Hi everyone, my name is Jane Jewett. I have a farm in northeastern Minnesota called Willow Sedge Farm and I know there's this discrepancy between farther east and farther west and whether it's a farm or a ranch. I raise cattle and other things so I call it a farm. So this is a farmer rancher grant project. All right so I also work for the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and the Greenlands Blue Waters Project. And both of those things we deal with sustainable agriculture, Greenlands Blue Waters deals a lot with concerns about soil erosion and water quality and perennial cropping systems. And so all of those things kind of feed into my mindset about why grass fed beef is interesting and important. There are some acknowledgments of people that helped with this project. My three farm cooperators are on top. Edgar Brown, Jake and Lindsay Grass and Bill McMillan. And an interesting thing about this which I'm not sure how relevant it is but it might be is that we're all kind of on the eastern edge of Minnesota. So a particular climate precipitation pattern that may make a difference in what we saw it may not but it's a thing that happened just with who said they would cooperate on this. Troy Salzer Carlton County Extension was a big help, worked a lot with Edgar Brown, helped us with getting access to a livestock scale for those of us that didn't have one. Wayne Martin is the alternative livestock specialist at the University of Minnesota. I told you at my husband and my family in general had to put up with a lot of extra messing around with cattle to get weights and things so I appreciated their help. Kate Clancy and Helene Murray both involved with Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and their previous work on grass fed beef helped inform why I thought this was important. Chris Johnson was on Army Supportive Directors and he circulated the original journal article that got me started on this. And Kate Seager and Betsy Weiland, Minnesota CERICO coordinators have been a great help. The Midwest Perennial Forage Working Group is part of Greenlands Blue Waters and they were a great group of people to bounce ideas off of. Rich Pirag was a co-author on the paper that I mentioned that got me started on this. Laura Payne is a Wisconsin based grass fed beef producer and educator and some of you may know her. She's also a friend and was really helpful in helping me go through some of the concepts on this and interpret results. Okay, so why is grass fed beef production or pasture based beef production? Not necessarily 100% grass fed but pasture based. Why is that important? And Greenlands Blue Waters, we talk about soil erosion a lot, water quality, permanent pasture and hay and pasture will reduce your soil erosion hugely down from what you see in a corn soybean system. And that is important because erosion of soil is loss of wealth from farms, right? And it's also a cost to anybody who's downstream of that. So perennial grasses, these are pictures out of the land institute in Kansas where they grew these in tubes and then pulled them out and washed the soil off the roots and took pictures. And so you've got all these grasses in a perennial sod that are, you know, interlinked with each other and they're living in the ground all the time and soil particles don't have a chance to escape. So this is the paper that Chris Johnson circulated about four years ago, almost five. Comparative life cycle environmental impacts of three beef production strategies in the upper Midwestern United States. Wow, great, huh? So what they did was they looked at feedlot beef, they looked at a system with backgrounding and then into feedlot and at a grass fed beef production system. And they did a lot of calculations on costs of that and productivity of that. And this is a quote from their results section, impacts per live weight kilogram of beef produced were the highest for pasture finished beef for all impact categories and lowest for feedlot finished beef. And I read that and went, how can this be? So I read the paper more and more carefully and found this quote that calves were weaned to pasture calves weaned to pasture in Iowa finish at 505 kilograms in 450 days on a ration of forage and hay. And I ran some calculations and thought, you know, that does not match my experience. I'm doing it quicker. So what that paper was saying is that they were getting about an 1,100 pound live weight animal a year and three months after weaning compared to a feedlot beef finish time of 1,400 pounds of live weight in 10 months. And so the age at weaning was assumed in that paper to be seven months. I realized that a lot of grass fed producers myself included weaned calves at a later age like nine or 10 months. But in that paper, they were standardizing things. So they use seven months.  So where did these figures come from? I had an opportunity to talk to Rich Pirag who was one of the coauthors on that paper. And he said that they couldn't find published data on grass fed beef productivity. And so they went with a personal communication from the Iowa State University Extension Beef Center which had been collecting some data on grass fed beef and they kind of had some averages and they gave the authors their advice on what numbers to use. So then I started thinking, okay, I think what might be going on here is that there's some confounding because if you're collecting data on grass fed beef production you've got a lot of people who are using heritage beef breeds or they're using some fairly poor pasture. I know some people who are doing grass fed beef production and they're using some pasture that I would call rough pasture and also heritage beef breed at the same time. So that's not the same kind of animal that you've got going into a feedlot. So what if that life cycle analysis used input numbers that you got from modern beef genetics and good pasture with good management? And so I asked Rich that question and he said yes, that would have made a difference in how things shook out in that life cycle analysis because the biggest thing that made grass fed production look environmentally bad was the long length of time that it took to finish those animals. Okay, so again my collaborators, all of them are using some form of managed rotational grazing on improved pastures and the livestock breeds that were being used were mostly modern British breeds but Jake and Lindsay Grass of Grass Meadows Farm had one whole group that was Scottish Highlander which is a smaller frame more heritage type breed. It actually was not my idea to include them in the project but they really, really wanted to and that's why you have collaborators because sometimes things don't go the way you plan but it's better. So here's the bottom line. We've got this chart that shows all of the data points from all of the animals in the study. This line is the average, okay so this is age of Cadillac slaughter in months down here plotted against the carcass weights and this line for feedlot, the vertical line is average age of animals finished in a feedlot 17 months. Average age for grass fed just shy of 22 months and where the circles are is where the carcass weights for those systems are. So this is the average grass fed beef carcass according to that paper and here's the average feedlot carcass. And so these are all the animals from the farms and they kind of fall into some clusters so there's those Scottish Highlander cattle. Here's the Angus Galve from the grass meadows farm and oh yeah there's Edgar Brown's cattle and so those three are all overlapping somewhat with that average grass fed. They have a few animals, you know younger than that, a few animals heavier than that. There's kind of where they all fall together somewhere around that average and then you've got Bill McMillan's animals that are a hundred percent of them are finishing sooner than the grass fed average and also a hundred percent of them are finishing bigger than that and then you've got mine which are finishing earlier but not not as big as Bill's. Okay so there's all those clusters. So there's a few interesting things you start to see there are some patterns but it's kind of hard to look at that way. And so I went with this age weight index which is really simple it's just the carcass weight of the animal in pounds divided by the age and slaughter at months and I was able to calculate that really precisely that age for the animals in this study because I had their birth weights and their slaughter or their birth dates and their slaughter dates and so the numbers are exact for their ages. And so these are the averages from that life cycle analysis paper. If you look at it as an index, the feedlot beef has a 49.7 and the grass fed beef has a 26.5 and here's how that looks on a chart with again all of the data from all the animals in the study. Now as an age weight index that's the number here and I just plotted it against time when they were slaughtered down here just to have something to plot it against. So these reference lines this is the average grass fed age weight index of 26.5 here's the average feedlot and then when you're dividing that carcass weight by the age to get a performance measure Bill McMillan has one animal that's exceeding feedlot performance on grass and alfalfa forage which is pretty amazing because he said he's been told he can't do that. He did it. Let's see another thing to notice here is that the Scottish Highlander these are the blue diamonds all of them are below that average grass fed line and that's important because it supports my contention that heritage breed is a confounding factor so if you're comparing a grass fed system and a feedlot system and you're looking at heritage breeds in the grass fed that's confounding it. You're not comparing the same kind of animals. And another