I see people moving in the world with a lot of automaticity. Running programs and beliefs and ideas and ways of being that are not their own. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Amir Approved. I got my good homeboy UJ Randes. I'll do a quick note about UJ. I have a quick bio over here for you. UJ Randes is a co-founder of Intelligent Change and co-creator of the world's famous five minute journal. He also is a deep master and a curious creature of the world of human habits and how human beings think. On his side time, he is a psychonaut. He likes to explore the mind and different elements of plant medicine. That's why I'm super excited for him to be on the show today. UJ, welcome brother. I'm so happy you're here, man. Dude, I'm excited. Also, Amir Approved was first coined like eight years ago. You and Floyd, yeah. Yeah, eight years ago. Dude, it was a long time where we were like, you should get this domain. This name is really cool. We still have it. It's great. I bought it that day. I love it, right? It was a hashtag of Amir Approved. It's such a great role. The phonetics, yeah. Exactly. It's such a great ring to it. It's such a great names. I'm so glad that. Well, remember, I had a thing on Facebook. I'm like, I'm restarting my podcast. Yeah, I remember that. And everyone's giving me his name. No offense to anybody. I'm like, looking at these names. Dude, Amir Approved was a great name. I forgot about this. How did you come back?  I think I was like, I don't know. I was walking. It's probably when I walk. I was walking all of a sudden. It's like, oh yeah. Yeah, this is a solid name. Yeah. Yeah. So keep doing whatever you're doing. This is a solid name. So I'm excited for this podcast overall. So what have you been up to? Dude, so a lot has changed actually. This month in my life is going to be a really. It's going to be a month I really look back on.  So a couple of interesting things, almost exactly a week from now. I will be a Canadian citizen. Congrats, man. Props to that. The time this goes live. I will be a Canadian citizen, which is exciting. It was like eight years in the making. Dude, it's 14 years. That's how long it takes. Yeah, dude. First of all, it takes way less time typically. But here's the thing with governments and policies and such. So in 2014, I could have applied Canadian citizen. But the regime changed and the laws around citizenship changed. So if you had given me a couple of more months, I would have been able to apply for citizenship, which would have meant that I would have been a Canadian citizen 2015. Gotcha. However, the regime changed, laws changed, which gave, which I've made it take another four years. I mean, even three years to apply, but another fourth year to actually get it. So what are the rules today? So if I land as a land immigrant, how does it work? It really depends on your, the streams of immigration that you can take. So I came, like you can come on a scale to work or permit. Yes. And that's going to take you, you'll need to work in Canada for, I think, you need to have a certain amount of days in Canada, around three years, I believe, three or four years of stay in Canada after you're a permanent resident. So you're constantly like checking your days, logging your days. A lot of your citizenship application is around the days you've had in Canada, kind of thing. And once you have that, then you can apply to be a citizen. But there's going to be another regime change that might happen. This is not because the federal elections are on, right? So I'm just really excited. I'm getting my citizenship before the election. Finally then. Fourteen years. It's a long time. But so there's that, which is for those listening who weren't aware of my story, came to Canada alone when I was 17 from India. It has been a long and beautiful journey to become a citizen and to establish myself, which brings me to the second piece of awesome news, which is I also exited from Intelligent Change, a company I built and ran with Alex, my mutual friend, over six years ago. So the exit and the citizenship both mark a pretty important shift in my life, and I'm super excited for it. I love watching from the sidelines the whole process. I remember when you guys first started sitting there and looking at what you guys are doing to where you are now.  So when was the first time you actually saw a five minute journal? I don't know, man. You sent me drafts.   Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. No, it's a, we followed a journey. That's another thing for listeners as well. Like I've known a beer for like almost nine plus years, right? So we've seen each other grow and learn like a lot in the last nine years. And it's been actually a lot of fun. I remember sending you a picture about a month ago of a kind of, I think Mastermind Talks we attended in 2013. Eight years ago? No. Six? Six years ago I would say. Yeah, you were thinner and fitter.  Yeah, you were. And I was pretty much bicking my head. That's good when I go bald. I'm used to it already. There's no change for me. Yeah, man. That was a good time. Actually, somebody asked me why I wear a hat.  I go to the gym right before this. You know what I mean? Like I even take it off. It's like I'm just lazy.  Dude, hat is a great situation.   It's awesome. I'm a huge fan. Recently got converted to hats. But I'm like, hmm, what's the benefit?  A lot of benefits, yeah. It's a lot of benefit. That was really cool. So yeah. So where do you think the journey is going to lead you next, man? You have the exit now? Are you focusing on anything? Yeah. So I have a few friends and mentors who have also had exits. And so I'm a huge believer that when you're in a situation that you're unsure of how to navigate, like someone has been in this position before, right? You don't have to reinvent the wheel. If you know people or you can get access to podcasts or interviews or books of other people who have been in a similar situation, talk to them. Ask them. I'm a huge fan of like not making mistakes other people have made and learning from other people's mistakes so you don't make the same thing. Yeah, it was a smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from others. Exactly. Yeah. I don't have time to be smart. I prefer to be wise. One of the consistent things that I'm hearing from other entrepreneurs have exited is like don't make any major professional moves in the next six months to a year. Like shill. Like you've earned it. You've done great. Take the time you need to be able to navigate and figure out what your next move can be and should be. The rules of the game are different now from when you started a company. Right? The rules of the game are different. And so learn to adapt to these new rules. It's going to take time for your mind, for your emotions, for your environment to acclimatize, to recalibrate to what's happening.  I really enjoy reading. I just took this weekend away to a cottage and took some amazing hikes. Things that will nourish my being. Things that will inspire me. I recently been watching Inside Bill's Mind. Pretty good docu-series. Really cool on Netflix. Very inspiring as well, right?  And it's really interesting to see a guy who was at least one of the richest men in the world and then how he's deploying his capital to make the world a better place and the challenges he's facing and things like that. It's inspiring. That's cool. So for me, I'm thinking about what am I inspired by and how do I spend my time intelligently when I don't have to do anything I want to do. And I have a sense of it, but I don't have all the answers yet. Bill Gates takes a week off and something he does that's intriguing to me, which I've done naturally, was he doesn't read electronics. Yeah, that's physical. Right. He carries bags and boxes of books so everywhere he goes. And so he takes this week off and he has boxes of books and magazines or newspapers or research papers and pen and paper. He just reads. Yeah. Yeah, he calls it a think week. Yes. And it's actually something that I've really loved. This is great. He goes alone, gets a cabinet of woods, takes a huge stack of books and papers, and just goes ham and reads. I thought that was genius. And he's been doing it for a long time. He's been doing it for over 20 years at this point. So stuff like that, right? Like learning from re-reading old books that I've really enjoyed is really, really interesting because when you read a book that you really love, when you finish it, I feel like you've only really learned the first layer of what that book has to teach you. If it's a really good book. And then when you read it again, you go a layer deeper. And at a certain point, if you read it enough times, you feel like you have absorbed the depth of the wisdom that book has to offer you. And at a certain point, sometimes you get to this place with a book. A lot of the times I haven't. You feel like you've lived the book. You have absorbed everything that book has to offer you. You can't really say that unless you've read it at least two or three times. It's a good book. And that's what I'm planning to do is to revisit books that I've really enjoyed. What are some books you've enjoyed? There's a book called Siddhartha by Herman Hesse that I review pretty much. That's a classic. That's a classic. Like every six months at least, I'll try to go through that once. And I have such a powerful reaction to the book because it is a story of a young boy's search for truth. And I consider myself a secret of truth. And so the resonance with that book is very strong. There is another book called What Everybody is Saying by Joan of Aurel. It's a really, really great book. It's basically an FBI feed investigator. And his field-attested approach on how to read by language. I think understanding people and understanding other people's thinking is one of the most valuable things, developing empathy, most valuable things we can do as humans. We have to deal with a lot of them. If we don't understand them, life is going to be very challenging.  So a lot of most people's communication is not explicit. We're talking in words, this is explicit. Most of communication is implicit in learning to understand deeply implicit communication. It's going to make life so much more straightforward. There's a book called Nonviolent Communication. Oh yeah, what was his name? Marshall Rosenberg. Yeah, he just passed away a couple of years ago. Yeah, I love watching his puppets on YouTube. Exactly. So the book is okay, but the video is on YouTube. As a presenter in an auditor, he's phenomenal. Yeah, the book is not great. Also, I'm not a fan of the word nonviolent communication. It's like calling, cuddling, like non-consensual touching or something or consensual, like, you know. It's not accurate. Yeah, I think everybody should look at his work. Exactly. Like it's very powerful. It's powerful because it helps people communicate effectively. It helps reduce friction and reduce emotional charge between people. You can actually focus on working together to get something done. If you're holding resentment or if you're not able to communicate freely to someone about something that's going on, you're going to be thinking about, like, you're going to be holding that inside you and it's going to lead to your energy being sucked up in that as opposed to productive work. So that's important and that's valuable. Oh, man. I'm re-reading fiction. Ender's Game. Oh, Ender's Game, yeah. You know what I re-read not too long ago was Shantarang, such a good book.  