What would you say is the benefit of educating yourself sexually and how important do you feel this is? I think it's about discovering your identity.  It's about understanding how you think, how you feel and understanding how your body and your mind reacts to certain things because your body and your mind do react to a lot of the stuff that is based around sexuality. A lot of our decisions are based on those reactions. Also, it's your body, it's your emotions. You should know how you feel about it. You know, there are so many of these really strange myths that have been passed on. So one of them is that, okay, it's the guy's job to turn me on completely and he's responsible for my pleasure. No, you are responsible for your own pleasure. Your partner can be a partner. They can enhance how you feel, but you need to understand this for yourself.  I just think it's so important. Why should we kind of say this is one part of our minds that we block off and never think of? I think it's a very large part of our brain and we should really understand it.


and you're out there saving people's lives. I don't think they're going to be like, uh... Hold on, player. Hold on. What's up, you guys? It's Adana. I am back. Let's get ready to rumble guy, you guys. Not working. So I'm going to just stick with my PA Q&A Tuesday. All right. So that is what we're doing today. I am reading you guys's questions and answering them. So if you haven't already done so, go ahead and leave your comments your questions in the comments section below for the next PA Q&A Tuesday, because I usually get my comments that I'm actually answering from these videos. Okay. Also, is there a competitiveness in your class in the sense that everyone is always trying to... I guess that says... I guess that should say trying to top everyone else. If so, how do you deal with it? Okay. So is there a competitiveness in my class? No. So my class, like, they kind of talked about this from the jump.  We want you guys to kind of matriculate together. Therefore, do not talk about your grades. Do not talk about your scores.  Did you do well? Great. Cool. Keep it moving. If not, you know, like, is there anything that we can do to help out? No, great. Keep it moving. That kind of thing. It's kind of just, like, up in the air. We do no one ever knows anyone's grades. Like, there are times when we know, like, oh, if they're like, yeah, somebody got a hundred or something like that, how we found out, I have no idea. But if we do, we don't necessarily know who it is, or they'll kind of give a range of times. They'll say, okay, so the top score was 90, this. The average was this. They never say what the lowest score was, which is a blessing for anybody that may have gotten a low score well below the average. You don't necessarily want to feel, you know, any, like, incompetence or anything like that. But no, there's no competitiveness. We're really, really, our class shares everything with respect to all of the study guides that they have. It's all in one Google Drive so that we can have access to it if we want to use the study guides made by other students in the class or the class pried to us. They shared their study guides with us as well, which was very beneficial throughout the majority of didactic gear thus far. So they're really, really helpful in that sense, and no one really talks about their grades, so there's no true competitiveness at all. I have two questions. One, I already graduated high school. I am currently attending community college for AAT in kinesiology. Would I still be able to apply for a bridge program? And two, are there any majors slash degrees that PA programs frown upon for being too easy or it doesn't really matter as long as you meet all the requirements thanks in advance? So question number one, your associates in kinesiology, are you able to apply to a bridge program? So I know that with respect to Howard, when Howard was doing their PA program, like there was an option for you to still apply to the bridge program if you were going straight into the masters, I guess you could say. So it's not really a bridge program, but you could go, if you already had your bachelor's degree, you could go into the master, which you could already do. So no, so I don't know. I don't know how that works. From my understanding, the bridge program is just a matter of you are coming straight out of high school, you're applying to their undergraduate degree.  If it's five years, you're getting out a little bit sooner. But I don't know how that associates degree would work. If you already have an associates degree, I feel like you're better off just going the other two years to get your bachelor's degree and then get into a master's program for PA school. You don't want to waste those two years that you've already done in your associates degree for kinesiology. So that would be my suggestion, but if you are looking into any specific school, please go ahead, talk to the school, ask them. And I'm pretty sure they'll be more than happy to answer that question for you. As far as is there any degree that is frowned upon? I mean, I don't know. I'm not really an admissions director at schools. I don't know if schools are looking at the degrees like, oh, you have a degree in fine arts. You're not going to be a good PA. They're more so from my understanding, looking at the prerequisite courses, how well did you do in those prerequisite courses? And then your actual healthcare and patient care experience. So were you an EMT for five years? I don't think if you had a degree in fine arts or music appreciation, not to say that those are easy, but I'm just trying to think of something that's not science-based.  Hold on, player. Hold on. You got a degree in fine arts. You're not going to be a, you're not a good candidate. You know, I'm looking down on that. No, it's really with respect to your experience. There are a lot of things. I mean, and I think you guys will just, maybe some of you have already realized this, but when, and if you haven't, you will find this out that in life, a lot of times it's all about your experience. It's about your experience and who you know. That is what's going to get you in. That's what's going to get you the jobs, that kind of thing. And so with respect to PA school and anything in general, it's about your experience. Sometimes experience trumps your degrees. So just keep that in mind, but I don't really think that anything is looked down upon. But again, if you are concerned, ask whatever schools that you are applying to or that you're thinking of applying to, hey, are there any degrees that you guys don't really accept so that I'm not wasting my time and money in applying to your school. What's the best way to study as far as organization methods? All right. So for me, I study various different ways for different classes. I use a lot of study guides. We make our own study guides, or we kind of augment the study guides that we've gotten from previous classes with what we've gotten in lecture. And then I study off of that. I like to study by myself and make sure that I get the material down myself before I kind of break out into a group if I so choose to go study with a group. But that's for me. With respect to my pharmacology class, I know I've showed you guys this before, but I use bubble maps or mind maps, however you guys want to call them, to actually study for that so that I will have the drug class, their adverse effects, their mechanism of action, their generic name, that kind of stuff all in little bubbles that are kind of attached to each other because seeing it is easy for me. There are students that use Excel spreadsheets and that works great for them, but for me, I can't just do the straight memorization with Excel spreadsheets. When I'm in my pharmacology test, I literally see those maps in my head. I'm like, okay, so I remember seeing this. I may not necessarily remember exactly what I had written there, but I know it's up in the right-hand corner and in the right-hand corner was my barbiturates. So what are my adverse effects? That kind of thing. And that helps me with respect to positioning and understanding what exactly that particular drug might be. So for me, with respect to farm, I use maps with respect to my med practice and my physical diagnosis class. I use just study guides. And I organize them from slides or from particular diseases. So let's say we're in Peds right now and there are medical emergencies. All of the medical emergencies or pediatric medical emergencies are in one block. And then all of the pulmonary or respiratory diseases are in another. And that just makes it easy for me. I can break it down.  So those are just some options for you. I don't think it just works for a PA school. I think it can work for any school, undergrad, high school, whatever you're at in your schooling career. What is the average age of a PA student? The average age of a PA student is 27. So obviously there are students that are older and younger. If you haven't seen my How Old Is Too Old for PA School video, go ahead. I'm going to leave a link for that. I've done a video and then I've also done a true life series. If you haven't seen my true life series, go ahead and check that out. I have a playlist of that. So you guys can check that out as well. But it talks about people and being old or thinking that you're old. And there are people that are well above 27. And then there are people that are slightly above 27. But for the most part, the average age is 27. There are not that many students that come straight out of undergrad and go into PA school. But there are some that do. I think just in my class alone, I think there was like maybe three of them, three or four of them, out of 30. So, you know, that's a pretty high percentage. But for the most part, everyone has already kind of been either in their first career and this is now their second career. They've been working towards becoming a PA. But the average age is 27. All right, so that is another one in the books for you guys. If you have any further questions that you want answered on the next PA Q&A Tuesday, leave that in the comment section below. I will be sure to get to them and answer them. Thank you guys so much for watching. And if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow me on Instagram at adanathepa. And like this video. Like it right now. Right now. Like this video. All right. I will talk to you guys next time. Bye.