thing that's important here is that there's there's really a range within every farm right and so to me that says there's potential within farms for farmers to improve and push more of their animals into the higher end of their range and then also there's the potential if you have this kind of you know data from several farms that you're looking at to say okay I'm boy I'm here I'm kind of low look at what that guy's doing and start to think about how you can push your whole system towards higher productivity if that's what you want to do. All right and these are the averages per farm on that age weight index again and again you can really see here this is the Highlander cattle they're well below that average grass fed productivity line so clearly the Highlander genetics are are pulling them down in productivity per steer not necessarily per acre but per steer okay and then here Bill McMillan is well above that average. So what do we know now that livestock breed matters when you're comparing grass fed systems to feedlot systems so if you're looking at an environmental kind of analysis like that paper was and comparing you know what's going to happen with grass fed beef versus feedlot beef and the grass fed beef are hampered by having a lot of heritage breeds thrown into that average that's going to make it look worse for grass fed it's not necessarily accurate. The grass fed system has the potential to approach the feedlot system in productivity and I think that's a really important result out of here looking at Bill McMillan's system and he wants me to tell people every time I talk about this that his is a high cost system he's a former dairy producer he's got the dairy infrastructure the silos he makes a lot of alfalfa halage he's on higher value ground down in the Rochester area of Minnesota so he's got a high cost system but you know clearly he's approaching that feedlot productivity and there's room for improvement of grass fed beef production systems and I think that's another important take home message because we sometimes hear that you know there's feedlot productivity there's grass fed productivity and never the twain shall meet and I think clearly with that slide that shows the range of productivity over all these farms that there's lots of room for improvement there's lots of potential for grass fed to get closer to feedlot productivity in terms of how fast those animals finish and how heavy they finish and you know we need to look we need to as researchers as farmers doing on farm research we need to start looking at ways to push that productivity and to not just assume that it can't be done thank you I'll take a couple questions now and then if anyone is interested how much time do I have left ten minutes okay I've got a couple slides showing the economics on the farms to kind of a comparison because how the economics come out is not quite the same as how the environmental considerations come out which is interesting too any question in that paper they didn't count subsidies no what they were looking at was carbon emissions primarily and they were figuring in the kind of the embedded carbon in the corn that was being fed and the fertilizer and pesticides used to produce it and the same for the grass system and actually they were assuming quite a bit of input into the pastures in the grass based system so it was fairly similar to Bill McMillan's high cost production system with regular fertilizer applications and so forth and so all of those were figured in in terms of carbon emissions but they did not subsidies were not part of it and they did not look at soil erosion either at that external cost it's question was did we get live weights and carcass weights and did we see a difference in that at the different ages yeah yeah so we took weights at weaning and at turn out onto pasture and I didn't do a lot with those weights in in the analysis because the weight that I was able to get consistently from everybody all the time was the carcass weight and the live weight so the focus was on that but yeah you know we we meticulously documented age of animals so I had birth dates I had slaughter dates so I knew exactly how old those animals were at slaughter and then their live weight and carcass weight we did see a lower carcass percentage on the grass fed beef animals than is typical for feed lot and that's on here so this this was calculated assuming a carcass yield of 60% for the feed lot beef and 52% for the grass fed beef and actually that Bill McMillan had some carcass percentages higher than that but to kind of be conservative and not get accused of inflating the results I used 52% so that's that's stinging the grass fed beef a little already on the carcass percentage relative to live but well yes because these you know this is the chart of age at slaughter versus carcass weight and so you know the older animals as you go across the chart this way they're older as you go up the chart this way they're bigger so you know so kind of but not not really linear it it depended a lot on the breed of the animal too and the system it was in we didn't do any marbling tenderness any of that we were just looking at carcass weight okay so I'm going to go ahead and show a couple of the economics things so the farms were really different in the quality of winter feed they were feeding Edgar Brown for instance relative feed value of 90 which is low he doesn't use bail rings he lets the animals sort through the bales and get what they want so they're actually eating better than that grass metals farm and my farm also both relatively low relative feed values yeah that's that's part of the situation in that part of Minnesota you get some really low quality forage sometimes when you're making it Bill McMillan had a much higher relative feed value again his high value dairy infrastructure alfalfa halage he was making and feeding bunk feeding so you know he's he's really kind of using the more of a feedlot type of infrastructure but feeding only forage okay so feed costs per steer and this included their winter feed for as long as they were on feed so if they were fed through one winter and part of the next one that was accounted for in here and then their pasture use is also accounted for based on the land value the like the cash rent value of the land they were pastoring on so Bill isn't lying he's got a high dollar cost per steer and his pounds per steer that's his average pounds of carcass finish weight which he's also been told he can't do but he's doing it I'm obviously the train wreck here and part of that was because of some nasty flooding in 2012 and all kinds of climate problems but anyway dollars per steer gross this is based on average carcass weight prices for grass fed beef as reported in the USDA grass fed beef marketing report which some of you are probably familiar with in November so it has since gone up but at this point I think we were using 320 per pound of hanging carcass weight to kind of standardize it across farms so dollars per steer net and then your dollars per acre net so bills on land that has a cash rent value of like 222 dollars per acre and so he's netting something that would be competitive with corn and beans in his area when corn is not eight dollars bushel any other questions um no I was kind of trying to standardize things between farms and so these aren't exact numbers for each farm I didn't want to pry into their finances too deeply so their their costs of feeding a steer are based on their relative feed value of their forage which we tested so we know what that was and then the average hay values based on relative feed value points that were reported in central Minnesota hay auction in November so it's kind of a standardized cost of your forage and then the standardized dollars per steer so yeah you know there are lots of little details of the farm operations that could shift their costs higher or lower people find ways to get land on the cheap or you know there are there are lots of details that aren't covered in here I did not know I mean I could with the data that we have but I was looking primarily at the finished carcass weight and the age at finish so off the top of my head I can't say I can plunk it out of my spreadsheet and tell you later yeah we we were kind of inconsistent in getting the weaning weight data from people because of problems with scales and you know lack of help to get the weights done and so forth so so that data is a little bit inconsistent okay what would I change in my system and do I want to get my carcass weights higher was the question yes I would like to get my carcass weights up to about 600 and I'm I'm doing that with some animals my average was again dragged down by a really poor year in 2012 if anybody remembers the city of Duluth was flooded in 2012 I got the same floods but I don't have any hills at all for it to run away on so I had flooding and cows with wet feet for six weeks and it wasn't good so you know when I'm not having that kind of problem my carcass weights are higher they're closer to 575 and I'd like to consistently be getting six yeah some things I've learned from this study that I am already making changes on our things that are contrary to what I've read and learned and heard other places and that is you know what I kind of had in mind on my farm was that I should keep a low enough stocking rate that I could minimize my use of stored forage and graze cattle for the longest season possible and what the other farms in this study that are performing better are doing is really maximizing their use of their pasture and if they have to feed some stored forage at a couple points in the summer to get through that they do that and I think that maximizing your pasture use is a good thing when you start looking at the economics I have more detailed economic