Yeah, I actually haven't read the Audible yet, but the production in Audible is like, legit, like, all out. I've heard good things about it. Actually, the next time I read that book, I might just do that. It's a very long book for anybody listening. And if you buy the book or the audiobook, the size will intimidate you at first. But just like any good book, when you get into it, like my bar for any fiction is that if I get to 100 pages and I don't get into the story, I can let it go, right? That's my general bar. By the time you get to page 100, you'll get sucked in. And then you don't want it to end. You don't want it to end because it is so beautifully written and it is like a near-biographical tale of the author, which is why he's able to go into such beauty and such, like, precise language and such a beautiful way of telling a story of a man who's been through a lot, who's seen a lot of lifetimes of craziness in the mafia, in Bombay, et cetera. Right, so that's quite wonderful. There's a book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, which is pretty good. It's about creativity, and it's about learning to kind of tap into your version of it, which is really awesome. Yeah, I basically have a stack of books on my coffee table, and I'll like lean into one and pull that out and I'll start to read it, as long as I feel inspired to dive into that. And books are such a treasure man because I mark all my books up with pen. And so I can look back at the last time I went through this book and see what I liked, what I didn't like. If I don't agree with something, I'll just cross it off in the book. And it almost is a way for me to connect with myself when I read the book for the first time because I've grown and learned since. And so I can start to see my thinking patterns when I read it, maybe the first time years ago and on and on. And so I'm excited man, I'm excited for this beautiful chunk of time for me to reconnect with myself in a way I might have never reconnected with myself. And I'm excited. Let me ask you this. So obviously you created the five minute journal to help people. Psychologically is one aspect. The whole point of people aren't familiar with it. It focuses on being humble and humility and gratitude. It's very simple exercises. Write down three things that you're grateful for in the morning, in the evening, etc. There's some iterations to that. That's it in the nutshell. In your mind, what's the science behind this gratitude? Or how do people benefit from more gratitude? For context, this is the five minute journal we've sold over half a million copies of this thing. And we've had a lot of really amazing people get behind it. It's like various, like refuel, etc. The research behind gratitude is came from this movement called positive psychology. The idea is a revolutionary idea at the time, which was if you take a look at all the papers published. I think this is in the 1990s. All the psychology papers published. More than 80% of the papers focused on how do we fix depression? How do we fix anxiety? How do we fix something that is not working? And there was less than 20% that was focusing on, hey, here are these people that are doing great work. But they're quite well psychologically. How do we look at how do we improve their life? How do we learn from what they are doing? And so, Martin Seligman, who is known as the father of positive psychology, started to ask the question, how do we, how about we start to do research on the positive emotions? On the things that actually help people that become better as opposed to be not anxious and be not depressed. And so gratitude is the emotion that comes up over and over and over again in this research. The writing down of three things you're grateful for. Fundamentally improves your baseline of happiness, improves your pro-social behavior, which is a fancy way of saying it makes, like, fancy way of saying it makes people more Canadian. Right? Right? Fancy way of saying, like, you help people more. You hold open doors. You say thank you. You are nice. And the benefits of that niceness isn't just for other people. You feel better as a result. Because our brain is wired for fear. Right?  So it's not wired for happiness. It's not wired for well-being. It's not wired for feeling amazing. It's wired for survival and wired for reproduction. So those two things on a raw machine level, they're optimized.  As we know from research, your brain can change. It can make new connections. It takes time. It takes practice. But it's absolutely possible. But how do you do that? And how do you wire your brain for happiness? Well, everybody has to do it for themselves. I can't do it for you. But the wiring of your brain for happiness is the practice of gratitude. Is the practice of looking at what's good around you. So you can start to train your mind in times of stress to be resilient enough to see what's good out there. Because when stimulus happens and you feel stress, your body is under retention. Your body goes into freeze, fight. Freeze, flight, or fight. That's the order, right? People say fight or flight. That's not usually it. People usually freeze. And animals too, or mammals. Right? Freeze is the first response. Then they'll flee as the first response. A second response. If they can't, if they have to fight, they can't, they can avoid fighting. They'll run. They'll run. Yeah. If they can't avoid fighting, then they'll fight as the last resort. Yeah. Because then now real damage is going to happen one way or the other, right? If they win or not, it's going to be some damage. And their body needs to avoid that to survive and to replicate. But assuming the survival and replication isn't given, which is what is true in our society, how do you be happy? Shit. You've got to train that. Because your system doesn't come in built for that. And that the sooner you have the training and the more training you have, the more resilient your well-being will be. And that is what the Feynman Journal does. It is essentially a toothbrush for your mind. It's something you do morning and night, something you do to keep your mind resilient, keep you buoyant, keep you looking at what's good. Talking about the toothbrush for the mind, right now in our current landscape, politically, things are heating up. Sure. There's a lot. There's a lot of whips. Yes. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance. There's a lot of, let's say, people not really using rationale or logic on both sides. This applies to everybody. This is a joke, man. Yeah. Social. There's that. I always mention the saying. The minute I read it, it stuck to me like glue. It's Owen E. Wilson, the biologist. We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technologies.  And people really forget that. There's a lot of things that you do yourself. And it's like grandiose pedestal. I'm like, dude, you're no different than your ancestor like half a million years ago. Yeah. That's very, very similar. Very similar. 9.85 or something. Correct. And so what I'm curious about, you just mentioned toothbrush for your mind. One way of helping your psychological homeostatic levels is gratitude. Whether it's gratitude as just saying thank you verbally or using a journal to write down or about being, you know, having gratitude equals humility, being humble, et cetera. Are there anything, are there certain things people can do today to counteract what the fuck's happening in the world? Like I think people are really don't, people underestimate the psychological pressures the social media brings onto them. Absolutely. Absolutely. No question. There's a lot, man. So I'm a fan of the quote, I think it's a Gandhi quote, which is, if you want to change the world, start with yourself. Yeah. There's a roomy quote too. Yesterday I was clever. I want to change the world today. I'm wise when I change myself. Exactly. Yeah. So I start with that. That is the basis of my thinking. And then I start to go, can I improve the quality of my ability to feel deep peace? All right. So there is a state that we have when not just we are, there is contentment, but there is a deep state of thoughtlessness, a deep state of inward repose that can only be found for me in deep meditation. You might be able to find it in a flow tank. You might have a really great spa session if you're an athlete or a BJJ competitor. Whatever your way of finding that flow is, I'm a huge fan of doing that. Right. So I know one of the ways you find flow is by lifting. Right? So by competing in martial arts, by lifting, like these are things that are really, that are really like running, walking, right? These are the ways you find flow. And so I think finding flow is beautiful and amazing and very valuable for anyone listening to engage in. So they can, flow is an experience of losing the concept of time, feeling like you are fully engaged with the activity on hand. Which was made by popular by Mihai McChency. Hi. I call it, Chick sent me hi. Chick sent me hi. Chick sent me hi is how I think about it. Yeah. It's got a great book called Flow, also made popular in the book. Stealing Fire. Stealing Fire by Stephen Coller and Jimmy Wheel. Great books overall and great ideas of finding that thing that allows you to explore and feel like you're fully expressed. That's important. Another one is obviously practice of gratitude journaling, but journaling by itself improves your ability to interface with your emotions and your thoughts. Right? So we have two brains. You have system one and system two as you would have it and thinking fast and slow. The idea is you have a thinking brain, you have a feeling brain. The thinking brain and the feeling brain sometimes operate independent of each other, but they're both intelligence, a way of sifting through information. The thinking brain acts independent of the feeling brain. You are acting without all of the information that you need. For example, if you can't accurately predict how you will feel when you go see your friends or dinner or you buy a car or you buy a drink, you can't accurately predict the state you will feel when you do that. You can't make accurate decisions based on what you want. So journaling allows you your feeling and your thinking to almost talk to each other. How am I feeling right now? How am I really feeling? This is something like Jonathan hates like elephant in the rider. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You connect with a part of you that is kind of under the surface so you can learn to work with that part of you to be a better performer. How does one approach journaling? I think it's good, first of all. Because you and I talked about this before. Yeah. I've been journaling for a long time.  