All right, so we're going to talk about how to set up open VPN on PF Sense, so your Windows box can log back in to your home network or office network, however you want to set this up. Sometimes we're referred to as a road warrior VPN because it doesn't really care where you're coming from as long as it's authorized by the firewall. And on the internet, you can get in from a computer and get into the LAN side of your network is the goal here. So we have our simulated internet lab, which is the <IP_ADDRESS> slash 24. So that three network is our simulated network. We have a Windows machine here. The goal is be able to reach this Debian box over here, which is on the 192.168.40 network or the actual IP address is 40.50. So let me jump into our Windows box here and show you what it has and the routing information. I'm going to walk you through all the steps of how to set this up on a clean install of PF Sense. So here's our Windows box, which has the IP address of <IP_ADDRESS>. Here's the route. All I did was a route print to get this and it shows the current routing table. So it doesn't have any other routing than to the dot three network and be able to get out on the internet. So I'm online. No problem there. But if we try to ping <IP_ADDRESS>, no go, no route to that host. So let's get into OpenVPN and get this set up. So here we have a clean load of PF Sense, latest version 241 as of November 17. We're going to go here to systems, package manager. Now OpenVPN is built in, but this available add-on tool called the OpenVPN export tool makes your life really easy for deploying OpenVPN. So we'll run this real quick. It installs fairly quick, at least on my machine it does kind of depends on how fast your machine and your internet connection is. So that's installed. Then we're going to go to VPN, OpenVPN. Now this is where it's really handy to use the wizard. So kick off the wizard. We want to choose local user access. Now the first thing it's actually going to do is create a CA certificate. So this will be my Lawrence system. So LTS country code, I'm in the U.S. Am I, I'm actually sitting in Southgate right now, LTS office, I'll throw my email in here. Now it's adding a new CA. This is why it's great to use the wizard, if not you have to go set up all these manually. Now that we created the CA, now we're going to create the certificate, LTS VPN and everything else the same. And if you notice, and I can jump, whoop, can't jump backwards, sorry. When you created this, it actually has a default of a 10 year lifespan of the certificate. You can set this however you want, that way if you want the certificate to expire, you can set a different time, but it defaults to 10 years. Hopefully within 10 years you've probably upgraded your machine. All right, now it wants to know what interface type UDP defaults to the WAN, that's fine. Now we can actually name our VPN, we'll call it test VPN. All this can stay at default. Same here, you can change encryption algorithms and everything else, and whatever you change here does have to match the client, but with the export tool you'll see that all the changes here go into the export tool to make this really easy to do. If you have hardware crypto, you can choose that for your hardware crypto tunnel network. You do have to define that in 3.70 slash .0 slash 24 works. What the tunnel network is on OpenVPN is the tunnel that the machines will connect to. So they have to create a tunnel. This IPs will be assigned to the individual computers connecting to join your network. So what it's going to do, for example, when I connect this Windows machine, it's going to get an IP address in this range. So you can set this to be however you want and scale it to what works for you. So if your network has more than 250 clients, you're going to want to expand this out to an even bigger network, but for purposes of this, a slash 24 works just fine. This is also another option where you can say force all the client traffic through a redirected gateway if you want. That means once they get to the VPN, force everything across, there's also another parameter I believe you need to add to Windows and I'll get to that when we do the look at the client config. Local networks. You have to specify what local networks you want them to have access to. So if we want them to have access to this local network, which happens to be 40.0 slash 24, you put that in here. If you have more than one, you would put that in there as well. And you only need to put the ones you want them to have access to in here. So maybe you have multiple networks, but you don't only want them to get to one, you can set it up that way. Or maybe you have a special network because you want an outside developer in your network coming in. You can specify the only network that that person can get to. And what this does is pushes the route back across their connection. So we're just going to leave this one so it has route to this. Number of concurrent connections. This is optional if you want to have to allow want to allow multiple connections to the server or limit how many connections can come to the server DNS servers. If you're doing something like redirected gateway, you have to make sure that you specify your internal or some other external servers because if you do redirect all the traffic, you also need to give them a gateway, not a gateway, but a DNS entry so they're able to look up domain names when they're on there. So you either specify internal and this is also handy if you're if you need them because of Active Directory reasons, you can specify your AD servers internally for this. So when Windows connects through OpenVPN, then it can come through and talk to the proper DNS servers for DNS resolution, throw in open VPN, the open DNS server in here. If you want to use net bios over this, it has the option if you check the back, we're not going to do that for the sake of this discussion. And once you get the bottom, you have all the advanced features. So if you have some special parameters you wanted to throw in there, they get pushed across. So that's it for all the settings we're going to get next. I mistyped the tunnel network. If you mistyped it, it won't work. It does have some sanity checks it does. So I just it's a typo there. Check these two boxes here. These automatically create the firewall rules for you. So you don't have to next finish. Now we're almost done. And I say almost because there's a setting here. So there's different ways you can do this. You can do remote user access or remote user auth with SSL. With SSL means you can do a per user certificate, which is a nice real secure way to do it. So you have the certificate for the VPN and then an additional per user certificate. So that's username, password and certificates. So they would need all three. For simplicity sake, we're just going to do the user auth. Just make it simpler. So all we're doing is going back in here because it defaults to SSL and user auth. We're going to go all the way down to just user auth and scroll down to the bottom and hit save. All right, that part's done. Now let's talk about users. So let's go to the user manager. You probably don't want to give me your admin password for your firewall. So we're going to create a user Tom and a password for Tom. Full name, Thomas. Now here's where you would create the certificates if you wanted to go through that trouble of creating a certificate for every user you create. You don't have to give any other membership or anything else to this user. So hit save. Matter of fact, because this user doesn't have any permissions, they can't log into the firewall and do anything or give any settings to it. They don't need to. As long as this is using, when you say local database, like we did at the very beginning, we're just using the local users list to authenticate. Simple as that. There are options in there, so you could use LDAP and other options for authentication. You don't have to use local user access. That's something that PF Sense does support. So if you have a external user list and you want to connect it to there, that is possible. When you're adding it, here's the other option that supports LDAP and Radius. You want to rerun this and you have an LDAP server. It would have allowed you to specify it when you're running the wizard at the beginning, but for simplicity and sake of this video, we'll just choose local user access. All right. The VPN is set up and now we get to use the client export. And this is the cool part right here. Here's all the configs for different options. Old Windows installers, so they still have some legacy support here. Max support. And here's our Windows installer. But we don't want to install on this computer. We want this installed on our Windows machine. So let me jump over to Windows real quick. Client export. Man, we're going to hide and use where I'm Windows 10 here. So we'll run the latest installer.  I'll minimize, say yes. And then we just next and yes our way to open VPN being installed. The defaults are all fine. Now I have noticed when the craters update loaded, it did break open VPN. Literally the same install file next and yes through it works fine. Didn't have to uninstall or reinstall it. We've had this happen a couple times with clients. You can just keep rerunning the same installer. Anyway, he goes. Now what that installer did is really slick. So double click this. It's going to throw open VPN down here. And I'm going to change the settings on here. You just right click on it and you can say launch at Windows startup. I usually do that and then show the balloon windows. This will have it automatically launch open VPN startup. Go here. We're going to hit connect username and password. You have an option to save it here. Not going to check it and it's connecting. Now when I ping, just like it did before, I couldn't ping this. It failed. Now it pings this network. And when we go to route print, look at all the routes we have. So we have our standard default routes, but now we have the tunnel route, which is right here. And the tunnel route says things that are going to the 40 network, the network we pushed over, push across this gateway. So this network is being pushed across here. And now let's go over to the PF sense. And we see this computer connected. It was assigned 70.2. If we connected another one, it would keep going up and be assigned the next IP address. Then here is the external IP address. Pseudo external. It's part of our lab, the 192.168. The username Tom has connected. If I connected with a different user, you'd see a different username there. So you'd be able to see all of your connections and each of your users. And you can just click the kill client and it will drop that client right off of there. Now the question came up about redirecting all traffic back through the VPN. It's actually really easy to do for Linux clients. And maybe I'll do a separate video because it's a little tricky to set up the Linux clients because, well, a bunch who has the features for it, but there's a few steps you have to load. And I need to do a whole video on that. But in Windows, the way you do it is this way, according to the documentation I've read. So you're in open VPN. We're going to go ahead and go over here. Edit the config file. Now this is from the open VPN page. And you need the redirect gateway. And I'll leave a link to this and below and what you need to add in there. So it's redirect