Podcasts about Venn

Vulture's Kathryn VanArendonk is back to talk about Apple TV+'s Murderbot, and whether the books do a better job of exploring questions of gender and essential humanity without Alexander Skarsgard's Ken-doll crotch confusing matters. Should YOU give it a watch? We went Around The Dial with Overcompensating, Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives, and Leverage: Redemption's third season before Anne offered another variation on the Utahn theme with a Real Housewives Of Salt Lake City Canon Presentation. Kelli Giddish won, Tom Hardy lost, and we all tried to survive the process of Venn-diagramming premiere and finale casting in Game Time. Hack into your governor modules and join us! GUESTS

 We really enjoyed talking with Libby, Owen, and Eli of Dallas Ugly. From hearing their unique band name story, to how they became a band was really a good time. We discussed their newalbum “See Me Now” (Available NOW!), and how they each individually write a song and then come together to finalize it.    Nashville's Dallas Ugly are an indie rock band of truly trusted friends, a trio who have been singing each other's songs for over a decade. Three distinctive voices: guitarist OwenBurton observes humanity at a wry remove, chuckling, multi-instrumentalist Libby Weitnauer lifts personal experience up into catchy tunes, and bassist Eli Broxham gracefully snakes through the low end on his more melancholy contributions. Together they've forged an ironclad, sibling-like bond, daring each other to ever increasing heights. Their listeners - lucky - get theoverlap of their Venn diagram, the best of their crop, otherwise known as “See Me Now,” their sophomore album.   Though they first started playing each other's songs back in their Chicago undergrad days, Dallas Ugly officially formed in 2020 when Owen, Libby, and Eli took a chance on relocatingto Nashville. Owen had been living in Senegal serving in the Peace Corps, Libby had established herself as an in-demand musician in New York City, and Eli was playing on frequent bluegrass and country gigs in Illinois - reunited in the Music City, they got to work, shaping both Dallas Ugly and the local scene while playing with a slew of other Nashville artists.   Check them out here:  BandCamp: Dallas Ugly  Website: Dallasugly.com  IG: dallasugly  TikTok: Dallasuglymusic  Facebook: Dallas Ugly  YouTube: Dallas Ugly  

Our guest this time, Dario Valenza, is all that and more. Dario hales from Australia where he grew up and went to high school. He then attended two years of college but then left academia to work on working on designing yachts for, among events, the America's Cup races. Eventually he did return to college to finish his degree. He does tell us that he has a passion for design thinking and designing. As you will discover he has designed yachts, aircraft including innovative drones and even automobiles.   We talk about how his over-arching passion for design thinking also helps him design functioning and successful teams. Dario is a team leader by any standard.   He founded and owns a successful design and implementation company, Carbonix. Much of the work in which he is involved today is around having designed and now manufacturing long-range drones that can stay aloft and travel up to 800 Kilometers before needing refuelling. His products can and are being used for major surveying jobs and other projects that take advantage of the economic enhancements his products bring to the table.   Dario and I discuss leadership and how his design-oriented mindset has helped him be a strong and effective leader. I will leave it to him to describe how he works and how he helps bring out the best in people with whom he works.       About the Guest:   I have a passion for design and design thinking. This is the common thread that has led me to build yachts, planes, and cars - as well as create the teams and company structures to turn visions into reality.   I believe that beautiful design, as well as enabling and inspiring, is inherently valuable. Testing a new design it in the real world, particularly in competition, is a way to interrogate nature and understand the world.   I spent the first decade of my career working on racing yachts as a boatbuilder, designer, construction manager, and campaign manager. My treasured achievements include being part of several America's Cup teams and pioneering full hydrofoiling for World Championship winning boats.   I applied the lessons learned to other fields. This trajectory diversified into aerospace applications including drones.   I work to create products that bring joy by being desirable, aesthetically pleasing, and ergonomically correct, while always adding value through effective and efficient performance. I'm always keen to share my experiences and tackle new challenges with like-minded teams.   Ways to connect Dario:   Main point of contact is LI: https://au.linkedin.com/in/dario-valenza-a7380a23 Carbonix URL: www.carbonix.com.au Personal website: www.dariovalenza.com   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Hi everyone. This is your host, Michael hingson, and you are listening to another episode of unstoppable mindset. And today our guest is Dario, if I'm pronouncing that right, Valenza, how do i pronounce it? Oh, good. Oh, good. I can sometimes speak the King's English really well. Dario is a person who has a great passion for design, and he's going to tell us about that. He has been involved in designing many things, from yachts to aircraft to other kinds of things, as well as teams in companies, which I think is very fascinating, that make products and bring things about. So we're going to get to all of that. Daro is in Australia, so it's early in the morning. There for you right now. But welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Yeah, my pleasure. Glad to be here. So what time is it over there right now? About 11am Yeah, and it's little after three here. So, yep, you're 20 hours ahead   Dario Valenza ** 02:27 of us. No, here, it's Saturday, I assume. There it's Friday. It is to the confusion.   Michael Hingson ** 02:33 So, so, as it's always fun to do, can you tell us about the future over the next 20 hours?   02:40 So, so far so good. Yeah, there you are. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:43 thank you for being here and for being a part of unstoppable mindset. Let's start, if you would, by maybe you telling us a little bit about kind of the early Dario, growing up and some of those kinds of things, so that people listening and watching can get to know you a little bit better.   Dario Valenza ** 03:01 Yeah, absolutely. I think the interest in how things worked was there as long as anyone can remember being exposed early on to different mechanical things and from household appliances to looking at trains and busses and cars outside. I think that all piqued my curiosity. But I remember the first time I came across the concept of a sailboat. Something clicked, or something about the way an aerofoil works, the way it can generate motion out of wind, the balance of forces, the structures, the things that all need to work for a sailboat to work. That sort of got me hooked, and then I spent every waking moment I could reading about it, doing research, making models that I'd sail across the pool, getting involved at the local sailing club, and just being hands on. And I think that's really where the passion started. So certainly, there's a general wanting to see how things work, and there's a specific aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, structures, just, I find it endlessly fascinating. And you're always learning, and   Michael Hingson ** 04:10 should always be learning. I think that's one, of course, the real keys is always learning, which some people think they don't do, but and some people try very much not to do, but that's not the way to really progress in the world. So I'm glad that you do that. You've always lived in Australia.   Dario Valenza ** 04:27 No, actually, born in Italy, moved here probably 10 years old, went to high school and uni here.   Michael Hingson ** 04:37 Yeah, you do seem to have a little bit more of an Australian accent than an Italian one?   Dario Valenza ** 04:41 Yeah, I think I was young enough when I moved that I learned the language pretty quickly. I did spend few years in New Zealand and a few years in Europe, so I think my accent is probably a little bit of a hybrid, but mostly Australian. I'd say, do you speak Italian? Yes. Funny, you get rusty at it, though, like when I go back, it probably takes me a few days to get used to speaking it, yeah, but it is in there   Michael Hingson ** 05:08 which, which makes some sense. Well, so you went to high school, and did you go on to college?   Dario Valenza ** 05:15 Did the first couple of years of an engineering degree, dropped out to go and do the America's Cup. Eventually went back and finished it. But really haven't spent more time working than started. Putting it that way, the things I was interested in, particularly the the advent of carbon fiber in in racing yachts, hadn't found its way into any curriculum yet. It was it was happening on the frontier in that environment. And so my judgment was you could learn more by doing it and by going to uni. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 05:49 yeah, on the one hand, with school, to a large degree, it's theory, and putting it into practice is something that always brings you closer to it, which which makes sense. Well, so you, when you went to your first America's Cup, what did you were you just an observer? Were you involved in designing a yacht, or what?   Dario Valenza ** 06:10 I was a boat builder. I was hands on, on the manufacturing, and that was the way in that was the the opportunity I had to actually be part of a team and prove myself over the course of the campaign, I obviously showed an interest in design, and I became more de facto part of the design team. But I really always like to sit at that interface between the designing and the building, so that there's a practical element to yes, there's a theory, yes, there's a design, there's a bunch of analysis you can do having that practical mindset of, is it easy to build? Is it practical? Is it possible to then tune it and modify it and improve it? And that actually led me to a lot of the logistical challenges of, how do you plan a build? How do you allocate time towards the things that make the biggest difference towards performance. So the journey was really from hands on boat builder to sort of logistics, to design   Michael Hingson ** 07:08 well, and design is clearly been your passion overall. So that makes some sense. When did you do your first America's cut?   Dario Valenza ** 07:17 So I was involved in the 2000 event in Auckland, which was the first time the Kiwis defended after winning in 95 right? Then I did 2003 also in Auckland, 2007 in Valencia. And then there was a bit of a hiatus after Valencia, because of the deed of gift match. And I was involved in a couple of teams as that transition happened. And eventually 2012 I peeled off to start my own business.   Michael Hingson ** 07:44 So let's see the New Zealand won in 2000 right?   Dario Valenza ** 07:48 They defended successfully in 2000 so they they won in 95 in San Diego against Dennis Connor, and it took them five years to basically set up a defense. So from 95 to 2000 and then they won, and they rolled straight into 2003 they lost in 2003   Michael Hingson ** 08:05 that was to Italy. Was it to the Swiss or to the Swiss? Right? Okay,   Dario Valenza ** 08:11 even though the core of the sailing team was the former New Zealand team, the basically flag of allegiance, but yeah, the lingua team. Now, Were you successful challenger, which is amazing. Were you   Michael Hingson ** 08:25 living in New Zealand in 2003   Dario Valenza ** 08:29 Yes, yeah. So when you become involved in a team, basically the whole operation camps out at a at a base in the lead up to the event. At the time, the yacht still had to be constructed in country. So in 2003 for example, I was with a Swedish team. I actually spent a little bit of time in Sweden during the construction of the yacht, and then traveled with a yacht to New Zealand, and stayed there for the duration. I asked,   Michael Hingson ** 08:58 because I went to New Zealand in May of 2003 the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind, or of the blind, asked me to come and do some speaking. It was, of course, after September 11, and I was pretty visible, so I went down and actually helped them raise something like close to $300,000 by giving a bunch of speeches around New Zealand, but I remember listening to the radio and hearing all the irate people because New Zealand lost. The government didn't put enough money into it, and we shouldn't have lost it was pretty fascinating to to to hear all of that.   Dario Valenza ** 09:38 There was a campaign called the loyal campaign, just basically trying to reprimand the Kiwi sailors that affected at the end of the day. It's a professional sport. There were nationality rules, but it was really residency, so as long as they signed on with the Swiss team within a certain time. Period, it was like two years or something, and basically set up a residence in Switzerland, and they were eligible to compete. And I think there's been a history of that since the New Zealand government having Lisa supported in New Zealand, because it's certainly an investment in the national industry and tourism, everything that comes with it. And I think they did walk that back, particularly for the last event. And the latest result of that is the Kiwis defended in Spain last time around, which is again, unusual.   Michael Hingson ** 10:35 Well, it was, it was fascinating to watch the races, and we watched them was before I went to New Zealand. But that's why my wife and I watched, because we knew I was going there, and it was, it was all being defended in New Zealand. And of course, they were using sails, and the yachts were just going at normal sailboat type speeds. But I know then later, so much redesign took place, and the boats started traveling significantly faster, right?   Dario Valenza ** 11:08 Yeah, absolutely, there's been a change in that respect, just on the atmosphere in Auckland again, with my perspective, having, as I said, obsessed over sailing, worked my way up, got involved in campaigns, helped to put sponsors together with skippers, to get funding to build boats, and arriving in Auckland with the prospect of trialing with a team, you walk out of the airport and there's the actual boat that won the copy, 95 was sitting in The car park. There are posters. You can really see, like they called it the city of sales. And as I arrived the round the world race was stopping by in Auckland, so there was a sort of festive atmosphere around that. And you could really see people were getting behind it and getting involved. And it felt, you know, they had parades at the beginning of the event. So it was really special to be there at a time when there was maybe 12 teams. It was a big event. And to your point, they were symmetrical ballasted monohulls. So they were fairly conservative, you know, long, narrow, heavy boats. And the competition was really to eke out a one or 2% gain to have better maneuverability for match racing. And it was really down to that kind of refinement. And what happened after 2007 I mentioned a sort of hiatus, basically, two teams took each other to court, and they went back to what they call a deed of gift matches, which is the default terms that they have to abide by if they can't agree to a mutually agreeable protocol. And that deed of gift match ended up being in multi holes. So there was a catamaran and trimaran, and they were big and fast. And I think then, when the Americans won out of that, they they sort of got seduced by, let's make this about the fastest sailors and the faster boat in the fastest boats. So they went to multi holes. The next evolution was hydrofoiling Multi holes. And then once the boats are out of the water, the drag drops dramatically, and now they can go really fast. They ended up narrowly the Kiwis ended up narrowly losing in San Francisco. The Americans then defended Bermuda. The Kiwis eventually won in Bermuda. And then they in in sort of consultation with the challenge of record. That was Italians. They wanted to go back to monohulls, but they wanted them to be fast monohulls, and so they came up with this concept of a hydrofoiling monohull. So the boats now are certainly the fastest they've ever been, and the nature of the racing has changed, where it's more of a drag race than a sort of tactical match race. But it's still fascinating, because it's all about that last bit of technology, and it's all about resource management. You have so much time, you have so much budget, how do you get to the highest performance within that time that you can access, that the Sailors can get the best out of? So it's all a balance of many variables, and it's certainly tactical and strategic and very fascinating, but   Michael Hingson ** 14:18 hasn't a lot of the the tactics, in a sense, gone out of it, because it's now so much, as you put it, a drag race or a speed race, that a lot of the strategies of outmaneuvering your opponents isn't the same as it used to be.   Dario Valenza ** 14:37 Yeah. So if you imagine, the way you think about it is, it's a multi dimensional space. You've got all sorts of values that you can dial in, and the weighting of the values changes depending on the boat and the racing format and the weather so on a traditional monohull maneuvers are relatively cheap because the boat carries momentum. So when you tack you go. Through the eye of the wind, you lose drive for, you know, a second, three seconds, but your speed doesn't drop that much because a boat's heavy and it just powers along. And so if you have a three degree shift in the direction of the wind, it's worth tacking on that, because you'll then get the advantage of having a better angle. Similarly, if you're interacting with another boat, tacking to get out of their dirty air, or tacking to sit on top of them, is worthwhile, and so you get that the incentive is, I can spend some energy on a maneuver, because I'm going to get a gain when you have boats that are extremely fast, and we're talking three, four times faster than the wind, if the wind direction changes by three degrees, it's almost immaterial. And so it's not worth tacking on it. If you go through the dirty air of another boat, you get through it really quickly. And on the other hand, when you maneuver, you're effectively, you go from flying on the hydro force to gliding. You only have, like, a few boat lengths that you can do that for before the hull touches the water, and then you virtually stop. And so basically, the aim is you minimize maneuvers. You roll with the wind shifts. You roll with your opponent. And hence they've had to put boundaries around the course to force the boats back together, because otherwise I'd go out to a corner, do one tack and then go to the top mark. And so it's a different racing. It's still there are tactics involved, but the trade offs are different, that the cost versus reward of different tactical choices is very different.   Michael Hingson ** 16:31 But the race obviously goes with the newer designs, goes a lot faster, and it isn't hours and many hours of racing as it used to be, is that right?   Dario Valenza ** 16:42 It's also shorter course, so the format is kind of optimized for television, really, for, yeah, broadcast. So you have many short races, and it's it does mean that if you have a big disparity, like if one boat makes a mistake and falls a long way behind, it's over pretty quickly, because it did happen in the past where you get a boat that was outmatched or did something wrong and just spend three hours following the leader with no chance of catching up. So there's certainly a merit to having short, sharp races, but I think it's probably more physical and less cerebral, like, if you look at, yeah, the way the old boats worked, you had 17 people on there providing all the mechanical power, maneuvering, putting spinnakers up and down, dip ball driving, moving their weight around the boat. He had a tactician. They would have conversations about what's happening and react, you know, in a matter of seconds, not in a matter of milliseconds. Now you have eight people on the boat, four of them are just pedaling bikes, basically to put pressure into an accumulator to run the hydraulics. You have a helmsman on each side, and you have a trimmer on each side, and they don't cross the boat, because the boats are so fast that it's actually dangerous to get out of the cockpit. So it's very much more, I guess, closer to sort of Formula One in terms of it, you've got you've got speeds, you've got the reaction times are shorter. Everything happens more quickly, and there's certainly less interaction between the boats. Do you have   Michael Hingson ** 18:19 a preference of whether you like more the old way or the newer way of doing the races and the way the boats are designed.   Dario Valenza ** 18:28 If pressed, I would say I'd prefer the old way. But that's probably the bias, because I was involved more back then. Yeah. I think it's equally fascinating. And that sort of brings me to Yeah. So even you know, we'll get into how it applies to business and things like that, and it's the same problem, just with different variables. So my view with the cup was, whatever the rules are, you've got to try and win within them. And so they will change, the boat will change, the venue will change, the weather will change, budget limitations, all these things play into this multi variant problem, and your job is to balance all those variables to get the best   Michael Hingson ** 19:10 outcome right in the rules. Exactly.   Dario Valenza ** 19:12 Yeah. I mean, the teams do have a say. So I was, for example, in the committee that designed the rule for the catamarans that went to San Francisco, having said that what we thought we were encouraging by the rules, and what actually happened was nothing to do with each other, because once you set the rules, then the fascinating thing is how people interpret them, and they'll interpret them in ways that you can't possibly imagine, hence unintended consequences. But yeah, you have a say, but ultimately they are what they are, and the point of competing is to do well within those rules. Having said that, if they get to the point where you're just not interested anymore, then don't compete. But it is what it is. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 19:54 So how long did you do yacht design and so on, dealing. With the cup,   Dario Valenza ** 20:02 probably 15 years altogether, was 12 or so in the actual America's Cup, and a few years before that, working up to it, doing various different projects, and that's sort of in a professional capacity, getting paid before that as a passion. It's pretty much my whole settling my teens, maybe a few years before that as well.   Michael Hingson ** 20:21 So what did you do after that?   20:25 I started my own business.   Michael Hingson ** 20:26 There you go. Well, tell us about the business and what you what you started with.   Dario Valenza ** 20:36 Yeah. So it the the aim was what we call long range aerial data capture. So fancy way of saying drones with a long range that can carry out surveys effectively. So whether it's taking photographs, video, LIDAR scans or combinations thereof, the sort of underlying motivation was the importance of data. So having come out of the America's Cup and seeing the way you develop is you interrogate what's happening with the boat and the boat and the crew and the conditions, and the more channels of information you have, the more informed decisions you can make about improving now, applying that to real world problems, to things like linear infrastructure, to mining to land management. It seemed like to me there's a gap where if you could have better aerial data, you could make better decisions. And I happened to have a tool in the design and manufacturing processes that came out of the America's Cup that would allow me to create a lightweight airframe that would have that efficiency and be able to give that range. And this was at a time when, you know, people were already starting to think of drones as a solution, though there was a lot of hype around them, but it was really all around the electronics, around multi rotors, around things that you could effectively buy and put up in the air and do a short mission wave and then land. The idea of a long range drone, other than in the military, was pretty much unexplored, and I think largely because to make it work commercially financially, you needed the range you need to be able to cover in the order of hundreds of kilometers in one flight, so that you're not having a ground crew, effectively driving the line relocating from point to point as the surveys carried out. So initially it was fairly conservative in the sense that the main focus was to set up that manufacturing capability. So basically, copy or transfer those process out of the America's Cup into a commercial setting. So making molds, curing carbon, the way you document or the way you go about it, that design process, and I was open to doing custom work to subsidize it, basically. So doing stuff again, for for sailboats, for racing, cars, for architecture, just with that composite manufacturing capability as a way to prove it and refine it. And whatever money was coming out of that was going into developing a drone airframe. And then I was fortunate enough to have a collaboration with a former colleague of mine in the cup who set up a business in Spain doing computational fluid dynamics, and he alerted me to a contract over there for a military surveillance research drone. We, by then, had an airframe that more or less we could demonstrate, and we could show that it was lighter and was more efficient, and then fly further and it had a more stable flying path and all of that. So we won that contract, we supplied that, and then out of that came the commercial offering, and it basically grew from there.   Michael Hingson ** 23:50 But when did you start dealing with the drone design, the airframe and so on,   23:57 probably to 2015   Michael Hingson ** 24:00 Okay, yeah, I think I had started hearing about drones by then, and in fact, I know I had by that time, but yeah, they they were still fairly new. So how far would your drone travel?   Dario Valenza ** 24:16 So we have two versions, the old electric one will do a couple of 100 kilometers, the petro hybrid one will do up to 800 and so we're really squarely in the territory of crude helicopter, smaller, small fixed wing planes like Cessnas, and we're really going into that same way of operating. So we're not so much selling the drone to a utility to do their scans. We are providing the data that comes out of the scan, and we're using the drone as our tool to get that data. And by effectively mirroring the model of the traditional sort of legacy aviation, we can offer, obviously, a lower cost, but also better data. Because we fly lower and slower, so we can get a higher resolution and more accuracy, and there's a obviously carbon footprint reduction, because we're burning about 2% of the fuel, and it's quieter and it's safer and all of that stuff. So it's really doing that close in aerial survey work over large distances the way it's currently being done, but with a better tool,   Michael Hingson ** 25:21 the electric drone, you said, only goes a couple 100 kilometers, is that basically because of battery issues,   Dario Valenza ** 25:27 absolutely, especially power density. So not so much energy density, but power density really how much energy you can store in the battery in terms of mass, and obviously the fact that you're not burning it off, so you're carrying the empty battery around with you. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 25:45 Any interest in, or has there been any exploration of making solar powered drones?   Dario Valenza ** 25:52 We've certainly looked into it, and we've developed relationships with suppliers that are developing specialized, conformal, curvy solar panels that form part of the structure of the wing. There are a couple of considerations. Most prominent is the trade off that you're making. Like if you take add solar panels to a wing, even if they're integrated in the structure, and you minimize the structural weight, they will have a mass. So call it an extra kilo. Yeah. Right now, if I were to take that extra kilo and put it in battery or in fuel, I would be better off, so I'd have more energy by doing that than by having the solar panel   Michael Hingson ** 26:36 dealing on efficiency yet, yeah,   Dario Valenza ** 26:37 yeah. So obviously, on a hot day, when you're flying with the sun directly above, you probably would be better. But over the course of the day, different locations, banking, etc, it's just not there yet. Net, net, particularly considering that there'll be a degradation and there'll be a maintenance that's required as the panels deteriorate and the various connections breakdown, etc. So it's not something you'd rule out. Then the secondary consideration is, when you look at our aircraft, it's fairly skinny, long, skinny wings. When you look at the area from above, there's not a lot of projected area, particularly the wings being thin and very high aspect ratio, you wouldn't really be able to fit that much area right when it comes to and then you've got to remember also that if you're generating while you're flying, your electronics have to be very different, because you have to have some way to manage that power, balance it off against the battery itself. The battery is multi cells, 12 S system, so you then have to balance that charging. So there's some complexity involved. There's a weight penalty, potentially a drag penalty. There is a Net Advantage in a very narrow range of conditions. And overall, we're just not there yet in terms of the advantage. And even if it could extend the range by a few minutes, because we have an aircraft that can fly for eight hours, doesn't really matter, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 28:04 So dealing with an electric drone again, have you ever looked into things like fuel cells as opposed to batteries? Or does it not make we have,   Dario Valenza ** 28:14 and there's a company in France that we've been collaborating with, it's developing a hydrogen fuel cell, yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 28:21 So I was wondering, yeah. And   Dario Valenza ** 28:23 again, this is about, sort of, maybe sounds a bit conservative, but you know, during these lessons from the Americas capitals, talking about being seduced by the latest shiny thing can come at the detriment of achieving what you need to achieve today. So we're very conscious in the business in carbonics, of having this roadmap where there's a lot of nice to haves, there's a lot of capability that we want going forward, and that's everything from the remote one to many operations, detect and avoid fail safes, additional comms, all stuff that will enable us to do what we're doing today, plus x, y, z, but we need to be able to do what we can do what we have to do today. And most of the missions that we're doing, they're over a power line in the middle of nowhere. They're in relatively non congested airspace. The coordination is relatively simple. We have the ability to go beyond visual line of sight. We have the range, so it's really let's use what we have today and put all the other stuff in time and space. As the business grows, the mission grows, the customers get more comfortable, and that's a way to then maintain the advantage. But it's very easy to get sucked into doing cool R and D at the expense of delivering today.   Michael Hingson ** 29:42 Yeah, it's R and D is great, but you still gotta pay the bills. Yeah, so you have worked across several industries. What's kind of the common thread for you, working across and designing in several industries? Yeah. So   Dario Valenza ** 30:00 I think it's a high level problem solving is having an outcome that's very clearly defined and a rule set and a set of constraints. And the challenge is, how do you balance all those elements to deliver the best value? So whether it's, how do you design a boat within a rule to go as fast as possible? How do you develop a drone to fly as long as possible, given a certain time and budget availability? You're always looking at variables that will each have their own pros and cons, and how do you combine them so things like, you know, team size versus burn rate versus how aggressively you go to market, how do you select your missions? How do you decide whether to say yes or no to a customer based on the overall strategy? I see that as you have all these variables that you can tweak, you're trying to get an outcome. How do you balance and weigh them all to get that outcome?   Michael Hingson ** 30:58 Yeah, well, you've I'm sorry, go ahead.   Dario Valenza ** 31:01 I was gonna say, I mean, I have also, like, an interesting motorsport and when you look at a formula, one strategy, same thing, right? Did you carry a fuel load? Do you change tires? Do you optimize your arrow for this? It's a similar type of problem you're saying, I this is my aim. I've got all these variables. How do I set them all in a way that it gives me the best outcome? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 31:23 and in your design and and as you construct and look at what you're doing, you decide exactly what the parameters are, and you know when you're going to change the tires, or, you know when it's time to put in more fuel or whatever. And then, see, you've got to really know the product very well,   Dario Valenza ** 31:42 absolutely. And again, in the case of salvo racing, it's almost exemplary, because the rules are spelled out, and you have, it's a very artificial set of constraints, and you have a race day, you'll have your budget, and obviously you can work to increase that, but the time is what it is. And then in the rules, you actually get to trade off length versus width, versus mass versus sail area. Do I make my boat more powerful so it goes faster in strong winds, or do I make it skinnier so it goes better in light winds? You look at the history of the weather in the venue, and the teams that win are the ones that get all those mostly, right? So it's not necessarily the latest, fastest, more, most extreme solution, it's the one that best balances all these variables. Yeah, you transfer that into business, and it's a similar thing. You've got, you've got funding, you've got burn rate, you've got people, you've got customers, probably more variables, and it's a little bit more fuzzy in some cases. So you need to work harder to nail these things down. And it's a longer term. It's an open ended prospect. It's not I've just got to race on Sunday, then I can have a break for six months. It's you do it today and tomorrow and tomorrow. So it's going to be sustainable. But I the way you think about it in the abstract, it's the same,   Michael Hingson ** 33:00 and you also have to keep evolving as technology grows, as as the industry grows, as demands change, or maybe better than saying as demands change, as you foresee demands changing, you have to be able to keep up with it. And there's a lot to all that. There's a lot of challenge that that someone like you has to really keep up with. It's   Dario Valenza ** 33:23 a balance between leading and listening. So there's a classic Henry Ford line that if I'd asked the customer what he wanted, he would have told me a faster horse. We've fallen into the trap sometimes of talking to a customer, and they're very set about, you know, we want to use this camera to take these this resolution, at this distance, because that's what we use on a helicopter, because that's what used on a multi rotor. And you have to unpack that and say, Hang on, what data do you actually like? Because we have a different payload. We fly in a different way. So let us tell you how we can give you that solution if you tell us what we want, and I think that applies across various sort of aspects of the business. But to your point about the continuous evolution, one of the most fascinating things out of this experience of almost 10 years of sort of pioneering the drone industry is just how much the ecosystem has evolved. So when we started out, the naive assumption was we're good at making airframes. We can make really good, lightweight, efficient aircraft. We don't necessarily want to be an electronics manufacturer. It's a whole other challenge. Let's buy what we can off the shelf, put it in the aircraft for the command and control and go fly. And we very quickly realized that for the standard that we wanted in terms of being able to satisfy a regulator, that the reliability is at a certain point, having fail safes, having programmability. There was nothing out there when we had to go and design. Avionics, because you could either buy hobby stuff that was inconsistent and of dubious quality, or you had to spend millions of dollars on something out of the military, and then it didn't work commercially. And so we went and looked at cars, and we said, okay, can seems like control area network seems like a good protocol. Let's adopt that. Although some of the peripherals that we buy, like the servos, they don't speak, can so then we have to make a peripheral node that can translate from can to Rs, 232, or whatever. And we went through that process. But over the years, these suppliers that came out of hobby, came out of consumer electronics, came out of the military, very quickly saw the opportunity, and we were one of the companies driving it that hang on. I can make an autopilot module that is ISO certified and has a certain quality assurance that comes with it, and I can make it in a form factor under the price where a commercial drone company can use it. And so it really accelerated the last maybe three, four years. There's a lot of stuff available that's been developed for commercial drones that now gives us a lot more options in terms of what we buy rather than what we make.   Michael Hingson ** 36:13 Well, now I have to ask, since you brought it up, does anybody use Rs 232, anymore? I had to ask. I mean, you know,   Dario Valenza ** 36:21 less and less, yeah, at one point, like we use it for GPS parks, because we didn't have anything that ran on can right slowly we're replacing. So the latest version of the aircraft now is all cap, but it took a while to get there. That's   Michael Hingson ** 36:37 gonna say that's a very long Rs 232, cable you have if you're going to communicate with the aircraft, that'd be I still have here some Rs 232 cables that I remember using them back in the 1980s and into the 1990s but yeah, Rs 232   Dario Valenza ** 36:57 horrendous ones was, there was a, I think it was a light LIDAR altimeter. Someone will correct me, it ran on I squared C, oh, which is the most inappropriate possible thing. And it is what it is. So all we, all we could do is shorten the wire length as much as possible and live with it until we found something better, and   Michael Hingson ** 37:18 then we also had parallel cables. Yes, of course, one connected printers,   Dario Valenza ** 37:26 and we have ethernet on the aircraft for the comms. Well, yeah, there's a lot of translating that we need to do. And again, I'm not an electronic engineer, but I understand enough of it to know what's good and what's not. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 37:38 yeah. The days have gone by with all of the RS, 232, and parallel ports and all that. Now it's all USB and Ethernet and cams and other things like that which making kind of fun. Well, what other industries have you been involved in besides the drone and the boat or yacht world?   Dario Valenza ** 37:56 So I've done a little bit in cinemable Things which was kind of pituitous. The last of the Star Wars prequels was filmed in Sydney, and I happened to be here for a few months between America's Cup campaigns. And there's a few boat builders that were asked to go and do fiberglass work on the set, and they recommended me to do some of the structural design work for some of the sets. I don't think I was credited, but it was fun. Again, not something I planned to do long term. It just happened to come up, and I did it for about three months. As I said, a little bit in motor sport, more as a hobby, but as an interest. But we've made in the early days of carbonics, we made spoilers and wings and bits and pieces for cars when we were getting going, but mainly the sailing of the drones, really, because I've been in the drones now for 10 years. So right?   Michael Hingson ** 38:51 What? Why did you switch? Or maybe, why is it the wrong answer? But what made you switch from doing yachts to drones, and how did the drone story come about?   Dario Valenza ** 39:05 Yeah, so I mentioned the angle of the importance of data, looking for a real world problem where data was going to make a difference, and having the right so that not a solution in search of a problem, but the right solution for this problem, saying, if we can design an airframe that can do this, there's an obvious advantage and an obvious saving that that would make a difference to the world that has a big market. Now that's the theory, then to take the plunge. It was a bit of a combination of things. It was being beholden to the unpredictable movements of the cup, where your career depends on who wins and where it goes, and as a young single man, that's fantastic once you're trying to get married and have a family, becomes a little bit more of a problem. So again, starting your own business doesn't exactly give you stability. Cheap but more stable, I guess. And really that combination of an opportunity, being able to say I can actually see if I can make this work, and see what happens, wanting to be located in one place, I guess, looking for variety as well, and knowing that, you know, I still could have contact with the Americas Cup World, because I said I was doing custom work, and we had people from the cup working in carbonics. But it's really that point where you say, Do I want to keep following the circus around the world, or do you want to try and do my own thing and see how that goes? And I can always go back. And the aim is, you know, once you're committed, then you sort of tend to try and make it work no matter what, and it becomes the new aim, and that's what you put your energy into.   Michael Hingson ** 40:52 I had a guest on unstoppable mindset named Dre Baldwin, and Dre was a professional basketball player for nine years. He went to high school, was on the bench the whole time, went to college, played in college pretty well, but wasn't really noticed until he went to a camp where people could try out and be scouted by professionals who wouldn't come and see you because you weren't famous enough to be seen just by them coming to look for you. But he got a video, and he got some good suggestions, and anyway, he eventually made that into a nine year career. And I asked him, when we talked, why did you end the career? Why did you leave and start a business? And the business he started was up your game LLC, and it's all about helping people up their game in business and so on. And of course, he does it all in the sports environment. But I asked him why he left, and one of the things that he said was it, what people don't know is it's not just the games themselves and the basketball that you play. It's all the other stuff. It's all the fact that if you're going to really do it and be reasonably well, you need to go to the gym a lot, not just when they tell you to practice, but you got to take the initiative and do it on your own. You have to do other things. And he said, I just got to the point where I didn't want to do that, all that invisible part of it anymore. And so he left and started his own business, and has been very successful, but it was an interesting answer. And in a sense, I hear, you know what you're saying. It's really where you're going to go, and what is, what's really going to interest you, which is what has to be part of whatever you do?   Dario Valenza ** 42:34 Yeah, that all makes sense. I think, in my experience, I've never not had an obsession, so to speak. So yeah, with the sailing absolutely like, if you want to be in the America's Cup, it can't be a day job. You have to be committed. You have to be able to concentrate, innovate again, if you're I wasn't an athlete on the boat, so it wasn't necessarily about going to the gym, but certainly doing research, doing testing, working on the boat overnight before I went out the next day. It is a competition, so that the longer, the harder you work, assuming you still keep your performance up, the better you're going to do. So it was an obsession. I accepted that I never it never occurred to me that I don't want to keep doing it right. It was really the logistics. It was thinking, because of the cup had gone to court, we'd had the deed of gift match. Everything had been on hold for a while. It got going again, and the rules changed and there were fewer teams. I'd actually spent a bit of time fundraising for the team that had come out of Valencia to keep it going until the eventual San Francisco cup. So that was interesting as well, saying that, you know, is it getting the reception that I hoped it would, in terms of people investing in it and seeing the value, and kind of looking at it and saying, Okay, now I've got to move to San Francisco the next one, who knows where it's going to be, the format and all those things, you just sort of trade it off and say, Well, if I can make a go of something where I can do it in my hometown, it can be just as interesting, because the technical challenges is just as fascinating. And it's really about, can I create this little environment that I control, where I can do the same fun stuff that I was doing in the cup in terms of tech development, but also make it a business and make a difference to the world and make it commercially viable. And that was really the challenge. And saying that, that was the motivation, to say, if I can take the thing that interests me from the cup and apply it to a commercial technological challenge, then I'll have the best of the best of both worlds.   Michael Hingson ** 44:44 What? What made you really go into doing drones after the yacht stuff?   Dario Valenza ** 44:52 So yeah, certainly that aerial data capture piece, but also the it's very announced. I guess. So most of the work that I was doing in the cup was around aeroelastic optimization, lightweight structures, which really dynamics, yeah. And so, you know, a yacht is a plane with one wing in the water and one wing in the air. It's all fluids. The maths is the same, the physics is the same, the materials are the same. If you do it well in the cup, you win. If you do it well in drones, you win also. But you win by going further and being more efficient and economical at doing these missions. And so it's sort of like having this superpower where you can say, I can make this tool really good that's going to give me an advantage. Let's go and see if that actually makes a difference in the market.   Michael Hingson ** 45:44 Well, I mean, as we know, the only difference really, between water and air is that the molecules are further apart in air than they are in water. So why? It really isn't that much different? He said, being a physicist and picking on chemists, but you know, I do understand what you're saying. So when did you actually start carbonics? Was that when you went into the Drone   Dario Valenza ** 46:05 World? So the business itself early 2012 and as I said, those are a few years there where we're doing custom work. And as it happened, I ended up supplying to New Zealand because we built an A class catamaran, which is effectively a little America's Cup boat for the punters, kind of thing that did well in some regattas. It caught the attention of the team New Zealand guys. They decided to use them as a training platform. We did a world championship where they were skipping the boats the carbonics built did really well in that sort of top five spots got a bunch of commercial orders off the back of that, which then brought some money into subsidize the drones, etc, etc. So by the time we were properly so the first time we flew our airframe would have been, you know, 2015   Michael Hingson ** 46:55 but nobody has created an America's Cup for drones yet. So there's a project for you.   Dario Valenza ** 47:01 They're all sort of drone racing, so I'm not surprised. Yeah, and I think again, it's really interesting. So when you look at motorsport and yacht racing in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s it really was a test bet, because you had to build something, go compete with it, learn from it, repeat. And you'd get, you know, the case of motorsport, traction control, ABS, all that stuff. In the case of sailing, that the use of, you know, modern fiber materials for ropes and structures, that was really sort of the cauldron where the development happened. And I think that was sort of the result of an analog world, so to speak, where you had to build things to know. I think now, with better compute and a more sophisticated role that simulations can play, it's still there is value in competition, but I think it's done in a different way. You're doing it. The key is to iterate virtually as much as possible before you build something, rather than building as many things as possible and doing the development that way.   Michael Hingson ** 48:13 Well, here's an interesting Oh, go ahead, yeah.   Dario Valenza ** 48:16 So I think that affects, certainly, how sport is seen in terms of there's probably more emphasis on the actual athletic competition, on the technology, because there are just other areas now where that development is happening, and SpaceX drones, there are more commercial places where control systems, electronic structures are really being pushed well before it was mainly in sport.   Michael Hingson ** 48:45 Well, here's a business question for you. How do you identify value that is something that you uniquely can do, that other people can't, and that here's the big part, people will pay for it,   Dario Valenza ** 49:01 cost per kilometer of scan is really my answer in the case of carbonics, saying you want to get a digital twin of a power transmission line over 800 kilometers. You can do that with a helicopter, and it's going to cost 1000s of dollars, and you're going to burn tons of fuel, and you can only get so close, etc. So you can only do it in visual conditions, and that's sort of the current best practice. That's how it's done. You can do it with satellites, but you can't really get in close enough yet in terms of resolution and independent on orbits and weather. You can do it by having someone drive or walk along the line, and that's stupendously inefficient. You can do it with multi rotor drones, and then, yeah, you might be able to do five kilometers at a time, but then you got to land and relocate and launch again, and you end up with this big sort of disparity of data sets that go stitch together by the time you add that all up. It's actually more expensive than a helicopter. Or you could do it with a drone like. Fly for 800 kilometers, which is making it Yes, and making a drone that can fly for 800 kilometers is not trivial, and that's where the unique value sits. And it's not just the airframe that the airframe holds it all up, but you have to have the redundancies to command and control, the engineering certifications, the comms, the stability, the payload triggering and geo tagging. So all of that stuff has to work. And the value of carbonics is, yes, the carbon fiber in the airframe, but also the the team ethos, which, again, comes out of that competition world, to really grab the low hanging fruit, make it all work, get it out there and be flexible, like we've had missions with stuff hasn't gone to plan, and we've fixed it, and we've still delivered the data. So the value is really being able to do something that no one else can do.   Michael Hingson ** 50:54 So I assume that you're still having fun as a founder and the owner of a company,   51:02 sometimes,   Michael Hingson ** 51:05 more often than not, one would hope,   Dario Valenza ** 51:07 Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, obviously there's a huge amount of pride in seeing now we're 22 people, some of certainly leaders in the field, some of the best in the world, the fact that they have chosen to back the vision, to spend years of their professional life making it happen, according to the thing that I started, I mean that that's flattering and humbling. There's always a challenge. It's always interesting. Again, having investors and all that you're not it's not all on my shoulders. People that are also invested, literally, who have the same interests and we support each other. But at the same time, it's not exactly certain. In terms of you're always working through prices and looking at what's going to happen in a day a year, six months, but you sort of get used to it and say, Well, I've done this willingly. I know there's a risk, but it's fun and it's worth it, and we'll get there. And so you do it   Michael Hingson ** 52:10 well, you're the you're the visionary, and that that brings excitement to it all. And as long as you can have fun and you can reward yourself by what you're doing. It doesn't get any better than that.   Dario Valenza ** 52:26 So they tell me, yeah, how do you absolutely, how do you   Michael Hingson ** 52:31 create a good, cohesive team?   Dario Valenza ** 52:36 Values, I think, are the base of them would be very clear about what we are and what we aren't. It's really interesting because I've never really spent any time in a corporate environment, nor do I want to. So keeping that informal fun element, where it's fairly egalitarian, it's fairly focused, we're not too worried about saying things how they are and offending people. We know we're all in it together. It's very much that focus and common goal, I think, creates the bond and then communication like being absolutely clear about what are we trying to do? What are the priorities? What are the constraints? And constantly updating each other when, when one department is having an issue and it's going to hold something up, we support each other and we adjust accordingly, and we move resources around. But yeah, I think the short answer is culture you have to have when someone walks in, there's a certain quality to the atmosphere that tells you what this team is about, right? And everyone is on their page, and it's not for everyone. Again, we don't demand that people put in their heart and soul into 24/7 but if you don't, you probably don't want   Michael Hingson ** 53:56 to be there. Yeah, makes sense. So what kind of advice would you give to someone who's starting out in a career or considering what they want to do with their lives?   Dario Valenza ** 54:08 Where do I start? Certainly take, take the risks while you're young and independent, you don't have a lot to lose. Give it a go and be humble. So getting my experience going into the cup like my approach was, I'll clean the floors, I'll be the Gopher, I'll work for free, until you guys see some value, like I'm it's not about what am I going to get out of this? It's how do I get involved, and how do I prove myself? And so being open and learning, being willing to put in the hours. And I think at one point there was a comment during the trial that he doesn't know what he's doing, but he's really keen, and his attitude is good. And I think that's that's how you want to be, because you can learn the thing you. That you need to have the attitude to be involved and have have a go.   Michael Hingson ** 55:05 Have fun. Yeah, you have to decide to have fun.   Dario Valenza ** 55:14 Yeah, absolutely. You have to be interested in what you're doing, because if you're doing it for the money, yes, it's nice when you get the paycheck, but you don't have that passion to really be motivated and put in the time. So right by this is that the Venn diagram right, find something you're interested in, that someone is willing to pay you for, and that you're good at, not easy, but having that openness and the humble and saying, Well, I'm don't try and get to the top straightaway, like get in, prove yourself. Learn, improve, gain skills, and probably, in my case, the value of cross pollination. So rather than sort of going into one discipline and just learning how it's done and only seeing that, look at the analogous stuff out there and see how you can apply it. Yeah. So again, from from boats to drones, from cars to boats, from really racing to business, abstract the problem into what are we trying to solve? What are the variables? How's it been done elsewhere, and really knowing when to think by analogy and when to think from first principles,   Michael Hingson ** 56:23 that makes sense. And with that, I'm going to thank you. We've been doing this for an hour. My gosh, is life fun or what? But I really appreciate it. Well, there you go. I appreciate you being here, and this has been a lot of fun. I hope that all of you out there watching and listening have liked our podcast episode. Please let us know. I'd appreciate it if you'd email me. Michael h i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I B, e.com, or go to our podcast page, which is w, w, w, dot Michael hingson, that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, and I would ask you how, how can people reach out to you? If they'd like to reach out to you and maybe learn more about what you do, maybe join the team?   Dario Valenza ** 57:09 Yeah, probably the easiest way would be LinkedIn, just Dario Valencia. Otherwise, my email is just Dario D, A, R, I, o@carbonics.com.au.au,   Michael Hingson ** 57:21 being Australian, and Valenc spelled V, A,   Dario Valenza ** 57:25 l e n z, A, but the email is just dario@carbonics.com.au You don't need to know how to spell my last name, right? Yeah, sorry for the LinkedIn. It'll be Dario Valencia, V A, l e n z A, or look at the carbonics profile on LinkedIn, and I'll be one of the people who works. There you   Michael Hingson ** 57:43 go. Well again, this has been fun, and we appreciate you, and hope that people will reach out and want to learn more. If you know of anybody who might make a good guest, or if any of you watching or listening out there might know of anyone who would be a good guest for unstoppable mindset, I sure would appreciate it if you'd let us know, we really value your help with that. We're always looking for more people to be on the podcast, so please don't hesitate. And also, wherever you're listening or watching, we sure would appreciate it if you give us a five star rating. We really appreciate your views, especially when they're positive, but we like all the comments, so however you're listening and so on, please give us a five star rating and let us know how we can even do better next time. But Dario, again, I want to thank you. Really appreciate you being here with us today. This has been a lot of fun, and I'm glad I learned a lot today. So thank you very much.   58:37 My pleasure. You   **Michael Hingson ** 58:43 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