Yes. I have a journal open in front of me right now. I typically have that because to me journaling is a way to interface with life. It is a way to amplify the input that I'm getting, understand what is happening, and digest the wisdom. Digesting wisdom is a skill set. We've talked about this as well, right? If I'm able to see an insight and pull an insight to be able to convert that into how my life changes on Tuesday at 4 p.m., I have to process that insight properly and effectively to the point where I am able to modify my behavior based on the insight that I have received. That's a tall order for someone who doesn't understand how to sift through an insight and break it into pieces and start to say, okay, this means that I need to do this. This means this aspect of my behavior changes. So how do you do that? The first thing is you start to practice putting your pen to paper when you're feeling a bit funky, right? If you're having trouble with a decision, if you are looking for, you're looking to get more clarity on something, you put pen to paper. And the first question I always like to start with is, how am I feeling right now? Feeling is a very accurate indicator of your general state and also your desired state. So if you're feeling confused and you want to feel clear, okay, you have a sense of where you want to go. You have a sense of where you are and strategy essentially is the art of getting what you want with what you got. And so once you have the two pieces, what you want very clear and where you're at, then you can start to map how to get there. So how am I feeling and really asking yourself, why am I feeling that way? And then I like to ask the question, both in a journal and outside the people, what's going on?  Because asking that question allows you to get the information you need to make decisions that matter. A lot of the time there is, I see people moving in the world with a lot of automaticity, running programs and beliefs and ideas and ways of being that are not their own. They've been acquired by society, by peers, through friends, their parents, whatever. They are not their own. And typically when there has not been a lot of critical thinking, where there hasn't been a lot of thinking about, wait, is this person know what they're talking about? Yesterday I saw, for the first time I didn't see this before on a pizza pizza sign. It says Canada's number one pizza. What? Who determines that? And what gives them the authority to say that? TTC said they're the best. You see that? Are you guys the judges yourself?  Who's doing this, right? But here's the thing, the reason they're able to put it out there is there are not enough people like you and I asking that question and making fun. So you're saying you think most people aren't skeptical? No. I know most people aren't skeptical because of the authority bias, right? We have numbers on the authority bias. The majority of humans will not question something set authoritatively. They will not question that. The act of journaling allows your critical mind to become stronger, to ask those questions. Do you think there's like a heuristic that we can build or is out there already where it's kind of a checklist of cognitive biases one can ask? There is. There are lists of cognitive biases. I know there's lists, but I'm saying like within like a very simple checklist. I'll tell you the problem with journaling most people have with anything in general. They're like a puppy or a dog. Exactly, they need structure.  Yeah, you know what I mean? And so for me it's okay there has to be some... I'm not going to guide you all the way, but there's some type of guidance. Yes. I can provide this. And this is actually something I might think about in the future is how to help people kind of guide themselves into thinking and putting their pen to paper in an intelligent way. Like it's a good book called The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf. The Belly. Yes. Good book. Great book. Similar. There's one issue with that book or any thinking clearly book. Whether it's like seeking wisdom with Peter Bevelen or any of these books around that subject is it's a data dump. Yeah. For sure. I agree with that. This is a problem because I love the book. It's small, it's nice. I get it. I've been studying this stuff forever as a hobbyist, not as a professional. And you know looking back in hindsight 2020 it's taking me years to figure out what type of cognitive biases affect me the most. Exactly. And that's just by sheer experience knowing who I am.  It's like well I'm not going to remember 50 of the cognitive biases or when to apply them or let's even reverse more is like when was I influenced by them. So like trying to simplify this data dump of like where do I begin with all this stuff. This is a great question. So this is the way I've attempted to go through this. First you pick a book. So I picked Seeking Wisdom by Peter Balvin. And I found someone who was also is fanatical about this stuff as I was. He is now a good friend. His name is Matt Bodner. And we essentially decided to have a weekly call. Or was it bi-weekly? I can't remember. We just said like let's go section by section. And let's look through every bias and let's analyze. And look through our life and our experience and see how this bias is actually affected us. And so our goal was not to finish the book. Our goal was to understand ourselves deeply. The point where I started to notice a list of biases that actually I'm like these are my top five to ten biases that I know I am quite influenced by. The only way you can really do that is to understand the essence of a bias very deeply. And then look through your life and say okay where has this affected my life if any that I can remember or understand. Like knowing myself like is this bias likely to affect me. Or is it like or maybe there's going to be others that are more valuable or important. You go through them one by one. The point is not to go fast. The point is to understand deeply. Because if you understand it then now I have a list of about five to ten biases. And I'm like I know I'm susceptible to them. I know that I like if I'm making a decision I like to take a look at that list and be like okay like am I getting influenced by any of these. If not like that's my 80 20 in terms of instead of looking like the 100 plus biases which exist. Right. I'd rather look at the 10 that I am most likely to get influenced by and use that almost as a tool to navigate future decisions. But that takes time. It's almost like a university course. It's difficult. I had an idea before and I'm hoping to doing this. Maybe you and I should do it. But the overlords of the future of your brain or the AI algo engineers for social media. For sure. You know even Neval Ravakan talks about this. Okay. We're not going to really escape social media. The Pandora or Pandora's box has been open. Can but it's tough. I think more and more income cyborgs. I think people are opting in for and the big green easy button. This is definitely the common choice. Yeah. Listen. Social media has benefits in context of who you are, what age you are, what gender you are, you know, the reasons why you're using it. You know, and Jonathan hates last book Cuddling of the American Mind. He goes to show the detrimental effects for young females. You know, not so much young boys. There's a difference. What's the detrimental effect? So the psychological makeup of young boys versus young females are different.   Boys or men in general, they take their aggression out physically. And it's not a long term. It's instant. You and I can fight today and tomorrow might be friends. Women on the other hand, they don't attack physically the attack from a social aspect. Sure. There's a pecking order. There's more social pressures with women. How do I look? How do I look towards the group? Do I fit in towards the group? And this is why there's a correlation, Jonathan shows, between depression, suicide, just overall detrimental emotional health. And he, in fact, he recommends that both boys and girls should not have any, not the internet, but social media we're talking about, like Facebook, Twitter, all that stuff or whatever the tech talk, 14, 15, like no social media until that age. That's how detrimental it is to the psyche. I like that. Right? So context, all matters of context. But let's say you and I, you know, we're in our 30s or whatever, 34, 35. I'd love to have an app that has a list of the cognitive biases and we create an ML in there, a machine learning algo where based on our behavior on social media, it gives you like a warning like, Hey, UJ, we've noticed that you've liked X, Y and Z posts. These posts, you know, they have, it comes from these types of sources, the same type of thinking and kind of patterns your behavior because when you're using social media right now, you, it is, it is programmed.  Certain posts that you like gives that data information to the AI or machine learning algo, that algo therefore refeeds it back also depending on what type of ads are happening, cell, et cetera. And that's why people live in eco chambers, right? You have people who are hardcore, like say conservatives, all they see is conservative news and conservative data, same thing with liberals, et cetera. Yeah.  This is why you create polarity. Exactly. And that's why the landscape political and otherwise is that polarized. Correct. Because you have most of the social media, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera, Instagram, right? Where it's, they continue their goal is to get your eyeballs. Of course. Right? And maximize the time your eyeballs are focused on them.  This is a huge problem because that's not how the world has worked for most all of human history till just a few years ago. So when that happens, now there is constant confirmation of the way you think and the way you believe and the way you are and all this other stuff.  And then you dehumanize them. Correct. And dehumanization is the foundation of conflict.  When you dehumanize someone or something, you're okay with them being treated differently. You're okay with them being deported out of countries.  So it's challenging. It's a challenging world. And it's a challenging thing to actually deal with. And it's almost like it would be valuable to have tools, apps, etc. that allow you to see into different eco chambers, different filter bubbles so you can balance your own perspective. This is a real challenge. And also speaking of phones, let's go there for a second.  