino things got, he’s got some stuff from that, but, but that does sound, I married into it. I’ve married into some German roots and so I can understand there’s some, there’s, there’s some different things. Yeah, we can, we can call it that. So you, um, so you’ve got a two. So what’s it, you got a two and a three year old. You have a career selling real estate. Yeah. You are a, you know, you’re a mom, you’re a wife, you’re, you’re a career woman. You’re, you’re a Filipino minority. I guess if you wanted to say that’s a, that’s a ball of wax. You got a lot going on.Marites 20:52 For me it’s just normal. Uh, my mom, he was an entrepreneur so she did every business under the sun. She came to Canada with like $10 in her pocket and she, when she moved to the mainland, she became more interested in business. And so she got into um, like a car mechanic shop and I’m like, mom, you don’t even know how to change oil. She’s like, I don’t care. I want to start this business. And so she did concert promotion. She had a magazine, she ran a convenience store. She ran a grocery store, like she’s just done anything and everything and it never phased her that she was a minority. Cause this was in the eighties and nineties. So even more so on minority. And um, she was just fearless about it. And so she paved the way for me to realize like what, there’s nothing stopping me.Marites 21:40 And so I can quote unquote do it all. But the difference is that my mom has amazing capacity and I feel like my capacity is a lot less. We joke that she’s got the energy of a 30 year old and I’ve got the energy of like a 60 something year old, so I have to get more help. And so that’s the difference is that my mom never really asked for help. She’s just kind of this like stubborn, vivacious woman that’s, I’m just going to do it all and I’m like, I need help. I can’t do this. You know?Andrew 22:07 So in your mind, um, as you, you know, as you transitioned from a teenager into an adult, married, were you always going to have a career? Um, like not knowing, you might not have known you were going to go into real estate, but w was your framework and your brain like go get a job? Or was it, I mean some, someone, women will say, well, I knew I always wanted to be a mom and, and that’s, that takes the primary role and then the career as a secondary conversation. How did that play out in your, in your mind?Marites 22:37 I think because I got started in real estate when I was 19, and because I had been acting since I was eight and then seriously pursued music throughout my teenage years that I had always been working. So for me work was very normal and that was part of life. Uh, I’ve always wanted to have kids. It was, uh, but my career was kind of always ingrained into me ever since I was a young, young child.Andrew 23:04 So let’s dive into that a little bit then. Cause this, this is one of the things that fascinates me about you. Um, you, I mean, my impression is that you’re an incredibly present and available mom and yet you withstand the incredible pressures of the real estate industry. And, and then my impression of you as a realtor is that you’re an incredibly present, hardworking individual who devotes a lot of time to your clients. So what, like that is a, that is a thing that is completely foreign to me in that, you know, I’m a man, I don’t have a uterus and I’m, I’m automatically eliminated from that conversation. But speak to that a little bit. What does that, what does that like balancing those things and not just on a surface level, like let’s go, what do you really feel married tests about this conversation?Marites 23:55 There is a tension that I think is the mom. I feel that my husband doesn’t feel like when he goes to work, he just goes to work. You know, when the kids are like, Oh dad, we’ll miss you when I go to work. I feel like crying. And I remember very early when my kids were, were even younger than they are now. And I could see them out the window and I could see their Mt. Mommy ma, like I could see their mouth calling for me and tears falling down their face and I, and I stopped the car and I’m looking at them and then I’m crying, looking at them crying and going, I need to go to work. I have a responsibility to get stuff done. And so having children has made me more efficient at my job. And when I’m with my clients, I’m very present.Marites 24:36 I’m very dedicated to getting them results and not just networking or, and so I do miss some things like conferences and maybe I don’t run the smoothest business behind the scenes. I’m not looking to grow my business exponentially because I’m, I do have to focus on being a mom as well. And so my, my favorite thing is when telemarketers come and they call me and they’re like, Hey, don’t you want to grow your network and reach new clients? And I’m like, no. They’re like, what? You don’t want to make more money? I’m like, I don’t want to make more money. I don’t even like my life the way it is. So, so I do have that tension because all the training and leadership and coaching I’ve had in real estate is, you know, you’ve got to drive and make more sales and be bigger, better, faster, stronger. But I can’t, I physically can’t be number one and be producing a certain level. And so I have to accept that my career is maybe capped at a certain amount because I have to be with my kids. And, um, there are times when I have to choose and it’s, it’s a tough choice to make. Yeah.Andrew 25:43 Do you think, so I, I’ve spend some time thinking about this recently in preparation for our conversation, but also, you know, this is just a dialogue that I’ve, I’ve had with other people ongoing, cause it’s, it’s interesting to me, but I’ll just make a statement and tell me if this, if you think this is fair or not. Um, today our audience is the world. Like, you know, if you go back, whatever, 75 a hundred years, whatever pre-internet pre-social media are, are the people that we would compare ourselves to. Um, we’re basically are the tribe around us. That’s all we had access to. So like immediate family, immediate friends. But it was actually a small group of people right? Today, you know, social media is, it can be great and the internet is great and you know, having access to all corners of the world, you know, there’s, there’s good things in that.Andrew 26:35 And I, but I think one of the, the, the negative sides to that is that we are comparing ourselves to this tribe that I think we’re not naturally fit to do. Like, you know, so now instead of like, you know, looking at my friend who lives across the street and seeing how he’s a dad or what he does in his business and kind of, you know, like measuring myself in that way, I’m exposed to 7 billion people. And I think in every facet of life there is somebody who’s way better than me kicking my ass at that, you know? And then, yeah, I have the ability to like go like, man, I’m, you know, I’m shitty at this or I’m shitty at that because I, I am on a global scale. But you know, in my own local village, if I were to be able to confine my brain to that, I think I’d come to the conclusion that, you know, I am actually pretty good at this.Andrew 27:24 Or pretty good at that in comparison to those around. And so where that conversation is relevant to you as a mom and you know, balancing work life is, there’s been this huge, you know, and for the positive there’s been this, this huge push of, you know, um, equal opportunity and equal outcome and you know, you know, um, things, things like that, you know, in that conversation of, you know, giving women opportunity. But then now you are also whether you want to be or not compared to all of these other like whatever, conquering moms through social media and, and the internet, which, which I can imagine is, is not easy. It must be,Marites 28:01 it’s not and you have to keep your focus really small and you can’t get stuck down that rabbit hole of following other people and staring and playing that comparison game. Um, and, and I don’t just play it with other women. I play it with other men because I see men there, they’re crushing it. And I know he’s at the office till 10 o’clock and I’m home at four 30 cause I want to make dinner. And so he’s going to make that many more sales. But how many more sales is it? Do I really need? And at what expense is that going to cost my family? Because in an instant my career could be taken from me. Everything could be taken. And so I can’t focus on, on trying to be better than other people. I just have to do what’s, what’s best that I can do.Marites 28:47 Like for example, when I was nursing my child, I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of, of pumping. She was like, I don’t know to see about this, but no women that are listening for children. I watched my wife, you know, raise our babies with very little of mine. I’m familiar with pumping. I mean, you have to carry this backpack around and find a bed. It was like, it was just a hassle. So I said, forget this. I’m just going to go home every three hours. And so I’d go to a meeting, show some property, drive back home, nurse my baby, go back out, do another meeting, drive back home, nurse my baby. And so this was a different type of busy-ness and multitasking that I had to manage that. Um, maybe some of my male counterparts don’t have to worry about. And so I also worry about food. I mean, I’m a foodie. I love food, but I also want to make sure that my kids are well fed. And if it’s up to my husband, it’ll be every night. SoMarites 29:42 I have to make sure that they are listening. Tyson, get your ass in here. That’s right. You know, if there’s no milk in the fridge, if there’s no vegetables in the drawer, I feel responsible for that. So I need to work out groceries, grocery planning. AndAndrew 29:58 so that, that you just raised a very interesting point. You touched on it earlier. I mean, I think it would be safe to say that even when you’re focused on one thing, maybe that’s, you know, whatever, working with a client, your mind is not at rest because your mind is in other places. And I had, I had coffee with somebody, um, the other day. Uh, it was fascinating conversation and actually she’s, she’s going to be on the show as well. And she made this statement about, she asked me this question. Sure. Her name is Shahana. She’s incredible, incredible individual. We’ll talk to her, uh, very soon on the show. But she said, Andrew, when’s the last time you left for work and had any kind of like mental anxiety about what was going on at the home during the day? And this sounds like a completely, I’m, I’m all, I’m, well I’m, I’m, I’m, I don’t want to say ashamed, but it’s embarrassing to admit this.Andrew 30:48 Like I’ve been married for 16 years. I have three children, 12, 10, and eight. And when she asked me that question, um, I’ve given lip service before to saying like, you know, my wife is incredible and I do think my wife is incredible and I’m, I’m grateful for everything she does. But when she asked me this question, I kinda had this like, Holy shit moment. And I went, yeah, like I roll out of the home at, depending on the day, anything between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM or whatever. And I never worry about anything. So whether we’re talking about like the basics of like, you know, groceries, whatever. But like you get into the kid, drop off the mental wellbeing of the children, anxiety they might have when they get home from school, there’s somebody there to catch them and then like, you know, deliver them back into the nest of the home. And we’ve had that, right? Like we have days where the kids, one kid comes home and tears or there was a fight or whatever. But like when I’m at work, I’m on and I don’t think about that until I walk through the door and then I’m hearing about it from Kristin. And so what that does for me in terms of my effectiveness at work, it allows me to just be completely, you know, honed in on whatever I’m doing. You don’t have that luxury.Marites 31:55 I have not. It requires a lot more effort for me to focus and do what I’m doing in the moment. But then it’s a lot more pressure for me to get the job done fast.Andrew 32:05 Hmm. Fascinating. So do you think related to this that the conversations, you know, we’re in a, I feel like there’s a lot of big issues being talked about in the world today. Right? You know, what, we don’t need to get into all of them and nor do I want to try to get into some of them cause I’m not equipped to talk about them. But, um, but on the topic of, you know, um, equal opportunity for women and, and not just equal opportunity for women, but like helping moms get into the workforce or companies, uh, maybe making adjustments to their policies, to getting moms into the workforce. Do you think the conversation that’s being had in the public than the media is the conversation that needs to be had? Do you think it’s an honest conversation? Is there any way that in your mind it needs to be tweaked or shifted to, to better address the issue?Marites 33:00 I haven’t really heard of it being spoken of, so maybe that’s the issue is that it’s just, I, I haven’t heard that it being discussed publicly. Um, I just know like the personal pressures that I feel from it. So like, I know when I’m at home and I’m, I’m cooking dinner, I often have my laptop open beside the stove and I’m responding to emails while the water’s boiling. And then I’m cutting vegetables and then I check a text message. And so I’m kind of always working and sometimes that affects my kids because my son will say to me, mommy, look at me in the eyes.Andrew 33:36 Wow. And he’s like threeMarites 33:39 that is unbelievable. And so as much as I say, you know, I try to be present with my kids when I, I really do. But, um, sometimes I can’t because I’m doing multiple things at once. And so that’s why I’ve tried to implement a day off, which for an entrepreneur is really difficult. But I try to really, really protect our day off together. And my husband takes the same day off and we try to do things just as a family. And then I’m just purely reactive to fires in the business on those days. But I’m not doing any prospecting, not responding to anything that’s not urgent that day, once a week.Andrew 34:14 So I know the answer to this, but I wanna I wanna um, I want to raise it because I want to hear you speak to it, but how then I shouldn’t say I know the whole answer. I maybe know part of the answer. How have you gone about, um, relaying the importance of your family and balance to the people you work with so that they understand and respect, you know, the boundaries that you have.Marites 34:39 It’s hard because clients kind of want you available 24, seven. There’s a bit of that expectation. And so I, I don’t outright tell the client, this is my day off. I just might, because I try to move people through the system pretty quickly. And in theory, they’re not working with me with weeks and weeks on end. So it’s not like they’re picking up that, Oh, she’s always taking this day off, but I’ll just say, Hey, I, um, I can’t make it for tonight at five. Can we do tomorrow at 9:00 AM? You know, so I’ll just try to push it to the next day. Yeah. And then sometimes if they text during bedtime, then I’ll, I might be a little bit slower to respond, but then sometimes I’ll say to my kid too, like, mommy has to just send this really quick message. Like, can you just wait one minute? You know? And so my kids have to learn to be patient and so I have a very supportive husband as well. And so I’ll just say don’t like, Oh it’s a phone call. I got to take the call. It’s another realtor. He’ll, he’ll take the kids and then I’ll hide in the closet and then make the phone call. You’ll actually, you will hide in the closet. There’s been times where we have guests over, they opened the closet doorMarites 35:38 to hang their coat and I’m standing on there on the floor signaling them like pull away and you see one of your boys. That’s what mommy does. She crazy, it’s fine. So, and then my kids, they don’t find me and I try to keep the phone call short and I don’t tell the client. On the other line. I’m hiding in a closet right now becauseMarites 35:57 you know, I, I don’t want them to see that I’m trying to multitask. I kind of want them to envision that I’m, I’m focused, I’m doing but this, this is the reality of things. And sometimes I pull up to the house and I sit in the garage and I stay there on my laptop and people will come out and she’s like, she’s in my garage, like she’s still working and I’m like, Oh, I’m coming like three more minutes. I’m like, I need three more minutes. And I just bust through my work as fast as I can. And then I have a part time assistant as well. So on those days off, I’ll delegate as much as I can to her and just try to pass off. Like I’m, I’m pretty good at just being like, okay, this is not for me to take care of. She can handle this and just delegate, delegate. And if I have pain in the butt clients that I don’t want, I’m at the point in my career to you, I’ll just pass them off to somebody else.Andrew 36:41 Yeah. Okay. I have a question I want to ask you. Is there a, is there an experience or multiple experiences, whatever that occurred in your earlier life, anytime, any point in childhood that you think you’ve taken with you and then you use as, you know, maybe sometimes people will, will use the terminology, you know, something happened to you at a certain age and you made a vow that, you know, that would never happen again or it was, it was a shaping experience for the positive or the negative. Like this doesn’t have to be, this isn’t, doesn’t have to be a clean answer, but is there something that sticks out in your mind or are a few things that stick out in your mind that you carry with you today and you know, impact the way you either mother, how your espouse, the kind of, you know, how you work, things like that. Speak to that a little bit.Marites 37:30 Uh, it wasn’t really from my childhood. It was when I was first licensed as a realtor and my mom and I were buying and selling real estate and we had one property in particular that was the property from hell. Basically everything that could go wrong with this property and went wrong. The tenants ended up in jail. They didn’t want to pay their rent, so I had to post notice on their door, but they would tie their guard dog to the front door. So I couldn’t do it. Um, we had them parking in RV and dealing drugs there. So I had to deal with police. We had dumping issues and garbage. So I had to deal with the city bylaws and fines and complaints. Um, we had a major plumbing disaster, which was a big insurance issue and I’m just, everything just, it was such a pain in the butt trying to deal this property.Marites 38:14 So we had to unload it and I couldn’t, for various reasons, I couldn’t refinance the property. And so it actually ended up going into foreclosure. Wow. As a realtor, that was really embarrassing for me. And as a young adult, I didn’t have the skills to cope with the stress of, of this type of investment and all the problems that came with it. So I was very stressed out. Um, this was kind of around the time when I was newly married and moving from Richmond to Abbotsford just shortly after that. And so for my career, it was a bad move because Richmond real estate was average. Price was 600. And um, Richmond was about 600. Abbotsford was about 300,000. And I grew up in Richmond. I had a database, I was selling real estate for about six years. I had a steady income to move to Abbotsford where I knew zero people and home prices were half.Marites 39:07 I thought for sure I’m not going to make it. This is career suicide. I don’t know why God has called us here. This is not going to be a good idea. And so, so we got him into this foreclosure with this investment property. So this was intended to be a rental or rental. And then we were gonna develop the property with a neighboring site into a townhome site. And then you, but you at some point in time you needed to refinance it. Yes. And we just couldn’t, there was, yeah. Is complicated for why, but sure. And so it ended up foreclosure in a foreclosure. You get an accepted offer, which for this house was for 14. Yeah. I didn’t know what all the costs would be exactly with legal fees and I, I’d never been through foreclosure before, should, I just knew that it was going to be about a hundred thousand dollars short.Marites 39:54 Wow. So moving, having this uncertain career, $100,000 debt pending a, I was terrified, stressed out. I didn’t sleep. Um, I cried every day. A new marriage, new marriage. That’s a great thing. My husband is very, just such a sweetheart because he carried hearing and prayed with me through that whole ordeal. And like, this is a baggage he signed up for. He knew about this property when we got married. Wow. And, and so we’re waiting for the court date for four 14. And I, I had a dream that I told the guy in this dream, someone made me an offer. I told him I need five Oh four and I don’t know where that number came from. It was just a dream. And so we’re waiting for this court date, uh, for them to approve the four 14 offer. And Mmm. The realtor call then, or no, I called him and I said, okay, what happened?Marites 40:48 Like did it get approved? And I remember he said, boo. And I said, boom, who starts a sentence? Boom, it goes, boom. The property sold for five Oh five, 100. And I felt all the strength in my body disappear and I had to fall on my knees. It wasn’t like this act of like, Oh, I’m going to fall on my knees to pray. Like I literally could not stand, just melted. And that’s when I felt God’s grace and hope again, enter in and I, I, it was a six minute drive to my husband’s office and I drove over there crying and laughing the whole drive. And I’m like, I look like a crazy person on the road. I’m like, I hope I don’t get into an accident. That’d be a terrible way to end this story. Um, and so I got to his office and I told him the whole thing again, just bawling my eyes out and just realizing I was this close to living a certain type of life where I would have had to have paid this debt.Marites 41:50 And that meant maybe we would’ve stayed in our basement suite a lot longer. Maybe we wouldn’t have kids for awhile. Um, and I, and, but I remember getting to a point of surrender and going, okay, if this is a burden that I have to carry, then God, I entrust you to, to help me do this and to provide for me. And maybe I have an unhealthy relationship with money and maybe this is your way of teaching me something through that. Maybe there’s lessons of stewardship in this. And so when, when I didn’t have to carry that $100,000 debt, I felt very, very relieved and very grateful. And it was a huge growth in my faith.Andrew 42:29 So have you encountered, I mean that’s, so, yeah, for you to have experienced that and then be in real estate is, is an irony in and of itself, but have you encountered, uh, have you sold for closures? Have you encountered people who are being foreclosed on or going through the process?Marites 42:46 I’ve had some people who, who’ve been close to it and so I can relate to them and have empathy and, and just when people I know they, like, they’d just barely have enough down payment to buy something. And the joy that they feel it, I feel that same joy with them because I know what it’s like to just to just barely have enough. Um, and the, the iron, I mean, like the kind of cherry on top for that story is that despite me knowing nobody in Abbotsford and despite home prices being half of what they were in Richmond, my income should have been half, but I ended up doubling my income the next year.Andrew 43:23 Well, story. So how does that, so th th uh, not to say that you didn’t answer the question, but this, this experience that you’ve, um, that you had, which was clearly difficult and trying at times, um, today when you, when you do what you do and, and you know, whether you’re being a mom or being a wife or being a friend or, or, or being a realtor, um, do you carry that with you? Like is that always top of mind or is this something that’s now faded back into the subconscious and you, you draw upon it when you need it?Marites 44:00 It has faded back in, in a lot of ways, but the relationship that I have with money is very different now. I think back then I put a lot of faith into my money thinking that that’s going to provide me stability and security and hope and, and just realizing like, no, that can just disappear in a instant with one judge making a call. And, um, and so I think that carries in with me and also a humility of being like, I’m not the top dog. Like I, you know, like I know that everything’s kind of meaningless at the end of the day. And so that’s why I put my heart and soul into selling real estate. It’s not just a transactional business for me and you can’t really learn humility by reading about it. I think you have to be humbled and go through a period where you, you end up on your knees cause you have no other choice.Andrew 44:59 Yup. There’s a, there’s a saying that I, I can’t take credit for because I surely didn’t make it up, but I, I can’t even remember where I heard it. But it goes something like this, you know, when, when sometimes someone will ask me like, well why do you like that individual so much? And I’ll say I like that person because they have the scars and by scars, you know, I just mean, um, those life, those crucible moments in life that, you know, you come to a realization that like, I am not equipped to deal with this. And, you know, it forces you to read, to look beyond yourself for answers and you know, for you, you know, very, it’s obvious, you know, you’re a person of faith and that was very important to you in that moment. Um, sometimes it’s leaning on other people or whatever, but regardless of what it is, it’s, I can’t figure this out on my own and I need an, I need something else or someone else outside of me to help me deal with this. And that is, um, yeah, you can’t take you, you either have experienced something like that or you haven’t and it, and it’s, it’s hard to, it’s hard to describe racism. Is this a, is this something you’ve, you’ve encountered and dealt with?Marites 46:07 Because I grew up in Richmond, which was such a multiculturalAndrew 46:12 hub. Yeah.Marites 46:13 I didn’t really feel different than anybody cause everybody was different from everybody. But I, I remember one day coming home and, uh, on our white garage, somebody spray painted in black ink, chink. And I just thought, man, these racists are dumb because I’m not even Chinese, can’t even insult me properly. Um, and so I was like, that means that somebody who doesn’t like my ethnicity knows where I live. And went through the effort of getting spray paint and tarnished our house just to send some sort of message. Like I didn’t really know what to make of it. And I remember my mom, how she handled it. She was more just irritated that she had to now figure out how to remove paint and get like the hurt. It just got added to her to do list. She didn’t really seem to take offense to it. And so then I didn’t take offense to it.Andrew 47:11 And to your knowledge, is that the, is that the only encounter you’ve had with it in your life or do you,Marites 47:17 I would say that’s the most outright racist experience I’ve, I’ve had, I’ve had lots of ignorant conversations with people who say, you know, ignorant things. What does that look like? And I’m, I’m causeMarites 47:30 like, I,Andrew 47:32 I don’t know what that’s like, you know, like if you, if you sit in a, you know, if I’m, if you’re, if you’re not a visible minority, if you’re, whatever you are, if you’re, you’re a white Canadian by European descent, you can’t possibly know what it’s like to be in a conversation or a situation in life where, um, you know, maybe somebody hasn’t spray painted something on your door, but there’s like this circumstance or this like offside.Marites 47:56 Yeah.Andrew 47:56 Say what does that, how have you encountered that and what does that like?Marites 48:00 I, I mean I’ve had people say like, Oh, you’re a singer. Like did you sing in your mother tongue? And I was like, Mmm, you mean English? Cause I don’t S I don’t have them. Like, you know, so they’re not mean spirited. They’re not trying to put me down. They’d just, it’s just an ignorant question. And so I don’t, I don’t take offense to that. I mean, actually moving from Richmond to Abbotsford is where I actually felt like I was different from everybody cause we wanted to, I can’t imagine why. Let Mary test tell you about Abbotsford. I remember our first Sunday at our new church and there’s like 800 people and I looked around the room, I was like, there’s only three other people with black hair in this room. Like this is very different from my last church in Richmond, which when we had cultural day we had 40 different flags representing 40 different countries.Andrew 48:50 By the way, for anybody listening to this show who is not from Abbotsford, who had beliefs aboutMarites 48:56 what Abbotsford is, you’ve just confirmed. I was heard a bunch of hillbilly farmers who were all blonde hair, blue eyed and they’re all, it’s actually notAndrew 49:07 the case, but yeah, that is, that is, that’s very real.Marites 49:10 Yeah. And so people weren’t rude or rate like everyone was so welcoming. I’ve actually never felt more loved and accepted by a community, so I don’t have anything negative to say about it. It was just, I was more aware of for the first time I’m like, Oh,Marites 49:23 one of these things is not like the other and it’s me. Wow.Andrew 49:27 But in terms of your day to day today, now you would say 99% of the time this isn’t, this isn’t an issue in your life and you’re notMarites 49:35 generally speaking in countering anything like that. No. I mean, when I, when I first moved here to Abbotsford, I w I was pretty selfMarites 49:41 conscious about it and I was worried how it was going to affect my business because I was scared that, Oh, these people have like deep roots with each other. They’ve grown up together and here I am, I’m a foreigner in every sense of that word. Why would they hire me? And I talked to Ray and Ghana and he, and he talked to me about how if you just bring enough value than ethnicity and age have nothing to do with it. And he spoke very frankly, he’s like, very test, just bring value at this SD has nothing to do with it. Is that okay? So I focused on just being very skilled. I did all the training classes, I became a better realtor and I never let my race, um, enter that self-doubt again. SoAndrew 50:27 one of the, uh, one of the reasons, I mean, there’s many reasons why you’re wonderful, but when I first got to know you more, the thing that I thought, well, what you know, why is Mary Tess amazing? I, the word that came to my mind is she’s authentic and the way which I think people can hear that and you, you know, in, in this interview, it’s, it’s quite clearly obvious. You know, you’re, you believe certain things, you’re passionate about them and you’re not, you know, you don’t shy away from them. But where I, where I encountered your authenticity is, you know, you and I didn’t have much of this relationship. We weren’t, you know, we weren’t face to face. We in the same industry, work together, whatever. But then I encountered you through Instagram. Yeah. And an Instagram is an interesting arena to encounter someone on because I would actually suggest for the most part, it’s one of the most inauthentic spaces on the planet earth today.Andrew 51:19 And even social media in general. And I know like people will listen to this, you know, who this love social media, they’ll call bullshit. And they’ll say, Oh, Andrew doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But I would say that that the social media platforms can be a very inauthentic space where people are showing or presenting the side of them that they’re comfortable with, that they want the world to see. And, and not that that’s even bad, you know, like we do that on a daily basis. Like, you know, when I have people into my home, do I leave shit on all over the floor? No. I, you know, I present of course it’s not me that cleans the home, Chris, Kristen that prepares it, but it’s us. But, um, you know, so I don’t think these, this is a bad thing to do, to present well, but when we present well in a, in a, in a, in a context where, you know, there’s humans in front of humans and it’s real life, I think there’s an understanding that, that, you know, there, there’s another side to people, but then when you encounter people online and you don’t know them from a hole in the ground and all you ever see is that best PR presentation or representation, then that’s where, you know, we can find ourselves, you know, comparing ourselves to people in things that aren’t necessarily real or whole.Andrew 52:27 And um, and so then in that space, I find it especially refreshing when I see somebody who’s totally authentic and you’re getting every side of them. And, and T I’ll, I’ll take it one step further. Like, I have been slow into the social media game, you know, and I have received a lot of pressure to get there quicker for various reasons. Uh, but my hesitation in that process has been I value authenticity and I don’t see a lot of authenticity there. And I just wasn’t quite sure how to engage in a way where I don’t want to like blow my brains out because I felt like the closer I got to some of that stuff, the more I hated it. Right. So then along comes you into my life and I start to see you and watch you and I see you on Instagram and I just go, Holy shit. Like here’s this, you know, everything we’ve talked about today, you know, working mom, Filipino background moves from Richmond and whatever, blah blah blah. Two kids making it all happen. And you are on Instagram. Exactly. The same person who’s sitting across me today on my couch. I think that’s amazing. And I think you’re amazing because of that. And I just want you to, I dunno, I want you to, I want you to hear that and absorb that and to sit in that because I think that’s phenomenal.Marites 53:40 I, yeah, I don’t know how other people do it. I feel like that would require so much effort to always have to put the best foot forward all the time. Like Instagram is like quick stories are just like, you are on the fly, I’m recording stuff and hitting send. Like I don’t have time to edit and put on makeup or you know, like it’s just, that would be tiring if I, if you’re not an authentic person, then you have to always be changing hats from your workplace to the Nam on social media. And then I’m at home, then I’m at church. Like if you’re just the same person, it requires way less effort. So I think it’s just a matter of efficiency that I want thatAndrew 54:15 so, and that is, that’s, that’s, I mean, that’s the conversation in your brain and that’s why you’re able to do it. I think, um, a lot of the conversations in people’s minds as they are, you know, grappling with how to engage with social media and video and, and, you know, engage the world in that way, is that, Mmm. They’re not comfortable with things like the sound of their voice or the way they look or, you know, like it’s, it’s this huge obstacle to, um, to present themselves in that way. And so then yet you get, you get a couple of different types of people. You get the people like, like me, like where I’ve been, I’ve been hesitant to engage for a variety of reasons. And then you get a lot of people where they engage, but then their engagement is, it’s only you can just tell.Andrew 55:05 So clearly it’s only the side that they want to present. It’s the highly educated or highly, um, edited, edited video, edited photo, uh, or it’s only one particular type of post all the time. Right. And, and I mean, I’m not, and this isn’t my attempt to, to slag any individual. It’s just an attempt to say good on you for, um, for showing all sides, um, in what I say is it really real way. And then I would then say that is, if it’s not the most significant reason, it’s gotta be one of the most significant reasons as to why people gravitate to you and why you’re so successful and you know, why you do what you do. Because people love that. Um,Marites 55:47 I think that’s what life is really about is connecting with each other and helping each other and not one upping each other. And so, I mean from a business perspective, my, um, I didn’t even know what you call it, like not the wall but the, your posts. My posts are pretty uh, professional. Like I had a branding lady come and help me figure out, you know, that my colors and all that kind of stuff. So my poster and I’ve got the edited listing videos where I walked through the property. So those are pretty clean and crisp. But um, if I’m feeling something a certain day, I might post something personal, but then my stories are really, those are reallyAndrew 56:24 off the hook. Well, and I would say, you know, not to, not to knock your professionally taken photos of homes or whatever, but like, just as a human, forget the felt, the fact that we know each other in the business when I go, when I engage with you on social media, I couldn’t give a shit about the host. You just listed your, what you’re doing with your kids and your husband. And out in your day to day life or whatever where you’re, that’s the entire spectrum of Mary tests. Yes. That’s the only thing I’m there for and that’s why I’m engaged. There’s a million people in the world that if we just want to talk about our industry or, but in any industry where all they’re doing is presenting, this is what I sell, this is what I do, here’s the best of this, or whatever gag. Like I just want to puke when that’s all I see. But then because of the way you’re engaging by showing, you know, the entire spectrum of who you are, that’s why I think people are there. That’s why I’m there. And I, and I, and I think I can speak for the world when we say this is why we love Mary tests.Marites 57:22 Well, I, I kinda think of it as like a TV show. People don’t watch TV to watch the commercials. Right. They watched the show to watch the show and then there’s a couple of commercials. Unless we’re talking about the super bowl, but I don’t want to get us off track. Yeah. That’s why I’d watch the Superbowl. Um, and so my life is like the shell and then real estate is kind of like the commercials. Like I kinda throw it in there cause it’s a part of my life. It’s not like I’m a secret realtor, you know, it’s there, but it’s, it’s not who I am. It’s not, my identity is not based on my career.Andrew 57:55 That might be the best thing you’ve said all day. My life is the show and real estate is like the commercials. I like that. That’s good. Everybody listening needs to write that down. Okay, let’s play a fun game. Okay. What is your, you and I both love, we both love calories. We love, I’ll take calories in any form. Uh, but what is your like when you are alone in a room and the door is closed and there’s nothing to be a barest of a, nobody can see what you’re shoving into your face. Like what is your thing? Pork rinds.Marites 58:29 This is amazing. I don’t know if you’ve ever had work rides. It’s, it’s, Oh man. Filipino world. He’s so offended. You take pork skin, which is fat. I’m going to get letters from PETA. I know they’re going to hate this, but then you fry it in more fat until it gets crispy and then you dip it in vinegar. This is the Filipino one. This is the, you gotta dip it in the vinegar because the vinegar I think like eats the fats. So then it’s like you’re eating celery.Andrew 58:58 That’s how that makes sense. You just made that good for vegetarians. It’s like you’re eating celery, so, okay, give us you gotta you gotta put this on the spectrum for us because there’s, there’s clearly 99% of the world has never consumed this. Although I’m telling you, I’m going to now after we’ve discussed this, so you, where is this on the, on the taste spectrum, like is this like a salt and vinegar chip? Is this more like bacon? Does this taste likeMarites 59:24 the nation of bacon and a potato chip? Like it doesn’t get better than this. Like this is why I have gallstones. Cake.Andrew 59:34 That was amazing. I have gallstones, but I’m willing to sacrifice for them. So are we like when we consume these things, is this like a thing? We’re, we’re doing this in front of the TV while we’re binge-watching or how is this, how is this food consumed?Marites 59:47 You can like crumple it up. Like put it on salads, put on like noodles. LikeAndrew 59:52 so is this a regular, are they always in the clean household? Cause it’s like peanut butter.Marites 59:57 Yeah, this is in the drawer.Andrew 59:59 Wow. And they’re just stored in a bag or whatever. I’m not going to finish the whole bag in one sitting. I’m not a pig. Like Whoa. We went, no pun intended. So we wouldn’t judge you if you were it be fine. So you know for those, for those listening, like you know, if they’re someone’s curious, I’m like well where would I be? Where would I buy something like this Asian market. What about like Superstore? Superstore has everything. Do you want to sell your story or any or any Asian market and have a more variety of different flavors? I can’t believe we’re talking about pork rinds this long. Well, you brought it up and contrary to what you might think everyone is going to be like, I’ve never heard someone say, Hey, we need to invest in pork rinds because yeah, it’s about to boom, the stock is about to boom.Andrew 00:42 Okay. Okay. That was question number. That was very, that was very good answer. Pork, reds, my, yeah, not that you’re asking me this, but I, my, my answer would definitely not be that interesting. I would have been very blend like some kind of candy or potato chip or, or something like that. So Andy’s good too. We had a candy theme wedding and a big candy bar. And that’s a big thing these days is, I, I’ve, I’ve seen many things like this. Recently we had donuts and candy and like those pop rocks, they’re not pop rocks. The rock candy. Yeah. Icicles around like a big buffet with various different Heights of all sorts of candy. Like the kids loved it. Huh? So, okay. If you weren’t. So if Mary test claim was not a married realtor was two kids living in Abbotsford, British Columbia, uh, doing what she does and, and the world was your oyster and you’re like, you can answer this question without causing any offense to your spouse or children because you know, it’s, it’s purely for science. Where, where would your, where would your life be