tables but your cost your your cash rent cost of grazing on pasture is a lot less than your cash rent for the hay ground and so if you're not getting good utilization of that pasture during the summer grazing season when you should be you're not making the best use of that resource I think according to the economics so so one thing I'm going to do is try to increase my farm stocking rate get more cattle out there and not worry so much about whether I'm getting the longest possible grazing season worry about whether I'm using the pasture as much as I should and the other thing is I'm going to start letting my cows sort their hay more I've taken the bale rings off I'm letting them sort through those bales because Edgar Brown is getting some pretty good economic results from doing that and I've got similar low quality hay so that's another thing yeah I'm slaughtering at 17 to 18 17 to 19 months of age no I mean I'm not saying okay my forages run out I'm sending cows to market I direct market everything and so I've got customers who are expecting cattle at a certain time of year and so I've got my schedule set up based on that marketing plan yeah question was whether everyone determined their own finish and yes my goal with this was not to try to fit people into a box kind of and say this is how we're all going to do it it was to look at what people have and say how does it stack up to this assumed standard for grass fed beef are we better are we worse are we about the same a lot of us are better


Hey friends and welcome back to my channel. I am Yoshida and this is Norris Cove. So today I was looking at some videos last night before I went to bed and I just wanted to you know I always want to whatever I do I'll say I always want to become good at it and of course practice makes perfect. Well you remember I set up this planner on my channel and I'll try to remember to put the card up in the corner and this was my mini planner I was using it for social media it started out I didn't know what to do with it I put some extra pages and I started to use it for meals and house like cleaning and things like that and then this is all laid out and then this was going to be where I put pretty much my schedules well here the schedules I have not even looked at okay I gotta be honest so then this is when it was home and dinners and things like that and then here it is as my social media which was you know pretty good I liked it as social media because I had room to put like my stats my goals things like that and then here it just became social media and I really liked it for that so then I went into the horizontal layout because I don't know what it was I didn't you know like about it being in the dashboard layout but I came to realize that I kind of liked it in the dashboard layout so now I decided like after watching some videos I just didn't want to get rid of it totally because I did like it I just didn't really know what to do with it then I was going to make it my faith journal but I knew I would need more room for my faith writing so now it is going to be my one to go and I didn't know that existed until last night of watching because I'm like what am I going to do with all these planners and then I had meals here in the back I had room for a budget uh back here and still here's some of my stuff for my recipe planning so it's been a little bit of everything so this is what I've decided to use I really didn't um care for the colors but we're gonna work with it I just wanted a blank page now also this is kind this is my follow facts and this is kind of my one to go uh planner but I pointed my pages all crazy and so I'm missing the weeks I'm missing yeah it stopped at May 6th through 12th so I don't have the weeks I have the 13th and those are tasks and I could have written in but I use it this pretty much for well here it is okay I could use this too so but I'm pretty much using this as a order tracker tracking my orders and I really like it for that so that's what let me slide this on so that's what this one is so it's on the go but here lately I've been leaving this one at home and I just come in and I leave it at my computer so it's kind of like a desk planner and I just leave it on my desk to kind of um come down when I get a package and then I'll just write in when I get a package so I really felt bad not using my happy planner and I love it so I wanted to go back to using that so I'm not going to ramble but this should be kind of quick um also I've put aside some books some things some ideas that I had I did a spread um it's on my IG of me using these two sticker books and they came out so nice that I was like you know I could possibly use these in my on the go so I'm thinking of using those along with color story and I bought these out because I had an idea for these but I'm going to save these these are some basically um that cuts from the pink paisley page evidence in Joann's and then I have my agenda 52 book and my lol so that's pretty much what I'll be using between these books here and I wanted to make it kind of simple to show people because the you can get the happy planner fairly cheap um when you catch it on sale at Joann's and you can get these books super super cheap and also even a regular book here from happy planner you catch it on sale um you can get those kind of cheap and you don't need really a lot catch these on sale because I did I quit these I believe for 50% off so I'm not going to ramble let's get started I'm going to try to talk through this and what I did earlier was I used some little thin washi to cover the lines but I'm going to keep these lines black I do have some washi out here I do have maybe I'll use a little bit of strip of this somewhere since we do have the black lines and let's just see and I'm going to need dates you all so yeah that's not going to work so I'm gonna flip through this and this had some really good um at first I didn't really care uh for this book I think it was just the feel of the paper but I kind of got over that so so basically what you're on the go planner is like your top three to four things that you need to do so this is going to be for the week of the 20th through the 26th I'm looking for my tweezers so since it's multi-cut and I'm trying to save my other numbers for um I'm trying to save my other dates for um from the happy planner for my other like journaling and my faith planner and stuff like that I'll go back in and fill the dates in because this is crazy it was just um it was I didn't have enough so I do have date dots and I actually make my own and I don't know why I'm just sitting here acting real special right now but um I can just use those so I'm going to use these boxes I believe because we're going to be doing like your top uh things of the day and I want to leave room for deco and stuff like that so I'm just kind of playing off of that kind of orange and blue over here to Friday and I actually could um one of the reasons I don't like talking through my videos is because I feel like I ramble and I like to talk and then I'll get silent because I'm concentrating concentrating I'm gonna go into color story I need some more colorful boxes yeah I think what I'm going to do because it's up it's taking up too much room here on Tuesday and I think with the horizontal being a um on the go I can still have room to write extra and what I wanted to do was um like sometimes like today at my doctor's appointment I needed to put in my next doctor's appointment and I didn't I don't like to write directly on it I like to um I like to make a sticky note and I didn't have my sticky notes with me and I'm like oh lord jeez I don't have my sticky notes so what I did was I had to put it in my phone and then luckily something else was going on on the date of my next appointment so um I already had a sticky note up so I just kind of I kind of um use that as a sticky note so this would definitely be good and I was like I gotta get my sticky notes into my I'm trying to figure that out so it's going to be real colorful over here I'm trying not to get carried away because I tend to do that I don't want to do that so again I am in color story and I don't know which one this is two two two two and I was looking at all of the the present happy planner squad and they were doing their throwbacks and I had to laugh because I was like I'm doing I'm doing throwbacks because that's what I plan in I use old sticker books because when I first started planning that's just what I picked up that's what was available to me so so I just used you know what was available that you know the leftovers what people didn't want so and I would like to have me a nice box um quote here and like this box I mean this particular um this particular book has like free spirit and it has a lot in it so even had squad girls see look at that what squad girls in there so this was a pretty good book and then two year old I get hot and I really really really want to turn on my fan and that'll be loud but these little books here were like just keep moving they're like perfect and then see here's some washy you know Sundays I don't have a lot to do I'm gonna run this washy here wait a minute because it matches that I really think that um everybody get the stickers I know in the beauty industry there are a lot of the same um manufacturers and everybody just has a different name but it's usually the same manufacturers so like I believe these agenda 52 books and the Walmart stickers are by the same people but you know you pay less for one than the other because one may have had something extra added or what have you and also I'm learning that I gotta get some better whiteout because this whiteout is it skips and I don't know I was watching someone's video again I just do YouTube binges at night is when I can normally get my good YouTube