I even see most of my friends in my general circle tend to be pretty high in awareness. Yes. And I still see the poll that the phones have on them. The addictive nature of the dopamine burst. The checking your phone too much when you're having a conversation. The poll and the way the information that's coming at them, they don't question. There's a lack of analytical thinking around the information that is being presented. Like both Instagram and Facebook. More Instagram has this ability to make you think things about someone by adding the context. You don't know the context around what's going on behind their life. You don't. But because of the medium, your brain fills in the context without telling you. And so it's easy to portray who you are while actually not being that. And so a lot of what it's doing is preventing real, raw conversation. Any communication from actually happening. I think we're becoming more disconnected than ever. For sure. For sure. The level of consciousness, general humanity is starting to dip at a rate that is quite concerning. Quite concerning. And the only thing we can do back to what I was saying is keep the phones away as much as possible. Not just from kids, from yourself. You know that Warren Buffett only has a $20 flip phone? Oh, that's awesome. Wow. That's cool. So does he know the other people?  There's a great documentary on him becoming Warren Buffett. People live complicated lives. Let's talk about becoming Warren Buffett actually. I'm curious to hear your perspective on it. You remember that? I'm becoming Warren Buffett. What are your thoughts on the documentary overall? Yeah, I think it's okay. It's not groundbreaking or anything. I'm more interested in Charlie Munger than Warren Buffett. Yeah. Same. From a cycle, how he dives into psychology and understanding human behavior. One of the things, he started diving long time ago when Robert Childini came out with his research. And he actually gave out books to everybody, his persuasion book. That's kind of a gift to everybody. I'm interested how they think. For me, it's like people are fatuated for him because he made money. That's it. I agree. That's the only reason, right? There's two things. You look at the Bill Gates documentary, you look at the Warren Buffett documentary. Interesting. Obviously, both people's fascination, including mine, to a decent extent comes from the fact that they've asked significant wealth. But my real interest actually comes from how are they living their life now? Because they have so much money that they can choose to live their life in whatever way they want. And more importantly, how do they choose to spend their time? That's really interesting. They don't ever have to make money again.  How are they truly choosing to spend their time? And how is that improving their quality of their being? What is the rate? The funny thing, though, in Bill Gates' documentary, find out that if it wasn't for Melinda Gates, Gates would never be friends with Warren Buffett. Exactly. That's cool. That's pretty cool. It's also like the relationship between Melinda and Bill was also really cool. It was really well depicted in the documentary. I thought it was at least in Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They're true partners. That's an interesting and valuable insight that I had. But what's interesting and surprising for me from Warren's perspective is he doesn't spend much time on his physical movement or activity. No. That's mind-blowing because the research on that is very compelling. If you move your body fundamentally, it will make you better. There's not too much focus on health. He has Coca-Cola every day. And McDonald's in the morning. McDonald's fries or something. I think it was McDonald's in the morning. I was like, what? It makes no sense. Also, they didn't talk very much about his engagement with friends or community very much. I found that interesting. Bill is different in that way. He has a lot more ecosystem. He's got a lot more friends. He's got a lot more communities. And he's more active in philanthropy. Buffet drops his cash into Bill and Mill in this foundation. Or even set himself. He's like he can deploy better than I can. Exactly. So that's interesting to me. I feel almost like Bill's making better decisions in terms of, again, with my limited understanding, how he's deploying his time and his capital. It's context too, right? Exactly. Warren's older than Bill. Much older than Bill. Depending on the context of how you were raised, when you were growing up, what state you were, how the politics, family structure, it's all context. It's hard to compare two people. But there are some similarities. Yeah, totally. Yeah, the voracious readers. The reading is a very consistent similarity. The play and the seeking of the things that bring them joy is also a consistent similarity. So if you look at similarities, I take them as principles. And then I ask myself, back to journaling, I'll just put a question at the top of my journal. How do I sequence and how do I inject more play into my life? Bam. And so I start to go and start to think. And I start to get a list and then I deploy that list into my schedule. Done. That's a simple example of how to take an insight and turn it into something that fundamentally changes you on a week to week basis. So Munger is more interesting for sure. There's one book that has pretty much all of Munger that you will ever want. It's called Poor Charlie's Out of Almanac. It's a large, blue book. And for some reason, it's always on back order on Amazon. But if you're in the States, it's much easier to get. And that has all his speeches, all the... It's got interviews with close friends, family, et cetera. He talks a lot about his life and how he lived it and how he has used models of thinking to apply mostly to investing. He hasn't applied very much to his life, which Buffett talks about actually.  I'm like, interesting. That's good to know because I like to apply things comprehensively across all buckets. Because why not if you can take a concept and you can apply something like some cost fallacy to your relationships and your finance and your friendships and your business. It just applies to everything. Why not? You're already applying it to one area. But I guess this is not a common thing. So learning how to do that, learning how to think for yourself, learning how to find what is your true nature.  And nobody else really has that. It's very your style where if you were nurtured and if you were cared for and you were taught in a way that opens you up to your own nature. You're naturally a direct guy. You're an aggressive guy. You're kind of like a machine gun when it comes to like focus on one thing. You'll just keep going and when you're done, you're done. You're out of bullets. Absolutely. So we've known each other well. So I know kind of what your nature is and how you operate. But if you had a teacher that saw you for who you were and kind of guided you like a wise man, let's say, much older, right? Who could guide you and say, hey, that's kind of what seems like that's where your nature is. So let's move you in that direction. Let's give you something that you naturally gravitate towards. Let's nurture you and your style in a way that you're able to fully develop what that is.  Let's focus on how you learn. Let's develop that. That's something I really truly believe is how mastery is experienced. So you're very unique in your own ways.  You're also like love to question things. You have a natural kind of anti establishment mindset, which is pretty awesome, right? It's an unconventional mindset. You have a traditional distrust for authority, which is what allows you to question, allows you to think for yourself. If we were all kind of allowed to develop in our own nature and think for ourselves, we would develop into the people that make us fully alive and expressed. And for me, like self expression, the extent of self expression and life satisfaction, like they're on the same plan. So the more fully expressed you are in your true nature, the more deeply fulfilled you can be. And that's something I strive for. And thinking is a big part of it. Like thinking I consider is art. Writing is art. And think it's kind of my art. How do you think better? How do you? I really love great thinking because it feels beautiful. It feels simple. It feels like elevates my being in a certain sense. So let's kind of simplify things. We look at, for example, Ray Dalio. Great investor. Yeah. One of the best out there with Bridgewater. Talks a lot about meditation. Oh yeah. Big on that. Massive. Also is a huge fan of Joseph Campbell too. Yes. When we look at principles and Elon is one of the best as well when it comes to first principles. Sure. And we use that as our thesis to approaching new things. What are things people can do today based on first principles to maybe understand themselves a little bit better? This is a great question. So before we ask that question, let's go even deeper. Let's understand how do you think in first principles? Because this is a question that doesn't get asked. Yes. We are never taught how to think in first principles. How do you think effectively? I see a lot of people trying to solve problems, but they're thinking about it wrong. And it's kind of like if you have a faulty windshield, how are you going to drive properly?  So the first step is to understand what it feels like to come to terms and read first principle. Thinking. What does it feel like to read a book like Ray Dalio? How do you tell truth from fiction? How do you tell something that's fundamentally strong and based on something real? In physics, the first principle is the term comes from science, from physics, where all of science is built on a bedrock of first principles. Things you cannot falsify, like the speed of light. It is a first principle. It's foundational to a lot of the physics formulas that are derived slowly over time. All of physics and science is derived directly from these fundamental principles. Yeah, if that theory of speed of light breaks apart, all of physics breaks apart. Exactly. And so in the same way, recognizing being able to... The first step is to learn for every human to recognize in themselves how do you know what a first principle is? How can you tell apart a first principle from a second order or a third order principle? That's important. And to do that, it's important to surround yourself with thinkers like Elon and Ray that frequently think from that standpoint, from that basis. So you have a taste. It's kind of like you're able to taste a good thinking. Because if most people have been living what you're thinking all their life, you can't taste it. And you don't even know what you're missing out on. And so learning to surround yourself with good thinking and slowly understanding, ah, okay, this makes sense. You start with that. You start there. Then you start to question some of the ways that you're thinking. Because thinking is essentially software, right? It's a fancy way. We are a carbon-based life form. Alright, so most computers are silicon-based machines. But let's say if we had silicon-based software, we'd be able to update our thinking a lot faster. Sadly, don't. So we have carbon-based, we're just going to take a lot longer to iterate. Journaling is a very good way of updating your software, updating your thinking, updating your decision-making, analyzing what are the things you did? What are the things you will do? What was the thinking behind your decisions that were faulty? Right, where was the fault in logic? Very similar to how you would debug a program. You got an output you didn't want. Okay, what happened? And it's not a thing where you necessarily need to take it personally. Your code, it's not moving the way you want it to. So how do we figure this out in a way that makes sense? When you put pen to paper, you re-cognize it. Cognition means to understand, to think, to process. You process the thinking, again, re-cognize. You recognize your thoughts on paper. And that changes and updates your thinking in almost real time. So an idea becomes real for the first time when you put it on paper. Because it goes from an intangible thought to a tangible word on a page. And as you start to do that, your processing becomes better. Your processing becomes better and you're exposed to good thinking. You cannot but help update the person you are to the thinking that you're surrounding yourself with. That's a very effective way of being able to upgrade your own personality. And your thinking and therefore your actions and your results in life.   