This episode is all about the tactics and tools that you need to be 2% better, and why life is really a battle between 49 and 51. Towards the end of the episode, we talk about the different conferences we’ve seen and the upcoming Biohacking Congress in London.Who is Kaspars Vendelis?Creator and founder of 3-day-live-program and online program RESTARTS for synchronizing brain, nervous system and life purpose. Cofounder of the biohacking.lv movement, community and organizer of the largest biohacking conference in the Baltics.Renaissance man. Serial entrepreneur, healthy lifestyle and top performance promoter. Systemic improvement of wellbeing by science, technology and nature. Emphasizing the one neglected area of biohacking – social aspect. Author, communicator, public speaker and mentor of strategies to self-improvement, to high performance, to longevity (through mental models). Nowadays this biohacking is applied to raising 3 children, optimizing for sleep, right foods i.e. cooking, fasting, brain health, nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular systems.Highlights[3:12] Kaspars talks about the idea of how to be 2% better[7:57] The casino analogy[13:31] Practical tools that people can use to go from 49 to 51 percent[20:53] Kaspars talks about his two to three-day retreats[25:01] What exactly is the idea of rebirthing breathing?[35:12] Insights from Kaspars’ talk for the Biohacking Congress in London in 2020ResourcesMaking Sense of a Complex World through Mental Models with Kaspars VendelisBiohacking Congress, LondonBiohacking Conference in Riga, LatviaBiohacking Fest in KievDrinking to enhance rather than escape life with Todd WhiteJust Breathe by Dan BruleThe Body Keeps the ScoreLetting Go by David HawkinsMinimum effective movement with Pamela GoldKaspars’ Restart RetreatsOur sponsor today is BLUbloxWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters.If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.Continue Your High Performance Journey With KasparsInstagramWebsiteDisclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Penny & Sparrow is a folk music duo from Austin, TX. On their tour through Louisville, Andy Baxter and Kyle Jahnke, the talented guys behind the band, stopped by for a few bourbon pours. We talk about life on the road, their musical creation process, and how their fans give them bourbon at shows. You can catch their latest album, Finch, wherever you stream your music. Show Partners: * Barrell Craft Spirits is always trying to push the envelope of blending whiskey in America. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. * Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. * Distillery 291 is an award winning, small batch whiskey distillery located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Learn more at Distillery291.com. Show Notes: * Pappy Map retires: http://bourbonr.com/blog/pappy-van-winkle-release-map-retires/ * This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about the holidays. * How did you all get into music and start the band? * Where does your inspiration come from? * What is your craziest moment with a fan? * How did you get into bourbon hunting? * What bourbon got you hooked? * How does the band work when you live in different states? * Who is the messy one? * What's it like on the road? * What do you listen to on the road? * Have you been on the Bourbon Trail? * Where do you go when bourbon hunting? * Do you ever get free bourbon? * How did fans discover your were into bourbon? * What does it mean to you when someone says your music has changed their life? * Where did the name Penny & Sparrow come from? * Was there a moment where you felt like you made it? * Tell us about your latest album, Finch. 0:00 We like to call ourselves rose a rock occasionally was a rock yeah sleep folk sleep. Good music to procreate to Yeah. Yeah, these are the things that we call Yeah, we discover music as like nobody's working out to Penny and Sparrow like, at least to the best of our knowledge nobody's getting a good pump while they listen to your workout as a stroll. 0:32 Welcome back, everybody. It is Episode 228 of bourbon pursuit. I'm Kenny. And here's the news. The dates for the Kentucky bourbon festival 2020 have been announced. It will take place on September 16 through September 20 of 2020. The festival which draws novice and experienced bourbon lovers to Bardstown, Kentucky every year will celebrate the storied history of distilling America's native spirit during National bourbon Heritage Month. Tickets for the Kentucky bourbon 1:00 festival will be made available for purchase during the summer so make sure you continue to visit Kentucky bourbon festival at KY bourbon festival.com. To stay up to date on all the latest festival happenings and developments. Now for some pursuit series news Episode 15 is now hitting retail shelves across the state of Kentucky. If you're interested in getting a bottle, pay attention because here's the small list of stores that our distributor gave us so you can go out and find your own. Westport whiskey and wine, the party source go big blue liquors depths, fine wine, Ernie spirits bind pig bourbon market, the brown hotel and the brown barrel. We appreciate all the support for going out there and buying a bottle and we hope to bring more here in the future as well. Now it's a sad day in the bourbon world is Blake from bourbon or calm is announced that he's retiring his Pappy release map. It's something that many people around the country including myself used over the years to kind of know when Pappy was gonna be hitting in my state. And Blake he puts it all out there. 2:00 His latest article, that it's time to stop because there's a rare chance that you will ever get it. And if you do, the odds are you are not going to be paying MSRP. He also kind of throws a quick jab in there saying that Sazerac rock really isn't doing anything to prevent counterfeits, nor are they doing anything to stop stores or distributors from playing this game. And you can read more about this in this article within our show notes. Now for today's podcast, I met Andy and Kyle the guys that are behind the band, Penny and Sparrow for the first time back at the 2019 for castle Music Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. I won't ruin the beginning of the podcast for you. But besides being great musicians, and also being incredibly funny, these guys are also really into bourbon. And I'm going to anticipate that after you listen to the stories that these two have to tell about their life on the road, their creation process, and of course, their love for bourbon. You're gonna become a fan as well. Now, it's time for Joe to tell us a little bit about barrel 3:00 spirits. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 3:05 Hi, this is Joe from barrell craft spirits. We're always trying to push the envelope of blending whiskey in America. Find out more at barrel bourbon.com. 3:15 I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char. We're coming up on the holidays. What a wonderful time of year you have your family and your friends together. And you crack open the cork. You pour a little bourbon in your glass, you sip by the fire. It's so magical. It's so wonderful. I absolutely love the holidays. But here's the here's the kicker of it all, is that it is not easy to buy bourbon for people anymore. For God's sakes, I'm trying to figure out what to get some of my friends who I always get bourbon and they get everything already. So here's my recommendations for 4:00 Want to buy your friends who are bourbon fans? Come down to Kentucky or find someone who's in Kentucky and buy private barrel selections. I mean truly, and honestly, those are the best possible gifts that you can get because they are unique. They are unique to that particular store. And if you don't know what a private barrel selection is, it's when a liquor store or a club goes to the distillery and they actually select a barrel of bourbon that is bottled specifically for them. You'll see their sticker on it and then when you give that as a gift to somebody, you can tell them you know, that's one of only 75 or 200 bottles of that bourbon it when that bottles gone, you'll never have any of it again. And in fact, you don't have to go to Kentucky you'll find that whether it's a total wine or a local liquor store in your market or a big chain like Kroger, you'll find that there are excellent private barrel selections there. Just walk up to the cash register and say hey, you have any private 5:00 barrel pics. And if they look at you like you're crazy, you know you're in the wrong store. So hopefully by now if you're listening to this podcast, you've already found your bourbon store. And if you don't have your bourbon store, just ask us in the comments where you should be shopping. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram, hey, even my YouTube, just search my name Fred Minnick. Until next week. Cheers. 5:32 Welcome back to that episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon. Kenny here today just in the basement recording studio, but this is going to be an opportunity that we rarely get. I mean, it's an opportunity where we are trying to find new guests that are able to bring a new dynamic to the podcast. You know, we've had WWE superstars on before and today we're going to have a music artist on that. me you've maybe heard of and if not, you're going to learn more about them too. 6:00 Day. But I want to tell a quick story of how we all kind of got connected here. So, you know, we're starting to get involved with a lot of more music festivals, and, you know, for castle, bourbon and beyond, and so on and so forth. And when you do that, you get put on a media list. And with the media list, you kind of get spammed with a lot of band managers and PR people. And it's usually pretty generic. Sometimes it'll say like, hey, and then they'll be like a variable that says, like dollar sign, insert name here. And it says, like, you got to meet these people. They're great. You can see you can see him on stage at this time. And let me know if you want a chance to have them on your podcast or have them on, you know, maybe in your newspaper article because they don't really tailor it. It's just, you know, just something generic that goes out. But you know, shout out to Joe, Joe's, the PR manager for Penny and Sparrow. And he sent me a very personalized email and it kind of started off and saying like, Oh, hey, like, Listen, these guys are actually like really into bourbon. And that's kind of what kind of kick this off because usually people's 7:00 You know, you gotta have mon like, okay, sure what are we going to talk about? music that is because if we don't have any shared interest in bourbon, this is going to be a pretty, pretty lame for a bourbon podcast. And so we took an opportunity I said, Yeah, that's that's awesome. Let's go meet these guys so we had an opportunity to sync up at four castle after their set. And we talked and I mean, we talked for probably a solid 30 minutes there and I think we just we there's there's magic I mean, there's there's something was happening right all the all the stars were aligning, and, and we really kicked it off. And these guys are huge bourbon nerds. They're really into it. Plus, they make great music. And so I'm happy to be able to introduce these two guys to the show. So today, we've got Eddie Baxter, and Kyle Yankee. They are the duo behind Penny and Sparrow which has been featured in Rolling Stone and they're also came out with the latest album Finch. So fellas, welcome to the show. Hello. Thank you for having us. Greetings to you constant listener. 7:58 So, you know, I couldn't be 8:00 Usually like talk about bourbon like as we usually go into this like it's because we usually have a master distiller somebody get coming on but you know you guys bring a different dynamic to this so we'll talk about bourbon here in a little bit. I kind of want to learn more about you all like talk about the origins of the band. Maybe talk a little bit more about the type of music y'all do as well because I know it's kind of it's like folk music maybe like iron and wine mixed into it kind of talk about like, where you all get your you know, your vibe and everything. folk music iron line is very, very good. A good comparison. We like to call ourselves rose a rock occasionally was a rock Yeah, sleep folk sleep. That's good music to procreate too. Yeah. Yeah, these are the things that we call Yeah, we describe our music as like nobody's working out to Penny and Sparrow leads to the best of our knowledge. nobody's getting a good pump while they listen unless you enjoy your workout as a stroll. Yeah, cuz that is what we can provide a good stroll soundtrack can do that. We started doing music and 9:00 College because I needed a place to stay. My wife knew this guy and 11 other guys that lived in this huge house. That was basically a shithole frat house. 9:10 By the way, not at all. I'm just letting you know this was that many people in a small space with very little air conditioning is filthy is filthy. So I moved in and Kyle and I pretty quickly found out that we both liked music and both sounded pretty okay when we sang together. And man, the rest as they say sort of history. We just kept plugging along and on a small home rig that his mom and dad got him for Christmas, we recorded our first song with the sheer expressed intent of having music that our kids could someday listen to. And here we are eight years later with no kids. 9:46 That's pretty cool for one day they'll listen to it. Yeah, if we procreate Yeah, they'll be able to hear it. They'll be able to they'll be able to get down on it. But I mean that your all's vibe like what you all do. You know I think I read that you make serious songs, but you're not very serious people. 10:00 All right. And that's kind of like the kind of vibe y'all put. I mean, we were down here talking before we started recording here. And we were just cracking jokes left and right. So kind of talk about the music, like where the inspiration comes from the lyrics, everything like that. Yeah, we that's I mean, what we mainly try to do is write basically autobiographical songs, things that we're working through things that would be cathartic to us. 10:26 But that's usually the more internal stuff, which is great. I mean, we talked about it all the time. It's the the deeper conversations Andy and I have. 10:35 But yeah, I mean, I don't we don't live in that part of our we have, I feel like the majority of what we do is, as humans is just light hearted. Yeah. And I remember years ago, when we started doing this, we started taking ourselves really seriously on the front end, right? Like we were we featured ourselves being serious guys writing heartfelt music with good lyrics and the least on stage. Yeah. 11:00 So we'd show up to these shows, and then we would, you know, barely move an inch and not talk and not laugh in between songs just to try and, you know, sing our ass off. And then I remember my dad talking to us after a show one time and more or less said, Jesus Christ, let him come up for air. I think the point he was getting at was like, Look, this isn't who you are, when you're not onstage like, this is sort of more of a character, you're creating this overly serious, you know, facade. So just do you see like that I didn't raise an overly sensitive son that would happen to all that he definitely raised an overly sensitive side is true, he did do that. But he also raised a sort of a goofball as the his old man. And so for what it's worth, it felt so much more free just to be the same person on stage and off. So the same dumb shit jokes that we make in the van is what you get here on a podcast is what you get on stage and we do a show and that feels really nice. Yeah, I mean, I had the opportunity last night to go and check you guys out on the show because you guys are doing your your nationwide tour right? 12:00 Now and I know it's going to be finished by the time this this wraps up. But it's funny because you all you mean exactly exactly what you just said, right? It's it's serious songs, and then you all bring this different vibe to it where you like you try to bring it up lifting. I mean, at one point, Andy, you're doing this thing of like, All right, let's get the clap. Let's get the beat going. And then you would raise your hands slowly, slowly need said as I raise my hands. I want to see your hands in the air. And then when I make like this musical cue of like, stop, everybody stop. No, I don't want to see repeat. And it'd be great job too. Yeah, really impressive. Yeah. And I think I even told him when I do that, I want you to shut the hell up. Yeah. Which is aggressive to say to a crowd of paying customers who came to see you do a thing, but really, that just point needs to be gotten across. And they do they went into it. It's awesome when people are I mean, maybe it's because it's bourbon country. Everybody was slightly hammered, but they really they bought in which is nice. Yeah. I was about to say how many venues do you go to and there's like four roses posters just blasted everywhere over like Morgan headliners last night. Oh, dude. It's this is a different 13:00 chunk of the country okay like people here get the brown water and they're down with it as are we but I feel like we had three gifted bottles to us last night and they were all good Oh really? Yeah they were all nice we had an eagle rare we had a Woodford double oak forgetting one from a another distillery but we got gifted these bottles and I was like, man, it pays to play in Louisville. Yeah, so good. That's awesome. And yeah, free bourbon is always the best bourbon. It's a great bourbon. Yeah, it tastes better. Yeah, that's what we're down here to we were sitting there sampling from my bar before we started here. We had started with some dusty and I think we got we got Booker's right here is what we're sampling on right now. So that's a fact and constant listener. You should know that. We are in a layer. It's not just a studio, we are in a bourbon layer. There is lighting fixtures made out of barrel hoops. There are thousands of bottles surrounding it thousands. Like if it's a powder keg in here, one errant match and the whole blocks going up in flames. Yeah, we're gonna make sure we don't have a gas leak little bit later. He just 14:00 Right, yeah, positive of that. 14:02 And so, you know, the music is fun and it's interesting and you all are been going and I kind of want to talk a little bit more about, you know, the road and the tour because I'm sure you've got fans. I remember there was one fan last night and I think she tried standing up or waving she was she was on the right side about five rows back and every song she was just going crazy. What's your craziest like fan moment that you've had? That's a good question. I'm really good one you know, Skid Row comes to mind. Yeah, Skid Row probably comes to my most likely that mean Andy with a fan 14:36 who loved our stuff. The the man had a few too many drinks and was kind of shifting between being extremely excited and happy to see us like tears of joy seeing us and telling us how much he loved us to literally almost throwing punches at us. And he had some just Jacqueline 15:00 Hi, I'm going on while we were there, oh, he was a psychopath. And he shall remain nameless. But he went by will actually this is not on his birth certificate. So I think it's safe to say this. He introduced himself as joke. That was his name. Yeah. So rule number one. Yeah. Don't be friends with anybody named john. Sure. Yeah. But junk like Kyle said and met us with tears in his eyes saying I'm so glad we got you here. I'm so glad we got your you're going to show them you're going to show them and saying a lot of nonsensical like the hell does this guy mean? So Kyle, and I basically consoling him. Yeah. While he was meeting us, which was really sweet. Like I took it. We're here. We're here. Thank you. So we're also glad you're here. Thank you for this is a gig, right? Yeah, we can still play. And he then proceeds to, you know, basically ask us a really basic question. Like, you know, how far was a draft day? And he's slurring over himself. And as Kyle goes to answer the question, it was just act it out. Yeah. Let's just do a little role play. Yeah. Okay. We're used to this. Yeah. Okay. You I'll be 16:00 junk UBU Okay, and how how long was draft today? Oh the drive Shut up. fuck up, dude. 16:10 So the important parts of that interaction dude, buddy, buddy that's it. Yeah, I took away that took away that's the most important thing that you could Garner from that story is that he said shut the fuck up dude, buddy. And we have ever since us dude buddy as the perfect you know, hey, screw off they want to call somebody and that was with a fan so I don't really know what to do with that other than Hey, thanks, john I'm glad to exist in this weird world of ours. But no no crying outrage like on stage when you're up there and he was just cool calm and collected in a seat. Oh, no, there's no Well, there were some crying outrages he kept screaming out the phrase make them wonder over and over, which we still to this day are not sure what he meant by that. But we're doing our best still junk. If you're listening to this. We are trying to make them wonder every night every night. I think that's 17:00 That's the new lyric to our new new title though new song is what it's got to be. Yeah, it's totally true meta man named junk in Skid Row. We're going to make them 100 mega one day we are eight years later still making them. 17:13 Oh man, that's fantastic. So I guess we'll we'll kind of shift a little bit and we'll kind of talk about bourbon. So kind of talking about your all story with bourbon like, Where are you introduced to it? How did you kind of get into it? Because you know, Kyle, I know last time we talked it you know, you're part of like the r&d next and we talked you're part of like the the hunting party now like you're searching for bottle bottles and stuff. So I think we both got started, I guess similar in time, our our manager Paul's a big collector of bourbon. And he's got this thing called the steel speakeasy, which is really rad. And he was the one who showed us for the first time like, Hey, here's the really nice stuff. You've had a lot of the shitty stuff. Let's try some really good things. And I'm going to talk you through some of the taste notes, some of the flavor profiles just 18:00 Some of them get you get your feet wet a little bit. And I took to it really fast really enjoy it as this Kyle and for me one of the things that keeps me sane on the road is hunting for two things, where books and bourbon so I'll go to liquor stores just along the highway as I'm driving in the van or used bookstores and it's just really neat once you've been introduced to how big this world is. how big the world of dusty hunting is how big the world of rare bottle hunting is, and raffles are like the secondary market when you get invited into that and you see how crazy it is but also, you know, the community family aspect of people tagging you in a thing because they know you like Booker's 20th anniversary or they know you've always wanted to find the Booker's right bottle and so they tagged you in when they thinks a decent price in the secondary market. This world's huge man. And so once we got our feet wet into it, it was sort of snowballed from there and now, and now I'm a moderate alcoholic, and I really like bourbon a whole lot. That's where it's thermometer. It's good. 18:59 Good lottery 19:00 Good don't go over that that edge right? Yeah, that's all I need to worry about. Do you think like how early on when we were down in the speakeasy were you overwhelmed a bit when we were like down there with 1000 and a half bottles known because you and Paul are my Sherpas? 19:14 You guys tell me everything I need to know about. 19:18 I love that answer. Yeah, thank you. I felt comfortable. calm. You made me wonder down there. That's that's how I wanted your first experience. Be. I was it was I tender and affectionate Ender? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Laughing that's how that's Yes. No, that's how your first time should be tender. Whisper the notes. Yeah, it was a bourbon into my hand and give me a soft, gentle kiss on the cheek. Got It's hot. And I'm glad that I didn't know 24 proof 19:50 tenants. 19:55 Man, we just fell in love with it pretty early on and now it's on the writer every night. 20:01 It feels neat to be able to try local stuff and and go by I love baby distilleries. I've got like this massive affection for seeing someone knowing that the craft took so many years to make, like there are these people who gather buddies together started a small distillery, and all of a sudden, they're like putting juice and barrels, and they have to wait. It's a waiting game, and they hope and their fingers are crossed. And so when good stuff comes out of that, I know that for me, it's inspiring because I know what it's like to crockpot a creative idea and wait for it. And that hoping is part of the thing that you're doing, whether it be making music or making booze like you just have a hope you really desire to make a good thing. You put everything into that you can knowledge know how expertise, advice from other people, and then you sit and you wait and hope. And I have a lot of value for that. Which is one of the things I think I'm drawn to bourbon about and baby distilleries, because I think that that's hard to do. And it's risky as shit, man. Oh, yeah. And that's good. That's cool to me. I love that. Well, Andy, I mean, what 21:00 can talk about more about what was there like one bourbon or anything like that that got you kicked or hooked on it or anything like that. Like there's Oh yeah. So kind of talk about what that what that was. It was Booker's for sure it's my favorite to this day. I mean, the way that I always when people ask us our answers the same we both love Booker's and my usual response depending on who I'm talking to with why I love it so much is a the nostalgic pull of it being the first fancy bottle that someone bought me like the first fancy ish bottle and being blown away by how spicy it was. And I tell them the reason why it's my favorite is it it's a it's a bourbon you can have three ways. It's three Bourbons in one bottle. You that is a totally different flavor profile, if you haven't need versus how you have that with a drop of water swill let it open for a minute versus having a couple cubes in there. I mean, you are literally changing the flavor complexion three totally different ways. And as the ice melts, you're going to get a fourth and fifth and six depending on how long you sip on it. 22:00 So any chameleon bottle like that, that exists I'm fond of, which is normally Why go for the hazmat shit. I'm just a huge fan of high proof stuff like that a chameleon. I like that I don't think I've ever heard that one I'm Can I steal that you can share science yours now I'm gonna go ahead and pour in the ship for me and it's all yours will keep going. 22:19 So, Carl, what about you? I mean, I know he said, You know, he said he'd like Booker's as well. But I mean, was that your first introduction was somebody that said, like here drink this hundred 25 proof stuff. You're gonna love it. So I remember Andy and 2011 when he was like, man, I think I like bourbon. That's, that's great. That's really cool. And at the time, I didn't know too much about it. I just started doing a text message. Really? sweet man. Yeah, thanks, man. Cool personal epiphany. Yeah, enjoy a good Tuesday. And I remember you would you drink. 22:51 Just like all of the standards, just like a makers are bulletin, any of those and you are just learning about them. And I do remember when you got your 23:00 First, your first bottle of the good stuff daddy's first book. Yeah, it was very sweet. isn't good time. But then that was it. I feel like it just came over. And I mean, we at the time, were already spending so much time together that I was part of the whole process. And that's just not like yours like guiding Angel, like the whole thing. I'll continue on Go on. How would you say that I'm your enabler and that I to have made you a moderate alcoholic through this process? Because I'd like for you to not say that. I can't not say that. It's definitely true. Yeah, it's very true. Cool. Yeah, we're in the same spot. Yeah, I feel great about that. Our liver is fine. It's fine. We're young. It's length. And if anything, if anything is Old Ironsides Yeah, there that thing can take. And it's fine. I'm say take a look. And I don't know if I like that. But it's okay. Because you really can you have to look at the end. I'm working on that. But yeah, that's how I just and you is for sure my enabler. Through through all of it. My dad is more of a scotch guy. And so I knew about scotches and then I think Andy's 24:00 My whole family in fact about the bourbon world because my dad now will go and buy anytime he knows we're going to travel through hope by the biggest bottle of bourbon that is possible to buy and will be so excited about it. It looks like a super super soaker tank 24:16 it's literally like I didn't know they made them that big It looks like a novelty inflatable but it's real and it's full of Woodford any acid every fucking time. Yeah, I'm so grateful. 24:26 And it's almost cash by the time you leave. Well, I wouldn't gonna say it but yeah, but yeah, if I had a nickel for every like ambling midnight to 2am walking down the stairs at the young house. I've had that huge daddy bottle I'd have loads of nickels. 24:43 So kind of talk about more your your all's camaraderie because you know you grew up together went to school together in Austin. But you don't live in Austin together anymore? Correct. You guys are separated by a state now. So like that. Yeah, that's my talk. So kind of talk about like how that all works out. 25:00 You know the band The friendship, everything. Yeah. Will you talk about the band? I'll talk about the friendship. Yeah. So as a should we should we start with that? Let's go friendship then you do? Yeah. Okay. So I don't think that friends. In fact, I know this. Friends don't spend as much time around each other. Normally as Kyle and I do. I've lived with Kyle in three different homes, both as a married individual, me, my wifey, his wife and another buddy and his wife all lived in this house in Austin in this communal type setup, where we would be going on the road, and our wives and friends all get to always share meals together. And so we lived in married housing together, we lived on the road in various hotels, we lived in San Antonio and a house together. We have lived together in college so much time has been spent with this human. And over that time, you learn a few things not only about each other, but you learn about how to have interpersonal relationships, but 26:00 Right, like you learn like if I again, the amount of mercy extended and mercy received and hard conversations had and celebrations and things to be more and and births and funerals and everything that we've had as a friend group is so much higher than most people have just out of sheer proximity. We live together we work together, we have slept in the same lucky into bed more times than any friends have ever done before, at least to the best of my knowledge. And when we were recording back in the day, we would sleep on couches, just head to toe unlike one individual couch that that was a fact. Yeah, and we didn't enjoy that. One is not 26:42 to say somebody enjoys 26:44 that somebody is a me. 26:48 Yeah, we just with the sheer amount of time that we spend together I feel like not only is this my best friend, but there's there's something deeper than that. It's something that's close enough to begin and it comes 27:00 Out of hard fought years and time spent, there's no substitute for time spent ever. There's no sub for it. I've spent thousands of hours with this person talking about the scary shit in life, the beautiful things in life. And everything in between. And the end result of that has been something that, like I said, is closer to kin than most things that people will ever have. And closer than brothers, that I know like most people that I know don't even have this relationship with their kin. And that has definitely fed into how we do music. And this is a little bit weird for us to live in a different place. Now. It's the first time in our lives that we live in a different city different state. And granted, we still see each other hundreds of days a year as we toured together, but it's definitely affected the music in a good way but surprising. Which brings me to the next phase, the music kind of what would you say our friendship is when it comes to music and its creation. Well, me and Andy we hate each other. So we have to be separated by at least by at least a two to 300 28:00 jerril Simon and Garfunkel thing, right? Yeah. 28:03 And well So Andy we both moved to Alabama for a season. And Andy fell in love with it. I also loved it but wanted to come home to family were to be back in Texas. So I moved back. And so to record we wanted to stay home just because it's a lot of travel if if we don't. 28:21 And so we've just learned learned how we each have our own little individual studios that we go to we record with our buddy Chris Jacoby in San Antonio. And he goes and records with Chris buffet. We each have our own individual Chris's that we record in their studios. CRISPR get on the phone, right Mike Chris over here, his Chris over there is perfect. And we just do the method. I do a lot of the melody and he does a lot of the lyrics. And 28:48 when it comes time to record, we just do our own individual thing and kind of just mash it all together and see what works and technology allows it. Pretty crazy thing now. Sweet. Not so hard. Yeah. Sweet, sweet. 