watching in unless I have the day off or something or I'm home by myself I'm gonna put this up here as a flag right here no I'm gonna search that over so they were saying there was a different type of um a different type of white out in like when I'm looking at the white out I think it's by Tom Bo I want to say Heather Kale mentioned it but the that particular white out it matches pages like it's not um looking crazy because some of this white out just looks crazy so that's really colorful so now I just want to add in a few little people me and hubby may have a date on Friday maybe he's supposed to look at his schedule so we'll see and I am really trying not to um I'm really trying not to spend I did so good over the weekend whoo them Etsy shops was calling my name but I didn't do it I did not do it I'll put her here because I'm sure she looks a little tired I'm sure be a little tired but um I didn't do it oh I was so proud of myself all weekend well I knew like my car note was coming out I just couldn't do it I've been having some great weeks but um last week it was still it wasn't bad it just wasn't as good as the last couple weeks have been so um I had to like say hey pump your brakes on these shops because I was out of control ever since I came back from my little uh meet up I have been out of control and I had to gather myself like uh uh uh uh and half of them hadn't even shipped their stuff yet so no no no I wanted to save this pen for something but I'm gonna go ahead and use it because I'll probably forget oh you know what I'm gonna use it because this week I am working on I had started doing lettering so I'm gonna put that on Tuesday I had started doing practice and lettering and then I just don't know what happened I really don't so I need to get back to um that and then I'm gonna do it again so I got some coloring pencils here I'm just gonna set these over here on Thursday but I love this book this book is something I don't want to use those glasses yet because now tomorrow is Tuesday but Wednesday I need to have pretty much all my stuff uploaded and scheduled like today I got some videos to work on and then I must must must must must go walking on tomorrow but I gotta get my baby girl from the airport so I gotta go walking sometime tomorrow those are top priorities and Wednesday I'm gonna put out this little water bottle because um even though I'm put that here on Monday I had my doctor's appointment today and I had stopped kind of drinking sodas but um I kind of went back but not as bad as I was because honey I love me some out and do and I would just drink it drink it drink it so here's a colorful me time well my me time is about to be gone my baby girl will be back and then see this here this matches that so I'm gonna put me time on weekday prayerfully Friday prayerfully Friday that's a priority so it's fully the top part that is a priority I need me some me time on Friday Sunday not much goes on so I can kind of decorate I don't have to do my nails this week I'm gonna use this out of the office sticker definitely need to get a pedicure this week I can do my own pedicure but I just sometimes don't feel like it because I feel like I need I just need someone else to go to sleep in pedicure out of the office and I got gym day I like this book I'm gonna go back and get another one Sunday out of the office which I don't technically be but I'd like to be and sleep in that's what I'm doing so this is it I'm gonna find my numbers hold on I think it's in prayerfully my phone doesn't ring again so we got to Tuesday and I put my top three things in pick my door up destiny up from DC a take destiny work and then therapy anything else comes up I can just jot it down possibly up under this pan same with here over here on Monday I'm gonna put dinner some green meat dinner and I'm gonna do this chicken and shrimp pasta occasion don't know about tomorrow's dinner but it's gonna have to be something good because my baby girl will be home and I'm sure she wants a good home cook meal um Wednesday I'm gonna go through my other planners to see what's popping on Wednesday and I really can just go into my catch all Wednesday I'm supposed to go walking that's the top of the list let me check Wednesday oh I'm doing a no spin oh I gotta do my um sheets and towels laundry and did I need to record what's in my bag that was my top three so far Thursday I'm just gonna see in the catch all because the catch all has everything so no spin nothing really so far for Thursday I'm gonna go to Friday Friday I have the water and gas bill do those are my days I record playing with me so I need to go back to Thursday and hit record because I have a couple of them on Friday I have now finished I need to clean up this office so my baby girl will be home so maybe she'll help me clean office and I was sending my girl anika um like my polish collection so I oh I need to do that definitely let me go back to Thursday Tuesday actually Tuesday I need to pack polishes for anika and then I will mail those about Thursday mail polish that is definitely a top thing and then I'm supposed to be decluttering my makeup because my makeup collection is worse than my um polish collection it's it's crazy it's just when you start to grow and get older you start realizing stuff that you spend so much time and money on it and you no longer touch your use and then it goes bad and then you you know you feel bad Saturday it's to work then I have a baby shower a baby shower Saturday I also need to get a gift I want to get the gift on Friday well before then really it's on my to-do list let me put this get baby shower give I don't know how I like this pen it's okay let me try this one this is a 0.35 this is a 0.45 let's try this one work baby shower and we're on Saturday so then I'll probably do some editing those are my top and schedule okay Sunday already don't have anything to do I'll probably be doing some scheduling and finishing some laundry and then dinner I need to figure out what I'm gonna cook for dinner that day um down here under to do get baby shower gift again so that way I don't forget all right if anything else comes up I can put it there so I hope this video hasn't been too long and I had a little interruption had to keep starting and stopping but that's it and um I hope you guys enjoyed this video um let me know I always ask you guys like if you found Planet Peace I think I'm getting there um I have a reason and you know what I kind of want to get into memory planning kind of but I think I'm kind of already over my head so I just wanted to get back into my mini I'm gonna pop these pages in because I missed kind of carrying my mini around and like I said I needed my stickers and I really couldn't fit them in anywhere I kind of want to glue these pages but then again I don't so this is what it looks like so thank you all so much for watching and I will see you in my next video bye


The focus areas, the core genres, the core focus areas of discovery remain the same. And we are focused on, at present, viewers want to watch a lot of survival stories, a lot of stories on how it's done, programmed like factory made, which is how factories work, how things are produced, and like I told you, survival, which is man versus wild or dual survival. That kind of story is plus, there is history, there is science, there is space. There is a lot of India this year, as you've seen in the last couple of years, we've focused a lot on India. So while viewers come to discovery to watch a global channel, but at the same time, India in the global context makes really good and compelling television. So that we are focusing on. We premiered a very big show on 26th of January. We produced a show on the Siachen operation of the Indian army, how the Indian army functions at Siachen, how it all comes together, and it's been a very well received show. So you will see more of this, more of discovery. Well, you know, you see, India is a large country, and people start losing sleep over a particular date. Digitization has happened on 31st of December, and it will take a little bit more time to really consolidate and play out to all the stakeholders. Most importantly, what digitization is doing, and what we are really gaining from, is by removal of the bandwidth constraint of analog cable, it is giving consumers a very, very, very wide choice. And we want consumers to experience more of our channels. And if you look at, you know, a few months back when Bach started measuring the rural ratings, all our channels grew because consumers want to consume our channels in the length and breadth of this country. And I feel that once things start playing out, everybody will benefit. I mean, in discovery, we are going deeper in content. And as a company, discovery is producing a very, very wide variety of content. More than two billion dollars are being spent on content. So that really is a game changer that we will bring to the Indian audiences our full suite of content. The other is all our channels are now maturing, and all 11 channels have become unique. They are, the viewers connect with them, and that will gain further on the back of digitization. So digitization is a big game changer for us. Our content is a big game changer for us. And thirdly, delivering on viewer expectation.  Animal Planet has shown a lot of growth this year. That is a game changer for us. And now Animal Planet is clearly ahead of National Geography. And so we have two channels which are absolutely leaders. We have TLC, which is the leader in its genre. We have Discovery Kids progressing very well. So the Discovery Portfolio will be, will reap the benefit of the changing scenario this year. And like I said, the three game changers, what do you want it? The Discovery Portfolio, the content that is carried, and the digitization in India.


