39 Burst results for "Eight Years Ago"
The Tennis.com Podcast
A highlight from Eric Diaz's Journey From the University of Georgia to Coaching Rising American Alex Michelsen
"Welcome to the official tennis .com podcast featuring professional coach and community leader Kamau Murray. Welcome to the tennis .com podcast. We are here with Eric Diaz. You remember the name? Eric is son of Manny Diaz, coach of Alex Mickelson, Werner Tan, and right now has his own thing called tier one performance out in the Irvine area. Welcome to the show, Eric. How's it going? Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. It's great to be on. Great to be on. So I interviewed your dad probably about 2 months ago. That was, you know, we were poking fun about him redshirting Ethan Quinn, you know, not choosing not to play Ethan Quinn later. You know he wins NCAA the next year. It was kind of like, what were you thinking, right? Yeah, one of those tough ones. Oh yeah, it was kind of like, did you think he wasn't ready? Was he, did he think he wasn't ready? Like, you know, you probably could have won NCAA twice. That kind of thing but you obviously came from good tennis pedigree. So, I guess the first obvious question was what was it like growing up with your dad being Manny? You know, because I, it's hard not to take work home, right? Let's just put it that way. You're a tennis coach and a child of a tennis dad. Yeah. You know, I don't know. I think anybody that's been in tennis for a long time knows it's kind of a lifestyle a little bit. You know, there's definitely being the tennis coach and kind of, you know, working toward things but it's also, I don't know, the sport takes so much of you that sometimes, you know, it just feels like, you know, it's second nature. It's kind of a part of it. So, I mean, growing up in Athens, growing up around Dan McGill Complex was always a treat. That was back when NCAA's were kind of always hosted in Athens. So, I got to watch, you know, all the college greats. I grew up watching the Bryan brothers get, you know, sadly then they were kind of pegging some of our guys in doubles matches but, you know, it was really cool being able to sit court side, watch those guys and then, you know, be able to watch them on TV a little bit later. Really cool. Really cool experience growing up. Now, from a junior career, did your dad coach you your whole career or did he hire private coaches to sort of teach you technique? Because I know, you know, coaching at a program like UGA, it is very demanding and sometimes the children of the tennis coach lose out to the actual players and the people who are paying. So, did he coach you? How was that? You know, he coached me. I think he tried to coach me but at the same time, he also didn't want to put too much pressure on me to like, you know, really play tennis and go in. So, he kind of let it be my own thing. I started, I actually went to Athens Country Club, great little spot on the outside of Athens. Alan Miller was the main coach there. So, he helped me out a lot. He actually, he was on my dad's first, you know, assistant coaching team where they won a national title. I think he paired with Ola who now obviously has been with USGA for a while. I think they played doubles and I think they won a doubles title as well. So, I think Alan was a part of the first team championship and then he was also, you know, he won a doubles title there too. I think he might have won two. So, I spent a lot of time around him which was also, it was really cool. You know, it was a guy who was a part of the Georgia tennis family. Athens is really tight -knit like that and so it's special to be a part of that family both, I guess, through blood and through, you know, the alumni. It's cool. Now, let me ask you, did you ever consider going anywhere else, right? I mean, successful junior career, one of the top players in the nation, tons of options. You know, it could be like, you know, there's always sort of the, oh, his dad's going to give him a scholarship, right? You saw with Ben Shelton, you know, Brian Shelton. Obviously, he's going to look out for his kid. Did you ever aspire to like go to another top program or UCLA or Texas or Florida? I think growing up, you know, because I got to see all those teams play. You know, I remember in 1999, I looked up this guy who, he played number one for UCLA. I don't know, this guy showed up. I'm a little kid and he had half of his head was blue and the other half was gold and, you know, UCLA was firing it up. They were really good at the time. I remember that was my dad's first national title in 99. And, you know, ever since then, I really, you know, I looked up to the guys. Every now and then, I got to sneak on to a little travel trip and, you know, I got to see what it was like. But, I mean, for me, it was always Georgia. I thought Athens was a special place, you know, getting to see the crowds that they get there and being able to kind of just see the atmosphere of everybody caring about each other. You know, it was cool looking at other teams. You know, the Brian brothers had the cool Reebok shoes, you know, the UCLA guy with the different hair. But at the end of the day, it was always the dogs. It was always Georgia. So, I was really lucky when I got to be a part of that team and I got to kind of wear the G that, you know, through my junior years, I was always wearing it, you know, but I guess it was a little bit different when you're actually, you know, on the team and representing. I think it's a different feeling. Yeah. So, if you didn't go into tennis, what else would you be doing? Like, you know, I didn't, you know, I'm obviously coaching now, but I didn't go right into coaching. I went to work into pharmaceuticals like marketing, sales, you know, finance. It's always, I always find it interesting to say if I wasn't coaching, I got my degree, I would be doing this. Yeah. You know, if I was a little bit more prone, I think to just loving schoolwork and loving studying, you know, everybody's always told me that I would make a pretty good lawyer just because I'm a bit of a contrarian. I like to argue. I like to challenge everybody that's kind of around me. So, I'm always looking for a good argument. So, I'll go with that. Everybody's always told me, you know, maybe you should have been a lawyer. You argue a Hey, lot. well, I'm sure, I'm sure your tennis parents, right? The parents of the academy probably don't like that one, right? They like to be in control. They have the last say and be contrarian. A lot of the time they do. A lot of the time they do. Yeah. So, you're sort of like stepping out, right? Out of the shadow and you're now on the west coast out there in the with Irvine area tier one performance and quite honestly, making your own name. I know you've had opportunity to coach Alex Mickelson as well as, you know, Lerner, Tan who are both like doing real well, both like main draw this year at US Open. Tell me about the process of moving way west. Yeah. And starting your own thing. Well, you know, it kind of started with, you know, I took that leap and I moved away from home for, you know, the first time because obviously being born and raised and going to school at UGA. I took my first chance and I went to Boise State and I worked under Greg Patton for a year who I'd heard great things about and, you know, all were true. He's a great guy. I thought it was a fantastic experience. So, I did that for a year and then over the summer, the UGA swim coach's son that I kind of grew up with, he was in Newport and so I kind of came to visit and then, you know, all of a sudden the opportunity to be coaching out here, you know, came about and, you know, I did my due diligence a little bit. You know, I looked at the old tennis recruiting pages and, you know, I'm looking at all the talent over the last like 20 years and, you know, statistically, you look at the list and you're like, okay, you know, if I'm in this area and I give myself, you know, the right opportunities and I, you know, learn how to coach properly, you know, I feel like I've had some pretty good experience from some good mentors. You know, then I kind of thought, you know, okay, maybe I can kind of control my own destiny out here a little bit and, you know, over time, it's taken a lot but, you know, over time, I feel like I did get myself some pretty decent opportunities. So, when you first laid eyes on Mickelson, how old was he? He was 12. He was coming out to some point place. It was the first place I kind of rented courts. It was this old rundown beat up club but beautiful. There were some trees there. Nobody wanted it. The courts were kind of run down and everyone's like, oh no, nothing there and I was like, I'll take it. So, you know, it gave me space. It gave me courts. It gave me the ability to kind of try and market. I made things cheap so I could get a lot of kids out there and try and get a competitive environment going and luckily, you know, had a good bit of talent out there where, you know, the kids kind of attracted the kids and I was this young coach, 23, 24 and, you know, over time, you know, people started to kind of gain trust and realize, you know, this guy isn't that bad. So, you know, over time, it kind of, you know, worked in my favor and, you know, everything kind of worked out. I eventually switched clubs to a nicer one and, you know, you move up. You earn your stripes. Now, when you saw him, did you initially see, you know, like super talent because he won our ADK this summer and, you know, it was full of Steve Johnson, Su -Woo Kwong. It was Ethan Quinn. It was other names, right? Kanee Shakuri. And Alex, okay, you know, he got the USTA wildcard. He's a young kid. You know what I mean? Like, sort of under the radar and then he wins the whole tournament in finals Newport on the grass like a week later. So, did you see it right away? Was he like a typical kind of 12 -year -old throwing his racket, having tantrums? What was he like at 12? Alex has always turned on tantrums. But, you know, when he was 12, he was good. But, you know, I'll be honest, there were a handful of kids out there that, you know, Kyle Kang, who's had a lot of success. I saw him. Sebastian Goresney, who Alex won doubles with. There were a handful of others and, I mean, Alex, they were, he was good. If I thought that he would be this good, you know, at this point, I think I'd I don't think I saw that. But, you know, you definitely see that this kid's capable of playing at a pretty good level while he's young. And then, you know, as the years kind of go and then as you sort of see him and his personality kind of develop, you kind of recognize, you know, this, you know, this isn't too normal of a 16, 17, 18 -year -old kid. And then, you know, sure enough, eventually the results followed, which was pretty fun to watch. Yeah, I mean, I felt it was interesting because he was here with like his friend. Yeah. You know, not even like a coach, trainer, physio, nothing. Like him and his homeboy. Yeah. He didn't look like he played tennis. You know what I mean? So, yeah, it was like, it was interesting to show up without, you know, completing against guys who are here with like coaching that they're paying six -figure salaries and who are scouting, right? And for him to kind of move through the draw, honestly, I mean, you know, maybe he split sets once. Yeah. It was actually really interesting. He's an extremely competitive kid. And so, you know, throughout the last few years kind of as we've traveled to some events and as he's gone to some like by himself, you know, the whole understanding is, okay, how well do you really understand, you know, your day -to -day process? How well are you able to, you know, nowadays, you know, with challengers, everything you can stream, you can watch. So, you know, both myself and, you know, Jay, the other coach that's here and helping him out, you know, we watch, we communicate. But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it was one of those big decisions, okay, are you going to go to college or are you going to go pro? And he's kind of weighing those two things. And it's, you know, if you really think you want to be a pro, show me. And so it's one of those things, luckily, when he's young, you know, you have the, you know, it's kind of freedom. If he loses some matches, okay, you're young. If, you know, you win some matches, okay, great. You're young. So it's one of those things where, you know, we really kind of wanted to see, you know, what he's able to do sort of on his own. How well can he manage emotionally? How well can he, you know, create some game plans and stick to his day -to -day routines? And he, I would say he passed. And did he officially turn pro? He officially turned pro, yeah. Yeah. So I know UGA was going to be where he was going. I know he was undecided this summer, but UGA was going to, was there a little bit of an inside man kind of happening here, right? You know, I mean, you know, I think that, you know, I'll definitely say, I think he had some exposure to hearing about, you know, some Georgia greatness. I think that for sure. But, you know, I'll say it was his decision. Ultimately, I tried to not put too much pressure or expectation on where he was going to go. You know, I think Georgia has a lot to offer. So I think, you gone that route, I think it would be, you know, I don't think we can really fail if, you know, you're going and you're trying to be a tennis player and that's a place you choose. I think it's a pretty good place. Now tell us about Lerner Tan. I'll admit as a player that I hadn't had the opportunity to watch too much. I had not watched him in the challenges at all. But was he also sort of in the program at a young age or did he just sort of come later on? My partner actually, you know, kind of helped him when he was young because Levitt Jay used to be incorporated at Carson, which was kind of where Lerner kind of had his, you know, beginnings. He was a little bit more, I guess I'll say, you know, his talent was Federation spotted, I guess you could say as to where Alex was kind of, you know, the guy on the outside a little figuring his own way. Lerner was kind of the guy that everybody kind of thought was, you know, the guy. Right. And so, you know, it's been fun kind of watching him, you know, see his transition, you know, from juniors to now, you know, kind of becoming, you know, the top of juniors, you know, winning Kalamazoo the last two years and his transition. It's been fun to see. So, you know, I've seen a lot of him out of the last, you know, two and a half to three years. So it's been, it's definitely been a different transition. I feel like, you know, it's a little bit fire and ice there. You know, Alex is the fiery one screaming a good bit and Lerner is the silent killer. So it's, they're definitely different, which I think, you know, is pretty refreshing and it's kind of cool to see them both have success in their own accord. So tell us about Tier 1 then. So how many courts, obviously you grew up, I mean, like, you know, I started in the park years ago, right? In Chicago Park, right? And now I got 27 courts. But tell us about Tier 1 performance now. Where are you? How many courts do you now have? How many kids are you serving? Yeah, we're in Newport Beach right now, which is great. Weather's nice. We have, right now, we're running our program out of only five ports. It's not that big. You know, we take a lot of pride in just kind of being individually, you know, development based. I feel like if you're in our program, you're going to have, you know, a good bit of time from the coaches. You're probably going to have a chance to hit with some of the top guys. We try to be really selective with who we kind of have. Just because in Southern California, it's really difficult to, you know, get your hands on a ton of courts. There's so many people in tennis. There's only a few clubs now. You know, pickleball, even at our club right now, you know, pickleball is booming. You know, so many people are playing. It's keeping clubs alive, which, you know, I think is nice. But at the same time, I would love to see, you know, a lot of tennis courts and tennis opportunity. But, you know, it is what it is. Yeah, man, pickleball is definitely taking over. You see clubs getting rid of one court, two courts, and they think that it's not that big of an impact. But I mean, two courts really makes a difference in terms of being able to spread kids out, get them more time, get more balls and more balls at the time. But it's, you know, I think in tennis, if we want to fight them off, we've got to market better and we've got to grow, right? They're in this growth sort of stage and we're sort of stagnant, you know, so it's not like we're not leaving the club with a lot of choices other than to diversify, you know what I mean? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So, let me ask you that. So, you've obviously had two kids that are going on. What do you tell that next parent, whose kid's 14, right, may get to see learner Alex come to the academy and number one, they want to homeschool, right, or ask you whether or not they should homeschool or B, you know, whether or not they should choose to go to college or, you know, turn pro. How are you advising parents? Because I get the question all the time. Should we homeschool, right? Should we do whatever? And I always, you know, the answer is always, it depends. Yeah. But what would be your answer in terms of homeschooling to train? Well, look, I definitely think that if your primary goal is to be a tennis player and I think, you know, if you're an athlete and that's kind of what you want to do, I think there's a lot of benefit in homeschooling just because, you know, it enables you to travel. You know, if I get to the ITF level, you know, I need to be able to travel. Those tournaments start on Monday and they go through Friday. So, you know, if I'm in a regular school, if I'm a high school kid, you know, that's a pretty difficult life for me to be able to justify or to, you know, be able to get my excused absences and stuff like that. You know, we're definitely big. You know, if you show me a 14 and under kid and I feel like I had pretty good experience in this just because I saw a lot of kids from the age of 12 to 14, you know, I got to see an entire kind of generation out of SoCal and a lot of them were pretty good. You know, the one thing I think, you know, when you're 12, 13, 14 years old, I think the primary thing kind of for level, obviously it matters how you're doing it, but I think the primary thing is the repetition. You know, I saw a ton of kids where they had a bunch of practices and I knew that that kid probably, you know, had 30%, 40 % more time than some of the other kids. And, you know, sure enough, that kid is more competent at keeping the ball in play. You know, they're able, you know, they've just seen and touched more balls. So, you know, they're going to make more balls. I think it's a balance. I think it really depends on the parents. I think it really depends on the kid. And I think it depends on the environment that they'll be in if they are going to be homeschooled. You know, I will say that, you know, we've had a handful of kids kind of switch from high school to homeschooled and they're in our program. But I feel like there's still strong social aspects in our program. You know, all the boys are tight. They compete a lot. They, you know, I feel like they get their social, you know, they go to lunch. And just kind of our standards are really high. I think this past year we had five kids that graduated that all went to IVs. So, you know, it's totally possible whether you're homeschooled or whether you're in school, I think, to, you know, kind of pursue academic excellence. I think, you know, just because you're doing one thing and not the other, I don't think that that necessarily, you know, takes that away from you. I think tennis can open a ton of doors. And I think I kind of, you know, we've kind of seen that in the last few years. I've seen a lot more tennis kids choosing IV ever since 2020, I feel. I feel like the IVs have been pretty hot, especially for some blue chip players, which I think, you know, if you look prior to 2020, I think the percentages took a pretty drastic jump, which is interesting to see. Yeah, you know, it's funny, you know, in some markets you see people playing for the scholarship and in some other markets you see them playing for entrance, right, into the Princeton, the Harvards. And one of the myths, like, I think if you think about basketball or football, right, the better basketball football players are obviously choosing the SEC, right, Pac -12, whatever that is. But in tennis, you know, I think that, you know, your academics and your tennis have to be, like, at the top scale to go, just because you're not like a bad tennis player if you go to Harvard, you know what I mean? Like, the kid that goes to Harvard or makes the team probably could have gone to PCU, right, or Florida or whatever, you know what I mean? And so it is interesting to see the number of people who say, yes, I've spent 30 grand on tennis for the past eight years and I'm still willing to pay for college, right, because I got into Princeton, Harvard, Yale, etc. But I think it's a big myth where, you know, the United States is so basketball focused, we see Harvard basketball as, like, okay, that's everyone that didn't get chosen by the Illinois, the Wisconsin, the Michigan. And it's not the same, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's different for sure. So when you think about, like, the Ivies, right, you see a lot of kids go to East Coast and you think about, you know, COVID obviously changed something with the home school, you know, sort of situation. People who never considered that it was possible were like, okay, well, we've been living at home for a year and a half and doing online studies, it's not that bad, you know, they're more focused with their time. Did you see more people from families who you thought would not have done it try it post COVID? Yeah, definitely. I think the really popular thing that a lot of people are doing now is kind of a hybrid schedule, which I actually really like a lot. At least in California, I don't know if the schooling system is different everywhere else. I know it was different where I was from. But a lot of these kids, you know, they'll go to school from 8 to 1130 or 8 to 12. And, you know, they have their three hours where, you know, I don't know how they stagger their classes and stuff like that. But I know that pretty much every kid at every school in SoCal is at least able to do this if they so choose. And so they're able to get released around 12 or something. And, you know, they're able to be at afternoon practice and get a full block in. You know, for me, that still enables you to get the hours you need on court and to be able to maintain some of that social. And, you know, if you become, you know, really, really good, I guess, okay, by junior year, maybe you could consider, okay, maybe I should take this a little bit more seriously, maybe I should go full time homeschool. Or, you know, a lot of these kids are in a place where it's, you know, I'm comfortable with my tennis, I like where it's at, I feel like it'll give me opportunity in college. My grades are great. And, you know, maybe that person's a little more academically inclined. And, you know, they want to have a career and they feel like tennis is that great stepping stone. Which I think is a really cool thing about our sport is it just opens a tremendous amount of doors. I feel like if you figure out how to develop and be a good tennis player and how to compete well in tennis, you can you can apply that to almost everything in life. Yeah. So you talk about opening doors, right? When Alex or Lerner were sort of deciding whether to walk through door number one, which is college, or door number two, which is which is obviously turning pro. Right. How did you advise them? You know what I mean? If I say, hey, you know what? Take a couple wildcards. If you went around or two, maybe you go to college. If you win a tournament, maybe you stay out there. If an agency locks you into a deal, right? Then, you know, they normally know what good looks like and they normally have like the ear of the Nike, the Adidas, right? Then you turn pro. What was your advice in terms of if and when, right? Yeah. For those who ask. Well, they were both in different places. I'm gonna start with Lerner cuz he's younger. He actually, you know, did a semester in college. You know, Lerner finished high school, I think, when he was sixteen, sixteen and a half. And so, obviously, your eligibility clock starts, you know, six months after you finish your high school. So, for him, it was, you know, he was so young, he didn't really have much pro experience at that time. You know, he did great things in juniors. You know, he won Kalamazoo. He got his wild card into the men's that year and then, you know, he played a little bit of pro kind of and then, you know, that that January, he went in and and did a semester at USC which I think was a good experience for him socially. He had some eligibility problems which, you know, only let him play about five, six matches toward the end of the year which was kind of disappointing and then, you know, he won Kalamazoo again and so, you know, that was the second trip there and then, you know, by then, he had a little bit more exposure with, you know, agencies and brands and kind of, you know, the stuff that you'd like to see that'll actually give you the financial security to kind of, you know, chase your dream and pass up, you know, the the education, I guess, for the time being. So, you know, I felt like that was really the security was a big was a big thing for him. You know, prior to winning Kalamazoo for the second time, you know, he still had Junior Grand Slams to play. He wasn't playing men's events. So, for him being that age, you know, it was, well, you know, I'm I'm not in a massive rush so why not get a semester in and I think he had a great time. He really liked it. I mean, he he speaks pretty positively about the dual matches. He actually follows college tennis now a little bit more. You know, he will talk about some dual matches which I think is pretty cool and you know, I think it gave him some confidence getting to play for university, getting to represent, you know, seeing that university promotes you. I think there's a lot of benefits there and now, you know, he's got an alumni base. You know, people talk about all, you know, he's a USC Trojan and stuff like that. You know, you see it at all different tournaments. You know, guys are wearing a USC hat and, you know, hey, learner, da da da and you know, I think that that's pretty cool to be a part of, you know, a big family of people who are proud that, you know, they can say they played in the same place and then Alex. Alex was, you know, he was a little old for his grade and he was one that he committed and, you know, the whole time him and learner kind of, you know, talking and, you know, about going pro and da da da da. You know, obviously, it was their dream. You know, I just kept telling Alex, you know, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it until, you know, it's a real problem and so, you know, he gets to 400 in the world and, you know, it's what you do. You get to 400. You know, it's good but at the end of the day, you know, you're not, your life's not changing because you're 400 in the world. You know, so he's 400 in the world and he's, you know, saying stuff to me and I'm like, I could not care less you're going to college and then it was, you know, this was probably in January, February, you know, he starts to kind of do a little bit better and I think at that point, I recognized that he was better than a lot of the guys kind of at the challenger level. You know, just from my perspective, I was seeing kind of what it was, what it was to be 300, what it was to be 200 and I think at that point, like February, March, I fully knew that he was good enough to be there and to be winning those matches but at the same time, you know, having financial security, having set, you know, all of those factors that kind of go into whether I'm going to pass up my education and go pro. You know, it's a big decision and so I remember we were putting it off. I just said, you know, nothing till US Open. I was like, we're not, we're not talking about college till US Open. I said, you know, when we get to US Open, you finish US Open, you have that exposure, you know, we see what happens in those two weeks and then, you know, then we'll kind of make a decision but until then, like, don't even think about it. Don't talk about it. Don't care. You're going to school and I think that mentality really helped him kind of just play free. He was, you know, I'm not playing to go pro. I'm trying to do my job in school, finish my high school. I'm going to tournaments, playing great, just trying to compete and, you know, lucky for him, you know, well, I guess it's not lucky at all. That kid worked his absolute tail off but, you know, he had that success in Chicago at your club and then, you know, he made that little Newport run and I think by then, that was his third or fourth former top 10 win and, you know, he won his challenger. He final the challenger. He'd semied another one. He had kind of shown and, you know, some people have gotten attention and they started believing in him and so then, you know, that's when that big decision kind of came but I feel like for him, he really established himself, improved himself amongst pros which I think is an interesting thing because a lot of the time when you see these juniors kind of go pro sub 18, a lot of the time, it's because they had tremendous junior success which then made them, you know, they had grand slam success and stuff like that but Alex didn't have any of that. You know, Alex was kind of the late bloomer that, you know, in the last year when he was already 18 and aged out of ITF, the kid really just took it to a new level and, you know, I think he really showed that he's kind of ready for what the tour has to offer.
Stephanie Miller
Fresh update on "eight years ago" discussed on Stephanie Miller
"He's in some heat now. Oh Yeah. boy, and his fans are pearly white You know that deep state with its case, babe And the evidence it's piled so high And that then, oh it brought Matt heat, babe. He thought Never leave a trace behind Thrown under the Us now who on the Sunday morning show claims he's Canceled just oozing lies Someone's creeping Been around the schoolyard Couldn't Be Matt the gates. Yeah, did he pay for a tug job Down by the river we don't know with his PayPal Just to ride it on down. Well, that's cement there Their deep state case now at least from five to ten. That's where Matt's bound. Oh, I hope so. Alright. I think we - But I don't know. We don't No, know. we don't know. We think he's there. Let's see. There's only one man now that understands Nazi Piers Piers Charlie Piers political columnist for Esquire .com Why is everybody Always laughing with me. Hi. Hi Charlie. Hi guys. How's everybody? It's Just fantastic. You commented as most people did on this poll you tweeted over the weekend ABC in the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results with a product of a month -long exercise with a magic eight ball. I'm not sure why you publish a poll that you admit is an outlier. Right. I mean that damn boss. God bless him from the Washington Post. Writing a lie is a story. This one sounds like an outlier and by the way the stat about Trump 20 with -point a lead among young people is probably really stupid. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. mean I I've always had trouble with news outlets doing their own polling ever since they started doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Well and also you know we've talked about just the general numbness that we thought you wrote about this weekend's addition to Trump's list of treasonous foes Mark Milley. Ordinarily you said we every don't jump time a brushfire breaks out across the desiccated landscape of the former president's brain if for no other reason than the fact that that with would be all we did here at this should be in life is too damn short. But I think it's the numbness and the whole numbness of it. Oh, he just issued a death threat against American general. We all just Yeah. He wants to clear cut the entire staff of NBC News. Oh my God. Yes. This is really remarkable. I mean, this is this is all newsworthy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I and again, I guess we'll see what Judge Chutkin does. I know the Where is it, Jody? The Georgia jurors have been, you know, are going to be anonymous because this is the world we live in. Charlie, they cannot you you know, there's no photography there. They aren't going to be named because they know that, you know, they're all going to be under under death threats, right? Well, they can all they can all call Ruby Freeman and ask her. Yeah. Yeah. You know what it's like what it's like being a public figure these days when you don't want to be. By the way, if you haven't read his lawyer's response to the Jack Smith gag rule request in federal court in Washington do so immediately. It's freaking hilarious. It's a lot better reading if you have some some Lee playing in the background, because it's not a legal filing. It's a transcription of one of his speeches. Yeah, it's all about how Biden is behind the whole thing and and, you know, it's about an attack on Trump's ability to speak freely as a candidate. And by the way, he's leading in all the polls, you know. Oh, my God. Yeah. Like that has anything to do. I mean, I realize the guy is on the on the team Q on lawyers now. But my God, these guys. Wow. Yeah. By the Wait, way, you wrote about Bob Menendez. You said Senator Menendez shared no explanation for the gold bars. He had an explanation for the four four hundred eighty thousand dollars in cash in his house, which the indictment against him said, said had some fingerprints of his alleged co -defendants on it. He was keeping it safe in state in case the United States turned into Castro's Cuba. Yeah. Which one of us has half a mill hanging around in case. Sure. Right. Yeah, sure. In case something something Castro. If the heat goes, if the heat like you goes have to have something to burn. Right. Yeah. You know, can I just say I felt like Nancy Pelosi, as usual, will said it best yesterday. Yes, it would be best if he would resign because it is a distraction and feeds the both sides do it narrative when they have the biggest book in our history. By the way, that's as close as Nancy will ever Yeah, yeah, it would be better if you were to resign. Yeah. And I and if he won't, then I may just show up at his house with a carving knife. Explain things to him. no, Yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah, this is the Democrats in the Senate are being painfully awful about it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know where Durban's head is at. I see Sherrod Brown now has come out and said he should resign, which is Yeah, good. and Fetterman as usual. I mean, this is what I love. Yeah, but it's just I mean, I thought was a KRP reference, but nobody got it. Oh, good. Oh, thank you, Kelly. Yeah, I but I think that that's exactly the point is just it feeds this the both sides do it narrative and everybody's equally corrupt when it's just when we have just honestly the biggest crook we've ever seen in our history up on four different indictments and 91 charges and it's just, you know, I this reminds time. me of I mean, this is this is this guy's second bite at the end. I was just gonna I was just gonna say someone wrote a piece on he stop should bragging about the last time because he keeps bringing it up the last time he faced charges. He he he said, Menendez said prosecutors get it wrong sometimes. Sadly, I know that. But despite Menendez's implications. Otherwise, his last federal corruption trial did not end with his vindication. It was a it was declared a At that point, they said instead of using his power as United States senator to help a friend with his lady troubles for vacations, luxury when then death stands accused of wielding his power and sent it for relations, of the Egyptian Catholic chairman government do the bidding in of exchange for literal bars of gold. I mean it does strike me. This this is is the exact thing Clarence Thomas and his wife did. So, you know, in terms of both sides but but yeah, but I mean, in an odd way, Menendez has an out because he has he to has to go before the voters and he can say, Well, you know, if they don't want me to represent them, then let them decide. Thomas doesn't have to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just but it's just all the screaming by the two systems of justice it's like right this is why Clarence Thomas should also resign but anyway all all right, let's go to Oh, by the way, the Did you see any of the Cassidy Hutchinson interview? I just watched In fact, about 20 minutes ago. Yeah, I didn't watch it last night. I had a football game to watch but sporting the sports. Yeah. Um, yeah, but what did you think? I mean, I it's just saying now, you know, thank you. Why didn't you Do do this like, you know, eight years ago. How long did it take you to realize you were working for a public maniac? act. Yeah. You know, I mean, I'm happy she's out there. She seems like a lovely young lady. I hope she does, has a good career in public service after this. But she's going to have have a black mark on her resume forever? Yeah. Well, I know. I mean, that being said, she had more courage than all of these other combined, guys you know, she's twice she's only 27 now so then and she has no you know, as as they pointed out a lot, they should know money, family money, anything. So took a lot of courage, I think to, you know, obviously dump her Trump paid for lawyer and tell the truth. That's the part. That's the one. That's she did that I find unassailable is getting rid of this, you know, house counselor, house counsel or whatever he was now suing by suing Andrew now, by the way. Yes. Oh, by the way, that lawsuit filed by the dumped Cassidy Hutchinson attorney been is assigned to Judge Tonya Chunkin. Oh, yeah, yeah. And this guy, by the way, suing is Andrew Weisman for for damaging his reputation and asking for seventy five thousand good a pretty idea of what his reputation is worth. Right. Right. And by the way, Cassidy Hutchinson confirmed, which what what what the what do you call it? Andrew Weisman and others said and reported is that, you know, he just he told her, just say you don't recall whatever. Right. You could say you don't. Yeah. Say you don't recall about that, you know, and that in itself is illegal. Yeah, exactly. Charlie, your lawyer is not supposed to tell you to break the law. Right. Yeah, exactly. Even my degree from Law and Order University. Charlie has one of those. Yeah. All right. I learned that in my one law class. Hudson University, I guess. Hudson, exactly. Hudson University. Rule number one on law and order. Never go to never go. There you go. We're late, Charlie.