29:00 Internet. We couldn't stream it. Who knows where to be here, man? What was it I think, who was at the open for you all last night. Caroline Spence, Caroline Spence she had a she had a really funny kind of like opening to one of her songs and saying like, oh, I've got like a couple million downloads on Spotify with this one song. It's amazing that my parents have figured out how to use Spotify 29:21 solid Carolina. 29:24 So who's the messy one between you to me? No, I were both pretty messy. I would say I you're very sweet to say so. I think we can both be tidy when necessary. But I think I would probably get because he's more form and function like he would never asked me to pack up the van. What I do, and I've learned it now I've learned this about myself and it's fine. I am not efficient in a lot of movements. And so I look at Kyle and I'm like, Kyle, if you will please do this for you. Or will you do it and then teach me so that I can now know how to do it your way spatial reasoning I did not score very high. 30:00 On I knew lots of synonyms but I did not know how to put the blocks in the right order so that they would fit neatly into a van he does so I think that would mean that he's cleaner well that's that's like a dad move right you know to pack up a pack up the truck to go down to Myrtle Beach or to Florida or desk whatever it is and you're sitting there playing a game of Jenga with all your luggage I've got that I've got that gene whatever it is in my tool I it's so hot The other day I literally it did happen where you start waving fan and yourself like Oh, it's so nice to have a man around. 30:34 And I would honestly say something like that every time I see impacting man like I'm so proud of you. Amy peg the van the other day and the doors wouldn't shut up. He was like trying feebly trying to shut both of the doors to say Cleveland was not nice, but it was just calling it what it is and painting a picture. Yeah, typecast. Listen, it's here. It's banned. I think I literally pushed you out of the way was like I got this. Just 31:00 I'm out, and then I put it together. Oh my insolence my silliness that I would even tried to back the van but did but in terms of who's cleaner, both of our suitcases explode. That's why I'm entering every single hotel room we enter. That's true. They do so to answer your question, maybe it's a push, but the more organized of the two of us would be Kyle. Yeah, I don't be somebody I'll take her. Yeah, you'll have to look at its object. I'll take it. So when you're on the road, are you are you all constantly talking to each other is like one person napping while somebody else is driving? Or is it you know, you said like, you've talked about everything deep and everything here. So is that is that what does that what driving on the road is like for you also, we, the last four days. Before we got to local, we had four days of six hour drive days each. So within that six hours, there can still be two hours of talking, and a good two hour nap and then two hours of just 32:00 Looking at your phone or whatever else you want to do, or just staring off into the distance Yeah. And that's about what happens each time is just a mix of all of those and whoever is in the driver's seat gets the ox cord and gets to choose what we listening to. 32:15 So you got into on the road got a good system. Well, I mean, it's almost guaranteed. You're going to look at see a few things with Ryan, our tour manager, you're going to get a steady diet of pop divas, you're going to hear lover by Taylor Swift over and over again. Then you're going to hear him switch over to never getting to know Anderson's lover, that whole album on repeat that some Shania Twain and I will never weasel in when Kyle's in the seat recently. It's been a lot of RMB RMB Yeah, yeah, I don't I can't listen to anything but right now, which is just fine some slow moving kind of get you in low juniors. Yeah, that's what I'm looking in this home a little bit as I will always Yeah. Manny, what are you alluding to? I didn't 32:58 just like thank you. 33:00 Yeah, you mean you can make it look at Andy as much as you can, but it's like yeah, after a while you're just like, all right. I miss home a little bit. Yeah. Listen the RMB stuff. I get it, man. It's nice. It does. That's been that's been on the docket for him for a while now. So it'll probably bleed into the next record somehow. Yeah, for me, it's guaranteed I will sit in the front seat. Probably be quiet for like 20 minutes and then put on my Stephen King audiobook more Stephen King podcast. And they will both look at me smirk a little bit and put their headphones 33:32 such as life man such as life. So So I mean, so you're a podcast listener right. So the Stephen King stuff, so you don't you're not a fan of just like listening to whatever's happening. Going around as you're driving then. No, not so much for me. Yeah, I think we're gonna let him have a Stephen King. No, I'm sure he's a beautiful human, Stephen King, and I hope to meet him one day, but please, I I just haven't read his books yet. Now, I'm not a book reader either, but I can listen to a book 34:00 Totally that's like why they invented movies. Like why would you? Why would you read a book? Yeah, we made it past them. Yeah. It's like when you sit down with a book for a month when I can get finished in an hour and a half, and see the problems, my shit on y'all and I don't want a problem here in the zoo, Andy's a fast reader. And so he doesn't get that he can finish a book in a few hours. And that's where he finds enjoyment. And it still I've been reading the same book this whole tour and I think it's like 150 pages. Oh, God, and like it's half and more pictures. Right? Yeah, it's actually it's actually shell Silverstein it's a really good novel. He's gonna love it when he finished it. I could barely finish it goose goose bumps novel anymore, right. So man, choose your own adventure. Yeah, sweet RL Stine. I love you. 34:42 So, you know, kind of shifted a little bit back to bourbon real quick before we start losing listeners talking about this random. 34:49 So, you know, kind of talk about, you know, have you all visited the trail, you know, come into Louisville, Kentucky, like have you been to distilleries like is there something around there that that kind of fascinates you 35:03 As the saying goes, Portland is weird. Perhaps it's something in the water. It turns out that there might be some truth to that. The Oregon capitals primary water source is supplied by the bowl run watershed. It's also the key ingredient in one of the city's most popular watering holes, Bull Run distillery, the boulder and watershed is a very unique water source. It's protected by an act of Congress back in the 1870s. And the city's fathers got their hands on a beautiful lake up in the Cascade Mountains. And it's been that way since the 1870s. It used to flow through wooden pipes by gravity to Portland. 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On September 11 2011 10 years after 911 changed his life and the lives of so many others. He pulled the first whiskey off that's still building a future in whiskey office passion for photography. What defines to 291 Colorado whiskey is it spirit passion permeates every sip, find a bottle near you at 291 Colorado whiskey.com, right like you stole it. Drink it like you own it. Live fast and drink responsibly. 36:55 Give you been to distilleries like is there something around there that that kind of fascinates you? You know 37:00 IC getting ready to jump in? Yeah, I have I have been up for my 30th birthday, which is four years ago now I went my good friend and Florence drove us down, went to the bourbon trail saw a few distilleries, so bullet Buffalo Trace. And one more that is eluding me right now. I can't remember. But I got to see a lot of the stuff behind the scenes in terms of like I didn't know about the ALGEO and orphan barrel stuff and how I was involved with bullet and all that stuff is my first time ever being behind the door. That was my first experience was the bullet one and then I went to Buffalo Trace which sort of like the Cadillac for me. It was lovely. Never seen a brick house never been inside one before. I was the the perfect target for the guy that sits down and watches the video in Buffalo Trace and was just like 37:47 just just full, full geek Boehner and loved it so much and I'm sitting like asking questions of the tour guide I'm that guy. I was. I was really loving it. And like man, I again, if 38:00 I lived nearer to here I do it so much more often because it's such a cool thing man. I know that there are other worlds as big as this in the booze world like I know the the world of smelly A's and wine is huge and if you want to go to you've got favorite vintners and favorite years and all that famous and maybe sometime that'll be a thing that I get into but right now this is like the second most passionate affinity that I have is bourbon and I love that and Stephen King's a good number one to have it is pretty good 38:31 again selfish plug listener out there if you know Stephen please connect him with my people. 38:38 Hey, will you tell me Can you show your Somali a skills with this bourbon with what we're having? Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean, let's put you to the top I 38:48 want the listener to hear what I basically what I go through, but I get to go through Oh, and welcome to Andy's bourbon tasting. This is imagine you're my ear. Yeah. If you switched by normal 39:00 Take the left earphone out, put it back in, but the right one and I'm all around you. What I'm drinking today friend is Booker's right. This is the first fancy bottle I ever bought for myself. My wife was furious. I found it in Texas, or outside of lower Greenville. And here it comes to me via the bourbon pursuit podcast and his willingness to share his nice booze on the nose, a stringent rye smoky, very sour ish In my opinion, which I love very much very much right? But this drinks more like a bourbon very spicy, stays in the back of your throat right above the tongue just lingers there for much longer than it would the burning taste that you'll get with anything high proof and Booker's is always there and always present. But this even though it's Ryan astringent, in my mind still has a sweetness that is not normally present and rye whiskeys for me that I love, which is why I would compare it to a bourbon and that is my tasting note for today. On Booker's right, thank you don't fantastic, slow clap for that. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was nice. 40:00 Right yeah sure head guys into it. I mean, because Booker's ride this was this was one of the most, you know, highly anticipated and allocated releases that came out a few years ago. It's long gone from the market who knows if we're ever going to see something like this again, because this was a batch of ride that actually Booker know put down, right? I mean, this was this was something that happened a long time ago. But what was it that kind of got you into the kind of the hunting scene Andy like what got you into trying to find where bottles or anything like that? I think it was the first time that Paul described to me how few of these get made and the stories behind him like you just alluded to the fact that if I remember right, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but Booker Booker know when he was there, and like his latter years, this was the only project that outlasted in terms of his actual life. This is post mortem released. Absolutely. But he had his actual hands on the mash bill on the creation process on the front end. And the story of that to me, I knew this was a bottle that I had to hunt down and find which is why I have it in the bunker because 41:00 Booker's get that in style jackpot For me it was the first thing that made me fall in love with bourbon I collect as many of their offerings as I possibly can the best use of ever had my life is Booker's 25th anniversary and so for me hunting began with this bottle which is pretty cool that we're you know, having it in this podcast but the first time I ever remember bouncing over to multiple different liquor stores when I news release week for this, and I was just hoping, you know, and I was I was so green, like, didn't have a fucking clue. I'm literally walking to places like, do you have it? Yeah. And they're like, like, I would get laughed at so hard. But this one, like, younger clerk at this liquor store was like, I think I can probably get one. I mean, I think that the dude that we had promised to bailed, and it was just too high of a price point for him at the time, and I was like, I'll do it. And again, wife was none too pleased until I explained like, I'm not gonna do this all the time. We don't have the cash for it. But I saved up my money from the road. We're good. And it feels really cool to say that it began a love for 42:00 Hunting dusty is later on when I learned what they were finding out old distilleries that I occasionally can find on the secondary market that people sell. And where do you go for this? Like, how do you hunt? Yeah, that's good question. I mean, like, I would say that you're you're in a decent position. I wish I should I say you probably wish maybe when you started doing this, like six years ago, you were on the road. Yeah. When you're on the road. That was prime opportunity way back then. Right. Because even back in 2013 2012 timeframe, the stores were still littered back then they couldn't sell the stuff sure until 2014 hit 2015 then everything just was scarce. It was just a ghost town and some of these liquor stores to find allocated bourbon. So yeah, to talk about your story there. Well, the hunt for me like it begins not on the secondary market. For the most part, I love going to hole in the wall along the road hole in the wall, seemingly dilapidated liquor stores and checking behind the front rack and what I mean by that 43:00 I've had incredible luck in in and around smaller towns and Alabama checking package stores and looking at old like literally they'll put the new version of wild turkey one on one of the front. And then if you look behind you might be lucky enough to see like you can tell cork difference you can tell label difference that I've found at least six bottles of us Austin Nichols wild turkey that way just from looking in the back and that just means that nobody goes into that package store and buys wild turkey. They had to buy it to get the new label to keep their rep happy or whatever. I found age state at old charter and found some old log cabin some really great best old saying yeah some some really cool dusty finds just from people who've like only these package stores for years. And you know, don't know what they have and I'm not out there trying to scam them because I don't do any I don't resell anything. My my meager bourbon collection in my little closet of my house is all for drinking. I wanted to have specific bottles set aside for specific purposes in my life. 44:00 When a buddy has a kid, we're going to open up birthday bourbon. When there's a death in the family and I want to celebrate the life that has been extinguished, I want to open up the Booker's offering. I want to open up the dusty of the bottle and bomb bomb beam that I have from the 60s. That was there. I mean, he was in the barrel when Kennedy was alive, like, Are you kidding me? Like there's so much of this stuff that I see a bottle that there's limited number of and I immediately see a story. And I see who was alive when it was first in the cask and I see all of those things that matter to me as a storyteller and my other job. And so I admittedly I wax nostalgic and poetic on everything in my life. And I've done that Full Frontal with bourbon and I'm very pleased with it. It just makes the hunt so much easier because it makes it something fun to do. And so the secondary markets like the last stop the last stop I'm like, I really want to thing but I know that there's no chance I'm gonna be able to find it in the wild. But for a person who hasn't done that, what does that even look like the secondary market secondary markets tough man sometimes you can invite 45:00 The private Facebook's and lots of stuff, but you've got people online that'll buy a bottle for X number of dollars. And then they will take that MSRP and they will multiply it by 1000 million dollars. And then say yes, you can have this MSRP bottle of $170 for the meager pricing of 1200. Gotta and it's brutal but to be honest with you, and this is just being really blunt and whether this gets me castrated by bourbon fans or not, there are times where the story the juice is worth the squeeze the story of the bottle and me never being able to get access to that bottle outside of this really jacked up price on the secondary market is worth it. Like I'm saving up for the sheer fact that someday I'll be able to get a bottle of Booker's 25 be for probably 850. Now I think 600 was a couple years ago, but that about right azz pretty much on point or out there. So looking at that I'm like, okay, I want that and and is the story and the amount of time 46:00 And dinners that I'll be able to have that with and back porch conversations. 46:06 Is it worth it? And the answer is, of course, of course it is. To me and that's not for everybody but if you spread out that price point over the amount of time and stories that I'll be able to have it on it then yeah towards it. So there you go. So if your listener out there, you're a fan of these guys. You got a book or 2015 around. There's there might be a private private concert you could have in your backyard for a bottle who knows I'll rub your back. Lots of stuff. There's a lot of ways 46:33 so I mean, are you so Kyle I'll ask you so when when when you're on the road and Andy's driving or you're driving or whatever? Does a DC like a rundown liquor stores like pull the pull pulled over pulled over? We gotta go, Sam. Yeah, we both do, because I know that's what he did. So I'll see what it'll be like, is this a good looking one, we need to stop here. And most times, ZS there's really not a there's very rarely I know, to go into a liquor store. So we'll go pretty often and I know what to look for. 47:00 Now, which is really fun, I know how to say the things to the guys behind the counter to see if there's anything back there. Yeah to play that game game, and I'm in it now, which is nice, but I know that uh, whatever whatever we find whatever the bounty is. We'll go to Sir Baxter, which is great. And then I'll get a couple polls off at every once in a while. Pro tip for you hunters out there, just one. I won't spoil all the tricks. But one, a really great way to get in good with a local liquor store that sells fancy bottles is before you let them answer upon asking if they have that midwinter nights DRAM or whatever really cool bottle you're looking for you immediately say before you ask before you let them talk after you've said do you have this is Do you have anything in the back? You say also if you do have it will open it right here right now and will each have a poor and that is a great way to immediately be like I've seen people turn on a dime when they were going I gotta tell me No. And then I'm like, Is it worth 48:00 it for me to like have a poor of this stuff right now with the the owner then buy the bottle from him. Yeah, because it does two things in one thing you get to try the juice, you get to try the juice with a friend who also probably loves bourbon because he's selling the stuff he pedals it and then you're probably going to get future offers or future looks because that guy knows that you give a shit because then you're not going to resell an open bottle. Like for him I find it for most people I find that disarming because they know that I'm not in this to make cash. I'm in this because I love the juice. I love the story and I really want that bottle to open up and drink in my house and it'll get open eventually might as well now yeah, exactly as will make it happen. So take that and run with it listener So even with the with the fandom that you have anything like that nothing's like nothing's free coming your way. I mean, I talked about bourbon all the time and yeah, all I get samples sent to me But yeah, for the most part, nobody sitting here sending me allocated bourbon, but even in the music world. Nobody's like, Hey, I got all this Booker's in the back waiting for you guys, right. We got occasional offers 49:00 The occasional offers of people that are kind enough that want to bring us bottles and we get gifted because they know that we dig it we can give to a fair amount of booze on the road which we love the idol amazing. Please continue doing really great, really love that's a good trend. Let's keep that rolling at the end of every tour we do a bourbon lottery because we'll have 49:18 a decent amount that we've both accrued by ourselves and that we've accrued from GIFs from people and so we'll get to the end of a tour a leg of tour and we just go one for one we like rock paper scissor who goes first then we go one for one and first Captain second cap Yeah, and usually those bottles that we still share but we just keep in our house and get to slowly sip on but we're both at each other's houses enough that like we basically choosing which ones we want to have a little bit more of a drink anything at my house and whenever I'm over at his house like he's got bourbon, I'm drinking that too. And so it's literally like it's a first Captain second captain and the only way that he's not going to get it as if he doesn't show up in time for me to finish that bottle. 49:59 get hurt. Yeah. 50:00 So I guess the way to get in good graces, you gotta feed these guys bourbon. Yeah, you guys are bourbon bourbon geeks at the end of the day, which is awesome. And I think that's one of the main reasons why we love to have you on here is because I don't think there's a whole lot of people, we could go and talk to better musicians out there that could have this level of conversation with us as well. Because, you know, like you all are, you're in the trenches, too, right? You're, you're out there, you're hunting, you're driving, you're looking for stuff, and you know what to look for. Right? I think so. I mean, and again, this world's huge still learning what this is like, I've only known about dusty for like, three years. And so like the amount of knowledge that you can amass in this world is massive dude, so crazy to learn about who used to own Old Crow, what years were good. When did it stop being great? When is it is it making a resurgence? Like all these nuance things that you can figure out about this world is huge. And to me, that's just fun. It's just a fun thing to start studying. And so it's changing really quickly. Yeah. Like, especially some of the smaller distilleries around the nation that are happening. feel like there's no 51:00 More to know than ever. It seems like Yeah. It's just an exciting time to be somebody who loves this stuff. Yeah. So if I remember correctly last night, Andy, when you were on stage, you were drinking bourbon. That's fact. Yes. I mean, you were you're drinking bourbon between the songs like you had I think he had a poor with some some rocks in it or something like did you know I was getting we were both gifted that we were gifted 51:23 some old forester on stage. And before that, I was I was Yeah, and we had Eagle rare. In the cup Eagle rare walking onto stage. We had a good amount of bourbon last night just from people bringing us random poor, which is great. How did how did fans get to know that you all were into bourbon? I don't know if there's a time on stage that Andy or I are not drinking bourbon. And I think it think it became apparent after a few years of us just just constantly in between songs, having people. Yeah, okay. And so I think and then eventually people would buy us Bourbons, and send them 52:00 onstage and we started, we just would say how appreciative we were, and we would drink them, which is also great. And that on top of just talking about it, 52:11 whether it's social media or random interview questions like print interviews when they ask, I mean, again, like I said, it's like, second most touted affinity in myself. And so when it comes to both of us being asked on interviews, what do you into? What are you on the road to stay sane? Aside from drinking, we don't drink this thing saying, Yeah, but it complicated, complicated answer. 52:35 But But in all seriousness, when people ask us what we're into, like, it's one of the earliest things we can talk about, like we like drinking bourbon, we like collecting it. We like trying new stuff, local distilleries, like all that. It's a natural overflow of something that's already cool, that we have loved for years. And so when people caught on to that we are very grateful that they have decided to say like how cool this is a way that I can say, Hey, I like your music. It's given me a lot of solace. Have a pretty 53:00 It all the moments that have like music, your music has been a part of our life for a few years now and we'd like to give back. And a lot of times they choose to give back with sweet hundred proof goodness, we are pleased with that choice I was about to say and kind of tail off on that last one is like when somebody does come and says that, you know, your music has inspired their life, like kind of talk about that, right? Because I mean, this is we're getting a little deep with this, but kind of talk about like, what that means to you all as artists. To be honest with you, man, anytime we get to be a part of a thing that's been healing for somebody. Anytime somebody comes up and says as it happens fairly regularly, now, we've toured enough and we've seen enough cities and met enough people that people get to come up and tell us a story of of a moment in their life that they got through with the helping hand of catharsis and music, and we've gotten to be a part of that. And so anytime someone steps up and says that a good thing resulted in emotionally beneficial thing healing. catharsis happened because of our tunes, and 54:01 I don't know that there's a better compliment you could give our music we a lot of why we write our music is is for that it's our own healing. A lot of the times it's it's pretty often autobiographical. And I know that's not the only way to write music. I mean, in the pop world, you're not looking to write something that's heavy or something that's that's going to be specifically cathartic. Yeah, I think carry on a grand day said, you know, leave your boyfriend for me or something. Yeah, yeah. So, a little is emotionally deep. Yeah. Like, there's a lot of shift, it really can be. 54:32 But the fact that someone else would also feel what we're going through kind of it just as pretty binding for us. It's a really cool thing. 54:39 To although our intention wasn't to be like, we want to write something specifically for other people, because we write it for ourselves to know that other people are also connecting with it is just really, it's a cool bond to have with somebody to be like, yeah, we're, we're in the same thing together a lot of the time. So it's really cool. It's really cool for us when anybody tells us right on absolutely 55:00 And so I guess another thing to kind of tail off on from the last question before then is you know you all are not also discriminated in the whiskey world as well because I think it was a city or two ago you did a shout on Instagram saying somebody sent you some of your favorite cinnamon flavored whiskey. Oh yeah, well let's Let the record reflect a few things one will drink it if it's wet and it tastes decent. We will 55:24 we will say the the honey whiskies we just have had we had too many bad experiences in college can't do it so much honey and few can't do it. Yeah, do not good. It's bad to like I just barely heard before. Okay, good I it's it's very triggering. I get I get like American honey shell shock and it's no good. But for the most part, if it's wet and curiously tasty enough to try we'll we'll do it and somebody said for whatever reason we didn't talk about it. They didn't talk about I think we I think we just 56:00 just mentioned it on a whim, did you? I don't remember. I don't remember doing that sometimes you just they're talking on stage you know and that's fair. We could have rambled and said something about fireball but like four shots of fireball appeared. Oh gosh, and well and four shots later like we were like crossing arms on stage and like newlywed couple shooting fireball and then they flirting with us on the line. Yeah, it was great. It was such a such a 56:26 fireball reached out to us is really great. We never responded to him. We need to offload it back. Don't get there sending us a care package. 56:34 No idea What's in the bag. I hope it's just a huge fucking beach ball with fireball on the side. So take it Yeah. Cool. Sounds great. I think because last night you were talking about like, you know, trying to figure out how do you get sponsorships and you're like, you're like what do these guys actually stand for? Now? I think you figured out what you all stand for total fireball. Yeah. Honestly, it's like bring us your strange it like if you could say like, what's your thesis statement for how you want to 57:00 Like roping your sponsors like who's strange out there who wants to do something really weird? Because we're into that that's great for us. We're we gave a random shout out to white claw and great hopes that they'd flirt back with us. We don't even know to what end we don't we're not asking for anything. It's just like what will they say if we start and I also just want to pit white clog against fireball second half storm of the century baby we say go for the highest bidder go for our affections. You don't care Be it cinnamon popery whiskey or if it be this sweet, sweet blackberry White Glove go Yes, sir. Vodka. There you go. You'll start wearing like fireball jerseys on stage now like when you're going out there. That's okay. We didn't sell out 10 out of 10 would do it but I would only do it if they didn't pay us money. I'm like I'm not getting paid for this. Just want the leather jacket. I just want this jacket because I think it's dope. 57:52 I guess one more thing about the band that I want to ask you because I don't think we ever talked about it back in forecast when we first met is the name 58:00 Penny Sparrow like, Where did the name originate from? And how did y'all come up with it? So when we were roommates, we had one other roommate in our room, and it was way too crowded for all three of us. It was basically bed dresser bed dresser bed dressing. And he was an author or a writer. 58:19 And he wrote under the pen name of Penny and Sparrow, and we were getting started. We used to just go by sports teams, because we Why not? It was nothing was really official for us. So anytime we would play a show, it would be like, Hey, we're the Utah Jazz happy to be here. I read the Dallas Cowboys. And by show he means like when somebody in the community was like, hey, we've got a fundraiser and there's gonna be like 13 needy people. We need we just need somebody to play matchbox. 20 covers and 58:48 we're like, oh, we know Rob Thomas. And so we did that a lot of media by sports. So you go by sports teams, and eventually we did one that was paid out, be it not very much money. 59:00 And so they came up to us and basically we're like, Hey, you can't be a sports team anymore. This is making me look bad. Please don't make me look bad we just pick we please just pick anything that's not Utah Jazz. Yeah. And so our roommate who went by opinion Sparrow, we basically just asked them were like, Hey, can we just use your name and then anything we do in this room will do under the guise of finance barrel? And that's where it just kind of stuck and we just kept it and here we are. We years later doing we picked that name when we saddled ourselves with that we didn't think that this was going to be where we would be no seven years later. Yeah, if we did w