It's a process of osmosis. Okay, so let's say people, maybe whether they read Dalio's book or they dive in deep into first principle thinking. Oh, by the way, there's a really good blog post by Tim Urban on the Web of Why. It's called The Chef, the Cook and the Chef. The Chef, the Cook, the Chef. The Cook and the Chef. Wait, but why? If you just Google this, it'll lead you to a long article. All of Wait But Why's articles are usually long. But they're very worth it. And he talks about how Elon Musk thinks.  It's really funny. So what's something people can do once, let's say they read that. What's something they can do afterwards, pen to paper? Are there questions they can ask themselves? So what I would do is I would take, I would read principles by Red Alio. I would read section one, like there is a part about principles, life principles. Read that section. And then very similar to what I did with the Seeking Wisdom book, which is go principle by principle and put pen to paper and ask yourself, how does this apply in my life? That's it. Understand the principle deeply and then put pen to paper. Ask yourself, how does this principle apply in my life? How can I apply it more effectively? If you do that for that section, I will tell you your thinking is going to really significantly improve. And that's it. It's as easy and as hard as that. And I'm guaranteeing you less than 5% of the people listening will do that. It's hard work. It's hard thinking work. But if your thinking isn't in line, then your life is going to suffer because the results cannot be as precise as your thinking is. Is there any advice you have or you've seen an experience for follow through? To actually do the thing? What is follow? Like for example, let's say you start this process.  And you write about it. Is there any mechanisms or systems in place that can give you a greater chance of success to follow through on that? Great question. So the one I did that shared is accountability. That's a really great one. Just find someone else who's just as hungry as you are or if not more hungry, which is ideal. And work with them. I want to do this. Do you want to do this too? We can help each other out. We can give each other feedback on each other's thought processes. And we can make it a co-evolution experience. That's fun. That's a lot of fun because you got to go with someone. Doing anything with someone else who's also going the same place. It's still a lot of fun. What's the downside? It's like having a gym buddy for your mind. So that for sure. Get accountability. Find someone who is also interested in developing themselves in this way. That's probably my best tip. A second best tip is if you're doing that, put some money on the line, whatever is meaningful to you. It could be like 50 bucks. It could be 100 bucks. It could be 1,000 bucks. Like whatever is meaningful. And it will hurt if you lose it. Like that is your target. That is your mark of, okay, I want to do this. And that's it. And then if you have the right accountability, if you have the right stakes, and if you have the right rhythm, maybe just one principle a week, don't overdo it. It'll take you maybe an hour or two. That's good. And just constantly surround yourself with good thinking. And people that are getting the results you want. That's a really important one. So you look at Dalioni constantly talks about transcendental meditation and how valuable it's been for him and how consistent he is with his practice. That's remarkable to me. That's cool. Okay. I'm interested in this sliver of his results, but his thinking is just beautiful. You know, he's got these beautiful videos on YouTube, right? How the economic machine works. Yeah, the macro micro, yeah. Exactly. A nice 30 minute video that he produced that is like out of his wisdom. It's beautiful. It's very simple, but accurate. It's another video series you produce around this book, Principles, right? It's just like an animation. And there are examples of how the principles work in action. And if you just constantly surround yourself with excellent thinking and people that are getting the results that you want, making sure that you actually want those results. A lot of people want a house and a car. Really, they don't want that, right? They've been brainwashed by society and peers and advertisements and Instagram and things like that to want that. It's just the first layer. But if you put a pen to paper and you ask, what do I really, really, really want? I'll give you an example of what it looks like to get what you really want. Is you're familiar with Anderson Silva? Obviously. Fighter? Yeah. Right? Extraordinary fighter, first of all, is a documentary made on him. Also really good. But the parts that I was most impressed with him was actually after he wins the title. He's like a six plus foot Brazilian man with a lot of pride, right? He gets on his knees and he starts sobbing when he wins the title every time. That's a man who's got what he wants. It's a powerful emotional experience, man, to really get what you want. And we all are capable of that emotion. We all are capable of feeling powerfully vindicated by life for having pursued what you truly want to pursue. But even knowing what that is takes digging because you got to get through the house and the car and all this nonsense that's been programmed at you from birth pretty much, right?  You have to get through this gunk down to the things that really matter to you. And that is a process that can only be done alone, with yourself, with your mind, with your body, with your heart, with your being. Other people can ask you questions, but the true work is done is to be done alone in introspection. You can get a therapist, you can get a coach, you can do all of these things. But fundamentally, the work is yours.  Exactly. Because meditation allows you to get in touch with your being, with who you are.  You do two sessions a day. Yeah, I want to do two sessions a day. My average is about one, but I aim for about two. And what's an easy starter pack for people to get into meditation? Headspace, man. Headspace. Yeah. I've been meditating for a long time, but for all the people that I've actually seen make some progress, headspace is actually pretty good. I've seen some people get on and off muse, but headspace actually is more standard. I think the way to approach it is to say, a lot of people say, oh, I tried meditation once, didn't work for me. That's like saying I tried to exercise once it didn't work for me. It's basically the same thing. I view meditation as exercise behind. Exactly. But you can do a lot of things. You can run, you can lift, you can swim, you can play hockey. And many forms of meditation. Exactly. Right? So when someone wants to get into meditation, a big thing I say is, hey, this is like saying I'm interested in mind exercise, but you don't know which form of exercise you kind of like yet. So don't give up after trying one or two. There are many ranges of meditations. There's TM, there's headspace. There's like meditation studios popping up over the city these days. There's all kinds of the Pasana, there's insight. There's a lot. There's like different yogic meditations, kind of all kinds of stuff. Right? Figure it out. Like figure out what works for your disposition, for your personality. But dismissing like meditation based on like a few sessions isn't really sustainable. It's not a good, it's like going to the gym a couple of times and say, ah, it didn't work for me. I got sore muscles. Right? It's a process you commit to. And if you're doing it, there's actually mindfulness based stress reduction, MBSR, which is like, I think of a 12 week guided program. So where you go in every week and you're instructed and you have sessions at home that you're supposed to go back and do. And over a 12 week period, it almost kind of helps you build a habit. And it's supposed to be a program that's like, runs pretty much most cities, most major cities in the world. And if someone truly wants to build a habit, it's a pretty solid way to get started as well. That's the thing. Same thing with the gym. People try to go in like an hour a day. That might be too much of a mental level at the beginning to build that neural pathway as a habit. For example, I use a daily basis. I use my, sorry, com.com. Right. Yeah. Com is com. That's basically similar. 15 minutes. I was like a 15 minute session. Absolutely. Trying to quiet spot, turn it on and go at it. And the best part is like a minute is better than zero. Yes. Right. Like one is definitely better than zero. One is like exponentially better than zero because you were applying effort into it. And so zero is your enemy. All right. Zero is your enemy. There should be a whole brand around that. All right, UJ, put that in the journal. Zero is your enemy. We'll start that tomorrow. Good stuff. Yeah, man. Yeah. Meditations, the benefits for it's just exponential. There's like no downside to it. Yeah. Yeah. And especially if you combine that with good thinking, journaling, movement, surrounding yourself with great inspiration, surrounding yourself with excellent humans that are similar in a value set and are working on themselves in a similar way. Like that's, this is enjoyable. Right. This is an enjoyable life. This is worth, like this is a life worth living because again, back to the point the Buffett and Gates, I think it's a, they're great, almost memes and ideas for like, huh, even people with significant resources aren't working on themselves the way I would imagine they would be working on themselves. Huh. That's really interesting. Okay. So this whole, this whole industry of, of improving yourself and the drive to improve yourself is not a super common thing. That's fascinating. It's a market. Yeah. There's a market. I think also people try to build Rome overnight. They got to focus on one thing. Yeah.  