Unchained
A highlight from Why All 10,000 OnChainMonkey NFTs Will Move From Ethereum to Bitcoin - Ep. 548
"One of the things people are worried about with images being put on Bitcoin, how it can really slow down or prevent other people from sending monetary transactions on Bitcoin. But we're showing that with efficient coding, you can actually have the best of both worlds. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full -time. This is the September 26, 2023 episode of Unchained. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle built for Layer 0 is now securing every Layer 0 message by default. Their custom end -to -end solution sets itself up to bring its world -class security to Web3 and establish itself as the HTTPS within Layer 0 messaging. Visit Layer0 .network to learn more.
Unchained
Fresh update on "eight years ago" discussed on Unchained
"One of the things people are worried about with images being put on Bitcoin, how it can really slow down or prevent other people from sending monetary transactions on Bitcoin. But we're showing that with efficient coding, you can actually have the best of both worlds. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the September 26, 2023 episode of Unchained. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle built for Layer 0 is now securing every Layer 0 message by default. Their custom end-to-end solution sets itself up to bring its world-class security to Web3 and establish itself as the HTTPS within Layer 0 messaging. Visit Layer0.network to learn more.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Evangelism: Muslims and Mormons
"Of things, looking at how when we speak and reach out to those who are around us, specifically we'll be talking about Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and then atheists as well. What are some things that as we seek to point them to Christ, what are ways in which we can engage them well? And so we are going to do those things together here. And with anything that you talk about, especially other world religions, I know pastor has been going through different denominations in the morning and kind of looking at some different aspects of denominations. I thought this would kind of be somewhat in line with that, looking at other religions and ones that are a little bit more common to you and I, maybe some less than others, but how is it that we can engage with them well? And of course, many things can be said about Jehovah's Witnesses, what they believe, Muslims, what they believe. And so the point of this isn't to give an exhaustive discussion about everything in which a Muslim or a Mormon might believe, but just to give us some handles that we can hold on to in our brains as we discuss the gospel with them. I know for myself, sometimes if I see someone on the side of the road and let's say I know they're a Jehovah's Witness, you know, there was times in my life where I would say like, ah, well, I don't really want to engage with them because I don't really know what they believe and I don't know how to answer all their questions, so I'm just going to, you know, I'm not going to talk to them. Whereas with Mormons, I had a lot more understanding of Mormonism and I had talked to a lot more Mormons. When a Mormon would come to the door, I'd be like, ah, come on in guys, like you want to come in? I'll get you some water? I'm like, let's chat. Because I had a better understanding of the Mormon faith and I felt like I was ready to engage them. I felt like I was ready to have an answer for questions and try to point them to the gospel. And so the point of all of this is to equip us as a church, to equip us as saints, as we go out into the world, at your jobs, in your neighborhood, with your family members. We might not all have a Mormon cousin, but you probably have an atheistic coworker. And so being able to engage them with the gospel and feeling that you are equipped, and I know many of us are, many of us are, so I hope this will just be a supplemental help to you in that endeavor. And so we're going to begin working through these notes. And if you look at your notes, the first one is Islam. And I recognize that Islam is not huge in the Midwest, in Omaha, Nebraska in particular. For sure there are Muslims. I've talked to a few since we've been here, walking around different parts of Omaha, but you almost have to go and find them. But I'm sure that even, I know, I'm speaking to Dan Williams and others that there are coworkers even here in Omaha that are, hold to the Islamic faith. And so I want to walk through each one of these religions together, give us a little brief understanding of their history. And because Islam is so big, where we are in Mombasa, a large portion of Mombasa is Islamic. A lot of times you'll have Somalis in particular that we're working with. The father will be here working in America and he will, they'll live here as a family for many years, but eventually as the kids get older, they send their kids back to a place like Mombasa because it's not, you know, a war -torn place like Somalia, but there's a large Islamic influence there and they want their children to be brought under that Islamic influence. And so we'll have a lot of Somali Muslims that are there, the kids in the model are there, and they're being taught and trained in that Islamic culture, and while the dad is here in America working and supporting them. And so there's Muslims here and I hope I'm writing that. I hope, I know a lot of times we can be afraid of Muslims, but there's, for the most part, there's no reason for that theory. So what I want to do is spend a little bit more time on Islam because again, it's something that we have been very, very engaged in, spending many hours talking with Muslims, and so it will be a little bit more in -depth, but I will try to walk through this one quickly. So today for the Sunday School, September 24th, Understanding the Other Side, we're going to be looking at Islam and Mormonism. Just out of curiosity, just out of curiosity, how many of you have either, you know, neighbor, relative, co -worker, whatever, who is Muslim, Mormon, Jehovah Witness, or atheist? Just raise your hand. Just probably raise your hand. So at least somebody, right? There's somebody. Now if he just said Muslim, there might be like two hands that go up, but that's all right. We'll get to the others, okay? So very briefly, I'm going to try and be brief, okay? I was trying to be brief with these notes and they ended up being 11 pages, so not off to a good start, but that is all right. So as you've seen in your notes, Islam, A, the history of Muhammad, early life. So of course, whenever you speak of Islam, you're speaking of Muhammad, and so if you talk to any Muslim, they will talk to you about the prophet Muhammad, and then they'll go on to say, just be upon him and ramble on these Arabic blessings about his name, but Muhammad was born in AD 570 and he died in AD 632. And in his life, living in Saudi Arabia, born in the city of Mecca, he had a rough childhood. His parents both passed away as a young boy. As a six -year -old boy, he went off to live with his uncle, or his grandfather, and then as an eight -year -old, as his grandfather died, he went off to live with an uncle, and so he was kind of moved around from family to family. He joined in the family business of being a camel caravan driver, so he would go on all of these long trips across Saudi Arabia, Syria, with his uncle and others that they were working for, traveling all over the place, delivering goods. At that time, in Saudi Arabia, of course, at this time, it was not an Islamic country as we think of it today, but there was all sorts of Gnostic Christianity, which is no Christianity at all. It taught a dualistic type religion and many, many problems with some Judaism, other pagan religions, polytheism. There's just a hodgepodge of religion going on in Arabia at that time. And so Muhammad would have come across all of these things as he's traveling around, listening to stories, discussing with other people. The Quran itself tells us very little about Muhammad himself. We don't really understand much about Muhammad at all if you've got random passages that don't really connect with anything, and you have to have some sort of grid to really be able to understand that. And you find that grid within the other important literature in Islam, which are the Hadiths, the Sirat, and these other religious important books that give the traditions and the understanding of who Muhammad was and what he did and all of that. And so in the Islamic literature, we discover these things about Muhammad, where he was and what it was like for him growing up and these other things. And so you might think, okay, you know, the pastor's going through Quranicals, and so we don't really want to go through any more genealogies with Muhammad and figure out who his grandpa and all of those people were. And that's not the point of discussing him being moved around and all of these things. But it is important to note that Muhammad was exposed at a young age as he's traveling all over to various religions. He's hearing different stories as he's traveling around. He's hearing stories from Gnostic Christians, again, who are not Christians at all. And if you read and study the Quran, you find that Muhammad oftentimes quotes things in the Quran that he either thinks are biblical excerpts, or he thinks that they come from the Jewish scriptures in the Old Testament. But as a matter like the Arabic Infancy Gospel of Matthew and these other Gnostic gospels that no Christian would have accepted, what Muhammad quotes is that he believes that they are, in fact, the Christian scriptures. And so this happens time and time again. Muhammad thinks he's quoting from the Bible, but he's really quoting from the Jewish Talmud. And this happens oftentimes. And so the understanding that Muhammad had of Christianity is by no means what you and I, and so even if you read the Quran, you see that Muhammad believes that the Trinity, the Trinity that the Christians believe in is God the Father, Mary, and Jesus. Of course, no Christian believes that the triune God is made up of Mary, and not even, if you want to try to point the finger at Catholics or Orthodox, not even Catholics or Orthodox go so far as to worship Mary. And so there's just a, in many ways, a bad understanding, for lack of a better word, a bad understanding of Christianity within the mind of Muhammad. But at the age of 25, Muhammad is employed by a woman named Khadija. He starts running his own caravan. He eventually marries this woman, and then he begins, as we get on to point number two there, Quranic Revelation, Muhammad begins to really seek after God. He wants to worship God. He wants to know God. And Muhammad goes away. He begins to go into a mountain near Mecca. He goes up into the mountain. He goes into the cave, and there he's fasting. He's praying. He's seeking to know Allah, which is just the Arabic word for God. And he wants to know God. He's trying to have a closer relationship with him. And again, for the sake of time, we're not going to go into any lengthy accounts of Muhammad and the experience he had in the cave. But what happened as Muhammad is there praying and fasting is Muhammad says that there is an angel named Jibril, which is Gabriel. And Jibril comes to him and says, Muhammad, read. And Muhammad says, I can't read. And the angel says, well, first the angel squeezes him very hard. Muhammad says it hurts him. It squeezes him very hard. And it says again, read. And Muhammad says, I can't read. And so this goes on. It's kind of like, I don't know, a Three Stooges play. But Muhammad just keeps telling the angel, I don't know how to read. And the angel beats him up a little bit and tells him to read again. And it just goes on and on and on until eventually Muhammad, you know, starts to recite parts of the Qur 'an that the angel Jibril is giving to him. And so this happens, and Muhammad comes home. As I'm quoting, I'm not quoting, but the place in which I'm getting this story from is from the Hadith, it's from the Surah, it's from the Islamic tradition itself. It's not some, you know, angry Christian writing from their seminary office saying like, ah, Muhammad was, you know, this crazy guy who's getting beat up by an angel as he's reciting the Qur 'an. And this is all from the Qur 'anic sources, Sahih al -Muslim, Sahih al -Bukhari, and so on. And so Muhammad then, he runs home to his wife, he hides under their covers, and he is petrified from what has happened. And he tells his wife, he's like, I don't know if I was meeting her with a demon or what happened, but it scared me and it hurt me and I don't know what happened. But his wife assures him, no, no, no, it was God, God is speaking to you, you should go back. And so Muhammad goes back, he continues to go back to this mountain, to this cave, and there he continues to receive revelations from this angel. And Muhammad goes on to say, this is a quote from, again, one of the Qur 'anic, one of the Islamic resources here, Sirah Rasula, says, Muhammad is quoted as saying, I will go to the top of the mountain and throw myself down that I may kill myself and gain rest. So I went forth to do so. And then when I was midway on the mountain, I heard a voice from heaven saying, oh, Muhammad, thou art the apostle of God and I am Gabriel. And so the Gabriel goes on to tell Muhammad, do not kill yourself, you're the apostle of God, you can't do this. But there's multiple times in the life of Muhammad while he is receiving Qur 'anic revelations where he seeks to kill himself, he tries to throw himself off of the mountain. And furthermore, there's other accounts of people saying that at that time, Muhammad was possessed by a demon. So these are just some facts to keep in the back of our mind. As we think about this, even within the Qur 'an, Surah, I had printed off, originally it was going to be in your notes, kind of a glossary of terms, because I know using a lot of these Surah and Ayah and all these type of things, you might not all know what that is, but Surah is just chapter and the Ayah is the verse. And so in the Qur 'an, Surah Adam 1, 22 to 25, 69, 41 to 42, Muhammad is trying to refute the idea that he is demon -possessed. And so he's arguing against the Jews and the Christians and are saying like, nah, we don't think you're demon -possessed, man. And he's like, no, I'm not. And he's trying to argue against that idea. And so this is just kind of a bit of a background as to how the Qur 'an was revealed to Muhammad. And so we might ask the question, well, do you think that Muhammad was just making all these things up? Is he just a total, is this all just a fabrication of his mind? I personally believe that Muhammad was not just making these things up. If you look at the scriptures and you see in the Old or the New Testament, you see various times when angels Abraham, appear to Mary, the Lord Jesus, Isaiah, there's many encounters where angels come and speak. Even the angel of the Lord comes and speaks to people. And many times people recognize that, oh man, like I am speaking to an angel and they are startled and there is awe and wonder that is within them as they speak to an angel. Not always, but we never see an angel of God coming and beating somebody up and hurting them and then causing them to become depressed and wanting to kill themselves and so on. And so what I believe is that as you look at the life and the story of Muhammad receiving the Qur 'anic revelations, his desire lines up much more with, as we read in the gospel, these, and again, not saying this to be crude or rude towards the Islamic faiths, but faith. But you see a herd of pigs when they are enveloped by demons, high -tempered toward the cliff and jumping off. We see Judas Iscariot, when he is the son of Perdition, when he is, it says, the Bible says that the devil goes into him and he betrays Christ and turns Christ over. Shortly thereafter, himself, Judas, killing, many believing, killing himself. And so it just doesn't seem that Muhammad truly had, of course we don't believe that Muhammad is a prophet of God, but it would be much more in line that, yes, Muhammad did have a revelation, but it was not from God, but rather, as we read in 2 Corinthians 11, 13 and 14, for such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
Fading Memories: Alzheimer's Caregiver Support
Fresh update on "eight years ago" discussed on Fading Memories: Alzheimer's Caregiver Support
"Now, on with our show. Welcome back, listeners. Always, you know how much I appreciate your time. I think you're gonna definitely enjoy this week's guest. With me is Mary Fridley, and we are going to be talking about reimagining dementia, finding more joy. And so I am going to let Mary introduce herself because she said she's got too much to say for me to remember. So thanks for joining me, Mary. Well, thank you, and thank you for having me. This is wonderful. And I'm thrilled to, if you will, meet your community. I'm a big fan of communities, building community. That's what I've spent the last 40 odd years of my life doing. So I love meeting communities. Just formally, I am the co-founder, together with a dear colleague of mine, the late Dr. Susan Massad. Together about seven or eight years ago, we founded a workshop and conversation series called The Joy of Dementia. You gotta be kidding. And then a little later on, but certainly coming out of that work and the people we were meeting, in 2020, we were the co-founders, and I continued to lead an international coalition called Reimagining Dementia, a creative coalition for justice that has about 825 members around the country, about 33 countries. And we're continuing to move forward. That sounds wonderful. International, it's definitely more of a global community these days than it was when my mom first had Alzheimer's and after my dad passed away in 2017, and I started the podcast in 2018. And that doesn't sound like that far away, like that long ago, but it kind of is. It was a different world. I was speaking with a new coalition member who's in Germany and he's very involved with music, which I think is wonderful, and bringing music to people living with dementia. And we were talking and he was asking me about the coalition and I said, well, really, I mean, you can come up with highfalutin reasons to do anything, depending on how grand you wanna make yourself seem. But really, I think in the sense, and I'm speaking in this moment in particular about the coalition, it really was the product of the pandemic, to your point, both because it was really sparked by just what we were seeing unfold and the impact and the disproportionate impact and the just awful impact that pandemic was having in nursing homes, care homes, amongst older adults, people living with dementia, and many of whom in my view, and I'm not asking everyone to agree with me, but in many instances, I believe they were being allowed to die during the pandemic. But nevertheless, regardless of whether that's your take on it, I think we've all been aware for a long time that the conditions in care homes are just not sufficient, period, for anybody. And though that's largely hidden away, like most of us who don't, I mean, my mom ended up being in a care home, so I'm very familiar with them, but not everyone is, and not everybody wants to know much about them. But nevertheless, I think the pandemic and the headlines and just the endless coverage just pulled back the curtain in a way that you had to see it. And people, even I know people in my life, we're just very upset, just on a human level. So that really both sparked our putting out a call to colleagues that we had met through the Joy of Dementia work and saying, hey, we got to respond. Now, we had a particular response in mind that I can speak more about, but nevertheless, in some ways, we just thought this is a moment we have to respond. It would just be unconscionable not to. And I think, so that's one pandemic-related, spark, but also honestly, it was also a summer of a lot of unrest, I mean, George Floyd. And so again, regardless of how we felt about that, it still was a moment where people were rising up, they were taking to the streets. So in some sense, that fervor was also very much in the air everywhere. And then finally, honestly, it's because everyone discovered Zoom. Like Zoom had been around for a long time, and I remember during the first couple of years, my brothers and sisters would have weekly Zoom calls, which I think a lot of people did. Now, we never talked to each other weekly ever. I mean, we love each other, but that was not part of our thing. And I remember at one point, my brother just saying, how come we've never done this before? So, I mean, like it just entered, there are just moments where you're introduced to something and it becomes on that, everybody was doing it. So really, there would not be a coalition if we weren't able to bring together people from the US and South America and Africa, and it just wouldn't happen. And I think it's been powerful also because, and you and I have spoken a little bit about community before, I think people, I mean, this is a bit of a cliche and I wanna be careful because I think there's always different ways of approaching this, but people were eager for community. They wanted to be part of something for obvious reasons. And while I think our return to in-person life has shifted that a bit, I don't think it's any less critical in our life. So that's really, as I said, that's what I've been doing is working with people. And this is a big part of the joy of dementia work. Is how do we create communities that support, because as you know, and many of our listeners will know, and I don't think it's just unique to dementia. I don't think, I wanna be careful because I don't think anything I'm saying, I think it could be applied to a lot of life situations, but we're talking about dementia. So, but that, where it just, it becomes almost immediately isolating. Like I've just spoken to so many people living with dementia, their families, their care plan, their friends, and they go from working, having a group of friends, whatever they're doing, whatever their interests were, one day they get the diagnosis, and all of a sudden a lot of that disappears. And that's a very difficult experience. I think we under appreciate, and I know I do, and I just, it's been really doing this work that I've began to appreciate. Wow, you're kind of, that's a lot to go through. I mean, particularly since it's not, and I'm saying this, I know people can come up with reasons why they disappear. I'm not, and I'm not casting any blame. People handle things the way they handle things. But it's not even clear why or that we have to do it that way. And that's where I think the joy of dementia was born. I think we're a bit over determined by this kind of prevailing narrative about dementia. And I think it's got us so scared and afraid and disoriented that we just kind of lose sight of, well, there are other, there are ways go about this that doesn't have to be as devastating and as stressful and that will be there. I mean, my mom died of late stage dementia. So I went through being with her and it was, I freely say it was the most emotional time of my life, period. And I've gone through a lot in my life. I'm old enough that I didn't say that. Been around the block a few times. Right, and she lost her capacity to speak, all those things. And so we really had to keep reforming our relationship. But at no point that I ever see it as a tragedy with either a small P or a large P, but particularly with a large P, which I think is what I mean when I say that the coalition and the joy of dementia in different ways, but I think share in a way of a deep, deep, deep, deep commitment to overthrowing that big P, tragedy of narrative, which I think has been so harmful. Oh, I agree. Do you think that the reason people kind of disappear and don't seek out or know to seek out a community of care helpers, I guess it might be a word, is because one, it's a terrifying diagnosis. It usually comes because of some emergency that I have a past guest that referred to it as that Tuesday afternoon phone call that upends your life. And then there's no, you don't get support from the beginning. It's like, well, your person's got Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or Lewy body or whatever, and you almost get a pat on the shoulder and a good luck and there's the door. I agree. And in many of the people that I've met, you're friends now who live with dementia, who I've spoken to, you know, you're told go home and get prepared to die. I mean, that's not an overstay. I wish I could say, oh, well, no, that really doesn't happen that much, but it does. And it does today. I guarantee you that hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of people being diagnosed with dementia at this moment are hearing some variation of that message. And I agree with you because I think that, yes, it is in this, again, coming back to this big key tragedy narrative that honestly I think the biomedical system has helped perpetuate. I don't, you know, it didn't appear out of nowhere. It wasn't like, it's not like we got together one day and said, okay, how badly can we really treat people living with dementia? Let's scare folks to death and just condemn them to a non-existent life. So I didn't walk away. I'd like to think better of the human species, but, and again, I'm not even interested in pointing fingers if that blame isn't gonna help anything, but I do certainly think there's contributors. So, yeah, I mean, it's so surrounded by fear and shame and stigma and just everything that we actually, as a human, as human beings don't deal with well. I mean, shame is a fairly common, I actually think we live more and more in a shaming culture. We shame everyone. Yeah. But he's different than us, we shame him. We don't like what somebody, we think we're better than someone, we shame them. I mean, this is like breathing, sadly. And I'm not saying that lightly because I think it's a deeply corrosive phenomenon. On the other hand, it is, so, yeah, we don't handle shame well anyway. We don't handle, we tend to then get angry or withdrawal. I mean, I know what I do when I feel shame. I'm, you know, I, yeah, let me at him. Yeah, we're not very good at handling, we're not very good at handling the emotionality of it at all, and I'd say that with love. And I think, yeah, we are, in a way we're, I hope this is what this phrase, I've never used it in an interview before, but we're kind of hoisted on our own petard because on one hand, we live in a culture and in many cases, we deeply value being these kinds of rugged, self-reliant individuals. We do, I mean, that's our mantra. Now, leaving aside that actually it's largely a myth, but that's perhaps a conversation for another day, I could go into that. But even if you think, maybe, but even if you think, wow, individualism is the greatest thing since life spread, it doesn't serve you well when you're in need of a community and support. Now, and that doesn't have to be dementia at all. I know people, in fact, when Dr. Massad, my partner, was dying and she passed away about a year and a half ago and she was dying of multiple cancers, she had a team of support around her and in part, and actually over her 30-year practice as a physician and an enormously innovative and caring physician, she had created a model she called Health Team. And they were really designed initially primarily for health situations where the patient or the person diagnosed could call together a group. It could be friends, family, stranger, whoever they wanted around them, including medical professionals, care professionals. And it really was designed to not only be of support, which is important, but it also, the design of them is to try to kind of shift the balance between every decision and every feeling being just that of the individuals. So in a way, how can you kind of even modestly transform, oh, it's my health, to, oh, no, it's ours. This is a shared experience. No one living with somebody with cancer, for example, doesn't have that experience. I mean, you aren't suddenly walled off from having the feelings. Are you having the same experience? No, but that's true in life. Because you're not having the same experience doesn't mean you're not having emotional parts and that you're not part of this social, what's happening socially. So really that's been very helpful because in our, oh, I know, but the story was held to your point was, so she was interviewed by a reporter from a very well-known health newsletter. And we kind of got to know her and her us. And afterwards I was talking to her and she said, you know, my best friend, her best, best, best friend forever was diagnosed with cancer and she shut everybody out. And again, I think just let them sink in for a moment. But we both probably done this and then on the receiving end, that's an awful feeling. And it's also what there's and given the current setup, we can't even do much about it. Like you feel powerless, even as you also feel like, wait a minute, this is a woman person I love, I care for, she's been a part of my life and all of a sudden, but it happens. So again, we aren't very good at asking for help. And we're certainly not given the tools and resources and support to create those communities of support because, and in a way we're offering this as an alternative to, not instead of, but as an alternative to, yes, if you can find support, great, go to every place imaginable. However, as you well know in many communities and across the country, there's just not enough support no matter what. And that's tragic and we should change that. And if I had a magic wand, I would. However, given the current realities, we're saying, okay, but we don't have to be just passive bystanders in our own lives, any aspect of our life. We can also create them and we can be empowered to create the support even as we continue to try to find it. But we don't, it doesn't have to be an either or. Oh, well, I couldn't find anything. What, I guess that's it for me. And that often happens. I'm not saying that lightly. I think it leaves people in an awful position. So to the extent that we can in our workshops and our conversations say, okay, let's at least, we can give you some tools and support to do something a little different, to be able to bring people together. And in our case, we draw heavily on, and this is, it's an approach that both Susan and I have been familiar with for 40 some years. So this isn't new and it wasn't new. And we obviously have now brought it into the dementia field, but it's really an approach that's been informed by what we found to be just the incredible power of play, of performance and particularly of improvisation. It's obviously a kind of play. I am, I mean, I respect all the other things that are being done in the dementia world, but I absolutely believe that we, if we were able to lead more improvisational and playful lives as a whole, not when the moment where you're hit with possibly one of the most upsetting and frightening moments in your life. I think our relationship to a lot of this would shift. Does it make everything okay? Of course not. But it certainly would, again, empower us to be able to do different kinds of things, to create support, to be able to do something more powerful, more joyful, just more positive, more giving, we're not victims. And that makes sense. So that's really what, I mean, there's a lot of things nuances in that, but that's really what we're very committed to doing.