Paul Laursen (PhD) returns for round two. In our previous episode, Paul and Boomer discussed HIIT training in detail. This episode is focused on endurance nutrition. Are high fat diets right for endurance? Or do you need to carb load? Who is Paul Laursen?Dr. Paul Laursen resides at the nexus between exercise performance research, theory, and application. He is an Adjunct Professor of Exercise Physiology at AUT University in New Zealand where he leads research into low carb diet and its performance applications. Dr. Laursen has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and is a co-founder of HIIT Science, which serves to teach The Science and Application of High-Intensity Interval Training (see book and online course). He coaches a select number of elite triathletes, including Kyle Buckingham, and is the inventor of Floe Bottle, which enables ice slushy delivery for hot racing conditions.Highlights[3:55] The ideal diet for athletes[6:06] The value of reflection on personalization[11:23] Using a CGM to identify your optimal diet[16:47] Paul's work with Phil Maffetone[21:57] The role of the HPA axis in your training[24:53] Are carbs necessary for endurance racing?[26:02] Rinsing your mouth with Glucose while running[30:50] The massively fat adapted athlete[33:01] Fat oxidation and performance in HIIT training[37:39] Prescribing diets for training[38:38] Ketogenic diets in a marathon[45:05] Metrics to track for endurance training[46:02] Ketone esters in training ResourcesRethinking the role of fat oxidation: substrate utilisation during high-intensity interval training in well-trained and recreationally trained runnersOverfat Adults and Children in Developed Countries: The Public Health Importance of Identifying Excess Body FatDecision-Making in Health and Fitness.The effect of 1,3-butanediol and carbohydrate supplementation on running performance.Athletes: Fit but Unhealthy?Training PeaksDexcom - Continuous Glucose Measurement Freestyle LibreSponsorWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top. Quality matters. If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.DisclaimerThis information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Greg Potter, PhD discusses the biological clock, best times to eat and fast, and what you really need to do to discover whether you are a day person or a night person.Who is Greg Potter, PhD?Greg Potter's PhD work at the University of Leeds on sleep, diet, and metabolic health was featured by the likes of the BBC World Service, the Washington Post, and Reuters. Greg has a BSc and an MSc in Exercise Physiology from Loughborough University, where he coached a sprinter to four gold medals at the European Championships. Greg has also worked with groups such as The United States Naval Special Warfare Command on health and performance optimization. He is now Chief Scientific officer for a digital health startup.Highlights[3:20] The issue with quoting percentages of night and morning people[8:00] Biological clocks- circadian rhythms, light dark cycle, peripheral clocks, eating and fasting[13:54] Biological daytime and how can we hack it[18:46] Age and biological clock[20:25] What is chrononutrition?[22:28] Time restricted feeding - morning fasting versus early time restricted feeding[28:15] Enhancing morning focus and cognition[32:24] When to eat and meal sizes[44:40] One meal a day - is it sustainable?[51:50] Biological clock and recovery from jet lag[59:40] Greg answers the final four questionsResourcesDigital Minimalism by Cal NewportDoing Good Better by William MacAskillHealth Optimisation Summit TicketsBiohacker Summit - FinlandSponsorWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BLUBlox is definitely the go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top. Quality matters. If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.DisclaimerThis information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Scott Sherr is a pioneer in Health Optimization Medicine. This episode is a deep dive into hyperbaric oxygen therapy, metabolomics, and holobiont.Who is Dr. Scott Sherr?Dr. Scott Sherr is a physician certified to practice Health Optimization Medicine (HOMe) and a specialist in Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT). He creates personalized treatments for patients including HOMe and cutting-edge, dynamic HBOT protocols as well as adjunctive technologies. Scott likes to say that he is (in no particular order!) a “physician, a creator, a father to four amazing children, a husband, and a synergizer. For me, the box was broken a long time ago. And out of the box there is fun, wonder, love, and healing.”Highlights[1:54] Our mutual connection, Tim Gray[4:12] What is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy? [15:08] The positive effects of oxidative stress[18:45] Metabolomics as assesment for individual performance[20:02] Holobiont[24:30] Testing metabolomics[28:15] The epigenetic effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy[36:28] Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) and heart conditions[41:32] HBOT and Alzheimers Conditions[50:38] Performance optimization, cognitive enhancement, and improving test scores with HBOT [58:58] The downsides of hyperbaric oxygen therapy[1:07:39] Blue Cannatine [1:15:42] Dr. Sherr answers the final 4 questionsResourcesIntegrative HBOTHealth Optimization MedicineBlue CannatineHealth Optimisation SummitThe Power of Habit by Charles DuhiggStalking the Wild Pendulum by Itzhak BentovHolobiontChris MasterjohnEffects of hyperbaric oxygen on the Nrf2 signaling pathway in secondary injury following traumatic brain injury.Additional Studies in PubMed on Hyperbaric Oxygen TherapyHenry's LawGenova DiagnosticsHyperbaric oxygen in chronic traumatic brain injury: oxygen, pressure, and gene therapyHuman Heart, Cosmic Heart by Dr. Thomas CowanKeto Nutrition - The Official Website of Dr. Dominic D'Agostino Continue your highperformance with Dr. Scott SherrInstagramHyperbaric Medical SolutionsDr. Sherr's HOMe clinicFacebookTwitterSponsorWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters.If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.DisclaimerThis information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Language creates. Boomer and Satu delve into the fascinating realm of how the words we use on an everyday basis help shape our reality.Highlights[0:37] Abracadabra [2:00] The impact of language on performance[6:08] Conflict vs. Architect language[8:47] Listening, sentence structure, and communication[10:51] Negations vs. Affirmations[12:16] The power of questions [13:14] Binary languageResourcesProcabularyOntocoreExtreme Ownership by Jocko WillinkSponsorWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go-to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters.If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It’s July 2015, and Andy Greenberg is driving his Jeep Cherokee through downtown St Louis. The weather is normal for a summer’s day in Missouri: clear and warm. So Andy finds it a bit frustrating when the windshield wipers start up. Especially as he can’t seem to switch them off. Then the air conditioning turns up full blast, even though Andy hasn’t touched the controls. Next, the radio switches on, playing music at maximum volume. Andy presses the button to turn it off, but it keeps going. At this stage, it’s pretty clear what’s happening. Andy’s car has been hacked. But what might such an attack look like in 2019, conducted on a driverless vehicle? That's the question we're asking in this month's episode of Journey Makers. Welcome aboard. smartmobility.london