Digital Freethought Radio Hour First I was a Catholic girl Love the mess, I watched the swirl Smoke from candles burning While Mary looked up yawning I got confirmed and I confessed I really felt that I was blessed Plus I love my uniform So did the boy who lived next door But something changed When I became of age And all those things I thought were true Someday I'd break Hello and welcome to Freethought Radio Hour on Wozo Radio 103.9 LP FM Live right here in Knoxville, Tennessee Today is August the 1st Make sure you don't forget that change in the month I can mess that up all the time And hey, if it's not Then you're listening to a rebroadcast of the show And you should not be trying to call in I am the Wombat! And as usual we have Dowder 5 And friends on the show Dowder 5, how are you? Fine, how are you? I'm wonderful Anyway, Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a call in talk show It's about atheism It's about Freethought It's about rational thought It's about unionism And the sciences All of those things in one lovely package Conversely, we'll also be talking about religion Religious faith God's holy books And superstition And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in Knoxville Well, you're not alone There are several atheists, freethinking And rational groups that exist right here in Knoxville And I'll be telling you how to get in contact with them After the men's show break Also, hey, did you know It's been an atheist call in television show broadcasting right here in Knoxville And it's been, I don't know, for like seven years now Did you know that, Dowder 5? Yeah, I saw it I don't think the concept of turtles doing karate And carrying swords around is a very viable concept But I've seen it Turtles? It's not that great No, no, no, no No? Is that not it? No, that's not it In fact, if you were listening to this show, it'll be broadcasting right now The atheist call in TV shows Broadcasted by our own friends here in Knoxville And if you ever want to catch up on any of those episodes There's a fan of the show that's putting up those shows on YouTube There's a whole record of them And all you got to do is search for freethought in Knoxville In order to see those episodes yourself And in spite of what Steve Martin would have you think There are lots of these songs out there And you'll be hearing some of them right here on this program right now I got Quiet Company coming up This is going to be a great show Today's topic is How to deal with presuppositionalists That's a big word But we got one of the biggest brains To talk to us about it And his name is Raul And he's a good friend of mine Raul? Hey Raul How are you? Welcome Hey, thanks, I appreciate it Glad to be on Glad to look forward to talking with you guys Cool Raul First, before we begin I think it's absolutely imperative that you have a radio name Please tell me what your radio name is In the next five seconds What is it? Let's see Three, two, no Carl Pagan Carl what? Carl Pagan Carl Pagan?  And what does that mean to you? Yep, so street epistemology as I understand it Is a dialectical method In other words, a question and answer Method of dialogue between two people Where they talk about the roots of somebody's beliefs In other words, how did you get there? Like show me your math Show me how you arrived at your conclusion And the method you used to get there And then together We work with, okay How do we know that this method, whatever it is Is actually reliable So are you saying then It's like a conversational technique That two people can use to see If they have a good reason to believe what they believe? In short, yeah, it's a great way We're an easygoing show I know there's people on our roads Listening to this, we want to make sure We just like Let everybody know what we're all about So why do you like street epistemology? How'd you get into it? I got into it just because Like I've always been interested in knowing what's true Like even when I was a Christian I'm no longer a Christian But when I was a Christian Always interested in truth And even as an atheist I maintain that value of I love truth And I'm always willing and open To engage people who disagree with me And I feel like this method Really does away with a lot of the barriers That exist in two people understanding each other And getting across one That's a brilliant way to say it What do you mean by that? As far as taking, oh, going around barriers Yeah, so I find it to be really helpful And I regularly hit the streets To do on the street interviews with strangers A lot of people are willing to talk About what they believe in And why they believe in it And we have a great time Would you say it's like an argument Or like a debate? How does that actually work? No, I wouldn't call it an argument I wouldn't call it a debate I would just call it a chat I guess to kind of steal a turn From your YouTube channel Let's chat, check it out everybody You owe me five cents But it's a chat But for the most part Raul, about your setup So there are a lot of different ways That I've seen people do street epistemology I've seen people use like a table Where they have like two cameras And a setup there I've seen people like Maybe have a stationary camera And record two people at once How do you go about it? And where do you find like The best places to have these kinds of chests That you're talking about? So I use a method similar to what Another popular street epistemologist Uses Anthony Magnavosco Some of your listeners might be familiar with him He's kind of like the main guy But he hits the streets with a chest camera Which is the same kind of setup that I use So I got a GoPro Shapt in my chest I hit the streets And the downside to that is You can't see my face But you can see the reactions Of the person I'm talking with Other setups allow you to see both faces If somebody has a good table setup Like you do for instance Right I also like the ability Well sometimes I wouldn't say it's a good thing To see my face Sometimes I just feel like A little too scraggly For that to be on camera What do you think is the appeal Behind like setting up a camera on yourself And starting a conversation with people Is there any kind of apprehension Because with my setup I have like a table And only the people who are I guess willing or curious About the setup Sit down and have a conversation with me But I feel like you are actually Engaging people in a more freer format And I guess what kind of challenges Come up with that Yeah I mean there's probably Pros and cons of both Definitely like the table setup Is more maybe inviting Less aggressive People come to you type of thing Whereas with the chest camera setup You're kind of like walking around Actively seeking people out So you might be able to have more opportunities But at the same time People might be a little bit more apprehensive Do you feel like you ever get Like really shy people That don't want to have a conversation Oh yeah I guess what are you doing that Yeah definitely I don't just try to gauge the situation I mean some people And you know after five minutes They are done you know So after about five minutes You have a timer for yourself You said Some people do use a timer And there's definitely benefits to that I don't I think I started to use one When I first started going out But I just kind of like Just try to gauge the conversation How comfortable the person is You can kind of You just kind of get a sense Of when someone is done With the conversation Because I try to pay attention for that And what would you say Is some crucial things About the practice that you're doing Like do you How much do you value listening Etc. Like what are some core concepts If for anyone who's Also interested about Starting these kinds of conversation With people What are your tips Yep so you always start with Understanding a person And then And then you go into Asking them Beyond what they believe in So you get the The nuts and bolts Of what they believe in Help them define their terms But then The meat of the discussion Is going to be mainly about How did they Arrive at their conclusion What method did they use Did they use Some kind of Scientific method Did they use perhaps faith Did they use prayer You know whatever it is Yeah we mostly Well I was wondering When Wombat sits down He's willing to talk about anything And the sign says That you know we'll talk about Anything Do you have a Pre-set going into it That if a person sits down They have to have A kind of a topic in mind That I don't know coincides With what you want to talk about How do you approach that Are you open to anything Yeah I make it clear to the person I'm talking with Basically what I'll say When I approach somebody Is I'll be like I only have basically like Kind of two-prides area With what we talk about And that is number one Something you're fairly confident of Number two something that is Kind of fundamental to your Understanding of the world So those are my two-prides area And I just let the person Choose from there Okay so they can't Talk about like cheerleading Or something Nothing wrong with that I love cheerleading No I mean it starts off With a fundamental understanding