THE EMBC NETWORK
A highlight from Finding Healing and Community to Enrich Your Sexual Experience and Identity with Erika Alsborn
"Welcome back to season two of Energetically You, where we talk all things healthy habits, abundant mindset and optimal wellness. I'm your host, Meghan Swann, a mindset and wellness coach. I love helping women optimize their wellness through plant based nutrition, movement, mindfulness and mindset practices, that having them feel more aligned with who they truly are and confident in their own skin. I'm the creator of the Sustainable Integrated Wellness approach. I am also living in Mexico and I have been for the last 12 years. At 30, I sold everything and went on my own eat, pray, love journey, if you will. And now at 42, I'm still on my first stop, loving life and feeling more empowered than ever before. This podcast is for incredible humans who are interested in feeling more aligned with who they truly are, confident in their own skin and able to make more empowered decisions for themselves going forward in the future. So let's dive in. So excited for this interview. So excited. In fact, I'm up at five in the morning. This is the only time that Erika, who is in Sweden, could meet. But I am so excited. She is a new friend. We'll get into it in our interview. But Erika is an international sex and birth coach from Sweden. For the past decade, she has immersed herself in exploring the body, mind and sexuality from many different angles and approaches. The academic, the medical, the spiritual and the holistic. Her own sexual healing journey inspired her career shift from nursing to becoming a sex coach and entrepreneur. In 2019, she gave birth to her first child, and through that experience, realized how transformative childbirth is and can be, and is now dedicated to shifting the current narrative around birth, helping women to have positive, empowered and ecstatic birth experiences. So, so excited to dive into all of that. Welcome, Erika. I am so excited to have you here today and to get to know you better, really from a selfish point of view. I've followed your work for six plus months. I love everything that you are putting out into the world and sharing. And I just registered for your shameless course, Mastermind. I don't know what's the best defining. And, you know, it was it was a bit of a leap for me. Really excited. And I want to get to know, like your whole journey to where you are today. And I know that a bigger part of it is is the birthing coach. So let's dive into both parts. First of all, how are you? Welcome. Hi, Megan. Yes, I'm happy that you found me, obviously, super delighted that you have joined this amazing program of mine. And and yeah, I'm so happy to be on this podcast and share about this near and dear topic of mine, which has kind of surprisingly, which kind of surprisingly, you know, went from being my biggest obstacle in my life and then turned into the greatest teacher, which, well, I guess it's not that surprising. As you do. Right. Take us back. You were you were a nurse and, you know, that's a really powerful, amazing career in itself. And like, was there sort of like one defining moment that you can point to where you thought I'm going to be a sex coach, not a nurse anymore, or was it much slower and kind of like a part time thing that you secretly did on the side and then eventually made it into your main passion? There are kind of two lanes or two parallel sort of journeys that then crossed and combined and became the one. And so one journey is if we go way back to when I was a kid, I was masturbating from a pretty young age, as one does. When before, you know that it's called masturbation. And before someone tells you that it's inappropriate or you don't do it outside of the house or whatever. Exactly. Or you realize that not everyone else is touching their genitals all the time and like, what's wrong with you? OK, they don't do it. So probably something's wrong with me. I better stop. Right. Yeah. So as a kid, in that kind of innocent, shameless way, exploring my body and, you know, the delights of my body and all of that, and then growing a little bit older and like before puberty filled with, for lack of a better word, like horniness as a preteen, like everything's so exciting and you're starting to feel attracted to people. And it's like you're getting all lit up when you see people kissing on TV and like, you know, excited when there are any sex scenes and all that juicy stuff. And then little by little, what instead started to happen inside of me was I was coming up against all of the negative messages. And mind you, I grew up in Sweden. I'm Swedish. I grew up in Sweden. So the messages are pretty mild in comparison to other countries, other societies, especially, you know, religious stuff for anti sex, religious stuff and dogma and all of that. But still, there were so many conflicting messages and I'm quite the sensitive person. And, you know, pair that with a with low self -esteem and lack of parental guidance and positive, like sex positive, authoritative figures, adult figures, role models. I started to, again, like feel like, OK, well, this is not safe and this is not normal and something's wrong with me. And boys are predators and I'm the I'm the prey and they're going to take something from me and slut shaming. And and then combined with some negative sexual experience at my sexual debut, it all just sort of went into like. yeah, Shit, like and so which I didn't realize, and then I performed sex for a long time, I was having sex, I was enjoying it. But mostly performing and faking orgasms because I just thought, you know, like that's the way one does it. Or at least that's what at least that's sort of the cards I've been dealt. And so suck it up like that's it. And then I became a nurse, obviously, there's a whatever desire, personality trait, something inside of me that want to help other people and find enjoyment in that. And I went down that route, but pretty quickly I realized that it wasn't really my thing. During my nursing degree, I had been sort of trying to get into the sexuality realm. I wrote my thesis on sexuality and there was an interest, but it was kind of the the it was as a nurse, you're limited. You cannot really work a lot with sexuality, at least not in a kind of positive, proactive guiding way. Then it's more like, here's a person with STD, take a blood sample. And I was like, that's super boring. I don't want to do nothing spiritual about that. No, nothing creative, nothing spiritual, nothing engaging. So I stumbled upon a sexuality, a sexology master's degree at the university here where I live in Sweden. And luckily, my nursing degree made me eligible to to apply and be accepted. So I started doing this sexuality. Academic sexuality training, and I quickly realized that this is pretty boring. Like, when are we going to talk about sex? Because we were there, you know, in class talking about all of the systemic and structure, structural things and and like beating around the bush. And I was constantly feeling like, when are we going to talk about sex? And how to have better sex and help someone have better sex and have their first orgasm or have all of the orgasms. And, you know, really much more with that kind of I had that focus. That was it became really clear to me that that was my interest, because that had truly been the journey and it was the journey that I was on. So simultaneously, as I kind of did that shift and started exploring and studying sexuality, I'd also found an online teacher. Who Tantra taught and holistic sexuality, and I was going through a massive personal and sexual healing and transformation journey, and it was really that that that made me realize that. Well, if if if I can understand that something is not innately wrong with me and that there are certain experiences and belief systems and. Habits and behaviors that have accumulated and contributed to me feeling like I can't access my orgasmic capacity and I can't really enjoy sex. And there are actually solutions to that, then surely there are thousands, millions of women out there who feel the same. And I don't want this to be a secret because I don't want them to feel as broken as I did. And so that kind of started accelerating me in that direction and propelled me forward towards. Thinking of sexuality as not just a personal journey, but also perhaps a professional career, and it was that experience that also made me feel like the psychology masters is great, intellectually elevating, thought provoking, great. But it's not giving me the tools to solve the problems that I have and that I want to help other women solve, so I enrolled in an online. Super comprehensive, extensive sex, love and relationship coaching program, and it was my jam, like juicy, practical, holistic, spiritual, academic, modern, like all of the things combined with a real focus on coaching, identifying issues and solving them through. Well, working holistically with sexuality and very practically, so. Yeah, it's been eight years since I first enrolled in that online course where I realized that I get to heal and thrive, and so it's been a very fascinating journey. And long story short, I've gone from pre -orgasmic, really sexually dissatisfied to multi -orgasmic and having the best sex of my life. And I keep saying that, oh, my God, that was the best orgasm of my life. Oh, my God, that was just the best sex of my life. And it just keeps getting better, which is something that you normally don't hear women say as they age and become mothers and wives and all of the things. Yeah, oh, my goodness. So so many follow up questions, but sorry. No, no, that's good. I, I feel like your your journey really points to the reality in many realms. Like mine was more specifically around going in moments of my life, trying to go the academic route of psychology and the same thing. Like I think it's important to have that background and that basis. But, you know, you can speak to this as well as a coach, you know, it's just so much more tactical and tangible, the coaching scenario more often than not, than going sort of like the traditional structure within the medical model route of solving things. And yeah, so that just makes me even more excited. I'll tell you, like random, random things that sold me on the course, like it really is you. I mean, I'm very excited about all of the modules. And they're like, honestly, there's a few modules that kind of scare me, but I thought, like, that's a good thing. But it was one, I'm in love with how you say body, how you pronounce body. Every time you say it, I'm just like, oh, my God, I love her. And you're not the first one to say that. Probably the only thing that stuck after living in Australia for two and a half years. That's what it is. Because it's like, it's like out of character of the rest of your accent. Anyway, it's awesome. So that and, you know, I very seriously considered, I'm like, you know, what about what maybe it would be so much more valuable to work one on one with you. But then as we got going through this, the process of you like sharing and giving so much value and then the sort of like mini the what was so intoxicating was the dynamic of working with other women in this this realm. And because I think, I don't know, this is this is my perception, but I'm guessing it's common where it seems kind of weird and intimidating. You know, like the first thing I did was six months ago, I did like a breast massage workshop and I'm like, oh, OK, so we're really going to sit on Zoom together and like be breast, you know, like bare breasted and massage. That that was a step for me. And at the same time, there was just something like really, really powerful that I would never have imagined about doing something like that, like a healing practice where you've been taught to have so much shame around even just having your breasts hanging out and do and like giving the whole group permission at the same time. I don't know if that resonates. Absolutely. I think it's so beautiful how you describe your journey with that and the that the confronting experience of like, what am I going to do this with other people? Isn't this something that we always only do behind closed doors and always pretend that we also don't never like never do it? We don't do it at all, because that's what like being modest and civilized mean. And here it's like the contrary, inviting you into a space like the workshop or in my course where you're going to be literally masturbating to my voice live with your sound and video off, because we don't do that, knowing that there are 8, 10, 15, 20 women doing the same spread out all across the world. Like, that's not your so powerful it seems like in one box, it's like, oh, my God, that's so fucking crazy. And then another box, it's like it's so powerful and epic. And yeah, anyway, I'm excited. The and what happens is just like you said, you know, after when you when you're in that experience and once you just meet that confronting, like, this is weird, what the fuck? And then you get over it and like, OK, this is this is what we're doing here. And then all of a sudden what happens is, is that you feel like this is the most normal thing ever. This is the most healing thing ever. I can't believe I've never done this before, or I can't believe it actually feels so natural. And natural is not a word that I normally like to use because what is natural, but the loaded word, it is a very loaded word. But it it actually feels after after a while of doing it. And I've even done this in person, in person retreats with 50 women naked on the floor, some with sarongs on top of their genitals, some butt naked, masturbating with fingers and tools inside of themselves and doing like really amazing, tantric sexual practices in person. Everyone having their solo experience. But in community and you're like. This is so normal, I'm hearing a woman having an orgasm to my right, I'm having hearing a woman crying to my left because you're going through a healing experience and I am plucking on, you know, I'm somewhere having my experience and you're like, wow, the it gives you a taste and a little insight into maybe what community used to be. Where sex wasn't so abnormal, taboo, charged, controlled, demonized, all of those things hidden in secrecy behind closed doors, but where actually sensual and communal pleasure could potentially have been a thing. And so we're bringing that back. And when we do that, we realize that it's a very joyful experience to share with other people. It builds deep bonds and it makes us feel really happy and normal, right? Normal in our desires, right? So let's talk a little bit because I think it's a common experience and I know that you had a huge shift as well. Like for me, childbirth was one of the most powerful experiences, and I won't go down the rabbit hole of like it also was very far from perfect experience. But the fact that I blew my own mind about what I was capable of doing and did it all naturally, I had absolutely no in the face being surrounded by a culture and individuals who also didn't really see that as normal or that possible. You know, it's like completely changed my vision of what was possible for me in general. So I think that there's that like the transformational point piece of giving birth. And then also another huge topic is how, I mean, as much shame and judgment we tend to have about our sexuality can be in general as young women. There's like another layer that comes with, oh, well, now you're a mother and that somehow means like that you don't have sex anymore or you're certainly not. Oh, like there's like yet another layer of hiding or being openly sexual. And I briefly told you off the top here, for me, it's like such this weird mind fuck in a sense here in Mexico where there are like women that are, it's very normal to dress super sexy even as a mom and not like, quote unquote, slutty. And we can deconstruct that works. I know it's one of your favorites, too. But, you know, in a much more overtly trying, trying to be attractive, that's completely socially acceptable. But and I'm sure there's spaces and maybe I'm not privileged to them as a foreigner where there are more open discussions. But I haven't been privileged to them in 12 years where women here are talking about like maybe with very close girlfriends.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
Fresh update on "eight years ago" discussed on Evangelism on SermonAudio
"When I was in college, I heard a story of an old farmer who was talking to a pastor friend. And the pastor friend was leading a church convention on how to grow your church. The farmer, being old and wise with farming, turned to the pastor friend one day and said, I see in your church convention that you plan to discuss the subject, how to get people to attend church. He said, you know, I've been farming for a long time and I have a lot. And many of my friends are farmers. And you want to know something amazing? Not one of us farmers has ever wondered how to get cattle to come to feed. We've only ever discussed what kind of feed to give them. I love that story because it reminds us that what we come to church for isn't about the latest flavor of the month. It's not about how we can be satisfied in our own selves. It's not about how we can be entertained. We come to feed upon the word of God. And so as we come this morning, we're looking in verses 43 to 47 is really an application to what we looked at last week in verse 42 of how the apostles in the church devoted themselves to the word of God. And so we're looking at the attributes of the church. And we saw last week the devotion that the early church had. And so we've already covered verse 42 in depth. And so as we were looking at that verse, you're going to see that so many of the principles that were driving the church are found in verse 42. And they flow down to 43 to 47. Why they do the things that are done in verses 43 to 47 are the effect of what is done in the cause of verse 42. And so these verses describe the way in which the early church really applied verse 42. And so the first mark that is obvious of the church in verse 43 is the church's reverence for God. And you see that in verse 43 where Luke writes, then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. And so if we back up and we see that they are continuing steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, that's the key. That's the foundational principle. That is first. If that doesn't take place first, you don't have the next four verses. And so they were devoting themselves to the doctrine of the apostles, which is really the doctrine of Jesus Christ, what he taught them while he was still on the earth. And then you have their fellowship with each other. And then you have their meeting and prayer. And so now with all of this, because of their devotion to the word of God, because of their fellowship and their devotion to each other and because of their devotion to prayers to the Lord God on high, what happened is the people developed a deep reverence for God. And the word fear here speaks of a profound respect and holy awe. This is a sweeping statement showing that when people looked at the church in the early part of the church, the 3,000 that were saved, they were a fearful people. They feared no man, but they feared God. They had a reverence for God that they had never had before. Now remember, these are people who were on the earth when Jesus walked. Perhaps some of them had even heard him teach and even seen a miracle or two. But the fear of God never developed in their heart because they had not been regenerated. But now, after their conversion and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which brought about a reverence for God, now there is a reverence and a in-depth fear of I could have been damned to hell for my unbelief, but God was merciful to me and saved my soul. And so there is this deep and profound reverence after the illumination of the Holy Spirit to the teaching of Jesus. John Phillips says, the church does not instill much fear today. The professing church accepts such low standards for its fellowship that lying and immorality, questionable doctrine, deception, and even perversion are allowed. We have forgotten the divine command, be holy for I am holy, in 1 Peter 1, 16. Beloved, I don't know your situation today. I don't know what you're struggling with, I don't know your temptations, I don't know your trials, I don't know your fears, I don't know your pains, or the people in your life who seem to be there all the time when you least need them. But here's what we have to remember, is that fearing men and fearing problems and fearing pain will never bring about holiness in your life. It will only bring about an unhealthy, unbiblical, sinful fear in our hearts that will not allow us to rise above as the early church did. It will be an anchor to our souls that will keep us from moving forward in faith. And so we must fear God and be in awe of him in the midst of the trial, knowing that he is God over the trial. In fact, when you read James 1, who brings the trials? Well, God does, for the purpose of perseverance and a perfect faith. And so we trust God in the midst of the trial, that he will bring about the perseverance as we run with faith that race, that we would bring glory to his name. The second half of verse 43 is an interesting one and is one of those debatable parts of scripture as different theologians have different opinions. So we will look at this and be careful with it. The second half of verse 43 speaks of wonders and signs. Well, when you understand the word wonder, it is an unusual sign and is usually something that is seen in the heavens as something that is impending. You would sometimes hear the prophets speak of the impending judgment of God. And you have men like Isaiah and Jeremiah who would use different items like clay pots and they would use these things to smash them or to burn them or bury them or crush them to make their message known. Well, that would be the idea of a wonder, yet it would be more of a supernatural phenomenon that the apostles were able to bring about through their message. And the signs is an event which has been regarded as some special meaning. This would be something more like a miracle, a healing or a casting out of a demon would be more of the sign. And so we have to back up though because if we just take this verse and we read it and we keep forging on and we forget the context, we're gonna make some erroneous conclusions. The foundation for these wonders and signs is in verse 22 of chapter two of Acts where Peter is preaching and he says, "'Men of Israel, hear these words.'" Listen to what he says. "'Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you "'by miracles, wonders and signs.'" And so we have to understand the foundation of these wonders and signs is not the apostles. It's not in them, it is Christ in them who is the one who is bringing about the confirmation of their message. And so as they preach the truth of God, they were given the grace to perform special ability for a time, to perform signs and wonders, listen clearly, to show the message they preached was true. Now we have to make sure we understand that distinction and R.C. Sproul used to say all the time, "'Good theologians make careful distinctions.'" If we were to say that the signs and wonders as some people would say are to show that the messenger is true, well that's a different story. If it is about the messenger and not the message, then we would expect that anyone who preached the true gospel would be able to heal and do miracles and conjure up all kinds of wondrous works. And yet we rarely see that today. In fact, we don't see that at all today and those who claim that they can do it tend to do it on the television screen with special effects and all kinds of other gimmicks. One of the, I think, benefits that COVID brought along was it showed the lack of truth in the prosperity gospel. It showed the charlatans who they were as they were on TV blowing away COVID, saying, "'You shall not pass.'" As if quoting the Lord of the Rings would stop a virus. These men do not preach the gospel and they are largely entertainers and greedy men who seek their own kingdom here on Earth. Now what we're looking at here is an explanation, a description of what was taking place in the early church. This is not something that we need to try to take and then apply to our life. Certainly we should be applying that we should have a fear of God. There's no doubt of that, but the signs and wonders, this is describing what took place in the early church. So if the signs and wonders were to affirm the messenger, we would think that every preacher should go to the hospital and heal those who are sick. And so it would be like if I could go to the hospital and I saw Ted Grove lying there, I could touch Ted's hip and pray and he'd be miraculously healed because as a messenger of the gospel, that would be the affirmation. I can't do that. In fact, even those, there were very few who could do that even in the biblical times. It was reserved really for the apostles, those who served under Christ. They had that mantle of Christ and when they died, that gift passed with them. And so what we're seeing here is a statement showing that because the word of God had not yet been written down, the proof of the message was through the signs and the wonders. See, if we reverse that and we say, no, the signs and wonders are about the person preaching, well then we would expect signs and wonders to be taking place. But if it's about the message that's being preached, the gospel of Christ which we have written down in his perfect and errant infallible word, well then it makes sense that there wouldn't be no more wonders when the word was completed. And so this is where I stand on the issue. It's also why you will see in the book of Acts the majority of the miracles and the wonders take place in the first 14 chapters. After the Jerusalem Council in chapter 15, there are certainly miracles that take place, but they are few and far between. Why is that? Because books like the Gospel of James, or the Epistle of James, Galatians, Philippians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Titus had been written. And now the word of God is beginning to spread through Asia Minor, the Middle East, and even further than that. And now you have not so much the confirmation of a messenger, but the message. And so as the message is being written down and authenticated and proven, it's from the hand of the apostles, the miracles stop and the word of God begins its powerful work. And so while we do not have men and women anointed from God into the miraculous works of healing today, one true statement is this. God works miracles every single day. Miracles have not stopped. What they have stopped is, miracles have stopped by the hands of men. But God works miracles every single day. You know, we have people who go in and out of the hospital who have surgery that just a decade ago their life would have been forfeited. They didn't have the surgery. There's medication available now that we didn't have and years ago would have taken our life. In homeschool our children are learning about the Middle Ages and the different ways in which they would try to keep the black plague away. And some of the ideas that they had, we look at, we just sort of shake our head, but think of how we have come in medicine and yet we still die. Why is that? Because it is appointed once for man to die because of our sin. All have fallen short of the glory of God and therefore all of us must pay that price, but thanks be to God for Jesus Christ who has come to earth to renew that relationship with us and God, between us and God, who is the only mediator between God and man. And through his sacrificial death on the cross, him paying our penalty, his death on the cross is paying our penalty for our sin and his resurrection restores us back to God. What a message we have to preach. That was the message that was being authenticated. And so what we're seeing is that God continues to perform miracles. He still does it. He does it every day when he brings people into his church. We may not be aware of it. It might be happening over in China and Africa and North and South Korea, but it's happening. It's happening in America every day. We just may not be aware of it. The great miracle that God would save our souls is a wonderful miracle from God. And so while we are not performing miracles, God most definitely is. So I don't want anyone telling me that I don't believe in miracles. I absolutely do. I just don't believe that there are miracle workers on earth that are called men. There is one miracle worker and he is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we have seen the reverence of the church and now we see the church's generous spirit in verses 44 to 46. Now all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they saw their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. The early church had a generous spirit. And there's a transition from the reverence to their generosity. And we have to tread lightly here and again, make some careful distinctions because there have been some rather interesting conclusions drawn here from those who have read this and have not paid careful attention to what is taking place. Now what we're seeing is all the believers in Jerusalem. This is speaking specifically of Jerusalem believers. It does not describe every believer everywhere but the believers in Jerusalem. And even then, it does not descriptive of every single believer but of a majority of believers. They serve as a general rule. And so understanding, first of all, the word believed is extremely important. The word believed means to believe the good news of Jesus Christ and to become a follower of him. And so we are talking about a small group of people. We're not told how many people in Jerusalem are Christians. There was 3,000 at first but now some of them have spread out to their own homes and all of the different regions that were mentioned in the sermon of Peter. But in Jerusalem, there was a large group of Christians and they were believers. This means that they have lost everything that was dear to them. They lost their families who were Jewish. They lost their jobs if they were Jewish. They lost everything. Because by claiming and proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ, they were renouncing their Jewish heritage which means their parents disowned them. Their children cut them off. Their communities shunned them. And so you have this idea of we are all we have on earth. And so what you're seeing then is that they have a common Lord Jesus Christ, a common mission, the proclamation of the gospel and a common compassion towards each other, a common love among the church. Now I want to make sure you understand that in the context of Acts, the believers were free to do with their possessions as they chose. You see that in Acts chapter five when Ananias and Sapphira lie to the Holy Spirit. And Peter says, hey, this was yours. What you were free to do with it, what you wanted to do, why would you lie to the Holy Spirit? And they were killed because of their disobedience. But what is key is that they not only were able to choose what they wanted to do with their possessions but they had all things in common. Now that word common in the English is not very helpful to understand what is really being explained here. The word means to share with one another. And so because they had a common unity in Christ, they were ensuring that everyone in that community had everything they needed. They were sharing from what they had. It's the idea they would not allow a fellow believer to go hungry, naked, or without shelter. That's what the idea behind that word common is. Now inevitably, someone's gonna read Acts 2, 44 to 46 and think, hey, the Bible teaches communism. I've actually heard people try to use this passage as an argument for communism. But there is a fatal flaw in that argument. Communism requires a forced sharing where the government comes along and makes you give up what you have. This is a giving of the will. This is a free will offering to the Lord and to the church. And so in communism, they force you to give up what you have and then they redistribute to others. It's just amazing, isn't it, how the government doesn't play by their own rules? And the richest people in the communist nations are government officials. It's just amazing how men will be corrupted by power and money. And communism allows for that. And so do not think that the Bible is teaching communism. I like what Stephen Gere says. He says this was a display of biblical communism, not communism. The early Jerusalem church clearly valued people over possessions and, at least for a time, modeled the ideal community as envisioned in the Mosaic command, there shall be no poor among you in Deuteronomy 15, four. Now Jesus uses a similar concept to bring the rich young ruler to his senses and, unfortunately, to the point where he would reject the gospel. In Matthew 19, 21, Jesus says to the rich young ruler, if you want to be perfect, meaning you're lacking one thing, young man, but this one thing is keeping you from God. If you wanna be perfect, sell what you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. And then come and follow me. In the sad reality, this young man would not give up what was holding him back from entering heaven. And the idea here, however, is that the wealth and riches in the early church, wherever it was, they freely gave it up because they wanted nothing holding them back. They were the individuals to use at their disposal and will and they were already in the kingdom, yes, but they didn't wanna be held back from serving the Lord and so what they did was they gave it all so that none in their community had lack. So they sell their possessions and their goods, they divide them, that word divide speaks of distributing to those who have need. Now, the word need is key. They had to have had need to receive what was being given. Now, that idea is not common among communism, that you are wealthy, that the idea is you're wealthy, I want what you have, therefore, I'm gonna make you give it to me. It's greed. Whether you have need or not, you're wanting it. It really is a discontented disposition that brings about and allows for this idea to grow. And so the idea is I want what you have, I'm gonna take it. Here's what you're seeing in Acts 2. I have something, I'm seeing you suffer and I will part with what I have so your suffering stops. Do you see the difference? In communism, I'm greedy and will take and rob from you. In this biblical commonism, I have been given much, I will graciously give to you from my heart that you will have and not lack. And so we have to see the difference. The first is the one who lacks is taking action, but in the second, the one who has plenty is taking action. And so we are called as a people to be giving of our abundance and God has richly blessed this congregation, I am amazed and continually amazed at your generosity. And so as a church, this is an area where we really thrive. We give to the Lord, your giving has been beyond, above and beyond our expectations the past two years and already 2023, we're off on the same foot. The elders and I have talked and we're just amazed at how the Lord provides and how you respond to the Lord's call in your life to give. I want to commend you because you continue to give to the work, the Lord continues his work and we're seeing it all over the world as you give to missionaries, as you give, we're not just talking about programs. I mean, we have programs here, but the programs serve a purpose to pronounce the gospel of Jesus Christ, whether that be in our junior church, which is taking place right now, or that be in our Sunday school, our Awana program, our Trail Life and American Heritage Girls, whatever program you want to talk about, it's all there for the proclamation of the gospel of Christ. And so we thank you and commend you for your continued giving. The church's generosity is also seen in their unity. Look at where they're meeting. They're in one accord in the temple. Now to be of one accord means to be of the same mind. The idea is unity. This is the third time we're seeing this in two chapters. It's a key concept. We saw it first in Acts chapter one where after they come back and see the ascension of Jesus, they gather in that upper room 120 believers and they were of one mind. Then in Acts 2, one, we see on the day of Pentecost, all 120 were gathered together again of the same mind. And now here you have it in Acts 2.45, they are of the same mind. Now here's what's amazing. You have 120 believers. That's about the size of our congregation, a little bit bigger. We're a little bigger than 120, but of the same mind. It's fairly, you can think, okay, we're of the same mind, we're a small group of Christians. And I'll explode that to 3,000. To have 3,000 who are of the same mind is a work of the Holy Spirit. That's what's happening here. And so while we all have our own opinions and thoughts and ideas about secondary issues, we are united by the message that Jesus Christ alone saves sinners. And that you must come to Jesus to be saved. That's where we're united. We can differ on end times. I tend to be a dispensational premillennialist and I have dispensational premillennialist friends and we don't agree on everything. We've got someone here who is telling me that they're now a postmillennialist and we're talking about all of that and we don't agree on everything. But you know what we do agree on? Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. And so we can talk about all the different secondary issues which I believe are important and we must discuss and have a strong belief on them if they're in scripture. But when it comes to salvation, that's where we're unified. And so as we come, I really do believe that our differences can bring us together because they force us to discuss and have communication and to make clear distinctions. But it is the unity over the gospel that fuses us together. And they met in the temple. Again, very Jewish in flavor. The early church is very Jewish. And so they are meeting in the temple, they're breaking bread, they're affirming one another in the faith. Again, showing that church membership issue of affirming one another. And they ate their food with gladness, speaking of intense joy. And they recognized it was a gracious gift and provision of God and they were eating with simplicity of heart. That really speaks of generosity of heart. That's really what that word means. This is the normal way of life for the first century. They met at the temple, likely on Sundays, and every day of the week, they were meeting in someone else's home, breaking bread, having what we would call Bible studies. There are no details given, but we see their devotion to God's word, God's people, and God's mission. They are united together. This is first given by Luke in Luke 24, 53, where the last verse of the gospel says that the disciples were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. In the next chapter, in Acts 3, one, we'll see that Peter and John are on their way to the temple when they heal a lame man, and all of a sudden it becomes another opportunity to proclaim the gospel. So we take these principles and we apply them to our planning for services, to the way in which we do things. For instance, the breaking of bread here suggests the Lord's Supper is being done, and so once a month we have the Lord's Supper. The gathering places are not commands but descriptions. It's not that we have to meet in homes, it's just that's what they did. And so we typically gather at the church for our organized meetings, but there are times we gather in other people's homes. That's gonna take place this week with our ladies' Bible study. We're gonna meet in restaurants on Wednesdays with our men's Bible study. There are times that we're gonna meet other places, but we're gathering together and we're having fellowship and we're proclaiming the truth of God's word and we're breaking bread together. Whether we be here in the church or we'll be at the Swartz Pond for baptismal service in our picnic, we are applying the principles that we see here in Acts 2, 42 to 47 for our church that we would be a biblical church and be pleasing to God. So we've seen the reverence of the people and their generosity. Now we see the church's growth. In verse 47 we see the second summary of Luke on the growth of the church where he says, "'Praising God and having favor with all people.' And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved." You wanna know what's amazing? God hasn't stopped doing that. God has not stopped adding daily to his church. Sometimes we get so focused on what's going wrong and we see everything around us and we see the nonsense, we see the error, we see the heresy, we see the liars, we see the fool and we throw up our hands and we say, what is God doing? You know what he's doing? He's saving souls and adding them to the church. He hasn't stopped. He won't stop. He will continue until the last day. But these men and women were so unified that as they were out in their community, you know what happened? Even though they were shunned from their community, God gave them favor in their community's eyes. That's amazing. There was a favorable attitude towards them. And though they were to be shunned by the religious leaders, the common men and women accepted them because they saw the truth. They saw what they were standing for. They saw how they treated each other. They saw their love and generosity for each other and it penetrated their hearts. What they did not see in the Pharisees and the chief priests and the scribes, they saw in the disciples. The love and the compassion that they had for each other, which was absent from the religious leaders, was present in God's children and it drew men and women like a magnet. And so we have to remind ourselves that it is through the compassion of God and through our compassion that those who are in the world will respond to the gospel. There is a reason why the number one adjective to describe Jesus in the Bibles is compassionate. He is a compassionate God. John MacArthur explains that the early church was so unified, joyful, and spirit-filled that their very existence was a powerful testimony to the truth of the gospel. True evangelism flows from the life of a healthy church. And God continued to add daily to those who were being saved. You will soon see that God will stop adding and begin multiplying. And it will grow and it will become an unquenchable fire. That though the leaders in the world will seek to extinguish, the harder they try to extinguish, the faster it grows. Which is amazing because when you see governments in the world seeking to destroy the church, it's the soil for growth where God moves. It's like fertilizer. I'll never forget when I heard a Chinese Christian, this is maybe seven, eight years ago, he was talking to a radio host that I follow and the radio host asked him, how can the American church pray for the Chinese church? And the Chinese Christian was talking about all the different things that are going on and the host said, well, what about persecution? Should we pray that persecution would stop? I mean, doesn't that just make sense? That makes sense in our American mind. And the Chinese man laughed. He said, no, don't pray that God takes away the persecution. And there was silence. He said, persecution is refining us and keeps us humble and reminds us that what we're doing is of greater value than of our own life. And so we see that as God multiplies the church and the world seeks to stand against it, if God is for us, who can stand against us, Romans says. And so, beloved, as we go into the world and we feel like we are the only one, you might be the only one in that situation, but there are millions and billions around you, a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before. Let us be faithful to the Lord. And so as a church devoted themselves to the word of God, fellowship and prayer, they developed a reverent fear of God, a generous spirit and a continued growth. Three simple and quick points of application for you today. First, the message of the cross may not be seen by the world as a message of power and influence. But the message of the cross is the only message that will save men's souls. And so it is the message that we preach and also the message of the cross unifies believers. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1.18, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. And so we have to remind ourselves, it's not my power. I can't do that. But God will do this through us. Yet not I, but Christ in me, as we sang this morning. So we must continue to preach the gospel of Christ that people are saved. And as people are saved and they grow in their faith and they devote themselves to the word and fellowship and prayer, they will develop a deep reverent fear of God and they will serve him faithfully. They will be generous and the church will grow. Not necessarily the local assembly, but the universal church in Christ. Second, I will warn you that there are always opportunities for a church to fracture, splinter and split. When we get our focus on the secondary issues that while important, but are not as fundamental to the gospel of Christ, we will start to see ourselves drifting apart and we will no longer be unified. We will be separated. We will put ourselves first and Christ will come second. I have a friend who likes to say, keep the main things the plain things and keep the plain things the main things. And what he means by that is the plain things are the gospel of Christ and those are main. And the things that are main are the things that are most plain to understand in scripture, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's keep preaching that. Let's keep focusing on that. And when we have our hearts and our minds set upon Jesus Christ, him crucified, resurrected and ascended into glory, all the secondary issues, we'll be able to work through. We'll humbly be able to work through because our eyes are on him. We don't have everything figured out. We don't know everything. So let's stop acting like we do. Finally, we need to notice that it is God who brought the growth. Sometimes when people ask me about when they were looking to join the church or looking for a church and looking to attend, they'll sometimes call me and ask me about the church and every once in a while I'll have someone who will ask me, what's your church growth program? And I am joyfully able to say, we don't have one. Calvary Bible Church has a God who saves. We don't need a gimmick to get people in the doors. And so we proclaim the gospel and we see a God save people through the preaching of the gospel here in the church and also as our people go out and take the gospel to their areas of influence. I'm always amazed at the responses to that. Oh, well, you don't care if your church gets big? No, I care if my church is healthy. I care if God is worshiped in our church. I care that people know the gospel of Jesus Christ and I care mostly that people know God. If you're in this church and you're just wanting to be a part of a big church, there's plenty of places for you to go. But I worry for those who are in these large churches that they are just a number, do they know God? Are they being shepherded? Are they being discipled? Are they being taught? Are they being fed? Every once in a while, I'll get an email about those church growth strategy conferences. I just roll my eyes and hit delete. We have a God who saves. And it is his church growth program we're a part of. And here's what it says. Preach Christ to sinners everywhere that they repent and God will move. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. And so we stand upon that truth. And so we are faithful to the work that God has called us to do and we wait on him for the harvest. Here's what I know. God's gonna grow Covery Bible Church to the size he wants it. To the size that the elders are responsible to oversee. And he will use Covery Bible Church to affect this community best when we're faithful to his word. Just as he did with the early church. You can't tell me that the early church was not effective as we're going to see one little pebble thrown in the pond sends ripples all throughout. And we look to be faithful to our Lord and our King. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the reminder that we are to serve you and trust you with the results. We thank you for the example of the early church and the description that is given here to us. And while it is not necessarily for us to do exactly as they did, we are to take the principles and to apply them. I thank you for the areas where we are strong. And Father, where we are weak, I ask that you would grow us and make us more like Christ. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Unchained
A highlight from Why FTX Might Try to Claw Back Funds From Retail Customers- Ep. 547
"I mean, these are all fraudulent transfers, potentially while the debtor was insolvent, potentially while it was coming to lift funds, so clearly all that money has to come back. I think that's pretty easy. The question is like, what's it worth now and who can actually pay it back? Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full time. This is the September 22nd, 2023 episode of Unchained. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. Today's episode is brought to you by Overtime Markets, your premier Web3 sportsbook. The innovative protocol is changing the game one match at a time. Powered by Thales, explore more at OvertimeMarkets .xyz. Arbitrum's leading Layer 2 scaling solution offers you ultra -cheap and lightning -fast transactions, all with security rooted on Ethereum. Visit arbitrum .io today. With the Crypto .com app, you can buy, trade and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code LAURA. Link in the description. Today's guest is Thomas Brazile, founder of 117 Partners. Welcome, Thomas. Hey, Laura. Good to see you again. This week, FTX sued Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, the parents of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried, alleging that Bankman was intimately involved in a number of the allegedly fraudulent schemes such as silencing someone who threatened to expose the alleged FTX fraud, the purchase of property in the Bahamas. Barbara Fried encouraged the use of strong donors as campaign finance laws, or allegedly, and both were accused generally of either knowing or ignoring the red flags that FTX was in solvent. Was this development surprising or expected? Thanks for having me on, Laura. Good to see you, as always. Was it surprising? No, I don't think it was that surprising. I think what was in the lawsuits in bankruptcy referred to as adversary proceeding, but what was seen in the adversary proceeding was probably a bit shocking, the actual details. But I think people knew that they were pretty involved. And I think that was some of the heat they were getting post him getting a criminal complaint against him was that, you know, why is he hanging out with his parents, weren't they involved in a lot of parts of the business, and people were saying things like that. I don't think it's that unexpected. People I think long knew that there were some real estate transactions where they were gifted or given some certain real estate in the Bahamas. But to see it all laid out in the complaint or I should say in the adversary proceeding was interesting, you know. And yeah. Which items in particular really struck you? I guess it's the involvement like in the actual day -to -day stuff. I mean, if you come from a corporate background or were a tax lawyer, which is that I guess was is, and that there wasn't more, I don't know, structure to the organization. I mean, you know, the dichotomy between what people thought pre -petition, what John Ray sort of said post -petition, and now some of the revelations coming out about the pre -petition activity. I mean, it's just kind of amazing to think about people that might have been a more corporate background and saying like, if the business was so profitable, why were you cutting corners? And, you know, to be fair to these guys, like in the, you know, in the light of day, sunlight of bankruptcy court, which as, you know, people in bankruptcy say, like my parents would say, like, the last place you want to be as a criminal is in bankruptcy court because there's so much sunlight and everything, you know, everything is good scrutinized. And to be fair to people, sometimes the stuff gets overly scrutinized and they cherry pick stuff that went on. But it seems pretty damning, some of the stuff and, you know, let's see what the responses will be. I mean, it's good for the estate and it's good for creditors because I'm sure they want to see, you know, sort of retribution. But in terms of recoveries, I don't think it's going to be incredibly meaningful, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars. I mean, that's, I don't know, maybe two months of bankruptcy fees. And so, you know, earlier when we were talking about like how some of the things are particularly damning, like if you were to kind of say, FTX will win in court, you know, for these reasons, like which were the particular acts that you think probably will put things over the edge? Oh, yeah. I think almost all the stuff though, they'll win on the merits of the fraudulent conveyance. I mean, these are all fraudulent transfers, potentially while the debtor was insolvent, potentially while it was coming with funds, so clearly all that money has to come back. I think that's pretty easy. The question is like, what's it worth now and who can actually pay it back? Like if money was given to a charity, can you actually go and get it back? Like meaning, is it there? Has it been spent kind of stuff? And you know, you can only squeeze a, you know, whatever, rock so hard. So the question will be, you know, what is the real estate in the Bahamas worth? The 10 million bucks or whatever that was gifted to them, where did that money end up going? Can they trace it? So these things cost money to do and then the question is like, how much of an effort do you want to make? And of course, you know, all that can be stopped by a criminal investigation, which there isn't a complaint, but clearly some of the activity could be considered criminal. And I think, you know, I won't pretend to be a criminal lawyer or a lawyer at all, but when you're bringing lawsuits, I mean, basically these are kind of like preponderance of evidence standards versus like, you know, higher standards that you might have for criminal complaints. So it's easier for John Ray to like stitch together some stuff they know and slap an AP and sue these guys. But it's a little harder from the criminal side. But all of it, just on facially, I mean, of course, as my lawyer likes to tell me, like, you know, facts matter, Thomas. So it is more discovery happens than they take discovery. We'll see. But on the face of it, I mean, it looks pretty, pretty obvious that it's sort of slam dunk. Just the question is what they'll actually be able to recover. Yeah. I think one of the ones that stuck out at me simply because I could very easily imagine myself in a similar position with my own parents and I could just picture what my mother would say. And it was when they purchased the Bahamas property and everything was just getting billed or allegedly in the complaint to FTX. And the parents didn't even make an attempt to pay to furnish their home themselves. And I could just imagine something similar was happening with my mother. She would be like, wait, is this OK that we're doing this? Like, you know, she would have so many questions about the money and like what was OK, what was kosher, what was not. Like, I could just practically hear her in my head. But at least, you know, from what the complaint described, it didn't feel at all like the parents had any of those qualms. So that was. Yeah. It wasn't 100 percent owner of FTX. So it is bizarre that those red flags wouldn't have been or people wouldn't have been like, hey, I know that you think this is OK, but I don't like someone would have said something. Maybe they thought it was a drop in the ocean. But if FTX is so wildly profitable, I mean, it was so wildly profitable, they didn't need to cut in corners and have them picking up the checks. I mean, it would have been easy for Sam to just be like, no, I'm picking this up personally or something. Well, one thing that I also notice is that the document hedges its language, saying things like, quote, Banquin and Freed either knew or ignored bright red flags, revealing that SPF and other insiders were orchestrating the scheme. And again, you know, I saw later again, it was like they either knew or blatantly ignored. So right. Yes. That's because the standard for these civil cases is much lower. You know, like if you were trying to criminally try them, you'd have to like really show that they knew because they're going to say they didn't know, they didn't know, right? But the standard for breach of fiduciary duty or unjust enrichment, it's a much lower standard. All you have to basically show is a reasonable person should have known, you know? Oh, oh, I see. Yeah. So that's why I keep saying that. So you're saying, so basically they don't know whether or not they knew, but it doesn't matter for what they're trying to do. Is that what you're saying? I will respectfully say that I'm not a lawyer, but a stress investor. And what people usually say is the standard is usually what a reasonable person should have known, steps a reasonable person should have taken, best practices that a board should have taken. So like a board of director, if somebody runs off with money in a company, they don't have to necessarily show that they knew the person stole the money, but did they take any steps a reasonable person would have taken to like verify that the money was there, that the person wasn't absconding with money or whatever. So it's just this reasonable person standard that I think you trigger under Delaware and under a lot of jurisdictions for breach of fiduciary duty or breach of loyalty, duty of care that you have, mainly in the boardroom, but also I think as a C -suite executive and it sounds like he was sort of melding between the two. So basically, yeah, they're just trying to meet that standard for their purposes. They don't need to go beyond. And Barbara Fried, you know, also, so as far as I understand from reading this, you know, Sam Pinkman was definitely involved more in the day to day. You know, he was often listed with FTX management. He you know, could make executive decisions on his own at one point saying, oh, I'm just going to make this decision without Sam, like we don't need to involve him, that kind of thing. So Barbara Fried was not involved at that level. However, it did say that she was a key influence on the campaign donations. And I wondered what your takeaway was in that regard in terms of, you know, her involvement there. Campaign finance fraud? Yeah. Again, I don't have too much to say other than it's just bizarre that, you know, so many corners were cut in regards to stuff. I don't have a real view on. Again, it's like it helps them build a story that they can, you know, just slam dunk, take back any money that was taken out of the estate at any point in the last couple of years by Barbara and the husband. But I don't think that I don't have a real view on that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And as far as I understand, I don't think they're married. They're domestic partners. Just to clarify. Yeah. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk about what the consequences could be after, you know, from this document. But first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Toku makes managing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. Are you designing your token compensation plan and grant templates with multiple law firms? Are you managing cliffs, vesting and taxable events in a spreadsheet? Are you distributing tokens to your team manually? With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Easy to use token grant award templates, vesting tracking via online dashboard, tax withholding integration with payroll, automated distributions, great employee experience. Make it simple with Toku. Learn more at toku .com slash Unchained.