gateway. Then you have to add DEF1 for default one. So we open up this file here. And this is what we would add just at the bottom. And that basically means redirect everything to the default gateway for the tunnel traffic. So by adding this, that would mean when we connect this computer, it redirects all the traffic. Because I'm using all local IPs, there's not really any way for me to test that easily with my demo environment. Side note though, save won't let me save. You to edit this file, open up notepad, right click, run as administrator. Yes, notepad has to have administrative access. So you can go to file, open, go over here to your program files, open VPN, config, all files, config, then we would add this redirect gateway and we'll close this one. And then I'd be able to save the config. Now the other thing you may have noticed in here, this keeps things pretty simple. When the export tool ran, here is all the settings dropped right in here. So if you need to change something like the remote gateway to be your VPN, your VPN server, fully qualified domain or IP address, you can just edit this config file once it's installed if things change without having to rerun the cert. The other nice thing is here is the cert file that tells to pull the TLS off file and when it ran the installer, it did all, it copied all these files over and put them in the proper directory. So if you make any changes on the server, you just rerun the export tool and it recreates all of this and you can just install over the top or you can go in here and edit it all by hand if that's what you want it to do. But this makes deploying pretty straightforward and simple. Now I will note this to make sure this is working. So let's save, close, open up a command prompt and we'll go over here, open VPN. We're going to do a disconnect and reconnect with that new parameter we added. So this is the route before we change that. And now let's go route, print. We should probably see a different, okay so that does work. So all the traffic here covering all the routes. So not just the .40 network but all the other networks are said to use this as their default gateway. So 0, 0, 0 there, there. So it did change the routing so that should work for rerouting all of your traffic back across VPN. So this is handy if you're traveling and you have this VPN set up at home and you want your Windows box to redirect all the traffic through there. That's the way to do it. Just add that one feature and I'll leave a link below where that command is in the description below. So that's pretty straightforward for setting up the open VPN on PF Sense. It's not too difficult. Use the wizard. It automatically created the firewall rules and the routing. So the firewall rules are already in here and it says open VPN, test VPN wizard. It tells you in the description that the wizard created it. Also creates the rule here by the open VPN wizard. So you can go modify the rules if you have some restrictions you want to add for people remotely accessing your network. But pretty straightforward, not that hard to deploy. That export tool makes it very simple to do. Now let's go back real quick here. If you wanted to set this up on other devices, the client export tool is also handy for when you're doing it on Linux, for example. You can actually just download like this. So when you're setting up on Linux, you still need, you just look at the settings file to put it in Linux like so. I'm going to do a separate video sometime on that. But it also puts the two keys you need to get it in there too, the CA and the TLS key that are needed in order to get the connection going. So that'll be a separate video for how to do this from a Linux machine. But as far as setting it up from a Windows machine, it's really just beautifully easy because you can just run the Windows installer here. And this is the latest version of 2.4 of open VPN. And easily deployed is this is something we've done for a lot of clients to set these up. A lot to do for clients for extra security, we will add the per user certificate, just a little bit more to manage and more to set up. But it will do that too, if you add certificates per user. And I guess I could show that real quick here. So if we go here, open VPN, and you wanted to build it like this, we'll go down here, save. So we go to the user, edit. Add a user certificate. If you have an existing one or you can create an internal certificate. Department, LTS, common name, Tom's, cert, save. Now this user has a cert. And we go over here to the VPN, open VPN, client export. We have a specific user Tom export. And the same thing can apply if I want to go here to system, user manager, we'll create one for you. Create one for the admin. Here's the admin export and then the Tom export. So it works much the same way, but now I've added that extra level. So there's the system cert. There's the user cert. And all these certs get bundled into the installer. So it works, but it also gets trickier to install. It all depends on what level of security you want. Keep it in full head on. More security isn't bad at all. Please note though, more security also means more complexities and there sometimes is a little bit more configuration that gets involved in these. So it'll work fine. The basic and so far open VPN has been proven really solid. I went through a code audit. It's still a really solid VPN to use. So you can trust that the traffic through it is well encrypted. All right. Hopefully this was helpful, showing you how to set up open VPN and your essentially road warrior style VPN for your windows box, connecting into your home network or a remote network or office network. If you like to continue, like and subscribe. If there's something you may expand upon, let me know. Message me in the comments below or if I completely screwed this video up. Let me know that too. You never as wrong as when you're wrong on the internet. So hopefully I got all this right because I could ping and it seems to work. All right. Thanks again.


everyone and welcome back or welcome to Norse Cove I'm Yoshida. Today we're going to be doing our monthly budget and for those of you who are subscribing been with me my last video was about a month ago. Well I've pretty much been out most of August from work. I had a real bad nosebleed the first of August which lasted about six days. I ended up in the hospital. I just realized I didn't do August. It's budget because I pretty much was sick and I kind of found out it was high blood pressure, stress and I hadn't been taking my medicine I'll be honest and yeah so then after that I caught COVID just like directly out of the hospital not from the hospital but my daughter had courted. She was home so yeah anywho let's start on September I hate that I didn't do August but I know I checked some things off through my calendar that's something else that I didn't do my calendars but we're just going to start on September and I want to get back in the swing of things I have my wallet here because I'm actually going out of town once I finish this video but I have my wallet here because I wanted to stuff some envelopes. I thought about doing it with this video but I think it'll just be too long so we're just going to start here with our monthly budget also if you are new here these inserts you can find in my shop I'll try to remember to leave the link below and it's just I love it for using my monthly budget I do want to kind of search it up for 2023 but I'm already long-winded I've already been gone a while so let's hop right on into it. So first off we're going to start off with our sources of income one being hair now I normally put down nails but while I was out my only few little clients they basically went somewhere else to get their nails done so I just only want to include nails so I'm gonna put miscellaneous and Norris Cove y'all it's just been something else so projected for hair I'm gonna put 3,500 I like more than that but that's what we're gonna go with miscellaneous I don't expect anything Norris Cove I'm gonna put I'm gonna put 100 I'm really gonna try to do more work with Norris Cove and get back again in the swing of things so that leaves our total at 3,600 so Colton paper this month it's gonna come out on the 15th so I gotta remember that but Amazon came out on the first and that was 1589 community I've paid them just waiting on them to clear I'm playing catch up I owe back booth rent because I was technically out of work for like oh two weeks and remember I went and kept my nephew for a week and I just thank God I've had them at work that Saturday to get the money Shopify for last month was $29 I haven't paid them yet credit one paid them so my budget is gonna be really really tight this month but you guys let me tell you when I was in the hospital bed I just thought of everything and my finances was one of them because I was not prepared I just wasn't I'm just gonna be totally honest with you you all have seen how my budget goes you see how I pay bills and things like that I had no savings and I'm in the hospital worried about bills and I just didn't think that was cool you know I'm saying I just thought Yoshiba you have field yet again but not necessarily field I feel myself I feel my finances you know and always so I'm gonna save up for a sick day because you know with hairstylers we don't you know get sick days and things like that I'm writing down chase or I did chase credit like capital one so anyway I'm thinking about all of that stuff while I'm in a hospital bed okay I'm thinking how I got there of course not taking care of my health and things like that and I was like I've made a promise to God I said Lord listen if I get out of here and I live I'm okay I'm gonna do better and I'm gonna I don't care if I save 20 $25 a week whatever I'm gonna save something you know when I get out of here because I don't want to be put in this position again because I'll be back here stressing out about bills and I don't want to do that so I've done great this week I'm not gonna say great but still just trying to catch up you know on bills and I am behind I mean I caught up fairly quickly that first week I was back but there's the ones that was just like wasn't really important that I'm behind and I owe back boost rent so I have to pay pay that I've been luckily the owner of the salon she's very sweet and she's allowing me to give what I can so kudos to her but I need to get myself together I forgot car note number one in here so and I realized I'm looking at this budget I forgot car note number two I mean car note number one though last time so car note number one and car number two is 81 60 a piece and car insurance 28 so yeah like conscience I need to pay that it's just I've got to get back on track and I was doing so well I had to borrow from my life insurance to help with bills so your girl is like I'm gonna put the here for T-Mobile I already know I gotta give them 285 I really oh I'm gonna tell you how much oh T-Mobile T-Mobile 199 but yeah so I like said your sheet that you've got to get it together and you gotta make an effort with this cash envelope you gotta make an effort with savings and again you all see how I pay my bills and how I get paid and sometimes it's just not there you know like this week my T-Mobile I forgot about it it's due boost rent back with rent regular bills and the little money I had set aside I set aside like $50 from about like last week and then so this week I just