In this mind-blowing episode, you'll get to discover how a Navy dolphin program accidentally cracked open an exciting breakthrough in human health and longevity. I sit down with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist whose fascinating path led her from caring for military dolphins to identifying a completely overlooked fatty acid—C15:0—that's now being recognized as the first essential fatty acid discovered in over 90 years. If you’ve ever been confused about dairy fat, the nuances of saturated fats, or how to truly fuel your body for lasting vitality, this conversation will clear it all up—and give you real, actionable ways to start leveraging this cutting-edge science right away. Full show notes: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/c15 Episode Sponsors: Peluva: Experience the freedom of natural movement with Peluva, the zero-drop minimalist shoe that combines a barefoot feel with just the right cushioning for everyday life, fitness, and beyond. Try them risk-free at Peluva.com and use code BEN for 15% off your first pair—let your feet be feet! SuperTeeth: SuperTeeth is one of the first oral care brands that creates products that safely remineralize teeth without the need for fluoride. Visit GetSuperTeeth.com and use code BENGREENFIELD for 15% off. BIOptimizers MassZymes: MassZymes is a powerful, best-in-class enzyme supplement that improves digestion, reduces gas and bloating, and provides relief from constipation. Go to bioptimizers.com/ben and use code BEN10 for 10% off your order. Jaspr: Breathe air so clean you can smell the difference with the Jaspr commercial-grade air purifier. Visit Jaspr.co/ben and use code BEN for 10% off. MOSH: MOSH's signature blend offers a plant-based, high-protein bar that is a great source of vitamin D and an excellent source of vitamin B12. Head to moshlife.com/BEN to save 20% off, plus FREE shipping on either the Best Sellers Trial Pack or the new Plant-Based Trial Pack.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Melissa sits down with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, founder of Fatty15, to explore the keys to longevity, the importance of essential nutrients, and how to live a vibrant, purpose-driven life. Stephanie shares the fascinating story of how she accidentally discovered C15:0—the first essential fatty acid identified in over 90 years—through her groundbreaking work with Navy dolphins. Together, they dive into the science behind Fatty15, its powerful benefits (especially for those avoiding dairy), and how optimizing this nutrient can help restore our healthspan and give us more time and energy for the things we love most. The conversation goes beyond supplements, touching on the importance of letting go of rigid wellness labels, embracing moderation, and making healthy living more accessible and sustainable. Stephanie also unpacks why many common supplements—like gummies—may not be as effective as we think, and shares insights from her new book, The Longevity Nutrient, which simplifies complex science into actionable, everyday tools. If you're curious about cutting-edge health discoveries or looking to create a fuller, longer life without the overwhelm, this episode is a must-listen.You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to fatty15.com/MWH15 and using code MWH15 at checkout.Follow us on Instagram at @melissawoodtepperberg and @melissawoodhealthLimited Time Offer: Use code movewithheart when you sign up for a monthly membership to get your first month FREE on melissawoodhealth.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eve Maler returns to Identity at the Center for her seventh episode, bringing her signature insight and humor to a deep conversation about the state of digital identity. Jeff and Jim explore the gap between lagging IAM programs and next-gen technologies with Eve, who dives into her research on non-human identities, the power of identity services as products, and how martech and adtech intersect with customer IAM. Plus, get a preview of her EIC talk and the latest on Identi-Squabble, the identity game show set for Identiverse. Don't miss this packed and playful discussion!Timestamps:00:00 - Assume breach, assume tracking02:03 - Jim's IAM theory and gap analysis10:00 - Identi-Squabble game show preview13:00 - Eve joins, talks SXSW experience18:00 - Non-traditional Venn diagrams & stakeholder models22:00 - Personhood credentials and digital death27:00 - MarTech, AdTech, and the identity connection35:00 - Consent is dead: what it means for IAM47:00 - Treating identity as a product50:00 - Identity's role in organizational silos53:00 - Identity Security: what is it really?59:00 - Is “identity” big enough to hold all these qualifiers?01:00:00 - Lighter note: would you rather meet past or future self?Connect with Eve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evemaler/Venn Factory: https://www.vennfactory.com/Conference Discounts!Identiverse 2025 - Use code IDV25-IDAC25 for 25% off: https://identiverse.com/Connect with us on LinkedIn:Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.comKeywords:Eve Maler, IAM, Identity at the Center, Identiverse, Identisquabble, Martech, Adtech, Personhood Credentials, Identity Security, Consent Management, Non-Human Identity, Identity as Product, Digital Identity, Venn Factory, Identity Governance, IAM Strategy, South by Southwest Identity, Privacy by Design

Marius Borg Høiby svarer ikke når vennen ringer. Så sprekker nyheten: Marius er siktet for vold mot kjæresten. For første gang forteller en nær venn av Marius om de alvorlige anklagene, kjærestene og hva som skjedde bak skandaleoverskriftene.

Podkasten er produsert av P7 Kristen Riksradio

Lok er endelig tilbake og ukens gjest er ingen andre enn sjefen sjøl, Jonis Josef. Jonis gir en oppdatering på hvordan livet er i New York og hvordan det går på Stand-up fronten i det store eplet.Jingle: Jonis Josef Produsent: Kasper Bugge Kaspersen Cover: Kristine Lie Øverland

266: If you struggle with anemia, leaky gut, low red blood cells, high LDL cholesterol, brain fog, fatigue—or if you bruise easily—this episode is for you. There's a special fat that's been shown to support all of these issues. It's called C15:0, and it's the first essential fatty acid discovered in over 90 years! Stephanie joins me today for an eye-opening conversation about this unique fat—an odd-chain saturated fatty acid that's changing the game. She breaks down the difference between odd-chain and even-chain saturated fats and clears up the common misconception that all saturated fats are bad news. (Spoiler: they're not.) We also dive into how C15:0 could benefit pregnant mothers and developing babies, and why there's growing interest in adding it to infant formula. So, what foods actually contain C15:0? Are there any that block its absorption? And why are so many of us deficient in it to begin with? If you're curious whether you're lacking this essential fat, good news—there are tests for that. And within just 3 to 6 months of supplementing with Fatty15 (a C15:0 supplement), people are reporting some incredible results. We definitely get a little nerdy in this episode—and I loved every minute of it! Fatty15 | Get 15% off when you use code: DIGEST Topics Discussed: The essential fatty acid we're missing The difference between short, medium, and odd-chain fatty acids What C15:0 is and where to find it Why Americans are so deficient in it Connections to anemia, leaky gut, and aging Why pregnant and nursing moms need C15:0 The potential of adding it to infant formula Sponsored By: Fatty15 | Get 15% off when you use code: DIGEST at fatty15.com/digest Manukora | Head to MANUKORA.com/DIGEST to get $70 off the Starter Kit LMNT | Get your FREE sample pack with any LMNT purchase at drinklmnt.com/DIGEST Our Place | Go to fromourplace.com and use code DIGEST for 10% Ollie | https://www.myollie.com/digest/ & enter code DIGEST to get 60% off your first box. As always, if you have any questions for the show please email us at digestthispod@gmail.com.  And if you like this show, please share it, rate it, review it and subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app.  Show Links:  Check out Fatty15 scientific studies: https://www.discoverc15.com/  Check Out Bethany: Bethany's Instagram: @lilsipper YouTube Bethany's Website Discounts & My Favorite Products My Digestive Support Protein Powder Gut Reset Book  Get my Newsletters (Friday Finds)

Whether you're looking to earn extra cash or dream of quitting your day job, this conversation delivers the practical blueprint you've been searching for.We meet creative entrepreneur Georgia Norton Lodge who offers brutally honest advice about what it actually takes to build a sustainable side hustle. She shares the exact steps that helped her transform a $35 product into a $500 one, and how a single email to her database once made her $16,000.Plus you’ll learn:- the Venn diagram approach to identifying your perfect side hustle- six practical steps to get started (even with no time or budget)- realistic timelines and expectations- when to know if your side hustle is working (or when to let it go)Check out Georgia’s courses and workshops, and you can follow her on LinkedIn and Insta.Sign up to the BIZ newsletter hereYou might be interested in our episodes on:How To Talk So People Listen To YouHow To Be More Productive (Without Trying Too Hard)Time Blocking Doesn't Work (Until You Do It Right)How To Ask For More Money (Without Dying From Awkwardness)THE END BITSSupport independent women's media.Follow the Biz Instagram, Michelle’s startup Sunroom and Soph’s career coaching business Workbaby.Got a work life dilemma? Send us all the questions you definitely can't ask your boss for our Biz Inbox episodes - send us a voice note or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au. You can remain anon!HOSTS: Michelle Battersby, Soph Hirst and Em VernemEXEC PRODUCER: Georgie PageAUDIO PRODUCER: Leah Porges Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠The Primal Tallow Balm.⁠⁠⁠⁠ Naturally Increase C15 (Free Guide): http://www.theprimal.com/lab/new-cause-of-insulin-resistance-c15-deficiencyDr Venn Watson's book 'The Longevity Nutrient': https://amzn.to/42gsgEXFatty15 (use code PRIMAL): https://fatty15.com/PRIMAL My guest today is Dr Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist, entrepreneur, and a leading expert in C15. Dr Venn Watson has conducted over 60 peer-reviewed papers and has made the link between C15 deficiency, insulin resistance, and chronic disease.C15 is a saturated fatty acid in whole-fat foods, including whole-fat dairy, fatty fish, and red meat. Dr Venn Watson will discuss how the changes in our modern diet and the changes in dietary guidelines towards low-fat and high-carb diets have contributed to Cellular Fragility Syndrome, which leads to C15 deficiency. Dr Venn Watson will discuss the process of Ferroptosis, which causes an iron overload in the liver, leading to chronic disease and insulin resistance. She will also discuss the amount of C15 you need, how to avoid deficiency, and the best dietary sources of C15 (hint: it includes butter). ‍This episode is important to understand that insulin resistance does not just come from sugar and carbohydrates, but also from C15 deficiency. You will learn the science behind C15 deficiency, how to fix it, and Fatty15 - a revolutionary new supplement to fix C15 deficiency.

In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction—only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, KSR has established a conceptual space as dedicated to sustainability as his own beloved Village Homes in Davis, California. All of that, though, only prepared the ground for Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020), his vision of a sustained governmental and scientific rethinking of humanity's fossil-burning, earth-warming ways. In only five years, it may have become the most influential work of climate fiction ever—perhaps right up there with Uncle Tom's Cabin in its thoroughly shocking ability to jump into the political fray. Flanked by Novel Dialogue's John Plotz, KSR's friend and ally Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (celebrated eco-critic and UC Davis professor) asks him to reflect on the book's impact. He brushes aside the doom and gloom of tech bros forecasting the death of our planet and hence the necessity of a flight to Mars: humans are not one of the species doomed to extinction by our reckless combustion of the biosphere. However, survival is not the same as thriving. The way we are headed now, “the crash of civilization is very bad. And ignoring it…is not going to work.” Mentioned in the Episode: --Pact for the Future --COP 26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference) --COP 30 (where KSR will be a UN rep….) --Planetary boundaries J. Rockstrom (et. al.) --Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds --Paris Agreement --Don't Look Up --Tobias Menely, The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice --Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction—only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, KSR has established a conceptual space as dedicated to sustainability as his own beloved Village Homes in Davis, California. All of that, though, only prepared the ground for Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020), his vision of a sustained governmental and scientific rethinking of humanity's fossil-burning, earth-warming ways. In only five years, it may have become the most influential work of climate fiction ever—perhaps right up there with Uncle Tom's Cabin in its thoroughly shocking ability to jump into the political fray. Flanked by Novel Dialogue's John Plotz, KSR's friend and ally Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (celebrated eco-critic and UC Davis professor) asks him to reflect on the book's impact. He brushes aside the doom and gloom of tech bros forecasting the death of our planet and hence the necessity of a flight to Mars: humans are not one of the species doomed to extinction by our reckless combustion of the biosphere. However, survival is not the same as thriving. The way we are headed now, “the crash of civilization is very bad. And ignoring it…is not going to work.” Mentioned in the Episode: --Pact for the Future --COP 26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference) --COP 30 (where KSR will be a UN rep….) --Planetary boundaries J. Rockstrom (et. al.) --Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds --Paris Agreement --Don't Look Up --Tobias Menely, The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice --Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode of "ThinkFuture," I dig into the eternal struggle every creator faces: making what you love versus what the crowd wants. Picture a Venn diagram—one circle's your passion project as a content creator (think podcaster, TikToker, artist), the other's what goes viral with millions of views. Problem is, they rarely overlap! I talk about how creators pour their hearts into work that often stays unseen, while algorithms push crowd-pleasers—stuff that's made to go viral, sometimes even using AI to predict what'll pop off. But should artists have to compromise their vision just to get noticed? I say nah—there's a better way. We need smarter algorithms, search engines, and AI that can connect awesome, unique content with the right audience without forcing creators to chase trends. It's time for tech to step up and make those Venn circles overlap, so great work doesn't stay hidden and fans don't miss out. YouTube crew, let's dream up a future where creators and consumers actually connect!---brought to you by polyscopemedia: https://polyscopemedia.com

In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction—only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, KSR has established a conceptual space as dedicated to sustainability as his own beloved Village Homes in Davis, California. All of that, though, only prepared the ground for Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020), his vision of a sustained governmental and scientific rethinking of humanity's fossil-burning, earth-warming ways. In only five years, it may have become the most influential work of climate fiction ever—perhaps right up there with Uncle Tom's Cabin in its thoroughly shocking ability to jump into the political fray. Flanked by Novel Dialogue's John Plotz, KSR's friend and ally Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (celebrated eco-critic and UC Davis professor) asks him to reflect on the book's impact. He brushes aside the doom and gloom of tech bros forecasting the death of our planet and hence the necessity of a flight to Mars: humans are not one of the species doomed to extinction by our reckless combustion of the biosphere. However, survival is not the same as thriving. The way we are headed now, “the crash of civilization is very bad. And ignoring it…is not going to work.” Mentioned in the Episode: --Pact for the Future --COP 26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference) --COP 30 (where KSR will be a UN rep….) --Planetary boundaries J. Rockstrom (et. al.) --Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds --Paris Agreement --Don't Look Up --Tobias Menely, The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice --Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction

In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction—only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, KSR has established a conceptual space as dedicated to sustainability as his own beloved Village Homes in Davis, California. All of that, though, only prepared the ground for Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020), his vision of a sustained governmental and scientific rethinking of humanity's fossil-burning, earth-warming ways. In only five years, it may have become the most influential work of climate fiction ever—perhaps right up there with Uncle Tom's Cabin in its thoroughly shocking ability to jump into the political fray. Flanked by Novel Dialogue's John Plotz, KSR's friend and ally Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (celebrated eco-critic and UC Davis professor) asks him to reflect on the book's impact. He brushes aside the doom and gloom of tech bros forecasting the death of our planet and hence the necessity of a flight to Mars: humans are not one of the species doomed to extinction by our reckless combustion of the biosphere. However, survival is not the same as thriving. The way we are headed now, “the crash of civilization is very bad. And ignoring it…is not going to work.” Mentioned in the Episode: --Pact for the Future --COP 26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference) --COP 30 (where KSR will be a UN rep….) --Planetary boundaries J. Rockstrom (et. al.) --Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds --Paris Agreement --Don't Look Up --Tobias Menely, The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice --Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction—only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, KSR has established a conceptual space as dedicated to sustainability as his own beloved Village Homes in Davis, California. All of that, though, only prepared the ground for Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020), his vision of a sustained governmental and scientific rethinking of humanity's fossil-burning, earth-warming ways. In only five years, it may have become the most influential work of climate fiction ever—perhaps right up there with Uncle Tom's Cabin in its thoroughly shocking ability to jump into the political fray. Flanked by Novel Dialogue's John Plotz, KSR's friend and ally Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (celebrated eco-critic and UC Davis professor) asks him to reflect on the book's impact. He brushes aside the doom and gloom of tech bros forecasting the death of our planet and hence the necessity of a flight to Mars: humans are not one of the species doomed to extinction by our reckless combustion of the biosphere. However, survival is not the same as thriving. The way we are headed now, “the crash of civilization is very bad. And ignoring it…is not going to work.” Mentioned in the Episode: --Pact for the Future --COP 26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference) --COP 30 (where KSR will be a UN rep….) --Planetary boundaries J. Rockstrom (et. al.) --Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds --Paris Agreement --Don't Look Up --Tobias Menely, The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice --Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

The JWQ = The Just War Question(s). Rhetorical questions, mostly. In this episode, we cover the section on "Avoiding War" in the Catechism. I'm just sayin': It could be explained better! I want a Venn diagram!Are you interested in war and peace? Do you want to read one of the greatest literary works of Western civilization with the support of a live class -- and the accountability that comes with it? This summer, put down your phone and tackle some serious reading with us! Ellen is teaching a live class on The Iliad. There will be so many themes we'll be discussing that will allow us to really examine and ponder more deeply the major topics that are discussed on this channel, but this time through poetry, not podcasting. Hope you can join us!The Iliad Summer Course for Adults: We start June 3rd! Go here for more information and to enroll:https://courses.teachtothetext.com/p/...Ellen teaches online middle and high school classes in classical literature, composition and creative writing. (She does NOT critique the Catechism in front of kids, though she does introduce them to BOTH traditions in the Church: Gospel Nonviolence and "Just War"!)Find her over at: www.teachtothetext.comFind CAM here:  https://catholicsagainstmilitarism.comRSS feed: http://www.buzzsprout.com/296171​Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/CAMpodcastFind CAM here: https://catholicsagainstmilitarism.comRSS feed: http://www.buzzsprout.com/296171​Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/CAMpodcast

A VAR személyében lelepleztük a hét kamuját, utánamentünk, miért hallgathat a teljes állami médiakonglomerátum egy felcsúti lesgólról, sőt, egészen odáig jutottunk, hogy ha az MLSZ nem veszi komolyan a saját portékáját, akkor nem biztos, hogy nagy baj, ha mi is a helyén kezeljük. Elemeztük a Bodø/Glimt csodálatos EL-menetelését, egy új rovatban ráadásul mindezt ráeresztettük a magyar futball általános közérzetére is. Végül szóba került a Fradi önálló médiaépítése, és egy kellemetlen, mégis fontos kérdés: mi marad a sajtó szerepe, ha normává válik, hogy egy klub csak a saját maga által föltett kérdésekre hajlandó válaszolni?