The Podcast On Podcasting
A highlight from Ep379: The 5 Fs Podcasters Shouldn't Neglect - Jerry Dugan
"Be consistent with who you're speaking to, what you're posting off. Still show yourself and be a guest on other shows, especially if the show is like yours, because those listeners will also want more and more variety and they'll come to you for that. Most hosts never achieved the results they hoped for. They're falling short on listenership and monetization, meaning their message isn't being heard and their show ends up costing them money. This podcast was created to help you grow your listenership and make money while you're at it. Get ready to take notes. Here's your host, Adam Adams. What's up, podcaster. It's your host, Adam Adams. And today I'm joined with Jerry Dugan from Beyond the Rut. And Jerry's passionate about supporting business leaders, helping them with different things like work -life balance. So one of the questions that I'm going to ask, does work -life balance even exist? Because I'll tell you it's very polarized. On one end, everybody's like, you have to balance, you have to balance. And then I read this other book that said, no, it's not balanced. It's switch tasking. You go here all the way, then you go here all the way. And then there's other people that say you have to be out of balance for a certain amount of time. So I'm really curious just to start there. Jerry Beyond the Rut supports people with a life worth living in faith, family, and career. So a lot of the listeners that you have are probably around my age and your age that are probably struggling with the work -life balance and making sure that they are putting enough to their faith and their family and their career. And I love that. I want to ask, why do you think work -life balance is real? And what have the other people said? Yes, ultimately, I think they're all saying the same thing. Like if you really break down to what, like, even the folks that say there's no such thing as work -life balance, what they're ultimately saying is like, we make life choices based on our priorities. And when I talk about work -life balance, I'm saying the same thing. One of my hope is that when you're on your deathbed, I already know you're not going to say, man, I wish I did one more launch of my program or man, I wish I was at inbox zero more days in my life. You're going to say things more like, I wish I had one more day to spend with my grandkids and my great grandchildren. I would have loved to have been there for my daughter's wedding or for my son's wedding, whatever it is. And in serving in combat and knowing some folks who worked in hospice care, that is the thing that they hear over and over again, that people wish they had more time to be with the people they love and on the flip side, when they have the people they love, they wish they succeeded more in their career. And so it's like, what if you could win in all of that? What if you could take your career as far as you can and not sacrifice your family at the same time? And so you look at what's important to you and how are your current activities impacting those areas of your life? How are you doing with your family life? You know, okay, work's taking a lot out of me. Okay. Is that a permanent thing or is this a temporary thing? If it's temporary, then you talk it over with your partner and you decide from there, like, okay, yeah, this is temporary. What's the deadline? What does success look like? And what's the bailout trigger that says, all right, we're not hitting these measures doesn't look like we will let's scrap that and go another direction. So that to me, that is why I'm a big fan of work -life balance. It's not just strictly. I spend so many hours at work, so many hours at home. It really is. How is getting out early impacting all the things? Am I going to miss my children's big school events? What's that impact if I do? And what's the message I send? Because I'll tell you from personal experience, I was a lot of kids, superheroes, because I would volunteer my kids' school for a day and their dad had to go to work and it's not the same thing against their dad, because why did the dad go to work? Because he wanted to provide for his family. And so the motivation for a good thing for the family was there, but there wasn't that balance to, I also want to communicate to my child that my child is important. I want to communicate to my partner that she's important. And so it's, how do you win at all those things? And how do you find the right company that will support you as a person while also supporting you and your career growth and getting you to perform well to help the company also succeed? It's like, there's a way to find all that. I want to hear a tip or two. And I'm thinking you and I talked a little bit about this before we first press record. You were talking about the checkbox and a lot of us, we got a checklist and we're checking off all the boxes and it's seems like we're checking off all the boxes. It feels like when we look at the checklist, it's pretty much full, but we might not feel fulfilled even at the expense of checking off lots of boxes. So if that's us, we're listening and we're trying to think of what is it that we think we've had success on paper, but we don't really feel it. We don't really feel like we're everywhere we need to do. What's one or two tips for the listener to be able to feel like they're doing the right thing right now? I think the first thing is you got to know who you are and that's the big broad umbrella piece of advice. Know who you are, what is valuable to you? Like, what do you believe in? What do you not believe in? It's if you believe in respecting the dignity of every person, then that is key. If you value time with family, then your calendar should reflect that. If you value being a supportive person for your family, does that go beyond just monetary support? And so knowing your values, I think is very huge. What is your vision, your purpose in life? I have a couple of mottos I live by. One is the Dugan crest motto. So somebody around the 1500s and it's a miracle that the Dugans are still around because apparently these guys called the Saxons came into like Ireland and almost wiped us all out, but like good Irish people, we stuck around. And so that's not important. The important thing is somebody added to the family crest. Oh man, it's by virtue and valor. So for Tute et valore, and it sounds cooler when it's Latin. I hope I said it right. So that's one thing I live by is am I living my life according to my family's crest motto, am I living by virtue? Am I living by valor being courageous to do what's right when even nobody's looking. But then from there, I had a vision that I wanted my children to live a life that was better than mine, but also be set up to be better adults than I was to have better successes than I did to know who they are and to feel comfortable pursuing their own dreams. Like that's in a written vision that I have tucked away on Evernote somewhere. So you got to have something like that. Like, what do you stand for? What is life like for you when you die? And I love talking about these things called the five Fs, your faith, your family, your fitness, your finances, and your own future growth or possibilities. Like looking at your life through those lenses, what does success look like for you? So I guess that's the second one is defining a second, Jerry. I missed an F F that I got faith. I got family. I got finances. I got fitness. And what did I miss? Emily, faith, finances, and fitness, future possibilities, future possibilities, always growing to be better today than you were yesterday. And then what's that future state of yourself you'd like to become. And so being a constant learner is that future possibilities. One reading books that are outside your usual norm, listening to podcasts that are outside your norm, being open to ideas that are not typically in your bucket or wheelhouse either a, to see how your own ideas and beliefs stack up, because sometimes like I myself had gone through life and realized, oh wow, I held onto this belief and I met three people who completely challenged that is my belief wrong or is it just not as strong as I thought it was, is there more context? I needed to add. And, and so sometimes I realized I was completely wrong about something. And other times I realized, oh, I was missing a lot of context here. I believe this, but only in this context, because I also believe this and my belief should not undermine somebody else's right to be who they are. And so it's like, oh yeah, okay. I can wrap my head around that. And I can be a decent person in my community that way. And so that, yeah, the future possibility is that a bit more unpacked, I should have put that in. Have you ever heard of, I think it's Gino Wickman and I hope I'm not wrong. And he wrote like three books. One was like, I'm going to just type in Gino Wickman. This is going to be the easy way. Then I'll sound so smart instead of dumb Gino Wick man. All right. So he wrote three books. Yes. Yes. What the heck is E O S he wrote traction and he wrote what it's not showing me the last one traction, what the heck is EOS and there's another one called rocket fuel. Okay. So these three books are interesting and it kind of is what you're talking about, but in more of a business category. And so I think this is really great to extract it and bring us to the listener in rocket fuel, what the heck is EOS and traction, ultimately what Gino Wickman talks about is your business should have a culture or have values that you all live by. And so it's interesting because when we look at all of the things that we can value, let's just pretend that I don't know the number. I'm just going to say that it's 20 values. There's 20 things that are good. And most people would agree with 18 or 19 of them. So one would be honesty, but at what expense are we going to be rude and honest? Another one might be politeness. Another one might be doing the right thing. Even when it hurts, you kind of mentioned your integrity. Even when people are not looking, am I going to be doing this with my family crest and everything? So the Gino Wickman also talks about like all of these things that we can value. And most of them are important to everyone. Honesty, of course, that sounds right, but not everybody puts that at the top of their value. Maybe they put discretion, maybe they put kindness above it, or maybe they put honesty above kindness and et cetera, et cetera, they might put doing the right thing, even when it hurts as one of the top values. And so in RocketFuel and EOS and Traction, Gino talks about how we need to build our team, our company culture around where all of us agree on these main values. Like we value making money, we value serving the client, we value X, Y, or Z. All of them are good, but which one is in the hierarchy? And so when I'm hearing you, you basically gave me two things. The first one is you got to know who you are. You got to know your culture. You got to know your values. What do you believe in? And you talked about by virtue and valor. What do you believe in? What matters to you? And then you focus on it and you bring people along. And the second one is a written vision. Like you actually write down the vision where you put in faith, family, finances, fitness, and future possibilities, and you figure out how are you doing these? How does this work for you? And you write it down because everybody's vision, like a fingerprint has to be different. Everybody's culture or their values have to be a little bit different, how they put them. And for you, you're saying a way that you can check off the boxes is to just know exactly what the heck the boxes are in the first place. Know which things matter to you and get rid of the rest. So you can really focus on those. And I thought that was really interesting because not only can we do it in our business, we can do it on our podcast. And as you've illustrated, we can do it with our family, with our own lives, our personal lives. So I thought that was really, really beautiful. I appreciate you going into that before we move on to anything, something that I missed or something else you want to share about being able to check off those boxes and feel really good about it, even that person who might be listening might feel like it looks like they're checked off, but they don't feel completely fulfilled. Yeah. Similarly to how business, they have their strategic plan that pushes them and they make big decisions off of that. Does this activity support the strategic initiative of this organization? And the answer is yes, they keep pushing forward with some adjustments. If it doesn't, they're like, well, then why are we doing that? Let's cut that out and let's restructure and reorganize. And it's cool to see that there are these business and even podcasting principles and practices that help us create a better podcast, create a better business, and we don't realize how easily we can just transfer those same skill sets into our very lives. And so it's the same thing. You know, how many people do we know who are physicians who hate being a physician? I can think of two or three or somebody who became a lawyer because the money was good and they quit being a lawyer because they realized that wasn't fulfilling for them or me, I left my corporate job because I realized I didn't want to start all over again and build something that belonged to somebody else and it was time to go after my dreams. So even my mom like kept encouraging me to become a doctor. I was a pre -med student. I'm not a doctor now because I did not do well as a pre -med student, but I realized later on it's because that was never my dream. That was my mom's dream. She wanted me to be a doctor. She wanted to be able to live vicariously through me and what she wanted success to be, and once I realized, Oh gosh, I don't want to be a doctor. What do I want to be? Of course, now it took a 10 year journey for me to realize what I did want to be, but I got there, man. That's that's important. So anyway, that was it. Yeah. You're willing to walk away from something really good stuff. I want to move into just your podcast journey now for the listener. I'll point out a couple of things that I'm seeing with your podcast. Hey, I think it, haven't you been doing it for like eight years? Yeah, this particular year, eight years. Yeah. Amazing. So with eight years, over 400 episodes and a lot of traction, not going back to Gina Wickman, a lot of traction on your podcast success, I think that we've got a couple of listeners that haven't quite been doing it for eight years, they may have been doing it for a year or two, they're new. And they would like to have the type of success that you've got with your podcast. So I'm like to get a couple of takeaways, what you've done, what you've learned, what you would do differently. First, a quick word from our sponsor, but when we get back, I really want you to focus on what made your podcast successful so that the listeners podcasts can also be successful. We'll be right back. Hey, my friend, as you know, this episode is sponsored by my company, growyourshow .com. We want you to be able to have the best tools at your disposal without costing you a whole arm and a leg. So right now you can get a free list of vetted equipment that like mics, mixers, webcams, sound treatment, editing software, everything that you need. I created the whole PDF with direct purchase links, just to save you time and money to help it be more convenient for you. So this free PDF will help you skip all the guesswork. If it's on there, it's vetted and approved by yours truly. And if it's not on there, it's probably not worth the money. So go ahead and get yours at growyourshow .com forward slash PDF. Let's get back into the show. We're back with Jerry Dugan. And we've talked a little bit about work -life balance, helping leaders with work -life balance, making sure that you're checking all the boxes and feeling fulfilled and the five F's and his family crest, which I don't even remember what it said in Latin. I think it was Latin, but it really means by virtue and valor. And I wanted to talk about now, how is his podcast so fricking well known and he's doing a great job. He's getting a lot of success through the podcast. And hopefully you'll be able to take away a couple of things that can support you in a successful podcast as well. Jerry, what do you think made your podcast? Yeah, a lot of what I'm seeing really is in the last year, year and a half, really. So I jokingly tell folks, but I'm not joking that it seems like I did year one, seven times, and then finally I had year eight happen all at once. So it's no overnight success kind of thing. I think the first thing that really helped was when there was a team of three of us. So we started off with three of us. We all agreed on one thing other than the name of the show. And that was the avatar of the show. So we have an avatar that we named AJ. He's 35 years old, married to his college sweetheart. He has two kids that they both have together. One's in elementary school. One's in middle school. AJ has a mid -level leadership career going on with a corporation in a metro area. And got the car, got the house, got the six figure income, but feels stuck in life. And so from there, we start to unravel how AJ feels stuck. There's the commute to work. There's the no real future in the job he's in. Not really making any progress. Wants to be a good family man when he gets home, but he's just drained of energy. And this cycle is putting a strain on his marriage. The kids feel like he doesn't love him, which is so far from the truth. So how does AJ live the life that he really wanted to live in his faith, in his family, in his fitness, finances, and his future? And so that's what we did when we came together to start the show. Now where we had a lot of weak spots, and I feel we did the first seven years over and over again, was that when you listened to the early episodes, we were all over the place, we didn't really stick to that mantra. Like what does AJ really need? And I hate to say it, but it wasn't until like the other two guys quit from the show that I realized, Oh, we're so far from what we wanted to do, who we wanted to help. And so how do I get there? And so year six, really going into year seven was how do I niche this down? I worked with a couple of different groups that really helped me start to niche that down. Jerry, you're helping specifically this demographic. You're helping them specifically with things like work -life balance and really having a mapped out future or a vision for their future focus on that. Okay. What kind of guests should I have? And so this kind of leads into the second one, which was that pairing down that niching down. So the first one was having that vision of who I wanted to help. The second one was really paring down and niching down. How am I going to help AJ? And once I started to see that a bunch of doors opened up and the third thing was I needed to get the word out there. So the marketing piece, I threw stuff out there for the first seven years, but really it's in this last year that I've been more intentional about it. The posts that I put out there on social media are aimed at AJ. The shows I appear on are aimed at AJ and you know, as that guest appearance on other shows, I think so far in the last 10 months, I've been on almost 70 other podcasts and to the point where now I'm starting to feel like I'm in alternate realities down. Like, how do I know Adam Adams? Oh yeah, I was on his show. All right, there we go. We talked about this, this, and this, or how do I know, Deirdre? Oh yeah, I'm here, here and here. It's just all that starting to overlap. But anyway, those would be the big three is know who you're serving. The second thing is truly niche down. Even if you have a lot of passions, interests, try to stick to one thing and just kind of lit little dose of yourself, sprinkle into your episodes. That way people know what they're getting when they come to your show. And then the third thing, I know I just said it. Marketing.
The Mason Minute
First Aid Kit (MM #4565)
"You don't think about a first aid kit until you need one. Couldn't tell you the last time I needed a first aid kit. Sure, around the house we have a small first aid kit with bandages, but I know where everything is in the house, so I'm not too worried about it. Other day at work, I ran into a coat hook, I guess you'd say. Put a nice little gash just below my elbow on my forearm. It's about three, four inches long, and it hurt, so I'm like, wow, man, I ought to put something on it. I don't need a Band -Aid per se, plus I got arm hair there, so what am I going to do? I'll go find the office first aid kit. Now, it's the first time I'd ever had to encounter the first aid kit at work, so I went into the cabinet and found it and found lots of aspirin, lots of Rolaids or Tums or whatever antacids were in there, hundreds of bandages, some gauze, but nothing like Neosporin, nothing like Basatracin, nothing to put on the cut. It's not something you ever think about until the first time. Now, I probably won't scratch myself or hurt myself or cut myself again for another six, eight years, but every now and again, when you need a first aid kit, you got to be prepared. They weren't prepared for me. I wasn't prepared for them, and, well, I'm paying the price. It still hurts, by the way.
The Mason Minute
First Aid Kit (MM #4565)
"You don't think about a first aid kit until you need one. Couldn't tell you the last time I needed a first aid kit. Sure, around the house we have a small first aid kit with bandages, but I know where everything is in the house, so I'm not too worried about it. Other day at work, I ran into a coat hook, I guess you'd say. Put a nice little gash just below my elbow on my forearm. It's about three, four inches long, and it hurt, so I'm like, wow, man, I ought to put something on it. I don't need a Band -Aid per se, plus I got arm hair there, so what am I going to do? I'll go find the office first aid kit. Now, it's the first time I'd ever had to encounter the first aid kit at work, so I went into the cabinet and found it and found lots of aspirin, lots of Rolaids or Tums or whatever antacids were in there, hundreds of bandages, some gauze, but nothing like Neosporin, nothing like Basatracin, nothing to put on the cut. It's not something you ever think about until the first time. Now, I probably won't scratch myself or hurt myself or cut myself again for another six, eight years, but every now and again, when you need a first aid kit, you got to be prepared. They weren't prepared for me. I wasn't prepared for them, and, well, I'm paying the price. It still hurts, by the way.
The Mason Minute
First Aid Kit (MM #4565)
"You don't think about a first aid kit until you need one. Couldn't tell you the last time I needed a first aid kit. Sure, around the house we have a small first aid kit with bandages, but I know where everything is in the house, so I'm not too worried about it. Other day at work, I ran into a coat hook, I guess you'd say. Put a nice little gash just below my elbow on my forearm. It's about three, four inches long, and it hurt, so I'm like, wow, man, I ought to put something on it. I don't need a Band -Aid per se, plus I got arm hair there, so what am I going to do? I'll go find the office first aid kit. Now, it's the first time I'd ever had to encounter the first aid kit at work, so I went into the cabinet and found it and found lots of aspirin, lots of Rolaids or Tums or whatever antacids were in there, hundreds of bandages, some gauze, but nothing like Neosporin, nothing like Basatracin, nothing to put on the cut. It's not something you ever think about until the first time. Now, I probably won't scratch myself or hurt myself or cut myself again for another six, eight years, but every now and again, when you need a first aid kit, you got to be prepared. They weren't prepared for me. I wasn't prepared for them, and, well, I'm paying the price. It still hurts, by the way.
The Mason Minute
First Aid Kit (MM #4565)
"You don't think about a first aid kit until you need one. Couldn't tell you the last time I needed a first aid kit. Sure, around the house we have a small first aid kit with bandages, but I know where everything is in the house, so I'm not too worried about it. Other day at work, I ran into a coat hook, I guess you'd say. Put a nice little gash just below my elbow on my forearm. It's about three, four inches long, and it hurt, so I'm like, wow, man, I ought to put something on it. I don't need a Band -Aid per se, plus I got arm hair there, so what am I going to do? I'll go find the office first aid kit. Now, it's the first time I'd ever had to encounter the first aid kit at work, so I went into the cabinet and found it and found lots of aspirin, lots of Rolaids or Tums or whatever antacids were in there, hundreds of bandages, some gauze, but nothing like Neosporin, nothing like Basatracin, nothing to put on the cut. It's not something you ever think about until the first time. Now, I probably won't scratch myself or hurt myself or cut myself again for another six, eight years, but every now and again, when you need a first aid kit, you got to be prepared. They weren't prepared for me. I wasn't prepared for them, and, well, I'm paying the price. It still hurts, by the way.