You know, if you always tell people, you don't have to go to gym. Like if you can do like 20 pushups a day, there's your start. Exactly. Walk 20 minutes. I don't know. Something. What's the most minimal viable thing you can put in? Exactly. So same thing when it goes to like improving yourself, you know, they try to do everything all at once. Something with health, right? Like, oh, I'm going to clean diet and go to the gym and do some, I'll look at the people and I'm like, no, it's not going to work. No, again, they don't understand the first principle of habit change. It's not going to work. Right? They don't understand the first principle of habit change. Yeah. Right? There is a setup cost. There's a significant setup cost to any new habit or behavior that you're going to inject into your life and trying to wear three things at the same time is not going to be effective because it's not going to stack. Right? It's like lifting five bricks when you can only lift two. Mm-hmm. When you get exhausted, you're going to get dejected and you're going to fail. You're not going to know why you failed. Correct. And you're going to give up because now you don't have an actual rudder and understanding of how to move forward in a way that makes sense. Of course. And this happens over and over and over again. So, hmm, there's a market. Yeah. Interesting. I'm excited for the combination with psychedelics and... Sure. ...mine improvement. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a whole new world, too. So, the cool thing about psychedelics is you add fuel to all this fire that already exists. Right?  And then you add psychedelics to that. You get some magic right there because you already have a strong base. The fundamentals are strong. Mm-hmm. The ability to interface with life in a way that allows you to learn and grow on a daily and weekly basis is significant. Right? Your ability to... Your... The navigate life is strong.  Now, what they do is they improve the rate that you can inject consciousness into yourself. That's powerful because through all of these habits and through connections with therapists, coaches, et cetera, you can stabilize the consciousness. Right? You can inject this consciousness into yourself, you know, metaphorically, obviously. And then you can start to allow that consciousness to settle into your day-to-day life. So you can bring that love and that care and that attention and that drive to your work, to your friends, to your family, to your relationships. That's a powerful thing because to me, I think psychedelics obviously in the last year or two have become quite popular, quite popular.  It's annoying and it's concerning because these are powerful things that cannot be used indiscriminately. Hopefully we'll see in the next couple of years legalization and release the mushrooms. Exactly. Psilocybin. Exactly. That'd be nice. But something that gets often not talked about is the integration piece. Correct. And the integration is super important to life. Forget psychedelics for a second. What is an integration skill set? The integration skill set basically is the ability to learn something, like get an insight, and to be able to apply it in life such that you've learned from it. So let's say you get into an anatomy-bill accident because you ran a red light. A very basic example of integration is learn what happened there. Were you drinking? Were you driving? What caused you to move past the red light? Did you not look both ways? Did you not clearly realize there was a red light there? What happened? And the ability to apply that, okay, I didn't look. Or maybe I was drinking, whatever the person has done, the person starts to apply. Okay, I'm not going to do this in the future. Basically, that skill set amplified and refined is what you need. So let's say every conversation you have is a conversation that you can learn about yourself, the other person, and slowly, even just a slight layer of refinement to the next time you interact with them, or the next time you interact with someone else. It is a growth mindset. It is the ability to pull information from the outside and allow yourself to refine every interaction, every iteration of what you're doing. Taking that to psychedelics can be powerful because now you have such a strong injection, influx of consciousness. You're like, wow, this is cool.   And then you start to list it all out and you start to list of the actions that you need to take as a result of this experience. Bam. And that fundamentally changes you in a way you would never have been able to change yourself. Because this access is a powerful thing. So that's what I'm excited for. Obviously the economy and that side of things is also quite interesting, the investing around some of these startups is interesting. The ecosystem in Canada is really cool, man. It's growing because we have a few friends in the industry as well. It's great to see the work they do. Yeah, I'm excited. My hope is legalization. My hope is all drugs are legalized. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Controlled legalized. It's safer. Yeah. It's better. Yeah. Because I would not want them over the counter, man. Listen, even over the counter stuff like Advil and Aspirin is dangerous. Absolutely. Absolutely. My general philosophy is eliminate the black market, legalize old drugs, make sure people want it. They have the most purest, cleanest form and another form even though I'm against taxes, another form of tax revenue for the government. That's fair. You can look at Portugal. Portugal decriminalize most drugs and their statistics are good for people less time in jail, less addicts and also a bit better educational curve as well. It's just safer. For sure. You're not going to stop people from doing what they want to do. Exactly. The safest option is possible. And you eliminate the black market, which is huge for a lot of reasons. Also, you eliminate the impurities and just the lack of great material that people have access to. That costs a lot of debts and ODs and this and that. It's still off tangent. It still befuddles me that prostitution is illegal. I didn't know this. Yes. Okay. Take into the statistics of sex trafficking abduction and you're telling me you're not legalizing it. Legalize it. Streamline it.   It's like no joke. It's obscene.  Oh yeah. Yeah, no, there's a lot of stuff in the world that befuddles me, man. A lot of stuff. This is the world we live in. And that's how we change it day by day. Exactly. Exactly. We learn to embrace it. We learn to see what you can change. We'll end this podcast, which how we started the podcast is I can't change the world, but I can change myself. Exactly. Exactly. One person at a time. Yeah. The best we can do. Yeah, man. So, we've covered a lot. We have. Yeah, man. Guys, make sure you take. Don't take. Don't just passively listen to this, you know, just like any good podcast or audible or book, re-listen to parts that resonate with you. You know, I'm a firm believer in any form of any medium of knowledge that you take in. You view it as any relationship. It's not just transactional. It's multifactorial. You know, when I'm one book that I always recommend people to pick up is how to read a book by more and more Adler, you know, meta analysis or meta reading. And today's time meta reading isn't just reading is absorbing information through podcasting like this or through YouTube.  They don't find a section that you like and don't just listen to it. Like if you enjoyed what UJ was talking about first principles or meditation, take that section out and actually make a checklist for yourself. You know, what are action steps from here? Okay, I'm going to go read Ray Dalio's first principle or read, you know, how to think clearly by role for etc. And actually make a roadmap of actionable steps that you can take after this. I think, you know, we touched on this, is seldom that people do follow-up process in one ear out the other ear. So less is more. That's all I'm saying. Less is more. Yeah, also recommend just pulling out a journal and a pen and paper. And just like asking yourself the questions that matter. Yes. You know, start with how am I feeling right now and why. And then start your search to write about the thing that is on your mind. We're all dealing with something, right? We all are. And put it on paper. Yes. And ask yourself the questions. You know, what's going on? What do I know for a fact? What am I struggling with? How do I move through that? And what do you learn from this podcast? Right? And put it all down. Because if you do, the chances of your follow-through are going to be higher. Because it's hard to sit down with something, write something, have it stare you in the face, not do too much about it. Euje, it's always a pleasure when you come on. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. If people are looking to find more information about you, what's the best resource? The best way is find me on Instagram. Find me on my website. Subscribe. What's Instagram handle? EujeRamdus. Okay. Twitter or anything? Facebook, Twitter or just Instagram? Just Instagram. Okay. EujeRamdus on Instagram. And guys, if you're listening to this on iTunes or Google or wherever else, please make sure to leave a review. Those always help. And if you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment below. I check all the comments on a daily basis. Like, share, and don't forget subscribe. Until then, guys, this was another episode of Amir Approved. And I'll talk to you guys soon. Take care. Bye.


This is Trump-Loy on think tech, connecting the dots on what our president is doing and how it compares with what has gone before and what it portends for the future. First, the Toronto Star reports that every investor lost money on the Trump Tower in Toronto, but that Donald Trump made millions anyway. At this point, the scenario sounds so familiar and even predictable. So the beat continues on the president's special business approach that has so often left his investors, partners and customers in the dark and in the lurch. Is his way of doing business with the Congress, the courts and the country any better? What can we expect for the public? Then the Times reports that after Harvey and Irma, the people of Texas and Florida are waiting weeks for FEMA's help, much less response. Of course, the people of Puerto Rico are having an experience which is much worse. Has Trump and his administration provided sufficient even baseline assistance for these people? Or is it rather that he has turned his back on them in favor of the politics and policies of polarizations and alienation? Shouldn't the president be more caring about these disaster victims? What will happen when similar disasters strike in the future? And to add to that, Trump is in another ridiculous and unimaginable public feud this time with the bereaved widow of a U.S. soldier who was among a group of soldiers recently killed in Africa. A feud with the bereaved widow? It all seems so personal, egotistical, uncaring and insensitive. It reminds us of so many other feuds he has had. Is this appropriate or just another scene in an ongoing senseless, tasteless reality show distracting us yet again from the failure of his administration? How are other servicemen and women and their survivors supposed to react? Anyway, thanks for watching Trump Loy. We'll be back with more as the Trump administration unfolds and unravels going forward.