Of the universe So they have to get kind of Kind of deep going out of the gate Yeah I prefer those I prefer conversations about topics That if this person Didn't have this belief any longer It would kind of pull the rug out From under them Those are the conversations That I'm kind of interested in having But just imagine The broader range You can really talk about anything Cool Yeah I've noticed That Raul has a style That's really really How do I put it Aggressively curious Like he really wants to know Like to a sincere level What this person thinks Particularly on special topics And I've seen most of this Talks are about religion Could you tell me about Some of the other Non-religious talks that you had With street epistemology Like what was some of the Four talks that you had That were just like really out there So the interesting thing About that Is that I just moved I'm living in the northeast right now But I was living in the Bible Belt Initially When I first started going out And filming the interviews I was having with people And I think geography Has a lot to do with The kind of conversations you get Because I've always gotten A lot of God beliefs A lot of Christian beliefs And once in a while You get like a stray belief Like karma or aliens Or ghosts But I think geography Has a lot to do with The kind of stuff you encounter So that man I want to talk about food up there Is that it? Like for instance There's just one other Popular street epistemologist Cordial curiosity He's in California I believe And you notice a trend With the kind of beliefs that I guess tend to be popular in California There tends to be a lot of I don't know Eastern slash mystic I'm not really sure how to describe it You're talking to a Californian Right now I kind of understand What you're talking about A woo I think It's its own variety of woo But it How do I say it? Are you saying Or the way how I see it Is street epistemology Is a really good way To talk to people About supernatural beliefs That they have You had mentioned things Like karma Or like reincarnation Even spirituality These are things That we don't really Have good ways to test And my position On things where I When I don't have Like a really good Tangular grasp I'm fine with saying I don't know Or I'll just withhold belief Until I have better evidence To believe it And if I told people Like if I told people That straight out At the beginning of the talk It might shut down The conversation But if I take This street epistemology approach It's not just a good way For me to express My point of view But it's also a really good Way for me to learn About how they came To their conclusions And if they find out Something really cool About how they reach Their conclusions Maybe in a way That they are responsible Or has a really good reason Behind it I want to learn from that But it's just a really good Way to maintain That kind of conversation What do you think? Yeah, I like that attitude Of I want to learn from that And it's important like Important attitude To keep when you're talking With people Yeah, it's important To keep the conversation Two-way You don't want to Come across As being preachy Or even preaching You want to I mean admit To be able To learn something In a conversation That's the whole Conversation Right So we are not here To talk about having nice Conversations We're here to talk about Conversing Conversing with Presuppositionalists And I think you have one Coming up pretty soon So what do you mean By a presuppositionalist And then who are we Talking to And then Tell me how your initial Thoughts are And then we can get more Into it in the second half Of the show So what is a Presuppositionalist Basically? So a presuppositionalist Is somebody who uses Presuppositional apologetics What that is So basically all it is Is just somebody who Accepts as their foundation To knowledge God exists And so in other words You can't know anything Apart from God And so the Presuppositionalist Apologists will typically Go about trying to Demonstrate how you As an atheist Or whatever you believe In any non-Christian You have no foundation For knowledge period And the only way You can build any Fact claim Any knowledge claim Is if you accept The most fundamental Fact claim of them all And that is that The Christian God Of the Bible exists Let me try to take a step back If I had like a guitar I got a guitar right here In fact I'm looking Right now If I had a guitar And I hand you the Guitar And let's say You couldn't play Guitar But my presupposition Position My presupposition Is that you can play And the fact that You aren't playing well Right now The fact that you're Playing like I don't know The theme song to Different strokes On the guitar Is because you choose Not to play it You're choosing Not to play it And my worldview Is that people Who can't play the guitar Are just people Who really choose Not to play it Because in my idea I'm assuming I had a time The presupposition Is that everyone Can play a guitar And those who can't Are just choosing Not to play it well Is that kind of Close to it? What do you think? But you see, Ty Which you don't understand Is that you're not An ultimate authority Okay So, God He's an ultimate authority He's able to serve The function of Being a foundation to Knowledge What kills me About presuppositionless They assume the answer Before they get Into the argument There you go In other words When you go into an argument A philosophical argument With something really The basic The baseline is You know I know that I exist Because I think Chateau Ponce Just we Whatever You know that kind of thing And everything after that Is up for grabs And you can argue about it You can think about it You can give and take You can arrive at Conclusions But a presuppositionless Comes in and says Everything below this line Is not up for argument Everything below this line I take his truth And you can't question And that to me is It's dishonest up front Not only that But it doesn't seem like They're willing to move Or budge on that position Right, they're hot Uh-uh Have you ever seen Matt Dillahunney Do a debate With a presuppositionless? Yeah, in fact He did a What was the name Of that presuppositionless Raul? Oh, I can't remember his name It happens to be The same one that I'll be talking with here In a few weeks We're gonna play Psy10Burgentate Yeah, Psy, that's right Can I give you some advice? I don't come here I'm soaking it up Oh, don't go there And don't go there I mean, it's just gonna Be beating your head Against the wall But maybe we're entertaining Yo, we're gonna get Into all the advice In the second half In fact, most of the show The second half Will just be advice And maybe some role play As well But I guess up front Who is Psy10Burgentate? Can you say that name again? It's such a So Canadian What's going on here?  He is Somebody who's been Doing presuppositional apologetics For, I don't know How many years now Possibly like 10 years Or so But he started out As an evidentialist So he was all about Giving you facts to prove That the Christian God Of the Bible exists That he's one true God And then he came To this realization Where he realized, no Wait a minute If I'm using facts To prove that God exists That means facts Of the ultimate authority Human reason is The ultimate authority And I'm robbing God Of his due Because I'm saying He's not the ultimate authority So that's why He uses the approach He uses It's his way of honoring God Of submitting to God Of saying Jesus is Lord Not just of My life He's the Lord of my reason He's the Lord of logic He's the Lord of everything Do you think that It's a cop-out If you ask me It's a simple cop-out But go ahead Do you think that Psy Genuinely holds These points of view Yeah, I have no reasons To doubt his insistence I mean the human It's easy sometimes When somebody believes Something crazy Like there's no way They could believe that And definitely there are people Who are just ingenious But I mean the human mind Is you know It's wonky sometimes It does weird things You know You can't see me nodding I'm wondering So you're talking with Psy He's like this really I wouldn't say Skilled debater Because he's not really Trying to have a debate He's really just trying To preach in front of somebody He kind of talks past points And he has ways Of avoiding the deeper subjects That his partner The bait partner Wants to talk about But he is very well experienced At what he does Have you heard any of his Previous conversations With other I guess atheists Or other people who aren't Who don't necessarily Hold the same presuppositions That he holds? Yep I have In preparation For my discussion with Psy I'm you know Revisiting a lot of his Material Really watching a lot of his Stuff To just get To swim in those waters And just get more comfortable In all that But yeah I mean He Like I said earlier The main tactic Of the presuppositional list Is to demonstrate somehow That what you think You know You actually Apart from God You have no foundation For knowing it And so the way to do that Is for them to ask questions Like You know Is it possible For you to be wrong About everything You know How do you know You're not