The listeners have spoken and selected Batman Beyond as the next Bat-show we're going to review on the podcast. So Andy, Jamie, and Brendan dive into the adventures of Terry McGinnis and old Bruce Wayne by reviewing the first three episodes of the series: "Rebirth" parts 1 and 2 and "Black Out". Join our Mailing List: https://goo.gl/FKUBA2  Take a quick demographic survey: https://goo.gl/33VxBz    Find more Holy BatCast on the internet: Web | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Patreon   Rate, review, & subscribe to Holy BatCast on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | iHeartRadio | Stitcher | TuneIn   Your feedback is appreciated. Send emails to holybatcast@rf4rm.com

Does time at work equate to more productivity, output, and therefore a higher quality of life? For many, no. Boomer and Satu look at the current state of workplace engagement in The United States of America and Europe.Highlights[2:28] The cost of burn out to Swedish society[4:56] A personal history with burn out[8:57] The United States of disengaged workers[16:06] The problem with the "what are your strengths?" interview question[16:43] Procabulary[18:31] Cortisol and the adrenalsResourcesBurn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of DiseasesUnderstanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatryDUTCH Plus Test Estimating the Attributable Cost of Physician Burnout in the United States The United States of Burnout Majority of U.S. Employees Not Engaged Despite Gains in 2014 Workplace Stress: The American Institute of StressJob stress, burn out on the rise in The NetherlandsProcabulary: The Language of Getting Things DoneStress Buckets with Dr. David HeitmannRate the Podcast Please give us a 5-star rating on iTunesSponsorWhat brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go-to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top.Quality matters.If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order.DisclaimerThis information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC, or Decoding Superhuman, is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nutritional advice is dogmatic and polarizing. One day, eggs are good for you. The next, they are not. Fat is good for you. Fat is bad for you. Energy drinks will give you the extra boost you are not getting from coffee. The truth lies in a gray area called, "it depends." Boomer and Satu discuss the generational gap in perception of two of these: fat and sugar. Highlights [0:45] Sprite, Grant Hill, and the worst nutrition advice ever received [4:11] The problem with the "fat is evil" perception [10:27] Canola oil, rapeseed oil, and Omega 6:3 ratios [17:42] The dangers of energy drinks [21:15] If you cannot pronounce it, why are you consuming it? Resources Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan M.D. Sponsor What brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top. Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Arye Shabtai is the CEO of Serenity Ventures and a Co-Founder of Daocloud.com. Arye shares how he built companies, why he emphasizes corporate culture, and how mindfulness is a distinct part of those cultures. Who is Arye Shabtai? Arye Shabtai is on a mission to transform global business culture in order to improve society and the environment. He is the founder and CEO of Serenity Ventures, a global mastermind network for impact entrepreneurs. Having co-founded two businesses in the wellness space prior to Serenity Ventures, Arye now supports entrepreneurs to build more profitable, impactful, and sustainable businesses while having fun with the process. Highlights [4:06] Arye's battle with Crohn's Disease [6:09] Building Daocloud.com [8:02] Experiments in mindfulness at the corporate level [15:06] The value of enjoying the journey [26:49] How Yoga shaped Arye's business [37:44] The mind/body connection in productivity [40:08] 10-day silent retreats [43:58] Reverse engineering habits for lifestyle design [49:24] Empathetic listening [53:19] Arye answers the final four questions Resources Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda Mindvalley Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore Light on Yoga: The Bible of Modern Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar DaoCloud.com Continue Your High-Performance Journey with Arye Shabtai Instagram LinkedIn Serenity Ventures Sponsor What brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top. Quality matters. If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order. Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

You remember that time you woke up in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep? Was it last night? Last week? Never? A very common problem for entrepreneurs, executives, and CEOs is sleeping through the night. In this episode, Boomer and Satu discuss strategies to keep the monkey mind at bay and help you sleep more through the night. Highlights [3:28] The myriad of reasons you are awake at 3 am [5:27] Timing your last meal for optimal rest [7:49] Alcohol and sleep [10:05] Cortisol, the HPA Axis, and sleep [13:48] The problem with the McKinsey article on what to do when you are awake at 3 am [18:09] Effective Task Management Resources What to do when you’re awake at 3 a.m. by McKinsey Investing in Sleep with Dr. Benjamin Smarr The Advanced Sleep Class with Dr. Benjamin Smarr The Oura Ring Sleep, Sleepiness, and Alcohol Use Naturopathic by Nature: Traditional Chinese Medicine Wake Times Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity by David Allen Todoist Things 3 Sponsor What brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top. Quality matters. If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order. Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

High-Intensity Interval Training is a popular format of exercise to get more done with less time. The research behind HIIT for both physical and mental benefits is convincing. Dr. Paul Laursen joins the show to discuss HIIT in detail. Who is Dr. Paul Laursen? Dr. Paul Laursen resides at the nexus between exercise performance research, theory, and application. He is an Adjunct Professor of Exercise Physiology at AUT University in New Zealand where he leads research into low carb diet and its performance applications. Dr. Laursen has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and is a co-founder of HIIT Science, which serves to teach The Science and Application of High-Intensity Interval Training (see book and online course). He coaches a select number of elite triathletes, including Kyle Buckingham, and is the inventor of Floe Bottle, which enables ice slushy delivery for hot racing conditions. Highlights [2:33] Our mutual connection, Jason Moore [3:01] What is high-intensity interval training? [10:03] Sample HIIT programming [21:42] Electromyography [22:45] The problem with programs prescribed to the masses [25:57] HPA Axis and HIIT [28:44] HRV and HIIT [32:03] The Five HIIT Weapons [37:33] Paul Laursen answers the Finishing Four Resources HIIT Science Website Why We Sleep by Dr. Matthew Walker Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss Waking Up by Sam Harris Waking Up App The Throwdown Continue Your Journey with Dr. Paul Laursen Instagram Twitter Facebook Sponsor What brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top. Quality matters. If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order. Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Can you really increase your cognition by over 60% just by spending time in nature? Naava CEO and Co-Founder, Aki Soudunsaari, explains the problems with indoor air, why you may want to spend more time outside, and how to upgrade your office air. Who is Aki Soudunsaari? Aki lives and breathes entrepreneurship, which he defines as "ideas into action". Equipped with over 10 years of experience, he is a true expert of growth venturing with a passion for human behavior, winning teams, educational leadership and company culture. After working as a teacher of physical education and health sciences, Aki worked on his PhD in the Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics and was a visiting scholar in Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship at San Jose State University. He ran Global Venture Labs' growth venturing programs for a few years, where multidisciplinary students solved companies problems and learned entrepreneurial thinking and processes. Aki's personal mission is to improve people's health, happiness and performance. During his PhD work he met Naava's co-founder Niko, and this led to the birth of Naava. Six years later, Naava has grown from an innovative experiment of two young men, to a global business. Naava brings nature indoors, creating natural environments where we can feel healthier and happier. Aki has been nominated for EY's Entrepreneur of the Year (2017), PWC’s Most Valuable Entrepreneur (2015) and Young Academic Entrepreneur (2014) awards. He was invited by the President of Finland to join the Finland 100-year ceremonies in 2017, and he has been a keynote speaker at tens of different seminars, events, and conferences. Key Highlights: [5:00] How bad is the air quality in the world? [7:00] 61% increase in cognitive performance from improvement in indoor air [9:12] The benefits of having plants indoors [10:09] Indoor air quality is much worse than outdoor [15:40] The problem with humidity in our buildings [18:25] How Naava got started [22:31] Testing air quality [24:21] It's all about the microbes [27:39] Your microbiome and air quality [30:19] How Naava works [38:12] The range of effectiveness for a Naava [40:38] Controlling our nervous system with plants [40:47] Aki answers the final questions Resources Mentioned: Naava's website Promoting human health through forests: overview and major challenges Shinrin-yoku (forest-air bathing and walking) effectively decreases blood glucose levels in diabetic patients Associations of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers: A Controlled Exposure Study of Green and Conventional Office Environments NASA Microbial Research NASA - Interior Landscape Plants for Indoor Air Pollution Abatement Continue Your High-Performance Journey with Aki and Naava LinkedIn - Aki LinkedIn - Naava Naava's website Sponsor What brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it’s 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he’s tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top. Quality matters. If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code “DS15”, you’re going to get 15% off your order. Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The second part of our routine series is a deep dive into evening routines. While morning routines and rituals get much publicity, evening routines are often neglected. Boomer and Satu discuss the why, how, and what behind evening routines. Key Highlights [3:14] Why you need an evening routine [6:00] How to develop an evening routine [9:48] The value of eating early in the evening [10:58] Rebuilding your body after circadian disruption [11:42] Evaluating quality blue light blockers [14:20] The External Brain [18:56] Put electronics in Airplane Mode Resources Mentioned Cognitive Load is Real by Seth Godin Oura Ring - Use Code Boomer for 75 USD or 75 EUR off (depending on geography) Kava tea Four Sigmatic Reishi Tea Acupressure Mat Evernote HeartMath Inner Balance RomWod About these Episodes The Decoding Superhuman podcast comes out twice per week. Our normal interviews with experts in the domain of performance will continue to occur on Tuesday every week. In those episodes, you receive a deep dive in a particular domain of performance. The second episode will feature Boomer and Satu discussing a topic in a condensed, 20-minute format. These episodes are action-packed and filled with our experiences and recommendations on how to achieve high performance using the latest tools, technology, and research. Feel free to send feedback on these, or any other Decoding Superhuman podcast, to podcast@decodingsuperhuman.com Sponsor What brands of blue light blockers do we recommend? BluBlox is definitely a go to. The CEO Andy Mant on the show before where we got into a really deep dive on blue light. If you get any amount of blue light in your glasses, no matter if it's 3%, 10%, it disrupts melatonin production. So Andy has created blue light blockers that hold up to the highest standards. And in fact, you can see he's tested it versus other brands and that they always come out on top. Quality matters. If you head over to blublox.com and plug in the code "DS15", you're going to get 15% off your order. Disclaimer This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. This is being provided as a self-help tool to help you understand your genetics, biodata and other information to enhance your performance. It is not medical or psychological advice. Virtuosity LLC is not a doctor. Virtuosity LLC is not treating, preventing, healing, or diagnosing disease. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment. For the full Disclaimer, please go to (Decodingsuperhuman.com/disclaimer). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Leon and Josh discuss failures big and small, and how our religious/moral/ethical traditions inform the "opportunities" for failure that life in IT presents us with almost daily. Transcript: Leon: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate it. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is technically religious. Josh: 00:21 Hey Leon, did I ever tell you about the time I was wrong? Josh: 00:24 No Josh: 00:26 It's okay. I was only mistaken. Leon: 00:29 Oh, seriously?!? Josh: 00:32 You know, dad jokes are a fantastic thing, Leon. And uh, sometimes my delivery is great and sometimes it's an epic fail, which is good. It's okay. Because I think today I want to talk about failures in it. Leon: 00:47 Like when the SAN fails? Josh: 00:50 No. How about when we fail the SAN, Not when the SAN fails us. Leon: 00:54 Oh, you mean like the time I took the entire backup path down, but I forgot about it. And later on I did a fail over and the entire storage array went down because there was nothing to backup to. Josh: 01:03 Uh, yeah, exactly that. Leon: 01:05 Oh God. Okay. All right. Once again, our religious, moral, ethical outlook I think helps us with those failures. First of all, I should say that the opportunity to fail presents itself almost every nanosecond in IT. I think there's lots of things to fail at. Um, but uh, as, as some people say, failure isn't an option, it's actually built into the primary features of the product a lot of times. So I think our religious outlook helps us to either adapt to failure or fail better. What do you think? Josh: 01:40 Well, um, so I, you know, I don't have a great answer for that yet. I'm going to flip back to my ideas of, of religion based on scripture. Okay. So, in the scripture, in the New Testament says, "be ye therefore perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect." And to me that's always been a very weighty thing because I view God as perfect. You know, he's all knowing, all loving. He's, he's the perfect father and holy cow, how do I ever live up to that? And I, I've spent a lot of time in my religious life and even my post-Mormon life thinking about this mandate we've been given of being perfect. And you know in IT I'm, I'm nowhere near perfect. I am so far from it, but man, uh, I spent a lot of time in my religious upbringing trying to look, sound, act, be perfect. And I didn't do a very good job to be frank. Leon: 02:50 So it's interesting because, uh, at least in in Judaism, yes, God is perfect, omnipotent, you know, uh, infinite, all of those things. But, but the mandate to be perfect is... That's, that's a hard pill to swallow. Um, the, the language that I've always heard is that you should, you should try to perfect yourself. So it's more a message of constant self improvement. Knowing that, that there's always something about yourself that you can improve upon rather than say that you're trying to attain this goal of perfection. I think that that's, to be very honest, you know, impossible. But I also think that that idea pairs nicely with IT life because in IT, I think that we, the, the people who are most successful in IT typically are committed to being lifelong learners and to knowing that they're going to spend their whole life perfecting a set of skills - whether it's networking skills or their knowledge of IOS commands or, their ability to create good, useful powershell scripts or whatever it is - that nobody sits back on their laurels and says that "I'm the everything about active directory. I've got it all down." I mean, they may be comfortable with it, but there's always a recognition that you could do more with it. Um, so yeah, I think that's an easier thing to, to get to then perfection. Josh: 04:22 Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. And you know, some may argue that you've arrived at a state of perfection when you realize that you have to be constantly learning. And it was that old adage. The more I know, the more I realized how much I don't actually know. And I think that that's very true both in life as well as an it an interesting story to share real quick. I've got younger brothers, and my youngest brother, uh, I usually introduce him to people when I'm, when I'm telling a story like this, I say "my little brother is an overachiever" and they look at me like, "oh, I see." Yeah, he dropped out of high school twice. And people that they kind of give me this odd look like, "are you just being snarky?" And then I go on to tell them about how my youngest brother is the most magnificent carpenter I've ever met. Although he is a high school dropout, twice, because he went back and decided, nope, this definitely is not for me, which is okay, right? He then went on to work for another master carpenter, worked like a dog. Fortunately he lives out here kind of near me. He is head-hunted on the regular by some of the top architects in the region. He builds the most insanely complex things. And he just SEES them. And I think to myself, "wow, he would have totally wasted away sitting in a classroom some place." In fact, I had that exact discussion with my son today who's trying to figure out where he wants to go to. And I asked him, I said, "Noah, would you be happy sitting in a classroom for the next four years?" And he said, "I would be miserable." And it's true. He would be absolutely miserable. And so, you know, this idea that, that perfection requires you to go sit in a classroom, or for my youngest brother to, you know, graduate from High School is, you know, that's, it's null and void in those cases, that is not their idea of perfection, you know. So sometimes when we talk about learning, we look and we say, "hey, you know, um, Leon, you only learned, uh, you know, these skills. And Leon is the perfect it engineer because he knows x, y, and Z." Leon: 06:43 Okay. Getting a little deep here! Josh: 06:46 Hold on, hold on. Okay. But then we look at other people who have a completely different skillset that is very relevant to what they need to accomplish. And for them, they are that perfect engineer, right? It's the whole idea of, you know, hey, I can script in powershell or I could script in python, but if you are an AIX admin, perl's gonna help you, but you probably need to have some other skills, and that powershell isn't going to be very useful for you. Cause I don't think AIX runs powershell. Leon: 07:18 Right? Not, not presently, but you never know in the future, or powershell may run in AIX anyway. Um, we can dream can't we? So, um, yeah, I think, I think what are the things you're getting at is, is that self improvement and perfecting ourself is actually a process of repeated failure. Josh: 07:42 Amen Leon: 07:42 As, as hard as it is to sometimes accept that on a daily basis. It's hard to live that experience. I often, Josh: 07:53 You only fail once a day? Leon: 07:54 No, no. A constant state of failure. I like to tell people that, that working in IT sometimes feels like a huge stretches of soul crushing depression, punctuated by brief moments of insane euphoria, before returning back to the long stretch of soul crushing depression again. You know, like, I'm working on this problem. "I don't know what it is. I can't figure it out. I've tried everything. Let me try this one. Yeah. OH MY GOSH IT WORKS THIS IS BRILLIANT!! This is incredible. I love it... Okay, next problem." All right. Josh: 08:31 That's accurate, isn't it? I, I, that's my life. I don't know how I didn't know any different. Leon: 08:37 So the, so the idea of failure, really is just, I think framing an experience incorrectly because it's just, you know, working, you know? It's finding out all the things that don't work. And I think that our religious, moral, ethical outlook, those of us who, who feel strongly about those, I think that it allows us to embrace that experience, to be more flexible about failure. Then somebody who, who may not have that outlook. Not that people who, you know, don't, you know, who aren't religious CAN'T do that obviously. But I think that that a religious framework helps us to see it in a particular light. Um... Josh: 09:26 Why do you think that is? What, what is it about having a view of yourself, not as isolated from the world, but having, uh, an understanding that you are relative to, you know - whether it's God, whether it's, you know, the universe, whether, you know, whether it's the... what is it about that view that allows us to embrace both failure and an evolution toward perfection? Leon: 09:54 I think part of it is that in, in many religions, there is actually a habituation of repentance. And what I mean by that is that there is a period of time or a day or even a moment during daily prayers when you ask for forgiveness. When you recognize that you've somehow fallen short of a goal that you could have reached but didn't, and you apologize for that. Now at least in the Jewish tradition that is, you know, failures, things that you have missed between you and God. So, you know, "I'm expected to do certain things and I fell short and I'm so sorry and I'm going to work on that..." And so on and so forth. That's sort of the subtext of the prayer. But I think that asking for forgivenes, apologizing is a habit, is a technique, and you have to practice it before it feels natural. And I also think that knowing that you can apologize and be forgiven is something that you have to practice a few times before you can become comfortable with it. And because religions tend to have that built in - that repentance, apology, forgiveness cycle - that we and IT who make mistakes that do affect other people are perhaps finding an easier time saying, like, I joked earlier in this talk, you know, "I took the backup circuit down, I forgot to bring it back up again. I did a fail over a week later. I am so sorry. I know that caused an outage. I will, you know, here are the things I'm going to do to make sure that doesn't happen again." I'm not, quote-unquote "a failure" for having allowed that to happen. I failed, I made a mistake. But my, my Jewish experience with the repentance cycle allows me to admit that without feeling like I have to give up some part of my soul in order to do so. I, you know, I apologize all the time. I apologize, honestly, every day during prayers, There's a particular times of year when apology figures prominently. And the act of showing up and doing that allows me to turn to my coworkers and apologize and know that forgiveness can be given without fear. And I think, and I think that's it. I think that fear really gets in the way of a lot of people, you know, in that case, I don't know what you think about that. Josh: 12:37 Yeah. You know what, I 100% agree. I, I saw, I can't tell you how many times in my life I've been afraid. Um, funny story growing up, we lived in a small house that had one of those dirt basements. You know the kind I'm talking about. And I was horrified of that basement. Absolutely horrified. And so when you turn the lights on in the main basement, there was a back basement that was like completely, uh, didn't have any lights. And every so often my parents would say, "hey, can you go down to the cellar and get something?" And I would just start panicking Leon: 13:17 That is nightmare fuel! Josh: 13:19 Right? It is totally nightmare fuel. And I can remember like just screaming up the stairs as fast as I could because I was so afraid of the thing I could not see. So yeah, I am not Kevin McCallister. I cannot stand with, you know, a triumph in front of my furnace, in my basement and you know, you know, you know, scream from my front step, you know, "I am not afraid anymore." I also don't have a next door neighbor who I think is an ax murderer. Um, that's another thing too. Leon: 13:51 That's a plus. Josh: 13:51 That's definitely a plus. Every tell you about my first, my very first fail? Actually, did I ever tell you about how I got started in IT? That's probably better. Leon: 14:00 Tell everyone. Josh: 14:01 Okay. So let me tell you and everyone who's listening. Um, thanks mom. Uh, I want it to be a lawyer. I remember the exact moment in my life when I decided I want it to be a lawyer. I was in seventh grade and we were doing a mock trial in seventh grade and the smartest girl in class, um, and I were head to head and I eviscerated her. It was hands down the... the entire class was the jury. And it was, it was, it was epic, "Of epic proportions." Wonderful. That moment I realized I actually want to be a lawyer. Yeah, no, no. I'm not a lawyer. Leon: 14:44 As a parent, I can tell you every child is a lawyer. Josh: 14:47 That it, that is very true. That is very true. That's all that. And so I battled for a very long time about whether or not I should embrace this whole idea of being in IT. I also remember the exact moment that my wife and I decided that I should pursue a career in IT. Um, it was mostly out of desperation. I was young, I was married, I had a family and needed to, um, you know, make money. Here I am 20 odd years in and I realized that I did not fail by not becoming a lawyer. In fact, I succeeded by recognizing that being a lawyer was not the path I should walk. Leon: 15:21 Right. So, you know, when I was little, I wanted he marine biologist. Josh: 15:27 You and George Constanza. By that way, Leon: 15:28 I really, you know, Jacques Cousteau, like the whole thing I really wanted... So naturally I went into university to study theater. That makes perfect sense. Then I discovered the universe did not need another short Jewish nebbishy looking actor. Uh, and so of course I went into IT. I mean, that's true. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And now I'll do the same thing. "You know, I was young, I did it for the money." Um, so yeah, it's, you know, there, there's several inventors who said that, "I might have failed a thousand times, but you know, that taught me a thousand things that didn't work." Josh: 16:06 Absolutely. Also also known as a week in the life of Josh. Leon: 16:10 Right, right. That's, you know, and, and I, again, I think that IT really is... So we're talking about two different things though: When you try something and it doesn't work, that's a personal, that's, that's a failure on a very personal level. I tried this, I tried that, and I tried that. And I think that most of us who work in IT are used to that. You know, you've got to try a few things before it's going to work. But then there's the other failures, like the one we joked about at the top of the episode where I took the backup circuit down or I accidentally shut off the VAX because I thought it was a mini fridge. Um, I did that. Josh: 16:43 I do want to know that story someday. Leon: 16:45 Yeah. You know, or whatever. Those are failures that impact other people. Those are the ones that go back to that repentance, apology, forgiveness cycle where you have to go outside of yourself and say "I did fail. I did fall short of the mark and I need to do better." And I think that both of those experiences, those personal ones of trying things and it not working, and the big ones where you have to go in front of other people and apologize and ask for forgiveness. I think both of those things our religious lives prepare us for, because they, it inculcates in us the fact that this is part of life, this is part of the normal experience. And therefore I think our frustration level with that as a normal part of our day is lessened. Because we don't feel like "This is incredible. How do people live like this, with things breaking all the time, and things not working?!? I can't stand it!" Like, no, that's, this is life. This is the way it works. Josh: 17:49 I often said, and I still say, and one of my maybe crowning moments was when someone quoted me saying, this is, "it doesn't matter how close or how far along number..." Sorry, let me say my famous quote one more time. "It does not matter how far along the road to perfection you are when you die. It only matters the direction you're facing." And I think that that's a very important principle. Whether you're talking about your life and your pursuit of this ideal of perfection, or you're talking about your career, we're all going to fail. But when you fail, fail forward, and we've heard that from business leaders, "Hey, if you're going to fail, fail forward, don't feel backwards." But that is, if we embrace that, we recognize that, you know, some people may fail faster and get up and move forward, but every single one of us needs to, when we fail, fail in the direction of progress. And when we do that, we, when we look up, we still realize that we're on the path. It's when we fail and we fail completely off, or, you know, maybe there's no trust and support in our lives or in our business. You know, there, there are cases where I failed and I became the immediate butt of blame. Uh, you know, people, yeah, "Josh screwed up," and that those are really hard to recover from. One of my managers, well actually our common manager for a very brief period of time... Um, yeah, it's a story for another day, right? Leon: 19:23 Apology, forgiveness. We're back in that cycle again. Josh: 19:27 So Andy said, "Nobody will be faulted for trying and failing, only for failing to try." Leon: 19:35 I liked it every time he said it. Just going back to what you said about your famous quote, your, you're remarkably close to a beloved ancient rabbi, Rabbi Tarfon, who, in Pirkei Avot, said, "It's not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you're not free to desist from it either." Josh: 19:55 Oh, I liked that one. Leon: 19:56 Yeah. So you, you are standing on solid ground with your famous quote. So just to wrap up the episode, I think something that Andy and I both saw and you were just a little bit short before you got there to see it, was that idea of "you won't be blamed for failing" is, it also depends so much on what you do about the failure. When I was back at where you're working, where I used to work, I saw something within a period of a week: two major outages that were caused by somebody making a change outside of change control. In the first case the person immediately called folks and said, "hey, the system down. I really didn't think that what I was changing was going to have this kind of impact. I thought it was a minor configuration file. I didn't know it had this sort of wide ranging impact. What can I do to fix it?" And they were told "there's nothing you can do to fix it. It's beyond your skill set." But that person stayed on the phone for hours while the repairs, the backups and restores and everything went, you know, and said, "I just want to be here to see what I need to know for next time." And nothing more was said about it. And if I hadn't known this person, I probably wouldn't have known that much of it. A week later there was another major outage. Not with the same system, a similar system, similar magnitude. This person tried to cover their tracks. They actually tried to bury it under the rug. "What, what? It's down? I had no idea!" And as we all know, there's log files for everything. And so it came out pretty quickly that, you know, what had happened. This person had made a change without a change control. Nobody knew it was happening. This person tried to bury it under the rug and, without another comment, that person was simply escorted to the door. That was it, it was over. It wasn't about the failure, it was about how they handled it. It was about how they owned or didn't own up to it. And I think that's when we think about failure in IT. And also what does a religion, religious, moral, ethical outlook give us? I think it's, it's that it gives us the ability to recognize that failure is a normal, natural part of our experience as people moving around the world. And that, you know, it's not some sort of huge character flaw to have failed and, and how to have the moral fortitude to own up to it and to say, you know, uh, to apologize and to say, what can I do to make restitution and to make sure that it doesn't happen again. I think that's really more than anything else. What, what our outlook, our religious outlook on life gives us. Josh 1: 22:56 Yeah. And that's really interesting. I love the the Pixar movies. My family loves to Pixar movies. My son, my oldest son, really loves the Pixar movies. And in Toy Story, Buzz attempts to fly, you remember the scene right? And so to paraphrase Buzz, "When you fail, fail with style." And of course, that's what Buzz says. He thinks he's flying and it takes him the entire story. And then, you know, uh, what he's looking up and he's like, "Oh my goodness, you know, Buzz, you're flying". And the Buzz acknowledges, "No, you know, we're, this is falling with style." And I think that, right? I think that's really the essence of it, right? If you're going to fail, fail with style, fail with purpose and intent, recognize that as you move forward, that's, that is the essence of life. That is the essence of life in IT, life at home, life as an individual, life with your relationship with God. You're going to make mistakes, as you've so wonderfully said, you're going to make mistakes. When you make those mistakes, recognize them, admit to them, and try really hard not to make them again. That that is the evolution of humanity. Roddie: 24:15 Thank you for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious. Visit our website at technicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions or connect with us on social media. Leon: 24:28 So as we learned from Alfred and Christopher Nolan's "Batman begins." Alfred: 24:31 Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.  