A VAR személyében lelepleztük a hét kamuját, utánamentünk, miért hallgathat a teljes állami médiakonglomerátum egy felcsúti lesgólról, sőt, egészen odáig jutottunk, hogy ha az MLSZ nem veszi komolyan a saját portékáját, akkor nem biztos, hogy nagy baj, ha mi is a helyén kezeljük. Elemeztük a Bodø/Glimt csodálatos EL-menetelését, egy új rovatban ráadásul mindezt ráeresztettük a magyar futball általános közérzetére is. Végül szóba került a Fradi önálló médiaépítése, és egy kellemetlen, mégis fontos kérdés: mi marad a sajtó szerepe, ha normává válik, hogy egy klub csak a saját maga által föltett kérdésekre hajlandó válaszolni?

*DISCLAIMER* This episode covers adult topics that are not intended for young ears.   260. Sex After Cancer with Dr. Kris Christiansen   James 1:19 (NIV) My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,   **Transcription Below**   Questions We Discuss: What is common mis-information that you want to set straight as it relates to cancer and sex? If someone is walking their own cancer journey right now, what would you advise them to both do and avoid doing so that they can still enjoy the healthiest sex life possible with their spouse? What hope do you have to share with people who have battled cancer and still desire to connect intimately with their spouse?   Dr. Kris Christiansen is a board-certified family physician who specializes in sexual medicine. She attended medical school and completed her residency in family medicine at the University of Minnesota. She practiced full spectrum family medicine for 10 years and then pursued additional training to specialize in sexual medicine. She works as a sexual medicine specialist at two different clinics in the twin cities.   Her clinical interests include both male and female sexual dysfunction, and she loves working with individuals and couples to restore an important part of life. Dr. Christiansen is involved with teaching medical students and residents at the University of Minnesota Medical School, and she has presented at multiple local, national, and international medical conferences. She is involved with the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health (ISSWSH) and serves on committees, collaborates with other experts to publish articles for medical journals, and edits informational articles for the society's new patient facing website. She is passionate about teaching patients, students, and colleagues about the importance of sexual health and well-being. In her free time, she started her own business called Intimate Focus which provides information and quality products to enhance and restore sexual health and wellness. She also enjoys shopping, hiking, and spending time with her family.   Dr. Kris Christiansen's Website   Previous Episodes featuring Dr. Kris Christiansen on The Savvy Sauce: 215 Enriching Women's Sexual Function, Part One with Dr. Kris Christiansen 216 Enriching Women's Sexual Function, Part Two with Dr. Kris Christiansen   Additional Place to Find More Episodes from The Savvy Sauce Related to This Topic: One-Stop Shop for Marriage and Intimacy Resources   Dr. Kris Christiansen's Recommended Websites for Sexual Health: The Menopause Society Mayo Clinic National Institutes of Health International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health American Urological Association International Society of Sexual Medicine Sexual Medicine Society of North America American Cancer Society ISSWSH International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health SMSNA Sexual Medicine Society of North America  ISSM International Society of Sexual Medicine The Menopause Society   Find a provider: For a women's sexual health provider, pelvic floor physical therapist, (non-Christian) sex therapist ABCST American Board of Christian Sex Therapists (for a Christian sex therapist)   Thank You to Our Sponsor: Leman Property Management Company   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website   Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and subscribing to this podcast!   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)   Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”    Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”    Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”    Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”    John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”    Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   **Transcription**   Music: (0:00 – 0:09)   Laura Dugger: (0:10 - 1:22) Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host, Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.    Leman Property Management Co. has the apartment you will be able to call home, with over 1,700 apartment units available in Central Illinois.   Visit them today at lemanproperties.com or connect with them on Facebook.    Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message.   Not many people specialize in the same thing as our returning guest for today, Dr. Kris Christiansen. She specializes in sexual medicine, and today she's going to provide clarity, information, and direction for how to maximize sexual pleasure with our spouse after one receives a cancer diagnosis. Here's our chat.   Welcome back to The Savvy Sauce, Dr. Christiansen.   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (1:23 - 1:30) Well, thank you so much, Laura. We had so much fun last time, and I'm looking forward to this conversation again today.   Laura Dugger: (1:31 - 1:57) Likewise. I feel the same way. And it really wasn't that long ago that you were on The Savvy Sauce two times, so I'll make sure and link to both of those episodes in the show notes for today.   But hopefully everybody's already well acquainted with you, and that's why we're just kind of diving right into our topic today. So, for starters, how did this topic of sex after cancer become an interest of yours to study?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (2:00 - 2:32) Well, so Laura, my job as a sexual medicine physician is that I work with both men and women and helping them with their sexual lives when they have problems or whatever. So, cancer is often a big part of that. So, through my journey with work, I've just developed a significant interest in learning how to really care for people to help restore this important part of life.   Laura Dugger: (2:33 - 2:52) Absolutely, because a lot is taken away when somebody gets that awful diagnosis, and so I'm very grateful for people like you who are experts. But is there any common misinformation that you would like to set straight as it relates to cancer and sex?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (2:55 - 6:42) Well, interesting you say that, because there is so much misinformation out there just about sex in general. And then when we throw cancer in on top of that, it just makes it even more complicated. So, I think a common fear that people experience when they get that diagnosis that they hope they never hear, the C word, is that it's going to have a significant impact on their sexual intimacy.   And you know what, it can, but that doesn't mean that that chapter in life is closed. We just have to remember that sexual intimacy is much, much broader than just intercourse. So, if we can refer to this as PIV sex, penis in vagina sex, many people view it as kind of an all or none thing.   If they can't have vaginal intercourse or that PIV sex, then they don't want anything at all. Unfortunately, that just rules out or shuts out so much of sexual intimacy that God has intended for us. We may not be able to engage in the same activities for a time or even long term, but that doesn't mean that we can't connect.   So, if we try to remember that intimacy, sexual intimacy is all about giving and receiving pleasure, then there are so many more opportunities. So, we have to get beyond the fact that sexual intimacy, sexual intercourse is just vaginal intercourse because it's not. It's giving and receiving pleasure.   And however people want to connect or comfortable connecting, that they can still enjoy a very fruitful sex life. The other thing that is misunderstood and misconceptions is estrogen, vaginal estrogen, especially. Because, well, all women who enter menopause and you're in menopause for the rest of your life do experience some changes.   And it's so common that women experience the genital urinary syndrome of menopause. That's vaginal atrophy, or when the tissues get drier and thinner and there can be tearing and pain as well as bleeding and decreased sensation, decreased sensitivity. These things are common with aging, but oftentimes cancer treatments emphasize that or accelerate it or make it even worse.   And vaginal estrogen is really, really safe. It does not cause cancer. And most of the studies show that even in women who have breast cancer, that it doesn't cause recurrence.   So vaginal estrogen, being so safe, can really save our vaginas. And we're talking about vaginal health and bladder health. It's not just about sex, but it helps keep our bodies functioning properly and minimizing pain and discomfort.   So, if a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer and she's on treatment, then obviously we have to talk to the oncologist, make sure they're okay with that. But we get more and more studies showing it's safety and it's definitely effective and can help keep our tissues young.   Laura Dugger: (6:42 - 7:25) This is really helpful and brand new information to me. So someone, like you used that example, if they have breast cancer diagnosis and there's different types, but if they're doing the treatment where perhaps they go into early menopause or they have a hysterectomy or remove their ovaries and they even have an estrogen blocker so that they're not producing estrogen, for that type, you're still saying as long as you're working with the oncologist for that personal client, even in those situations, vaginal estrogen, which would be, I'm assuming, more of a cream or something you insert to the vagina, is that right? That that would be safe?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (7:25 - 10:55) So, where it gets a little gray is if the woman is taking an aromatase inhibitor, which is the estrogen blocker. So, it pretty much wipes all estrogen out of her system. There's a little more risk there.   So most definitely we need to double check with the oncologist. But it often comes down to quality of life. I have a patient who, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, I believe, in her early 60s.   And she came to me at the sexual medicine clinic and she was just miserable. I mean, when we think of vaginal dryness, you think of, okay, it's annoying. You use a lubricant, right, and it's going to be just fine.   In the beginning, yes, that's the case. But this genital urinary syndrome of menopause, GSM, gets worse with time, especially with those anti-estrogen treatments. And for this poor woman, she couldn't exercise.   She loved to go hiking. She loved to go skiing. And just any kind of movement was painful.   And we don't think of that. We kind of take it for granted. But for some women who really experience severe side effects of the breast cancer treatments and causing dryness and irritation, it affects everything.   And for her, we tried all the non-hormonal things first. They didn't work. And her oncologist gave us the blessing saying, you know, we tried it.   This is really important to you. Let's give it a try. And so, we've monitored her, and the vaginal estrogen hasn't caused any problems.   So, a couple points on that. With the vaginal estrogen, yes, it comes as a cream. There's a tablet, which is like a little pill with an applicator that you insert in the vagina.   There are vaginal inserts. They look like little caplets that you just insert with the finger. There's a vaginal ring.   But with the localized treatment, it's meant to just act locally, meaning just on the vaginal tissues. And, oh, package insert. So, you know, here we tell patients, vaginal estrogen is safe.   Don't worry. It's not going to cause cancer, heart attack, strokes, or blood clots. But then they go home.   They get their prescription. They open up the patient insert, package insert, and it talks about risks and bad things that can happen and side effects. Unfortunately, the FDA says we have to use the class labeling or the side effects that are associated with systemic estrogen.   And it automatically gets applied to the localized or vaginal estrogen treatments. So, patients go home, they read that, and they think we're lying to them. But, unfortunately, it's just very misleading because we have plenty of studies to show that vaginal estrogen doesn't cause those terrible things.   And it's very safe. So, they just have to trust us. And there are groups and people out there trying to work with the FDA to get that class labeling effect removed because it just scares everybody away from using estrogen, which can be so helpful.   Laura Dugger: (10:57 - 11:04) Wow, that is helpful. Is there any other common misinformation you want to make sure we don't overlook before we continue on?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (11:05 - 11:29) Well, I made a few notes here. No, I don't think so. Except that media, television, and all that other stuff that we see out there is so misleading when it comes to sexual intimacy.   Because sex in real life doesn't look like what you see in the movies. Yeah.   Laura Dugger: (11:30 - 11:45) Great, great point. And so, when somebody does get, like you said, that dreaded C-word diagnosis, what's a common path that they may experience as it affects them sexually?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (11:48 - 14:00) Well, so, the different cancers are so different and treatments are so different that it's hard to generalize for everybody. But, you know, first thing most people experience is fear. What's this mean for me?   What's this mean for my life, my family? Am I going to be around in five years? So, it's that fear.   And the initial part of that journey is often involved with meeting with lots of doctors, having all the tests, trying to figure out what's going on, what we're going to do. And sexual intimacy often isn't part of that first steps that they take. So, but when things kind of finally settle down, then those questions start popping up.   What does this mean? It's important to talk with your cancer journey, your cancer team, the oncology team to find out what's going on. And it's important to ask all these questions because doctors really aren't very good about asking about sexual health and what that means to you.   Oncologists, generally speaking, they want to treat the cancer and their job is done when the cancer is treated, under control, gone, whatever. And they've done a good job. However, so many of us are just left afterwards saying, okay, thanks, cancer's gone, but now what?   And so, it's a matter of really trying to figure out what's important over time, learning what's going to work and what's not. And know that there are people out there to help you and that want to help you if it's not going as planned. You know, I just want to reiterate that people really need to advocate for themselves and they need to ask questions.   And if they're not getting the answers that they want, don't give up because there are people, organizations, information out there that can be helpful. So rather than just worrying about what's next, seek help.   Laura Dugger: (14:02 - 14:18) That's really great advice. And I think this may be an appropriate place to pause and just get some of those recommended places. Because if somebody, this is new to them and they don't know where to turn, do you have any places or websites off the top of your mind that you would recommend?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (14:20 - 15:41) Well, so cancer.org, the American Cancer Society has a lot of resources on there. When it comes to menopause-type symptoms and such, menopause.org is the Menopause Society, which has a lot of information. And a website called PROSAYLA, it's P-R-O-S-A-Y-L-A.com, is a website that's managed by ISHWISH.   We've got all these acronyms. The International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health. So that is my go-to.   Okay, so that's the organization where there's so much research and science and such happening. And the PROSAYLA.org or prosayla.com, either one works, is a website where there are several articles written by experts in the field. So, these are articles backed by science.   It's not just somebody's opinion or somebody's blog. And I know there's an article on there about sex or cancer and sexuality. So, some generalities and some other references on that site too.   Laura Dugger: (15:42 - 15:51) Okay, that is super helpful information. We'll make sure and add links to those places as well. Anything else that you want to make sure we don't miss?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (15:52 - 17:36) Well, when we talk about sexual concerns or sexual problems, we always try to approach it from a biopsychosocial aspect. Because those three different entities all play a big role in what works well and what doesn't. So, from the biological section, that's pain, medications, nerve problems, chronic medical problems.   So obviously cancer plays a big role in that. And with cancer treatments and such, pain may be part of that, nausea, fatigue. And so, we just don't feel the same going through these treatments because it's really hard.   As far as the psych bubble, I'm usually referencing a Venn diagram here. Psychological, so when we experience anxiety or depression or performance anxiety, that plays a big role. So, we need to take a step back and realize that what happens up here in our brain has a huge impact on how our bodies function physically.   And then as far as the social aspect, that's our relationships, our interpersonal relationships with our partner, our spouse, with our family and how things are going on at work. A cancer diagnosis and treatment can affect all of those. And so, it's not just a magic pill to improve your libido because if we don't treat all these other things, people continue to struggle with their sexual function.   Laura Dugger: (18:01 - 19:46) Duplexes, studios and garden style options located in many areas throughout Pekin. In Peoria, a historic downtown location and apartments adjacent to the OSF Medical Center provide excellent choices. Check out their brand-new luxury property in Peoria Heights overlooking the boutique shops and fine dining on Prospect.   And in Morton, they offer a variety of apartment homes with garages, a hot downtown location and now a brand-new high-end complex near Idlewood Park. Their beautiful, spacious apartments with private garages in a quiet but convenient location await you in Washington. And if you're looking in Canton, don't miss Village Square Apartments.   Renters may be excited to learn about their flexible leases, pet-friendly locations and even mini storage units available in some locations. Leman Property Management Co. has a knowledgeable and helpful staff, including several employees with over 30 years working with this reputable company. If you want to become a part of their team, contact them about open office positions.   They're also hiring in their maintenance department, so we invite you to find out why so many people have chosen to make a career with them. Check them out on Facebook today or email their friendly staff at Leasing@LemanProps.com. You can also stop by their website at lemanproperties.com.   That's LEMANproperties.com. Check them out and find your place to call home today.    Also, Dr. Kris, are there any certain cancers or treatments that have the most detrimental impact on a person's sex life?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (19:48 - 23:15) We know that cancers that affect the breast, for women, but men too get breast cancer, and also the genital area have the biggest impact. We've talked a fair amount about breast cancer. Many of the treatments for breast cancer result in early menopause.   If a woman is premenopausal when this happens, menopause can have a definite impact. The treatments can cause the pain and dryness and decrease sensitivity. Also, if surgery is involved in a mastectomy, it can affect our own body self-image.   From a more physical standpoint too, when we have the mastectomy and those nerves are cut, it decreases the sensitivity. For a lot of women, breast stimulation is really important as part of their sexual play. If now her breasts are gone and she can't feel anything when her husband is touching her breasts, that can be a really hard adjustment.   Any cancers that affect the genital area, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, or anal rectal cancer for both men and women, and prostate cancer for men, those all have a huge impact. In addition to working with a lot of women who have breast cancer and overcoming and improving those areas, I work with a lot of men who have prostate cancer. Those treatments usually result in erection problems and urinary incontinence, which can be hard to deal with.   Men who have a prostatectomy, so if they have their prostate removed, then 100% of them are going to have erectile dysfunction in the beginning. It's going to take time for those nerves to recover, and it may take up to two years to see that full recovery. In those first few months when I'm working with men, I'm trying to be their cheerleader, saying, don't lose hope, don't give up, because this is going to get better.   It just takes time for those nerves to regrow. In the process, though, it is important to do whatever we can to make sure that that tissue stays healthy. Remember that the penis is actually muscle, muscle tissue, smooth muscle.   If we don't use a muscle for several months, atrophy sets in, which is a bad thing. With atrophy, the penis can shrink in size, and scar tissue potentially can set in, and it just makes that recovery less optimal than what it would have been. Trying to maintain the blood flow during those first few months or first year is really helpful.   Just to help maintain the blood flow and the oxygen to help keep the tissues healthy, so when the tenders do recover as best as they're going to, we get the best outcome.   Laura Dugger: (23:16 - 23:36) This may be an ignorant question, but then if erectile issues are present during that first time period, but it's crucial to have the blood flow to that area, what can men do to increase blood flow there, even if erection is difficult or impossible?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (23:36 - 25:01) That's a great question. Taking a medication like Viagra or Cialis. Cialis is my favorite because it stays in the system for a good 36 to 48 hours every time you take it.   If you're just taking a low dose every day, it just encourages a little bit of that blood flow every day. Using a vacuum device, which I just happen to have one right here, looks like this. A penis goes inside the cylinder, we create a vacuum or suction, and it pulls the blood flow in.   It's not the most sexy thing, but using it and using the vacuum device several times a week just to get that blood flow going is a very helpful way to keep the tissues healthy. Getting an erection with the vacuum doesn't get those arousal-type feelings, so it looks a little weird, but it does work. For men who want to use this for sexual activity, you can get the erection within the tube, and then it comes with these tight rings that are stretched over the edge of the cylinder.   Once you get the full erection within the tube, you slide that ring off to maintain the erection.   Laura Dugger: (25:04 - 25:14) That's incredible just to pause and think of God's grace and these inventions and how incredible that there are solutions. Please continue, but I find that encouraging.   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (25:16 - 27:39) There are all kinds of encouraging things, but if you're in the middle of this journey, it can be sometimes hard to keep going when you're not getting the results that you want to. But we believe in a big God, and he created sexual intimacy, and it's a gift. Other ways to help manage erectile dysfunction and a couple other show-and-tell things here.   This medication is called Muse. The actual medication is a pellet that comes preloaded in this applicator. You insert it in the tip of the penis, the medication gets absorbed, and 10 minutes later, magic happens.   I don't prescribe this very often because it's really, really expensive, a little harder to find. But the advantage to this medication is that it doesn't need the nerves to work, whereas the medications like Viagra and Cialis, they need the nerves. Guys usually kind of turn white when I pull this out.   For our listeners, I'm holding an insulin syringe and needle. There is such a treatment where you can actually inject a tiny amount of medicine directly into the penis, and it will give you an erection. I tell men that with the pills like Viagra and Cialis, just in general with ED, it works in about 60% of men.   We can get this to work, the injections to work, in 90-95%. It's such a tiny needle that men say it feels like a poke or a pinch once they get past that initial shock that they think is going to hurt. The usual response is, oh, that wasn't so bad, and it's very effective.   This can work within four to six weeks, so whenever your surgeon says it's okay to engage in sexual activity again, this will work. Then last but not least is a penile implant. That's surgery, and that you have to wait at least a year, if not two, after the prostate surgery.   That works in 99.99%. Wow.   Laura Dugger: (27:40 - 27:56) We were focusing a lot on men for that one. Is there any medication or any other injections or anything like that for women, other than the vaginal cream or different ways to get estrogen in the vagina?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (27:58 - 31:15) Yes, we've got all kinds of treatments. If a woman has breast cancer, or for whatever reason we want to avoid hormones as much as possible, then generally we're starting with a vaginal moisturizer, which is different than a lubricant. A lubricant is just for sexual activity and just to make things slipperier and feel better.   That often helps in the beginning, but as the GSM or the atrophy continues, the lubricant isn't enough. A moisturizer, think of like a facial moisturizer or a moisturizer for your hand, in order for it to work, you have to use it regularly, which is probably at least three times a week. These moisturizers can come in forms of a liquid that gets injected.   They're little capsules that you can insert. Reveri is a hyaluronic acid suppository, which you insert in the vagina and over time that can be really helpful. One of my favorites is this Rosebud Everyday Balm.   It's a really nice balm that you can put on the tissues inside the lips and inside the vagina. It's just really, really soothing. Again, you've got to use these things regularly.   It will take a good two months at least to see the full effect, so it doesn't work right away. Just like with the guys where they've got to be patient with the nerves, we have to be persistent and patient with things that can work. A vaginal moisturizer is really helpful.   A lubricant for sexual activity. There are over-the-counter and prescription medications that can help with arousal and orgasm. There are two approved medications for the treatment of low libido in premenopausal women.   One is Addi, which is a pill that you take every day, also known as the pink pill. Another treatment is Vilece, which is an injection. It comes in a pen, so you never see the needle and really don't feel the needle.   You give it to yourself about 45 minutes to an hour before sexual activity. Both of these medications are working on the brain chemistry because the brain is the biggest sex organ in the body. It's the most important sex organ.   It works on the brain chemistry and improving the dopamine and norepinephrine and the good sex positive hormones. Like I said, it's only approved for premenopausal women, but many of us do prescribe it for postmenopausal women. We have studies to show that it's safe and it's effective.   The drug companies didn't go through with all the rigmarole they had to do to get the FDA-approved indication for that. We've got all kinds of tricks up our sleeve.   Laura Dugger: (31:16 - 31:26) Absolutely. Just piggybacking on that, they wouldn't oftentimes follow through on all those studies, would you say primarily because of financial restraints?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (31:27 - 31:41) Totally. To get a medication approved for female sexual function, it's multi-million, if not a billion dollars. Studies and everything that needs to be done, it's crazy.   That's why these meds are so expensive.   Laura Dugger: (31:42 - 32:14) Then you also mentioned earlier bringing in the quality of life. There are so many options to consider, but such a personal basis. I had another question that arose.   You kind of were answering that because this one works with the brain chemistry. I'm thinking the body parts may be functioning and you can do different things to have an erection or be aroused with your genitalia, but how is desire affected with cancer?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (32:16 - 35:03) It's huge, unfortunately. Again, if we go back to that biopsychosocial model and for everything to work well, everything's got to be working well. If we have pain, of course that drives down desire.   We use the analogy of putting your hand on a hot stove. Pain with sex can hurt just as badly as that. I have women tell me it's 10 out of 10 pain feels like shards of glass.   Obviously, that's not pleasant. If we compare that to putting your hand on a hot stove, why in the world would you want to do that? We've got to take care of the pain.   When it comes to pain, it becomes imprinted in the brain and the body responds by just amplifying that pain. You've got more pain and you have less desire. Part of GSM or surgery or chemotherapy and other treatments, radiation, can affect the nerves.   We don't get those positive sensations and the arousal anymore. There's arousal in the brain as well as arousal in the genital area. If we're not getting that positive feedback that this just isn't fun anymore, it's hard to get enthused about engaging in that.   Sex therapy can be really helpful. Sex therapy isn't going to fix thin tissues, but a sex therapist is very skilled and trained at working with people and working with couples on trying to process this, working through the process and the changes that are happening. Sometimes it is a permanent change in sexual function, so there's grief involved.   Helping to process through some of that is really important. But again, if we take a step back and remember that sexual intimacy is more than just PIV sex, that there are all kinds of ways to be able to give and receive pleasure, as long as each person is comfortable with this. And moving beyond the thinking that, well, if I can't have intercourse, I'm not going to have anything at all, then that may mean you might not have anything at all for the rest of your life.   That makes me sad. We just have to take a step back, work through some of this, because it's a journey, it's a cancer journey, it's an aging journey, and try to make the most of it.   Laura Dugger: (35:04 - 36:32) I want to make sure that you're up to date with our latest news. We have a new website. You can visit thesavvysauce.com and see all of the latest updates. You may remember Francie Hinrichsen from episode 132, where we talked about pursuing our God-given dreams. She is the amazing businesswoman who has carefully designed a brand-new website for Savvy Sauce Charities, and we are thrilled with the final product. So, I hope you check it out.   There you're going to find all of our podcasts, now with show notes and transcriptions listed, a scrapbook of various previous guests, and an easy place to join our email list to receive monthly encouragement and questions to ask your loved ones so that you can have your own practical chats for intentional living. You will also be able to access our donation button or our mailing address for sending checks that are tax deductible so that you can support the work of Savvy Sauce Charities and help us continue to reach the nations with the good news of Jesus Christ. So, make sure you visit thesavvysauce.com.   What are some of those examples for someone if they can't have PIV sex anymore? What are ways that you encourage continuing to build intimacy and a knowing of one another and offering and receiving pleasure?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (36:34 - 41:17) Well, starting with making sure each person is on the same page as far as what they're comfortable with. Okay? Communication is key.   To be able to talk about what you want, what you desire, what your needs are, and listening to your partner say that same thing, trying to make no judgments and not forcing anybody into anything, but just so that we can help understand each other. And when it comes to actual giving and receiving pleasure, whether that's with manual stimulation, with your hands, with your fingers, or if you have a massager, oral stimulation, using a vibrator. And a vibrator can be really helpful for women in menopause, women dealing with cancer treatments, and also for men if they need a little extra help with the stimulation because their nerves aren't working so well.   A vibrator, using it together in the context of giving and receiving pleasure can help, just help with the response, help with the enjoyment, and make it a little more fun, as long as everybody's okay with that. Using a lubricant is really important. And a good lubricant, you want to use a good lubricant because some of the more common ones, unfortunately, have ingredients in them that can actually hurt or irritate.   And like KY and Astroglide, sorry to name names here, but they're basic water-based lubricants, have either glycerin, parabens, or propylene glycol in them, and those can irritate, so we want to try to avoid those. A silicone-based lubricant doesn't have those preservatives, and it stays slippery longer. Where we have to be careful with that is that if you're using a silicone tool, otherwise known as a vibrator, you don't want to use those together because it can ruin the tool.   And if the man is struggling with ED, using too much, especially of a silicone lubricant, can make it too slippery. And too slippery is not so good for him. Oil-based lubricants, they're very nice, except if you're using condoms, it will degrade the condom and create other problems, potentially.   Other ways to stimulate, manually, orally, and when women have pain with intercourse, I'm going to bring in another show-and-tell here, the pain is often coming from the vulva, not so much in the vagina. We talk about vaginal dryness and vaginal atrophy, but the part that's most sensitive is often just right inside the little lips here. And so, if we have terrible pain with penetration, we want to avoid that.   However, the whole surrounding vulvar area is very rich in nerves, can be very much stimulated, and it can feel really good, however each person is comfortable stimulating that area. And another fun fact is that this entire structure is the clitoris. You know, when we think of the clitoris, we think of the glands, this tiny little magic button right here, which, by the way, has 10,000 nerve endings in it.   It's incredible. But the legs, the legs are the cruise of the clitoris, as well as the bulbs. They come down on either side of the vagina.   So, the vagina is here. However, this part of the clitoris can easily be stimulated, so the legs of the clitoris can be easily stimulated, just inside the labia majora, or the outer lips. So, using a vibrator here can be really pleasurable, and you're avoiding the part that hurts.   So, stimulating externally the clitoris, the labia, and wherever else feels good can be very fun. And so, if you try to approach it may be like a game, making it fun and exploring each other's bodies so that you can really figure out ways to make the other person feel good or experience pleasure without causing pain.   Laura Dugger: (41:18 - 41:43) That's so great. And like you had mentioned, if they go see a Christian sex therapist, they would say the same thing as you to stop when there is pain, because it just makes it worse over time. And so, I love that you've given us other options, if that is the case.   Is there ever a time where orgasm is no longer possible after cancer?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (41:46 - 43:14) It's possible. Yes. Depending on the cancer and the treatment, that it can make it really difficult or even impossible to get there.   But that's where we want to not focus on orgasm as the ultimate goal, because if we engage in sexual activity with orgasm as the ultimate goal, your brain's not going to let you go there, whether it's the male or the female, either one, the brain is the biggest sex organ in the body. Just trying to go for the gold just won't let you get there. So, you have to relax and enjoy the journey regardless.   So even if the cancer or the treatment didn't necessarily affect orgasm or if it's just our brains, my encouragement is to approach a sexual encounter as an experience. Enjoy the experience. It's not a performance.   We don't want to perform because then we get in our head, and we get nervous and our muscles all tighten up. So, we don't want to perform. We want to enjoy the experience, and it can be very pleasurable.   Even if orgasm isn't part of the picture anymore, it doesn't mean you can't have fun and can't connect because you can.   Laura Dugger: (43:15 - 43:25) But then I guess also to offer the hope, if I ask it a different way, are there times that orgasm is still possible after a cancer diagnosis?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (43:27 - 44:01) Absolutely. We always have hope. We always have hope.   Just because you're diagnosed with cancer doesn't mean you're not going to be able to engage in PIV sex or be able to experience an orgasm because that's always a possibility. Don't focus on just getting to the big orgasm. You want to slow down, enjoy the journey, and oftentimes it will come.   There are medications that help with blood flow, that help with arousal and orgasm, and sometimes they can be helpful. Sometimes they're not, but usually it doesn't hurt to try them.   Laura Dugger: (44:02 - 44:26) There you go. That's a very helpful reminder. It's a piece of the puzzle, not the whole thing.   But if someone right now is walking through their own cancer journey, what else would you advise them both to do and to avoid doing so that they can still enjoy the healthiest sex life possible with their spouse?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (44:29 - 47:19) That's going to involve several pieces. One, first and foremost, maintain the communication about wants and desires, what hurts, what doesn't, what can we do, what do you want to try tonight? Maintaining the communication.   It's much better to prevent problems like the vaginal dryness and pain than to try to treat it after you've been dealing with it for years sometimes, or even months. If you have, say, breast cancer, just getting in the habit of using one of those vaginal moisturizers from the get-go even before the dryness starts can help prevent problems. Seeing a pelvic floor physical therapist can be really, really helpful.   A pelvic floor physical therapist is a physical therapist who specializes in these pelvic floor muscles that help support everything on the inside. And so if these muscles are too tight, causes pain, and if they're already too tight, doing tangles is the last thing that you want to do, because sometimes it means being able to relax them. Or women who have, who need pelvic radiation, say for uterine cancer, the gynecologic oncologist is usually really good about giving you a vaginal dilator and to use it, but they're not always really good at telling you exactly how to use it, how frequently and how long, so be sure and ask.   Because again, we want to maintain the integrity of the tissues, because it's better to maintain them than try to get it back. That's often quite hard. For guys, especially with prostate cancer, it means participating in that, we call it penile rehabilitation.   So, it's basically physical therapy for the penis. You know, its muscle, so we want to keep that muscle healthy and to help maintain healthy tissues. And just trying to be as good to ourselves as we can, giving ourselves and our partners grace when we need it, because it's a journey and it's not an easy one.   But we believe in a big God and he's there to help us through this and he delights when husband and wife can unite as one, whatever that looks like. And it makes him happy and he's there to try to keep this going for us.   Laura Dugger: (47:21 - 47:40) And you may have already answered this question with that, but I love how you're always encouraging and gentle and full of hope. So, any other hope that you want to share with anyone who's battled cancer or is in the midst of their journey, but they're still desiring to connect intimately with their spouse?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (47:47 - 48:33) Sometimes it means asking for help. So, for finding a provider, whether that's a therapist, a gynecologist, a sexual medicine provider, or even your pastor counselor to help you through this. In the show notes, we'll put in websites where you can find a provider because not everybody is educated.   Hardly anybody's educated on this, unfortunately. But there are people out there throughout the country, throughout the world, where you can find to help guide you on this journey. Don't suffer in silence.   We're here to help. So be sure to reach out so we can help you.   Laura Dugger: (48:33 - 48:50) That's so good, Dr. Christiansen. And are there any other proactive measures that all of us can take to set us up for a healthy sex life into aging or any diagnoses that we may get in the future?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (48:53 - 50:38) Well, treating our body like a temple, like God says. We have to take good care of ourselves. And just in general, going for your preventative visits and checking your cholesterol and your blood sugar and your blood pressure and screening for cancer so we can prevent them or catch them really early.   And it's so much easier to treat. But things like smoking and diabetes and being overweight and high blood pressure, high cholesterol, they impact sexual function very negatively, especially smoking. Guys are still surprised when I tell them, or I show them a picture of a cigarette with ashes that are kind of wilting off the end.   This is your penis. This is what happens with smoking. Okay.   So quitting smoking. And in women, we have those same little blood vessels and nerves that men do. And so not taking care of ourselves as far as weight, exercise and diabetes and all that stuff, that affects our sexual function, too.   So just making sure that we take a proactive stance on just taking really good care of our medical and our mental health because that's so important. And our spiritual health. Can't forget that, too.   Yeah. Just, you know, taking care of ourselves because aging does impact sexual function. As we get older, our endurance isn't quite what it used to be.   Certainly not as flexible as we used to be. Things kind of hurt. Achy joints and whatever.   So, the more we can take care of ourselves, the more we can enjoy that sexual intimacy, which does involve a little bit of physical exertion.   Laura Dugger: (50:39 - 51:03) Absolutely. Well, you've shared a lot of places where we can go to seek help. But I would love to know where we can continue to learn from you or a website where people can find out more of your offerings because you mentioned not many people are educated in this field or on this topic, but you are a great resource.   So where would you direct all of us after this chat?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (51:05 - 52:23) Well, I started my own business called Intimate Focus, Intimate-Focus.com. Where my goal is to offer education and quality products that people can use to help equip them and enhance sexual intimacy. As part of my clinical career where I see patients, we'd often talk about using a good lubricant or getting a vibrator to help with those nerves that just aren't quite as effective anymore.   And so many times they told me they were just not comfortable going to an adult store or they didn't want to purchase them on Amazon because it could be a shared account and kids or whatever may see what they're ordering. So, this is a private and secure site and I don't even know how to sell your email so don't worry, that's not going to happen. Where you can purchase good quality products, I vet them out myself to make sure that they don't contain the ingredients that I encourage women to avoid and no pictures with nudity or anything like that because I want it to be a comfortable space or at least as comfortable as we can make it for everybody.   Laura Dugger: (52:24 - 52:43) Wonderful. Well, I'll certainly link that in the show notes as well. And Dr. Christiansen, you are already a friend of The Savvy Sauce, so you know that we're called The Savvy Sauce because savvy is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so, as my final question for you today, what is your Savvy Sauce?   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (52:46 - 53:15) Well, you know, James in the Bible is a very practical kind of guy and I love his advice that we should all be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. And if we were all able to do that or at least just a little more of that, I think our world would be a much better place to live.   Laura Dugger: (53:16 - 53:42) This is so good. I cannot hear that verse enough and I just truly look so forward to the times that I get to spend with you. You are such a calming presence full of wisdom.   That's what we prayed for before we had the recording begin for today. And I am just overflowing with gratitude. So, thank you, Dr. Christiansen, for all that you've shared. Thank you so much for being my returning guest.   Dr. Kris Christiansen: (53:43 - 53:48) Well, thank you, Laura. This has been great. It's an honor to be on your show.   Laura Dugger: (53:50 - 57:32) One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term gospel before?   It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news.   Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves. This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved.   We need a savior. But God loved us so much, he made a way for his only son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with him.   That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus.   We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us. Romans 10:9 says, “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” So, would you pray with me now?   Heavenly Father, thank you for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to you. Will you clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare you as Lord of their life?   We trust you to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.   If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring him for me, so me for him. You get the opportunity to live your life for him. And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason.   We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So, you ready to get started? First, tell someone.   Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible.   I selected the Quest NIV Bible and I love it. You can start by reading the book of John. Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ.   I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you. We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read scripture that describes this process.   And finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, “In the same way I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.   And if you've already received this good news, I pray you have someone to share it with. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.