tried to add what I could to it so it's not a whole lot that I'm stuffing but I said Lord how am I supposed to save if I got you know always play catch up so I always a head in the back of my mind that thought and it says pay yourself first and like don't touch it so I'm like okay just imagine if you're paying somebody off your sheet you just can't pay a bill you just don't have it you know not right now so just try to do a small amount so that's what I'm doing is just trying to start small so my cash stuffings will be small again until I can pretty much catch up I'm very ashamed I'm slightly embarrassed because at my big age I don't have a savings I don't have a retirement and I've just been self employee most of my life both my adult life to be honest and I thought about it I'm gonna give you a good example like okay I have down here a thousand dollars for booth rent I'm going to make it because I've given her I'm down to over these so 1450 is what I need to pay okay and my daughter has my calculator and let me see if we have another calculator here but I'll add that up I want to put into my savings this month at least a hundred dollars so put that down that's just a minimum and I can't think of an account number I already have fifty dollars in there so far so it'll be a hundred and fifty and I transfer fifty dollars over today to my savings account because I'm just like I gotta do better I just gotta do better and I had this realization let me zoom out I had this realization I was watching P Valley and the young lady you know she's been stripping and she was like you know she saved twenty thousand dollars up over seven years you know dancing and her mother stole it and I was like dang I've been doing this 30 years and I don't have twenty thousand if I could have probably had more you know so over 30 year period I could have had more of course than I should have a million okay let's just be honest I should have a million dollars saved and I don't so I know I can't catch that up not unless I hit the lottery but it is what it is I need to get on it fact let me add it up and then I'll come back and give you a total of the total amount that I owe but we're expecting thirty six hundred dollars for the month and normally let's check in I have not any new bills but that's not right oh it is normally it's like almost twenty five hundred dollars a month that I pay so let me do the math and I'll come right back and as you can see I told is twenty nine thirty nine seventy three so we're on almost three thousand dollars worth of bills so when I take away we're just gonna round it out to three thousand that leaves me with six hundred dollars and then I'll have the hundred and fifty well a hundred dollars and that leaves me with roughly around five hundred dollars that I'll have left and I do I haven't done groceries I haven't done miscellaneous so I'm going to go back again to my cash envelopes and in the beginning when I do my cash envelopes it's going to be clearly just to start and prayerfully not touch until I can build up a certain amount I don't even know if I want to do myself care in there yet I may have to slack on myself care Christmas is going to be a little shaky so those envelopes won't be started immediately but definitely my savings emergency funds of course I want to catch up some debt I want to pay off you know some things so we're gonna focus on that but that's all that I have for you guys today thank you guys so much for your patience I want to welcome all my new subscribers I pray that you stick around and if today's your first time watching any of my videos and you enjoyed today's content please do me a favor hit that subscribe button also leave me a comment it really helps me get out there so others can see my content and I pray that you subscribe and I'll see you guys in my next video


This study found that enocetylcysteine, NISI, had no significant effect on the serum level of lipoprotein A, LPA, in type 2 diabetic patients with diabetic nephropathy. However, NAC did reduce the amount of proteinuria, serum triglyceride, TG, level and systolic blood pressure in these patients. Further research is required to fully understand the potential benefits of NAC in treating type 2 diabetic patients with nephropathy. This article was authored by Hamid Rohi and Faruzan Ganji.


some of those people but the other positions we need people that are really skilled at project management how to how to implement things how to convene the team expertise those that group of folks I think we can we can pull from someplace else I have you advertise mountain biking magazines yeah I mean yeah I think we're almost to that place the governor likes to tell that story if you don't want to if I shift gears a little bit a lot of press about what you described as a thought experiment concerning the concept of a one school district so I've heard it described as a thought experiment I've heard it described as actually a a relatively robust discussion that is consuming some capacity and time of our educational leaders could you qualify kind of what that's all about and where it is yeah and I certainly I would welcome the opportunity to come in and spend some more time on that I think it's deserved of some focus on that but I will say it's probably all of the above I think is someone who has testified before this committee in the past and just listening today and the opportunity to stop in for about 45 minutes I think you know one of the features of Vermont policymaking and education is we have a lot of stories and everyone has a different perspective and therefore has a different story and they're not to say one's better than the other but everyone has a story from my perspective just so you know my story I'm not saying it's better but from my perspective I started out as a teacher and became a principal and when I was working at St. Michael's College I was working with folks who were aspiring to be principals I've never yet met anyone who went from the teacher role to the principal role who found that to be a life altering experience okay meaning that someone when you step up to be principal and you find out you look at the whole thing as a system in the building it's a different experience than a teacher perspective you know it really is eye opening black wise when you go to a principal or a superintendent you start to contemplate what is the complete district experience it is revelatory for me going to state government in spite of my 19 years has also been eye opening and my conceptualization of leadership is just you should not just count on me to provide some sort of diagnosis but also some sort of opening into the vision of the future so what I use the paper basically the vehicle to suggest to you my perspective based on my experience of state government after four months looking across the whole state is to say and also I would just say working with the staff of the agency and watching them struggle through trying to administer all the various programs and competing initiative that have been burdened on the system in the last couple of years that my conclusion is one we have an overly complex system based on the scale and the number of students just my clinical diagnosis from that perspective it's overly complex the difficulties we have in filling positions that we just talked about the difficulties in launching information systems providing quality and equity which I see of the two fundamental aspects of the state's role in education all these things are challenged by the significant complexity that we have as an education system and we are off the charts in terms of complexity alright and I can give you some numbers if you care to visit those for example for instance we are often compared to West Virginia on the issue of school district consolidation West Virginia has about 280,000 students in consolidated down to 51 school districts we have 75,000 school districts consolidating after act 46 down to 150 school districts so anything we do at the state level is required to administer to all that granular complexity at the local level so my conclusion number one is that we are overly complex two I started to conceptualize I'm thinking about what is the role of state government in education in Vermont education I see it as two-fold one to ensure quality and ensure that quality is equally distributed across the state quality and equity that's the fundamental role I see of state government my second conclusion is one we are overly complex but two the complexities actually now interfering with our ability to ensure quality and equity we can't go about measuring equity we can't begin to measure those things effectively due to this complexity we can try, we're going to do our best but one should not be surprised that we're challenged by this third conclusion I would make is that the complexity is now the root cause of our high inefficiency as measured by finances you name it we are highly inefficient system largely due to this complexity the good news is as a prescription it's not meant to say we're going to go down that road of having one school district though I know greater minds than mine have envisioned on the past but the point is that we should start down a path of intentionally designing our future and that path largely to me means becoming simpler so that we can achieve our goals of quality and equity so I put that out there to get the conversation started it's a conversation that percolates the cabinet state government because I think another dimension of resolving the complexity issue is that we also need to deal with the integrated need to have education more thoughtfully brought together with other social services and that's something that needs to be provoked sooner rather than later but the other end of it I think now is to embellish this document the first round of it I wrote myself and then the people in the room contributed to that you know to round it out in what was called version 2 what I'm seeking to do now is to translate that document into a website because I think it's already unwieldy as a 37 page document and I'm seeking to have some folks round off the bookends of the policy we're looking for some embellishment on the higher ed piece of it to what extent with the simplification of the K-12 system enhance our ability to resolve the higher ed issue in the state which is also challenged by demographics and then to look more systemically in the early education so it's not going anywhere fast we're not here today and I won't be in the coming months introducing language around creating a single district but I think you'll hear me when you hear me talk about complexity and our complexity issue it's really a response to that because I think we've done it to ourselves to a certain extent we have really I think have consensus in the state that it should be an opportunity available to every Vermont student take it from what it is my diagnosis of the situation today is an experience for my educator is that we are at jeopardy if not being able to achieve some things unless we get a grip on simplifying our infrastructure in terms of complexity you described state-driven policy complexity and how that implementation looks at our education system the federal pieces that lend to that complexity and what they mean for the agency as you try to remain compliant with federal law I think it's a great point because one of the other dynamics I was responding to is