Is it ‘fuh-jee-tas’ or ‘fudge-eye-tas’? It’s gotta be the former. The latter is way too close to… well… you know. How else could you possibly say ‘fajitas’ without sounding like a pervert?   We’ve heard you—or maybe we haven’t—and we get it: we mispronounce all your favorite legendary creatures. So Andy and Kyle sit down with the Legendary Creature Linguistics Team to figure out how to say a bunch of magic cards. We promise that you won’t learn anything this episode, but you will get angry at our ignorance.   Get some real magic experiences—or watch us screw up games too. Check out our gameplay videos on YouTube:   Find the podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or wherever you grab your RSS feeds. Also, ask your smart speakers to play the Legendary Creature Podcast.   Twitter: @legend_creature   The music this episode is by an oh-so-sexy artist: Silver Richards. Be sure to check their beats out. It’s really a huge deal to have musicians be willing to let us use their music.   Big shout out to Mikey Patch for logo artwork! Check his stuff out:

Welcome to this month’s GPS Training podcast, it’s our 17th episode. Today we have Andy and myself, Jon As always, we are streaming it live on Facebook. So if you want to see what we all look like take a look at our Facebook page Just search for GPS Training on Facebook and don’t forget to ‘like’ our page. So, without further ado let’s get on with today’s podcast …… It's our 17th podcast. In today’s podcast we are going to look at the following – • Best budget GPS for Christmas • Geoffrey the Bot, all will become clear, I hope • 2018 Ordnance Survey mapping - Routable TOPO PRO • Online resource update – restructuring • Andy’s Top Tips, both Garmin and SatMap • Download .gpx files - what’s that about • And Finally, what piece of kit is on each of our Christmas lists 1. Best budget GPS for Christmas 2018 So, Andy, as we approach Christmas 2018 what is the best ‘budget’ GPS unit. First of all I think we need to clarify, what’s are we going to classify as a ‘budget GPS unit’ – let’s say - £350.00 or less - Garmin eTrex 20x with 3,000 sq km of mapping - more - Garmin eTrex 30x with 3,000 sq km mapping - more - Garmin eTrex Touch 25 with 3,000 sq km of mapping - more - Garmin eTrex Touch 35 with 3,000 sq km of mapping - more - eTrex Touch 25t with Discoverer 1:50k maps - more - eTrex Touch 25t with TOPO PRO 1:50k maps - more 2 – Geoffrey our GPS Training Bot This week we have launched ‘Geoffrey the GPS Training Bot’. We are currently showcasing him to the public as we are training him but in the next few weeks, he will find his final home inside the GPS Training online resource. Geoffrey the bot constantly analyses and catalogues any answers we email to customers and with a little bit of AI, its more learning and indexing rather than artificial Intelligence, but AI is the current buzz word, he will hopefully start to answer your GPS tech questions. We have all been very entertained in the last few days so please do give him a go and over time his knowledge will hopefully broaden as we add more data for him to draw from. To put Geoffrey the GPS Training Bot through his paces please click here and you will see Godfrey down the bottom left of our support portal. I hope you find him as entertaining as we have! 3 - 2018 Ordnance Survey mapping - Routable TOPO PRO, this is just for Garmin users. So Andy the TOPO Pro rears it’s head again and 2018 map cards, can we clarify this for the final time? We are getting so many customers on the phone who, rightly, are totally confused by the different Ordnance Survey map options - Garmin Discoverer – 1:50k and 1:25k Garmin TOPO PRO – 1:50k and 1:25k Garmin Birdseye map download – 1:25k To find out more about any of these different map options please click here. SatMap Andy is a little more straightforward? Routable off-road data on a SatMap, how does that work and is it on all map types? And with SatMap we have three different Map options with GPS units – - 1:50k - 1:25k - Platinum To find out more about the mapping options please click here. 4 – Online resource update – restructuring - Firstly, Andy what is the GPS Training online resource? You can get to it by visiting our website – gpstraining.co.uk – and clicking on – online resource - And what have you been up to with the online resource over the past week? To access the online resource just go tour website – gpstraining.co.uk – and clicking on – online resource – on the top menu bar. The online resource is £50.00/ year or free for one year if you buy a GPS unit from GPS Training, please do support us here at GPS Training, I know many of you do but it does help to keep the Podcast on the air. 5. Andy’s Top Tips, both Garmin and SatMap Garmin – Colder time of year, Eneloop Pro , Lithium AA perform better, keep batteries inside pocket warmer batteries better, use battery save from setup display,

Welcome to this month’s GPS Training podcast, it’s our 14th episode. As always, we are streaming it live on Facebook So if you want to see what we all look like take a look at our Facebook page. So, without further ado let’s get on with today’s podcast …… It's our 14th podcast. In today’s podcast we are going to look and discuss the following – 1. We interview Tom from Garmin, as we get hands on the Garmin GPSMAP66s for the first time. 2. TOPO PRO mapping – to route or not to route 3. Other interesting activities people are using outdoor GPS units for 4. We have Andy’s top tips - both Garmin and SatMap 5. And then finally we will announce the winner of last months podcast 1. Garmin’s GPSMAP66s – at last! Last week Tom, from Garmin sales came and spent 24 hours with us and he brought with him the new GPSMAP66s from Garmin. Here is our chat with him. 2. TOPO PRO mapping – to route or not to route I know we have mentioned it in past Podcasts but we are still getting a number of questions over the phone regarding the TOPO PRO mapping from Garmin. It is a little confusing I think it is the ‘TOPO’ that is throwing people. So Andy, what is it? 1. OS mapping, not TOPO mapping (e.g. Topo Light, Topo Active) 2. It has turn by turn off road data within National Parks 3. You can get both 1:50k and 1:25k in the TOPO PRO versions To find out more about the Garmin GPS units please go to our website – gpstarining.co.uk – click on – gps store – then choose the category you want on the left-hand side – 1:50k, 1:25k 3 – Some common activities and less common activities that people are using GPS units for As you will be aware most of the GPS units we sell and train people to use are used for walking and cycling but what other activities are people using them for? - Horse Riding - Sea Kayaking - Skiing - Trail Riders, we have talked about this in a past podcast - Surveys (wildlife, surveys for work) - Geocaching, we have had Pete Mason, from the Podcach show on a past podcast – Episode 4 - Mountaineering   4. Andy’s Top Tips Andrew Wallington has kindly written to us with his top tip – Good Morning, First of all thank you for your podcasts, site information and videos. I have only been walking and hiking for the past 2 years and being of "mature years" I have a lot to learn. I learn a lot from Andy's top tips and would like to add my own. My route this week was about 25 miles in mid-Wales which I intended to do over 2 days but having completed 13 miles and getting to the bus stop for my return an hour early I decided to complete the whole walk that day. The weather was great and I felt capable of finishing even though I have never walked this far in one go. Sunset was due at 18.30 which gave me time to finish in daylight I thought. - I had not taken fatigue into account. A bright clear day started to cloud over so reducing light My Satmap was getting low on battery as the route required me to constantly check my position. I did not have a power back up as I intended to finish by midafternoon. I did not have a torch for the same reason. The last half mile was downhill through a very thick wood so there was little or no light in places even though there was light outside. This was not good for trip hazards. I am sure that as seasoned walkers you would not make my mistakes but it seems that there are more people walking now and lots of us are novices. So my top tips to myself are: 1) Never overstretch myself. Fatigue sets in quickly 2) Always carry a power back up source for my navigating device even on short walks in case of battery failure. 3) Carry a torch all year round. Powerful torches do not have to be heavy. Maps are useless in the dark. Having said all that, the sense of achievement of walking 25 miles in one go and at the same time completing the 'Severn Way' was fantastic. Regards Andrew 1.

Today our expert guest is Andy Molinsky, a Professor at Brandeis University's International Business School with a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology and the author of Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge and Build Confidence.   Andy's work blends social psychology, organizational behavior, and cross-cultural communication to help people develop the insights and courage necessary to act outside their personal and cultural comfort zones when doing important (but challenging) tasks in work and life.   “Cultural differences are really important – but what's even more important is that it's really hard to take that knowledge about cultural differences and put it into action.”   So Andy developed The Cultural Code, a concept that will help you understand cultural differences in any situation or culture.   To help you pinpoint the challenges you might run into in any given situation, you can look at it through six different lenses:   Directness Enthusiasm Formality Assertiveness Self-promotion Personal disclosure   By looking at what's expected in those situations, you can find the gap between what's comfortable and what's expected – and then, with awareness around your actions, step outside of your cultural comfort zone to make things happen, if necessary.   And as technology breaks down the physical barriers between countries, businesses are also increasingly virtual and interconnected. So how can we use this understanding to create great virtual teams?   In his book Global Dexterity, Andy explains that there are three core challenges to adapting and adjusting your behavior across cultures:   Authenticity - You may not feel yourself Competence - You may even feel that people think you're bad at what you're doing Resentment - You know the old adage, “When in Rome,” but now that you're actually in Rome, you may be questioning why, exactly, you have to do as they do.   Logically, you need to adapt – but psychologically, it can be quite frustrating.   Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all version of adapting and adjusting your behaviors across cultures. You have to arm yourself with knowledge, in each situation.   “You need to find a place in that culture where you can be appropriate and effective, which is of course important if you want to achieve your goals, but without losing who you are in the process – and the way you do that is by customizing, tweaking, and finding your version!”   If you want somewhere easy to start, though, you can also check out Andy's free 10 Cultural Codes From Around the World Cheat Sheet.   The Biggest Helping: Today's Most Important Takeaway   “Take action. We can be in our heads, we can think of all the sorts of ways we might want to do something or ambitions that we might have for ourselves, but I really think there is something to taking that leap.   And I don't think you should go blind – but I do think that strategically, thoughtfully taking action and taking that leap can really be life changing.   --   Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.   Resources: Learn more at andymolinsky.com Connect with Andy: Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter Download Andy's FREE 10 Cultural Codes From Around the World Cheat Sheet Read: Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge and Build Confidence Read: Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior Across Cultures without Losing Yourself in the Process The Daily Helping is produced by Podcast Masters

This week on IAQradio+ we welcome two of the founders of the Restoration Rebels. The disaster restoration industry is going through trying times and the rebels’ mission is to take back the industry that they love. We will talk about the reason the group was formed, the current state of the industry, and what the future looks like with Andy McCabe and Joe Ledbetter. Andy McCabe is a long-time restoration professional who lives in Bend, OR. He has written a book for mitigation contractors called The 24HR TECH, created an online training course by the same name, runs a podcast called The Claim Clinic and is President of the Alliance of Independent Restorers. Andy started his career in restoration, after brief stints as an electrician and financial advisor, with Dow Columbia restoration based in Portland, OR. Murray Dow Sr., the founder, was an original member and past president of both the NIRC and ASCR. Andy has worked his way up through just about every position in the industry. During that time he witnessed two former employers go bankrupt, and saw the rise of the TPA. After starting an Xactimate estimating service, Claims Delegates in 2012, he began to see some common problems that contractors deal with nearly every day. The two biggest problems were declining profits and increasing overhead. Everyone saw it, but it seemed no one was willing to do anything about it. So Andy decided to do something. Since the spring of 2017, he has run a free, contractor-focused Facebook group called the Restoration Rebels. Restoration contractors come to the group to solve problems and create solutions. Membership sits around 2,400 people as of the time of this writing. Andy is a vocal advocate for restoration contractors internationally. Joe Ledbetter is the Owner and Senior Business Consultant for DISASTERCO.COM(previously Clean Source Consulting) of Warren, MI. He is also President – Founder of Mannle Construction in Warren, MI. Prior to founding his current companies he was the Co-Founder/President of the Cleaning Connection of Warren, MI and the Director of Business Development of Drytech Group, in Ottawa, CA. In 2016 Joe surpassed 1 billion square feet of mitigation to commercial buildings and 1,000’s of residential losses ranging in size from $5,000.00 to $200,000.00. He is also one of the Restoration Rebel Leaders and his role is to help build and grow the group through sharing his knowledge and experience and helping develop the management and revenue opportunit

Welcome to this month’s GPS Training podcast, it’s our 9th episode. As always, we are streaming it live on Facebook So if you want to see what we all look like take a look at our Facebook page – 1. Just search for GPS Training on Facebook and don’t forget to ‘like’ our page. So, without further ado let’s get on with today’s podcast …… In today’s podcast we are going to look at the following – 1. We take the first look at the new Garmin InReach mini 2. Then we will look at Open Street Mapping and other mapping options when going overseas 3. We look at the new (Beta) version of Xpedition2 from SatMap – for both Mac and PC users 4. Andy’s top tips – both SatMap and Garmin 5. And then finally we look at both Routes and tracks 1. Garmin’s new inReach Mini This week Garmin launched the all-new inReach Mini, this is the small brother/ sister of the Garmin inReach SE+ and the inReach Explorer units. I must stress that at this moment of time we have not yet had our hands on one, we have some ordered and are hoping they will be in stock early next week, but we have been aware about this product for some time now. On our fourth Podcast, in December last year we did an in-depth review of the inReach SE+ and inReach Explorer as our ‘sister’ business, Shepherds Walks Holidays uses inReach products on their walking holidays. So Andy, can you give us a quick overview of both these units that have been with us for some time now. - Two-way satellite communication - You need a contract to get a Garmin inReach to work (like a mobile phone contract) and these start from £12.99/month but a little more for a more usable contract. I think we pay around £25.00/ month which is a good mid-range contract. - Contracts vary according to number of Text messages you want to send each months and if your tracking points are included in the contract or not. The interesting thing is that all pre-set messages are unlimited and also the SOS button works on whatever contract you are on. - They offer live tracking, the ability to send text messages, pre-set messages and they have a SOS button - It can also be used as a GPS navigator, but I personally think it does not replace a standalone GPS navigational unit. The SOS button, what happens if you press that? - It notifies GEOS Worldwide, LTD is an independent emergency response organization headquartered outside of Houston, Texas. Their high-tech underground facility is the central component in their International Emergency Response Coordination Center (IERCC). That facet of their operation is somewhat self-explanatory. When GEOS receives a distress call, their IERCC department swings into action to coordinate an immediate and appropriate response. - GEOS also maintains a large network of offices around the globe in Perth, Marrakech, Paris, London, New York, San Jose, and Los Angeles. So what is difference with the inReach Mini? - Send and receive inReach messages through compatible Garmin devices, including connected wearables and handhelds - Palm-sized satellite communicator for adventures where size and weight matter, hence the mini If you want to find out more about this and all the Garmin inreach products go to – GPS Training.co.uk – click on GPS Store – and click on Garmin inReach – satellite communicators on the left-hand side Open Street Mapping and other mapping options when going overseas It’s that time of year, when many of our listeners will be heading overseas so what map options are available for both Garmin and SatMap GPS units - After talking about the inReach products (not the mini I must add) what options have we with this product - Garmin – local mapping and OSM What is OSM? - SatMap – what options do SatMap users have? Xpedition2 from SatMap What are the big changed from Xpedition to Xpedition2? We have just added lots of step by step videos into our online resource,

Ian Kelly returns, but “forgets” to bring a question. So Andy once again turns to Would You Rather Bot for an hour of nightmare scenarios.