Send us a textMost agents are still trying to win on Instagram using strategies from 2021… and wondering why they're not getting results. This week, I sat down with Tessabella Jelten — real estate content coach, marketing genius, and Instagram ninja — to break down exactly what's working RIGHT NOW in 2025 to grow your audience, get more eyeballs on your content, and (most importantly) get more clients.We're not talking fluff. We're talking strategy that gets you DMs, leads, and closings — even with a small following.This episode is packed with gold for agents who want to finally break through the algorithm and get real traction on IG.If you want to:Know how often to post and what to postStop stressing about your follower countStart attracting the right clients on autopilot…you need this episode.

Oh what's that? It's 2025 and you did not come to play? Us neither.While SELLING OUT might have negative connotation when it comes to art, it can also be the exact thing to help you-- literally -- sell out your inventory. We happen to think products and commercialization can be a great option for funding your practice; but how do you do this in a way that still feels good to you (and your bank account)? The eternal question! Marisa shares with us her Venn diagram for finding your commercial sweet spot and the three of us get into what has and has worked for us when it comes to selling out-- in all the ways.Go forth and SELL OUT baby.

Take Our Podcast Listener Survey!Have you ever wondered what the key to healthy aging might be? In this fascinating episode, we explore the groundbreaking discovery of C15:0 - the first new essential nutrient in over 90 years - with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, author of "The Longevity Nutrient: The Unexpected Fat That Holds the Key to Healthy Aging." Discover how this unique saturated fat may help combat inflammation, stabilize cells, prevent iron overload, and even support brain health.You can find Stephanie at: Website | peer-reviewed C15:0 science | LinkedIn | Episode TranscriptIf you LOVED this episode, you'll also love the conversations we had with Matthew Park, Ph.D. about how aging immune systems affect cancer risk.Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the WheelVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount CodesJoin journalist Danielle Elliot as she explores why ADHD diagnoses are surging among women in the limited-series investigative podcast, "Climbing the Walls." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ever wish you knew what all the best business builders had in common? What talents contributed to their success? Well, that's exactly what the BP10 is all about! If you want to build a successful coaching business, you need to tune in!   We kick things off by explaining what BP10 stands for (Builder Profile 10) and how it identifies the top talents that successful business builders possess. We also share about our own top talents and how they influence our approaches to business, especially when it comes to building relationships and profitability. Spoiler alert: we have different strengths, but that's what makes our conversation so rich! We also discuss the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people—your personal "board of directors"—to fill in the gaps where you might not excel.   Whether you're contemplating starting your own business or looking to enhance your existing one, this episode is packed with tips and encouragement to help you leverage your unique strengths for success. So grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let's get building!

Ezúttal az egymilliós ársávban keresgéltünk olyan használt autókat, amiket magunknak is megvennénk. A fillérekből fenntartható városi minik és a családi használatra is alkalmas kombik, egyterűek mellett hobbi célra is választottunk sportos vagy veteránkorú típusokat, amik megvásárlása belefér a keretbe, a többi költséggel most is plusz kiadásként számoltunk. Engedtük, hogy elragadjanak az érzelmek, de reflexből figyelembe vettük a racionalitást is. Vajon az olaszok vagy a franciák nyerik ezt a kört?

Psychiatrist and author Dr. Judith Joseph joins Lesley to unpack "high-functioning depression," a hidden struggle affecting many high achievers who seem successful externally yet feel emotionally exhausted inside. Discover why driven individuals often overlook signs of burnout, the surprising prevalence of anhedonia (lack of joy), and Dr. Joseph's practical framework—the Five Vs—for understanding and enhancing your personal happiness. If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co.And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.In this episode you will learn about:How to spot signs of high-functioning depression and overcome anhedonia.Why your emotions, including joy and anhedonia, directly influence those around you.The role of trauma, people-pleasing, and over-functioning in our mental health.Dr. Judith's biopsychosocial model for understanding your own unique path to happiness.Easy ways to reduce burnout by shifting from constant "doing" to mindful "being."Episode References/Links:Dr. Judith Joseph Website - https://drjudithjoseph.comDr. Judith Joseph Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/drjudithjosephHigh Functioning Book by Dr. Judith Joseph - https://a.co/d/9sFHkQWAnhedonia Assessment Quiz - https://drjudithjoseph.com/anhedoniaquizGuided Meditation by Deepak Chopra - https://beitpod.com/deepakchopraGuest Bio:Judith Joseph MD, MBA, is a board-certified psychiatrist, researcher, and award winning content creator who specializes in mental health and trauma. She is chair of the women in medicine initiative at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, clinical assistant professor in child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Chief Investigator at Manhattan Behavioral Medicine, New York City's Premier Clinical Research Site. Dr. Judith was awarded by the US House of Representatives with a 2023 Congress Proclamation Award for her social media advocacy and mental health research. In 2024 she was named a top 6 NAACP Mental Health Champion and a VeryWell Mind top 25 Thought leader. In 2024 She taught a Workplace Mental Health Course to The Executive Office Of The President of The United States of America. In addition to being a notable public speaker at prestigious institutions, Dr. Judith is a sought after on-air expert who has been featured on Oprah Daily's The Life You Want Series, Good Morning America, The Wendy Williams Show, Tamron Hall, Today Show, CNN News With Anderson Cooper, The Mel Robbins Podcast, and more. She recently received a 2020 and 2023 Share Care Award for her MedCircle series on PTSD and a Good Morning America investigative special on ADHD. Social media's favorite psychiatrist, Dr. Judith boasts more than 880,000 followers across platforms, a 30% increase in less than a year. Her Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube videos receive more than 15 million views per month. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/Resources:·        Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-g·        Lesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/·        Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/·        Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/·        Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQ·        Profitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/ Follow Us on Social Media:·        Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/·        The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-g·        Facebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilates·        LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/·        The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Dr. Judith Joseph 0:00  I think the more you practice this, the more exposure you get to this, not only do you change, but the people around you change. I always say Anhedonia is contagious, but joy is contagious too.Lesley Logan 0:13  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.Lesley Logan 0:55  Ladies, and the few good men who listen, hi. This is amazing. This is exactly an episode I wanted to have since last fall. We had a whole topic on Anhedonia, and I got so many of you reaching , going oh my God, tell me more. So, I found an expert. Get your notebooks out. If you're driving, you'll hit, you'll, just listen, because you want to listen again, you're going to take some notes, and also you're going to want to get this book. So Dr Joseph's book is going to be out April 8th, and so you, normally, I don't preview that. I let you fall in love with her and then tell you, but I'm already in love. I'm going to make sure I get my hands on a copy of this book. So definitely check it out, but here, for you to get the help that you deserve and some amazing validation of who you are and what you're going through, here is Dr. Judith Joseph. Lesley Logan 1:40  All right, Be It babe. I am honored, truly. I heard about our guest today through one of my favorite people in this world, Amy Lavell, and so Dr. Judith Joseph is our guest today. She has a story to tell us, and also has done so much research, and I wanted her on the show because my high-functioning peeps, I see you, we keep talking about not being a perfectionist, not over committing, not do all this stuff, but I thought we'd have an expert come in and talk about the journey of what that does to us and how we can get out of it. So Dr. Judith Joseph, thanks for being here. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you rock at? Dr. Judith Joseph 2:12  Thank you so much, Lesley. I'm a board certified psychiatrist. I am based in New York City, and I am high-functioning. AF. All of my followers know it. I do a gazillion things on top of being a single mom. I run a lab, content creation, podcaster, author of my book High-Functioning, conducting the first ever study in the world on high-functioning depression, which is something that you know is not really recognized at all in medical literature. But I don't think the depression of our days is our grandma's depression. I think there's a whole new beast out there, and many of us don't even know that we're walking around with it. So I'm trying to demystify that and to bring useful tools to heal.Lesley Logan 2:56  Yeah, that's why I was so intrigued by you. Because what I hear all the time is like, well, I'm not depressed because I get up every day. I do 17 other things, but there's no joy in it. And so can we maybe, maybe take a step back and figure out, like, what is high-functioning depression, and what are the maybe some of the signs that we might be having it?Dr. Judith Joseph 3:15  Well, you said two really great things. You said, listen, we're still getting up. We're doing our stuff. It doesn't look like anything's wrong. And you also said something that's really key, that there's just no joy in it. And actually, the two are connected. So when you go to a doctor or therapist, they're going to pull out this bible of psychiatry called the DSM, and they're going to go through checklists. And according to the DSM, the bible of psychiatry, Diagnostic Statistical Manual, if you don't meet criteria for a lack of functioning or significant distress, but you have all these symptoms of depression, like sometimes you have poor concentration, poor sleep, feeling on edge. That's what we call psychomotor agitation or restlessness, low mood, anhedonia, which is a lack of joy and interest and pleasure in things that once used to light us up, but you don't meet that box of lack of functioning or significant distress. They're going to be like, well, you know, come back and see me when things are really falling apart. The problem with that is that there are tons of people out there who have these symptoms of depression but are still functioning and over functioning because they're the rock, right? They're the mom, they're the boss, they're the teacher, you know, they're the doctor, the nurse, that people depend on, so you can't fall apart. So how do they cope? They busy themselves. They people-please and, eventually, something's going to give either they physically burn out, they mentally burn out, they have a major depressive disorder where they actually do stop functioning. They medicate with substances or with alcohol or self-soothe by shopping too much and going broke, right? Something's gonna give. So why are we waiting for people to lose functioning to do something about this? Why aren't we preventing it? And that's where the research comes in.Lesley Logan 4:56  Oh my gosh. I think first of all, a bunch of people just were like, uh, I have all these things. That's me. I meet a lot of women who are doing all these things, and yet they don't have that joy, that anhedonia that you mentioned, and they try to get help, and the help is either medications that they don't need right now because they're not fully depressed, or they're being told to come back later, and that's so frustrating to not feel heard, and then you just keep doing because you're like, okay, well, maybe I need to do this other seven things. Maybe these things will be the thing that makes me feel better. So I know that people feel so seen, and also I really hope that this becomes the thing people can get diagnosed with, because in that bible, because it does feel like, as you said, this the depression we're having now is not from grandma, because it's true, I don't have children, but if I just were to take off for a week, my team could do a lot, but at some point I need to, like, show up, like the wheels don't spin without, you know, so , it does, it can feel like there's extra pressure on the women who are going through this. How did you get involved in this topic? Were you just seeing it as a bunch of people coming through, or is it something that you went through? Like, can you tell us a little about how you got intrigued by this? Dr. Judith Joseph 6:06  Yeah, actually, it was during 2020, I was given this talk from the same desk that I'm talking from right now, and it was a large hospital system, and it was April, and people didn't know what the pandemic was going to do. They, I mean, we didn't know anything then, and I was called in to really give people the tools to get through a tough time. And halfway through the talk, I realized, I think I'm depressed, but here I am at my desk with my gazillion degrees behind me, instructing doctors and nurses and healthcare professionals on how to heal. And I didn't even realize that I was depressed because I was a doer, you know, and I had this saying, are you a human doing, or are you a human being, right? And I think a lot of us, that's our coping mechanism, at least for me. I'm an immigrant. I come from scarcity. It was never an option of giving up. You had to, you know, if times are tough, you work harder. If you go through something like a breakup, then you just got to take on more tasks at work, you know. And a lot of us cope with our pain by busying ourselves by doing versus just being and feeling and over time that wears on you. And I found myself at that moment in time during this Zoom talk, having that epiphany, and then led me to wonder, how many people on the other side of the Zoom feel like me, because there are a lot of nurses, a lot of doctors in healthcare. Then I started looking into, you know, some I'm in Manhattan, so a lot of my clients are performers, and they went through a really hard time during the pandemic, being out of work, and then the strikes and all that. And many of them, even though they were feeling depressed, they couldn't show it. They had to mask it, because they have to perform. They have to light up a room. So I just started looking at all these different industries, moms, you know, who have to do so many things. They have to go to work, they have to take care of their jobs. They have to take care of their kids. All these people masking these symptoms and just not slowing down and doing instead of feeling and healing. And I just thought, I'm onto something. So I created a reel on socials in 2022 and it went viral. It's been seen over 10 million times around the world. And I had people reaching out to me from different countries saying, I have that. I have anhedonia. This is me. How did you know? Like people were joking, do you have a camera in my home? That's me. Lesley Logan 8:23  Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I like, as we're sitting here talking, we're two weeks into the new year, so the before, you're, you know, we're taking a few months before everyone's hearing this. And I have friends who are in LA. I lived in LA for 14 years, and, you know, I checked on my friends where I live, where I lived, is still there, because it's kind of in the total middle. And so they're still going to work. Their jobs still expect them to do the thing that they're supposed to do. So they're showing up and doing all the things, and I'm showing up doing all the things, and I'm kind of like, so do we, this is how we just, like handle everything now. We just like keep doing and I think part of it is like it feels normal. And a lot of times we, when there's tough times, we want to do the thing that feels normal, because we we don't want to experience the other thing. But I also think not a lot of us have the privilege in life to not keep doing when stuff is going on, so then you're kind of stuck. You have to keep going, because the world like you are, that's how you get paid, that's how you make a living, that's how all these, that's what people expect of you. And also, you know, there's this underlying currently you can't really deal with so it feels like what you're onto is something that will continue to be happening, but we need to be able to recognize it, so we can label it, so that we can actually go and address it, right? Because we can't just keep living like high functioning, you know, we can't just keep doing that depression. Dr. Judith Joseph 9:42  Yeah, you're absolutely right. I saw this meme, hilarious meme, where it was like, I told my mom I was depressed, and she said, boy, we broke. We don't got time for that, you know. And I thought it was so funny, because you're right when you go through hard times and you don't have the privilege to slow down or others depend on you even if you are economically sound, but others depend on you. You just don't feel like you have that privilege to slow down. You feel like, well, let me just do because that's what I've always done, but you're absolutely spot on, something's gonna give either your body breaks down. And I think that's why a lot of women have these autoimmune conditions, because women, particularly are like they just have so much on their plate. There's so much expected of them. They're not allowed to seem deflated because someone else is going to take your position. Someone's going to say you're on your period, or you're going through menopause. You know, there's just so much on our plates that we don't feel like we can slow down and certain under represented groups, same way, they're just happy to be in the room. Certain industries, doctors, like, if a doctor says that they are experiencing depression in certain hospital systems, they have to report it to the state. I mean, like, there are certain industries that you just can't even say that you're struggling. So I think that if we allow ourselves to process pain, it's not saying that we have to stop everything, because that's like the worst nightmare for someone who's had function AF. It's about teaching them how to get back into their body, how to process their trauma, so that once you start to feel the pain, then you can also feel the joy. But if you continue to numb and you keep on doing you're not going to be able to feel the pain, but you're also not gonna be able to feel the joys in life that we are all, you know, built to enjoy.Lesley Logan 11:28  That's so, thank you for sharing that. I think , like it's, to feel, I have a yoga teacher who is like, you cannot have one thing without the other. Like in the world, we want balance, you cannot have love in this world and not have hate. If you get rid of the hate, you get rid of the love. If you want to only have peace, there is war. Otherwise, you wouldn't know what you're in. And so if you want to have joy in your life, you do have to also feel your pain. And I think also not many of us were really raised on how to feel our pain. If I cried in public, it's like, hey, don't do that like you learn to mask it or bury it. And you brought up women with autoimmune issues. It is insane. How many women I know with multiple autoimmune issues, and you start to go, okay, what is going on here is either that we actually are testing for it, or the life that we're living now is causing us to harm our bodies in ways that are not visible, and not even things we would choose to do, but because we just keep shoving and not getting the help we need, or even if you're trying to get help, not being heard to get help. It's causing a lot of issues I feel like cannot be reversed, and we're missing out on a lot of life, you know. And you mentioned something about getting into your body that I love, because I'm a Pilates instructor, and I believe if you get into your body, you know so much about yourself. For the people listening, what are ways that you help people get in their body? What are the ways, the tools that you've used? Dr. Judith Joseph 12:49  Well, I love this Venn diagram called the biopsychosocial model, and I teach my patients. I teach my clients. It's three bubbles, if you can imagine them overlapping, but those three bubbles are a nice representation of each of us, and I always say your happiness is not the same as my happiness. Know the science of your happiness because a lot of people out there, they're trying all these different things, and it doesn't work for them, but that's because they're basing it off of the science of someone else's happiness. But there is only ever going to be one you. There's only ever going to be one Lesley, ever. I mean, when I think about that, I get chills, because it's like you're so unique. So understand what your makeup is. Understand your bio, which is basically your past history, in terms of your family history, your current medical conditions, what are the medicines you take? What are the supplements you take? You know? You have a very unique biology. Understand your psychology. That's the psycho part of the biopsychosocial you have traumas that are different than my traumas, right? You have resilience factors that are different than my resilience factors. You have a different attachment style, possibly to mine, right? Or different strengths or weaknesses psychologically. And then, the social aspect, we're just saying, I live in New York, you live in Vegas, there are different environmental factors there, right? You probably eat different foods than me, or we have different movement routines. You may have a different work environment than me, right? Understand your relationships. Those are all the social things. So we all have unique factors. And if we were taught to understand these overlapping diagrams, we would understand the science of our own happiness, and we wouldn't be chasing after someone else's happiness. That's number one. And knowing about the uniqueness of your happiness, if you're someone who tends to have a lot of pent up trauma in your body, then I could tell you to eat as much kale as possible, but that's not going to treat your trauma, right? So in that case, I'm going to focus on the psychology bubble of that Venn diagram, and I'm going to say, let's try and process that trauma. We may have to do some 5-4-3-2-1, exercises with you, or some more trauma-focused work, like EMDR work or trauma-focused therapy, making you feel safe again, because that's something that trauma survivors, you know, really grapple with that sense of safety and psychological safety, right? But if you're someone who, on the biological end of things, has an autoimmune condition, has headaches and really intolerable physiological symptoms, I'm not going to be like, well, let's put you in a trauma workshop, right? I'm going to say, let's work with your nutritionist, let's work with your movement specialist, let's work with your autoimmune doctor, and let's see if we can bring down the levels of inflammation, right? If the social issue is the problem, let's say you're in a toxic work environment, where every time you walk into work, you're triggered. Your heart is racing. You have broken self-esteem because people are like, not kind to you, and this is your job that you depend on for your livelihood. I'm not going to say, well, you know, let's have you go see your cardiologist. I'm going, to fix that fight or flight sensation in your chest, I'm going to say, it's your work environment. Let's see if we get you more support at work or get you out of that environment. So everyone has different factors going on, and I think that makes us really unique and special, but it also complicates things a bit further. So I wanted to democratize this tool that is taught in all of medicine and let everyone have access to it so they can understand their unique workup and areas that they should really focus on first and their step to understanding the science of their own happiness. Lesley Logan 16:24  I love that and I do see that there's a challenge there, because we are kind of trained that if you ask the question, you should get an answer, and that answer should help you. But it is true. You know, we all have different needs, especially, and at different times. And I love the idea of the three bubbles, because you can evaluate for yourself, oh, it is more of the psychos. That's where I need to go get help. It is more of this. But I do love like defining our own happiness, which is not easy if you never explored that, if that wasn't something that we were invited to do or even feel. And so I think that where I feel my listeners struggle, where I get a lot of questions, is almost like, how do they know if they're happy? How do they know? Because they're so busy doing and they might even feel like the pain of stuff that's going on, but they're having a really hard time feeling what's happy also, because I think as women, specifically, we sometimes feel bad if I'm happy and they're going through something, I should put things around so people can't see that I'm happy. I should bring my happiness. I should come down. So, I mean, is there tips on how to know what makes you happy? Dr. Judith Joseph 17:30  Yes, and that is why I have a happiness lab in New York City. And a lot of people don't know this, but happiness researchers, we very rarely use that word happy. People are like mind-boggled when they hear that, because a patientwho will come in to see me for private practice will say, all I want to do is be happy. And so I wear two hats. I wear the research hat and then the private practice hat, where I do traditional therapy and medication, but the research hat is really trying to understand whether or not this person's getting happy or worse, and we use points in research. And so I developed this scale, the Anhedonia Rating Scale. Anhedonia means a lack of joy and pleasure. So basically, you want to know how many points you're getting in these basic pleasures in life. If you have like, high anhedonia and you're not enjoying things, then that's a problem. I love to use these quantitative ways because unlike, you know, let's say diabetes, right? If you go on for diabetes tests, you know where your glucose is, you know where your hemoglobin A1C is. But with mental health, it's kind of harder, like you don't have a test where you can look at and say, oh, I'm getting happier, right? But these quantitative measures, these tests, are really helpful. So you can go on my website, take the Anhedonia Quiz and see if you're getting points of joy. Lesley Logan 18:44  You have a quiz? Dr. Judith Joseph 18:45  Yes, I have an Anhedonia Quiz on my website, and you can see whether or not you're getting points of joy in life. And then what I ask is that people practice the five V's, because that's based on the science of your happiness. So the five v's are, number one is validation. A lot of us with high functioning we're always pushing down our feelings if they're negative. We only talk about the good. We don't like to talk about the bad. Someone says, how you're doing, oh, I'm great, and your house could literally be burning down, and you're saying, great, you know? So I want people to start learning how to accept their emotions, whether they be negative or positive, and there are many tools that I give in my book on how to validate, because people have a hard time with validation. Number two is venting. How do you express your emotions? And there are ways to do healthy venting, but there are ways to engage in unhealthy venting. I do a lot of content on, you know, narcissistic parents, and a lot of us had parents who trauma dumped on us when it was not appropriate. So I talk about how to vent in an appropriate way and the different creative ways to vent. You mentioned crying. You know, crying is something that a lot of people don't engage in because they think from childhood they were told to stop crying, you know, like you're a cry baby. But crying is actually a very healthy way to express emotions. And when you cry and you let a good cry, your body calms down, you feel relaxed, you feel more connected to you. The third V is values. And I say that values are things that don't have price tags. They are things that are priceless. So tap into things that, you know what and when you think at the end of the day, your last minutes of life, you're not going to be like, I wish I had that Gucci bag. You're going to be like, I wish I had five minutes with my loved ones, or I wish I had 10 minutes to do something that I always wanted to do, you know? So tap into those values. Try to get part of those values once a day. For me, it's learning and sharing my knowledge with my daughter, so, like, I love to learn black history and science, and I teach her because she wants to be a scientist. That makes me feel great, or when I volunteer and I offer my expertise to underprivileged youth, because that was me at one point in life that makes me feel good, that, you know, that's a value that I'm going to be like, wow, I wish I could do. I wish I did more good in life, you know. And then the fourth is vital. So we only get one body and brain. We have to take care of it. And so, you know, that's probably a lot where you come in, in terms of understanding how to honor the mind-body connection, eating foods that decrease inflammation that are not processed, drinking enough water, getting sleep, you know, like putting that phone away and getting really rich sleep, getting movement that actually helps your longevity and makes you feel happier, and understanding how relationships can be very toxic. And I wish that this was taught in school when I was growing up, but a lot of people don't understand how negative relationships can really drain your life force, and then having that healthy work life balance that's all in the vitals. And then the fifth V is vision. How do you plan for joy in the future? And when I say a future, I don't mean like, 10 years from now. I mean like, as in an hour from now. So for example, after this podcast, I'm gonna have a nice dinner, probably curry or sushi, and I'm gonna eat it, not in front of a screen. I might watch a little bit of Emily in Paris, because that's my guilty pleasure. You know, like these are little points of joy that I'm gonna plan, to treat myself, because today I helped people. I talked with you, these are all things that I need to celebrate, but we don't celebrate but we don't celebrate that. We're like, well, we're supposed to be doing these things, you know, no, every time I get my daughter to school on time, I pat myself on the back, and I sit and I drink my coffee, my oat milk latte, and I take my time. I don't go straight to work. I go home. Take my time. It, 5, 10 minutes, and just say I did a good job. I got her to work. I got her to school on time today. These are all things that we can savor in life, but we rush, we're busy. We don't take the time. We don't treat ourselves like human beings. You know, how many times have you eaten in front of a screen and they're like, you can't even taste the food, you know, and you love the food, but you're like, did you enjoy that meal? Not really. I just needed to get rid of that hunger pain. So the five Vs can really help you to understand the science of your happiness. Once you do that Venn diagram, and then you apply the five Vs to your life, it can really make a difference and increase those little points of joy every day. Lesley Logan 23:11  I really love each one of those in a different way, also what I'm getting. I love that you introduced yourself as high functioning AF, because I do think that a lot of the people like myself and the people who listen to this podcast, we start to think like, maybe I should do less. If I just do less, then I'll be happier. But then we are not happier doing less, because we are people who want to do things, and we are high-functioning people we and so I loved that it's not necessarily about not doing stuff, it's about how you do stuff and how you acknowledge what you're doing. And I think that that's really special, because it's sort of going, going, going, it's like, yeah, pat, I got my kid, my daughter at school on time today. Way to go. Yes. We have an episode on Fridays here. It's called Fuck Yeah Friday. And just this year I changed it so, like, I share a story from Instagram or the internet that, like, inspired me, some woman who inspired me whatever she did. But then it's about sharing the wins from the listeners. So they send in a win, and sometimes they send in these wins, like I finally did, blah, blah, blah. And my favorite wins are, like, I actually made dinner for myself and I went to bed on time, and I'm like, yes, that's a win. That's a huge win. You know, we have to give ourselves credit for that, because, just because it's what you think you're supposed to be doing you not celebrating it is not going to help you enjoy doing it in the future, and it's not going to help you do it in the future. So I, those are my favorites, and so that's what the episode is about. It's about celebrating the things we did do, as opposed to like these achievements that we're waiting to celebrate until a certain time comes. I think that that is, it's hard to do. Most people can't see a win in something or a celebration in something that they're supposed to do. So thank you for highlighting that. Your book. You wrote a book. I think anyone who writes a book to get their word out into the world is amazing, because it's not the easiest thing to write a book. Who is the book for and what are you hoping they get from it?Dr. Judith Joseph 24:55  I'm glad you said that people who are high-functioning AF want to do everything, because five Vs is a lot. And I can personally say, and I say this in the book, pick one or two, because the rule of twos says you really shouldn't be working on more than one or two things at a time. But I like one and two. I like validation, because it's something we can all do. And I like venting a lot, like, sometimes I'll just be so exhausted, and I'm like, why am I so tired? I'm like, wait a second, I'm not practicing the five Vs. I validate, I acknowledge, actually, I am tired. I had a long day. And then I vent. Sometimes I say it out loud. Or I'll tell my partner, listen, I had a really busy day. Or I'll tell my daughter, I was like, oh, mommy, had a busy day, you know? Like, I then I really try. Or I'll, like, put something on Canva, on IG, and say I've had a rough day, or something like that, but I'm venting. I'm expressing. And the other things, you know, the values, I try to tap into at least something a little a day, you know, for my values, vitals, that's hard to get to. I don't work out every day. I try to, but it doesn't happen. But at least if I'm not going to work out, well, I'm going to eat well. And if I'm not going to eat well, I'm gonna sleep better or drink more water or limit my screen time. So, there's a temptation to want to do it all, but pick one or two and tap into it, and then score yourself and see if the anhedonia is getting better. And I really do believe that once you start to do these things that are not expensive, like these, are all things within your capacity, right, to democratize mental health, you can do these things, and your life will be happier. But this book is for that family member who never acknowledges how they're feeling when they struggle because they're the rock. The book is for that entrepreneur who really is afraid of bankruptcy, doesn't ever want to be in that position again, and overworks and overextends and doesn't enjoy their wins. It's for that mom out there who puts everyone before herself, who feels depleted but can't slow down because she feels empty and restless when she sits still she doesn't even know what makes her happy anymore. You know, it's for that immigrant student who feels as if everyone's dreams are on their back and they can't fail, they can't tell anyone that they're struggling, it really is for those people who wear a mask, like the educator, the teacher who spends all their money getting their students supplies, but doesn't even eat lunch, you know like you are seeing you matter, so take care of yourself, because there's no one else like you, and you're worthy of it.Lesley Logan 27:27  That is so beautiful, and I love that you can be in a different walk of life and this book is still for you, because there is, we all have these dreams and aspirations, and sometimes those are other people's dreams and aspirations on top of that, and it can just be a lot. I'm assuming the five Vs are in this book. If people want to, like, read and score and write notes, I do want to attach that I love, that you put values in there. It's something I really in this house, like, we like to all filter things through my, our values. And I'm like, that's a no, because it's not hitting one of these things, and I can't take on more than that. So I love that. And if it can fit one of these things, I could do it, but doesn't. But I never thought about, like, how to make sure I'm acting with that as a way of finding some joy. Because, yeah, that's really, really cool. And yes, I love that if you're not moving well, then eat well. And if you're not going to eat well, then you got to sleep well. You got to do something. You got to do something for your body. Yes. For you, you practice those five Vs because so in 2020 you felt like, okay, I must have this, like, high-functioning depression thing. Obviously, you worked your way through and this is where you're at, is this something that, as a high-functioning person, you might dip in and out of or you can start to recognize it. And the goal is, like you recognize it faster, so you don't go into the depression for too long before you get yourself out. Like, I guess what I'm asking is for my perfectionist is like, is this a light switch once we get over our shit, can we feel really awesome and we never have to go back? Or is this something that we gotta just monitor?Dr. Judith Joseph 28:55  I'm glad you said that, because one of the risk factors for this is something called people-pleasing. But people don't realize that people-pleasing is actually a watered down version of masochism. So before the term masochistic personality disorder was removed from the DSM, the bible of psychiatry, it was really a caricature of someone who sacrifices their own happiness for someone else's happiness, or who's constantly in a position of giving and not getting. And when people think of masochism, they think of sex. But it's not that type of masochism. It's the personality traits that makes people bend over backwards when they shouldn't be but they feel as if that's the only way right? These are doers. They do, do do but what ends up happening is that the takers, they don't, like, thank you. They're resentful of you. They're like, well, do everything because you wanted something, or did you think I wasn't capable? So it actually backfires. So falling into these traits of being a doer is a pattern. It's a way of life for so long but yeah, you're going to work on yourself, but there's going to be a time when you fall back, and I'm guilty of that too. I'm constantly oscillating. But when I start to practice the five Vs and I'm like, let me, like I just demonstrated, let me validate that I went through a hard day, let me acknowledge these feelings, it's easier for me to snap out of that downward spiral because I'm practicing these skills. And so I always explain happiness as when we think of happiness, we think of this picture in the future, like I finally got the job, or I finally got the clout, or I finally got the thing that I wanted, the person that I wanted, the home that I wanted. And then what research shows us is that when we get these things, we're still unhappy. We're on to the next right? So my philosophy has shifted to finding happiness in the now. So when I get into that slump where I'm like, looking around me and I'm like, oh, so and so is doing that, and I'm starting to feel low, and maybe I should be doing more, it's easier for me to snap back into my values, right? I acknowledge how I feel, I validate, I vent it, but then I also tap into my values. And I'm like, wait, but I don't value what they value. My values are different, and I'm pretty good right here, where I am, I'm pleased in what I value right now. So that allows me to slow down. And so I think the more you practice this, the more exposure you get to this. Not only do you change, but the people around you change. I always say anhedonia is contagious, but joy is contagious, too. If you've ever had a boss that was a micromanager who was doing everything and you all were like, oh my gosh, we're so busy, we're all burnt out. And if that something good happened to that boss, let's say they finally dated someone, or they finally got validation in life, or something happened and or maybe even they got ill and they realized this is not important. When that boss shifts, the organization shifts, right? An organization is only as good as its CEO. So I think that anhedonia is contagious, but so is joy. So when you start to shift inside, people are going to notice it. They're going to come towards you and be like something's different. I want what you have, and you may not be more successful, you may not have more money, you may not be more beautiful, but you have something that they want, and they're going to gravitate towards you, but you have to get it for yourself. They can't have what you have. And I really do think that people will start to cultivate joy within themselves by understanding the science of your happiness and applying your five Vs to your life. Lesley Logan 28:55  Oh my gosh. I feel like every woman has to get this book for their best friend, just even as preventative, even if your friend isn't going through this yet, it's true that anhedonia is contagious, and also so can that high function like the doing can be contagious too. So I really appreciate you. I feel like we could learn so much. Now I might have to just binge out on every video you make, but I can't wait to read the book when it comes out, and probably send it to 17 of my friends. So we're gonna take a brief break, though, and then find out where people can find you, follow you, work with you, get your book and then your Be It Action Items. Lesley Logan 32:58  All right, Dr. Judith, you truly have given us a wealth of knowledge. Where can people connect with you, get your book. Where do you like to hang out? Dr. Judith Joseph 33:06  So they can buy my book at drjudithjoseph.com or follow me on IG, Dr. Judith Joseph and all the socials they could find my book there. And if you order before the pub date, you get preorder bonuses, and I have courses on the science of your happiness and ways to take you through the five Vs. Lesley Logan 33:27  Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for bringing you. You really have given us a lot, the five Vs is amazing. So if that ends up being part of this Be It Action Items, that's totally fine with me, but something that caused this podcast to exist is I would be drawn to someone and love what they said, and then going, okay, like, what is my first next step, though, you know? And so the bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted steps people can take to be it till they see it. What do you have for us? Dr. Judith Joseph 33:51  I just recently did this guided meditation with Deepak Chopra, and he said something that I thought was profound. He just kept saying, lose your name and just say I am. And it's really like a part of the just be, you know, what is it to just be? And if you could just take five minutes a day just to feel your being, just to get to know yourself again, I think many of us have forgotten who we are. So if you could just be, you know, I say, be a human being, not a human doing, you could learn so much about yourself. That self-reflection time, you could practice the five V's during that time, you could just practice one, validation, right, and just be. It sounds simple, but I think it's very difficult for a lot of us to just be. Lesley Logan 34:40  To sit for five minutes is very difficult. And you guys, like, what I found is like, 30 minutes is only 2% of your day, so five minutes is, like, not even a half a percent. So I don't do math well, so don't correct me. But if we cannot take five minutes for our day, we really do have to re evaluate what we're doing and who we're doing it for, because that is not the easiest thing to just be for five minutes, but ooh, I sit in a cold plunge every morning for four minutes, four minutes. And here's why, my tub is not big enough for my whole body. So three minutes with like, shoulders, hips, stomach, ankles, and then a minute for the knees to go in. And what I can say is I don't want to do it before I get in. I step in and I'm like, why am I doing this? I get in, I'm like, the air is sucked out, and then within a few seconds, you kind of settle in, and you're like, I just have to be here for four minutes. This is all I have to do. And it really is something that I'm so grateful that I do every day, because it does let me, like, set to go okay, today is today. Here I am today. I'm not even thinking about the schedule. It's just kind of like this moment and just being in this moment, where am I feeling this and how am I doing? And I highly recommend it. You don't have to get a plunge, but it just sits still for five minutes and see how you're doing. I highly recommend. I love that Be It Action Item. I think it'll be a challenge for a lot of people, unfortunately, but also I hope it's one that they take on, because I do love that. Dr. Judith, you are fabulous. I hope to one day, run into you and see what you're doing changing this world, because I do think this, your book and what you're saying are really what people are needing to hear right now. And I also just want to highlight one more time, everything you said in those five Vs is not actually going to cost a lot of money. It's like things you can just do by evaluating and addressing. So I appreciate tips like that. So thank you being you. Lesley Logan 36:18  Y'all, how are you gonna use these tips in your life? Make sure you tag Dr. Judith, you tag the Be It Pod, share this with a friend, but this is a friend who needs to hear it, you know, sometimes we feel like we have to help everyone, and sometimes we can help them by sending Dr. Judith's words to them so that she can help them and you can go back to taking care of you. So thank you so much. And until next time, Be It Till You See It. Lesley Logan 36:39  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.Brad Crowell 37:21  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 37:27  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.Brad Crowell 37:31  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 37:37  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.Brad Crowell 37:42  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Send us a textDownload Katie's Messaging Pivot Playbook.Ready to evolve your business but worried about confusing your audience? Katie Lantukh from Murphy Marketing joins Sarah to tackle one of the most challenging aspects of business growth: pivoting your messaging when your services or focus changes."People are very flexible with how they log you in their system," Katie shares, offering reassurance to entrepreneurs feeling stuck in their previous positioning. Drawing from her own experience transitioning from serving mom course creators to IT and cybersecurity clients, Katie provides practical guidance for communicating shifts in your business focus without alienating your audience.The conversation dives deep into testing strategies before fully committing to new messaging. Sarah reveals her method of gradually creating content on LinkedIn to gauge interest, while Katie recommends updating your headline and creating a consistent "super signature" for your posts. Both approaches allow you to explore new territories without the risk of a complete rebrand.For entrepreneurs juggling multiple passions or service offerings, Katie suggests finding the overlapping qualities in your audience—the center of the Venn diagram—to create messaging that resonates across different segments. This might involve crafting an "offer staircase" that serves clients at various stages of their journey while maintaining a cohesive brand story.Whether you're transitioning from done-for-you services to strategy, switching industries, or simply refining your focus, this episode provides actionable steps to evolve your messaging alongside your business. Katie's parting advice? "Start small. You don't have to delete everything if you want to experiment with something new." Download Katie's free Messaging Pivot Playbook through the link in our show notes and take your first step toward messaging that truly reflects where your business is heading.Join my events community for FREE monthly events.I offer free events each month to help you master your business's growth through marketing, sales, systems, and offer strategy. Join the community here! Are you tired of prospects ghosting you? With a Gateway Offer, that won't happen.Over the next Ten Days, we will launch and sell our Gateway Offers with the goal of reaching booked-out status!Join the challenge here.Support the showJoin the Tiny Marketing Club >>> Join the ClubCome tour my digital home :) >>>WebsiteWanna be friends? >>> LinkedInLet's chat every Tuesday! >>> NewsletterCatch the video podcast on YouTube >>>YouTube