secretary and I'm new on the job but I sense based on my experience navigating federal policy I sense we have a window of opportunity to have a Vermont-led conversation about what we want to see for our education system in the future we've come out the end of No Child Left Behind Act we were one of the few states that didn't get a waiver from its more onerous requirements and what that meant was we labeled every Vermont school a failing school in 2014 so we're at a place now with ESSA which every student succeeds act was really designed to give states more flexibility and my impression so far is that we have greater flexibility to do that under ESSA than we have for No Child Left Behind Act and perhaps we have federal requirements but we're at a point now in history where those federal requirements seem to be less restricted than they ever have been and perhaps there's an opportunity if not an invitation from the federal government for us to articulate a Vermont path forward I don't suspect that window to be open forever but I think I haven't felt I invite my other staff to contribute to this I haven't felt that we're under significant pressure in a policy direction from the federal government right now I would just add Emily Byrne the chief financial officer from the agency the only thing I would add is there is complexity on the funding side of things so the requirements the way that the federal government structure the funding that runs from the feds to local agencies is always through the state education agency so to the extent Vermont's agency of education is in effect an arm of the federal government responsible for managing the dollars that the federal government has allocated for education and holding local schools responsible for the rules that the federal government has put into place coupled with whatever requirements come on top of that from the agency of administration and sort of through state law to the extent the agency has to hold schools accountable to procurement laws and sort of regulatory regulatory stuff around funding there is this sort of complexity in terms of how the agency is poised to interact with schools and how those schools like how that back and forth, district excuse me, how that back and forth happens and what were accountable to the federal government so in that sort of middleman piece also comes into play so that sort of feeds into the complexity of what the federal government is holding us accountable to on the funding side and how that kind of plays into what the agency is doing we have a lot of capacity spent on handling all those middleman functions because we have so many local areas to administer so to be direct yes ma'am are we expecting to see something come forward from you this year that's going to start looking at your plan? no thank you, we have to see whether things were kind of struggling with at the moment yeah and that's sort of the other side I want to talk about the future but I also have my bias or my primary lens as a new secretary having been a superintendent for many years is that I want to focus on fidelity of implementation of the initiatives that we have on the table thank you and we have I'm predicting 173 will be a major piece of work that's going to require full attention I say our I mean the field as well as the AOE I'm encouraging the state board to go back and revisit the education quality standards because I think that's where many of the things we get into are about getting a tight definition of what we mean by quality and I think they're poised to do that and that will get us into act 77 some of the issues around personalized learning which folks have been struggling with so I think we have enough on the table right now I actually can't imagine too many policy spaces that you would not be involved in already you already have major initiatives like 166 and you did mention as something we have how are we doing in terms of our timeline with the federal government have each other said yeah yeah we're doing fine and I will come back in I think on Thursday to talk with you about the SLDS which I think might be where some of the concerns are arising around us meeting our deadlines SLDS is the data system acronym land so right now there we have an internal deadline for instance on the report card of December it's looking like that's actually going to be in the spring when we're actually able to launch the report card and I'll talk more about that on Thursday but that we're still compliant with our state law like there isn't any kind of stick from federal government currently that we're out of compliance on this particular asset plan so nobody is in jeopardy of experiencing something that feels like a government shopping in their schools there's no problem of money coming to our schools no and I would actually look to Emily to speak to we reallocate title one funds for instance I don't know if you want to speak to that so one of the requirements under ESSA was to identify additional support because we didn't have the data to do that we do have the flexibility with the federal funds to reallocate them back into the school so because we couldn't identify the schools we were able to take that money that was initially set aside specifically for those identified schools drop it back into the title one allocation and then push it back out to schools to spend in the current year so there isn't a pot of money that the agency is sitting on I think in that particular space you should remind us what percentage of the AOE employees are working as that farm of the federal government well it was upwards of 80% I think we have had three or four state positions so maybe we're inching down towards 72 we'll see I don't know it's like the arm of the federal government funded and Lisa it's a significant chunk and we'll make sure that to have all that data in our budget presentation but it is a large amount and to the extent just to put it out there a lot of the federal grants have not been there has not been a change in some of the like the small state minimums which Vermont gets so the bigger states the amount of administrative funds that are given to the states is sort of dictated is a percentage of how much is actually given but the smaller states get this kind of cap and those caps aren't changing and they aren't growing so to the extent the agency has kind of had to figure out given a fixed set of funds because there's not a lot coming from the state in terms of support for those programs there's more pressure on us on the same pool of funds right the state employee contract keeps increasing health care costs keep increasing the share of retirement keeps increasing so that pool of money is not buying as much as it used to so I think we're sort of at that juncture of how much federal dollars do we have given the positions that we have to the extent the state is backfilling us federal dollars or are we doing making other decisions you know around our resources as a little time in terms of vacancies you indicated that you discovered there were a lot of positions held vacant without getting into the world of our appropriations committee do you claim vacancy savings how does that sugar off for the agency? that's embedded as a formula I've learned in the budget development but I would say I just underscore I've observed a certain hiring situation we're addressing that and you heard me characterize the labor market and whom I apply I'm not saying I'm not sure of resources yet anything we're going to make that assessment as a team as we get clear about our structure I think there's places on the positions where we're funded by the general fund in particular that we might need some more support the grant funded so that 80% of the work that we do that's where the bulk of the vacancies are those positions are attached to certain discreet activities the less glamorous activities of just making state government run those general fund positions are ones like LA's area those are ones where we're doing some significant restructuring and those are ones I'm going to don't expect me not to come back with a request for more resources on that side because I think that's where we can handle and what is the agency actually requested to do what requirements do you have and then we're going to do an assessment of what resources we might need on that side it's a complex just a quick hollow and forgive me if it can wait we can discuss this another time but you also indicated looking at roles of the agency where a contracted service may provide value where a position previously had would that be a federal expenditure for those contracted services or would that be general fund dollars? It could be both I think there's opportunities I see that as like in the case of 173 part of that there was a anticipation of us needing to contract out for technical assistance on professional development so we put out the RFP but those were essentially local or state monies that did that so it's a blend of both and I think the structure is right we can see an opportunity to pull the two together to advance one discrete set of goals you know so we don't have necessarily federal requirements taking us in the direction we want to go as a state excuse me who just said it often thank you I was wondering if you could just share your thinking on expanding opportunities for high school students or even middle high school students other than going to college what I think the government seems to be very positive about technology education and I'm wondering what you're thinking and how they could possibly have I think it's like most rural states this is a huge issue I mentioned I started my career in Canaan, Vermont I was up there 15 years they're the students I think of the most when I think of opportunity and interestingly I think we're also it's a great time to be a student in the world today we have the opportunity to deliver all kinds of stuff to students and it's expanded learning opportunities that are really here now I think we've recently called into question some are more limited rural offerings that we provide students so I know the government is very interested I'm very interested Deputy Secretary Boucher this is her area of expertise I've created a career a lot of work due to our demographic situation needs to be focused on how we can really work from student aspirations to help them find a place in the Vermont landscape to live and work and that's something we have to work and once again back to my theme of complexity we need to break down the barrier so students can have more flexible access to the different programs they might want to see right now we've created a lot of sort of pathways but those pathways have like sort of jersey barriers on them and it's hard to move back and forth in among those programs for kids so we need to break down some of those silos but I see us you know the real call for us in terms of quality is how do we offer a 21st century world class which is this expansive curriculum to kids in our most rural locations if we can do that then we can achieve a certain amount of equity on behalf of our state can I just add a little piece I would love to come back in and show you what we've been doing in the area career pathways for instance it's really changing it's really changing the conversation so starting in the early grades it isn't are you going to college or are you not it's really what are the options for your life and how do