The Mason Minute
First Aid Kit (MM #4565)
"You don't think about a first aid kit until you need one. Couldn't tell you the last time I needed a first aid kit. Sure, around the house we have a small first aid kit with bandages, but I know where everything is in the house, so I'm not too worried about it. Other day at work, I ran into a coat hook, I guess you'd say. Put a nice little gash just below my elbow on my forearm. It's about three, four inches long, and it hurt, so I'm like, wow, man, I ought to put something on it. I don't need a Band -Aid per se, plus I got arm hair there, so what am I going to do? I'll go find the office first aid kit. Now, it's the first time I'd ever had to encounter the first aid kit at work, so I went into the cabinet and found it and found lots of aspirin, lots of Rolaids or Tums or whatever antacids were in there, hundreds of bandages, some gauze, but nothing like Neosporin, nothing like Basatracin, nothing to put on the cut. It's not something you ever think about until the first time. Now, I probably won't scratch myself or hurt myself or cut myself again for another six, eight years, but every now and again, when you need a first aid kit, you got to be prepared. They weren't prepared for me. I wasn't prepared for them, and, well, I'm paying the price. It still hurts, by the way.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from UNCHAINED: Zeke Faux's Crypto Adventures and His Relationship With Former FTX CEO SBF
"Hi, everyone, welcome to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago, and as a senior editor, Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full -time. This is the September 19th, 2023 episode of Unchained. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle built for layer zero is now securing every layer zero message by default. Their custom end -to -end solution sets itself up to bring its world -class security to web three and establish itself as the HTTPS within layer zero messaging. Visit layerzero .network to learn more. Arbitrum's leading layer two scaling solutions can provide you with lightning fast transactions at a fraction of the cost, all while ensuring security rooted on Ethereum. Arbitrum's newest addition, Orbit, enables you to build your own tailor -made layer three. Visit arbitrum .io today. Buy, trade, and spend crypto on the crypto .com app. New users can enjoy zero credit card fees on crypto purchases in the first seven days. Download the crypto .com app and get $25 with the code laura. Link in the description. Today's guest is Zeke Fox, author of Number Go Up. Welcome, Zeke. Hey, thank you so much for having me, Laura. Yeah, I'm excited to chat. You just came out with your book, Number Go Up. Congratulations. Tell us what it's about. Number Go Up. I've started out as it's my the story of like the two years I spent going down the crypto rabbit hole. And when I started out, I was just kind of curious and skeptical. And I was arguing with my friend about the reasonableness of a betting on Dogecoin. It's like the height of the pandemic. And I don't know, I got kind of sucked into investigating crypto. Two years later, I was cut to I'm in the Bahamas, going to Sam Begman Fried's penthouse just before the cops showed up interviewing him about the collapse of FTX. And so you said that this was your period of going down the crypto rabbit hole. What had you been doing before? So I've been an investigative reporter for Bloomberg for a long time. And at Bloomberg, I generally write about kind of the shady side of Wall Street. So I'd written exposes of predatory lenders, penny stock scams. One of my favorites was about a Patriots fan who stole the New York Giants Super Bowl rings after the 2008 helmet catch game. So I'd always been looking for like wild stories to tell in this world of business and finance. But I kind of resisted crypto as a potential topic. I just didn't really see it as like, I mean, you're going to laugh at me now, but I just didn't really see it as like a good target for an investigative reporter. And it wasn't because I thought crypto was like the future. It's just like this may be hard to believe if you're like a big time crypto guy, but actually maybe not because I'm sure you talk about it with your family and everybody. But like outside in the traditional finance world, a lot of people are so skeptical about crypto that they were like investigating a crypto company and finding out something bad about it, you wouldn't find anything surprising. I don't even care about that story. But what I realized was that my first crypto conference was Bitcoin 2021 in Miami. And I showed up there and I just met, I realized there were so many crazy characters in crypto. There were so many people that I'd love to write about. And I'm like, these are the kind of people who I need to get to know. One of the first people I sat down with was I met Sam Bankman -Fried there. I met Alex Mashinsky of Celsius, who was very prominent there. I had Michael Saylor saying all sorts of crazy things about Bitcoin. And I came back and I told my editor, like, I was wrong. There's all sorts of weird stuff going on in crypto. This would be a great topic and it'll be, you know, it'll be a long time before. There's too many stories to choose from. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny in terms of the years that you, quote unquote, went down the crypto rabbit hole. Those were two of the craziest years and in a way, like some of the more unusual years of crypto, I would say. Just so before we dive into, you know, the different escapades you underwent in your book, you mentioned earlier that you were both curious about crypto, but also skeptical. So, you know, before we dive into what you were looking into, I wanted to hear your overall take on crypto. You know, when you say you're a skeptic, how much of a skeptic because there are some people who are skeptics and they completely dismiss crypto, but I didn't get that feeling from reading your book. I'm sort of like a skeptic in general. I'm skeptical of everything. That's why, like, I'm an investigative reporter. So if somebody tells me, hey, like Alex Mashinsky did, hey, I'm going to pay 18 percent interest. And if you want a loan from me, I charge like as low as zero percent. This is like in the world of traditional finance, a very backwards business model. When you say something like that to me, I'm going to say, yeah, I'm kind of, can you provide some evidence, like what, how are you investing your money? How does this how does this make sense? But I tried to keep like an open mind. And the question I was always asking was, what does your product do when I meet crypto founders? Can I see it in action? Can I talk to your users? Is it being used in the real world somewhere? That's one of my favorite questions, because as a writer, it's hard to write about things if you can't see them being used. And so that took me to El Salvador to see the Bitcoin experiment there. But it also took me to Ape Fest to see what it was like to be a member of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. And I was pleased I got one of the first reviews for the book the other day from Jeff John Roberts in Fortune. And he's, I think, feels fairly positively about crypto. He thought that my take on crypto was a little shallow, but that the book was so funny, he didn't care. And I'm like, you know what? I'll take that. I think we can all enjoy reliving these last two crazy years. And like whatever your take is on crypto, like there are crazy things that happened that we have all just like so much has happened. There's no way to like remember it all. But I have done the work of writing it down so you can go read it. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was definitely it covered the range of events. But let's actually talk about one of the main through lines. And I believe, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, that this was actually meant to be a book about Tether. And because I remember like a long time reading that it was coming out and I think that's what it said. And you kind of keep saying this to yourself that you keep saying it yourself in the book that, you know, you're getting these tips about Tether and you're trying to investigate them. You keep coming up against these dead ends. So before we go into all that, why don't you at least just tell us, so what do you feel were your main findings about Tether and like what were you trying to resolve? So probably old for like most people listening, but Tether is a big stable coin. Each coin is supposed to be worth a dollar because each coin is supposed to be backed by real dollars that are held in a bank somewhere. And I when started out, I wrote like a story for Businessweek about Tether. That was sort of the start of this project. I always thought as kind of like a good jumping off point, I pitched the book as like, this is the craziest financial mania we've ever seen in the world and it's not going to last. And I want to be there to chronicle it. And I see this like interesting central mystery that is going to like take me through. And that was Tether. At the time when I started, Tether said that they had, I think it was around 50 billion dollars in the bank. It was weird because on the one hand, it was pretty widespread to be, and correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm describing what crypto people think, because you probably know better than me, but like even people who are pretty into crypto in when they were talking to me, they'd be like, yeah, I'm not so sure about their assets like this. I don't know what's going on with Tether. This is like a good question to be asking. And it was being asked at like the highest levels of the U .S. government. Like Janet Yellen called a meeting of all the top financial regulators and the topic was like, what's going on with Tether and like, could this affect the world And I just thought it was a little when I started looking into Tether and I saw that, you know, among its co -founders was a child actor from the Mighty Ducks. I was just like, what is this in that the company I write in the book, the company was quilted out of red flags, like in the world of traditional finance, you did never you would never find a company with so many weird things to look into. And yet here it was like at the center of the crypto world. And I just thought it was it was funny to me that the heads of state were discussing this coin that was like dreamed up by a child actor from from the Mighty Ducks. And I was like, this is my kind of mystery. I want to dive in. I'm going to try and find Tether's 50 billion dollars. I see. So, you know, as we mentioned at different points in the book, you do talk about how you feel like you keep coming up against dead ends in your investigation. So what's your conclusion about that fact? Like, do you think it means that concerns about Tether are overblown? Does it make you more convinced that like the company is just really hitting everything really well or like what are your thoughts? Right now, Tether has only grown bigger. Midway through my reporting, I found that Tether had invested a lot of its assets into Chinese commercial paper. And there's kind of like this conflict of interest at the heart of Tether's business model, which is that if you give your money to Tether, you want them to keep it really safe. So it's there when you go to cash in your Tether tokens. But Tether doesn't pay any interest in the way that Tether makes money is they can take the money that you trusted them with and they can go invest it. And so there was this theory that especially when interest rates were very low, they might be doing weird things with your money in order to earn higher profits. And that so I found that they were doing some unusual things that included the Chinese commercial paper and also making loans to crypto companies like Celsius and others. So to me, that seemed like that's kind of risky. What's going to happen there? And as I followed along in the summer of 2022, like crypto companies fell one after the other and Tether did not. And there was even like a little run on Tether where users cashed in, I don't know, five, 10 billion dollars of Tether. And I'm sure if those people did not get their money back, like we would have heard about it. Right.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1406: Bitcoin Will Hit $4 Million, Rising 100x - Peter Thiel
"In today's show, we'll be discussing Bitcoin Bollinger Bands hitting a key zone as Bitcoin price fights for $27 ,000. In breaking news just in, Bitcoin hash rate hits a new all -time high. Let's go. And quoting Stacey Herbert, Bitcoin is pumping on the news of President Bukele's speech to the UN tonight. Can't wait. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin Adoption Fund launched by Japan's $500 billion Nomura Bank. That's right. The Bitcoin Adoption Fund will have long -only exposure to Bitcoin and be available to institutional investors. We'll also be sharing Sam Bankman, Fried's father, dragged his mother into an FTX US salary dispute. You can't make this stuff up, folks. Also in today's show, Bitcoin gearing up for a post -having parabola, according to crypto analysts. I'll be sharing his very bullish all -time high target. We'll also be discussing crypto asset market cap should explode 5 to 10x during the next bull cycle, according to investor Raoul Pal. I'll also be sharing Peter Thiel's $4 million Bitcoin price prediction, and we'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market. All this plus so much more in today's show. Yo, what's good crypto fam? This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at cryptonewsalerts .net. Again, that's cryptonewsalerts .net. Welcome everyone just joining us. This is pod episode number 1406. I'm your host JV. And today is September 19th, 2023. We have lots to cover as usual. Massive shout out to everyone today in the live chat. Please let me know where you're tuning in from. And at the end of the show, I'm going to be reading everyone's comments out loud. Let's kick off today's show with our market watch as we do each and every day, the entire crypto market back in the green with Bitcoin back above $27 ,100 and checking out coinmarketcap .com, the current crypto market cap on the climb at $1 .08 trillion with roughly $27 billion in volume for the past 24 hours, Bitcoin dominance at 49 .2 % and the Ether dominance at 18 .4%. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours, we have TonCoin leading the pack up 5%, trading at $2 .57, followed by GMX up about 5%, trading just under 36 bucks, followed by Conflux up 4%, trading at $0 .12. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past week, virtually 95 out of the top 100 cryptos are in the green. Some of the top gainers include GMX, GRT, as well as CRV and NEO. And checking out the crypto greed and fear index, we're currently rated at 46 in fear, same as 37 in fear. So there you have it. How many of you are pretty stoked for this most recent pump? And how many of you agree with Stacey Herbert that this pump is due to Bukele's speech scheduled for this evening? Let me know, fam. And now let's dive into today's Bitcoin technical analysis. Check out the charts and what's popping with the king crypto. Bitcoin could see fresh upside volatility as the price action and the strength revisits a key level according to a classic metric. In a new post, John Bollinger, creator of the Bollinger Bands volatility indicator, says Bitcoin was positioned for a breakout decision. That's right. After hitting new September highs the day prior, Bitcoin has been challenging resistance levels out of reach since mid -August, according to data from Cointelegraph and TradingView. Now for Bollinger, the signs for Bitcoin are encouraging. Bollinger Bands use a standard deviation around the simple moving average to determine both the likely price ranges and volatility. And as Michael Saylor once said, volatility equals life force. Now, currently Bitcoin is putting in daily candles that touch the upper band. And when this happens, it can signal an imminent reversal back to the center band, or conversely, an inbound fit of upside volatility. Now narrow Bollinger Bands seen on Bitcoin recently lend weight to hopes that the latter scenario will now play out, quitting him here. And then there is the first tag of the upper Bollinger Band. After the new set of controlling bars were established at the lower band, he commented alongside this chart, the question is now, can we walk up to the upper band or is it too early to answer? What are your thoughts, chat? Let me know in the comments below. Now Bollinger characterizes the current mood among seasoned Bitcoin traders and analysts on the short -term timeframes. Despite the strength seen this week, caution abounds as various trend lines previously acting as support remain above the spot price. Now discussing the situation, we had on -chain monitoring resource, material indicators share the following. We have heavy technical resistance overhead at the key moving averages and support at the lower low. It is quite possible that we round trip the range. And with any luck, we'll see a legit test of the RS levels that will give us some clarity on where Bitcoin goes from here before the end of the week. And they also shared here in update number two, as noted earlier, it appears the Bitcoin bulls are gaining some momentum, but things are not always as they seem and goes on to share that sometime after last night's candle and close open, we've seen a new trend precognition signal develop on the daily chart and it seems to be bullish. I mean, we are breaking out. We are above 27 ,000. So let's freaking go. And also more strong foundation on the technicals. You can see Bitcoin hits yet another all -time high, which virtually means the network has never been this strong and this secure. Now I'm pretty stoked to tune into President Bukele's speech to the UN this evening. What do you think he has to share besides? I told you so. Let me know, fam. And again, welcome to everyone just joining us for the live show. Lots to continue to cover. So let's continue breaking it down. Next, let's discuss this adoption fund, which is a pretty big deal coming out of Japan. Let's go check this out. Japan's largest investment bank, Numura's digital asset subsidiary, Laser Digital Asset Management, launched the Bitcoin adoption fund specifically for the institutional investors. Bring it. The official announcement noted the Bitcoin -based fund will be the first in a range of digital adoption investment solutions that the firm plans to introduce. Now Numura is a Japanese financial giant with over $500 billion worth of assets, which basically that's half a trillion, baby, offers brokerage services to leading institutional investors. The Bitcoin fund launched by its digital asset arm will now offer investors direct exposure to BTC. The Laser Digital Bitcoin Adoption Fund offers long key exposure to Bitcoin. The financial giant has chosen Kamanu as its regulated custody partner. The Bitcoin fund is a portion of Laser Digital Fund's segregated portfolio company that has been registered as a mutual fund in accordance with the Cayman Islands regulatory authority. Now, Laser Digital Asset Management head Sebastian said the Bitcoin is one of the enablers of this long -lasting transformational change and long -term exposure to Bitcoin offers a solution for the investors to capture this macro trend. Now, the Bitcoin adoption fund might be the first of its kind launched by Numura and the digital asset arm, but the Japanese investment banking giant has been investing in the digital asset ecosystem for quite some time already. In fact, September of last year, the firm launched its digital asset venture capital arm to stay at the forefront of digital innovation. And also won Dubai's virtual asset regulatory authority license to operate in the country. The long -only Bitcoin adoption fund for investors in Japan comes amid a growing discussion around Bitcoin -based investment products from regulated and mainstream financial giants. The United States SEC approved two Bitcoin ETFs, even though there is a delayed decision specifically on the spot. Bitcoin ETFs. What's up with that, Mr. Gensler? Just saying. And apart from the US, Canada and focused investment products over the past couple of years. So there you have it, mass adoption, let's freaking go, especially on the institutional level. How many of you are in Japan? I know we have some in our audience out there. Let me know. And have you ever heard of this company before? Any plans in investing through them? Let me know how you guys feel. And now let's break down the latest. It gets more surprising and shocking every day with what all is going on with Bankman -Fried and FTX. Now his parents are involved. His parents are being sued by FTX. And it's just a nightmare of a mess, to say the least. So let's break down this latest story regarding SBF. Now, Joseph Bankman, the father of the former FTX CEO, Sam Bankman -Fried, complained to his son about the salary he was receiving during his employment at FTX US, turning the issue into a family matter. In a September 18 filing with the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, FTX debtors filed a complaint against Bankman and Barbara Fried, alleging that SBF's parents misappropriated millions of dollars through their involvement in the exchange's business. And according to the court documents, Bankman's contract with FTX US should have provided a $200 ,000 annual salary following a leave of absence from the Stanford Law School in December 2021. However, Bankman seemed to express ignorance about the terms of the contract, claiming to both FTX US and his son that he was expecting a $1 million annual salary. What about all that property in the Bahamas, fam? What about all that? Hundreds of millions worth of properties? Just wanted to throw that out there. The complaint states that Bankman was putting Barbara on this, suggesting that SBF's mother may have been able to persuade her son to follow through with the salary change. Things get even more interesting. So according to the complaint, Bankman's influence paid off, with SBF later providing his parents $10 million from Alameda Research. Can you talk about commingling? A 16 .4 million property in the Bahamas, funded by FTX Trading, the ability to expense roughly $90 ,000 to FTX Trading on the island nation in the Bahamas, and options to purchase company stock. Now, when reached out to the legal team representing Bankman and Fried, but did not receive a response at the time, unfortunately, the legal action brought by the debtors was the latest in the bankruptcy case involving FTX and many of its subsidiaries filed in November of last year. Bankman Fried also faces 12 criminal charges to be spread across two trials, starting in October of 2023, which is right around the corner, fam, and March of 2024, right before the halving, scheduled for April of next year. And since the federal judge revoked his bail in August, Bankman Fried has been largely confined to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Where's Brooklyn at? Before the start of his October trial, then on September 19th, a three -judge panel heard an appeal from SPF's legal team requesting the former FTX CEO to be released from jail in order to prepare for the trial, citing the lack of internet access and first amendment issues. All I got to say is this, I mean, how many people realistically have access to the internet in jail? Why should he? Million dollar question right there. But what are your thoughts, fam? How do you think this is likely to play out? And do you think that Bankman Fried's parents are just as guilty as SPF himself with the commingling and the fraud of going up north of $30 billion, making it the biggest scam in history that we're aware of? Hence why we call him Mini Madoff, because he made off with billions of dollars worth of investors' money, and Gary Gensler and the SEC was protecting him behind closed doors. So it's going to be very interesting to see how all this is likely to play out. Now let's discuss post halving. We all know there is a halving scheduled roughly six months out. We all know post halving, the price action is most likely going to reach a new all -time high and enter price discovery mode. Well, this analyst shares a very intriguing target. So let's break this down, shall we? And welcome to y 'all just joining us. Say hello in that live chat. Let me know where you're tuning in from. I stream live here seven days a week from Puerto Rico. Synonymous analyst Rhett Capital tells his followers on X that Bitcoin can rally above $80 per ,000 coin in the months following next month's event. For the halving, send it. Let's go. The Bitcoin halving cuts the Bitcoin miners' rewards in half, as we all know, expected to take place in April of next year. And while Rhett Capital is a long -term bull on Bitcoin, he notes that it is possible for Bitcoin to continue its downtrend before the halving, putting him here. Hang in there and make the most of any deeper downside in this pre halving period. You won't see the post halving parabola in the outlines here in this chart. It shows you in the yellow, the pre halving period, then in the pink, the post halving resistance, and then in the green, you can see the post halving parabola when we hit those new all -time highs. Now, Rhett notes that Bitcoin may repeat its 2019 bear market cycle when it traded within a triangle pattern before breaking out and starting off the bull market, as he shares here, if Bitcoin continues to form lower highs, could Bitcoin fill the CME, which is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange gap, at $20 ,000 later this year or in early 2024? So it makes a good point. There is currently a gap sitting at that $20 ,000 psychological level. And he continues, if so, the possible path could be consolidation to the apex of the black triangle before finally breaking out to close the halving. And you can see that triangle right here in this chart. Now, looking at the chart, he seemed to suggest that Bitcoin will confirm the triangle breakout in April of 2024, followed by a rally towards his long -term target. Now, let me know your thoughts, chat. How many of you agree that Bitcoin is likely to break out to a new all -time high, entering price discovery mode in 2024, the year of the halving? Let me know. And what are some of your targets? I'd also like to point out that the Stock the Flow model and Plan B, creator of that model, he suggests a $100 to $1 million range price for the King Crypto post halving. We also have some very other bullish predictions, which I cover on a daily basis here on the channel. But I'd love to know your personal prediction. I think we reached the cycle peak personally sometime in 2025, but I think 2024, we enter that price discovery mode. But I'd love to know your thoughts and your opinions in the comments right down below. And now let's break down our next story of the day and discuss the latest from the macro guru, Raoul Pal, who is suggesting that the Bitcoin market cap and crypto market cap as a whole does something between 5 and 10x for this upcoming bull cycle. Now, you do the math. We have a crypto market cap right now. I'm going to ballpark it at a trillion. We have a Bitcoin market cap. I'm going to ballpark it at a half a trillion, which is 500 billion. So hypothetically, if we were to 10x Bitcoin in and of itself, we're talking about a 5 trillion dollar Bitcoin market cap, which would be half the current market cap of gold. Now, with the entire crypto market cap, we can potentially hit 10 trillion. Now, also note, back in November of 2021, when we hit that all time high of 69 ,000 in November of last year, the total crypto market cap was just north of that 3 trillion dollar market cap. So he's so let's break this down and shout out to Raoul Pal. Here we go. Former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal says the next bull cycle can bring an explosion in the market cap of all of the digital assets. That's right. In a new interview with Altcoin Daily, the macro expert says he expects a huge increase in the adoption of digital assets, and that can cause the total market cap of crypto to skyrocket as much as 900 % from its current value during the next bull market. Quoting the analysts here, obviously, I think we'll go well through new all time highs. I think the whole ecosystem of crypto will go from 425 million users where we're at today. And I think at the end of this cycle, there'll be a billion users by that kind of use cases in which we have talked about. And let's not forget, we have got central bank digital currencies that are known as CBDCs and stable coins. There is a lot going on still. So if this entire space is going to grow 2 .5 X in the number of users, well, the market cap of the entire space is five or 10 X. Send it. Let's go. Pal also says he is closely watching development of layer two Altcoin projects for new use cases, which could boost the value of their individual market cap, quitting him again. And then let's see how people value layer twos in this. We don't really know how layer twos accrue much value. Do we have to have a massive amount of transactions in which case then you need stuff like Ticketmaster with millions and millions and millions of transactions to drive value to those chains because they batched them and batched them down to Ethereum. So there you have it. And to watch this interview, he did Raul Pal, the macro guru with Altcoin Daily entitled best cryptocurrency investing strategy into 2024. Check the show notes, blow the video in the description and let me know your thoughts on his personal prediction. Do you feel post having that the market cap for the entire crypto market can likely 10 X from the current valuation along with Bitcoin surging 10 X to roughly a five trillion market cap? And hypothetically, if the macro guru is correct, where do you think that would likely take the Bitcoin price? Well, let's run some hypothetical math. Bitcoin was the 10 X from the current price action of 27 ,000. Well, that's $270 ,000 per coin. Take that. And as we all know, Bitcoin rises like that, the entire crypto market cap would go along for the ride, including the altcoin. So please let me know in the chat, fam, which altcoins, if any, are you most bullish on in the crypto market? And what are your thoughts surrounding Raul Pal being so bullish on Solana? A few months back, I read in an interview he shared that 80 % or more of his portfolio was specifically in an altcoin called Solana. So I'd love to know your thoughts. Obviously, he has a high risk tolerance as I look at that particular cryptocurrency to be very risky, especially with all that went in with the venture capitalists and SPF and FTX exchange pumping that particular all. So I'd love to know how you feel regarding all of that. And with that being shared, fam, now let's discuss Peter Thiel and his $4 million price prediction, as well as rumor has it, and I'll be covering this as well, that he dumps most of his Bitcoin position at the top of the market practically 30 days before the crash. So let's break this down because Peter Thiel was actually one of the keynote speakers at the Miami Conference for Bitcoin. And here's what he had to share as I transcribed his speech, and then we'll discuss him reportedly making $1 .8 billion cashing out on his eight -year bet around the time he was touting these all -time high predictions. So here we go. He says, the enemy's list is a list of people who I think are stopping Bitcoin. He says there is a lot of them. They tend to have nameless, faceless bureaucratic perspectives, which of course is one of the ways they hide. He goes on to share, we are going to try to expose them and realize that this is sort of what we have to fight for Bitcoin to go up, 10x or 100x from here. Now, just FYI, to give you some perspective, at the time he made this prediction on stage at the Bitcoin Miami Conference, Bitcoin was trading at roughly $43 ,000 per coin. So you run the math. 43 ,000 times 100x is over $4 million per Bitcoin. So you know that? Let's continue with what he had to share. The central banks are going bankrupt. We are at the end of the fiat money regime. How many of you agree with that statement? I agree there 100%. The first person on the list is Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffett. Thiel put up a picture of Buffett with two of his most famous quotes about Bitcoin. One was rat poison and the other, I don't own any and I never will. I also like to point out now since then, Warren Buffett has much indirect exposure to Bitcoin through Bitcoin mining stock companies and etc. So go figure. If you can't beat them, join them, right? And he goes on. He opined, I think the direct in it. Yeah, and I say also Charlie Munger goes along with him. Now, feel further noted that Buffett has a bias and makes him long on fiat money system and money managers who follow the Berkshire Hathaway executives advice will pretend it's complicated to invest into Bitcoin. I think we call that FUD. Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Now expect nothing less from one of the wealthiest people in the fiat money matrix Ponzi scheme. You know what I mean? So just saying. The next person on the list of Bitcoin's enemies is the one and only JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, or as Max Kaiser calls him, Jamie the tapeworm. They'll put diamonds picture up with the following quote. I don't call them crypto currencies. I call them crypto tokens because currencies have rules of law behind them, central banks and tax with authorities. Now you guys already know how I feel personally about JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon. So I won't go any deeper there. But anyways, we know he's an enemy of Bitcoin and always has been. The next picture he put up was of the BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, with the following quote. I see huge opportunities in a digitized crypto blockchain related currency, and that's where I think it is going to go. Now just FYI, Larry Fink is the CEO of the largest asset management firm in the entire world, which owns a large share in virtually all the companies in the S &P 500, and that is BlackRock. They currently have over $10 trillion in assets under management. And for a long time, he was spreading FUD regarding Bitcoin. But guess what? Like I mentioned earlier, if you can't beat them, join them because they just most recently, a few months ago, they submitted their application for a spot Bitcoin ETF, which ultimately means they're going to be introducing this to the institutions which have trillions upon trillions of dollars as there's currently north of $700 trillion in total addressable market, and they want their piece of the Bitcoin pie. So he goes on to share, the PayPal co -founder added that Fink's quote is somewhat representative of the whole genre of Bitcoin attacks that need further context, stating that pro -blockchain is an anti -Bitcoin term, very typically. Feel then brought up the environmental, social, and governance, ESG standards, elaborating the following, the label they have come up with, and perhaps the real enemy is ESG. I think that ESG is just a hate factory. Also like to throw out there, Elon Musk, he stopped taking Bitcoin payments for Tesla, and he says it's because of the FUD regarding this ESG, and we all know it's not more than FUD, and it's already been proven that Bitcoin is more than 50 % clean energy. So the million dollar question, when will the world's supposedly wealthiest man, Elon Musk, when will he start accepting Bitcoin payments again for Tesla? Isn't that a great question, and wouldn't you love to know the answer to that? Maybe you should ask Elon and tag him on X and see what he says. Anyways, feel stressed. You can always ask the question, what's the difference between ESG and the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party? Well, when you think ESG, you should be thinking of CCP per H. Now, he also goes on to share, it is the finance gentocracy that runs the country through whatever silly virtue signaling or hate factory to them, just like ESG, the billionaire concluded. This is what I would call and what you have to think of as a revolutionary youth movement, and we have to just go out from this conference and take over the world. So there you have it, fam. What are your thoughts surrounding Peter Thiel's prediction that we are likely to 100X, and along with his enemies list, as it seems, a lot of the enemies have come around and now have direct exposure to BTC, but it doesn't stop there because around that time he was making this $4 million Bitcoin price prediction. He allegedly dumped most of his position cashing out and with over a billion dollars in profits for his fund. So let's also break this down as this is also very relevant. How many of you were able to watch the speech he gave at that Bitcoin conference? It was epic, to say the least. I recall it now. So here we go. Check it out. Peter Thiel's venture capital firm reportedly made $1 .8 billion closing out its crypto positions around the time when he was an early Bitcoin bull, still predicting the token's price to surge by 100X. And again, from 43 ,000 price action, 100X means over 4 million. Founders Fund had cashed out almost all of its bets on digital assets by March of 2022, according to the Financial Times report that cited people familiar with the matter. But Thiel was still backing Bitcoin, obviously, when he spoke at the crypto conference in Miami the following month. He went on to share where at the end of the fiat money regime, he said, adding that the token's price could increase 100 fold from its level at the time, which was reported at $44 ,000 per coin. That prediction was proven false and as rising interest rates and failures, the high profile firms like Celsius Network, Three Arrows Capital, FTX, Terra Luna dragged the crypto sector into the prolonged bearish winter. Now Bitcoin plummeted by over 60 % in 2022 and was trading at under 17 ,000 by the end of the year. And I believe the bottom currently for the cycle is 15 ,700. How many of you feel that that bottom is in? Let me know, chat. Founders Fund first started pouring money into crypto all the way back in 2014, when Bitcoin was only trading at roughly $750 per coin. So by the time Bitcoin reached its all time high in November of 2021, it had surged 8 ,500 % from that particular level. Not too shabby for a seven year run, wouldn't you say? Now Thiel has a long track record as one of Silicon Valley's most prominent tech investors. He took early stakes in startups, which include Facebook, Elon Musk's SpaceX, and ride hailing app Lyft, and even co -founded PayPal back in 1998. Thiel is also a high profile supporter of the Republican Party and continued to voice his support for Donald Trump since the former president left office in January of 2021. The fund held around two thirds of his portfolio in Bitcoin at one time, but now not has significant exposure to crypto according to FT's sources. So there you have it. Fam, what are your thoughts surrounding his prediction and him cashing out at around that time he was making those all time high predictions of 100X? Let me know, fam. And don't forget to check out cryptonewsalerts .net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode. HODL.
Unchained
A highlight from Zeke Faux's Crypto Adventures and His Relationship With Former FTX CEO SBF - Ep. 545
"Everywhere I went in crypto land, I always thought people would say like, basically, everybody bought into this number go up philosophy. People try to pretend that they have some other plan for their business. And time and time again, I would find that their business plan boiled down to number go up. And that's what Alameda's business plan was. Hi, everyone, welcome to Unchained, your no -hive resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago, and as a senior editor, Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full time. This is the September 19th, 2023 episode of Unchained. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle built for Layer 0 is now securing every Layer 0 message by default. Their custom end -to -end solution sets itself up to bring its world -class security to Web3 and establish itself as the HTTPS within Layer 0 messaging. Visit Layer0 .network to learn more.