Welcome to this month’s GPS Training podcast, it’s our 8th episode. 1. Today we have Andy and myself, Jon As always we are streaming it live on Facebook So if you want to see what we all look like take a look at our Facebook page – 1. Just search for GPS Training on Facebook and don’t forget to ‘like’ our page. 2. As much of this month’s podcast has been prerecorded I would very much encourage anybody watching us live to download the entire podcast from their preferred podcast provider once it gets released early next week. 3. And fingers crossed for next month as we are also looking to stream us live on YouTube, you will have to watch this space. So, without further ado let’s get on with today’s podcast …… In today’s podcast, we are going to look at the following – 1. The all-new TOPO Great Britain PRO 1:50k mapping from Garmin which was launched last week. 2. SatMap Active 20 unit software update, we will look at what has changed. 3. Garmin BaseCamp – the update, and not before time. 4. Andy’s top tips – both SatMap and Garmin 5. And then finally we will look at our video top tips in the GPS Training online resource Garmin’s new map card – TOPO Great Britain PRO 1:50k – Last week, after a very long wait, but more about that later, Garmin launched their 2018 map card and as hoped it has been modelled on it’s more expensive 1:25k brother or sister, the TOPO Great Britain PRO 1:25k map set. So Andy, what has changed with this new map card? - 2018 update of Map set – Garmin update every four years as ¼ of the country is released by OS as an updated version. - Turn by turn routing within National Parks, the true ‘hiking’ ‘activity’ or ‘routing’ option. - Isle of Man now added The famous, or infamous ‚ hiking option. The biggest mistake people make when setting up any GPS unit and now it gets a little more confusing. In the past on the 1:50k map we use the direct routing, how do we set up a GPS unit to utilise the feature when you are within National Parks. - Set activity/ Routing - Set up a new profile so you can easily swap as you go in or out of a National Parks We have a step by step video taking you through how to this on an Oregon 700/ 750 in our online resource – Go to – GPS Training.co.uk, login and then go to the Garmin Top Tips section And now we can let the cat out of the bag regarding the development of this map card. - We first received some pre-production cards late last year and we have been helping Garmin develop this product. - Before everybody says – why did you not say everything – we have signed a nion discosure agreement with Garmin as we do get shown things well before it is announced to the public and press. - I actually recorded a piece for the podcast between Christmas and New Year as at the time we all thought it was going to be released top market in January. - It’s been fascinating to work with them. If you want to find out more about this new map set and how it works go to – GPS Training.co.uk – click on reviews – and you will see an article - NEW 2018 Mapping now with Routable Trail Data within the National Parks SatMap Active 20 unit software update Active 20 - "Snap to Foot", Snap to Bike, Snap to Road routing in Routes Menu – Create new Route - On an Active 20, with a Wi-Fi connection, you now have the ability on an Active 20 to create a "snap-to-track" route. - Currently, this functionality is in "beta" testing mode - but as soon as it is fully tested and stable, it will be formally released. - USES Open Source Data via SatMaps server hence may not snap on trails on OS maps this may change in futue Also, you will have the ability to link the GPS to hotspot wifi on your phone, not currently working - To test this functionality, the latest beta Software Version is 3.11.936 or later on your Active 20 (this was released on 27th March 2018), and can be loaded either by Wi-Fi, or via SatSYNC.

Andy Rachleff was a co-founder of Benchmark, one of the most respected venture capital firms to this very day, and one of the biggest venture players during the dotcom era. On today’s episode, Andy gives us more background on eBay’s founding and what venture investing was like during the dotcom era. But Andy is also that very rarest of breeds, someone who became an entrepreneur AFTER an illustrious career as a venture capitalist. So Andy also tells us all about Wealthfront, one of the most interesting players in the modern personal investment space. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How will the right education to the future generations solve the sustainability-related issues facing the world now? Andy is Executive Director of the TYF Group, an employee-owned social enterprise, in St. David’s, Pembrokeshire. TYF’s mission is to help children, students and adults develop the confidence & skills they need the way they play, think and work. He’s a Founding Partner of the ‘Do Lectures’ and through the ‘Do Collective’, orchestrates the impact of a virtual team of hundreds of the world’s best thinkers and doers, and through the Innovation Advisory Council for Wales, advises Welsh Government on innovation strategy. Andy is a strategic advisor, facilitator and speaker to business and government, working with organisations to accelerate speed and scale of change to build resilience, drawing on 25 years’ experience in risk, action learning, biomimicry and sustainability. Andy blogs at www.tyf.com and tweets as @gringreen; his talks from the Do Lectures and TEDx are online here ‘Find your own luck’ and here Radical change. Sustainability as a driver Andy was born on the coast of west Wales and has lived there his entire life. This was the place that he learnt to walk, learnt to breathe, run and swim. It was some of the most pristine natural environment in the UK and in a national park. That time spent in nature; getting sand, salt and sea into his blood probably affected his DNA at that time more than he thought. That continued through his education where he did a degree in Geography. He travelled for a couple of years and then came back home. As part of his travelling, he worked in a gold mine in the desert of Western Australia. This is not what anyone who has any kind environmental conscience would want to do! When he was out in the desert he saw tyre-tracks from single vehicle which had been made 10 years before and still marked the earth. It was a powerful reminder to him of how fragile the ecosystems are and how much negative impact humans can have on the earth. After his travelling Andy had a strong sense that he wanted to return to Pembrokeshire, as that is where his heart wanted to be. He had no experience in business, but he decided to see if he could really make something work there. So Andy set up a business, thinking that if it does not work he would go away again. However, 30 years later, he is still there. Facing challenges in business Andy felt that if he was to talk about reducing environmental impact it was critical that as a business they did that.  They became the first organic hotel in Wales because they wanted to know what the journey was like in establishing something like that.  As regards offsetting carbon; it was a natural step to do.   The challenges that they came up against early on was that the outdoor industry particularly is ultra-conservative.  Ironically it gets outdoors much, but doesn't get out much.  It doesn't connect with people who are in pop-ups and start-ups and a lot of other hyphenated things where interesting things happen.   As a result, the outdoor industry was a very hard space in which to try and breed new ideas.  But they did they make progress, and now they have a team of people who really understand what they are trying to do.  The conversations now are multiple times easier than they were 20 years ago. Now TYF get invited to talk on platforms along with national NGOs, talking about the same things.  There is no longer any suspicion about what their motives are, since they have enough experience behind them for people believe they are serious about what they are talking about.  It was a long journey, but investing in the thousands and thousands of small steps, and proving that they could make it work, is the key part of that.  Part of their business at TYF is the retail operation.  They sell the clothing that people take out and need to wear for activities they run.   TYF is the largest retailer in the UK for Patagonia clothing and equipment.  With Patagonia there is lifetime guarantee, so TYF use retail as a way to tell people the story about why it is important to buy less and buy better in the first place.  It took them five years from the first decision to do that to be able to translate all of their stock in the right way and get customers on board. Andy’s advice to those who are facing challenges when trying to get a sustainability message across is; - It is important to remember the metaphor of the mountain climb; it is a thousand steps and it is OK that it is a thousand steps.  Do not be put off by the fact that it is a long journey.  Sometimes people think that it is easy and quit when they see it is not.  - Get a support group, or a mastermind group, of people you can turn to and who are going through the same things.  This way you can remind yourself time and again that you are not alone in doing this.  Having people you can hang out with, go for walk with etc. and to be able to recognise there is a whole tribe - that there are tens of thousands of people doing this and that it is hard for all of them.  The difficulties faced shouldn’t detract from the joy of what you are doing. - Andy built his own eco-house on the coast of west Wales and as a result is acutely aware of the idea of the question of ‘what is enough?’  For example; TYF are a retailer and sell products, but they try to sell things that have a lifetime guarantee, so that they never need to be replaced.  It is a part of that journey.   Andy also thinks that something that really helps is for individuals to pay attention to their own practices.  For example, their views on flying, on eating good food, on taking time and not rushing, cycling and using public transport without becoming some sort of martyr to the cause; someone who is pious. The more individuals be the change they want to see, the more it feels natural and the more it makes sense.  It is a combination of building networks, recognising that this is for the long term and paying attention to personal practice.  This is what really inspires other people and gives them permission to do the same sort of things. Educating children to face future challenges Andy believes that how do you educate children to cope with the challenges of the future, make them more resilient and have the confidence to achieve what they need to achieve, is a really important question that anyone connected to business and Government needs to be asking.   The way that TYF view this is that if the journey ahead was an outdoors experience it would not be a trip on a boating lake.  The journey ahead is one that needs to reduce carbon emissions by 90%, to restore biodiversity, address inequality, effectively utilize resources etc.   This journey is the equivalence of an extreme mountain trip in winter or a 15,000 mile bike ride - it’s not just a trip to the supermarket.  When taking journeys like that in the outdoors, each member of the team needs to be capable of looking after the other members and themselves.  They also need to be capable of noticing what is going on around them and responding to it, and be equipped in first aid, lifesaving and all other rescue techniques.   An equivalent of this in education would be having everyone leaving school having banked around 500 hours of impact learning; where they have learnt how to solve real issues out in the world - around energy, water, resources, food, waste, transport and so on - while applying rigorous problem solving techniques.   This would be coupled with the development of emotional resilience - so they can get over the idea that just because it doesn’t work you’re a failure.  At the same time becoming really playful about gaining experiences, so that things that don’t work are simply information to help get it right next time.   TYF are taking this into schools at a county scale right now.  To Andy this feels as though they are on the cusp of being able to do something remarkable.  Not only by teaching kids to change themselves, but also to change their parents’ behaviour.  As anyone who has been a child, has a child or has comes across them knows they are second to none in changing adult behaviour! Ken Robinson talks on TED (https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity) about how are born with the ability to do all of this and then it is educated out of them.  This is because that unshakable confidence in the ability to change the world is exactly what people who want the world to stay the way it is don’t want to see developing.  Yet, this is what will create a stable future.   Andy thinks that it is about the really practical things around; how do we become playful about learning, so that mistakes literally stop happening?  Things work or don’t work they are not a mistake; they are not failures; they are not something to shy away from.   There are proven techniques that are already working elsewhere in the world to make this happen, as well as the work TYF are doing.   As a result there is no reinvention needed, so it is about having that confidence to take this ambition to scale and say what would it take for every kid, every school to spend hundreds of hours solving real problems so that:a) when they enter employment they can start making a difference on day one, and b) they shape their parents behaviour since they’ve been taught how to do it through love rather than criticism - e.g. understanding that saying ‘mum, mum why won’t you do this?  I hate you.’ is not the best way to change your parents’ behaviour.   There is a huge potential there for millions and millions of hours of problem solving, of which a tiny proportion could help to create solutions to the problems of the world today.   There are teachers in schools all over the world doing things like this already.  Andy thinks that it would be great having an equivalent of the Guinness book of records which looks for all the ‘cool shit’ going on in schools already; looking in places like Chile, Tunisia, North Carolina and everywhere else.   Most of the ideas would not translate like for like into a school in Cardiff or Edinburgh for example, but it would be possible to take the ideas from it and go ‘right I’m going to adopt this and adapt that right now and do something better and different.’  There is no need to reinvent all of this.   A tiny example Andy came across was that some schools in USA give a t-shirt to children when they first start school, which has the year in which they are going to graduate from school on it.  As a result from the day they start school they are focused on the year they will leave it - thinking 15, 18, 20 years ahead through their education.  This is a great way of thinking about how the world is going to be different in the future and how are they going to shape it. The flip side of this is that Government and business need to realise there are a lot of resources they can tap into.  By blurring the boundaries between business and Government more could be achieved; recognizing that, generally speaking, it is in the world of business that people get really good at getting things done.  That their ability to get stuff out of the door quickly, at high quality, far exceeds most government programmes.  However, it is Government has the public interest at heart.   For example: regionally mapping the resources, the potential of how to create jobs and opportunities, improve well-being, along with everything else with things that make sense for all the stakeholders.   This links into another significant part of TYF’s business – how do you get people healthy outdoors, at scale?  How can the skills of the outdoor industry, the NGO sector, the communities, cycling groups etc. be linked to everything else that is needed to allow ministers to reduced health budgets by 20% and the country be applauding them rather than voting them out? Developing Super Senses A couple of years ago Andy met, and became friends with, Andy Shipley who is visually impaired.  Over the course of their conversation it became beautifully clear that, for people who are heavily visually impaired or blind, their entire experience of the word is one that no one else can see or experience.  However, the visually impaired still live perfectly enjoyable lives; they do different things and they have different experiences.   As a result TYF created a programme where people who couldn’t see taught people with full sight how to see the world in different ways.  It was a really powerful way of having them realise, and experience, what they had never noticed before; smells, the touch of the wind on their faces, the sun on their skin, the feel of the ground under their feet etc.  It helped them realise that they are so bombarded with visual clues, they never notice the information from their other senses.  This programme provides a way of gently helping people recognise that maybe they don’t know everything yet and maybe they don’t see everything yet. In school not as much work is done as could be to help people understand that how they think shapes the world.  For example; Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindsets is about showing people that if they think they’ll never be able to do it, then they won’t.  Learning to think differently is as fundamental as being able to process information differently and to notice more. The different facets of this big shift are; becoming more independent, more conscious and more action orientated individuals.   Individuals who know how to work, either by ourselves or with others, to create that seismic shift and not be scared of things not working the first time.  This is why playfulness is so important. Impact on Daily Life It’s hugely important for Andy to live by the principles he is integrating into business.  In Andy’s opinion actions speak louder than words; he don’t rant on about not flying for example but when asked points out to people that he don’t fly since talking about sustainability and how to impact climate change and jumping on planes doesn’t make sense!  It can’t be reconciled, so he doesn’t fly. He has noticed at conferences that people often don’t stop to think about living their principles.  Andy believes that how we dress, how we shop, how we live our lives, needs to embody the change that we want to make.  The more we do this the less dissonance there is between what we are trying to do and going ‘Oh well I do this, I do that...’  By being the change it becomes much easier. Nature memory The memories that stand out for Andy are; Being in a desert in an Australia where he was working in a gold mine as an exploration geologist.  Andy’s job was to go and find potential gold mines.  He would be driving by himself, in 4-wheel drive, out in the middle of nowhere.  At times he would find himself standing on the border of a landmass the size of Wales that had never been stepped on by white people. It was massive virgin territory.  He just remembers thinking how sensitive the earth was to his footstep, the fact of how much we just took for granted about the way that it didn’t matter what we did, and that it was sacred ground - with not a sight and not a sound, no vapour trails, that there was nothing but him and his footsteps. That was really special. The other times are when Andy has been out doing adventures around the coast of Wales and on the oceans.  For him it was that wonderful feeling of realizing how small and insignificant he was in relation to nature.  It is that realisation that in that feeling of smallness it is about learning the power of walking the talk and being part of that change.  Also, it’s a really good way of making sure the ego doesn’t survive; as it’s has no place where the waves are bigger than you, and where it doesn’t matter how expensive your kit is, if you don’t know what you are doing in that space. Takeaway from this Episode Take a few minutes to ask the question simple, but uncomfortable, question; ‘If I knew for certain that I would succeed; what is it that I would set out to do?  What’s the change that I would spend my time working on?  What’s the ladder against I would lean in my effort and set out to change?  If I knew I wouldn’t fail; how high dare I dream?’   Spending time doing that tells you what you really want to be doing.  Sometimes that would be so much bolder than anything other people would dare do.  So take time, sit back and say ‘If I knew I couldn’t fail how high would I reach - with the effort, skills and talents and insights that I’ve now got?’ Andy Most Admires Early on in business Andy really enjoyed the stories of people like Ricardo Semler, documented in ‘Maverick’ which is about shaping a business in South America against the odds, while doing what was the right thing to do. In the environmental sector he loves the work of people like Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins - who shaped some of that fundamental literacy around what they do. As a certified B corp TYF are now part of an amazing growing UK community of businesses, and Global community of businesses, who have proven that they care for this bigger picture - around nature and the environment - as well as for profit.  Through this Andy has met some the most caring sharing people that he has ever come across. Overall Andy admires people that just make ‘shit happen’.  He doesn’t buy into the hero stuff and hates hero worship just because someone has grown a business or is a great adventurer.  Personally, he thinks the heroes are the people who raise amazing families with no resources, who survive against the odds of social.  His admiration is reserved for people who really strive in that and succeed to walk their talk, without ego, and who are prepared to share everything they do as openly as they can.  To maximize that thing of being the change. Andy’s Favourite Resources One of the things TYF works on, which is a continual journey, is doing everything they can to encourage their own staff to break the rules.  Andy finds this is really hard to do as people coming out of school are so well trained not to do so! To help TYF have implemented a surf-time policy – which means staff can go surfing when the surf is up – this is something Patagonia also do.  If customers aren’t going to be affected and someone wants to go out for a run or get to the beach they are encouraged to just get out and do it.  It is about working by managing energy not time. TYF’s goal is to scrap holiday policy eventually.  The aim is to get to a point where everyone in the organization owns their targets and their performance so clearly that no one thinks about ‘I’m working late tonight’.  They just do what needs to be done, celebrate it and get on and do the next thing.   In regards to resilience; one of the things that is a most powerful metaphor embedded in the natural world, is that nature only uses diversity - since that is what works.  It never does mono-cultures because they don’t work; they break, they are open to disease and systems collapse etc.   In terms of building resilience one of the things that we as individuals need to do is think about how do we mimic that difference?  How do we make sure that we hang out with people of different ages and different backgrounds, different places, different views?  How do we from time to time do different things that give us those nuanced views on food, exercise, nature, cookery, art etc. to become more of a polymath in terms of our understanding the views of the world so that way we can connect to more people?    

So Andy got to have a chat with Adam White (Ad8m) from the TF Nation crew and got to ask some questions about the convention, which is right around the corner now. So good question some dumb questions, hopefully though this should inform people going to the convention and help alleviate some fears, if people had any.