you actually figure out at that time you are what you might want to do and so this body actually provided a career pathways coordinator for us who's now been there for a year and a half and he's been doing some great work on building career pathways stemming primarily right now from the career in tech education but certainly has for all students and really starting at that middle school a little earlier so I'm very excited by it and be happy to come and share an update on that work I think that would be great we're hearing from the state board of ed and the advisory group that they need help they're lacking resources that typically came from the agency is there any hope for them well yeah I would just underscore deputies remarks anytime you have a question on something you want our expertise we're happy to come in and provide that to the committee so don't hesitate to ask us I think the question of resources I think I serve on the state board as an unvoting member they're going through a bit of an existential conversation I think every state board does that periodically in my experience they're happy to be out from underneath act 46 and that sort of caused some of it but there's some state board members who question why the state board even exists at all and I think from my perception that when we made this change to secretary from commissioner the legislature created a basic framework to make that happen but now it's a good time to go back and revisit that back to my complexity theory I'm concerned about having multiple policy making bodies in education I don't think it's served us well per se that one of the issues that's contributed to complexity is one of state board thinks it's making policy important policy making authority or this committee making policy in conjunction with the governor's authority so I think we need to sort that out and get much more intentional Any more questions? Is there anybody at the agency who is looking at the future of online learning and where it fits in and is it any good that sort of thing? Yeah we have a position that's designed to education technology largely responsible for coordinating infrastructure around broadband development working, you know, we launched the Vermont virtual learning cooperative with that positions direct involvement so this is Peter Drescher does quite a bit of work and coding activity with students so we've got a lot of different pieces that run through that position at the agency and he works closely with our proficiency based learning team he's now housed in the flexible pathways division so it's a much more integrated body of work now I would say There's so much out there it's overwhelming, it's hard to know what's safe oil and what isn't and it's almost like you need a point person to really be able to test Part of it is this idea of open education resources that we call OER which is really where the channel is Curriculum today isn't like biotech because I heard reference in the prior it's really about how do you take all these different pieces and mash it up something the teacher in the other district can take and mash it up and contribute back to it so there's whole platforms dedicated to OER management I think we have to get a lot more intentional about in Vermont It's exciting also but it's really challenging Who did great Question for you I was very surprised to see that you were moving Can you give us some background on that Sure With the agency of natural resources and the agency of transportation on the water quality bill it was very valuable as tropical storm Irene that they were together and we were able to do that and now we're so we're separating that but I don't see how we're putting you near anybody that that creates I mean A&R is great but I'm not sure I get the nexus there Yeah I think well there's some synergies with ACCD which are up on the sixth floor but back to my perception coming in that I wanted the agency to be a better performing entity during the interview process it was floated to me you know we might want to move you and I said yes that would be great because there's nothing like a move to do organizational culture of work but it is challenging but I from what I understand it's a complex decision involved several elements one was we're currently in very city place and very city place was underutilized meaning the state was paying a lease payment but not all the space was being occupied so there was some capacity in very city place that was a conversation that was going on between AOT and BGS and then there was interest on the part of national life itself which is the landlord to take back more space or they wanted more of a presence on their main floor so they were in a conversation with BGS about their space needs on their own campus and then the fire happened that was just you know it happened and that precipitated really looking more systematically at all these issues so that presented itself with a solution where very city place could be more fully occupied if AOT moved out because we only occupy two floors there and coincidentally AOT can pretty much take over the whole space as I understand it so that was the beginning of this sort of move A&R also had some other other space being utilized in national life so the whole plan was put together and the fourth agency is A&C and Digital Services which we have ADS employees that are embedded in our agency like the other agency so there was a whole interest in rethinking how their provision so there were at least four agencies involved and it was a fairly complex decision but I think it was largely firstly driven not so much by synergies but by just being more effective use of our state spaces that we were paying for and setting some light so we're right now we're scheduled to move no sooner than March 1st so that's the latest word on that as of today if I had magic wand I'd be moving you next to AHS right because we certainly see the number of problems that are happening between those two agencies sometimes proximity can help but I don't see that we've helped you at all in the other thing I've noticed AHS is very large compared to us you know so I think if we were next then we'd probably be subsumed by them to a certain extent but no it's we certainly endeavor to work closely together but they're a much larger more complex agency than the agency of education just reiterate our interest in working with you whatever we do to support your work on behalf of a lot of you know don't hesitate to reach out and give us a call so we're going to have customers scheduled for the agency now initially I believe so it is actually they just had to be scheduled for Friday that's not going to work can you help us yeah well you know our people will work on the schedules best we can we have them for tomorrow they could not I'll ask them to resend yeah we'll try our best to shuffle the deck and see what we can do for you yeah we're trying to vote that out of Thursday so the agency's input is important to us that's good to hear we'd love to provide it so even if it could be Thursday okay yeah I'm not sure manager yes I just ask for anyone who announced themselves to the record today from the agency of education if you could please come see me when we're done and just write down your name, your title I have some of you listed but not all of you because I didn't know who would be coming so if you could do that that would be great thank you that's amazing thank you very much thank you and then Heather you're coming back yes Thursday I believe


Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday. So yesterday, Sarah and I flew to New York City. The descent was just a bit bumpy, but we landed safely, drove into the city, and met up with our best friends, Chris and Marina. Good morning America. I was wearing my fancy shoes because we were in town for the premiere of the movie Miss Perrigan's Home for Peculiar Children. Got a delicious lunch of sushi where I irrevocably stained my dress shirt, so we headed over to a department store where there were too many ties to choose from.  But I eventually found a suitable shirt and then put the stained shirt back on so as not to stain the new one and went for a walk. I love walking in New York, even in uncomfortable shoes, because you're both alone and not in a way I find deeply satisfying, even peaceful. I also love catching snippets of strangers' conversations. Don't you have to like someone to love them? One young person said to another as they walked past me. We walked through an outdoor bookstore where I sneakily signed some copies of Looking for Alaska, and then on my way to the hotel I happened to cross a crash course fan. What's your name again? Carrie. Big fan. John's awesome. We checked into our aggressively gold hotel room, I ironed my new shirt, suited up, and then got in the elevator. I don't like this tie. I then met up with Ransom Riggs, the author of Miss Peregrine. It's all voiceover, so it doesn't really matter what you say. I've known Ransom for half my life. Like when we were in college together, we took a road trip to the Grand Canyon with our friend Kathy. Are you taking pictures with me, dude? We read James Joyce together and wrote comedy sketches together, and I was always in awe of Ransom's imagination. I think, ultimately, my favorite feeling isn't joy or excitement, but wonder. The wonder I feel when walking through an autumn forest with my kid who's never before seen the leaves turn color, or the wonder I feel when in the company of a great book or movie. Hanging out with Ransom always brings me that kind of wonder because he has such a particular and interesting way of looking at the world, and that's also how I feel about his books. They're wonderful in the original sense of the word. After hanging out for a while, I went back to my room, changed my tie, and then met up with Sarah. I know like as nice as you do, but I'm like, oh, all right. Yeah, you look awesome, I love it. And then my publisher, Julie Strauss-Gable, dropped by, and we all headed to the movie theater for the screening. Before the movie, Ransom and his wife, the brilliant novelist, Taha Ramafi, posed on the red carpet, and I snuck back to be among the photographers, and then I took my seat where I caught a magic harp. Now we shall cut from the magic harp to me turning on the camera after the movie ended. You can't see me, but I just saw the movie, it's so good! Miss Peregrine made me feel the way Edward Scissorhands did decades ago. It was exciting and peculiar and explored with great wisdom the tension between the past you did have, the one you wanted to have, and the present you find yourself in. And that's what I kept thinking about as I watched Ransom and Taha Ramafi on the red carpet after the movie. Like, if you'd told me 20 years ago that this day would happen, I would have thought, that's gonna be so cool going to a movie premiere all dressed up, people taking our pictures while we hang out with movie stars. And it is cool, Ransom and I have both been astonishingly lucky in our professional lives. But the really wonderful part of yesterday for me wasn't the movie stars or the red carpet, it was seeing a great movie with my wife and dear friends, one of whom has known me since I was a kid on the edge of the Grand Canyon before I'd even learn to fear heights. In the end, I think people make experiences wonderful, not the other way around. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.