Cyber Security Weekly Podcast
A highlight from Episode 377 - Artificial Intelligence and Operational Resiliency
"This is Jane Lo, and I'm at the Global Resiliency Federation office here in Singapore. And with me today, I'm very pleased and very privileged to have Mark Orsi, who is the CEO of GRF or Global Resiliency Federation, all the way from United States of America. So thank you, Mark, for your time today. Thank you for having me. And so Mark will be sharing with us the latest in terms of artificial intelligence, which is causing a lot of excitement nowadays, as well as the operational resiliency framework, which has been developed by GRF over the last year or so. So Mark, you know, give us a brief introduction about yourself and also GRF and what, you know, the organisation does. And I also understand that you're very passionate about AI. So tell us about the history of your career as well. Sure. So I started as an aerospace engineer many, many years ago. And after aerospace, I was in computer science and I was working on computer vision. So it's really been interesting to see the journey until today. But additionally, so the last 15 years or so, I've been in the financial services sector primarily and technology risk and cybersecurity. I worked at Goldman Sachs for about eight years, KPMG for a few years, JP Morgan for a few years. And then in the past four years, I've been at Global Resilience Federation and we're a non -profit. We manage and support 17 different sharing communities. ISACs, which are really information sharing and analysis centres, they're collective defence communities where organisations join together to help protect themselves against the various threats that are out there. And of course, you have your conference later in October, later this year in Texas. Yeah, Austin, Texas, October 11th through 12th. Anybody who's local or who wants to make the journey, please come. We also have an OTI set conference on September 6th coming right up. More local. But yeah, it's an iteration of it, sixth year running. And it's security and third -party risk. So we have practitioners, CISOs, third -party risk practitioners, business resilience practitioners. And we have a whole track on AI security. So we've worked for the last six months with 20 organisations on two papers. One is a CISO guide to AI security and one is a practitioner's guide. So let's start with AI, which is what gets people excited nowadays. So tell us, you've got a great vintage point from America, which is a leader in many ways when it comes to technology and innovations. So what is the conversation like in terms of the business use cases that you see in America? Sure, we're coming from a cybersecurity and resilience perspective. And so I was on a call, it was about a week and a half after ChatGBT was released in November of last year. A hundred different chief information security officers on the call, really all concerned about maybe business forging ahead without really taking any security considerations into play. But also about some of the major strengths that they could, how can we use this for good as well, right? How can we use it to find vulnerabilities? How can we use it to secure our code? So an example is one of the organisations had been using a tool like it to actually rewrite their code base and translate into different language, which added memory management to their code and then translate it back to the original language. And they were also using it then to multiply their developers time by tenfold, because they didn't have to write the test cases and additional code around developers. So there's plenty of benefits to it and there's plenty of risks, right? We need to think about the whole pipeline, whether we have in -house AI models or whether we're using third parties, there's different kinds of risks that we need to consider. There's also been a lot of talk of using AI large language models to do predictive diagnostics in healthcare, right? And GRF, of course, you have more than, what, 20 member organisations? It's 17 different ones, yes, 17. And one of them is Health iSAT, right? So talking to your member communities, do you see a difference in terms of the pace of adoption in terms of using AI? Yeah, absolutely. And so we worked with 20 different organisations, including some healthcare, some manufacturing, some energy and others, to put together a guide on AI security, both the practitioner guide and a CISO guide. And yes, there's different pace of adoption. There's organisations that have been using machine learning and AI for many, many years. And but with the advent of this generative AI, there's just a tremendous amount of concern and the pace of change is much more rapid. It used to be every year you'd have change and now it's every week. There's new things happening. So of course, artificial intelligence is not new in cyber security. How is this latest innovation of using large language models, how is that going to be different in terms of adoption in cyber security? I think you mentioned a few sort of like... I think some of the power of it is that ultimately, if you think about the resource limits that we have, there's always constraints on the number of resources that are available that are cyber focused and cyber educated. And so for us to take the power of some of those large language model generative AI and sort of multiply the efforts of the staff that we have, then we can also meet some of the needs that we have from a resource perspective. Also, I think ultimately we're going to get into very targeted threat intelligence to where it'll be based upon our own assets. So if you're an enterprise and you have specific assets and you have specific threats in your sector, then the intelligence that you're delivered would be very targeted to your organization specifically. So it's going to get much more powerful over time to give you tailored threat intelligence. Do you think that the rate of adoption on the cyber defense side is possibly faster than how the threat actors are adopting... Yeah, I mean, that's a big concern, right? I think probably we'll be behind the curve. All right, okay. I think there was even talk early on about just pausing the pace of developments, making sure that we have the regulatory framework so that we know how to do this ethically and responsibly. So I think from a machine learning perspective, we could be doing very well, but I think from a generative AI perspective, we may be behind the curve a little bit. So I think the complexity of attacks, I think we'll be putting essentially nation -state tools into every threat actor's hands. So I think it's a very sort of concerning few years as we work to try and match the pace of change. You think that is something that is quite realistic that will happen, or is it just kind of like a hype? Because there's some part that human developers or human threat actors are possibly a lot more sophisticated when it comes to developing the malware code. And you can kind of tell the difference between one that's generated by generative AI and one that's written by human developers. I'll give you an example of just a very personal use case. So I was working with my son just a couple of weeks ago, and we found an old Nintendo DS. And so he wanted to run videos on his old Nintendo DS. And so we used ChatGBT to learn how to hack into our Nintendo DS to make it display videos. So he never had any programming experience, but we were able to do this. So this is exactly what I'm like, you know, we can put these tools into everybody's hands. So how do we, you know, we need to be extra vigilant as this change happens. So what do you think is the immediate step that cyber defenders have to take in face of this threat? Well, I think there's a few things. Number one, we need to be moving forward to be using it in the right ways, to be using it from a defender perspective. So if it is helping us to find vulnerabilities quicker, if it's helping us to develop threat intelligence better, that's more tailored towards each individual organization. But also just from security and ethics perspective, there's all sorts of different attacks that can happen to those, whether it's on the input data, whether it's in the model itself, you can embed undetectable backdoors in these models. So if you're using a third party to develop your models, you need to be very concerned and maybe even have multiple models to compare the answers. Now, some people also say, right, let's just get the basics right, right? So for example, we'll get more sophisticated phishing emails, right? So that just means more awareness in terms of how to spot a fake email from a genuine email. So that's kind of like the basics that we need to sort out. Yeah, but it's also addressing all the different aspects of that. You know, I mentioned the models themselves. So protecting the models, protecting the data. You don't want data poisoning. You want to detect and monitor these things because they may evolve over time. And you need to be really concerned about your third parties because every third party is going to be introducing AI. So we talk about an AI bill of materials. So the same as you have a software bill of materials, we want to think about how can we develop an AI bill of materials? So how can you ensure that the training data and the model that's being used, right, how do we know which models we're using and which training data is being used? So if we find an ethical bias or we find some, let's say it was trained on a set of a code that had malware embedded in it or a set of code that had logic bombs in it, you don't want to embed logic bombs in your new code that you're writing by using these tools. So we need to make sure that the training data is clean. For example, let's just take the example of data poisoning, right? So that is perhaps, you know, looking at how you provide access levels to your data set. So it's not any difference from sort of the basic cybersecurity measures, right? Right. It's using some of the same constructs that you have across others. But one of the things that you need to be concerned about too, though, is these are dynamic, some of these are dynamic models. Right now, it's a very static world. We have these models that were trained in, you know, 2021 data, right? But in the near future, these things will be much more dynamic and actually responding to the inputs to change their behavior. So you'll need to be monitoring. Yeah, that's very different. Right, okay. So I think one final question on the copy of AI before we move to operational resilience framework. A lot of people say, right, AI is going to mean, you know, perhaps job losses, right? And how do you see that playing out in the cybersecurity field? So I'm, you know, concerned in general. I studied AI 30 years ago. I was concerned about it then. You know, I thought the first sort of impact would be with self -driving cars and in our transportation industry. I think it turns out that, you know, these models advanced very quickly, maybe quicker than people were expecting. But it's going to take a very long time for us to sort of digest that through all of our business models that we have right now. But I think it's going to multiply our efforts. I think cybersecurity is an industry where we're very resource constrained, where people, there's way more cyber resources are required than we have people. So it'll just multiply our capabilities and maybe meet the needs that we have. So I think that's a very positive thing. Ultimately, I think our economy will be changing in the next decade or two decades in different ways. And I think we can only imagine what those changes will be. Right. Okay. So talking about overcoming some of these challenges, it means like resiliency, right? So that plays into the next topic, operational resilience framework. So tell us what this resiliency means in the context of this framework and perhaps cybersecurity. So back in 2018, there was a paper from the Bank of England. So regulatory guidance on operational resilience and impact tolerance. And so it was really thinking about the potential systemic impacts of bank failures on customers and partners. And so the question was, well, how do we respond to that? What are the things that we need to do to ensure that we can continue to operate our critical services through a crisis, even if it's an impaired state? So we, Trey Moss, who is the CEO of Sheltered Harbor, it was an initiative from FSISAC to help protect consumer data. So if there was a bank failure or a bank disruption, you could still access your bank account information. So it would prevent sort of a run on the bank or this systemic impact from it. So we took that concept and Trey was always thinking, hey, we probably need to do more than just protect this little piece of data. It was in a distributed and immutable way that the different banks and the standard format that different banks could access. We need to also prevent the bank from failing its critical services. So we were working with him, Bill Nelson, who is the CEO of FSISAC for 12 years. And he's our board of directors. Trey and I, we met for about a year to say, well, what should we be doing beyond just protecting this little piece of information? What are those critical services that we need to protect? And we need to make sure that through a crisis they would operate, even if it's an impaired state. So we developed a path to operational resilience. We worked with 100 organizations and financial services regulators to develop a very simple path that was meant really for every industry, not just for financial services. And so it's a path of seven steps, 37 rules. We tried to make it very simple. It's aligned to NIST and ISO standards and extends existing business continuity and disaster recovery type standards and frameworks. It takes a holistic approach and really looking outward instead of inward on saying these are internal business services that we need to keep running. Those we call business critical services. Operations critical are those things that your customers and your partners depend upon. And so making sure that those continue to run through a crisis. If you have a wiperware attack, you have a ransomware attack, you have a data center fire, you want to make sure that your customers' critical services continue to function through that crisis. So take an example of, say, a ransomware attack. So attack ransomware hitting one of these industrial organizations, right? So how would this resiliency framework help, you know, plug some of the gaps? So what's interesting is we've done this very much from an IT focus. We want to extend it to an OT realm as well. So we'll be working with OT ISAC and manufacturing ISAC late this year, early next year, and we'll set up a working group to do that. But actually one of our first scenarios that we put out there, it's, you know, freely downloadable from our website, grf .org, is a scenario that we call it ACME pipeline. And it was essentially a replication of colonial pipeline incident to highlight the benefits of an operational resilient framework approach. And so we looked at, you know, what are those critical services from a pipeline? And it was really just delivering petroleum. So there are a bunch of regulatory responses they have to have. There's payroll, there's all these different systems. When it comes to what do you actually deliver to your customers and your business partners, it was just delivery of petroleum. So making sure that they could deliver petroleum through that crisis, if they had a ransomware attack or a wipe away attack, what are those things they needed to do to ensure, even if it's an impaired state, how do I deliver that to my high priority customers and my low priority customers and designing so that let's say I could only operate at 80 % capacity. Can I still provide service to my low priority customers or do I need to only provide service to my high priority customers? So understanding at what point do you cut off service or do you are you going to disappoint some people because it's no longer a service to them. Designing that into your system and pre -planning that is part of this framework. Right, yes, yeah. So it's kind of like looking at from a sort of a consequence perspective on the mission factors rather perspective than start from the asset inventory kind of that traditional. It was interesting, I was hearing some of the same language that we were developing over the last two years coming from the OT experts on the panels as well about exactly that, about operating through a crisis, about the mission critical functions. Right, okay. So we just talked about one scenario which is ransomware and you are looking to sort of, I guess, expand to different types of scenarios to try to help organizations assess where they are in terms of their maturity when it comes to resiliency, yes? Yeah, so it really doesn't matter what the type of attack is, right? And also I think one of the concerns, we've been very sort of IT focused and very much we talked about the data and making sure that it's distributed and immutable, but also from a service perspective. So you want to make sure that you can deliver those services. That's right. Whether it includes manpower or whether it includes just technology. So that's very important. So what are the next steps then? So you say that the efforts started in 2019, yes? There's two active working groups right now. So one is we're developing a maturity model. We're going to release the next iteration in October of this year at our conference, which is in Austin, Texas. So not local. But so the next iteration will come with a maturity model, some of the comments that we've received from multiple industries, and we're still actively seeking, we want to make sure it's a cross -industry approach. We also have another working group focused on a scenario that's in the financial sector. So in ACH payments network disruption, ACH is, you know, domestic cash payments are made through this ACH network, and it's $76 trillion a year. So it's a very significant system. And so what would a disruption like that, how would it impact banks? And how should we be thinking about operational resilience in that scenario? So working through that, we'll probably do an exercise in November of this year, which would be open to many banks to have that discussion. So we'll be looking at the next steps. Like I mentioned, we'll be looking to extend the framework to OT, ICS concerns. And we'll be looking to, you know, develop the third iteration and additional scenarios. So what is the first thing that organizations have to do if they want to adopt your framework? So they can go to our website now and freely download it. It's available. They can actually review it and give feedback. But also think about how they can use it in their organizations, right? What some in major banks, they're using it just to develop training materials. So organizations, they're different business units across the globe regionally, and different business units can consider operational resilience and how they work. So I think it's a really good learning tool. And ultimately, as they implement it, the first steps are, number one, we build it upon the baseline of NIST and ISO standards. IDLE, change management, making sure they have core standards, core practices in place, core controls, and then naming an operational resilience executive. So really getting somebody who has visibility across business and technology. Yeah, a champion of it, who can sustain it through organizational change, right? Who can really have some power and authority to implement it. That's really important. And then you can start walking through the framework and doing the things that are necessary. It'll take investment, it'll take some work to really become more resilient. And so we're working on the maturity model as well, so people can evaluate sort of where they are and where they think they might have gaps. Can they participate in one of your working groups so that they can assess to see how they can practically use it? Yeah, they can contact me. No, happy to have that. Happy to have people reach out to me and contact us. Again, our website, grf .org .org. And yeah, we're continuing to develop new working groups and new sector focal points. Our goal is to make the whole ecosystem more resilient, to figure out how organizations can do that and to contribute to security and resilience in any way that we can. So this is one way to do that. Possibly there's a way to incorporate AI element, the latest generative AI element. I would love it, right? I love it. I mean, that's a real passion of mine from many years ago. So it's great to kind of see it finally come into play. And we just have to address it in the right way and with the right security concerns. So, well, Mark, thank you so much for your time today to talk to us about generative AI, as well as operational resiliency framework that GRF is developing. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Jane.
Audio
A highlight from DC28-Hildegarde-pt1
"Discerninghearts .com presents The Doctors of the Church, the terrorism of wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunsen. For over 20 years, Dr. Bunsen has been active in the area of Catholic social communications and education, including writing, editing, and teaching on a variety of topics related to church history, the papacy, the saints, and Catholic culture. He is the faculty chair at the Catholic Distance University, a senior fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, and the author or co -author of over 50 books, including the Encyclopedia of Catholic History and the best -selling biographies of St. Damien of Malachi and St. Kateri Tekakawisa. He also serves as a senior editor for the National Catholic Register and is a senior contributor to EWTN News. The Doctors of the Church, the terrorism of wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunsen. I'm your host, Chris McGregor. Welcome, Dr. Bunsen. Wonderful to be with you again, Chris. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about this particular doctor of the church who, it's rare, isn't it, in our lifetimes to have those saints elevated to the status of doctor who have quite a background like St. Hildegard Bingen. Yes, well, she is, of course, with John of Avila, one of the two of the newest doctors of the church proclaimed as such by Pope Benedict XVI, who has, I think, a special fondness for her. And as we get to know her, we certainly can understand why he holds her in such great repute and such great respect. It's easy to overlook the fact that in her lifetime, she was called the Sybil of the Rhine, and throughout that, the whole of the 12th century in which she lived. She was renowned for her visions, but she was especially loved and respected for her wisdom, the greatest minds of her age, and, of course, was renowned also for her great holiness. So this is a formidable figure in the medieval church, and somebody, I think, that we really need to look at today as we proceed with the reform and renewal of the church. I'll try to put this very sensitively when I say that her presence in our time is one that, unfortunately, was relegated maybe into a back corner by many because of those who tried to hijack, in some ways, her spirituality to try to move forward to certain agendas. Yes, I think that's a very diplomatic way of putting it. Hildegard, in the last 10 years or so, and Pope Benedict XVI, I think, helped lead the charge in this, has been reclaimed by the church. Her authentic writings, her authentic spirituality, and especially her love for the church and her obedience to the authority of the church have all been recaptured, reclaimed for the benefit of the entire church. It's absolutely true that over the previous decades, much as we saw with a few others, I'm thinking, for example, of a Julian of Norwich in England who lived a little after Hildegard, were sort of kidnapped by those with real agendas to try to portray Hildegard as a proto -radical feminist, as somebody who was hating of the church, who attempted to resist the teachings of the church, who rejected the teachings of the church. And yet, as we read her, as we come to appreciate her more fully, I think we can grasp her extraordinary gifts, but also her remarkable love for the church. She was one who allowed herself to be subjected to obedience, that wonderful, can we say it, a virtue, as well as a discipline. Absolutely, yeah. It's one of those ironies, again, to use that word, that here was somebody who was falsely claimed by feminists, who I think would have been just shocked at the notion of herself as a feminist, that she had instead a genuine love for the church, a profound mysticism. And you've hit on one of the key words that we're going to be talking about with her, and that is a perfection of the virtues of love for Christ and her obedience to the church, to the authority of the church in judging what is and authentic what is pure. And that, I think, holds her up as a great role model today when we have so many who are dissenting from the church and continue to cling to this notion of Hildegard as some sort of a herald of feminism in the church. I don't think I would understate it by saying that it was breathtaking in the fall of 2010 then when Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, began a series of Wednesday audiences on the holy women of the Middle Ages. And he began those reflections, especially on those who had such deep mystical prayer experiences, he began the audiences not with just one but two audiences on Hildegard. Yeah, he has made it very clear. He certainly did this as pope. He's done this throughout his life as a theologian, somebody who wants to make certain that the church recognizes and honors genius in all of his forms, but also profound holiness. And Pope Benedict, in that there's the set of audiences, especially regarding Hildegard, but I mean, when we run through the list of some of the great figures that he was looking at, he talked, for example, about Julian of Norwich, he covered Catherine of Siena, Brigid of Sweden, Elizabeth of Hungary, and of course Angela of Foligno, who just recently was canonized through equivalent canonization by Pope Francis. The gifts to the church, the contributions to the life of the church, to the holiness of the church by these remarkable women. It's something that we need to pause, and I really appreciate the fact that you want to do that, to credit Pope Benedict for doing that, but also again to turn our gaze to these extraordinary women. And it is significant that Hildegard of Bingen was included in that list. If you could, give us a sense of her time period. Well, she grew up in Germany and really was a member of the German nobility, and she belonged to the German feudal system. In other words, her father was a wealthy, powerful landowner at a time when owning land was everything. His name was Hildebert, and both in the service of, as the feudal system worked, a more powerful lord by the name of Meggenhard, who was Count of Spannheim. These are sort of dazzling names to people today, but what's really most important is that medieval feudal life in Germany was one of service, it was one of status, but this reflects on the upbringing of Hildegard, I think, in a into this noble environment. She had the opportunity to learn, to understand what it was to command, to know what it was to have special status, and yet from her earliest times, she displayed extraordinary intelligence, but also very powerful spiritual gifts and a desire for status conscious, as so many of the members of the feudal nobility were, and yet they recognized in their daughter the fact that she was called to something else other than the life of service and of status that they enjoyed. And for that reason, they offered her up, as was the custom of the time, as sort of a tithe to the church, as an oblet to the nearby Benedictine abbey of Disobodenburg, and she was only eight years old at the time, but that was the custom. And her life changed from that minute, but it was, I think, the greatest gift that her parents could have given her, because they placed her in exactly the environment that she needed the most to foster, really to develop her spiritual life, and all of the skills that she was given by God that she came to possess as an abbess and as a leading figure of the medieval church. The stability of the Benedictine role, that way of devoting time in your day, not only to work, the discipline of action, but then also to prayer, it really served her so well, didn't it? It did, and especially crucial in this was the fact that, as was again the wisdom of the Benedictines, they gave her over for her initial training to other women who were experienced in life, in the spiritual life, in the discipline of the Benedictine community, but also in the spiritual life they saw, I think, immediately needed to be developed in her. There was the first by a widow by the name of Uda, and then more important was another woman by the name of Uta of Spannheim, who was the daughter of Count Stefan of Spannheim. Now why is it that notable? It's notable because in Uta, not only did Hildegard receive a kind of spiritual mother, as well as a spiritual guide and mentor, but Uta was, being the daughter of nobility, clearly aware of Hildegard's background as well as her immense potential in dealing with other members of the nobility in future years. The position of abbess was one of great power. We don't encounter abbesses and abbots very much anymore, and yet because of the status of the Benedictine order, because of the lands it accumulated, but also because of its importance to the life of the community wherever you had a Benedictine monastery, abbots and abbesses acquired and wielded great influence in society and political life, economic life, and then of course their spiritual power. And Uta would have understood all of this, and over the next decades she helped train Hildegard in a life of prayer, of asceticism, but also of training the mind and personality to command, to lead with charity, and then of course to have the level of learning with the best they could give her to prepare her for the immense tasks that lay ahead. Let's talk about some of those tasks. It's an incredible time for a monastery life, and it would be affected by her example of how it could be transformed. Well Hildegard always seriously underestimated and sort of downplayed her own learning. She referred to herself as an indocte mulier or an unlearned woman, and yet while she may have had formal academic training that one might think of today, she nevertheless understood Latin, certainly the use of the Psalter. The Latin language of course was the language of the church. It was so much of the common language of ecclesiastical life, but she also continued to train other noble women who were sent to this community. And so when she was given, as they say, she took the veil from the Bishop of Bamberg when she was about 15 years old. From that point on, we can see a direct line of progress and advancement for Hildegard. This wasn't something that she was craving, but it was something I think that she took to quite naturally, both because of her training, both because of her family background, but also just because of her genius level IQ. I say genius level IQ because if you spend much time reading the works of Hildegard, the unbelievable diversity of which she was capable, and we're going to talk a little bit about that, you appreciate the sheer level of her intelligence and how in that community life, in the wisdom of the Benedictine life, they were able to recognize that, to harness it, to train it, and then put it to the good of the community and the good of the wider church. Not just for the church's benefit, but to make of Hildegard's immense gifts exactly that. A gift to the church, a gift to the community, but especially a gift to God. And so we're seeing her move rapidly a from humble young girl, somebody who was then trained to become a teacher or a prioress of the sisters, and then of course, around the age of 38, she became the actual head of the community of women at Disobodenberg. I think it's so important to honor that intellectual aspect of Hildegard, I mean the fact that she would have this ability like a sponge to absorb everything around her, as though it seems, and also to wed that with her spiritual life and those mystical experiences, and when she had, how can we say this, it was very unique in that it wasn't that she would have a vision of something. She would even say she doesn't see things ocularly, I mean something that she would have in front of her. No, it was something much more compelling in which it incorporated all of her. I mean not only the the spiritual aspect, but it brought in to play all that intellectual knowledge so that you would end up getting tomes and tomes and tomes of writing. Yes, that's exactly it. For her, while she was certainly conscious of her limited education, she understood that the knowledge that she possessed came from what she always referred to in the Latin as the umbra viventis luminis, or the shadow of the living light. And for her, this is not something that she was too eager or all that willing to write about, which is, as you certainly know, Chris, of all people, that's one of the great signs of the genuineness of spiritual gifts, that she was reluctant to talk about this extraordinary series of visions and mystical experiences that she began having as a young girl, but chose not to speak of until she actually began to share them with Jutta, then with her spiritual director who is a monk by the name of Vomar, who really I think was a good influence on her. And only when she was really in her 40s did she begin to describe and to transcribe so much of what she saw. And part of that I think was because here was somebody who was receiving these these visions, these mystical experiences from a very young age, but who wanted to ruminate on them, who wanted to meditate on them. And for her, then, it was the command to talk about these. And as she wrote in the shivyas, one of her greatest of her writings, she talks about the fiery light coming out of a cloudless sky that flooded her entire mind and inflamed, she said, her whole heart and her whole like a flame. And she understood at that moment the exposition of the books of the Psalter, the Gospel, the Old and the New Testaments, and it was by command that she made these visions known. But it was again out of humility, out of obedience to the voice that she did this. And the full scale of what she saw and what she began to teach to transcribe took up almost the whole of the rest of her life. And yet even at that moment, as she did so, what was she doing? She sought additional counsel in the discernment of the authenticity and the truth of what she was seeing. Why? Because she was concerned that they might not be of God or that they were mere illusions or even possible delusions brought on by herself or by the evil one. And that commitment to obedience, I think, stands her in such great standing in the history of the church among the mystics. But it also tells us that, as often has been the case with some of the mystics in history, there have been those positivists and scientists and psychologists who try to dismiss these mystical experiences. In Hildegard's case, what have they claimed? They have said that she was receiving these simply psychological aberrations or they were various forms of neurological problems leading up to migraines or a host of other possible issues. And yet the clarity of her visions, the specificity of them, and also the theological depth of them, demolish any such claims by scientists today and instead really forces to look at what exactly she was seeing. I don't doubt that there will be many out there over the next century particularly that could achieve their doctorates just by writing on different aspects of her work. And if you are at all a student of the Benedictine rule, you can begin to see in those visions those connections with the life that she lived out. I mean, this was very organic. It wasn't like this were just coming. Though they seem foreign to us, when you, potentially, when you begin to look at those visions, if you understand the time, if you have a proper translation and you know the rule, you begin to see a little bit better the clarity of what she's communicating. Yes, exactly. And we also appreciate the staggering scale of what she saw. I mean, she beheld as well the sacraments. She understood the virtues. She appreciated angels. She saw vice. She saw, as Pope Benedict XVI talked in his letter proclaiming her a doctor of the church, what did he say? He says that the range of vision of the mystic of Bingen was not limited to treating individual matters but was a global synthesis of the Christian faith. So he talks about that this is a compendium of salvation history, literally from the beginning of the universe until the very eschatological consummation of all of creation. As he says, God's decision to bring about the work of creation is the first stage on a long journey that unfolds from the constitution of the heavenly hierarchy until it reaches the fall of the rebellious angels and the sin of our first parents. So she's touching on the very core of who we are and the most important aspects of redemption of the kingdom of God and the last judgment. That the scale of this again, I think, is difficult for much of a modern mind to comprehend. And it tells us that we have to be very careful from our perch here and surrounded by technology and modernity that we perhaps have lost our ability to see the sheer scale of salvation history. That this abbess sitting on the Rhine in the 12th century was able to and then was able to communicate it with language that is surprisingly modern. Oh, let's talk about that language not only with words but with music and with art. I mean, this woman was able to express herself in all manners of creative activity. Yes, I mean, this is somebody that designed, created her own kind of language. It's sort of a combination of Latin and German, which is a medieval German. But she also composed hymns, more than 70 hymns. She composed sequences and antiphons, what became known as the symphonia harmoniae celestium, the symphony of the harmony of heavenly revelations. And not only were they simply composed because, well, her community would need music, they were very much a reflection of the things that she had seen. And she wrote a very memorable letter in 1178 to the prelates of the city of Mainz, and she talks about the fact that music stirs our hearts and engages our souls in ways we can't really describe. But we're taken beyond our earthly banishment back to the divine melody Adam knew when he sang with the angels when he was whole in God before his exile. So here she's as seemingly simple as a hymn, and connecting it to the vision, connecting it to salvation history, and connecting to something far deeper theologically. So her hymns ranged from the creation of the Holy Spirit, but she was especially fond of composing music in honor of the saints, and especially the Blessed Virgin Mary. Yeah, as we're coming to a conclusion on this particular episode, I just don't want to miss out on just a little bit of a tidbit. We could have called her a doctor, I mean, in a very real way, a physician. This woman, this wonderful gift to the church, gift to all of us, I mean, she had that appreciation of creation and actually even how it will work to heal. Yes, yes. Again, it's hard to overestimate her genius. Why? Because beyond her visions, beyond her abilities as a composer, here was somebody who combined her genius with practical need. Her community had specific needs for her gifts. And so what did she do? She wrote books on the natural sciences, she wrote books on medicine, she wrote books on music. She looked at the study of nature to assist her sisters. So the result was a natural history, a book on causes and cures, a book on how to put medicine together. And it's a fascinating reading because she talks about plants and the elements and trees and birds and mammals and reptiles. But all of it was to reduce all of this knowledge to very practical purposes, the medicinal values of natural phenomena. And then she also wrote in a book on causes and cures, which is written from the traditional medieval understanding of humors. She lists 200 diseases or conditions with different cures and remedies that tend mostly to be herbal with sort of recipes for how to make them. This is all from somebody who at that time was an abbess of not just one but two monasteries along the Rhine, who was also being consulted on popes to kings to common people who came to her for help. And this is somebody who at that time was also working for her own perfection in the spiritual life and in the perfection of the virtues and who is also continuing to reflect and meditate on the incredible vision she was receiving. So this is a full life, but it was a life given completely to the service of others. And of course, she'll have to have two episodes. We do. Thank you so much, Dr. But looking forward to part two Chris. You've been listening to the doctors of the church, the charism of wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunsen. To hear and or to download this program, along with hundreds of other spiritual formation programs, visit discerning hearts .com. This has been a production of discerning hearts. I'm your friend. This has been helpful for you that you will first pray for our mission. And if you feel us worthy, consider a charitable donation which is fully tax deductible to support our efforts. But most of all, we pray that you will tell a friend about discerning hearts .com and join us next time for the doctors of the church, the charism of wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunsen.