I was in India at the beginning of January and I saw this demo class, in India one of the things that's very exceptional that's happening is digital public goods that are getting built for identity, payment, many systems and one of the digital public goods that's getting built is for language translation, right. So basically they have an open source project so that anybody building any application in India can translate between any language in Indian, any Indian language. So a demo I saw was a rural Indian farmer trying to access some government program, right. So he just expressed a complex thought in speech in one of the local languages. That got translated and interpreted by a bot and a response came back saying go to a portal and here is how you'll access the program. He said look I'm not going to go to the portal, I want you to do this for me and it completed it. And the reason why it was able to complete it was because they had that developer building it had taken GPT and trained it over all of the government of India documents and then scaffolded it with the speech recognition software. So think about what that meant, right. That basically meant that a large model, a foundational model that was developed in the west coast of the United States a few months before had made its way to a developer in India who then sort of added value to it to make a difference in a remote village's life. And I've never seen that type of diffusion to your point about the industrial revolution clouds. You know I would say you know we're still waiting for the industrial revolution to reach some large parts of the world 250 years after. The internet maybe took 30 years maybe the cloud and mobile took 15 years and now I think we're talking months. I think it would be a grave error for central banks to revise their 2% inflation targets upwards at this point. Having re-emphasized repeatedly the absolute commitment to the 2% inflation target to then abandon the 2% inflation target would do very substantial damage to credibility. If you can adjust once you can adjust again. I think much of the rhetoric surrounding it's not worth having a recession to reduce inflation, which is an argument that is often heard, misunderstands the counterfactual. The counterfactual is not can we have more inflation and not have a recession. The counterfactual is if we fail to deal with inflation we are likely to have a larger and more serious recession at some subsequent point. Europe has not frozen, recession has not come, China has adjusted its policies towards the world and inflation has decelerated. Those are all positive things and reasons why we should feel better than we felt a few months ago. But relief must not become complacency. Inflation is down, but just as transitory factors elevated inflation earlier, transitory factors have contributed to the declines that we have seen in inflation. And as in many journeys, the last part of the journey is often the hardest. And that's true with respect to a return to the inflation target.


We are studying foreign policy analysis and within foreign policy analysis the various ways in which foreign policy decisions are made, what actors and what personalities bring to the table and sort of how they influence those final decisions. So studying this helps us understand the broader picture of how the decisions at the national level will influence the decisions at the lower levels within the military. It also gives us a broader understanding of how to bring different personalities into decision making and how that can influence and states and decisions. And then it helps us bring just our own different perspectives and backgrounds into influence the decisions.


Hi, welcome to Nursing School Explained in this video about EKG interpretation and ventricular dysrhythmias specifically about pulse less electrical activity. Let's look at this in detail. So pulse less electrical activity is also known as PEA and is a clinical situation rather than a specific dysrhythmia. And the term really gives it away pulse less electrical activity which means there can be any organized electrical activity that is underlying that we can see on the cardiac monitor but there is no mechanical contraction. So there is electrical activity that is not producing a cardiac output that means that the patient is pulse less. So on the monitor it appears like an organized rhythm but the patient will usually be pulse less and apnic and unresponsive and this is very dangerous because on the monitor the patient can appear to be looking well but if we don't assess our patient and check a pulse and actually say you know check on them we can't really figure out what's going on. And the patient may have any underlying rhythm so any rhythm is a possibility here. Pulse less electrical activity the causes for it are usually classified as the H's and T's. So H's can be hypovolemia hypoxia which are the two most common reasons of PEA and can be easily reversed. So this is something that we have to keep in the back of our minds when we are assessing a patient who is in PEA. Hydrogen ion meaning acidosis is another cause. Any potassium abnormalities so hyper or hypokalemia as well as hypoglycemia and hypothermia can be causes of PEA. Now looking at the T's it can be toxins so any kind of overdose should come to mind as well as a cardiac tamponade or a tension pneumothorax as well as thrombosis meaning coronary or pulmonary such as myocardial infarction and pulmonary embolus as well as trauma. So this is something that can happen when the patient takes a very forceful impact to the chest. Now looking at signs and symptoms again patient will be unresponsive apnoic and pulse less because all we see on the monitor is this electrical activity but there is no mechanical contraction no cardiac output hence the patient will be unresponsive apnoic and pulse less. Interventions are certainly CPR and this is a non-shockable rhythm. We only shock rhythms that are any kind of ventricular dysrhythmia such as ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation so PEA we will not shock the patient. The patient will need a nutritional intubation as well as IV access so we can treat the underlying causes of the H's and T's that we just looked at and we will follow ACLS protocols and medications to hopefully stabilize the patient. Here are some credits and references for continued practice strips so you can become very familiar and comfortable with EKG interpretation and then here is a list of my EKG interpretation playlists specifically all the ventricular dysrhythmias that we just discussed ventricular fibrillation, tachycardia and acessory. Thanks for watching nursing school explain in this video about PEA.


This is the SF Productions podcast network Supergirl wasn't the first woman to don the tights on TV from the pop culture bunker I'm Mindy and I'm mark you can check out our audio podcast how I got more free comics on iTunes on our website SF podcast network comm so after a long absence We have a super heroine show on primetime US TV Supergirl it has been a very long time. Yes as this airs the second episode has now come out We were impressed with the pilot got into the action and the costume quickly Yes, which was a problem with the other shows. I think yes It wasn't dark and depressing also a problem with some of the other shows who looking at you are oh Ben was was really born for the role. I think Yeah, of course the hardcore comic book fans don't seem to be as impressed Well, they're really not following comic book continuity as usual with some of these right now Yeah, but of course supergirl is hardly the first show with a super heroine lead So we're gonna talk about those Some rules I've put in place so we'll be talking forever. Yes live-action TV only Uh-huh must have actual powers either intrinsic or with gadgets. Yes No spies so that gets I'm appeal is out because she did not have super power right honey west so no and Must be the lead as opposed to just a team member so really the ones that appeared on like Smallville don't count Right. Yes. Now. I'm gonna bend that rule for the first entry and that's Batgirl 1967 and She was introduced for the third season of the Adam West Batman series Really added to save the series, but that ship had already sailed It was played of course by the recently departed Yvonne Craig There's a 10-minute introductory film designed to show the executives how the character would work and one thing they really stress was well A girl shouldn't be punching so she's kicking and she she does a lot kicking Did she ever not punch on the show? She never punched on the show. Wow. I never noticed that but she just kicks That's interesting and killer moth was the villain in this introductory film Just like her comic book intro, which was also in 1967 They didn't exactly match up but but they kind of borrowed from each other and The character is Barbara Gordon the librarian daughter of Commissioner Gordon.  