We're glad to know you're still there. It's still the run-up and we're hoping that you're having a wonderful time. Remember that we have less than 10 days, as it is, to the general elections. The presidential and national houses of assembly elections are coming up on the 25th of the month, this month. So, like I said, we have less than 10 days. It's a matter of 10 days and a few hours to that time. So, preparations, you should be rounding off everything that you need to do to make sure that that day is a success. Well, we have in the studio here a young man who is an author, a youth advocate and a patriot. When I met him, first of all, I saved his name and added Euroba language. That's how it was. So, I'm glad to introduce to you this morning, Olu Taiyo Irohtiola. Welcome to the program. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be on the show. I can't forget the first time we met and we were so passionate about the local language and I was like, okay, this works. I like someone who is proud of the language he was born into and a local language at that. Are you still doing that kind of advocacy till now? Yes, I have not stopped. The fearful thing for me is that currently I see that a lot of white people are coming to learn what we are actually ignoring and it poses a danger for the future, most especially the upcoming generation. If it's not taken, the white people will come back to teach them and that's what I think we need to guard against. That's why I stand to represent the culture, whenever I have the opportunity. I speak it, whenever I have the opportunity. I'll be it. I mix it with English so that at least I'm available to everybody who would want to listen to me. Please, don't speak it here. My entire Euroba is there. We are concerned about Nigeria and I also know that you like being positive, like staying positive and optimistic about things. But the election is coming. General election, like I said, is less than 10 days to that general election. The first one that is to me the decider or everything because a lot of people will realign after the first election, trust me. But what do you feel generally about the coming election? Are you excited? Why? Are you not excited? Why? So let's know. So the upcoming elections for me, it's full of mixed feelings. You know, a young person like me, I have a lot of friends who used to believe in Nigeria. But currently all of them are left because their faith in the country keeps waning by the day. And it's not their fault. It's a function of what is happening, what you can see in the system and in the community. As such, everybody is now saying, okay, if it means that I need to be a second class citizen elsewhere, I better be rather than being in my father's house and be made a slave by people that were all born free. I don't know if you get what I mean. So the coming elections signals two things. Number one, it signals either the beginning of a new country or it signals the end of the beginning. I don't know if you get that. So if you look at it this way, young people will still have a little trust in the system or believe that they could make a difference. If care is not taken after the elections is over, you see them changing chairs. That means if that difference is not made in this election. Exactly. If we can get that difference, people will take to their heels again. And where they are going, it pays them more because what we have around us here is that youthful population. And we are losing that youthful population to the place wherein many of them are old people. So at the end of the day, it's going to come back to us like a flip to say we thought we had a lot of youthful generation and now losing it to Western countries where they have a lot of old people. So someone's gain is definitely the loss of another person. That's it. But the youth seem to be of one voice talking about the kind of Nigeria that they want to have. Okay, so your friends have left and you know why they left. And you, maybe if you have the chance as well, you will be speaking here, you will be in the UK or somewhere else. But now, that's just a joke. Now, if you're talking with one voice, what is the kind of Nigeria that people in your demographic are looking at? What kind of Nigeria do you want to have beyond this election? Because a lot of people have said that this is the deciding. Like you just said, it signals a lot of things. It could be the beginning of a new dawn, a new Nigeria for all of us. But what new Nigeria, what is that definition of a new Nigeria from your perspective that we should be looking out for or that you as a person are looking out for? So for me as someone, the definition of a new Nigeria is a country where we all have access to basic things that make us feel human. And what are the basic things? Social amenities, security. Those are the things that make you feel human. The roads. Now, I give an instance. The tourism industry in Nigeria is not thriving all because you don't have good roads. For instance, very close to my home community that's at Aduawa'i, we have the suspended lake there. How many people from Lagos who comfortably say they are going to Aduawa'i? Which is just about three hours away. Suspended lake? Yes. That's just the second in the world. No, that's just the second in the world. Really? The third one is in the US, one is at Aduawa'i. Just those two in the world, I think. So how many people will go there? In my home community, there are a lot of hilly places that you will see things that will marvel you. How many people will go to OKO to see OKO? So we have all the treasures that we want to go see in Kenya. We have all the Yankari game reserves. We have everything.  So if we have the opportunity to travel locally without fear, if you have the opportunity to go anywhere, you are sure you can get jobs without aligning with maybe any political party or having somebody from your kinsmen who is maybe the head of that institution before you get a job. You know, the number of people out there who are jobless is massive. And these are the things that are making people be like, if I cannot get substantial living here, I better go to somewhere else where I will do many other jobs but I will still be able to make a living. Yeah. So living and the backside of it is that many elders come to tell us the story of when they were growing up. Oh, we were not yet done in the university before they started giving us employment letters and all the rest.  All these things are painful and they are not giving people the confidence to say, this is my home. This is where I belong. If we all can make a living, businesses are finding it difficult to thrive all because of multiple taxation all because there are other factors that come into being. Okay, it's overwhelming. The problems are overwhelming. But we are in this Niger and hopefully, like you pray, everybody else is praying as well that after 25th of February or after May 29th, we will see a government that is really for the people because without that, there is nothing that, no matter who wins actually, no matter who wins, so long as he will be strong enough physically and intellectually and then he will listen very importantly to what the people are crying for. Then the new Nigeria is possible. But right now let's see, you are an otto. So let's talk about the challenges that people in your sphere face because everything we have in this country and in any country for that matter is a matter of policy. Sometimes you flourish, sometimes you don't. So in your sphere, in your space, what are some of these challenges that you are hoping with the new administration that could address so that people will flourish more? Okay, so being a writer, part of what makes writing interesting is when it is used for pedagogy. That's for academic purpose. The first thing is that, yes, we agreed that the world is shifting towards e-books and digital and all the rest but there's nothing that feels like holding a hard copy of a book with you, being able to underline, to highlight, you know, all those things are there. But currently the publishing industry in Nigeria is close to dead because we don't have publishers who are ready to invest again in the creative works of people. No matter the quality of the work you do, it's just only a few that would say, okay, let's take a dive with you. If we survive, we both survive. If we perish, we both perish. That is one. Number two is even the cost of publishing itself. So currently now in this generation, you will find out that people are the ones who publish their works themselves. You rarely have a publishing house that is willing to support.  But you also are the only one enjoying the money. The money, and that's why the distribution, the reach of the books are quite limited because it depends on your reach. But what kind of government policy can make things like that easier? So it has to go, one, into supporting the publishing houses. Now, why I'm starting from the publishing houses is number one. A lot of government agencies, a lot of governments have publishing outfits, but they would not support the creative industry because what they see more is publishing publications that will only speak to their own audience. That's what they are more concerned about. Propaganda machine maybe. You said? Propaganda machine maybe. Well, if you say that. I will say that. So that's one. Number two is giving room for those who are writers to even experience a new lease of life, even with writing. Currently now, even if you look at the books that win awards around us here, they are largely the books of Nigerians living overseas bringing it in to sell, to market. There are some certain publishing houses that prefer to even publish their own types of books because they've made their name outside, they are just bringing it in. That's another issue. Another issue again is how it's accepted even for academic purpose in schools. These books are not, you have to lobby again to even find your books used in the curriculum no matter how good the content is. Okay, talking about a good content of the book. I know you just wrote one that I'm interested in. Okay, but we won't have time to discuss that. Just wait on. We'll take a moment, take the news and then we'll return to wrap up so that we kind of open the eyes of the people to the importance of what you wrote and what government can do for these things to be at the disposal of everybody who needs it. We'll take a short break now. We'll be back in a moment. Stay with us. You're welcome back. It's still the run-up and it's a Valentine's Day.  