Audio
A highlight from DC28-Hildegarde-pt1
"Discerninghearts .com presents The Doctors of the Church, the terrorism of wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunsen. For over 20 years, Dr. Bunsen has been active in the area of Catholic social communications and education, including writing, editing, and teaching on a variety of topics related to church history, the papacy, the saints, and Catholic culture. He is the faculty chair at the Catholic Distance University, a senior fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, and the author or co -author of over 50 books, including the Encyclopedia of Catholic History and the best -selling biographies of St. Damien of Malachi and St. Kateri Tekakawisa. He also serves as a senior editor for the National Catholic Register and is a senior contributor to EWTN News. The Doctors of the Church, the terrorism of wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunsen. I'm your host, Chris McGregor. Welcome, Dr. Bunsen. Wonderful to be with you again, Chris. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about this particular doctor of the church who, it's rare, isn't it, in our lifetimes to have those saints elevated to the status of doctor who have quite a background like St. Hildegard Bingen. Yes, well, she is, of course, with John of Avila, one of the two of the newest doctors of the church proclaimed as such by Pope Benedict XVI, who has, I think, a special fondness for her. And as we get to know her, we certainly can understand why he holds her in such great repute and such great respect. It's easy to overlook the fact that in her lifetime, she was called the Sybil of the Rhine, and throughout that, the whole of the 12th century in which she lived. She was renowned for her visions, but she was especially loved and respected for her wisdom, the greatest minds of her age, and, of course, was renowned also for her great holiness. So this is a formidable figure in the medieval church, and somebody, I think, that we really need to look at today as we proceed with the reform and renewal of the church. I'll try to put this very sensitively when I say that her presence in our time is one that, unfortunately, was relegated maybe into a back corner by many because of those who tried to hijack, in some ways, her spirituality to try to move forward to certain agendas. Yes, I think that's a very diplomatic way of putting it. Hildegard, in the last 10 years or so, and Pope Benedict XVI, I think, helped lead the charge in this, has been reclaimed by the church. Her authentic writings, her authentic spirituality, and especially her love for the church and her obedience to the authority of the church have all been recaptured, reclaimed for the benefit of the entire church. It's absolutely true that over the previous decades, much as we saw with a few others, I'm thinking, for example, of a Julian of Norwich in England who lived a little after Hildegard, were sort of kidnapped by those with real agendas to try to portray Hildegard as a proto -radical feminist, as somebody who was hating of the church, who attempted to resist the teachings of the church, who rejected the teachings of the church. And yet, as we read her, as we come to appreciate her more fully, I think we can grasp her extraordinary gifts, but also her remarkable love for the church. She was one who allowed herself to be subjected to obedience, that wonderful, can we say it, a virtue, as well as a discipline. Absolutely, yeah. It's one of those ironies, again, to use that word, that here was somebody who was falsely claimed by feminists, who I think would have been just shocked at the notion of herself as a feminist, that she had instead a genuine love for the church, a profound mysticism. And you've hit on one of the key words that we're going to be talking about with her, and that is a perfection of the virtues of love for Christ and her obedience to the church, to the authority of the church in judging what is and authentic what is pure. And that, I think, holds her up as a great role model today when we have so many who are dissenting from the church and continue to cling to this notion of Hildegard as some sort of a herald of feminism in the church. I don't think I would understate it by saying that it was breathtaking in the fall of 2010 then when Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, began a series of Wednesday audiences on the holy women of the Middle Ages. And he began those reflections, especially on those who had such deep mystical prayer experiences, he began the audiences not with just one but two audiences on Hildegard. Yeah, he has made it very clear. He certainly did this as pope. He's done this throughout his life as a theologian, somebody who wants to make certain that the church recognizes and honors genius in all of his forms, but also profound holiness. And Pope Benedict, in that there's the set of audiences, especially regarding Hildegard, but I mean, when we run through the list of some of the great figures that he was looking at, he talked, for example, about Julian of Norwich, he covered Catherine of Siena, Brigid of Sweden, Elizabeth of Hungary, and of course Angela of Foligno, who just recently was canonized through equivalent canonization by Pope Francis. The gifts to the church, the contributions to the life of the church, to the holiness of the church by these remarkable women. It's something that we need to pause, and I really appreciate the fact that you want to do that, to credit Pope Benedict for doing that, but also again to turn our gaze to these extraordinary women. And it is significant that Hildegard of Bingen was included in that list. If you could, give us a sense of her time period. Well, she grew up in Germany and really was a member of the German nobility, and she belonged to the German feudal system. In other words, her father was a wealthy, powerful landowner at a time when owning land was everything. His name was Hildebert, and both in the service of, as the feudal system worked, a more powerful lord by the name of Meggenhard, who was Count of Spannheim. These are sort of dazzling names to people today, but what's really most important is that medieval feudal life in Germany was one of service, it was one of status, but this reflects on the upbringing of Hildegard, I think, in a into this noble environment. She had the opportunity to learn, to understand what it was to command, to know what it was to have special status, and yet from her earliest times, she displayed extraordinary intelligence, but also very powerful spiritual gifts and a desire for status conscious, as so many of the members of the feudal nobility were, and yet they recognized in their daughter the fact that she was called to something else other than the life of service and of status that they enjoyed. And for that reason, they offered her up, as was the custom of the time, as sort of a tithe to the church, as an oblet to the nearby Benedictine abbey of Disobodenburg, and she was only eight years old at the time, but that was the custom. And her life changed from that minute, but it was, I think, the greatest gift that her parents could have given her, because they placed her in exactly the environment that she needed the most to foster, really to develop her spiritual life, and all of the skills that she was given by God that she came to possess as an abbess and as a leading figure of the medieval church. The stability of the Benedictine role, that way of devoting time in your day, not only to work, the discipline of action, but then also to prayer, it really served her so well, didn't it? It did, and especially crucial in this was the fact that, as was again the wisdom of the Benedictines, they gave her over for her initial training to other women who were experienced in life, in the spiritual life, in the discipline of the Benedictine community, but also in the spiritual life they saw, I think, immediately needed to be developed in her. There was the first by a widow by the name of Uda, and then more important was another woman by the name of Uta of Spannheim, who was the daughter of Count Stefan of Spannheim. Now why is it that notable? It's notable because in Uta, not only did Hildegard receive a kind of spiritual mother, as well as a spiritual guide and mentor, but Uta was, being the daughter of nobility, clearly aware of Hildegard's background as well as her immense potential in dealing with other members of the nobility in future years. The position of abbess was one of great power. We don't encounter abbesses and abbots very much anymore, and yet because of the status of the Benedictine order, because of the lands it accumulated, but also because of its importance to the life of the community wherever you had a Benedictine monastery, abbots and abbesses acquired and wielded great influence in society and political life, economic life, and then of course their spiritual power. And Uta would have understood all of this, and over the next decades she helped train Hildegard in a life of prayer, of asceticism, but also of training the mind and personality to command, to lead with charity, and then of course to have the level of learning with the best they could give her to prepare her for the immense tasks that lay ahead. Let's talk about some of those tasks. It's an incredible time for a monastery life, and it would be affected by her example of how it could be transformed. Well Hildegard always seriously underestimated and sort of downplayed her own learning. She referred to herself as an indocte mulier or an unlearned woman, and yet while she may have had formal academic training that one might think of today, she nevertheless understood Latin, certainly the use of the Psalter. The Latin language of course was the language of the church. It was so much of the common language of ecclesiastical life, but she also continued to train other noble women who were sent to this community. And so when she was given, as they say, she took the veil from the Bishop of Bamberg when she was about 15 years old. From that point on, we can see a direct line of progress and advancement for Hildegard. This wasn't something that she was craving, but it was something I think that she took to quite naturally, both because of her training, both because of her family background, but also just because of her genius level IQ. I say genius level IQ because if you spend much time reading the works of Hildegard, the unbelievable diversity of which she was capable, and we're going to talk a little bit about that, you appreciate the sheer level of her intelligence and how in that community life, in the wisdom of the Benedictine life, they were able to recognize that, to harness it, to train it, and then put it to the good of the community and the good of the wider church. Not just for the church's benefit, but to make of Hildegard's immense gifts exactly that. A gift to the church, a gift to the community, but especially a gift to God. And so we're seeing her move rapidly a from humble young girl, somebody who was then trained to become a teacher or a prioress of the sisters, and then of course, around the age of 38, she became the actual head of the community of women at Disobodenberg. I think it's so important to honor that intellectual aspect of Hildegard, I mean the fact that she would have this ability like a sponge to absorb everything around her, as though it seems, and also to wed that with her spiritual life and those mystical experiences, and when she had, how can we say this, it was very unique in that it wasn't that she would have a vision of something. She would even say she doesn't see things ocularly, I mean something that she would have in front of her. No, it was something much more compelling in which it incorporated all of her. I mean not only the the spiritual aspect, but it brought in to play all that intellectual knowledge so that you would end up getting tomes and tomes and tomes of writing. Yes, that's exactly it. For her, while she was certainly conscious of her limited education, she understood that the knowledge that she possessed came from what she always referred to in the Latin as the umbra viventis luminis, or the shadow of the living light. And for her, this is not something that she was too eager or all that willing to write about, which is, as you certainly know, Chris, of all people, that's one of the great signs of the genuineness of spiritual gifts, that she was reluctant to talk about this extraordinary series of visions and mystical experiences that she began having as a young girl, but chose not to speak of until she actually began to share them with Jutta, then with her spiritual director who is a monk by the name of Vomar, who really I think was a good influence on her. And only when she was really in her 40s did she begin to describe and to transcribe so much of what she saw. And part of that I think was because here was somebody who was receiving these these visions, these mystical experiences from a very young age, but who wanted to ruminate on them, who wanted to meditate on them. And for her, then, it was the command to talk about these. And as she wrote in the shivyas, one of her greatest of her writings, she talks about the fiery light coming out of a cloudless sky that flooded her entire mind and inflamed, she said, her whole heart and her whole like a flame. And she understood at that moment the exposition of the books of the Psalter, the Gospel, the Old and the New Testaments, and it was by command that she made these visions known. But it was again out of humility, out of obedience to the voice that she did this. And the full scale of what she saw and what she began to teach to transcribe took up almost the whole of the rest of her life. And yet even at that moment, as she did so, what was she doing? She sought additional counsel in the discernment of the authenticity and the truth of what she was seeing. Why? Because she was concerned that they might not be of God or that they were mere illusions or even possible delusions brought on by herself or by the evil one. And that commitment to obedience, I think, stands her in such great standing in the history of the church among the mystics. But it also tells us that, as often has been the case with some of the mystics in history, there have been those positivists and scientists and psychologists who try to dismiss these mystical experiences. In Hildegard's case, what have they claimed? They have said that she was receiving these simply psychological aberrations or they were various forms of neurological problems leading up to migraines or a host of other possible issues. And yet the clarity of her visions, the specificity of them, and also the theological depth of them, demolish any such claims by scientists today and instead really forces to look at what exactly she was seeing. I don't doubt that there will be many out there over the next century particularly that could achieve their doctorates just by writing on different aspects of her work. And if you are at all a student of the Benedictine rule, you can begin to see in those visions those connections with the life that she lived out. I mean, this was very organic. It wasn't like this were just coming. Though they seem foreign to us, when you, potentially, when you begin to look at those visions, if you understand the time, if you have a proper translation and you know the rule, you begin to see a little bit better the clarity of what she's communicating. Yes, exactly. And we also appreciate the staggering scale of what she saw. I mean, she beheld as well the sacraments. She understood the virtues. She appreciated angels. She saw vice. She saw, as Pope Benedict XVI talked in his letter proclaiming her a doctor of the church, what did he say? He says that the range of vision of the mystic of Bingen was not limited to treating individual matters but was a global synthesis of the Christian faith. So he talks about that this is a compendium of salvation history, literally from the beginning of the universe until the very eschatological consummation of all of creation. As he says, God's decision to bring about the work of creation is the first stage on a long journey that unfolds from the constitution of the heavenly hierarchy until it reaches the fall of the rebellious angels and the sin of our first parents. So she's touching on the very core of who we are and the most important aspects of redemption of the kingdom of God and the last judgment. That the scale of this again, I think, is difficult for much of a modern mind to comprehend. And it tells us that we have to be very careful from our perch here and surrounded by technology and modernity that we perhaps have lost our ability to see the sheer scale of salvation history. That this abbess sitting on the Rhine in the 12th century was able to and then was able to communicate it with language that is surprisingly modern. Oh, let's talk about that language not only with words but with music and with art. I mean, this woman was able to express herself in all manners of creative activity. Yes, I mean, this is somebody that designed, created her own kind of language. It's sort of a combination of Latin and German, which is a medieval German. But she also composed hymns, more than 70 hymns. She composed sequences and antiphons, what became known as the symphonia harmoniae celestium, the symphony of the harmony of heavenly revelations. And not only were they simply composed because, well, her community would need music, they were very much a reflection of the things that she had seen. And she wrote a very memorable letter in 1178 to the prelates of the city of Mainz, and she talks about the fact that music stirs our hearts and engages our souls in ways we can't really describe. But we're taken beyond our earthly banishment back to the divine melody Adam knew when he sang with the angels when he was whole in God before his exile. So here she's as seemingly simple as a hymn, and connecting it to the vision, connecting it to salvation history, and connecting to something far deeper theologically. So her hymns ranged from the creation of the Holy Spirit, but she was especially fond of composing music in honor of the saints, and especially the Blessed Virgin Mary. Yeah, as we're coming to a conclusion on this particular episode, I just don't want to miss out on just a little bit of a tidbit. We could have called her a doctor, I mean, in a very real way, a physician. This woman, this wonderful gift to the church, gift to all of us, I mean, she had that appreciation of creation and actually even how it will work to heal. Yes, yes. Again, it's hard to overestimate her genius. Why? Because beyond her visions, beyond her abilities as a composer, here was somebody who combined her genius with practical need. Her community had specific needs for her gifts. And so what did she do? She wrote books on the natural sciences, she wrote books on medicine, she wrote books on music. She looked at the study of nature to assist her sisters. So the result was a natural history, a book on causes and cures, a book on how to put medicine together. And it's a fascinating reading because she talks about plants and the elements and trees and birds and mammals and reptiles. But all of it was to reduce all of this knowledge to very practical purposes, the medicinal values of natural phenomena. And then she also wrote in a book on causes and cures, which is written from the traditional medieval understanding of humors. She lists 200 diseases or conditions with different cures and remedies that tend mostly to be herbal with sort of recipes for how to make them. This is all from somebody who at that time was an abbess of not just one but two monasteries along the Rhine, who was also being consulted on popes to kings to common people who came to her for help. And this is somebody who at that time was also working for her own perfection in the spiritual life and in the perfection of the virtues and who is also continuing to reflect and meditate on the incredible vision she was receiving. So this is a full life, but it was a life given completely to the service of others. And of course, she'll have to have two episodes. We do. Thank you so much, Dr. But looking forward to part two Chris. You've been listening to the doctors of the church, the charism of wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunsen. To hear and or to download this program, along with hundreds of other spiritual formation programs, visit discerning hearts .com. This has been a production of discerning hearts. I'm your friend. This has been helpful for you that you will first pray for our mission. And if you feel us worthy, consider a charitable donation which is fully tax deductible to support our efforts. But most of all, we pray that you will tell a friend about discerning hearts .com and join us next time for the doctors of the church, the charism of wisdom with Dr. Matthew Bunsen.
Op Persoonlijke Titel
A highlight from Caroline van der Plas
"Up, person de ketitel, a respect van vlees en bloot, for the keike die we luestern, and the luesterer die go keiken. Keike and luestern are... Caroline, van der Plas, welcome! Thank you! Eindeke eef rist? Euhm, neewen ik sie tom ik jou. Haha, there you are. Dit is heedleker eef een sprekjeso. Ja. Euhm. Euhm, dit is heedleker eef een sprekjeso. Euhm, neewen ik sie tom ik jou. Haha. Euhm, neewen ik sie tom ik jou. Haha. That doesn't happen all the time, but we do our best for it. That's a lot of work to do. So, since the general over -winning, with the rules... ...a club in the Netherlands... ...is it enough? No. No, the over -winning of 15 months... ...that took all the provinces together... ...and the United States... ...the formation of the colleges of the United States... ...the first came, and we said no. It was a long day for now. All uni, all cities and states... ...and all cities together... ...took a lot of time... ...and we came together in the same way. That's right. And Caroline for the Plus is the overall winner. Yes. You come to the overall table. So sick. Yes, yes, sicker. So we're going to take five or six years of Israel... ...in a module. Yes, clubs. What do you need? What do you need? Now, I have a lot of work to do. I work here, naturally... ...and a lot of work by income citizens... ...because, yes, I don't belong here. I come with my parents... ...and I also like to see that I'm still living here. I have a lot of work to do. Of course, Israel has a lot of work... ...by the opening of MBO here... ...and they say to me... ...you don't have time for that... ...but I'm still living here. I'm still living here. That's why I have a lot of work to do. It's a lot of work for people... ...a lot of work for people. I have a lot of input, so... ...yes, I still have a lot of work to do... ...with my kids. Well, that's it. We're really looking forward to it. You're a journalist. Yes. Are you more? No. I'm not more. No, you're not. You're more of a journalist... ...than a journalist. Yes. Who is more of a journalist than you? Yes, my father. My father was a journalist... ...a sports journalist... ...by David Dagblad... ...and, yes, at the same time... ...I also worked with a lot of sports... ...and so on... ...and I found out... ...that I really liked what he did... ...and that I really liked the Redaxi. What kind of sport was that? I've played a lot of amateur football... ...a lot of times in David... ...and I also played with the Eagles... ...because I think it's the most important thing... ...to be able to drive a motorcycle... ...and to be able to drive the Redaxi... ...and, yes, it's a little... ...but I also really liked the Redaxi... ...and I found out that I really liked... ...a lot of people... ...with a lot of spinners... ...and what -not... ...and coffee halls... ...for the journalists... ...and so on. I also liked the chocolate milk... ...because I thought... ...that I would also be able to help... ...with the KISS Rave. And so on... ...I really liked it. So it's a lot of fun. So it's not so much the journalistic... ...in the interest of where I'm going. No, my father gave me that offer. And he said... ...that you can't do anything... ...and you're not going to do anything... ...and you're not going to do anything... ...and you can't do anything else... ...and you have to pay for it. So it's a lot of the Redaxi work... ...and then the work comes up. So we all have to do something else. And... ...no, that's what I just said. Yeah. The question of whether or not... ...you're going to stick to it... ...can I ask? Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. I'm going to ask you to do something else. And say... ...you're not going to do anything else. No, no, no. I don't know if you know... ...the journalists... ...or the younger generation... ...with which I contacted China. I don't want to get into a Gladiator List... ...but I think it's also a big part of the younger generation. You know, younger generation always SCREAMS... ...about whether you're going to talk about their kind and... ... Their own states and things like that. So we can really talk about younger generations... ...who are going to talk about their own state. I always think that the criticism... ...and everyday else is applied to younger generations... ...so sometimes we think of younger generations as Russian... ...as being assume that it's not just you. We have had insane fish. They don't mind that that's not the best. We can do it without drugs. But we still have to find a way to double this on paper instantly In the mayoralpanels. Can you repeat the question in my context? Yeah well, our publictime support goes back to the start of the setup of the FC times, and to prevent so many types of emergencies. it works .pparang The pattern will break, in the states too fast. This will be ideal cherry grass, but that has to be done spiritually. They are very special for the society. This thing isDexter from the point of view of thephone. What about the speaker? There are several questions that you can answer. At least for a Rocky Buss. It's not that it's a big name, it's just a realistic name. But that's what we're talking about. Maybe if we're talking about problems? Yes. What do you think about that? I think that I'm 33 years old now. Yes, I'm not, but I'm an adult now. Yes, you are. Yes, I know, but... You don't have anything else to say? No, no, my ears are not really working. No, I don't have anything else to say. I'm not sure, but I'm not sure. But it was more that we were actually not really talking about the fact that we were talking about the fact that we were talking about the fact that this restaurant, the cafe, which is called Dina Weis, was a place that was closed for the first time. It was closed for the first time. And now that it's closed, the cafe is still closed, so it's hard to say. And you're from Bine, too? Yes, that was for him a question that is not working. There is no real time for it. No. There comes, well, a normal work up your ass. Yeah. And what you can do is take a stand from a bisturier to an angst for a new party. Yeah. The ground is open. Each year, at least, there's a tour back of the Bible, and stuff like that, so there's no real time for it. There is no real time for this party. It's open. So, it's a bisturier with the hand behind it. And that's what, what's the name of Caroline's bisturier? Her lance bisturier, that's what you're talking about. Yeah. No, it's a bisturier, but I think that we're seeing that we're already open to it. We're always open to it, that we're always looking at it, and that's what's next. And, of course, it's been a long time. And that's what we're seeing is the need for employees. And we're seeing employees that are always looking for a new job, a new job, a new job, a new job, So we're not too far away. So, we're not too far away. So, we're finally in the middle of the day. And, of course, we're having a good time with the candidates. We're having a lot of fun. We'll be doing some work with the candidates, we'll be doing some good things, and we'll be doing some good things. And we'll have a tour where we'll be able to get to know the candidates. So, yeah. Yeah, I think that I think that yeah, what is it? I think that it's a very important thing for the candidates. Because I see it on the wall. I'm not a fan of the wall. Yeah. I think that I think that we're not going to be able to do anything or do anything. Or, I guess so. But, what's your job for your audience? What's your job for your kids? Well, for my first job, I was really lucky. I thought I had a job, of course, and I thought I was very lucky. But I thought that it would be nice for my audience to be able to do something. And it would be nice to be able to do something if it were honest, if it were a technique, or something for my audience. What was it? Yeah, I think I was in the middle of the class. I was 13, 12, 13 years old. I was in the middle of the class. I was 13, 12, 13 years old. When I was really lucky. I didn't have any other things to do. I didn't go to school or other things to do. So, that was my thing. But, I did it. I got to have my own thing. And I was interested in it. I wasn't interested in it. I wasn't interested in it. I was very interested in music, pop stars, French, that kind of thing. So, what kind of music were you interested in? Aspen, ballet, and The Renderer, Ultra Fox, U2. That was the biggest thing. Were you interested in music? Yeah, I wasn't interested in music. I was interested in Spotify, so I wasn't interested in music. I thought, oh yeah, you can't do anything amazing. You have to do things in your head. You have to do everything amazing. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing that you have to do in your head. Yeah. on the other hand, you have to do things intuitively. Yeah. And that's another thing in politics. Yeah. No, I have a lot of things that in my head are the biggest things that the United States was in. The United States was free and I wasn't interested in music. I wasn't interested in music at all. I was interested in music. But I didn't have the best set of shows. I had a lot of things that I had done that the United States was free. I was not interested in music. It was good. Good. It was It was good. I was music. It was good. I didn't set of shows. The United States was free. The father was free. Man was free. The author was free. Most of the were free. In fact after that I was excited about my would you be more clear with the history of the place, the land and the state? Yes, I was at my base, but in the period before I came, I was in overland. My father was there in 2013, overland. So he didn't have much money. But my brother, my mom and my friend Henk, they visited as well. And they told me to come back. I was there in 2013, and I was there in 2013, and I was there in 2013. So I was there in 2013, and I was there in 2013. But I was there in 2013, and I was there in 2013. And they had a great experience. They came up with this idea of the Great Lakes. So, yeah. But who is that in the region that believes everything about it? And is there no state for it? Yes, then you have to think about what I'm talking about. Yes. Yes, it's a little different. If a person lives, has a loss of the right to be part of it, they have to go back home with a little bit of a miss. There's also the period that you're sick. It's going to be very difficult. Is it going to be very difficult? No, it's not. I think it's going to be very difficult. But, yeah, overland. In a health care process, I can take care of it. Yes, I think it will have a lot of impact on my health. I think that, with a lot of people, it's difficult to get enough of it. You have to take care of it. You have to take care of it. It's a little bit difficult to get enough of it. But if you see that you have a lot of pain and loss of health, that is a lot harder. That is not a good idea. That I think is a little bit hard. have That you a lot of pain and loss of health. That you don't have a lot of pain, that you're sick. And that's what I really want to hear, from the fact that it's over -layed, that it's all over the place. Is it a sort of good off -site? That you have a lot of pain? Yes, for sure. That's what I wanted to hear. A hundred percent. Overall, it's what I want to hear. That's what I want to hear. If someone has a heart attack and is sick, then they don't have the person who is sick. But you have to take care of it. That's what I want. That's what I want to hear. That's what I want to hear. And if they do that, then they will have a lot of pain. And that's what I want to hear. A lot of things can be explained. And it's sort of off -site, in the sense of, no, we don't have a lot of pain. We don't have a lot of pain. So that's a big deal. Yes, that's a big deal. A big deal. A lot of people do that. And that's a big deal. For someone who has a lot of pain, that they don't have a lot of pain. But I really want to hear it. And that's what I really want to hear. It's a very important moment that you have met Okaa. And you have to think about what it can mean in one day. And you have to work with it. You have to work with it. So you can take care of it. All of that will happen. You have to work with Okaa. And if it works, then it's not going to work. And that really is a real fact. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. So it's an important moment. Our lives and our practices will work together. So if you have a partner, or maybe even a partner, you have to think about it. If it doesn't work, it's not going to work. And realize that people don't have a lot of pain. No, they can't. No. And you don't have a lot of pain. Yes. You have to have a lot of pain. No, no. A lot. A lot of pain. A lot of pain. A lot of pain. Yes. Yes. No, but I've been very much involved in my family. My direct family. My sons. My mother. My brother. My life. That I really feel very good. That it's going to work. In the end, it's a very difficult thing to do. And how I want to do it. Is the state of your life, well, on your own right. Or on your own right. But if my own right is there, well, on your own right. That's it. I find it very difficult. That you have to be good at your own right. And after all, especially from my mother, my friend, my kids, have you ever felt yourself? Yes, it's a good thing. It's a good thing for me. It's a good thing that I'm on the court. I'm in a burnout. That I overcome my own right. That's what I'm talking about. Yes, I know. I'm a good man. I don't want to sit in the bibber as a rich guy at the bank. But if I'm going to be able to do it, it's a good thing. I'm a little bit of a man, but I'm a good man. If I can do it myself, I can do it myself. It's a good thing that my son can do it himself. I'm a big man. I'm a little bit of a man. I'm good at my own right. And I find it very difficult. I find it very difficult for people to do it myself. Yes, because you go to the middle, you have a hope in Bangladesh for a lot of people who are living in the States. That's a political point. But, it's a very big challenge for people to be in the States and be able to do it. And for people to be in the States, I think it belongs to you. Yes, it does. Yes, I think... ...you feel bad in your life, or have bad in your life, then... ...it's as if you make a thing out of it, that you think... ...is it really a bad thing, or is it a drug? And I think, no, it's totally not a bad thing. The people in my life are like a group. I have other things to do. That's why I think it belongs to you. But that's what's wrong, I think. I have a lot of talk about what the ungriving of my fund is... ...but now it's more about my base. My father was a journalist. He was a doctor. My mother was a reporter. She was a reporter. A CDR. A CDR, yes. You can't blame it. You can't blame it, then. No, yes, yes. I feel that it's really a bad thing. And we can work together. We can work together. But that's not the case. No, it's not that. I think it's a drug. I think it's a drug... ...to realize that people... ...who have a letter on their hands... ...have to pay for it. I think it's a bad thing. So I don't think it's a drug. There's no social media. But I think it's a bad thing. I'm a bit scared. But we don't have that. I think it's a bad thing. Yes, it's a bad thing. It's what you're saying. Yes, it's true. It's true. But it's true here. It's true. It's true. Like Savannah was talking about. Or like a little girl. I think it's a bad thing. I think it's a bad thing. I think it's a bad thing. And then there's politics. And then there's politics. I don't think it's a bad thing. But I'm aware of politics. That's what I'm talking about. People are asking for money and money. And that's what's coming out. Irish blood. Yes, I think it's a bad thing. Yes, yes. Is that a thing you're talking about? That you're not talking about Irish blood? In my personal life? Yes, of course. We have a lot of Irish blood. We have a lot of Dutch families. But I also have a lot of Irish families. And they say that I'm poor. But when they say that I'm poor, they say that I have a lot of other problems. In family, my my mother used to say that she had children. She used to work in a mail factory. She had a lot of children. And she had children. She was very poor. So she was very poor. But it was all right. It was all right. It was all right. Everyone was welcome. It was in the eyes of nature. She was very poor. She was very poor. She was the oldest. She was very poor. But she was very poor. That's what she thought. She was poor. And she was very poor. She was only eight years old. And she wasn't very old. She had two brothers of the Philippines. But she was very poor. And she was very poor. She was young. And she was very poor. She was straight and had a coma. And that was what she knew. She had three children. She was very poor. And she was very ill, she had a lot of children. Yes, she was very ill. No, she was very poor. She was a child. And in Limerick, she used to think that I that think the state of life, there is a state of life all over the world. The state of life in the middle of the channel. It's a big part of the roadblocks. It's a big part of the society with meteors. And that's why it's so much more controlled. And not only that, but also the IRAs. They were based on the boomers. And as we know, a boomers was created. There were a lot of strangers and strackers. That was a period when a lot of people... Yeah, a lot of people were in the Republic of Ireland.
WNYC 93.9 FM
"eight years ago" Discussed on WNYC 93.9 FM
"Melissa Harris Perry and we're back with the takeaway. I've been talking with author Susan Kamei about her book. When Can we Go back to America? I wanted to know why so many Americans tend to ignore these events in our nation's history. Susan, what do you make of our selective memory? And when I say our selective memory, I want to encompass a lot of communities. Those of us in media who might not want to remember the US media publications that created and stoked fear of the so called yellow peril or the selective memory of those of us who visit size of slavery, But I've never taken a trip to the racetrack, Sorta Heart Mountain. Actually stand in the places where this happened, or maybe just the selective memory of those who might want to remember FDR is the greatest president while ignoring this part of what happened. Why do you think we do that? Yeah, well, so there's many aspects I think to this one is that, uh, we can't remember what we don't know. So first, I think there's the element and this was a great motivation for me. With this opportunity to live. A book of the scope is too First have it be known to to tell the stories. And then, of course, so many of these experiences the one that Secretary Mineta a personally was describing Happened. Eight years ago. And so we have a I think of responsibility to No those stories to to bring them forward and to, uh and to share them and to learn and to learn by those by those lessons and that we learned from the stories And how they relate to other communities that are experiencing similar kinds of patterns of social on the on the wrong side of social behavior. So many of the communities of Japanese American communities before the war Were erased by the incarceration, for instance, Uh, there was a very vibrant Japanese American community in Tacoma, Washington, and for lots of reasons that community after the war did not get reconstituted. The community that did come back to Los Angeles in Little Tokyo came back in a different form. And so there's also this concept of of community loss and eraser and in some cases have not ever been. Reformed and and that aspect of our society has been has been lost. So I think there's um There's these consequences to be aware of. And that, uh, knowing what the personal effect Has been and the intergenerational Impact has been is an important part of what my efforts have been about two Can you contextualized As you've talked a couple of times about repeating our history, Can you contextualize is within the context of the rise in anti Asian and anti Asian American hate. Here in the U. S over the past few years. Sure. Well, uh, the context of the Of the Japanese American immigration that started in the 18 eighties. Was at that time, an anti Asian environment. Uh, the Japanese immigrants walked into the prejudice and discrimination that had already taken place. Against the first wave of Chinese immigrants, and so As as the awareness of just recently of the rise of anti Asian hate and violence has come up. I think it's been an important thing to remember that this is not the first time that that that the Asian American community has experienced it and that there's been a longstanding pattern of this so Uh, Secretary Mineta because of his experience. Was able to share that with President Bush. And then in the immediate aftermath of the 9 11 attacks and calls from the public that started right away once the identity of the of the terrorists Became known that well, we have to keep people who look like Muslims and middle Easterners off airplanes. And in fact, we should round them up and and detained them. And there were expressed references to what we did this in World War two were at war. Now we need to do this again. These are these are concerns what was called then in World War two of military necessity, and now the phrase is of national security. And it was because of President Bush's awareness of what happened in World War two uh, and the personal connection with with Secretary Mineta story that influenced President Bush's reaction and he has been quoted as saying. We're and we're not going to do what happened to norm in 1942 and had the F A. A under secretary, and it is ah direction. Issue, uh, an email to the airlines that reminded the airlines and the airport personnel that they should not be discriminating and that The policies for airline security still need to comply with all the legal requirements of of non discrimination. So we do have some experiences where some examples where We can't stop the bad history from repeating, But I think this takes the collective will to to remember these to remember these examples and to connect them. Susan Kamei, author of When Can We Go Back to America? Thank you for joining us. Thank you. My pleasure. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for hanging with us today. There was a lot of heavy news, so I'm glad.
The Hockey PDOcast
"eight years ago" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"He was on and suddenly he looks like the alec martinez of eight years ago and he's been phenomenal fit to the point where now it's like i'm saying like it's a total mistake if they don't find a way to bring this guy back and in these playoffs he's been key for he's he's made some offensive place he's been scoring on the power play. You wouldn't think of him as a power play guy. But he's he's got his little office over there on the right circle and just rips one timers and he's he's nailed a few of them and the other part of it is. I don't know what his injuries but he is. Battling through something that is. I believe to be significant and part of the reason. I've heard some things that aren't like solid enough to report but also what makes me believe that. He's battling through a lot is he has not touched the ice since the playoffs started except for a game he hasn't missed a game but aside from pregame warmups and the sixty minutes on of hockey. He has not touched the ice for a morning skate. An off day skate optional. Nothing he has not touched the ice. And that's not like alec martinez. He's usually out there almost time. So he's clearly battling through something and they're getting him ready for those games and the train staff is doing whatever they have to do to get him out there. But the fact that he's playing dealing with whatever he's dealing with and he's laying in front of six seven eight nine shots. A game is just tells you like. That's that's what that guy brings to this team..
Skeptiko - Science at the Tipping Point
"eight years ago" Discussed on Skeptiko - Science at the Tipping Point
"Newton brian wice and others where they realized that to deal with the issues faced by their patients of with very psychological psychiatric issues that by doing of hypnotic regression in uncovering memories of past lives. You start to explain and understand. Why certain challenges are there in this lifetime and only that you gain the tools to start to heal them so this is not some kind of idol armchair philosophy question of you know. Afterlife and reincarnation are they real or not Just to tell us what happens when we die. It's a much bigger question of how do we live the lives. We have here and now day to day. How do we make choices. How do we see ourselves in relation to ship to others and to the universe and i would argue that this kind of expanded of vision of study of consciousness. allows us to greatly expand our own kind of self vision of our relationship with the universe and really how to act how to be Think of ourselves so that when we come to the end of a life of a physical body we don't get that extreme shock you having your body die and all of a sudden realize you're more conscious than you've ever been before and damned. Did i waste that life. Following a falsehood that was promoted by material of scientific community just because they're theoretical models were inadequate and they couldn't figure out what the empirical data was telling them doesn't mean we have to just have give up and pretend total ignorance and follow this materialist. mindset down into the abyss. No this is about. And as i said earlier with placebo effect and healing It's such an extraordinary capacity to kind of improve ourselves and gain health and wholeness why in the world would we keep pursuing a very limited disproven worldview like materialism i mean essentially it would should have been banned from the world eight years ago with the advent of quantum physics materialism really has died at a lot of materials. Have not read the memo yet. But it's an absolute fact when you study..