in the matrix Oh you know I mean So I guess our listeners Would be asking then Right now Like What's the big deal Why can't you just answer Those questions And have a good conversation With Psy Yeah It's tough I mean The question that they're Trying to answer Is legitimate Like it's legitimate To ask What are our foundations For knowledge And the fact is Like there Are some things We know There are some things We don't know As far as our foundations There are some things That we just accept That it's kind of exploited By somebody like Psy He'll exploit the fact that You can't You can't Count for Why you for instance Trust the laws of logic Like for all you know They're going to change To know Yeah but he just Makes claims Just like most Christians Do Most religions do They simply make Claims and expect You to buy into them They say Make a claim that God Well they don't even go There They don't say God exists first God is the ultimate You know Authority in the universe And you have to buy into it But they They bypass the entire step Where they have to prove That God actually exists And it's It's dishonest I think that's the True point that I'd be inquiring about Because doubtful has a point You're in there Trying to have a conversation With someone Generally trying to Understand something In a curious And sincere way Whereas Psy is going To the conversation Trying to sell a brand He's not there Trying to learn anything new And he's not there Trying to be Exactly Demonstrated that he's wrong He's going to fight For what he believes regardless Of if it's Completely shown to be Irrational or not And because he's not Coming in there with The openness that you are It's not really A conversation anymore It's just Hey a listen to me Hour It's the listen to me hour And the cool thing About street epistemology Is if you have two people Who are generally Trying to understand You can get to an amazing Level of understanding With just working with Someone Kind of like if you're Working on a math problem Together You say hey This number This set of addition This line doesn't add up The way it should be And the other person Realizes the mistake And you guys can Correct it and both get To a more accurate answer But if you're working With someone who's Disingenuous Or someone who's So ardently Stuck on just one Frame of thought You can't really get That kind of feedback And you're stuck And you'll even End up going in loops And you can't really Expect it to have Like a fundamentally Productive conversation With that person So I guess what is Your goal with talking With Cy? I would say my goal Is to try to apply The same questions That he uses with people To his own belief And that is difficult Because I feel like Cy and people who Use street Or presuppositional apologetics One of their main tactic Is to avoid You mentioned earlier Avoiding subjects Yeah, it really is An invasion of any And all questions That might be aimed And targeted at Their foundations Right, and I can't see That it will be Productive at all I mean, you might As well walk up To a street preacher On the corner And try it out Shout him Because it's not It's not a conversation It's just going to be Making the same claims And the same points Over and over again It doesn't matter what you say To me, you're giving him Credibility You have reason To bring to the argument And all he's doing Is to say No, no, no What I believe is true And there is no argument There is no Back and forth There's no communication Not only that But go for it There is actually a little Like Rhyman reason To like his approach And when you understand that It can be an interesting Exercise to like question Some of his foundations Like for instance When he says that God exists And God is real Because without God You couldn't know anything In other words What he's saying is God is self-evident When he says That's the case I want to ask How do we determine Whether or not Something is self-evident How did you determine That he's self-evident? What's the criteria For a self-evident truth? When are we justified In accepting Something is self-evident? You know, The thing about it is It's not just you and him It's the audience as well I assume Are you going to have people In the room? Or is it just going to be online? Great question What is it? Because the audience Is a silent participant And if you make Some really, really good points I guess you could justify The entire exercise By saying That you're going to be able To sway some of the office I mean, the audience members But I guess it depends On the size of the crowd And the receptivity To see how worthy it would be Anyway, I give you kudos For going there anyway And it takes a lot of bravery To go up against a Recent officialist Who's not going to listen To anything you say It takes a lot of confidence To listen to someone Who's not going to listen back Exactly But I would say this Would you mind talking About the event Just before we head out When is the date What show it's going to be on What kind of audience Will be there Things like that Yep, I don't know How set and stone it is I'm talking back and forth With the host Or the co-host Of non-secretary podcasts And he gave me Some tentative dates And I just don't know How set and stone those are Tentatively, sometimes In the next month, I would say We plan, he plans on having Me and Si on for a conversation Okay, okay And if anyone wants to watch that Where could they go to check that out? Yep, the non-secretary podcast Actually just subscribe to it today Since I'm going to be on there If you guys are listening to some of their material And it's actually Really interesting It reminds you of Some of my favorite podcasts But you can find it on any Podcast platform It's called the non-secretary podcast And yeah, I would just say Look out for that particular conversation It should be coming out So just strictly podcast Check it out on your favorite podcast Follower Yep Okay, cool So we are actually getting Close to the bottom of the hour Like I said, we're going to play some music We have some quiet company coming up This song's called Set Your Monster Free And when we come back We'll be talking about some of the free fuck groups That you can join Right here in Knoxville Well, daughter, I once thought That I had angels in my room They were sleeping on my fan While I was dreaming of you And daughter, I once had Such desire to believe That our lives had been planned out By an unseen deity But you don't have to waste Your time consistent So daughter, just be strong Enough to make up Cause you don't have to waste Your time, your time Join in on the conversation At<PHONE_NUMBER> That's<PHONE_NUMBER> And now, back to the show Digital Freethought Radio Hour Welcome back, I'm Juan Bat And this is Digital Freethought Radio Hour On Wozo Radio 103.9 LP FM Live, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee Listen, we just had a great break And I love that band If you want to know what that band is That is Quiet Company The song's called Set Your Monster Free Check them out, however you get music And listen to them, they're a great band Wonderful story, and we have previous episodes On this radio show Where you can hear about us Going to more depth about Quiet Company Particularly Anyway, let's talk about Some of the Freethought groups That you can join Right here in Knoxville First, there's the Atheist Society In Knoxville, founded in 2002 We're in our 15th year! ASK now has over 800 members And you can find us online on KnoxvilleAtheist.org Or you can go directly to meetup.com And search for Knoxville Atheist Don't be let down by the number of people Who are RBSP, known RBSPs There's lots of people that show up And it's pretty simple If you don't live in Knoxville You should still go to your meetup And your local Freethought or Atheist meetup And search for an Atheist group in your town If you can't find one, start one Also, you can join ASK in person At our weekly meetup group Like I said, it happens every Tuesday evening At West Hills Flats and Taps We change locations Oh, where's the new location? Well, for one more week only We'll be at Black Horse Pub and Bearden Just off Kingston, Fife and Bearden But starting next week I mean, next week Week after We will be back at Marley Staff Room and Bearden Awesome! That's my favorite That's what we've been there for several years We've tried other places We've been gone for like a year And now we're going to be back At Marley Staff Room and Bearden So anytime after like April, August 10th You can join us there It's a great place in the city To meet up too Lots of parking Lots of great food Yeah, absolutely Good drink and great conversation Yeah So everybody's welcome And as long as you don't come to preach And proselytize, provoke or punch You will have a seat available to you anytime Thank you, Atheist Experience Another large free thinking group here in Knoxville Are the Rationalists of East Tennessee Great people I've done two talks with them so far And they've been around for over 20 years RET has a bi-league-y set of presentations And discussions at Pellissippi State Campus Near Hardin Valley Road And they meet on the first and third Sundays In