The JWQ = The Just War Question(s). Rhetorical questions, mostly. In this episode, we cover the Fifth Commandment as it's explained in the Catechism. I'm just sayin': It could be explained better! I want a Venn diagram!Are you interested in war and peace? Do you want to read one of the greatest literary works of Western civilization with the support of a live class -- and the accountability that comes with it? This summer, put down your phone and tackle some serious reading with us! Ellen is teaching a live class on The Iliad. We're going to have great conversations about human nature, religion, war, peace, pagans, Catholics, love and loss. There will be so many themes we'll be discussing that will allow us to really examine and ponder more deeply the major topics that are discussed on this channel, but this time through poetry, not podcasting. Hope you can join us!The Iliad Summer Course for Adults: We start June 3rd! Go here for more information and to enroll:https://courses.teachtothetext.com/p/...Ellen teaches online middle and high school classes in classical literature, composition and creative writing. Find her over at: www.teachtothetext.comFind CAM here:  https://catholicsagainstmilitarism.comRSS feed: http://www.buzzsprout.com/296171​Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/CAMpodcastFind CAM here: https://catholicsagainstmilitarism.comRSS feed: http://www.buzzsprout.com/296171​Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/CAMpodcast

What if everything we thought we knew about fat is wrong—and one molecule could change how we age, heal, and live? In this cutting-edge episode of SuperLife with Darin Olien, Darin is joined by Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist, former Navy scientist, and co-founder of Fatty15. Together, they unpack the discovery of C15:0, the first essential fatty acid identified in 90 years, and the tidal wave of science supporting its impact on longevity, inflammation, metabolic health, and cellular survival. From accidental dolphin data to peer-reviewed clinical trials, Dr. Steph reveals how C15 could become one of the most important health breakthroughs of our time.     What You'll Learn in This Episode: (00:00:00) Introduction – What today's episode is all about (00:04:15) Meet Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson – Her origin story and the accidental discovery of C15 (00:07:45) What is C15 and how is it different from omega-3s and saturated fats? (00:12:02) Why the USDA once told us to avoid fats—and how that caused unintended harm (00:16:30) The Navy's dolphin program & the surprising longevity connection (00:20:12) The essential fatty acid problem – Why C15 is needed in modern diets (00:24:45) C15 and inflammation – How this fat helps regulate immune response (00:29:40) What clinical trials are showing – Type 2 diabetes, liver disease, and more (00:34:01) Why our food system lost C15 – Industrial changes to dairy and livestock (00:38:25) The mitochondria connection – How C15 supports energy and cellular repair (00:43:10) Ferroptosis and cellular death – The antioxidant role of C15 (00:47:50) What “essential” really means – Revisiting the 1930s nutrient criteria (00:52:15) Real-world use cases: pets, children, elders, and chronic illness (00:56:40) Gut microbiome and metabolic syndrome – The C15 balancing effect (01:00:55) Saturated fat confusion – Not all fats are created equal (01:05:00) The science of “good fat” – What makes C15 fundamentally different (01:09:45) Global research momentum – Who's funding and validating the studies (01:14:05) The future of C15 in agriculture, food, and longevity medicine (01:18:45) What Dr. Steph wishes every doctor and nutritionist knew (01:22:35) Practical ways to start – How to safely integrate C15 into your life (01:28:10) Final thoughts – What happens when we redefine “essential”     Topics Covered: Discovery of C15:0 Essential fatty acids Dolphin research & human longevity Chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, liver disease Cellular death & ferroptosis Gut microbiome & metabolism Mitochondrial repair & oxidative stress Nutritional science and real-world application   Don't Forget... I just launched my brand new program Superlife Supermind. Visit my website https://superlife.com/ to learn more about how you can get rid of stress, improve sleep and overall health today.     Thank You to Our Sponsors: Bite Toothpaste: Go to trybite.com/DARIN20 or use code DARIN20 for 20% off your first order. Shakeology: Premium whole-food nutrition shake for energy, immunity, gut health, and longevity. Get 15% off, free shipping, and a free shaker cup at Shakeology.com with code SUPERLIFE     Find More From Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson: Website: fatty15.com Instagram: @fatty15 Book: The Longevity Nutrient (available now)   Find More From Darin: Website: darinolien.com Instagram: @darinolien Book: Fatal Conveniences     Key Takeaway: "C15 isn't just a supplement—it's a paradigm shift in what we define as essential nutrition." – Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson  