I Weigh with Jameela Jamil
"eight years ago" Discussed on I Weigh with Jameela Jamil
"Have a book coming out where you have taken all of these life lessons. We even included your childhood diary and trays which is such a brave and vulnerable thing to do up. My childhood diary entries was so disturbing than i literally burned. Eight years ago was like no one can ever find these. No one can ever gotten this. Is i never want to see this again. This is just. I was such a twist. But you've you've created this book. That documents your kind of journey through understanding neurology and something that i think is so interesting and this has been like a part of my experience of you. That has just been so fruitful a mind blowing is your dedication to understanding the actual function of the brain. Not just the emotional language not just the emotional tools but part of your recovery has been actually understanding what brain a doing. Well our brains are built to do. Survival mechanisms are and really getting into the weeds of neuroscience. It's been like watching you watching everyone. You've interviewed all of the pieces. You've gone and spoken all of the things that you have done. It has been like watching you. Essentially a phd in near diko very own you'll very vh day and neuroscience and psychology fascinating. I honestly think the root of all change is education And when i was lying in bed unable to move. I so i've got to understand what's happening. Because our bodies are brilliant on how brains brilliant to the problem is is that we are living lifestyles that are not conducive to healthy bodies and brains and suddenly when you understand what is going on you go. Oh my god of couse couth happen to me. Then of course always feeling anxious. It's so normal. My brain was actually working. It was work. It was doing what it's supposed to be doing. The problem is actually neighbor. Needs change my external environment. And it's i did. The brain has got three inputs. Bottom up you've got obviously jeans and then utrition you've got top down when your thoughts and your thought health and how you can regulate emotions and then you have external inputs and you know all you in a safe environment. What's going on if for example just recently gone through a break up. Of course you will be going to the ring and suddenly to understand the up. Brain is melting pot of all of these different inputs. You are able to develop so much more compassion for yourself and for me. It was like they're the complete change of my life from not knowing how my balaji walked and then suddenly starting to learn.
Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"eight years ago" Discussed on Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"She said i was like well. I think it's a horrible idea and he went cool. We're investing in it so he didn't listen to me and this happens all the time. According to her. The actress confirmed that she in culture went into bitcoin more than eight years ago. Admitting that initially she was concerned that bitcoin was not fdic. Insured you know. Coach tried to convince her that that was the exact point. So good. and this is the crazy thing. If your risk adverse that actually puts you into a lower tax bracket right Effectively or you make less money over your lifetime. There are certain points where you want to take that reduce your risk but especially early on in your life you should be putting should be taking more risky action because more risky action ends up in the long term. Me you're not making bad decisions With you end up having more wealth because the more risky take the more money can potentially make from those risks and opportunities right right right. This is this is done. The 401k plans retirement employer. When you're young you wanna go with like low risk so you can build up your your and the closer you get to retirement age the more aggressive you wanna be so you wanna revisit that every couple years with your employer and go. Oh well i'm getting closer to retirement. Now let's crank this thing up a little bit in the the risk department absolutely. Yeah and it's funny because a lot of people don't really they don't understand you know bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. And it's like you know a lot of the things i say. They're not applicable to just crypto.
Virtually Amazing
"eight years ago" Discussed on Virtually Amazing
"Because they're irrelevant or I don't need really need them And then in terms of learning how to automate those processes. I think these the beauty of tools like zappia and microsoft power old mates and integra matt and automate adopt all of these tools. That their no code. So you don't need to be a developer or a a program to learn how to to use them so you know. Sometimes there is a little bit of a learning curve but if you're doing it regularly and taking the time it's like it's like anything isn't it that you know The invest a little bit of time and trying to learn how to do something Yeah the benefits are a massive. As far as i'm concerned i agree and you know. Eight years ago pre zappia days we used to use In the project management world something called middleware. Which would do exactly the same thing as up here. Which would connect these big commercial database oracle and sap with other internal systems because there was no natural link. It just speeds up your business but don't know where you'd agree kelly. There are times when automation is not the solution. And that's when you need to do that kind of nurturing relationship building because automation doesn't replace. That does it. So when you're talking about like the one on one with people right. Yeah i mean i do agree. Partly that definitely anything. That should have a human doing that. Particular thing. she definitely should never be replaced by automation. But i think what some businesses that perhaps if they have a little bit of resistance from a themselves internally about putting in place new technology because you think oh my god well what what if it goes wrong or whatever. It doesn't do the things that i wanted to do. Is i'm going to lose control But i think one big thing in terms of them being able to engage this stuff in trying to put in place or or embrace automation is That they're not gonna lose their jobs over automation. All is one of those things that helps you to eliminate all of that repetitive. And yet all the drudge that you think. Oh my god. I can't deal with this again today. Because i've got to do this over and over and over is just killing me That's more time spent engaging with customers yup bringing revenue into the business and for the business owner that stuff being better more engaged in the in the jobs that they're doing so they've got to spend less money on recruiting because essentially they've got staff that want to do the jobs that they're there to do and you know they're not doing. All of the minority of things makes me think of it and they go description that makes me think about the argument. For outsourcing as a business owner. I'm a small business. They're now outsourcing the drudge work to. va stuff that. i don't wanna do. I outsource we. Va and then. That's kind of like the next step..
LifePix Relationships With ST
"eight years ago" Discussed on LifePix Relationships With ST
"It's a reason for how the retracted and that reason is related. I ready to the to the victim deserving of the act. Because where were you. were you drinking. How much you drink being. What will you wearing. And those with questions. And so i needed to myself. I read inwards. Because i thought that i was i had that something wrong. Yeah even though they were so wrong. It's taken me almost twenty years. That was eight years ago and be sticking the almost almost twenty years for me to accept. That was a violation only very recently. If i believe that it was something that that gets me will. So what was that thing that made you realize that it really was against you might children. I think you know being a parent. I start thinking about my children in the future and how i can protect them in how i can guide them grew them and in the process of thinking i parent myself except that you mentioning a life for myself as i would imagine for my children and then i realized truly realize on the inside that i didn't do anything if my children had done those things that i did. I still wouldn't have thought that was their fault him widely myself for it and so that was the force that that's how it started speaking out and i thought that was some story to tell him historic share. Yeah i love that. It's so beautiful literally going and re parenting yourself and viewing the things from a different perspective so when you met danielle than what happened. That made you decide to say like be able to talk about it and realized that. It's not so much than why i think we. I started talking body. Because i had issues. The i was suffering from bedie's did not knowing now suffering over the and i had all these trust issues in had issues to security commitment receiving affection. I didn't believe that he could love me because damaged so i would have all the information in our last year. Here it is..
Be-YOU-tiful Adaptive Warrior
"eight years ago" Discussed on Be-YOU-tiful Adaptive Warrior
"Its creative. And i just. I really enjoyed and knows a pretty special time. My life to just be able to absorb sponginess absorb all this amazing good information and the right stuff as camera. Technology changes know social media print. Magazines go the things that he instilled in me. Nots changed since about the lateness about relationships. Well in your recent ones with your lighting those pictures of crashing waves and the white is incredible. But i would say to if you hadn't taken the bull by the horns in that class that card. Yoke called him and so that's again that's For anybody listening you know. Sometimes it seems like just you know. Some people are just bored. Lucky but i think it's not about that as much as it's Willing to step out even a comfort zone in. Oh that's that whole uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. You don't know the answer will be but you decided to make that call where it led was golden and maybe it wouldn't let anywhere and you would have just gone a different path and that would have been but at least you did and so i. I truly believe that. Everything's about personal relationships. I think it is about extending kindness before kinds may be extended to you and and building that and not burning bridges and really. I mean what it took was five seconds to dial in those numbers to say. Heidi remember me and then your life just decided to go that way right which is actually part of the journey and what i love about vice now. I would never have expected this eight years ago from me. Well it's just enjoy. The ride in sumer takes us and people. I'm getting you meet like you and some other people around the world. It's been incredible. Because i'm not afraid either..
Talk About Talk
"eight years ago" Discussed on Talk About Talk
"Oh that's still showing up as your best self. In my opinion that's being a professional. I don't feel like reading this or preparing for this presentation or i don't feel like teaching this class today where people. I'm not in the mood right now. I wish i could just go. Sit down and watch. Tv sure but then you say to yourself. Why am i doing this. And who do i need to be and then when the answer to that is i'm a professional if identify myself as a professional that means that i behave as a grown woman and go do the work at that moment. That is showing it despite best. Because i'm a professional. And i show up when i i keep my promise you keep your promise. I love that answer. I was not expecting you to say that. But that that's absolutely true. Sometimes are bestself is just the one. That's barely showing up. But we do. Yeah so let's just back up for a minute and the other thing that i'm hearing is being intentional about our intentions right and i i'm actually thinking if we're really really focused on our practice than we almost need to have a mindset of practicing our practice yes there's humility to all this to you know a yoga practice makes you so humble and it makes you question convention or stop to think why you've accepted certain things. I was doing a challenging yoga practice with a teacher. I love last week and we came in to oppose that was a combination. And it wasn't he took us through it very slowly to get there okay. It wasn't an acrobatic class. We built up to it when we got to this postal. it was an arm balancing poles. But then you put one thoai up on your forearm as you're balancing on both hands and in your arms and then the opposite leg shuts back now nadine eight years ago. That's very fair. Eight years ago would have been like. Oh i can't do it. What's wrong with me..
Scoops with Danny Mac
"eight years ago" Discussed on Scoops with Danny Mac
"Minutes of of of stuff happening then you can go get a drink and use the restroom and more minutes. You know exactly how. I'll give you an example of and i don't know a lot of people don't like soccer but soccer's a it's big in saint louis relative to a lot of other cities in the country But the it was. Probably i dunno seven or eight years ago when i still lived in chicago and you know my schedule weird like yours is and when the baseball off season was happening you have a day off like tuesday..
WBZ NewsRadio 1030
"eight years ago" Discussed on WBZ NewsRadio 1030
"Real estate markets now with super low long term interest rates and where we build its booming founded in 2006, with a 15 year track record in Ri a gives you steady cash flow back by $1.2 billion of new construction development are a is accepting investors for our class, a real estate fund. Your received reliable 10% return electronic payments passive tax deferred income with bonuses to 21% on prime Residential buildings, your inflation protected with large rental buildings and diversified in 18. Prime real estate developments. Avoiding stock market risk. Call us now and do the math on our prime developments. See for yourself in our idea. Come do the math. It works just called to 012102727 That's 2012102727 and offer to buy or sell. Any security is only made by a private placement Memorandum. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Returns or annualized national is a real estate development firm csaid in our area. Yeah. 1877 colors. Kids. Okay, our ass cause kids white seven setting cars. Your kids don't eight years ago today White $77 for kids. Okay, ask our kids. Wide 77 cars for kids doing your car till you're better programs and Tony go to cars for kids so calm. It's okay pick up is quick and easy. You'll also get a vacation Belcher and that's no tax deduction. White. Send sending guys for kids. Okay, Our ascots kid wide 77 gods were kids Join your card. Also accepting real estate donations. Hi, This is Steve Andrews. When there's flooding in the streets, let your neighbors know to call the sump pump geeks at 18444335225. Or visit US online at some pump geeks dot com SPORTS Now on WBZ NEWS radio..
WMAL 630AM
"eight years ago" Discussed on WMAL 630AM
"Put his name on it. Joining us live from California. Doctor Canal. Welcome back to the program. Thanks now, Dr Cono. I know that your pop, You're extremely excited about the absolute barrage of information that's emerged in the past year or two on vitamin D. You're saying the vitamin D Revolution vitamin D error? Has officially started in the impact is going to be unprecedented. What's really going on here? Well, let me tell you just a little bit about how I got into this because I think of it gives them information about how this evolved. About eight years ago, I realized that vitamin D was going to revolutionize medical care. The reason I came to that conclusion is because I realized that virtually all Americans air vitamin D deficient When we followed our doctor's advice and their government's advice. Then we start putting on the sun block and staying out of the funk. It had a tremendous effect on the vitamin D levels in our blood. So I started a nonprofit the vitamin D Council on there. You can read more information than you can possibly remember all about vitamin D. And I also realized that the amount of vitamin D Americans were taking whether it be in their multi vitamins or trying to drink milk was pretty much irrelevant. The amount is so low it had no effect on vitamin D blood level. And when I realized that it literally changed my life, and then within the last year, so I realized that toe work fully toe optimally work. Vitamin D needs a number of co factors. It needs vitamin K to vitamin K one. But the more expensive vitamin K to it needs four on it needs magnesium. It needs think, and we'll talk about all these. Secondly, I realized there's the difference between having vitamin D on the shelf and people can buy it or getting people information on the radio, so people who are not taking it We're taking the wrong preparation can learn about it, and that's a big difference. So I approached the number of companies and purity agreed to make the vitamin D formulas and I insisted upon And secondly, I said, by the way, I want people to take this with fish oil. So what? We're going to talk about today a securities offer about complete vitamin D Formula One. That's unlike anything else on the market. You can't buy it in the story. You can't park it on on the Internet it This is the only such formula that exists. Together with their ultra pure molecularly distilled official. Now, let me ask you a question because I'm a skeptic it hard and I like to play the devil's advocate on the radio. And how is it possible that one vitamin in this case vitamin Dean could be involved in everything from cardiovascular health to immunity? The body weight, even dental cavities. I mean, Heard stuff like this before. You know about vitamin C. What's what is different with vitamin D? Yeah, that's a good question. Let me just do one thing. So people understand exactly what sort of things have been discovered. And one of the best ways to do that is to go back and look at Google News. Now. Here's some headlines from major publications in the last couple years about vitamin D, I'm just going to read off. List of headlines when you think about it is truly amazing it and these sorts of headlines have never been seen before for any other vitamins. Newsweek. Are Americans dying from a lack of vitamin D London time Neglecting vitamin D comes with a heavy price. U P I lack of vitamin D can affect 36 organs. Washington Post Vitamin D deficiency called major health risk. I am a news that's American Medical Association news. Listen to this back. Vitamin D deficiency may be the root of numerous health problems. That's the American Medical Association. Newt You know, it's just truly amazing The reason that it's involved in prostate health, breast health, bone health, cognition, blood pressure, health, immune health. All these different things is because Vitamin D pad. It's not a vitamin, It is truly the one vitamin. You cannot get from a good diet because it's not a vitamin. It's made in the skin upon exposure to sunlight. And what's eventually made is a steroid hormone. Now steroid hormones activated vitamin D is a spirit Horman and the weight they work that is there. The key. There are key to your genetic code. And some steroid hormones are key to only a few genes. But vitamin D is the key to 2000 genes that is it unlocked. 2000 Jean. It's the key that 2000 as 1/10 of your genome, but 1/10 of your genome just waiting for the key to unlock it. And the only thing that can unlock it is vitamin D. That's why it's involved in so many different health conditions. Your body knows what it needs. It just needs to keep who unlocked the right team. Now, Doctor, you say we need 5000 I use per day. Now. Here's here's the problem. I went through the health food store the other day, and I'm looking at most multi vitamins and I'm even looking at vitamin D sold separately. It was a supplement itself. Most of them have 204 100 I use. I saw a couple brands they had 1000. Nobody even comes close to what purity is offering here. I want you to talk about why we need 5000 per day. And there's really only three ways to get it. I could either go out in the noontime sun. Which really isn't practical for a lot of us, And there's you know the skin concerns that you talked about before I go to a tanning bed again. Not an optimal choice. Or I can supplement the right way with purity products. Why the importance of this 5000 number? Why is that? The Magic bullet? Yeah, because of the single fact And this fact changed my life. Seven years ago, when I was researching vitamin D. I came across a number of studies that showed If you put on your bathing suit and go outside it in the summertime and Sunday for about 20 minutes, 10 minutes on each side you make between 10,000 and 20,000 units of vitamin D in 20 minutes. Now That's incredible. I thought about that. And I thought about that. Why would nature devise a system that made that much vitamin D that quickly? And if you look at levels of people like lifeguards or roofers, gardeners or something their levels are 50 or 60, or 70. So that's a natural level and studies very clearly show if you want your level to the ideal your blood level to be 50 60. You have to take 5000 units a day 2000 units a day We'll get your blood level up to maybe 32. 5000 units. Today We'll get your blood level of the 50. And if you take a lesson that you'll get some benefits of vitamin D, but you will not get the full benefit. How do I know if I'm vitamin D deficient? I mean, other than there is a blood test, right? Right. There is a blood test and luckily more and more doctors or ordering the test the problem with getting a blood test this first you have to get your doctor to agree to it. And then your doctor has to know something about vitamin D, and many of them are really too busy to read the current research. And you have to go on. Have the blood test done. And then you have to go back and have the doctor interpreted. And you hope that by the way, the doctor ordered the right test. Is there an easier way are their symptoms I could look for that would tell me Pat, you're probably I'm not a lifeguard. So chances are I'm not not a roof for so probably gonna be vitamin D deficient but other symptoms I can look for. Yep. Not having enough energy is a common one. Aches and pains that doctors can't diagnose is another one. Interestingly and another is your muscular, skeletal system. How kind of ready you feel Even your performance on the athletic field will talk about that later that I have a paper coming out and About a week talking about vitamin D's effect on athletic performance. How shark you feel mentally, Whether where there's sometimes you're in a fog. It seems like you're just not thinking straight vitamin D is crucial for brain health. Those with the most common symptoms..
WBZ NewsRadio 1030
"eight years ago" Discussed on WBZ NewsRadio 1030
"To your home for being there for you Start with a free estimate from your neighborhood, sir to pro painters. We'd really understand how you feel about your home. That's why you can count on us to take care of every detail, listening, prepping painting. It's always worry free with our expert painting team. Whatever project you have in mind, Count on, sir to pro painters doing the job beautifully schedule Your free estimate. Now at sir to pro dot com that sir to with a C each sort of pro painters, businesses independently owned and operated. 1877 colors. Kids, okay, are as cause for kids white seven setting cause your kids don't eight years ago today, white setting cars for kids. Okay, ask our kids. Wide 77 cars for kids to make your car till you're better programs and stony good cars for kids so calm. It's kind of like a pickup is quick and easy. You'll also get a vacation culture and that's no tax deduction. Why 77 cars? Okay, ask our kids wide 77 gods for kids Join your cards. Also accepting real estate donations Nightside with Dan Ray until you BZ Boston's news radio. Folks, we have six lines.
WIBC 93.1FM
"eight years ago" Discussed on WIBC 93.1FM
"A free. It's your right to join the union. They've already done everything they can It just it just one more thing. It's just that constant. Hey, we're working with you. And then the first thing out of the gate is something that's against it. So at some point, someone has to call him out. And that's what I'm doing today with you. So what exactly does that bill do, though? Well, I think it gives the power discuss schools Theo not to eliminate the dues deduction coming out of their check. And if let's just let's just be blazingly clear. They want Pac money out. They don't want the state's largest teacher's union. I s t ated toe. Collect Pac money. I s Ta already got off the grid. Seven or eight years ago. They live there. He took themselves off these deductions. The problem for me, is it singles out one group. This isn't the police, fire construction building, trade Anybody else? Just teachers. If this is about political action money than what if the teacher has money, taken out for farm Bureau, or or Christmas club or United way then those those could be deemed political entities. So you're just getting into just a blatant attack? That's all it is. Against you. On the program is Justin Oakley. Justin Rights of political blog's of the education block. Just let me teach and also has an education. Public school advocate Justin Bob. Let me just play Devil's Advocate here. Why not just say, Hey, you know what if you want to do the do the union thing, that's fine. Just go ahead and write a check for it yourself have no problem with that. But they haven't read. If you read the bills. I have something about the Indiana Education Employment Relations board will vote was specifically put out a card. It'll be a specific day. They're using an enter to the only entity that governs contractual relationships in the state to turn it against its own entity. It's just layers and layers of hoops and know exactly what they're doing, and just to play Devil's advocate back. When Americans for prosperity to your lobbying in our state, another group that doesn't even lobby in Indiana shows up to lobby for these bills. I gotta ask for all the money on our legislators who have the time and energy to even present these bills. And then you find out they may or may not even want to carry the bill. They just did. Well, that doesn't make any sense to me When they say those things I'd scratch. My you've you follow the session that makes no sense, does it? Well, I didn't really want to carry this bill. But I went ahead and put that we're gonna try to get it through committee That makes no sense. Oh, yeah, that happens once more than you think, my friend believe, believe you, me. And what more would just in Oakland? Just let me teach you estimate you're listening to the weekend edition of a build a large share of 93 WNBC. It's Terry Stacey for your trusted local independent American standard heating and air conditioning dealer. BMW plumbing, heating cooling and drains under Dave Machine says regular maintenance is so important What a lot of people don't realize is how much abuse your furnace is taken because they're not around it all day long. They don't realize how many times I think turns off and on all day long you're in your car. You know how much abuse your car takes, and you get it in for regular maintenance and all But nobody really realizes what there. Honest goes through visit Big black trucks. Com BMW, Your trusted local independent American standard heating and air conditioning dealer here that let.
The RIFT Radio Podcast Network
"eight years ago" Discussed on The RIFT Radio Podcast Network
"And to have autism and it's hard anyway. I was fast asleep a few weeks ago in bed. And i felt like i was not a line in the room. I saad from the mrs next to me asleep. Where light sleepers as our smallest wonders the house. At night. I open my eyes and on my side of the bed is my middle child. She's a girl with autism. She was just standing over me to standing there in her ninety. Hey baby what's up. I wait no response. Honey you okay. I wait again. No response honey at this point. I'm starting to freeze them. My skin because no motion response but she has sleep. Walk before and done this before but that was probably about eight years ago without going into too much details wire fused to look away and causing a look at our hands for any kind of objects. Honey what you want at this point. I'm blindly nudging the mrs. I'm sweating bricks. Because this ain't normal now. I heard mrs stern go white. But i'm still trying to get through to my girl with no success as as point. My mrs turns on the bedside lamp and goes what's up and this was exactly the moment. My daughter vanished into thin. Like vapor. Swear to god almost followed through in the bed. All the kids were fast asleep in bed. I've had a few things happened in the house but that one that one was real as the phone. I'm.
Biz Talk Radio
"eight years ago" Discussed on Biz Talk Radio
"Welcome to do it. 6 10 363 11 10 6 10 363 11 10. It's rapid fire Friday. We're gonna do our best to get through calls as many causes. We can let me go to Vicki, Vicki's going us from Virginia. Hey, Vicki. Hey, Dan. I have a quick question. Am a 47. Should I elect to tend to shares in the exchange offer? I got a note from my broker. No. Okay, That's no. Thank you. Have a great Friday. Okay. Thank you, Vicky. All right. God bless you. Let me go to Jae in Mississippi. Hey, J. Hey, Good morning. I am now home food, Mom, but I was a public school teacher and I opened up a tech shelter for three bills the account do I need to invest it or withdraw it and add it to my savings. I would. How? How? How far? How old are you? J. I am 37. I quit public school teacher in eight years ago. I would on good for you, By the way you took on a a tough job and did a great thing for your Children. So I congratulate you and praise you for that. Um, I would say that You should probably invest it. You just want to be careful where you invest it so I would open up and IRA account. Um, somewhere at a brokerage account like fidelity dot com or TD Ameritrade or somewhere, you can do it online. It's real simple, and then they will transfer that money into that. And that way, I would probably tell you to put it into two or three Timothy et efs. That'll keep you biblically responsible, and you can just forget about it. You can just forget about it for a long period of time, and I think it'll be okay. I think that would be the way to do it. Thank you. Okay. All right. God bless. Thank you. Let's go to, um J. Craig Craig in Texas secret. You done? Good morning. Good morning. I I can't thank you. Enough. I'll let you don't matter To many things. My question is sent Jude donated. Um I have a friend that passed and You know what family would say? That's what you wanted this strange to do. Donate to the hospital said You'd, um, I don't know how you feel about those organization. It's a good organization. It's very sound. It's very solid. They they you know is one that I wouldn't hesitate to give to Okay, And that's actually and I just didn't want to support any of that stuff that we we we know is going to grieve the heart of God, right? So Mm hmm. Brother. Amen. You know, I'm glad you called. Like I'm glad you called. Thank you Appreciate you are gobbling this weekend on a great Sunday like you always I will. God Bless you. Button. You got you to thank you. We go to Jen and Oklahoma. Hey, Jack. Hello? The morning, Dan. Thank you again for sharing your gift that the Lord has given you with everyone question I have a T s P and I am looking at with what's going on in the next year, too. On with the changes, wondering about the stability of the Chief fund. I know they've I think in the past that followed from that cover our governments and government in the past, so Just trying to get the idea. Mm. I think the G fund is, you know, safe is any other Treasury Bond fund? Uh, um I mean, certainly it's government run its government owned, so they think and, um You know if something were to ever happen, where the government decided to take over any kind of IRAs or qualified money in some way, shape or form The very first place they're going to start is the G fund because it'll be very easy for them to do that. Um, I have a problem. I think in another month or so I know better. About what is going to happen. I assume that Biden is going to override President Trump's executive order to keep the government from investing its funds, G phones and others. Into China's military. I think that's going to be out the door and that's disturbing, but if you're still working and still contributing to it I would tell you to just continue. Continue doing it for now. Okay. Thank you so much. Dan have a block that weekend. All right, Jen. Thank you. You too. God bless We go to shoe and in Virginia High school in Good morning. How are you, sir? Good. Good morning. Good. I'm glad to hear that. I want to tell you how much your program means to me. It's helped me quite a bit. And, uh, Expressing Sonia. So I have 100,000 plus and the money markets setting doing next to nothing, So put you thanks best to do with that. You retired, too. In I'm 78. Yes, I'm retired. I do little jobs from one. But not that much time. Don't amount to nothing. I have some good in Italy. Mm hmm. I would leave it where it is. I wouldn't make any changes at all. I would just leave it. I know. I know You're not making anything there. I'm not making anything. I know you're not. Yeah, I know, but you're not losing anything. No, sir. And right now it right now, that's of great value not to be losing. Well, I love you. I love the Timothy plan. That's where I made a lot of money under your, uh Andre put you told me years ago and I followed what you said. Mm. Well, I think that Z great. I missed the very beginning of that statement just made there, but I'm glad you're following following alone. And I think it is. There's going to be some volatile times in some changes coming up, so I would do what you're doing. Continue listening so that we can catch any changes that we think we might need to make. Okay? I sure appreciate your help. And God bless you. Thank you so well and God bless you. I sure appreciate your listening to support all these years. Then we go to, um I don't know who that is. I don't think I have anybody there. At least there's nothing written Nobody. Okay, let me go to Well, we don't have anybody in the queue. Okay, so I don't know what happened there to that line saying to your car 6 10 363 11 10. I mean, well, we've got we've got a full board. We just don't have anybody cute up yet. Um, so you won't get through. But, um Keep doing. Make sure when you're calling, you know, It's not a great time to have a long, drawn out conversation with, um, darling because she's trying very busy on rapid fire Fridays and makes it difficult. So Let's see. Let's go to I'm trying to find as I speak here. The There it is, okay. Um So.
Xtra Sports Radio 1300 AM
"eight years ago" Discussed on Xtra Sports Radio 1300 AM
"Air radical changes from what we had say what? Eight years ago 10 years ago. Remember two a days. 02 a days Yes, the romantic feel of two a days practice at nine in the morning practice again it one blistering heat in the middle of the summer, tackling each other all the time. Training camps and places that aren't the practice facility like there's there's romance of that era, and on some level I get it, especially if you had a camp where you could go and see the players and watching practice and get excited and get autographs and all that stuff. Experience was really cool, but two a days went away and I don't think the game's been bad for the last 10 years hasn't been as impending dramatic drop off. Is it that much worse because if I'm looking at the changes the game I think the changes really are. The structure of the sport. I mean, we're talking about wide open fields quarterbacks that run more than they used to. And so you're gonna need different types of players. You're not gonna have guys there. £290. They're playing middle linebacker, your kind of guys that air You know, uh, just massive hoax of humanity running all over like tight ends or smaller these days, you know, so It's changed. The game's gotten faster. The game's gotten leaner. It's more about speed than it is about physicality. And so as you have those kinds of changes, you're gonna have smaller guys trying to tackle Fasters guys. It's just Maybe tackling just got worse because it's harder with the way the sport is played now. So That's also to say if it got that much worse. Is it really that much worse? Is it worse it all? Has there been major changes in tackling like that's the kind of stuff that I wonder about it? And for Jaycee traders, he makes this argument, saying as the president of the Players Association, We don't need to practice all this much. That's why I sit back and go, you know. He's got a really good argument. So 855 to 1 to 4 to 27 in another part of this is when you think of the newness I mean young head coaches or first year head coach is whether they've been in the league or new to the respective programs. Whatever it is That rule run Rivera Kevin's defense Qi Zhou Judge Mike McCarthy, with the exception of Mike McCarthy, who lost the starting quarterback early in the season. Honestly, I think a lot of people were skeptical of from the jump. Those guys are doing a good job. Joe judged have five wins with the Giants. Totally fine, totally solid season he might get 60 might make the playoffs. It's defense. He's doing an excellent job in Cleveland. They've got a really shaky game this week, and we get to that later. But he's doing great work. Ron Rivera is doing amazing work to see what Ron Rivera's doing in Washington is incredible. I mean, that guy. He's been great. He's been is good you could possibly ask for Matt rule is done A really good job in Carolina. So seeing what those teams have accomplished with new head coaches when you see the quality of the play and what it's been all year, rookie players that are playing well. You look across the board you go do they need to practice more? Do they need all the mini camps and training camp and four preseason games? Or should we just get out there? So how much would you change it? Do they need to change it. If it's gonna lead to these guys being healthier. Then it's worth it. So for me? Yeah, I'm good with getting rid of many camps. Fine. Throw him out the door I'm good with even if they want to shorten training camp a little bit. I'm okay with that. Again two games in the preseason. I'm good with that. So I'd love to hear from you 855 to 1 to 4 to 27 because I hadn't thought about it at all. At all this whole season pandemic shortened off season. None of it really felt like it affected the games. Some good was making the moves 855 to 1 to 4 to 27. You know what? Let's take a call. Let's go to J. Who's in Alaska? J. What's going on? I was just thinking, you know, if you have a situation like you have a veteran quarterback and you're bringing in, you know, like a rookie tight inner rookie wide receiver. I think I do think you need some of that. Opiates and many cabs because, you know, you gotta build a report. I mean, there's certain certain types of situations. I think you could modify it. And you know, um, I know is that there was a lot offense and defense of women get hurt this year. And I think it's because they weren't in football shape that it's certain positions. You know, a corner is the corner that corner. Those guys are usually always in pretty good shape. So you know, right back in that kind of thing. I think those guys could probably give some of that stuff. But I think That, you know, certain position, Certain things. That thing on your situation. You should go to modify your You know your mini camp. So you know, I always had idea the NFL wants Mortgage aims, so I think that they should just take the first two preseason games and make them count. And play all of your backups and all your rookies and what I'm playing a real game. See what? See what you got? Hold your starters than your starter's not mad because after Billy extra games, and you really get to see what you got. You lost to you and you're starting, You know, 33 pairs and you know you can. You can make your determination from there. That's that's what I would do. Okay, So that's an interesting thought. Jane. Thanks for the call. I'll say this. I can't make the preseason games count you saying Get rid of him for a moment. I was like, OK? Yeah, he wants to go to two or three. That seems to be where it's heading anyway. Find that he wants to make them count. I wouldn't make the preseason games count. But you are gonna have 17 games by the way it looks like next year..