That's a good Hapalita and there's a series and there's a sequence where She is looking at herself in the mirror and there's another actress who I'm Blanking on right now, but she played the girl in the Plain of the apes movies, okay And so that's who she sees in the mirror. So she's not all that beautiful in real life Yeah, really weird and never really went anywhere at all So we then skip all the way to 1974 Where a Wonder Woman returns this time with Kathy Lee Crosby Yeah, yeah, and TV movie intended as a backdoor pilot into a series She looked nothing like Wonder Woman more like a track-and-field runner A ridiculous plot that involved Ricardo model bond and code books. She had no real powers Exactly it I equate this to The Halle Berry cat woman movie, okay, where it's like we have the name of the character throw everything else out So they tried it again in 1975 with the Wonder Woman series the Linda Carter series Mm-hmm, of course perfect for the role. Yes much much closer to the comic book Mm-hmm It ran three seasons one at ABC and was set in the 1940s where she's in the army and It decided to be too expensive for the network because it was a period show I mean when you a period show you've got a nope modern cars. Everybody's got to be in costume It's very expensive to do a series like that And then they did two seasons at CBS then set in 1970s where she's a spy Working for the IADC the interagency defense command Now her character is immortal. So she's it's the same character in both series same cruise explain how They kind of do actually Okay, there's a reference to the fact that Lyle Wagner played both Steve Trevor senior and junior In the two series and there's a reference to that So she's essentially immortal. So it's like yeah, it's the same character. That's yes Carter's portrayal was so enduring. It's taken 40 years to try it again for the upcoming movie if that ever happens And of course TV is nothing if not repetitive so we got a whole group of shows around this time Yeah, so they were all trying to kind of ape the success of Wonder Woman right starting with Mighty Isis in 1975 a Saturday morning show produced by Filmation and This was kind of partnered with the Shazam series, right? Played by Andrea Thomas. She was a school teacher with a magic amulet She could use poetry to initiate the powers. It was the cheapest show short of public access Okay, I didn't watch it all that 1976 the bionic woman a spin-off of the six million dollar man and she has power so she counts exactly introduced in a backdoor pilot Jamie Summers played by Lindsay Wagner and just like Steve Austin was turned into a cyborg without the Approval well, she played a tennis player who is Steve Austin's girlfriend exactly and then she got horribly injured in one of his Missions skydiving accident. Yes, and and he made her you have to fix her Now she apparently died during his series, but that was just a cover-up and When she comes back Jamie has amnesia about Steve conveniently And she ends up working for the Office of Scientific Intelligence EOSI as a spy as Steve did. Yes, but somehow kept separate so that Steve didn't know. Yes She had a bionic ear a bionic arm and bionic legs and They later introduced a bionic dog in the last season Max. Yeah She reappeared in the TV bionic movies in the 80s and 90s I think she and Steve eventually got together and had little bionic baby. Yeah. Yeah Electro woman and dyna girl 1976 another Saturday morning show produced by Sid and Marty Croft of HR puff and stuff and Lidsville Deidre Hall who of course later went on to days of our lives and Judy Strangas played the heroes They had these electro comps bracelets that gave them powers Which apparently rarely worked it seemed like it took campiness to a whole other level than even more than the animus series There was an attempted remake in 2001 with Markey post in the lead any more much more cynical view of the character You can find it on YouTube. It's it's like wow she's like an alcoholic and And she's sleeping around She's living in a trailer Definitely not a Saturday morning show. No and then earlier this year a web series was announced But I can't find any evidence that it actually happened. Okay, like two YouTube stars that we're gonna do that again Oh, who knows? I think it's just a publicity stunt the greatest American heroine 1986 an attempted pilot sequel to greatest American hero that ran from 81 to 83 Played by Mary Ellen Stewart and the idea is this alien suit gives you superpowers. Yes We got a few female heroines in the 90s like Zena and Buffy, but I wouldn't really consider them to be superheroes I don't know Buffy, you know, she had powers. Yeah, she was the chosen one, right? Yeah, but you know, it's it's so far away from Superhero. Yeah, it seems like like more like a dark dark Hero, right and speaking of dark heroes dark angel in 2000 was an early role for Jessica Alba who plays a genetically enhanced super soldier on the run in 2009 post apocalyptic Seattle. I really liked this. Yeah, we liked this show. It also featured Michael Weatherly. Yep who went on to ACS. Yes. James Cameron did the pilot He produced the show. It cost ten million dollars for the pilot It lasted two seasons Black Scorpion 2001 sci-fi channel series from Roger Corman starred Michelle Lintel as a police detective who moonlighted as a vigilante hero Corman really emphasized the sexy costumes on the show She had no powers just gadgets in a supercar But she had tights so she counts as a superhero. Okay. Yeah Adam West and Frank Gorshin Of course both from the 60s Batman series got roles as villains at one point It was actually based on a couple soft core movies that were made in the 90s Which blade 2001 a TNT series based on images comic book series Police detective played by Yancey Butler who finds this ancient blade that gives her powers and magic armor That at least in the comic leaves little to the imagination It was supposedly cancelled because Butler went into rehab for magic use apparently Well, she They say was TNT's highest rated show when it was cancer. So it must have been because of that Birds of Prey 2002 based on DC's comic book series and again, I really liked this show at least in One of its various incarnations. They changed the they seem to change it up several times. Didn't well It was only 13 episodes. Yeah, but they kept changing people Yeah, it was set in a near future Gotham where Batman is gone leaving a city defended by Oracle Barbara Gordon played by Dina Meyer Huntress Ellen at Kyle played by Ashley Scott. Who is the daughter of Batman and Catwoman? So it's almost like an earth to in a way Dinah Lance who is the daughter of black canary and played by Rachel Scarston and as I mentioned only 13 episodes a Bionic woman remake with Michelle Ryan in 2007 Really never took off. I mean there were several episodes, but it did terribly in the rain. Yeah David Kelly produced a truly horrid Wonder Woman pilot in 2011 with Adrian Palicki Who's now on agents of shield and that is available online in various places? Yes? I want to watch it really was not very good There there's a scene where she's fighting this guy or coming up against this goon in a hallway She picks up this huge metal bar and impales him killing him instantly She was never in danger. Nobody was in danger. She just killed him. Yeah So now we have both a supergirl and a Jessica Jones series coming from Netflix With Kristen Ritter starring which looks very very very dark Yes, and you would expect that to be based on what we've seen already from their daredevil daredevil Yeah, right And we're also getting legends of tomorrow this January which is an in arrow slash flash spin-off on the CW There are multiple female heroes and heroines in that show Yes, so we'll have to see how that goes and how much of a lead they take right So we're looking forward to watching that at least I am yeah And in the meantime you can check out our audio podcast I got my wife Tweet comics on iTunes or on our website SF podcast network comm from the pop culture bunker. I'm Mindy. I'm Mark Thanks for watching


How's it going everyone Caleb here with late and sports cards next night. We're gonna be working on archive six series break number 15 Full case break that is here 20 box case Random division style. Thanks again. This is retired player edition. There are the results from the random one more time Thank you again everyone. They're also linked in your chats Good luck. All that remains tonight would be flawless left side serial number spots guys I will grab you a link here for the first one the spots Only break with spots left though. It has 13 to go on number 40 7 check it out there Here we go and good luck. Thanks again for joining on the division Good luck. Thanks again so much. See we got starting it out here with a Keith Hernandez autograph one of 16 Keith Hernandez and L East Next up here. It's gonna be autograph 82 of 99 by the blue and L West Go and L West Remember we'll be going by of course the teams on the card a lot of these players have played through lots of different teams Nice first one of one out is a Dave Magadan one of one autograph there nice You go a L West came down the board nice one of one auto We've got a will Clark NL all-star card. This is when he was on the Giants You can see a giant right there on his helmet.  That's numbered 16 of 38 You go and L West 16 of 38 auto here is gonna be a Steve Finley autograph here Dodgers 12 of 33 There he is and I'll West again on a roll here and L West There you go 40 of 42 is Dennis Eckersley 40 of 42 on the auto there Dennis Eckersley AL West now West divisions aren't eating Padres, it's gonna be a goose sausage Rick Gossage auto 11 of 36 Al West another hit for you Another one about that talk. I haven't seen any yet I know some of the top guys are like going after like Jeter stuff Although each hero would be like a top name as well. So I don't know I haven't seen any yet. It's a great question Uh 30 of 79 that's gonna be a Jason Kendall autograph and L central believe so. Yeah, thanks CWD you go nice one L central next one up It seems like something that each year would have a couple autos in we've got a Dwight Gooden autograph That's gonna be three of 37 once again all-star game. You can see he's wearing his Mets gear. That'll be a Mets card You and at least One autograph is Jim Palmer Jim Palmer one of one auto AL East You go AL East getting on the board with a one-of-one Jim Palmer Nice the graph is 13 of 53 Ron Goodry There he is Another one for the AL East Ron Goodry auto this time Jean tennis autograph 11 of 19 Jean tennis there you go and L West on the auto there Jean tennis Seven to go guys. Good luck F rangers six of 22 one Gonzalez Very nice AL West there you go Nice one AL West on the one Gonzalez. Oh, that's awesome Really cool card choice on the Bowman heritage Gary Sheffield autograph seven to 16 It's a clean-looking card There you go AL East Nice right five of them remaining. Oh, wow Jumbo autograph Julio Franco 66 of 85 Rangers 66 of 85 there. That's AL West Jumbo auto like I said Roars autograph Raleigh fingers 16 of 99 NL central you go You to go You what to go? We've got Steve Garvey autograph 13 of 47 Steve Garvey that'll be going over to the NL West another hit for you Go NL West Stackin' them up Let's you to go Roars autograph Ted Simmons 50 of 86 Ted Simmons NL central by contract he's required to although I have no idea and closing it out here with a Dale Murphy autograph eight of eight Dale Murphy to close it out There he is NL East Last hit of the break and thank you again everyone. I hope you did enjoy that Archive sync series that was a random division style break. We'll have all of those well protected up and right out to you Thank you again so much for joining. I do really appreciate it. We got another break coming up shortly tonight