If you're in SF: Join us for the Claude Plays Pokemon hackathon this Sunday!If you're not: Fill out the 2025 State of AI Eng survey for $250 in Amazon cards!We are SO excited to share our conversation with Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot and creator of Agent.ai.A particularly compelling concept we discussed is the idea of "hybrid teams" - the next evolution in workplace organization where human workers collaborate with AI agents as team members. Just as we previously saw hybrid teams emerge in terms of full-time vs. contract workers, or in-office vs. remote workers, Dharmesh predicts that the next frontier will be teams composed of both human and AI members. This raises interesting questions about team dynamics, trust, and how to effectively delegate tasks between human and AI team members.The discussion of business models in AI reveals an important distinction between Work as a Service (WaaS) and Results as a Service (RaaS), something Dharmesh has written extensively about. While RaaS has gained popularity, particularly in customer support applications where outcomes are easily measurable, Dharmesh argues that this model may be over-indexed. Not all AI applications have clearly definable outcomes or consistent economic value per transaction, making WaaS more appropriate in many cases. This insight is particularly relevant for businesses considering how to monetize AI capabilities.The technical challenges of implementing effective agent systems are also explored, particularly around memory and authentication. Shah emphasizes the importance of cross-agent memory sharing and the need for more granular control over data access. He envisions a future where users can selectively share parts of their data with different agents, similar to how OAuth works but with much finer control. This points to significant opportunities in developing infrastructure for secure and efficient agent-to-agent communication and data sharing.Other highlights from our conversation* The Evolution of AI-Powered Agents – Exploring how AI agents have evolved from simple chatbots to sophisticated multi-agent systems, and the role of MCPs in enabling that.* Hybrid Digital Teams and the Future of Work – How AI agents are becoming teammates rather than just tools, and what this means for business operations and knowledge work.* Memory in AI Agents – The importance of persistent memory in AI systems and how shared memory across agents could enhance collaboration and efficiency.* Business Models for AI Agents – Exploring the shift from software as a service (SaaS) to work as a service (WaaS) and results as a service (RaaS), and what this means for monetization.* The Role of Standards Like MCP – Why MCP has been widely adopted and how it enables agent collaboration, tool use, and discovery.* The Future of AI Code Generation and Software Engineering – How AI-assisted coding is changing the role of software engineers and what skills will matter most in the future.* Domain Investing and Efficient Markets – Dharmesh's approach to domain investing and how inefficiencies in digital asset markets create business opportunities.* The Philosophy of Saying No – Lessons from "Sorry, You Must Pass" and how prioritization leads to greater productivity and focus.Timestamps* 00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome* 02:29 Dharmesh Shah's Journey into AI* 05:22 Defining AI Agents* 06:45 The Evolution and Future of AI Agents* 13:53 Graph Theory and Knowledge Representation* 20:02 Engineering Practices and Overengineering* 25:57 The Role of Junior Engineers in the AI Era* 28:20 Multi-Agent Systems and MCP Standards* 35:55 LinkedIn's Legal Battles and Data Scraping* 37:32 The Future of AI and Hybrid Teams* 39:19 Building Agent AI: A Professional Network for Agents* 40:43 Challenges and Innovations in Agent AI* 45:02 The Evolution of UI in AI Systems* 01:00:25 Business Models: Work as a Service vs. Results as a Service* 01:09:17 The Future Value of Engineers* 01:09:51 Exploring the Role of Agents* 01:10:28 The Importance of Memory in AI* 01:11:02 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Memory* 01:12:41 Selective Memory and Privacy Concerns* 01:13:27 The Evolution of AI Tools and Platforms* 01:18:23 Domain Names and AI Projects* 01:32:08 Balancing Work and Personal Life* 01:35:52 Final Thoughts and ReflectionsTranscriptAlessio [00:00:04]: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Small AI.swyx [00:00:12]: Hello, and today we're super excited to have Dharmesh Shah to join us. I guess your relevant title here is founder of Agent AI.Dharmesh [00:00:20]: Yeah, that's true for this. Yeah, creator of Agent.ai and co-founder of HubSpot.swyx [00:00:25]: Co-founder of HubSpot, which I followed for many years, I think 18 years now, gonna be 19 soon. And you caught, you know, people can catch up on your HubSpot story elsewhere. I should also thank Sean Puri, who I've chatted with back and forth, who's been, I guess, getting me in touch with your people. But also, I think like, just giving us a lot of context, because obviously, My First Million joined you guys, and they've been chatting with you guys a lot. So for the business side, we can talk about that, but I kind of wanted to engage your CTO, agent, engineer side of things. So how did you get agent religion?Dharmesh [00:01:00]: Let's see. So I've been working, I'll take like a half step back, a decade or so ago, even though actually more than that. So even before HubSpot, the company I was contemplating that I had named for was called Ingenisoft. And the idea behind Ingenisoft was a natural language interface to business software. Now realize this is 20 years ago, so that was a hard thing to do. But the actual use case that I had in mind was, you know, we had data sitting in business systems like a CRM or something like that. And my kind of what I thought clever at the time. Oh, what if we used email as the kind of interface to get to business software? And the motivation for using email is that it automatically works when you're offline. So imagine I'm getting on a plane or I'm on a plane. There was no internet on planes back then. It's like, oh, I'm going through business cards from an event I went to. I can just type things into an email just to have them all in the backlog. When it reconnects, it sends those emails to a processor that basically kind of parses effectively the commands and updates the software, sends you the file, whatever it is. And there was a handful of commands. I was a little bit ahead of the times in terms of what was actually possible. And I reattempted this natural language thing with a product called ChatSpot that I did back 20...swyx [00:02:12]: Yeah, this is your first post-ChatGPT project.Dharmesh [00:02:14]: I saw it come out. Yeah. And so I've always been kind of fascinated by this natural language interface to software. Because, you know, as software developers, myself included, we've always said, oh, we build intuitive, easy-to-use applications. And it's not intuitive at all, right? Because what we're doing is... We're taking the mental model that's in our head of what we're trying to accomplish with said piece of software and translating that into a series of touches and swipes and clicks and things like that. And there's nothing natural or intuitive about it. And so natural language interfaces, for the first time, you know, whatever the thought is you have in your head and expressed in whatever language that you normally use to talk to yourself in your head, you can just sort of emit that and have software do something. And I thought that was kind of a breakthrough, which it has been. And it's gone. So that's where I first started getting into the journey. I started because now it actually works, right? So once we got ChatGPT and you can take, even with a few-shot example, convert something into structured, even back in the ChatGP 3.5 days, it did a decent job in a few-shot example, convert something to structured text if you knew what kinds of intents you were going to have. And so that happened. And that ultimately became a HubSpot project. But then agents intrigued me because I'm like, okay, well, that's the next step here. So chat's great. Love Chat UX. But if we want to do something even more meaningful, it felt like the next kind of advancement is not this kind of, I'm chatting with some software in a kind of a synchronous back and forth model, is that software is going to do things for me in kind of a multi-step way to try and accomplish some goals. So, yeah, that's when I first got started. It's like, okay, what would that look like? Yeah. And I've been obsessed ever since, by the way.Alessio [00:03:55]: Which goes back to your first experience with it, which is like you're offline. Yeah. And you want to do a task. You don't need to do it right now. You just want to queue it up for somebody to do it for you. Yes. As you think about agents, like, let's start at the easy question, which is like, how do you define an agent? Maybe. You mean the hardest question in the universe? Is that what you mean?Dharmesh [00:04:12]: You said you have an irritating take. I do have an irritating take. I think, well, some number of people have been irritated, including within my own team. So I have a very broad definition for agents, which is it's AI-powered software that accomplishes a goal. Period. That's it. And what irritates people about it is like, well, that's so broad as to be completely non-useful. And I understand that. I understand the criticism. But in my mind, if you kind of fast forward months, I guess, in AI years, the implementation of it, and we're already starting to see this, and we'll talk about this, different kinds of agents, right? So I think in addition to having a usable definition, and I like yours, by the way, and we should talk more about that, that you just came out with, the classification of agents actually is also useful, which is, is it autonomous or non-autonomous? Does it have a deterministic workflow? Does it have a non-deterministic workflow? Is it working synchronously? Is it working asynchronously? Then you have the different kind of interaction modes. Is it a chat agent, kind of like a customer support agent would be? You're having this kind of back and forth. Is it a workflow agent that just does a discrete number of steps? So there's all these different flavors of agents. So if I were to draw it in a Venn diagram, I would draw a big circle that says, this is agents, and then I have a bunch of circles, some overlapping, because they're not mutually exclusive. And so I think that's what's interesting, and we're seeing development along a bunch of different paths, right? So if you look at the first implementation of agent frameworks, you look at Baby AGI and AutoGBT, I think it was, not Autogen, that's the Microsoft one. They were way ahead of their time because they assumed this level of reasoning and execution and planning capability that just did not exist, right? So it was an interesting thought experiment, which is what it was. Even the guy that, I'm an investor in Yohei's fund that did Baby AGI. It wasn't ready, but it was a sign of what was to come. And so the question then is, when is it ready? And so lots of people talk about the state of the art when it comes to agents. I'm a pragmatist, so I think of the state of the practical. It's like, okay, well, what can I actually build that has commercial value or solves actually some discrete problem with some baseline of repeatability or verifiability?swyx [00:06:22]: There was a lot, and very, very interesting. I'm not irritated by it at all. Okay. As you know, I take a... There's a lot of anthropological view or linguistics view. And in linguistics, you don't want to be prescriptive. You want to be descriptive. Yeah. So you're a goals guy. That's the key word in your thing. And other people have other definitions that might involve like delegated trust or non-deterministic work, LLM in the loop, all that stuff. The other thing I was thinking about, just the comment on Baby AGI, LGBT. Yeah. In that piece that you just read, I was able to go through our backlog and just kind of track the winter of agents and then the summer now. Yeah. And it's... We can tell the whole story as an oral history, just following that thread. And it's really just like, I think, I tried to explain the why now, right? Like I had, there's better models, of course. There's better tool use with like, they're just more reliable. Yep. Better tools with MCP and all that stuff. And I'm sure you have opinions on that too. Business model shift, which you like a lot. I just heard you talk about RAS with MFM guys. Yep. Cost is dropping a lot. Yep. Inference is getting faster. There's more model diversity. Yep. Yep. I think it's a subtle point. It means that like, you have different models with different perspectives. You don't get stuck in the basin of performance of a single model. Sure. You can just get out of it by just switching models. Yep. Multi-agent research and RL fine tuning. So I just wanted to let you respond to like any of that.Dharmesh [00:07:44]: Yeah. A couple of things. Connecting the dots on the kind of the definition side of it. So we'll get the irritation out of the way completely. I have one more, even more irritating leap on the agent definition thing. So here's the way I think about it. By the way, the kind of word agent, I looked it up, like the English dictionary definition. The old school agent, yeah. Is when you have someone or something that does something on your behalf, like a travel agent or a real estate agent acts on your behalf. It's like proxy, which is a nice kind of general definition. So the other direction I'm sort of headed, and it's going to tie back to tool calling and MCP and things like that, is if you, and I'm not a biologist by any stretch of the imagination, but we have these single-celled organisms, right? Like the simplest possible form of what one would call life. But it's still life. It just happens to be single-celled. And then you can combine cells and then cells become specialized over time. And you have much more sophisticated organisms, you know, kind of further down the spectrum. In my mind, at the most fundamental level, you can almost think of having atomic agents. What is the simplest possible thing that's an agent that can still be called an agent? What is the equivalent of a kind of single-celled organism? And the reason I think that's useful is right now we're headed down the road, which I think is very exciting around tool use, right? That says, okay, the LLMs now can be provided a set of tools that it calls to accomplish whatever it needs to accomplish in the kind of furtherance of whatever goal it's trying to get done. And I'm not overly bothered by it, but if you think about it, if you just squint a little bit and say, well, what if everything was an agent? And what if tools were actually just atomic agents? Because then it's turtles all the way down, right? Then it's like, oh, well, all that's really happening with tool use is that we have a network of agents that know about each other through something like an MMCP and can kind of decompose a particular problem and say, oh, I'm going to delegate this to this set of agents. And why do we need to draw this distinction between tools, which are functions most of the time? And an actual agent. And so I'm going to write this irritating LinkedIn post, you know, proposing this. It's like, okay. And I'm not suggesting we should call even functions, you know, call them agents. But there is a certain amount of elegance that happens when you say, oh, we can just reduce it down to one primitive, which is an agent that you can combine in complicated ways to kind of raise the level of abstraction and accomplish higher order goals. Anyway, that's my answer. I'd say that's a success. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk on agent definitions.Alessio [00:09:54]: How do you define the minimum viable agent? Do you already have a definition for, like, where you draw the line between a cell and an atom? Yeah.Dharmesh [00:10:02]: So in my mind, it has to, at some level, use AI in order for it to—otherwise, it's just software. It's like, you know, we don't need another word for that. And so that's probably where I draw the line. So then the question, you know, the counterargument would be, well, if that's true, then lots of tools themselves are actually not agents because they're just doing a database call or a REST API call or whatever it is they're doing. And that does not necessarily qualify them, which is a fair counterargument. And I accept that. It's like a good argument. I still like to think about—because we'll talk about multi-agent systems, because I think—so we've accepted, which I think is true, lots of people have said it, and you've hopefully combined some of those clips of really smart people saying this is the year of agents, and I completely agree, it is the year of agents. But then shortly after that, it's going to be the year of multi-agent systems or multi-agent networks. I think that's where it's going to be headed next year. Yeah.swyx [00:10:54]: Opening eyes already on that. Yeah. My quick philosophical engagement with you on this. I often think about kind of the other spectrum, the other end of the cell spectrum. So single cell is life, multi-cell is life, and you clump a bunch of cells together in a more complex organism, they become organs, like an eye and a liver or whatever. And then obviously we consider ourselves one life form. There's not like a lot of lives within me. I'm just one life. And now, obviously, I don't think people don't really like to anthropomorphize agents and AI. Yeah. But we are extending our consciousness and our brain and our functionality out into machines. I just saw you were a Bee. Yeah. Which is, you know, it's nice. I have a limitless pendant in my pocket.Dharmesh [00:11:37]: I got one of these boys. Yeah.swyx [00:11:39]: I'm testing it all out. You know, got to be early adopters. But like, we want to extend our personal memory into these things so that we can be good at the things that we're good at. And, you know, machines are good at it. Machines are there. So like, my definition of life is kind of like going outside of my own body now. I don't know if you've ever had like reflections on that. Like how yours. How our self is like actually being distributed outside of you. Yeah.Dharmesh [00:12:01]: I don't fancy myself a philosopher. But you went there. So yeah, I did go there. I'm fascinated by kind of graphs and graph theory and networks and have been for a long, long time. And to me, we're sort of all nodes in this kind of larger thing. It just so happens that we're looking at individual kind of life forms as they exist right now. But so the idea is when you put a podcast out there, there's these little kind of nodes you're putting out there of like, you know, conceptual ideas. Once again, you have varying kind of forms of those little nodes that are up there and are connected in varying and sundry ways. And so I just think of myself as being a node in a massive, massive network. And I'm producing more nodes as I put content or ideas. And, you know, you spend some portion of your life collecting dots, experiences, people, and some portion of your life then connecting dots from the ones that you've collected over time. And I found that really interesting things happen and you really can't know in advance how those dots are necessarily going to connect in the future. And that's, yeah. So that's my philosophical take. That's the, yes, exactly. Coming back.Alessio [00:13:04]: Yep. Do you like graph as an agent? Abstraction? That's been one of the hot topics with LandGraph and Pydantic and all that.Dharmesh [00:13:11]: I do. The thing I'm more interested in terms of use of graphs, and there's lots of work happening on that now, is graph data stores as an alternative in terms of knowledge stores and knowledge graphs. Yeah. Because, you know, so I've been in software now 30 plus years, right? So it's not 10,000 hours. It's like 100,000 hours that I've spent doing this stuff. And so I've grew up with, so back in the day, you know, I started on mainframes. There was a product called IMS from IBM, which is basically an index database, what we'd call like a key value store today. Then we've had relational databases, right? We have tables and columns and foreign key relationships. We all know that. We have document databases like MongoDB, which is sort of a nested structure keyed by a specific index. We have vector stores, vector embedding database. And graphs are interesting for a couple of reasons. One is, so it's not classically structured in a relational way. When you say structured database, to most people, they're thinking tables and columns and in relational database and set theory and all that. Graphs still have structure, but it's not the tables and columns structure. And you could wonder, and people have made this case, that they are a better representation of knowledge for LLMs and for AI generally than other things. So that's kind of thing number one conceptually, and that might be true, I think is possibly true. And the other thing that I really like about that in the context of, you know, I've been in the context of data stores for RAG is, you know, RAG, you say, oh, I have a million documents, I'm going to build the vector embeddings, I'm going to come back with the top X based on the semantic match, and that's fine. All that's very, very useful. But the reality is something gets lost in the chunking process and the, okay, well, those tend, you know, like, you don't really get the whole picture, so to speak, and maybe not even the right set of dimensions on the kind of broader picture. And it makes intuitive sense to me that if we did capture it properly in a graph form, that maybe that feeding into a RAG pipeline will actually yield better results for some use cases, I don't know, but yeah.Alessio [00:15:03]: And do you feel like at the core of it, there's this difference between imperative and declarative programs? Because if you think about HubSpot, it's like, you know, people and graph kind of goes hand in hand, you know, but I think maybe the software before was more like primary foreign key based relationship, versus now the models can traverse through the graph more easily.Dharmesh [00:15:22]: Yes. So I like that representation. There's something. It's just conceptually elegant about graphs and just from the representation of it, they're much more discoverable, you can kind of see it, there's observability to it, versus kind of embeddings, which you can't really do much with as a human. You know, once they're in there, you can't pull stuff back out. But yeah, I like that kind of idea of it. And the other thing that's kind of, because I love graphs, I've been long obsessed with PageRank from back in the early days. And, you know, one of the kind of simplest algorithms in terms of coming up, you know, with a phone, everyone's been exposed to PageRank. And the idea is that, and so I had this other idea for a project, not a company, and I have hundreds of these, called NodeRank, is to be able to take the idea of PageRank and apply it to an arbitrary graph that says, okay, I'm going to define what authority looks like and say, okay, well, that's interesting to me, because then if you say, I'm going to take my knowledge store, and maybe this person that contributed some number of chunks to the graph data store has more authority on this particular use case or prompt that's being submitted than this other one that may, or maybe this one was more. popular, or maybe this one has, whatever it is, there should be a way for us to kind of rank nodes in a graph and sort them in some, some useful way. Yeah.swyx [00:16:34]: So I think that's generally useful for, for anything. I think the, the problem, like, so even though at my conferences, GraphRag is super popular and people are getting knowledge, graph religion, and I will say like, it's getting space, getting traction in two areas, conversation memory, and then also just rag in general, like the, the, the document data. Yeah. It's like a source. Most ML practitioners would say that knowledge graph is kind of like a dirty word. The graph database, people get graph religion, everything's a graph, and then they, they go really hard into it and then they get a, they get a graph that is too complex to navigate. Yes. And so like the, the, the simple way to put it is like you at running HubSpot, you know, the power of graphs, the way that Google has pitched them for many years, but I don't suspect that HubSpot itself uses a knowledge graph. No. Yeah.Dharmesh [00:17:26]: So when is it over engineering? Basically? It's a great question. I don't know. So the question now, like in AI land, right, is the, do we necessarily need to understand? So right now, LLMs for, for the most part are somewhat black boxes, right? We sort of understand how the, you know, the algorithm itself works, but we really don't know what's going on in there and, and how things come out. So if a graph data store is able to produce the outcomes we want, it's like, here's a set of queries I want to be able to submit and then it comes out with useful content. Maybe the underlying data store is as opaque as a vector embeddings or something like that, but maybe it's fine. Maybe we don't necessarily need to understand it to get utility out of it. And so maybe if it's messy, that's okay. Um, that's, it's just another form of lossy compression. Uh, it's just lossy in a way that we just don't completely understand in terms of, because it's going to grow organically. Uh, and it's not structured. It's like, ah, we're just gonna throw a bunch of stuff in there. Let the, the equivalent of the embedding algorithm, whatever they called in graph land. Um, so the one with the best results wins. I think so. Yeah.swyx [00:18:26]: Or is this the practical side of me is like, yeah, it's, if it's useful, we don't necessarilyDharmesh [00:18:30]: need to understand it.swyx [00:18:30]: I have, I mean, I'm happy to push back as long as you want. Uh, it's not practical to evaluate like the 10 different options out there because it takes time. It takes people, it takes, you know, resources, right? Set. That's the first thing. Second thing is your evals are typically on small things and some things only work at scale. Yup. Like graphs. Yup.Dharmesh [00:18:46]: Yup. That's, yeah, no, that's fair. And I think this is one of the challenges in terms of implementation of graph databases is that the most common approach that I've seen developers do, I've done it myself, is that, oh, I've got a Postgres database or a MySQL or whatever. I can represent a graph with a very set of tables with a parent child thing or whatever. And that sort of gives me the ability, uh, why would I need anything more than that? And the answer is, well, if you don't need anything more than that, you don't need anything more than that. But there's a high chance that you're sort of missing out on the actual value that, uh, the graph representation gives you. Which is the ability to traverse the graph, uh, efficiently in ways that kind of going through the, uh, traversal in a relational database form, even though structurally you have the data, practically you're not gonna be able to pull it out in, in useful ways. Uh, so you wouldn't like represent a social graph, uh, in, in using that kind of relational table model. It just wouldn't scale. It wouldn't work.swyx [00:19:36]: Uh, yeah. Uh, I think we want to move on to MCP. Yeah. But I just want to, like, just engineering advice. Yeah. Uh, obviously you've, you've, you've run, uh, you've, you've had to do a lot of projects and run a lot of teams. Do you have a general rule for over-engineering or, you know, engineering ahead of time? You know, like, because people, we know premature engineering is the root of all evil. Yep. But also sometimes you just have to. Yep. When do you do it? Yes.Dharmesh [00:19:59]: It's a great question. This is, uh, a question as old as time almost, which is what's the right and wrong levels of abstraction. That's effectively what, uh, we're answering when we're trying to do engineering. I tend to be a pragmatist, right? So here's the thing. Um, lots of times doing something the right way. Yeah. It's like a marginal increased cost in those cases. Just do it the right way. And this is what makes a, uh, a great engineer or a good engineer better than, uh, a not so great one. It's like, okay, all things being equal. If it's going to take you, you know, roughly close to constant time anyway, might as well do it the right way. Like, so do things well, then the question is, okay, well, am I building a framework as the reusable library? To what degree, uh, what am I anticipating in terms of what's going to need to change in this thing? Uh, you know, along what dimension? And then I think like a business person in some ways, like what's the return on calories, right? So, uh, and you look at, um, energy, the expected value of it's like, okay, here are the five possible things that could happen, uh, try to assign probabilities like, okay, well, if there's a 50% chance that we're going to go down this particular path at some day, like, or one of these five things is going to happen and it costs you 10% more to engineer for that. It's basically, it's something that yields a kind of interest compounding value. Um, as you get closer to the time of, of needing that versus having to take on debt, which is when you under engineer it, you're taking on debt. You're going to have to pay off when you do get to that eventuality where something happens. One thing as a pragmatist, uh, so I would rather under engineer something than over engineer it. If I were going to err on the side of something, and here's the reason is that when you under engineer it, uh, yes, you take on tech debt, uh, but the interest rate is relatively known and payoff is very, very possible, right? Which is, oh, I took a shortcut here as a result of which now this thing that should have taken me a week is now going to take me four weeks. Fine. But if that particular thing that you thought might happen, never actually, you never have that use case transpire or just doesn't, it's like, well, you just save yourself time, right? And that has value because you were able to do other things instead of, uh, kind of slightly over-engineering it away, over-engineering it. But there's no perfect answers in art form in terms of, uh, and yeah, we'll, we'll bring kind of this layers of abstraction back on the code generation conversation, which we'll, uh, I think I have later on, butAlessio [00:22:05]: I was going to ask, we can just jump ahead quickly. Yeah. Like, as you think about vibe coding and all that, how does the. Yeah. Percentage of potential usefulness change when I feel like we over-engineering a lot of times it's like the investment in syntax, it's less about the investment in like arc exacting. Yep. Yeah. How does that change your calculus?Dharmesh [00:22:22]: A couple of things, right? One is, um, so, you know, going back to that kind of ROI or a return on calories, kind of calculus or heuristic you think through, it's like, okay, well, what is it going to cost me to put this layer of abstraction above the code that I'm writing now, uh, in anticipating kind of future needs. If the cost of fixing, uh, or doing under engineering right now. Uh, we'll trend towards zero that says, okay, well, I don't have to get it right right now because even if I get it wrong, I'll run the thing for six hours instead of 60 minutes or whatever. It doesn't really matter, right? Like, because that's going to trend towards zero to be able, the ability to refactor a code. Um, and because we're going to not that long from now, we're going to have, you know, large code bases be able to exist, uh, you know, as, as context, uh, for a code generation or a code refactoring, uh, model. So I think it's going to make it, uh, make the case for under engineering, uh, even stronger. Which is why I take on that cost. You just pay the interest when you get there, it's not, um, just go on with your life vibe coded and, uh, come back when you need to. Yeah.Alessio [00:23:18]: Sometimes I feel like there's no decision-making in some things like, uh, today I built a autosave for like our internal notes platform and I literally just ask them cursor. Can you add autosave? Yeah. I don't know if it's over under engineer. Yep. I just vibe coded it. Yep. And I feel like at some point we're going to get to the point where the models kindDharmesh [00:23:36]: of decide where the right line is, but this is where the, like the, in my mind, the danger is, right? So there's two sides to this. One is the cost of kind of development and coding and things like that stuff that, you know, we talk about. But then like in your example, you know, one of the risks that we have is that because adding a feature, uh, like a save or whatever the feature might be to a product as that price tends towards zero, are we going to be less discriminant about what features we add as a result of making more product products more complicated, which has a negative impact on the user and navigate negative impact on the business. Um, and so that's the thing I worry about if it starts to become too easy, are we going to be. Too promiscuous in our, uh, kind of extension, adding product extensions and things like that. It's like, ah, why not add X, Y, Z or whatever back then it was like, oh, we only have so many engineering hours or story points or however you measure things. Uh, that least kept us in check a little bit. Yeah.Alessio [00:24:22]: And then over engineering, you're like, yeah, it's kind of like you're putting that on yourself. Yeah. Like now it's like the models don't understand that if they add too much complexity, it's going to come back to bite them later. Yep. So they just do whatever they want to do. Yeah. And I'm curious where in the workflow that's going to be, where it's like, Hey, this is like the amount of complexity and over-engineering you can do before you got to ask me if we should actually do it versus like do something else.Dharmesh [00:24:45]: So you know, we've already, let's like, we're leaving this, uh, in the code generation world, this kind of compressed, um, cycle time. Right. It's like, okay, we went from auto-complete, uh, in the GitHub co-pilot to like, oh, finish this particular thing and hit tab to a, oh, I sort of know your file or whatever. I can write out a full function to you to now I can like hold a bunch of the context in my head. Uh, so we can do app generation, which we have now with lovable and bolt and repletage. Yeah. Association and other things. So then the question is, okay, well, where does it naturally go from here? So we're going to generate products. Make sense. We might be able to generate platforms as though I want a platform for ERP that does this, whatever. And that includes the API's includes the product and the UI, and all the things that make for a platform. There's no nothing that says we would stop like, okay, can you generate an entire software company someday? Right. Uh, with the platform and the monetization and the go-to-market and the whatever. And you know, that that's interesting to me in terms of, uh, you know, what, when you take it to almost ludicrous levels. of abstract.swyx [00:25:39]: It's like, okay, turn it to 11. You mentioned vibe coding, so I have to, this is a blog post I haven't written, but I'm kind of exploring it. Is the junior engineer dead?Dharmesh [00:25:49]: I don't think so. I think what will happen is that the junior engineer will be able to, if all they're bringing to the table is the fact that they are a junior engineer, then yes, they're likely dead. But hopefully if they can communicate with carbon-based life forms, they can interact with product, if they're willing to talk to customers, they can take their kind of basic understanding of engineering and how kind of software works. I think that has value. So I have a 14-year-old right now who's taking Python programming class, and some people ask me, it's like, why is he learning coding? And my answer is, is because it's not about the syntax, it's not about the coding. What he's learning is like the fundamental thing of like how things work. And there's value in that. I think there's going to be timeless value in systems thinking and abstractions and what that means. And whether functions manifested as math, which he's going to get exposed to regardless, or there are some core primitives to the universe, I think, that the more you understand them, those are what I would kind of think of as like really large dots in your life that will have a higher gravitational pull and value to them that you'll then be able to. So I want him to collect those dots, and he's not resisting. So it's like, okay, while he's still listening to me, I'm going to have him do things that I think will be useful.swyx [00:26:59]: You know, part of one of the pitches that I evaluated for AI engineer is a term. And the term is that maybe the traditional interview path or career path of software engineer goes away, which is because what's the point of lead code? Yeah. And, you know, it actually matters more that you know how to work with AI and to implement the things that you want. Yep.Dharmesh [00:27:16]: That's one of the like interesting things that's happened with generative AI. You know, you go from machine learning and the models and just that underlying form, which is like true engineering, right? Like the actual, what I call real engineering. I don't think of myself as a real engineer, actually. I'm a developer. But now with generative AI. We call it AI and it's obviously got its roots in machine learning, but it just feels like fundamentally different to me. Like you have the vibe. It's like, okay, well, this is just a whole different approach to software development to so many different things. And so I'm wondering now, it's like an AI engineer is like, if you were like to draw the Venn diagram, it's interesting because the cross between like AI things, generative AI and what the tools are capable of, what the models do, and this whole new kind of body of knowledge that we're still building out, it's still very young, intersected with kind of classic engineering, software engineering. Yeah.swyx [00:28:04]: I just described the overlap as it separates out eventually until it's its own thing, but it's starting out as a software. Yeah.Alessio [00:28:11]: That makes sense. So to close the vibe coding loop, the other big hype now is MCPs. Obviously, I would say Cloud Desktop and Cursor are like the two main drivers of MCP usage. I would say my favorite is the Sentry MCP. I can pull in errors and then you can just put the context in Cursor. How do you think about that abstraction layer? Does it feel... Does it feel almost too magical in a way? Do you think it's like you get enough? Because you don't really see how the server itself is then kind of like repackaging theDharmesh [00:28:41]: information for you? I think MCP as a standard is one of the better things that's happened in the world of AI because a standard needed to exist and absent a standard, there was a set of things that just weren't possible. Now, we can argue whether it's the best possible manifestation of a standard or not. Does it do too much? Does it do too little? I get that, but it's just simple enough to both be useful and unobtrusive. It's understandable and adoptable by mere mortals, right? It's not overly complicated. You know, a reasonable engineer can put a stand up an MCP server relatively easily. The thing that has me excited about it is like, so I'm a big believer in multi-agent systems. And so that's going back to our kind of this idea of an atomic agent. So imagine the MCP server, like obviously it calls tools, but the way I think about it, so I'm working on my current passion project is agent.ai. And we'll talk more about that in a little bit. More about the, I think we should, because I think it's interesting not to promote the project at all, but there's some interesting ideas in there. One of which is around, we're going to need a mechanism for, if agents are going to collaborate and be able to delegate, there's going to need to be some form of discovery and we're going to need some standard way. It's like, okay, well, I just need to know what this thing over here is capable of. We're going to need a registry, which Anthropic's working on. I'm sure others will and have been doing directories of, and there's going to be a standard around that too. How do you build out a directory of MCP servers? I think that's going to unlock so many things just because, and we're already starting to see it. So I think MCP or something like it is going to be the next major unlock because it allows systems that don't know about each other, don't need to, it's that kind of decoupling of like Sentry and whatever tools someone else was building. And it's not just about, you know, Cloud Desktop or things like, even on the client side, I think we're going to see very interesting consumers of MCP, MCP clients versus just the chat body kind of things. Like, you know, Cloud Desktop and Cursor and things like that. But yeah, I'm very excited about MCP in that general direction.swyx [00:30:39]: I think the typical cynical developer take, it's like, we have OpenAPI. Yeah. What's the new thing? I don't know if you have a, do you have a quick MCP versus everything else? Yeah.Dharmesh [00:30:49]: So it's, so I like OpenAPI, right? So just a descriptive thing. It's OpenAPI. OpenAPI. Yes, that's what I meant. So it's basically a self-documenting thing. We can do machine-generated, lots of things from that output. It's a structured definition of an API. I get that, love it. But MCPs sort of are kind of use case specific. They're perfect for exactly what we're trying to use them for around LLMs in terms of discovery. It's like, okay, I don't necessarily need to know kind of all this detail. And so right now we have, we'll talk more about like MCP server implementations, but We will? I think, I don't know. Maybe we won't. At least it's in my head. It's like a back processor. But I do think MCP adds value above OpenAPI. It's, yeah, just because it solves this particular thing. And if we had come to the world, which we have, like, it's like, hey, we already have OpenAPI. It's like, if that were good enough for the universe, the universe would have adopted it already. There's a reason why MCP is taking office because marginally adds something that was missing before and doesn't go too far. And so that's why the kind of rate of adoption, you folks have written about this and talked about it. Yeah, why MCP won. Yeah. And it won because the universe decided that this was useful and maybe it gets supplanted by something else. Yeah. And maybe we discover, oh, maybe OpenAPI was good enough the whole time. I doubt that.swyx [00:32:09]: The meta lesson, this is, I mean, he's an investor in DevTools companies. I work in developer experience at DevRel in DevTools companies. Yep. Everyone wants to own the standard. Yeah. I'm sure you guys have tried to launch your own standards. Actually, it's Houseplant known for a standard, you know, obviously inbound marketing. But is there a standard or protocol that you ever tried to push? No.Dharmesh [00:32:30]: And there's a reason for this. Yeah. Is that? And I don't mean, need to mean, speak for the people of HubSpot, but I personally. You kind of do. I'm not smart enough. That's not the, like, I think I have a. You're smart. Not enough for that. I'm much better off understanding the standards that are out there. And I'm more on the composability side. Let's, like, take the pieces of technology that exist out there, combine them in creative, unique ways. And I like to consume standards. I don't like to, and that's not that I don't like to create them. I just don't think I have the, both the raw wattage or the credibility. It's like, okay, well, who the heck is Dharmesh, and why should we adopt a standard he created?swyx [00:33:07]: Yeah, I mean, there are people who don't monetize standards, like OpenTelemetry is a big standard, and LightStep never capitalized on that.Dharmesh [00:33:15]: So, okay, so if I were to do a standard, there's two things that have been in my head in the past. I was one around, a very, very basic one around, I don't even have the domain, I have a domain for everything, for open marketing. Because the issue we had in HubSpot grew up in the marketing space. There we go. There was no standard around data formats and things like that. It doesn't go anywhere. But the other one, and I did not mean to go here, but I'm going to go here. It's called OpenGraph. I know the term was already taken, but it hasn't been used for like 15 years now for its original purpose. But what I think should exist in the world is right now, our information, all of us, nodes are in the social graph at Meta or the professional graph at LinkedIn. Both of which are actually relatively closed in actually very annoying ways. Like very, very closed, right? Especially LinkedIn. Especially LinkedIn. I personally believe that if it's my data, and if I would get utility out of it being open, I should be able to make my data open or publish it in whatever forms that I choose, as long as I have control over it as opt-in. So the idea is around OpenGraph that says, here's a standard, here's a way to publish it. I should be able to go to OpenGraph.org slash Dharmesh dot JSON and get it back. And it's like, here's your stuff, right? And I can choose along the way and people can write to it and I can prove. And there can be an entire system. And if I were to do that, I would do it as a... Like a public benefit, non-profit-y kind of thing, as this is a contribution to society. I wouldn't try to commercialize that. Have you looked at AdProto? What's that? AdProto.swyx [00:34:43]: It's the protocol behind Blue Sky. Okay. My good friend, Dan Abramov, who was the face of React for many, many years, now works there. And he actually did a talk that I can send you, which basically kind of tries to articulate what you just said. But he does, he loves doing these like really great analogies, which I think you'll like. Like, you know, a lot of our data is behind a handle, behind a domain. Yep. So he's like, all right, what if we flip that? What if it was like our handle and then the domain? Yep. So, and that's really like your data should belong to you. Yep. And I should not have to wait 30 days for my Twitter data to export. Yep.Dharmesh [00:35:19]: you should be able to at least be able to automate it or do like, yes, I should be able to plug it into an agentic thing. Yeah. Yes. I think we're... Because so much of our data is... Locked up. I think the trick here isn't that standard. It is getting the normies to care.swyx [00:35:37]: Yeah. Because normies don't care.Dharmesh [00:35:38]: That's true. But building on that, normies don't care. So, you know, privacy is a really hot topic and an easy word to use, but it's not a binary thing. Like there are use cases where, and we make these choices all the time, that I will trade, not all privacy, but I will trade some privacy for some productivity gain or some benefit to me that says, oh, I don't care about that particular data being online if it gives me this in return, or I don't mind sharing this information with this company.Alessio [00:36:02]: If I'm getting, you know, this in return, but that sort of should be my option. I think now with computer use, you can actually automate some of the exports. Yes. Like something we've been doing internally is like everybody exports their LinkedIn connections. Yep. And then internally, we kind of merge them together to see how we can connect our companies to customers or things like that.Dharmesh [00:36:21]: And not to pick on LinkedIn, but since we're talking about it, but they feel strongly enough on the, you know, do not take LinkedIn data that they will block even browser use kind of things or whatever. They go to great, great lengths, even to see patterns of usage. And it says, oh, there's no way you could have, you know, gotten that particular thing or whatever without, and it's, so it's, there's...swyx [00:36:42]: Wasn't there a Supreme Court case that they lost? Yeah.Dharmesh [00:36:45]: So the one they lost was around someone that was scraping public data that was on the public internet. And that particular company had not signed any terms of service or whatever. It's like, oh, I'm just taking data that's on, there was no, and so that's why they won. But now, you know, the question is around, can LinkedIn... I think they can. Like, when you use, as a user, you use LinkedIn, you are signing up for their terms of service. And if they say, well, this kind of use of your LinkedIn account that violates our terms of service, they can shut your account down, right? They can. And they, yeah, so, you know, we don't need to make this a discussion. By the way, I love the company, don't get me wrong. I'm an avid user of the product. You know, I've got... Yeah, I mean, you've got over a million followers on LinkedIn, I think. Yeah, I do. And I've known people there for a long, long time, right? And I have lots of respect. And I understand even where the mindset originally came from of this kind of members-first approach to, you know, a privacy-first. I sort of get that. But sometimes you sort of have to wonder, it's like, okay, well, that was 15, 20 years ago. There's likely some controlled ways to expose some data on some member's behalf and not just completely be a binary. It's like, no, thou shalt not have the data.swyx [00:37:54]: Well, just pay for sales navigator.Alessio [00:37:57]: Before we move to the next layer of instruction, anything else on MCP you mentioned? Let's move back and then I'll tie it back to MCPs.Dharmesh [00:38:05]: So I think the... Open this with agent. Okay, so I'll start with... Here's my kind of running thesis, is that as AI and agents evolve, which they're doing very, very quickly, we're going to look at them more and more. I don't like to anthropomorphize. We'll talk about why this is not that. Less as just like raw tools and more like teammates. They'll still be software. They should self-disclose as being software. I'm totally cool with that. But I think what's going to happen is that in the same way you might collaborate with a team member on Slack or Teams or whatever you use, you can imagine a series of agents that do specific things just like a team member might do, that you can delegate things to. You can collaborate. You can say, hey, can you take a look at this? Can you proofread that? Can you try this? You can... Whatever it happens to be. So I think it is... I will go so far as to say it's inevitable that we're going to have hybrid teams someday. And what I mean by hybrid teams... So back in the day, hybrid teams were, oh, well, you have some full-time employees and some contractors. Then it was like hybrid teams are some people that are in the office and some that are remote. That's the kind of form of hybrid. The next form of hybrid is like the carbon-based life forms and agents and AI and some form of software. So let's say we temporarily stipulate that I'm right about that over some time horizon that eventually we're going to have these kind of digitally hybrid teams. So if that's true, then the question you sort of ask yourself is that then what needs to exist in order for us to get the full value of that new model? It's like, okay, well... You sort of need to... It's like, okay, well, how do I... If I'm building a digital team, like, how do I... Just in the same way, if I'm interviewing for an engineer or a designer or a PM, whatever, it's like, well, that's why we have professional networks, right? It's like, oh, they have a presence on likely LinkedIn. I can go through that semi-structured, structured form, and I can see the experience of whatever, you know, self-disclosed. But, okay, well, agents are going to need that someday. And so I'm like, okay, well, this seems like a thread that's worth pulling on. That says, okay. So I... So agent.ai is out there. And it's LinkedIn for agents. It's LinkedIn for agents. It's a professional network for agents. And the more I pull on that thread, it's like, okay, well, if that's true, like, what happens, right? It's like, oh, well, they have a profile just like anyone else, just like a human would. It's going to be a graph underneath, just like a professional network would be. It's just that... And you can have its, you know, connections and follows, and agents should be able to post. That's maybe how they do release notes. Like, oh, I have this new version. Whatever they decide to post, it should just be able to... Behave as a node on the network of a professional network. As it turns out, the more I think about that and pull on that thread, the more and more things, like, start to make sense to me. So it may be more than just a pure professional network. So my original thought was, okay, well, it's a professional network and agents as they exist out there, which I think there's going to be more and more of, will kind of exist on this network and have the profile. But then, and this is always dangerous, I'm like, okay, I want to see a world where thousands of agents are out there in order for the... Because those digital employees, the digital workers don't exist yet in any meaningful way. And so then I'm like, oh, can I make that easier for, like... And so I have, as one does, it's like, oh, I'll build a low-code platform for building agents. How hard could that be, right? Like, very hard, as it turns out. But it's been fun. So now, agent.ai has 1.3 million users. 3,000 people have actually, you know, built some variation of an agent, sometimes just for their own personal productivity. About 1,000 of which have been published. And the reason this comes back to MCP for me, so imagine that and other networks, since I know agent.ai. So right now, we have an MCP server for agent.ai that exposes all the internally built agents that we have that do, like, super useful things. Like, you know, I have access to a Twitter API that I can subsidize the cost. And I can say, you know, if you're looking to build something for social media, these kinds of things, with a single API key, and it's all completely free right now, I'm funding it. That's a useful way for it to work. And then we have a developer to say, oh, I have this idea. I don't have to worry about open AI. I don't have to worry about, now, you know, this particular model is better. It has access to all the models with one key. And we proxy it kind of behind the scenes. And then expose it. So then we get this kind of community effect, right? That says, oh, well, someone else may have built an agent to do X. Like, I have an agent right now that I built for myself to do domain valuation for website domains because I'm obsessed with domains, right? And, like, there's no efficient market for domains. There's no Zillow for domains right now that tells you, oh, here are what houses in your neighborhood sold for. It's like, well, why doesn't that exist? We should be able to solve that problem. And, yes, you're still guessing. Fine. There should be some simple heuristic. So I built that. It's like, okay, well, let me go look for past transactions. You say, okay, I'm going to type in agent.ai, agent.com, whatever domain. What's it actually worth? I'm looking at buying it. It can go and say, oh, which is what it does. It's like, I'm going to go look at are there any published domain transactions recently that are similar, either use the same word, same top-level domain, whatever it is. And it comes back with an approximate value, and it comes back with its kind of rationale for why it picked the value and comparable transactions. Oh, by the way, this domain sold for published. Okay. So that agent now, let's say, existed on the web, on agent.ai. Then imagine someone else says, oh, you know, I want to build a brand-building agent for startups and entrepreneurs to come up with names for their startup. Like a common problem, every startup is like, ah, I don't know what to call it. And so they type in five random words that kind of define whatever their startup is. And you can do all manner of things, one of which is like, oh, well, I need to find the domain for it. What are possible choices? Now it's like, okay, well, it would be nice to know if there's an aftermarket price for it, if it's listed for sale. Awesome. Then imagine calling this valuation agent. It's like, okay, well, I want to find where the arbitrage is, where the agent valuation tool says this thing is worth $25,000. It's listed on GoDaddy for $5,000. It's close enough. Let's go do that. Right? And that's a kind of composition use case that in my future state. Thousands of agents on the network, all discoverable through something like MCP. And then you as a developer of agents have access to all these kind of Lego building blocks based on what you're trying to solve. Then you blend in orchestration, which is getting better and better with the reasoning models now. Just describe the problem that you have. Now, the next layer that we're all contending with is that how many tools can you actually give an LLM before the LLM breaks? That number used to be like 15 or 20 before you kind of started to vary dramatically. And so that's the thing I'm thinking about now. It's like, okay, if I want to... If I want to expose 1,000 of these agents to a given LLM, obviously I can't give it all 1,000. Is there some intermediate layer that says, based on your prompt, I'm going to make a best guess at which agents might be able to be helpful for this particular thing? Yeah.Alessio [00:44:37]: Yeah, like RAG for tools. Yep. I did build the Latent Space Researcher on agent.ai. Okay. Nice. Yeah, that seems like, you know, then there's going to be a Latent Space Scheduler. And then once I schedule a research, you know, and you build all of these things. By the way, my apologies for the user experience. You realize I'm an engineer. It's pretty good.swyx [00:44:56]: I think it's a normie-friendly thing. Yeah. That's your magic. HubSpot does the same thing.Alessio [00:45:01]: Yeah, just to like quickly run through it. You can basically create all these different steps. And these steps are like, you know, static versus like variable-driven things. How did you decide between this kind of like low-code-ish versus doing, you know, low-code with code backend versus like not exposing that at all? Any fun design decisions? Yeah. And this is, I think...Dharmesh [00:45:22]: I think lots of people are likely sitting in exactly my position right now, coming through the choosing between deterministic. Like if you're like in a business or building, you know, some sort of agentic thing, do you decide to do a deterministic thing? Or do you go non-deterministic and just let the alum handle it, right, with the reasoning models? The original idea and the reason I took the low-code stepwise, a very deterministic approach. A, the reasoning models did not exist at that time. That's thing number one. Thing number two is if you can get... If you know in your head... If you know in your head what the actual steps are to accomplish whatever goal, why would you leave that to chance? There's no upside. There's literally no upside. Just tell me, like, what steps do you need executed? So right now what I'm playing with... So one thing we haven't talked about yet, and people don't talk about UI and agents. Right now, the primary interaction model... Or they don't talk enough about it. I know some people have. But it's like, okay, so we're used to the chatbot back and forth. Fine. I get that. But I think we're going to move to a blend of... Some of those things are going to be synchronous as they are now. But some are going to be... Some are going to be async. It's just going to put it in a queue, just like... And this goes back to my... Man, I talk fast. But I have this... I only have one other speed. It's even faster. So imagine it's like if you're working... So back to my, oh, we're going to have these hybrid digital teams. Like, you would not go to a co-worker and say, I'm going to ask you to do this thing, and then sit there and wait for them to go do it. Like, that's not how the world works. So it's nice to be able to just, like, hand something off to someone. It's like, okay, well, maybe I expect a response in an hour or a day or something like that.Dharmesh [00:46:52]: In terms of when things need to happen. So the UI around agents. So if you look at the output of agent.ai agents right now, they are the simplest possible manifestation of a UI, right? That says, oh, we have inputs of, like, four different types. Like, we've got a dropdown, we've got multi-select, all the things. It's like back in HTML, the original HTML 1.0 days, right? Like, you're the smallest possible set of primitives for a UI. And it just says, okay, because we need to collect some information from the user, and then we go do steps and do things. And generate some output in HTML or markup are the two primary examples. So the thing I've been asking myself, if I keep going down that path. So people ask me, I get requests all the time. It's like, oh, can you make the UI sort of boring? I need to be able to do this, right? And if I keep pulling on that, it's like, okay, well, now I've built an entire UI builder thing. Where does this end? And so I think the right answer, and this is what I'm going to be backcoding once I get done here, is around injecting a code generation UI generation into, the agent.ai flow, right? As a builder, you're like, okay, I'm going to describe the thing that I want, much like you would do in a vibe coding world. But instead of generating the entire app, it's going to generate the UI that exists at some point in either that deterministic flow or something like that. It says, oh, here's the thing I'm trying to do. Go generate the UI for me. And I can go through some iterations. And what I think of it as a, so it's like, I'm going to generate the code, generate the code, tweak it, go through this kind of prompt style, like we do with vibe coding now. And at some point, I'm going to be happy with it. And I'm going to hit save. And that's going to become the action in that particular step. It's like a caching of the generated code that I can then, like incur any inference time costs. It's just the actual code at that point.Alessio [00:48:29]: Yeah, I invested in a company called E2B, which does code sandbox. And they powered the LM arena web arena. So it's basically the, just like you do LMS, like text to text, they do the same for like UI generation. So if you're asking a model, how do you do it? But yeah, I think that's kind of where.Dharmesh [00:48:45]: That's the thing I'm really fascinated by. So the early LLM, you know, we're understandably, but laughably bad at simple arithmetic, right? That's the thing like my wife, Normies would ask us, like, you call this AI, like it can't, my son would be like, it's just stupid. It can't even do like simple arithmetic. And then like we've discovered over time that, and there's a reason for this, right? It's like, it's a large, there's, you know, the word language is in there for a reason in terms of what it's been trained on. It's not meant to do math, but now it's like, okay, well, the fact that it has access to a Python interpreter that I can actually call at runtime, that solves an entire body of problems that it wasn't trained to do. And it's basically a form of delegation. And so the thought that's kind of rattling around in my head is that that's great. So it's, it's like took the arithmetic problem and took it first. Now, like anything that's solvable through a relatively concrete Python program, it's able to do a bunch of things that I couldn't do before. Can we get to the same place with UI? I don't know what the future of UI looks like in a agentic AI world, but maybe let the LLM handle it, but not in the classic sense. Maybe it generates it on the fly, or maybe we go through some iterations and hit cache or something like that. So it's a little bit more predictable. Uh, I don't know, but yeah.Alessio [00:49:48]: And especially when is the human supposed to intervene? So, especially if you're composing them, most of them should not have a UI because then they're just web hooking to somewhere else. I just want to touch back. I don't know if you have more comments on this.swyx [00:50:01]: I was just going to ask when you, you said you got, you're going to go back to code. What