This Episode's Focus On Strengths Andy Sokolovich joins us to help you lead through your strengths at work. You'll find this episode especially useful if you need to influence others at work. He does it with his talent called WOO (Winning Others Over). He also shows the world how your natural talents are cooler than purple rain.   Listen Links Give the full episode a listen on iTunes or Stream The Audio Right Here.   SubscribeTo subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher radio. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode - let the app notify you each week when the latest question gets published. You can also stream any episode live on the website. Just click through the title you like and there will be a player waiting for you on each page. See you there!   Here's The Full Interview   Lisa Cummings: You mentioned Woo as one of your top talents, and it is one that interestingly, when I'm doing training events or speaking events, people probably more than any other, mention that one, and have a negative reaction to seeing it on their list, and they say, "I've been told that I talk too much in my career," or, "I've been told that I'm shaking hands and kissing babies, and that it doesn't look genuine," I've had a lot of people show a lot of concerns about that talent, and several others give a similar response. So Andy, talk to people about anything that you see in people where they've been trying to squash their talent and their career, because it's not really a virtue. Andy Sokolovich: Yeah Woo is definitely one that often gets highlighted a lot. Either you hear people talk about Woo and say, "The first thing I think of is the smarmy salesman that gives you a nice firm handshake and brings you in for that half hug with the sole desire of getting to buy something from them." That's not the case. I do see a lot of people suppress their Woo, because they do not want to come across as that. Granted, I embrace my Woo. I give it the double hug, bear hug. Bring it in. I love having Woo. Why? It has really allowed me to build my social capital to a level that I would never be able to do if I don't think I had that. Here's the thing. I'm not very good at noticing emotions in people, so some of those emotionally driven strengths, or people will notice that, "Hey, you're coming across to strong," or, "Hey, this person is kind of freaked out by the fact that you're super positive and excited, and way outgoing." Lisa Cummings: So when they stick out their hand out to shake your hand…and you give them a big bear hug instead they think, "Whoa buddy." Andy Sokolovich: Yeah. What is that? That is just the type of person that I am. But what I'm finding now, more and more, is that people are receptive to that as opposed to get offended or feel like they need to go on the defense. I tell people, "If you have the strong desire to go out and meet others to shake hands, to foster relationships, to grow your social capital, use it," because that's an untapped talent that a lot of people are not willing, especially managers, are not willing to foster that growth within their organization. This is my pet peeve on job descriptions. I feel we've created this way that we employ people: we give them a paragraph of what they're going to be paid to do. You have to have this degree, you have to have this amount of years experience, you have to have this, this, and this. Once all of those items are checked off here's a block of text that says what you're paid to do, yet we don't take enough initiative to unearth those untapped talents from those individuals and see what they're naturally good at. Now just imagine if you had somebody who was just overflowing with Woo. Someone who wanted to go out and meet people, who wanted to grow new relationships, wanted to bring new people into the business. And instead they were stuck in a cubicle crunching numbers. Is that the best use of their talents from a business perspective? My answer is probably not. Don't let them just sit there and wallow and own their own self defeat because they need to get out there and meet people, they need to go out there and shake hands. You've seen people like this if you work in the corporate world. They are the people that walk around and start up little conversations with everybody, and never really seem to be focused on their work. Why? They need to go out and communicate in order to feel like they are contributing something to the overall goal of the organization. Lisa Cummings: Yeah, and it's likely that that actually helps them relate better, influence better, and get their work done. It just looks different. Andy Sokolovich: Absolutely. Lisa Cummings: I always talk about it like a Jack-in-the-box where you have this talent (pick Woo or any others that you've been trying to squash down), and on the inside what's going on is that thing is getting cranked up, and do do do do dooodledo, do do do do dee do [singing] ... It's just getting tighter and tighter, and sometime when you're not expecting it, or when you don't want it, Bam, it's going to pop out and scare people. If you actually invest in it instead, and watch the effect that it has on people and use it to your advantage--double down on it, while you're maturing it and investing in it--it has a great effect for you. But if you're just trying to squash it, it comes out eventually. It's a part of you, so if it's your natural way of thinking or feeling, it's going to pop out at you. Trying to squash it isn't going to do you a lot of good in your career. Andy Sokolovich: Yeah, no, I reflect back onto the small part-time jobs I had before I joined the military, and I always think of reasons why I was either 1) fired, or 2) counseled for my bad behavior, and they all relate to me over communicating. I was always talking (first job when I worked at the grocery store) instead of stocking the shelves. I was always talking to somebody—to the customers that were walking up and down--sparking up conversations because of the jersey they were wearing for my favorite football team. Or if I was working at a grocery store up at the cashier station, I would get chastised for the fact that I'm spending more time talking to the customer than actually ringing them out and getting them out the door so the person behind them can come check out. All of the things that I ever got in trouble for were because I like to talk, and it wasn't just I like to talk because I wanted to kill time. It's because I needed to communicate with others in order to feel good about myself. Lisa Cummings: I can see with communication being such a strong talent for you also that you talk to think, and talk to figure stuff out, whereas other people might just go back to their cube and be able to do that stuff alone. There's such a different need from each unique person. How did you find the roles that would shine the light on those in a good way, instead of, early in your career thinking, "Oh my gosh, those are getting me in trouble all the time, getting me fired." Obviously you did the right thing. You didn't say, "Well, I guess I suck as a human." Instead you found how to make those work for you. How did you figure all that out? Andy Sokolovich: Yeah, it was a long maturing process. When I left the military, I had this overwhelming desire to be an entrepreneur. I can't really say where it came from. I knew nothing about business. I knew nothing about marketing. I knew nothing about any of that stuff. But when I moved to Clinton Iowa, I was looking for a void in the marketplace that I could fill. It's a small blue-collar town with a population around 26,000. There's a lot of small business growth, but there is the larger businesses in industry. We have large corporations in this community that really support most of our qualified workforce. So when I got here I was looking around at the small businesses—at what they were doing to market themselves. Really nobody at that point was leveraging the power of the Internet, and I started doing some research on marketing. Really what I found out was that marketing is being able to tell a story in order to draw in new business. Whether that story would be told via platforms like social media, websites, press releases, whatever it was, I needed to get out there and tell the story of these local businesses in order to draw in more business. I thought, "Man, would I be good at that?" I remember sitting there one day and I was talking to a friend on the phone and he said, "Well you like to talk, and you tell a pretty good story, actually half the time we don't know if you're telling the truth, or if you're stretching the truth," because I'm a storyteller, and actually, professionally, that's what I call myself: a professional storyteller. I tried it, and I got my first client. I realized that the client-relationship part of it--the sitting down, trying to create a narrative and tell a story--was a little difficult because they already had a story in their mind. My expertise was really to highlight those areas of their business that nobody knew about. Those little hidden gems that nobody really knew existed, but man if only they did, it would bring up a whole new level to that business, and there would be a huge attraction factor, and we just need to get it out there. It was slow growth at the time, because I had a lot of maturing to do. Believe it or not, I was that type of person who thought they were never wrong for a long time. I was so confident in my own abilities that I thought, "I'm never wrong," so once I got involved in client work, I really had to understand that, "Listen, we have to work as a team in order to make this effective." I started to grow the marketing business, and there was a time about 11 months after I actually started that where my business started to plateau. I wasn't losing clients, but I was having a hard time getting new ones. I went to a friend of mine, a mentor of mine, here in the Clinton area Chamber of Commerce, and he handed me a book called Strengths Finder 2.0. "Take this assessment." I thought, "An assessment? Dude I don't need something to tell me what I'm good at. I know what I'm good at." Lisa Cummings: I'm good at everything, huh? Andy Sokolovich: Yeah. He said, "Do me a favor and just take it. See what happens." Once my Top 5 were revealed, I did the Andy way of doing things at that time. I basically stuffed the report in my desk drawer for about another year. Now we're two years into my business development, and things are continuing to plateau. Again, not losing clients, but just not getting any new ones. What was even worse was that I was no longer in love with the fact that I was an entrepreneur. I was no longer in love with the fact that I was building my own business. I hated it. I went back to the same guy and I said, "What am I doing wrong?" He said, "What are your Top 5?" I said, "Dude I respect you, but I could not tell you because they're in my desk drawer collecting dust." Needless to say he was not surprised by that, because he just assumed that was going to be my course of action moving forward, but he said, "Go get them, bring them back in, and let's review them." Strategic, Futuristic, Woo, Ideation, Communication. What we quickly realized as we reflected back on my business growth and what I was actively doing, is I was spending an awful amount of time on the logistics of running a business. Tweaking the business plan, applying for financing, sending out invoices. All the little nitpicky numbers things that I hated, hated, but it had to be done, and I was the only one doing it at the time. He said, "What are you good at?" I said, "Man all I want to do is go out and talk to people about my business. I want to talk about their business. I want to go out and I want to share their passion for why they do what they do." He said, "Why aren't you doing it?" I said, "Who's going to do all the rest of this stuff?" He said, "Outsource it, find somebody else." And that was probably the single most important turning point of my career, when I started to realize, "I don't have to be good at everything, and there are people out there who like crunching numbers, and just because I'm not one of them doesn't mean I have to take that action on. I don't have to take on that responsibility." I started outsourcing whatever I could, whenever I could, and focus 80% of my time on just getting out there and speaking, doing what I naturally loved. From that moment on, things began to skyrocket. Not necessarily in result to my bank account, but in the way that I feel towards my business, and the social gains that I've been able to make over the last almost a year now. Lisa Cummings: There's so much good stuff in there…with identifying your talents and doing something with it. The career slump that was sneaking up on you, I mean you were at a point saying, "What's going on here? What am I doing wrong?" That stuff just happens over time, and people feel that in their careers all the time. For a lot of people listening that are in the corporate world--they may manage people, or they may not--a lot of them have had this experience of the career slump sneaking up. Let’s say they're digging the Clifton StrengthsFinder report out of the drawer…and if you are Andy talking to them now…and you want to give them a couple of ideas for what to do with this. Okay, they know their Top 5 talents now. How can they handle this at work in a corporate setting? What could they do next, just action taking? Andy Sokolovich: Yeah, the first step is always to be able to identify where your talents lie, and I think you and I probably have had similar success in the fact that when we get people in the room, and we show them their Top 5. When you have managers, supervisors, even C suite employees reviewing their Top 5, it sparks a conversation where people start to talk about, "Hey, what other skills do you have? Why are you so good at this? How have we been ignoring this the whole time?" My first little bit of advice is make it known. Okay? Don't keep your talents to yourself. Now it doesn't mean that you come in with your favorite kazoo and play your kazoo down the hallway, and say, "I'm musically talented." That means have that conversation with your supervisor and let them know what you are naturally good at, because if you keep it a secret, nothing is ever going to happen. The other thing I tell people is often when I give this conversation, or I give this speech in a large setting, people want to talk to me about the entrepreneurial side of things. "Well Andy I'm really good at this, and I've always wanted to do this as a business, but I'm scared to." Listen, the power of the World Wide Web has never, ever been stronger. I mean if you have it a desire to crochet for a living, and you think you can do it, and you're naturally gifted at crocheting, pursue doing that and try to draw in some extra residual passive income. Whether it be through online courses, or maybe crocheting stuff and selling it on Etsy, just try it and see if you actually like it first, because sometimes when people think they actually really would do well at something, whether it be starting up a business, or selling a specific product, they quickly realize that they don't like it as much as they thought they would. So test out the waters, grab a hold of your talents, figure out a way to apply them. If you want to try something outside of your normal 9-to-5 grind, use the power of the Internet to maybe start a little online business for yourself. Lisa Cummings: I've been wanting to start a kazoo band on the side [laughs]. Andy Sokolovich: It's really the only instrument that I play. I'm actually talented all across the board, but the kazoo… [laughs] Lisa Cummings: I couldn't let that one drop, you know you mentioned the kazoo… Andy Sokolovich: I have zero musical talent, I can't carry a note even on a kazoo [laughs]. Lisa Cummings: Oh Andy you were singing with me earlier, so that's pretty good. Andy Sokolovich: Yeah we were, Purple Rain I think is what we were jamming out to. Lisa Cummings: Yeah, now that's going to be in everyone's head the rest of the day. Purple rain [singing]. Oh, so let's talk about managers. Those are really good tips for employees, and then the next layer that happens is managers will say, "Okay I get it, I need to pay more attention to what's going on with the team, and I want to do this to lead my team through their talents instead of trying to scale humans." Let's say one of the listeners leads a team and they want to get better at just spotting Strengths on the job, even without StrengthsFinder, what do they look for, or how do they start this? What do they say? What are they watching for? Andy Sokolovich: Yeah, I mean as you and I know, every manager is different. Not everybody manages the same. What I found to be most effective is I always ask the managers that I work with to start communicating with their employees. To just start talking about things, and once you become aware, once you mentally decide, "I'm going to start searching for talents, I'm going to start mining for abilities that maybe are untapped in the organization." You will find that you are more in tune in the conversation to pluck those things out. It could be something as simple as, "Hey, what did you do this weekend?" Listen to what people are saying. Listen to their hobbies, look for when their eyes light up, when maybe they've spent the weekend with their son, and their granddaughter. Start to mine for those abilities that maybe you didn't realize existed, and ask them … You and I have talked about this in the past. There's an exercise that we do with some of our clients, and it's called “The Best Of Us.” Really what the conversation is about is asking people, "What do you need from me in order to be successful?" It's not a bigger budget. It's not a front row parking space. It's not a bigger office. You've got to think of this emotionally. What do you need from me as your manager, in order for you to be successful? That conversation goes both ways. Managers can say, "This is what I need from you in order for me to be successful." Again, it's not budget minded type of stuff, it's, "Hey, what I need from you in order to be more successful is five minutes of your time," or, "What I need from you to be more successful is maybe a little bit of information before moving forward." "What I need from you to be more successful is maybe that you understand that I'm a Deliberative person, and I'm not going to ever be late in getting you this report, but you've got to understand that I'm going to read over it 10, 15, 20 times and make sure that every I is dotted, and every T is crossed before it comes across your desk." That conversation usually yields massive results, but you have to be open and willing to have it. I guess my advice would be as a manager, is start asking people what they need from you in order to be successful. Ask them deeply. What do you…you…not your department, not whatever office you serve…what do you, first name, last name, need from me in order to be at your very best? Lisa Cummings: That's so good. To bring some examples like you did. And be ready. Give them context about why you’re asking this because if that question comes out of nowhere, and you haven't asked that kind of thing before, they might be looking at you with really blank eyes, like “what is up here? What's going on?” You mentioned something way earlier in that answer that is so cool to tap into. You mentioned somebody's eyes lighting up when a person was talking about a hobby. It's just taking those moments and saying, "Oh, you really lit up on that one. Tell me more about that." It can be the simplest sentence, but just noticing that that thing got them really fired up, and asking one more follow-up question, that's where the deep part comes from. Andy Sokolovich: Yeah, I'll use one example that I keep remembering, and it was early on when I started coaching, but we were sitting there and it was a group about 25 of us. I issued that same response, you know what I would do if I was manager, and I could see that there was this person to my left crying, I mean noticeably sobbing. I looked over and I said, "Are you okay?" She said, "Yeah, I'm okay." She said, "So and so is my manager," and he's sitting right there, and she's like, all I want to say to him is, "I need five minutes," and I think that's why I use that example all the time, "I need five minutes of your time in the morning." He says, "What?" She's like, "When I come by your door first thing in the morning, you're doing the standard zipping through 250 emails, do I need to reply? Junk, trash, the standard thing that most of us do every single morning when we sit down at our computer." She said, "In order for me to be effective, and to serve the position that you hired me to do, it's important to me that I have five minutes of your time every morning so I can go over my action steps for that day." She was like, "I don't need you to approve them, I don't need you to agree with them, it's important for me to verbally speak with you and tell you that." He was like, "Oh." She's crying, and he's like, "Well, I didn't realize it was that big of a deal," and she was like, "Yeah, because there's several times where I had my letter of resignation typed up and ready to send." Lisa Cummings: Wow. Andy Sokolovich: All because all she wanted was five minutes of his time, but she didn't know how to start that conversation, she never had permission to in her own mind. Now he would not have cared if she came up and said that. In her mind, she didn't give herself permission to share that, why? She thought that in doing so, she would be perceived as weak, or needy, or different from the others. The fact she was different, because she needed that five minutes, and then he started welling up a little bit and said, "Oh my gosh, I never knew it was that bad," and she said, "Well it is, and now we're talking about this, and I just want you to know that if you give me that five minutes every single morning," he said, "You got it. You have five minutes of my time between 8:00 and 8:05 is dedicated to you. I won't be at the coffee pot. I won't be putting my food in the refrigerator. I won't be checking emails. I'll be in my office waiting for you so we can have this five-minute sharing session of what you’re going to do that day," and as long as he was there ready to listen it changed everything for her. Lisa Cummings: It's so big. Five minutes, and just that moment to have this conversation and what you were doing opened that up. Andy Sokolovich: Yeah, and to think she was willing to pack up her office and leave in search of somewhere else that may have yielded less results financially who knows? Lisa Cummings: Who knows? Andy Sokolovich: The willingness to test the waters because of five minutes. Lisa Cummings: This also makes me think of one more question, which is how sometimes people have trouble seeing the other person's virtues, or preferences, or talents. You know, to pick that thing, and get into a mental habit about how you think about your boss, or how you think about that employee. It can go either way, whether you're the manager, or you are the employee with the relationship. Instead of viewing it like a lost cause going, "This person…we're just never going to click." How do you instead approach that when you're in a situation like this: you have an employee who you know has some goodness, because everybody has genius and talents, but they don't know how to uncover it. How do they even get started with the process of opening up to understand each other? Andy Sokolovich: Well, we always say as strength coaches, and strength enthusiasts, be able to look through a lens of strength. I think that comes with maturity, and it actually comes with an increased feeling of responsibility and discipline, because for the longest time I never was seeking out talents in other people. I mean it wasn't something that I totally ignored, but it was not on my priority list. I was focused on my own personal growth, but once I started to become really in tune to what other people brought to the table, no matter what level they are ... We've all seen the movies, you look at Goodwill hunting where the janitor solves the algorithm, but those people out there exist, but you've got to find them. I think the starting point is start with yourself, being able to identify the talents within yourself. First become aware of what talents look like. It’s one of the beauties of StrengthsFinder. I say this time and time again, I'm in love with the concept of strengths-based development. The 34 Talent Themes are great verbiage to add to your arsenal of tools to help you identify talents with others. I love the fact that Gallup has taught us (and Dr. Donald Clifton has taught us) that there is this whole strengths movement where we're actually starting to identify what's right with people rather than what's wrong with people. Once you start to realize the terminology of strengths, the 34 Natural Talent Theme names, you can start to look at people and be able to not judge. Instead, pluck around, or pick different talents until you can zone in on what you think they definitely have, and you don't want to say, "Oh, you're a Woo," or, "Oh you're a Deliberative, that's why you're taking so long to get me this report," or, "You're this." Be aware of it, and start asking questions to try to mine for that talent, and see if it actually exists, and then think of ways to apply it. Here's what I hear all the time. "That's great Andy, but that's not within..." and this is going back to my job description rant, but they say, "That's great Andy, I'm good at this, and yes I probably make a better salesperson then an accountant, but that's not within my job description, that's not what I've been hired to do." To me, that retards business generation, and forward momentum because you're not allowing people to grow within the company, and fill those cracks or voids using their natural talents. For the life of me, I can't understand why businesses still expect that. They just expect you to be happy in the position that you're hired in and never seek out more. If I went to my boss and said, "Hey, you know what? I know I'm an account, that's what you hired me to do right out of college. I'm an accountant today. I don't mind doing that, but I'm telling you what, I just have this deep itch to be in the sales floor and to go out there and talk people. Is there any way that I can maybe transition out of this office into that position?" When managers, or supervisors, or CEOs or whoever say, "No." I think, "Man, why would you ever say no? Why would you ever deny somebody the chance to express themselves and go out there and try to do something amazing for your company?" I probably just derailed your whole question there. Lisa Cummings: No I love that, because there are so many good conversations that come out of this. When I work with teams and people have that same feeling you just described--then I say, “all right, well, if you're doing something that's within your control, and you're the accountant…and you want to go be a salesperson…it's a serious change. So think about projects you can take on, teams you could be a part of, some extra stuff you could go build your network in that area. Test it out, and maybe build some chops as well. Be able to have that conversation with your manager so that you say, "Hey, this is what I'm interested in trying on."” Take on something that's low stake. Try a project where you can get involved. Then people start seeing you in that light. Managers aren't mind readers. I mean they don't know this stuff about you unless you have the conversation. Now I hope they're having the conversation, and I think listeners are the types who try to pull this out, but if you're in the employee perspective here, you've got to go think about what you want in your life. What do you want more of? What talents, what yearnings do you have? Then go ask for it, and say, "Hey, I'd really like to try out X," because if you haven't asked for it, it's not going to be on their mind. They have 4000 other things competing for that priority, but if you spark that thing that says, "Hey be on the lookout for projects that would let me test this out, I would love to do it," a lot of times, they come back and bring you the opportunity, and then those turn into roles, and they turn into relationships that 10 years later you're getting a job from somebody you worked with on a project because you expressed interest. Andy Sokolovich: Right, absolutely, and every corporate boardroom has that buzzword called retention. People constantly try to think of how to solve for it: how do we keep people here for the long haul? How do we bring them into our family, our culture and make sure that they continue to grow and they become enthusiasts about what we're trying to do? How do we make them want to stick with us forever? How do we do that? Well, the secret sauce is what we just said. You ask them what they want and what they need. You ask how you can foster their growth internally. Don't just expect them to live within your guidelines, i.e. that job description that they got hired under 11 or 12 years ago. I mean really start to invest in people, and you'll see things just mature to a level that's mind blowing. I've done it personally, even with folks that I worked with online. I do stuff with virtual assistants, and I do stuff with graphic artists, graphic designers. I try to constantly tell them, "You are naturally gifted at design, keep doing what you're doing. I really really enjoy this," and even when I'm not working with them, I'll go back every once in a while and say, "Hey, I just want to check in with you and see how you're doing. Is there anything I can do to help your business grow? Can I direct you to anybody? Is there a certain niche, or is there a certain group that you're trying to target? How can I help you grow, because I really believe you have the talent and to do what it takes." We've talked sometimes about low points. Just imagine being at a low point in your life, where maybe your career is not firing on all cylinders. Your family life is falling apart. Your health is going away--who knows--but when somebody comes and actually acknowledges or recognizes a talent that you have, something that you're able to do better than anybody else, how much of an uplift is that? How much of a boost in confidence is that? I think that little gesture makes all the difference. Lisa Cummings: I so agree. You never know what's going on in people's lives, and taking that moment to appreciate a talent that you see, and like I had an experience so similar to what you're talking about recently. I was working with a client, they were going through a merger and acquisition process. I was working with somebody who was a really heavy part of the due diligence process, and I know she was working insane hours. She was sleeping four hours a night. Otherwise working the other 20. I asked for something that just seemed trivial, and I knew it was going to be a pain. I didn't even want to send a request to the person, but it was something that I needed. So I made mention, "I appreciate you so much for taking the time to get this. It was so accurate and fast, and I know you must be so slammed right now." Then she wrote back this very heartfelt note. It was just about noticing what she was going through, and acknowledging that she took that extra time, and it was really cutting into her few hours of sleep that night, and she appreciated so much the notice. I think that's such a big deal--taking 30 seconds to tell someone what you see in them--just like you do with the designer you work with, or whomever, and say, "I really see this spark in you," and it gives them the juice to go, "There really is something to that," and maybe the difference in pursuing a whole different career. Andy Sokolovich: Absolutely, well said. Lisa Cummings: Andy this has been such a blast. Now I know the listeners want all sorts of Andy now, so how can they find you? Andy Sokolovich: My website is over at unleashstrengths.com Lisa Cummings: Thanks Andy, for joining. And thanks to all of the followers of Lead Through Strengths. Remember, using your strengths at work makes you a stronger performer. If you’re focused on fixing your weaknesses, you’re choosing the path of most resistance. So claim your talents. Then share them with the world. And help your team do the same!     Andy also has an excellent podcast focused on Strengths. It’s called Theme Addicts

TFcon Chicargo happened this week and there was a lot more news then any of us thought. So Andy and Mikey cover it all!!