But don't cause trouble today. It's a day of love. Let's love everybody. And especially our politicians know that if we will vote you, it's because we love you. So you have to reciprocate that love. So start to cook up a love story that will tell about you after your administration if you get the ticket or if you are voted in today. So that's what today is for you. And show some love not just to your girlfriend, boyfriend, your wife or husband. There are people who need your love even more than this circle of people I have mentioned. People that do not expect anything to come from you should be able to feel your presence today. I'm not talking to the politicians. I'm talking to everybody else now. It's a Valentine's Day. Okay, we're still here with Olu Tayo Ironteola, an auto, a youth advocate, a patriot. And we were just talking about some policies that will make the ground so fertile for especially people in the creative industry. And I am happy that he's doing something, not just writing the regular things, but also writing about history, which at some point was removed from our curriculum now. So it speaks to the fact that maybe our educational system needs some shaking up a little bit to make it a little bit better than it is right now. So Tayo, we're still here. You're writing history that people don't want to read. What has the experience been like? Researching to write this book that you wrote the Okehu. Okehu, yeah, I got it. The Okehu Exodus, because I'm sure you researched it and what were the reactions of people that when you were researching and now that you're finished and it's in the market, how are people reacting to it? Okay, so let me set the ground for what actually led to the book. The Okehu Exodus is a historical play of something that happened between the colonial masters and the indigenous people of Okehu. By the way, Okehu is in Oil North Senatorial District of Ohio State. What actually happened was the mother of a king at about 1916, 1917. So it took a lot of work. So I've been able to put together the details that make up the play.  So the characters existed. However, I had to create some new ones to join it to make it quite interactive, quite lucid and quite contemporary in its language so that everybody can sit into the story. You can see yourself in the story as you are reading it. You will also find yourself in it. All right, so why I said you will find yourself in it is this, is that Okehu as it were is an amalgamation of about 11 communities because of the invasions of the Daumai and the Fulani of old. That whole story of the Fulani and Daumai invasion. So all the communities came together around a hill called Okehu Aoro, a very massive hill, very, very massive, yes. And people from those communities lived in the caves as of that time to escape all the trouble. But when the colonial intrusion came into being, the people of Okehu Aoro, they were not finding it comfortable. The white men ordered that they should start digging pit latrines around their house which they considered as something not healthy. They gave women the opportunity to go to the court to seek divorce. They started immunization just like some certain parts of Nigeria are not still yet receptive to immunization today. When it was starting way back then, they saw it as something that wasn't healthy. Amongst other things that happened. So people felt like the king was in Kunayvans with the white man and that led to Regicide. The mother of the king, his wife, and the hair parent. That's the Aremo, the mother of them. Then the white man now commanded them to say, go back to your former location which is the upper part of the land before you get to the hill. The hill is located in a slope. So it's not somewhere that is easily accessible by somebody who doesn't understand the terrain. And to make you relate more with it, there is a saying that they used to greet themselves with, Ekwa Mokesu.  If you are coming down the hill, it's a welcome to the valley so that you have an understanding of what it looks like. So all of those things were the things I creatively put together in the play. You mentioned something, history as it were is not something that a lot of people engage with again in this generation. And I can tell you that some people, like you said, because I am a cultural advocate, people think it's because of my cultural advocacy that made me go deep into writing the story. But the thing is this is that there are some other stories that are not being told about Nigeria. And that's why we find out that the white man would always tell us that they discovered the... Exactly. So where was the source of the water that people in that community were drinking before they came? So we need to tell our stories, original authentic stories and share it to the world to say, okay, so if we keep those stories untold, nobody will hear it. And that's what happened with the OKO exodus. To tell people that, okay, the white man came, intruded into our lifestyle, and this was the result that he gave. And eventually people were still punished for it. However, I would like to say that the reception had been very, very wonderful by people who appreciate the sense of the history of a young person who could dig deep. Yeah, that was really what triggered me. Now, because the aim of this is to make sure that the next administration that comes looks at critical issues that will make us be proud of our country and history is one of those things. Now that you are here as a young person, some people will be shocked that you are even talking history. But make a case for history in our educational system generally if you were given the opportunity to advise the government on how to make sure things like these are available to people who need it. What would you tell the government? Because that's the crux of the whole matter. Okay, first and first, I would implore the government to invest more in archiving our history. Now, some years ago, I was able to read the last book of Ken Saruiwa. And do you know the interesting thing? These were the collations of letters that Saruiwa wrote to Reverend Sister to tell her of his condition in the prison. And currently, I think it's in Norway or one eastern country, all those letters had been preserved for any type of person wants to say it. We need to appreciate our own researches, document them for the next generation. We need to take it seriously. And we need to go back to building of libraries to ensure that people read. Now, the good thing about libraries is that it does not need to... It's not for one person. It breaks that limitation of saying, I don't have funds to buy books, to store books, but I can go somewhere to access books. And if we don't read, definitely we can grow. Because at every point in time, you would see that those people would take time to read. They are the ones which run out much more quality information that you would be like, oh, so this thing really exists. But it's just because the person has access to a book somewhere. So we need to invest in our educational system. Another thing is this. We need to encourage those in the academia. Those in the academia are doing a lot of work, doing a lot of research, and they will still be the ones that will not get paid for eight months. They will still be the ones that will try. Valence. No, no, no, actually. The thing about the academia now that you see is it's a full-time role that cannot be mixed with anything. And they deal with the lives of people. So they need to be taken much more seriously academically. Now going back to speak to those who do researches and put it in creative formats, I think it's something that must be encouraged, that must not be stopped, and that people should be motivated to do it. When we have that, we would find out that a lot of quality products will still come out of Nigeria. I give another instance. While I was speaking with somebody from Shagham after writing this book, he also mentioned that communities in Shagham also came together as a result of the same Fulani Daoma invasion that I mentioned. But this is also an information that is not readily available. So let people be motivated to tell stories of where they are from. Now, being a cultural person, I would now say it this way. We've discovered that some people are telling the stories that will suit their families as well. No, don't turn to stories. Thank God for you that you've emerged from those miracles of life. You've come up to the pedestal. You've grown.  But let's tell the story as it is so that everybody would appreciate the fact of what is not. Thank you. Okay, well, yeah. I'll let him just digress a little bit because we needed that background. If someone this young is talking history, there are other people who will even be younger that need the history more than he does, like me and everybody else. Maybe we're at an old school. We know some of these things, but the people who are coming behind need more. So if the next government is coming, while thinking about physical infrastructure, we should also think about the mental and intellectual infrastructure as it is and build our educational system. Like he said, a reading people is a growing people because if you don't read, you don't grow. So government, if we, and by government, I mean the people that we are going to elect, when you come in, if you're going to be in the legislature, make bills that will make sure that education is paramount. People who are educated will definitely progress more than the people who are not educated. We'll look at the educational system and we'll tell our stories like he said. Anybody who is telling our story should be encouraged, whether in a classroom or whether outside. And the creative industry also contributes a lot to making the world have a perception that we want them to have about us and making our people also be proud of who we are and what we can become or what we have become, even from the rubbles, as it were. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure to have you on any show at all. Thank you so much for the opportunity and thank you to PLOS TV for giving something very qualitative to the African audience at all times. Thank you. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you. Okay, that's how we wrap it up on the show today. We do hope that you had a wonderful time. Let's do it again tomorrow. God willing. My name is Nyam Gul Aghaji. Bye.