For nearly a century, scientists believed we had discovered ALL of the essential fatty acids the human body needs. But what if they were wrong? Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist and longevity researcher, joins Dave to reveal a groundbreaking discovery—a newly identified essential fatty acid, C15, that may hold the key to healthier aging and even longer lifespans. Originally uncovered in an unlikely place—U.S. Navy dolphins that were outliving their wild counterparts by decades—this forgotten fat is now shaking up the scientific community. So why hasn't anyone told you about it?? Decades of misguided dietary advice stripped this crucial nutrient from our food system, leaving an entire generation unknowingly deficient. Even worse, pregnant women have been some of the MOST hurt from this cruel change to our modern diet. Now, cutting-edge research is proving that C15 plays a critical role in cellular stability, mitochondrial function, and total mental health. What You'll Learn in This Episode: • The first new essential fatty acid discovered in nearly 100 years—and why it matters • How dolphins led to one of the BIGGEST breakthroughs in human nutrition • Why the removal of C15 from our diets is accelerating aging • The surprising connection between C15 and mental health • How this “missing” fat could outperform some of the biggest longevity drugs today! • What foods naturally contain C15—and should you supplement it? *** Get 15$ off Fatty15 at www.fatty15.com with code: DAVE *** SPONSORS Puori | Visit https://puori.com/dave and use code DAVE for 20% off.Calroy | Head to https://calroy.com/dave for an exclusive discount. Resources: • Dave Asprey's New Book - Heavily Meditated: https://daveasprey.com/heavily-meditated/ • Fatty15 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/fatty15/ • Fatty15 Website: www.fatty15.com • 2025 Biohacking Conference: https://biohackingconference.com/2025 • Danger Coffee: https://dangercoffee.com • Dave Asprey's Website: https://daveasprey.com • Dave Asprey's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/daveasprey • Upgrade Collective – Join The Human Upgrade Podcast Live: https://www.ourupgradecollective.com • Own an Upgrade Labs: https://ownanupgradelabs.com • Upgrade Labs: https://upgradelabs.com • 40 Years of Zen – Neurofeedback Training for Advanced Cognitive Enhancement: https://40yearsofzen.com Timestamps: 00:00 – Intro 00:34 – Meet Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson 00:46 – Discovering C15 in Navy Dolphins 01:58 – Challenges and Skepticism 04:21 – Scientific Validation and Research 06:59 – C15's Impact on Human Health 27:43 – Big Data, AI, and Longevity Research 36:08 – C15 as a Longevity Nutrient 42:14 – The Navy's Role in Fatty 15 43:03 – Epigenetic Aging and Lifespan 44:51 – Nutritional Guidelines and C15 Deficiency 50:41 – Mental Health and Endocannabinoids 51:33 – Dairy, Fats, and Nutrition History 56:38 – Fatty 15 in Skincare and Supplements 01:03:58 – Regulatory Changes in Nutrition 01:11:26 – Gender Differences in Fatty Acids See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today I'm speaking with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson on the Longevity Optimization Podcast. In this episode, we discuss the intriguing concept of longevity molecules, with a particular focus on C15 fatty acid and its implications for health and aging. Our conversation explores various longevity molecules, their mechanisms, and the surprising findings from research on dolphins that led to the discovery of C15 as a key factor in healthy aging. We emphasize the importance of understanding dietary sources of C15 and its role in promoting longevity and overall health. Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson is a leading researcher in the field of longevity and nutrition, dedicated to uncovering the connections between dietary components and health outcomes. Throughout our discussion, we delve into the significance of C15 fatty acid in relation to aging, health, and nutrition. We highlight how C15 influences biological age, cell stability, and the implications of iron overload. The conversation also explores the multifaceted benefits of C15, particularly for women's health and infant nutrition, while emphasizing the importance of optimizing C15 levels for overall well-being. Additionally, we draw parallels between the longevity of dolphins and human health, introducing emerging research on C15's role in mental health, providing listeners with valuable insights into this promising area of study.Save on Fatty15: https://fatty15.com/KAYLACode: KAYLALet's be friends!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaylabarnes/?hl=enTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@femalelongevityX: https://x.com/femalelongevityWebsite: https://kaylabarnes.comJoin Female Longevity Community: https://kayla-barnes-lentz.circle.so/checkout/become-a-memberFollow Fatty15 and Dr. Stephanie Venn-WatsonFatty15Website: https://fatty15.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fatty15/Dr. Stephanie Venn-WatsonLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanievennwatsonTimestamps00:00 Introduction to Longevity and Health02:48 Understanding Longevity Molecules05:54 Mechanisms of Longevity Molecules08:55 Research on Dolphins and Aging12:06 The Discovery of C15 Fatty Acid14:53 C15 vs Omega-3 Fatty Acids18:02 C15's Role in Longevity20:53 C15 Levels and Health Outcomes23:58 C15 in Diet and Lifestyle28:30 The Role of C15 in Aging and Cell Stability31:24 Understanding Iron Overload and Its Health Implications34:38 C15: A Multifaceted Molecule for Health37:15 C15 and Its Impact on Women's Health40:04 The Importance of C15 in Infant Nutrition42:01 Optimizing C15 Levels for Better Health44:42 Lessons from Dolphins: Longevity and Health52:27 Emerging Research on C15 and Mental Health

What if the key to aging well had been hiding in plain sight—inside our cells, our food, and even… dolphins? That's exactly what Stephanie Venn-Watson, DVM, a veterinary epidemiologist, discovered while studying dolphins in the U.S. Navy's marine mammal program. She found that some dolphins were aging significantly slower than others, leading to the discovery of C15:0—a newly recognized essential fatty acid that supports cellular health, fights inflammation, and may even slow the aging process. In this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, we dive into: How studying dolphins led to the discovery of C15:0 as the first essential fatty acid found in 90 years. Why a deficiency in this nutrient could be accelerating aging and chronic disease. How C15:0 strengthens cell membranes, reduces inflammation, and promotes longevity. The connection between diet, metabolic health, and optimal aging. What you can do to ensure you're getting enough of this essential fatty acid. This groundbreaking discovery could change how we think about nutrition and longevity. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman Sign Up for Dr. Hyman's Weekly Longevity Journal This episode is brought to you by PaleoValley, Timeline Nutrition, LMNT, BON CHARGE, and Big Bold Health.  Get nutrient-dense, whole foods. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman for 15% off your first purchase. Support essential mitochondrial health and save 10% on Mitopure. Visit timeline.com/drhyman to get 10% off today. Get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any order—just head to drinklmnt.com/hyman. Order BON CHARGE's Max Red Light Therapy device today and get 15% off. Visit boncharge.com and use code DRMARK for 15% off.  Try Big Bold Health's HTB Rejuvenate and get 25% off by going to bigboldhealth.com and use code DRMARK25 at checkout.

In this episode, we explore the science of longevity with seasoned veterinary epidemiologist Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, CEO of Seraphina Therapeutics and founder of Fatty15. With a background spanning the World Health Organization and the U.S. Navy, Dr. Stephanie has dedicated her career to improving human and animal health.She shares groundbreaking insights on pentadecanoic acid (C15)—a newly recognized essential fatty acid—and its role in supporting long-term wellness. We discuss the best dietary sources of C15, why it meets the seven criteria for a longevity nutrient, and how it impacts metabolic health, chronic disease, and overall aging. Plus, Dr. Stephanie reveals the fascinating research that started it all—studying dolphins!Topics Discussed: What is C15 and how does it support longevity and overall health?Which foods are naturally high in pentadecanoic acid (C15)?How does C15 compare to other fatty acids for metabolic and cellular health?What role did dolphin research play in discovering the benefits of C15?How can I incorporate C15 into my diet to improve long-term wellness?Leave Us A Voice Message! | https://telbee.io/channel/4_b9zzx58wdkuwirqkcxwa/Sponsored By:Be Well By Kelly Protein Powder & Essentials | Get $10 off your order with PODCAST10 at bewellbykelly.com.LMNT | Go to DrinkLMNT.com/Kelly to receive a free Sample Pack with any LMNT drink mix purchase!Fatty 15 | Fatty15 is on a mission to replenish your C15 levels and restore your long-term health. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to fatty15.com/KELLY15 and using code KELLY15 at checkout.OneSkin | Visit oneskin.co/BEWELL and use code BEWELL for 15% off your first purchase.Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Introduction00:01:24 - Dr. Stephanie Background and Expertise00:05:03 - Longevity Science & the Power of C1500:08:14 - Top Foods Rich in C1500:09:37 - The Importance of Dairy00:11:21 - Criteria of a Proven Longevity Nutrient00:16:52 - Metabolic Health Benefits of Fatty1500:20:26 - Dolphin Research 00:25:01 - Best Ways to Absorb Nutrients00:31:17 - The Science-Backed Health Benefits of C1500:38:56 - How Diet and C15 Impact Chronic Disease Prevention00:41:01 - Ranking Fatty Acids00:45:39 - C15 Shelf Life, Sourcing, and Quality00:48:40 - How to Easily Incorporate C15 Into Your Diet00:54:52 - You Are Not Alone00:57:11 - Dr. Stephanie's BookShow Links:Mediterranean Salmon RecipeCheck Out Dr. Stephanie: Get Her New Book NOW! Check Out Fatty15 https://www.discoverc15.com/Check Out Kelly: Instagram

Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist for the Navy, joins us again today for the second half of a two-part series. Dr. Venn Watson is passionate about raising awareness about the benefits of C15. In Part 2 today, she dives into the dangers of C15 deficiency, highlighting the differences between omega 3s and C15. She also explains why we need both and how to get C15 from our diet or by taking Fatty 15. Please listen to Part 1 first to hear about the Navy dolphins and the discovery of this fatty acid before joining us for Part 2 of our exciting interview series. Why we need C15s: For longevity To fight aging To boost energy levels To strengthen cells To reduce inflammation and the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and neurodegeneration To improve metabolic health To support brain health For better pregnancy health Dr. Venn Watson Bio: Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson is the CEO of Seraphina Therapeutics. A seasoned veterinary epidemiologist and public health scientist, Stephanie previously served at the World Health Organization and U.S. Navy. With a life-long mission of helping people (and our fellow animals) age better, Stephanie's award-winning approach to improving human and animal health has been featured on NPR, BBC, CBS, and National Geographic. In her time as CEO, Seraphina Therapeutics has been recognized for its extensive research and education on pentadecanoic acid (C15:0). Stephanie received her B.S. in Animal Physiology and Neuroscience from UC San Diego, D.V.M. from Tufts University, M.P .H. from Emory University, and she was a National Research Council Associate with the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center. She is an Albert Schweitzer Fellow for Life. In this episode: Why Fatty 15 is better for us than Rapamycin or Metformin What a C15 deficiency looks like Using blood spot testing to ensure optimum C15 levels How C15s differ from Omega 3 fatty acids The many benefits of supplementing with C15s How the Fatty 15 supplement gets made, and where the ingredients are sourced   Links and Resources: Use code LONGEVITYBLUEPRINT for 15% off your first purchase of fatty15 Or use this link  Use code ENERGY to get 10% off MITOCHONDRIAL COMPLEX Use code “DRGRAY” for 10% off Danger Coffee Use code OMEGA3S to get 10% off OMEGA3S Follow Your Longevity Blueprint  On Instagram| Facebook| Twitter| YouTube | LinkedIn Get your copy of the Your Longevity Blueprint book and claim your bonuses here Find Dr. Stephanie Gray and Your Longevity Blueprint online   Follow Dr. Stephanie Gray  on Facebook| Instagram| Youtube | Twitter | LinkedIn Integrative Health and Hormone Clinic Podcast production by Team Podcast Relative Links for This Show: The Longevity Nutrient: The Unexpected Fat That Holds the Key to Healthy Aging by Stephanie Venn-Watson Guest Social Media Links: TEDx: Save the dolphins. Save the world  Discover C15 fatty15 | C15:0 Supplement on Instagram

Have you ever wondered why so many of us feel like we're running on empty—despite eating clean, exercising, and prioritizing our wellness? It's that frustrating gap between doing "all the right things" and still feeling off, with brain fog, low energy, or restless sleep creeping in.In today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist and co-founder of Fatty15, to explore a groundbreaking discovery that's reshaping how we think about fats and cellular health. What if one specific nutrient—C15:0—could strengthen our cells, slow down aging, and restore balance in ways we never imagined? And here's the wild part: this research started with dolphins and led to one of the most exciting longevity breakthroughs in decades.We'll unpack how C15:0 became known as the "missing piece" in modern nutrition, why it's essential for everything from gut health to brain function, and how small shifts—like adding the right type of fat back into your routine—can have a huge impact on how you feel.If you've been feeling stuck in the cycle of fatigue and “quick-fix” health trends, this conversation is your invitation to break free, simplify, and tune into what your body really needs.Let's dive in!We Also Discuss:(00:01) Rooted in Wellness With Fatty 15(06:29) Discovering Essential Fatty Acid C15:0(15:41) The Power of Essential Fatty Acid(30:17) Discovering the Benefits of C15:0(42:27) Nourishing Health With C15:0 Discovery(56:59) Empowering Health Through Nutrition DiscoveryThank You to Our Sponsors:OneSkin: Get 15% off your first order with the code MONA at oneskin.co/MONALearn more about Mona Sharma:Website: www.monasharma.comInstagram: @monasharmaLearn more about Dr. Stephanie Venn-WatsonWebsite: https://fatty15.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/fatty15Stress Quiz: What's Your Stress Personality?Ever wonder how you naturally respond to stress? Take our quick quiz to uncover your Stress Personality Type and receive a personalized healing toolkit designed to help you regain balance and thrive. Take the quiz now at https://www.monasharma.com/quiz Download Your FREE Guide - 12 Wellness Tips to Unlock Your Best Health Now: Ready to reclaim your vitality? Download Mona's 12 Wellness Tips and take actionable steps to transform your health, energy, and mindset. Get started now at https://monasharma.com/12tips.Visit Mona's website: https://monasharma.com – Unlock powerful tools and wisdom rooted in wellness to elevate your health, energy, and clarity. Mona blends ancient healing practices with modern science to help you achieve lasting transformation.Follow Mona on Instagram: Stay connected with Mona for daily inspiration, holistic health tips, and personal growth. Join the conversation on Instagram at https://instagram.com/monasharma.

Today, I am blessed to sit down with Dr. Stephanie Venn Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist and author of "The Longevity Nutrient: The Unexpected Fat That Holds the Key to Healthy Aging." They discuss the critical role of the saturated fat C15 (penta acid) in cellular health and its implications for metabolic diseases like fatty liver disease. Dr. Venn Watson emphasizes the importance of maintaining adequate C15 levels, which are often found in full-fat dairy and certain fish. The episode also touches on the potential downsides of fish oil supplements and the significance of gratitude in health and longevity. You'll Learn: Importance of saturated fat C15 (penta acid) in cellular health Role of C15 in preventing nutritional deficiencies and cellular fragility Impact of modern dietary trends on fat consumption and metabolism Benefits of full-fat dairy as a source of C15 Research findings linking C15 deficiencies to metabolic diseases, particularly fatty liver disease Dietary sources of C15 and their significance for health Discussion on the development of a C15 supplement for optimizing levels Concerns regarding the consumption of fish oil supplements and their stability Emphasis on whole food sources of omega-3s over concentrated supplements The role of gratitude in health and personal reflections on research and public health

So… are you really tired of content creation… or just exhausted by everyone telling you how you should be doing it? In this episode, I'm unpacking a truth bomb about what's actually going on when we hit content burnout — and what to do instead.If you LOVED this episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah.⁠⁠⁠GET YOUR AUDIO GUIDE AND LEARN CONTENT STRATEGYKEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS

In this episode, Chrissie shares her take on how children's publishing feels right now vs. how it should beTo access the full essay including graphics of the Venn diagrams described in this episode, visit Chrissie Writes on Substack.Also mentioned in the epsiode: David Sedaris discussing picture books and lessonsBe sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow the show on Instagram @bookdelightpod, follow Chrissie on Instagram @librarychrissie, and subscribe to Chrissie's kidlit newsletter at librarychrissie.substack.com.If you want to support the show, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on Substack. For $7/month, you are helping to pay the costs of the show and receive exclusive content like extra booklists, live video Q&As with Chrissie, reviews of books Chrissie did not like, and more. Visit librarychrissie.substack.com to subscribe.

I am thrilled to have Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist for the Navy, joining me for a delightful two-part series. I have always loved dolphins, and as it turns out, they have taught us a great deal about aging! Today, in Part 1, Dr. Venn-Watson introduces longevity molecules known as geroprotectors. She shares how she discovered C15 while studying Navy dolphins and explains why those with higher C15 levels have a longer health span than those with lower levels. This interview has convinced me that I needed to take C15, which is available in a supplement called Fatty15. Best Food Sources for C15: Dairy fat Fatty fish (Heads and skin) Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson's Bio: Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson is the CEO of Seraphina Therapeutics. A seasoned veterinary epidemiologist and public health scientist, Stephanie previously served at the World Health Organization and U.S. Navy. With a life-long mission of helping people (and our fellow animals) age better, her award-winning approach to improving human and animal health has been featured on NPR, BBC, CBS, and National Geographic. In her time as CEO, Seraphina Therapeutics has been recognized for its extensive research and education on pentadecanoic acid (C15:0). Stephanie received her B.S. in Animal Physiology and Neuroscience from UC San Diego, D.V.M. from Tufts University, M.P .H. from Emory University, and she was a National Research Council Associate with the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center. She is an Albert Schweitzer Fellow for Life. In this episode: What are geroprotecters? How Dr. Venn-Watson discovered C15 accidentally while working with Navy dolphins What makes C15 the leading longevity nutrient? Why C15 is such a significant saturated fatty acid What is our optimum C15 level? How C15 protects us from oxidative damage Which foods provide us with C15? The benefits of supplementing with Fatty 15 Links and Resources: Use code ENERGY to get 10% off MITOCHONDRIAL COMPLEX Use CODE BERGAMOT to get 10% off Citrus Bergamot Use code Drgray20 to get 20% off Perfect Aminos Follow Your Longevity Blueprint  On Instagram| Facebook| Twitter| YouTube | LinkedIn Get your copy of the Your Longevity Blueprint book and claim your bonuses here Find Dr. Stephanie Gray and Your Longevity Blueprint online   Follow Dr. Stephanie Gray  on Facebook| Instagram| Youtube | Twitter | LinkedIn Integrative Health and Hormone Clinic Podcast production by Team Podcast Relative Links for This Show: The Longevity Nutrient: The Unexpected Fat That Holds the Key to Healthy Aging by Stephanie Venn-Watson Guest Social Media Links: TEDx: Save the dolphins. Save the world  Discover C15 fatty15 | C15:0 Supplement on Instagram Use code LONGEVITYBLUEPRINT for 15% off your first purchase of fatty15 Or use this link   

My guest today is a Gen X legend and someone I've been a little bit obsessed with ever since I saw her star in the definitive (late) 80s movie, Say Anything. Ione Skye. There was a time when It seemed like if there was a hot young actor - John Cusack, River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves - she got to snog them on screen. (I know, shallow, much.) Ione has spent her life in the centre of the Venn diagram of film, music and celebrity. The daughter of 60s superstar Donovan, she famously dated Red Hot Chilli Peppers' Anthony Keidis finding herself both babysitter and breadwinner at just 16. She followed that with an ill-fated marriage to Beastie Boy Ad-Rock (Adam Horowitz). But there is so much more to Ione than all those male name drops. She has starred in some of the most significant movies of their generation. She has worked with the likes of Sofia Coppola, Chloe Sevigny, Lena Dunham and Madonna. She's written children's books, directed short films and is an accomplished painter. Not to mention podcaster. (She hosts the podcast Weirder Together with her partner, Ben Lee.) Oh, and I do just have to say that as a child she only lived next door to the iconic writer Eve Babitz! Anyway It all adds up to one fascinating tumultuous story. One she's addressed extremely candidly in her new memoir, Say Everything. See what she did there? Ione joined me from LA to talk about growing up in the 80s and 90s, being a nepo baby before nepo babies were a thing, having it all, losing it all and getting some of it back, what she's learnt from her Gen Z daughters and finally coming into herself in her 50s. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Say Everything by Ione Skye and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com. • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls at Pineapple Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our 99th episode, Jill and Linda explore how collaboration can be a powerful form of self-care for moms. As we all navigate the exhaustion and demands of motherhood, finding ways to share the load with others isn't just practical—it's essential for our wellbeing. From carpooling arrangements to podcast partnerships, this conversation reveals how connecting with others helps lighten our burdens while strengthening our relationships.Episode Highlights:Collaboration as Load-Sharing: Discover how simple arrangements like carpooling for kids' activities can create breathing room in your schedule while building community with other parents.Start Small and Time-Limited: When beginning new collaborative efforts, consider starting with a defined timeframe (like a 6-week commitment) to reduce pressure and make it easier to say "yes."Relationship First, Plan Second: The strongest collaborations protect the relationship above all else. As Linda points out, "The plan is something that we just follow the rules on so we can protect our relationship."Finding the Overlap: Before diving into collaboration, identify where your "whys" match up with potential partners. Jill and Linda share how they used a Venn diagram to discover shared goals before starting their podcast.Accept Help Without Guilt: Jill's example of neighborhood childcare swapping reminds us that allowing others to help isn't a burden—it often provides mutual benefits that serve everyone involved.Moving Forward:If you're feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list, consider what burdens you could share with someone else this week. Even small acts of collaboration can provide meaningful relief. As we prepare for our milestone 100th episode featuring special guest listeners, we invite you to reflect on your own collaborative experiences. How might you create more "light lifts" in your life by connecting with others?Reach out through our show notes email or social channels to share your thoughts—we'd love to hear how you're using collaboration as self-care in your own motherhood journey!Remember: You don't have to do it all alone. That's not just good advice—it's good self-care.Connect with us:Email your questions for our 100th episode to muckedupyourselfcare@gmail.comJoin the conversation about what intentional self-care means to you.You can also find Jill on Instagram @mamaoutspoken and https://www.mamaoutspoken.com/ and Linda @hellolindabonney or https://www.lindabonney.com.Until next week – we hope you can unstuck your muck!

Are you constantly putting out fires in your agency instead of strategically growing it? In this episode of the Deep Specialization podcast, Corey Quinn welcomes Karl Sakas, known as "the agency therapist" who helps agency owners work less, earn more, and reward their best team members. Karl discusses his new book, "Calm the Chaos: 10 Ways to Run a Better Agency," which offers practical strategies for agency leaders looking to create better work environments, improve team morale, and achieve sustainable growth. Episode Highlights: Transitioning from Doer to Leader: Karl shares insights on how agency owners can effectively shift from being hands-on doers to strategic leaders, explaining the six key agency roles and which ones to delegate first Finding Your #2: Strategies for identifying, developing, and properly compensating your agency's second-in-command The Desire-Competence-Capacity Framework: How to identify potential leaders using this practical Venn diagram approach Streamlining Meetings: Practical tips for reducing meeting bloat and making gatherings more productive The Assistant Effect: Why hiring a reliable assistant is crucial for agency owners and how to find the right one The resources mentioned in this episode are: Escape the generalist trap with my best-selling book “Anyone, Not Everyone” and discover how to become the go-to agency in a vertical market https://www.AnyoneNotEveryone.com Connect with Karl Sakas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlsakas/ Free resources for agencies from Karl Sakas Calm the Chaos book, including free sample chapter (available via Amazon worldwide) Work Less, Earn More book, including free sample chapter (available via Amazon worldwide) Save $150 on "Control (and Maximize) Your Agency Exit" training, with discount code COREYQUINN at checkout Save $100 on "How to Stop Scope Creep" training, with discount code COREYQUINN at checkout

00:01 - Ad (Ad) Anne Ganguzza, you are a true gem. Okay, I am a voice actor, been in the business over 15 years, eight of those full time but, honest to goodness, until discovering the VO Boss Podcast this year, I feel like I've been getting away with murder. I don't even know how I've been as successful as I have been without all the strategies and perspectives and predictions that you make about our industry. I feel like I've been in VO College for like the past six, seven months listening to the VO Boss podcast. It's just incredible and I can't thank you enough. I love you, I love your co-hosts, I love your guests. It's just so full of information that I can put into action for my business and just please keep doing what you're doing, because I feel like I'm taking my business to the next level the boss level.  01:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey boss, talent Anne Ganguzza here with a quick shout out to those who are a little freaked out about marketing. VO BOSS Blast is your secret weapon, making your marketing manageable. Your voice deserves to be heard. Join us at vo boss.com and start your marketing campaign today is the Boss Level marketing campaign. Today, it's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level.  01:30 - Intro (Announcement) These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  01:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Money Talk Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am so happy to be here again with our resident money gal, Danielle Famble. Hey Danielle, hey Anne, how are you?  02:00 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I'm good, I'm good. How are you?  02:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I am good. You know, it's been a busy week of auditioning, coaching, working, submitting auditions, and I happened to reach out to my agent and it made me think about our series about money and I thought it would be great to talk about the whole agent aspect managers, pay-to-plays, the whole agent aspect, managers, pay-to-plays and about financials when we work with said companies, people. I think there's a lot of myths out there for people that are just getting into the industry or even people who are in the industry. They have a lot of beliefs about managers and pay-to-plays and should I, shouldn't I? What's fair, what's not fair?  02:44 I thought it'd be a great time to talk about that today.  02:46 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, that's actually really important because these agents and managers are pay-to-plays they're all businesses, right? So they are working within the business model that they have set up for themselves and businesses have costs and so to work with a business, there is a cost there and you, as the VO boss running your own business, you have to think about the cost that you would be paying, the business expenses you'd be paying for having these relationships. So, yeah, it's really important.  03:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, let's start actually. Let's start with, let's say, somebody's just getting into the industry, and I know a lot of myths about people that just get into the industry. They believe that they need to be able to get an agent right away. And so we can start there to dispel some of those myths. And, by the way, I will say myself personally, I was working full time in the industry for about four years before I got my first agent.  03:36 Oh wow, yeah, mostly because I was doing a lot of non-broadcast work. And so agents, their business, as we were just discussing, right, and businesses are in business to make money. And so if we think about an agent, where is the money right for the agent? How does the agent make money? Well, they get a percentage right of the jobs that they cast and opportunities that they send to us. And if we book that job because they provided us with that opportunity and negotiated on our behalf, they then get a certain percentage of that money and their business model, like any business, right, we want to remain in business, so it behooves them to make money right, to get bookings and to get jobs. And so I guess, Danielle, first of all let me ask you, I mean, in dispelling the myth, I mean, did you get an agent right away when you first got into the business, or what was your entrance into the business?  04:35 - Danielle Famble (Guest) So my entrance I actually came from a musical theater background and I had representation sending me out on auditions for shows, for theater shows, and that person also did rep people who were doing voiceover, who were doing on camera. So I basically kind of moved within that organization from being on stage to being behind the microphone. So in that respect I did start out with representation and then actually moved to a different agent who specialized specifically in voiceover. So that was my trajectory. But to your point and I think this is actually really important, depending on what you're wanting to do, like what genres that you are going into and really like putting your focus in, you may or may not need an agent, especially like with non-broadcast, for example.  05:27 You can get a lot of that work on your own with your own marketing and things like that. So you may not need an agent and there may not be agents who are really focusing in that specific niche to go to and work with them. So I think the question then becomes for the individual VO boss what is your business model? Are you wanting to do more commercials? Are you wanting to do non-broadcast? Are you wanting to do animation? Really, depending on what genres you're really targeting, depends on if you need or it would work best for you to have an agent or representation. I think a lot of people when you hear that they want to work with an agent, it's probably because they want to do commercials mostly, or animation.  06:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly, exactly. And I'm always stressing to my students that are just coming to me, that are new to the industry, that in reality, I mean you don't need an agent if you're not getting into broadcast right away. I mean you can acquire an agent later on or at a certain point, and most agents, I would say, are only really concerned with broadcast. Why? Because they get paid more.  06:32 It's as simple as that it's as simple as that right it's the money, because broadcast they can get paid based upon the job and where and how often it airs, because they'll get paid each and every time that happens. For non-broadcast it's kind of a one and done. Now all agents are not created equal. I mean there are some agents that are specializing in specific genres. Now I don't know of any agent that really specifies in an e-learning genre, but that's because why it's non-broadcast and it doesn't necessarily behoove them right to focus on that, because it's a one-and-done sort of thing. So the amount of money they're going to make on a non-broadcast job versus a broadcast where they're going to pay royalties, residuals, all that good stuff, is minimal.  07:17 And now I do have an agent that I book a lot of corporate work. I mean they're not going to say no, right, and I'm sure it's working with a company that also books broadcast style commercials and that sort of thing. So they also like, oh, I need a little internal training video or I need a corporate video that's going to be on my YouTube channel, and so I will get those jobs from my agent as well. But to be quite honest, I mean it's not as exciting as if I booked a national commercial. Sure.  07:46 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah.  07:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) The money. There is obviously much better there. So that is with agents, right? Well, let's discuss pay-to-plays, right? Because there's a lot of people who are like, oh, we should just direct market, how do I get opportunities? And a lot of people, when they first start out, want to talk about pay-to-plays and so pay-to-plays and so pay-to-plays, as their name suggests. Right is, we are going to pay so that we can play or get jobs and auditions, and so we pay a fee and, depending on the pay-to-play site, they have different business models. So you pay one fee for a particular amount of auditions or a particular level. At this point it used to just be one fee where, oh, you're on the site and you get auditions, and now they've kind of really diversified and have different levels many of them and so, depending on the amount that you pay, you get a different amount of opportunities.  08:36 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Or you get the opportunities at like a staggered time depending. But yes, exactly Like for all of these different companies, as you're saying, they all have a different business model. So really the question becomes like are you willing to subscribe to that company's business model as they have it set forth? You don't have to. There are certain pay to play sites I'm not on because I don't agree or want to participate in that company's business model. It really then becomes a business decision for me and for my business how can I best position myself to win? And if it means that I'm going to be signed to a particular agent or on certain rosters or pay-to-play sites or those kind of things, it really becomes a question for me of like, how do I want to position myself to have my business do the best that it possibly can? And that's going to change. It might change that I change to a different tier at a pay-to-play site or I just no longer use that one at all.  09:36 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Business models change and that I have seen evolve through the years, because back in oh gosh, I want to say about 2006, that's when I joined my first pay-to-play, which was Voice 123. They have since evolved and grown and changed their business model to now have levels. But in the beginning it used to just be one level and you would set up your profile and based on that profile and the things that you selected in that profile, you would get opportunities for the auditions and you would get those jobs. There was no other than that one feed that they collected for the membership. They didn't collect any additional monies for that. And then I would say, maybe a couple of years later, another one. And well, I should say Voice123 was the first like official voiceover pay to play.  10:21 Prior to that there was like Freelancer you know, Odesk, and those were just freelance type jobs that everybody would just bid on. And actually at that point there was a particular fee which was called an escrow fee, right, that you would pay the company if you wanted to make sure that you got paid, because the biggest issue with freelance work or doing independent contract work, and especially when it's online, is not getting paid. And so as that evolved in the workplace or online, it became a big thing and so companies and this is even before Voice123 and Voicescom, but they started to offer a service called escrow service, where they would pay you and you would be assured that you would get paid and then you would pay them a fee for that and it was called an escrow fee. And so that was adopted early on by the freelance companies. And the thing about all the freelance companies is it became very popular right for freelancers to get work, and so this whole kind of what people today call the race to the bottom right underbidding that's how everybody got their work on a lot of those. And it just became this crazy kind of a model where you know you would bid on something and then somebody would come in and bid a lower price and get the job. And so it became this mindset where it was like, well, I guess if I bid lower I'll get the job. And I think that's what started with the pay-to-plays people talking about them as being bottom feeders right, because people would start to underbid. It was very similar to the model of freelance Odesk, all those models in the beginning.  11:59 And then I think, after a few years and actually it was a few years because for a while Voicescom and Voice123 were the only two in the game and they competed with one another and they both had one level, and I remember Voice123, because they were out first, were always, I think, what people considered to be the standard, and they had a lot more memberships. And then I think Voicescom started kind of playing around with how they would offer jobs, and so they, if I remember in the very beginning, were the first ones. I don't believe Voice123 ever offered anything like an escrow service, but Voicescom started to offer you could pay escrow so that you can make sure that you got paid, and then you would pay them a certain percentage of the fee, and that was prior to any of their managed jobs of today, and so that was always a choice, so you could choose to take your chances and accept the job. And they were hands off, like if you got paid, you got paid, if you didn't, you didn't. They weren't really responsible. And then they offered the escrow, in which case they said we'll pay you and you can be assured you'll get your money.  13:04 And then, ultimately, I think the competition started happening once more. Pay-to-plays came about, like Bodalgo, and there's a couple other ones, voice Over Planet, et cetera, et cetera, and then the whole thing began. And, of course, it's always a point of contention, with everybody out on the forums talking about is it fair, is it right for them to double dip or triple dip, especially with managed jobs? And, danielle, I'd love to hear your opinion on this Double dipping, triple dipping. What are your thoughts? Is it a thing, is it bad? Is it illegal? Is it good? What are your thoughts?  13:37 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I mean, it's definitely a thing. I go back to my stance of this is the business model of the company that you are or are not choosing to do business with. If you don't agree with it, you don't have to participate in it. Like, for example, for me I am on Voice123. I'm not on Voicescom because I don't agree with their business model, so it is a thing. I don't agree with their business model, so it is a thing.  14:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I don't know that it's illegal.  14:04 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I mean, where are the laws saying that they can't do it? But if you don't agree with it, then you can just take yourself and your dollars out of the equation. And anyone who does agree with it or wants to use that platform for their business model, they're free to do it. And I think also for me platform for their business model they're free to do it. And I think also for me when I look at agents or managers or pay-to-plays, it really is. Is my business financially able to recoup the costs that I'm putting into, for example, the pay-to-play? Am I making enough money that the amount of money I'm spending, the tier that I'm on on voice one, two, three, for example is that a good return on my investment? I think that's the same thing for being with an agent, same thing for being on a pay to play site.  14:49 Is this is a business expense? And does my business have the capacity to recoup the amount of money that I'm spending, because I look at all of these relationships as a cost of doing business? And what is the return on investment If I'm spending because I look at all of these relationships as a cost of doing business, and what is the return on investment. If I'm not booking enough and I'm not making enough money to cover the amount in commission that I'm paying, for example, then maybe I need to go and look at how do I get my business to a place where the ROI will be positive. So really you can agree with all these different businesses or not, but really the question is does your business have the ability to get a positive return on investment for the amount of money spent, because it is a business expense when you are working with these companies.  15:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely. And I think, bosses out there, the one thing to really think about is just mind your own business and make your own decisions on whether you want to work with other businesses, and you can certainly get online and contribute to all the all the discussion and all the hype. And is it double dipping? Is it triple dipping? Is it right? Is it wrong In reality? Like people get so like up in arms about the state of pay to plays but in reality, just okay, let them do their business. And you're right, I mean, I am not part of pay-to-plays because, well, some pay-to-plays because I don't agree with their business ethics. So when managed jobs came about with voices, that's when I think, really, everybody started to say that there was double and triple dipping. And I guess you can say that, but honestly, it's kind of like well, I'm not going to stress myself out over it, I'm just not going to use it if I don't agree with it.  16:31 And managed jobs if you think about it and I want to talk to you about management companies too managed jobs is similar. You know, if you think Voicescom, they're charging a fee for your membership and then, in addition to that, if you decide to take a managed job. They're going to handle all the negotiation of the pricing, they're going to handle all the communication with the client, they're going to handle all of that stuff on behalf of the client, and so there is a fee for that. And of course, one of the big things was well, how much is that fee? But in reality, is there regulation on that? There really isn't yet. And so I mean, if you wanted to get into technicalities, have they done anything illegal, right, by charging a certain percentage for a management fee? No, not really. It's a business model. So if they decided to charge 50% management fee, well, that's their business model. And of course, that's a business model as long as we know about it. We can agree or not agree to it, right?  17:18 And as long as we know about it, and I do believe that any company that I do business with and I'm pretty sure it's the same with you, danielle I want them to be transparent.  17:28 And if I feel that a company or an organization has not been transparent with me. That's when I back off and I say you know what? I have a choice here. I mean, goodness gracious, I didn't get out of the corporate world so that I could continue to do things that I didn't want to do or invest in things that I didn't want to invest. I mean, this is why I am my own business, right, I make my decisions that are best for my business, and I can say you know what? I don't need to subscribe to that, I don't need to be a part of that model or have them as my client, and so it's as simple as that.  17:58 I move on my merry way and I don't let it stress me out, but it's good to know from the get-go. If I feel like they're not being transparent, then there's not much they can do to win back my trust. I don't know, danielle, if you're the same way, but that's my personal take on things. If you lose my trust years ago, from the beginning, I don't know if you'll get me back.  18:20 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I think it's also just about like really making sure that you are an informed consumer, because you are then the consumer and they are a business partner in a way. Yeah, so making sure that you are informed. If you aren't asking the questions that you need to ask, or don't partner with these people until you know the answers, also try it. Try it out and see if it works for you and if there is a positive ROI for trying it out or not. But for me, there are certain business partnerships that I just haven't entered into because I don't agree with the business model. Now they can change. My business model has changed. They can change their business model. I mean, we saw, like, the different changes that have happened with pay-to-plays over the last several years. But if you don't agree to it, there are so many other options. That's a great thing is that there's so many other options?  19:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm so glad that you brought that up, that, yes, the business model can change, like our business models change too, and you're right. I'm glad you brought that up because it makes me think about when you talk about transparency in a company. Right, I had a personal relationship with certain members in the community that owned businesses that I did business with, and so I think you're absolutely right. When it comes business to business, that's completely separate from, let's say, a personal relationship and maybe that trust issue that I might have had like. Are they ethical? Are they running their company ethically? And do I believe that they're telling me?  19:42 There's a lot of businesses out there that you know they make promises, and it's one of those things that I think you have to really sit down and do believe.  19:51 We're going to do this, we're going to change our business model, and so is it something that you believe that the company has integrity, that they have morals and ethics and that, again, is probably another podcast episode, but that can have everything to do with. But the fact is is that many of the companies and the vendors that we work with have business models and we choose whether or not to partner with them. So that brings me to you know, speaking of managed jobs, right, what about managers? And I will tell you right now, I do not work with a manager right now, because the majority of my work is on the non-broadcast side and I've always been very adept at getting my own work, and so I've not really felt like I've needed or maybe ever thought a manager would be something that would help my business, although I certainly don't discount it. But I know that you work with a manager, so let's talk about the financial aspect of management.  20:44 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah, so, like you said, I do work with a management company and it's a different business model than agents, like we talked about in the beginning of this episode. So, agents the job that they have booked you on and they negotiate on your behalf they're getting a percentage or a commission from that job With management companies and it really depends on which management company you're working with. But I'll just make a general statement. Really, what they're wanting, that business model is more like managing your career, and they are getting a percentage of your entire book of business, as in everything that you have booked, with or without them actually being the ones who have negotiated it or presented that opportunity to you. And there's a financial implication to that as well, because for me, I look at what is my book of business outside of this relationship with this management company.  21:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So anything that I get on my own anything that I get through my agents.  21:40 - Danielle Famble (Guest) What does that look like and am I willing to participate in the relationship with a management company and is the return on that investment high enough and positive so that I can continue doing what I'm doing and having the robust business that I'm hoping to have For me, having the robust business that I'm hoping to have For me? I look at that from a financial aspect every single month and I am detailed with it because this is it's a business relationship, and is it worth it to me to have the access to the opportunities from this management company, along with the other things that I'm getting with having the relationship with them, getting to speak to people who are incredibly knowledgeable, asking questions about things that I don't know Like? Is that relationship worth the amount of money spent on this commission of my entire book of business?  22:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Sure, I was just going to say I think there might be some confusion as to what the responsibilities of a management company are, right, do they take you by the hand you personally, danielle and say okay, here, we think you should work with this agency or we're going to get you job? I imagine that management companies, like overall, have a scope. Or does each management company operate differently, like, do you get personalized attention? Are they taking you by the hand and saying here, danielle, I think you should do this and we're going to give you all these opportunities in this genre, et cetera?  23:01 - Danielle Famble (Guest) I think for me my mindset with working with a management company, working with an agent at the end of the day I look at it sort of like a pyramid or tiered. I am running the business, I am minding the business that pays me, I am running this business, and so I look at this as relationships, not necessarily that I'm abdicating my responsibilities of running the business that pays me to somebody else and they can sort of take me by the hand and deal with it. Personally, I don't feel that that is the business model that I am trying to run for myself. So I think for me it's more about what are the relationships that can be made through the connection of being with this management company not here.  23:47 Just what are they?  23:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) doing for you? Yeah, exactly.  23:50 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Wherever you send me, I will go. It's a partnership and for me, I believe that the way that I can best create the business that I'm trying to create is to partner with people who are much more knowledgeable about certain genres or connections than I am. But I am a working participant in that relationship and not allowing someone to sort of take me wherever I need to go.  24:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's kind of like outsourcing. There's so many ways in which it's similar. It's like outsourcing because you want to be afforded opportunities that you may or may not be able to get on your own.  24:24 And that's the fee that you are paying them. I know a lot of people are like but how are they different from an agency? Well, an agency is one agency that has relationships with clients, right? Or has relationships. Maybe not relationships, but they establish relationships with clients to get job opportunities to then pass on to you. Management companies don't necessarily get specific custom, I would say, opportunities just for you, but they also develop relationships and have opportunities. That would be, I would say, a more broad spectrum than just one agent, right, it could be multiple agents, it could be multiple business relationships and those are the opportunities you are, quote unquote, paying a service fee for.  25:11 - Danielle Famble (Guest) And hopefully the idea is that they can coexist and work together, so like the agent model can coexist and work with the management model, so that it's not necessarily a replication, it's almost the Venn diagram of it all, and so there really should be sort of not necessarily just overlap, but an expansion of well, this is what the agent does, and these are the jobs that I get through my agency, and this is what the management company does, and these are the type of jobs that I get through the management company, and also I'm my own business too, so these are the jobs that I'm negotiating for myself and finding through pay to plays or through SEO, or through just the auditions that I have, or my own marketing word of mouth, those kinds of things. And so the idea is that all of these things are working together and you are utilizing the business relationships for each business that you choose to partner with, and at that point then you've built, hopefully, this robust business that isn't dependent on just one business model or one relationship.  26:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you just narrowed it down to just relationships, because in reality there's a lot of people that would say like, well, I did all the work in getting that job, why should I pay someone? Why should I do? And in reality it's really all about the relationship right. The better you can work with as a partner and the more income that you can bring to them, the more they're going to try to bring to you, and I think that relationship is a cycle One feeds the other, and I like that.  26:40 - Danielle Famble (Guest) You just said work with them, because a lot of people, I think sometimes, especially when you're wanting to get any sort of representation, agent, management what have you? It's like you're working for them, you're doing things for them, or they should do something for you, exactly. And this is a it's got to be a partnership. Do something for you, Exactly, and this is a it's got to be a partnership.  26:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, absolutely yeah. Whether you're talking manager, you're talking agent, maybe, I don't know, pay to plays I'm not sure. If you call that, I mean a partnership.  27:11 - Danielle Famble (Guest) really, I don't know if you call it a partnership exactly. I think it's a tool, it can be a resource, for sure.  27:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, yeah, but I would definitely consider agents and managers to be relationship partnership. Pay-to-plays are a slightly different model where I wouldn't say it's as customized. It's about as customized as it can get by the algorithm that gets you the opportunities.  27:28 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Yeah and again, all of this is really about the business expense of it all, because all of this costs money. So if your business is not in a place where this expense is bringing you a positive ROI, I would go back to training making sure your demos are up to date, making sure that you are the person who's going to be able to book those jobs, so that you would be able to pay these commissions and everything else. Because this really is about is the work coming? Are you able to book those jobs that you can make the money?  28:00 to pay the commission to all those things Exactly.  28:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And it's funny because I was thinking about that, as it's kind of the beginning of the month and I have to pay my VAs. You know, it's kind of like every month, boom, I pay them, I pay them, I pay them, and it's like this expense that I've gotten used to where it's like, oh okay, there's my outgoing expenses, I do it every month. And the funny thing is is like I think about myself, you know, 20, some odd years ago, when it would be like, oh my God, I can't afford to put this kind of money out every month for an assistant. And the funny thing is is I do it without blinking right now. You know I pay my assistants on a monthly basis and boom, and immediately it just and so I've got that. I don't know. I've got that cycle going where I'm getting a return on my investment and so I have the money to be able to use that as an expense every month.  28:44 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Absolutely. I was actually thinking the same thing because I very recently paid my assistant. It's like automation yeah exactly, and it's one of those things where I think about and I'm constantly I mean I'm so tuned into the financials of my business to the point that we're actually remaking our back-end system.  29:03 We use a completely separate back-end system like a CRM system, and one of the things that was most important to me is that the reporting was dialed in, because I want to know how much is coming in and all of that is coming from work that has been booked from me, my relationships with the agents, managers, my own clients, all of those things it has to have a positive ROI for me to be able to keep this business running, yeah yeah, good stuff.  29:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, I feel like we could have five episodes on that. Yeah, all right. Well, thank you so much, danielle. I cannot wait to talk to you on our next podcast. In the meantime, big shout out for All right. Well, thank you so much, danielle. I cannot wait to talk to you on our next podcast. In the meantime, big shout out for our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and make money like bosses like Danielle and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and look at that ROI, and we will see you next week.  29:55 - Danielle Famble (Guest) Have a good one everyone Bye, bye.  29:58 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

Why you should listenScott Hollrah shares his 10-year journey scaling Venn Technology from referrals to a 35-person company, revealing a winning mix of partner relationships, inbound marketing, and their new outbound strategy.Discover the game-changing marketing hire that transformed their business and how giving up control allowed Scott to overcome the bottleneck of his own growth.Learn practical strategies for leveraging technology partnerships without being wholly dependent on them. These strategies can help you build trust, which can lead to higher close rates and industry recognition.As a tech consultant who's maximized your network, you're likely feeling the crunch from 2024 and wondering what else you can do to grow your business. In this episode, I talk with Scott Hollrah from Venn Technology, who shares how he's expanded beyond just referrals to build a thriving integration company. Whether you're struggling to break free from the referral ceiling or looking to diversify your lead sources, Scott's journey offers practical insights on building a marketing engine, strengthening partner relationships, and launching an effective outbound strategy. His company helps free finance and accounting professionals from tedious data tasks so they can "make it to their kid's soccer game" – and his growth approaches can help you break through your own barriers to scale.About Scott HollrahScott is the founder and CEO of Venn Technology and host of the podcast In the Thick of It. He has over 15 years of experience in the business technology industry, specializing in ERP, CRM, and accounting software solutioning. Scott founded Venn Technology in 2015 to help small and medium-sized businesses regain their time and sanity by building integrations between their more important business apps. Plus, the Venn team also implements and customizes all things Salesforce. Venn's top priority: build solutions that free people to focus on what they're best at. Resources and LinksVenntechnology.comScott's LinkedIn profileVenn Technology on LinkedInIn the Thick of It podcast on YouTubeVenn Technology's YouTube channel: @venntechnologyVenn Technology on Instagram: @venntechnologyIn The Thick of It Podcast on Instagram: @inthethickofit_podcastPodcast: How I Built This Podcast: AcquiredPrevious episode: 596 - The Productivity System That's Adding Hours to Tech Consultants' DaysCheck out more episodes of The Paul Higgins ShowSubscribe to our YouTube channel:

#815: Join us as we sit down with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson – CEO of Fatty15, & a seasoned veterinary epidemiologist & public health scientist, who previously served at the World Health Organization & U.S. Navy. After years of research dedicated to improving human & animal health, Dr. Stephanie made groundbreaking discoveries in longevity. In this episode, Dr. Stephanie shares how lifestyle choices & genetic influences can greatly impact lifespan, essential habits to incorporate into your daily routine, the critical role of C15, & what the future holds for longevity!   To Watch the Show click HERE   To Watch Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson's previous episode click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM   To connect with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   Get your burning questions featured on the show! Leave the Him & Her Show a voicemail at +1 (512) 537-7194.   This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential   Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE and LTK page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn's favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   Visit fatty15.com/SKINNY or use code SKINNY for 15% off your first purchase of Fatty15 and learn more about Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson's book, The Longevity Nutrient. Nerd out on all the C15:0 science at DiscoverC15.com.   Visit istandwithmypack.org to support I Stand With My Pack's (ISWMP) mission by donating or adopting. Every contribution helps!   This episode is sponsored by Netflix - Running Point   Running Point, now streaming only on Netflix.   This episode is sponsored by Jenni Kayne   Find your forever pieces @jennikayne and get 15% off with promo code SKINNY15 at jennikayne.com/SKINNY15! #jennikaynepartner   This episode is sponsored by Wildgrain   For a limited time, Wildgrain is offering our listeners $30 off the first box - PLUS free Croissants in every box - when you go to Wildgrain.com/SKINNY to start your subscription.   This episode is sponsored by Squarespace   Go to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, squarespace.com/SKINNY to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.   This episode is sponsored by Smalls Cat Food    For 50% off your first order, head to Smalls.com and use code SKINNY.    This episode is sponsored by Momentous   Go to livemomentous.com/skinny and try it today at 20% off with code SKINNY, and start living on purpose.   Produced by Dear Media

He left a promising junior golf career to chase the rockstar dream, and it came true. Cam Avery has played bass for Tame Impala for the last decade while also producing solo records and playing alongside big-time acts like Arctic Monkeys. Now Avery is back playing competitive golf and documenting his journey along the way. He joins Mind Game to discuss the grind of the music business, not being able to read sheet music, the Venn diagram of life and golf, and whether or not he'd still WD from that Australian amateur event to go see Oasis. Subscribe to The Golfer's Journal: https://www.golfersjournal.com/Get 10 free AG1travel packs when you subscribe: https://drinkag1.com/event/bts24Put the 2025 ProV1 and ProV1x in play: https://www.titleist.com/All Mind Game episodes: https://www.golfersjournal.com/category/mind-game-podcast/

James is an Australian living in the UK who has been practicing some form of non-monogamy since he met his partner at a kink club in London nearly 20 years ago. He currently describes his flavor of non-monogamy as sitting in the middle of the Venn diagram between kink, polyamory, and swinging... His relationships often blend these three together in some fashion. James is insatiably curious and passionate about relationships, connection, community, and life in general! He was also diagnosed with AUDHD (Autism and ADHD) a few years ago and shares with us how this has changed his whole understanding of how he's done relationships and life for over 50 years. We love this conversation and hope you enjoy it as well! If you're interested in more from James, you can find his writing on Medium as well. Check out the full show notes here. Join the most amazing community of open-minded humans on the planet!   Click here to order your very own NNM shirt! $10 Off - Online STI Testing