the Goan's Admin Building Slash Cafeteria Annex And if that's too much to remember Just go to Rationalist.org And click on Upcoming Events And there's of course The Sunday Assembly Which started in England Just a couple of years ago And has spread around the world It's a no-god church setting For those who no longer believe in gods But still, like fellowship Of a church-type gathering And they only meet once a month And that's on the fourth Sunday We also have the Secular Student Alliance Which has programs to give camaraderie And community to any free-thought High school or college student Who would like to get involved In the free-thought movement Or who would just like to find Other free thinkers to hang out with Everybody needs like-minded friends And atheists are no different Again, if you ever want to call into this show Our number is<PHONE_NUMBER> That's<PHONE_NUMBER> I see a dancing phone in my mind And you can check out Digital Free Thought Blog For even more topics Anyway, this show we have A good friend of ours He is What did you call yourself? Carter Pagan? Carl Pagan? I love Carl Sagan And you gave me five seconds To come up with something And that's what popped in my imagination Cool And he is a street epistemologist And we've been talking about that On the show for a while But again, he's the guy Who likes to talk to people Using a friendly method To get to their foundation Of their belief And try to figure out If that foundation is reliable And if it is He wants to know about it And that's why he started These conversations He has a talk coming up With a presuppositionalist And a presuppositionalist Is someone who goes into conversations Already assuming that they're right About a very specific thing And are more or less Unwilling to move on that- On that front So what- It's like- It's like the battle between On a movable wall And unstoppable force We got Raul on one side He's rushing down On that presuppositionalist We got the presuppositionalist saying I'm not moving I'm not moving, I'm not changing my mind No matter what And we're asking here on the show What will come up What will come about of it So Raul I think what would be cool is To talk about some advice That you might give to presupps Talking to them And then maybe what your goals are Particularly in this conversation Why don't we start with goals first What exactly is your goal With talking with Psy Bergenkate Which is the guy that you'll be A pretty well-known presuppositionalist That you'll be talking to On the show coming up later this month Yeah, so I guess my goal is to apply A little bit of his critical thinking To his own view So I think a lot of the questions That presuppositionalists ask are good It's good for us to examine Our foundations to make sure When we're building a house That we have something solid To build on top of So a lot of these questions are good But I feel like a lot of times Applying those same questions To his own view is what exactly What's missed And so it might It's kind of like saying How can we not see the sun at night If the earth is flat But we have to assume the earth is flat So something's wrong with the sun And this is the problem that I have With presuppositionalists Because they won't change any Of the position that they start with And as far as I'm concerned Most of the premises that they start with Are false But you can't get them to move off of You know Sy does have the position Where he says any world view Aside from the Christian world view Is absurd And therefore he can only argue From the Christian world view His argument is If you're not arguing from the side Of Christianity You're not making any sense And there's no point talking to you Right Therefore let's talk about my point Of view And assume that it's the only You know rational one Like how do you even get over stuff like that Yeah The hard part really is trying to Get Sy or whoever you're talking to To share some of the burden of proof Because I think it's legitimate for him To ask me to defend some of my foundations Why I assume what I assume and so forth But the tough thing is to say Okay let's also apply these same questions to you And how do you do that You know how do you kind of turn The tables like that It would be cool if you guys were working on A similar goal Like my strat Dealing with people who are really unmovable Particularly people who have like an opinion And it's not so much that Yeah it actually is kind of like he has A very strong opinion that Christianity is true He's not able to demonstrate that Evidentially That means with evidence But he does have a very deep belief about it And that's the same thing to me Because he's like a guy with a really strong opinion But when I do my talks With people with strong opinions My goal isn't so much to Dive into the details of their opinions Because I can get that they hold it genuinely I get that they love it very much What I'm interested in is Can we work on a goal together To better understand why you came to this conclusion And if I can talk about the methodology That you used to get to your belief The how questions, the why questions, etc Then maybe we could set up a criteria That you're using to Really genuinely hold on to belief that you have And if you have a criteria Which you should If you admit that you don't have a criteria Maybe that's a more interesting point But if you do have a criteria Then maybe we can look to see if that criteria Is biased towards your conclusion already Because if it's a biased criteria It may not tell you as genuine information As an unbiased criteria And if your criteria is Christianity is the best And anything else is absurd If that's my criteria that told me That Christianity is the best Then we can obviously look at that and say Hey, this criteria seems to be obviously biased Towards one religion and none of the others Or even non-religions So like why are you using a biased criteria To reach this conclusion? Yeah, that is interesting So one thing that a presuppositionalist Might say to that is that Because basically what you're saying is It seems like a flawed methodology To assume your conclusion That presuppo my point out is that For a foundation to knowledge It's necessarily circular And so for instance they might point out The fact that like this logic They might challenge you to show me Why you trust logic Show me why you trust And accept the reliability of logic itself Without using logic Because you can't assume it's valid When you're trying to show that it's valid What else can we use? I mean it's like saying Your senses lie to you I can't tell you how many times I've heard Christian tell me That you can't trust your senses The senses lie to you What else are we supposed to use? Yeah, also is there anything wrong With saying I don't know If you don't have a good way to figure something out Like my base foundational position Is I'm happy with I don't know Because I don't know is actually The best answer not just an option But the literal best answer to have When you don't have a conclusive way To reach a conclusion I hate to use those two words In the same sentence But like if you are trying to figure something out And you don't have a good way to do that I don't know is a great place to be It's not the end, it's just a recognition That you have limited ways to do things And it's actually an intellectually honest position And there's nothing wrong with that We're raising a society where We need to say I know We need to choose our team Or our politician It's fine to say hey I'm waiting for more information This is the best that I have at the moment It seems to be pretty reliable I can test it, it can improve And in the event that it's wrong I'm willing to learn more better ways But here's my criteria that I'm using To get to your level And it requires these certain things These certain kinds of criteria And if that's not a good basis I'm willing to improve it What are you using and why is it reliable And what criteria are you using And is that criteria biased And if you don't like that, that's fine I understand that you like the way that you like to think But it seems to be the case that If I can't get to where you're at I'm either going to say I don't know As like my final answer Or hey, I may have something pretty useful right now That seems to be pretty Good with the way how I've been doing things already And I'm fine I'm fine with those two things right now Because they seem to comport better With the reality that I'm experiencing So here's the comeback From the preset So when you say I don't know is the best answer So let's accept that as your claim Your claim is I don't know Sometimes it's the best answer Ty, can you be wrong about Everything you know Can I be wrong about everything that I know Not everything I think there's some things that Are we role playing right now? I don't want to get too distracted On the radio show I would say There is A measure of how absolute I am About any belief And when someone gives me an absolute claim Like Tyrone in all situations are you X Or Tyrone in all situations are you Y Because my beliefs tend to be Based on evidence That necessarily puts me in a position Where I need to be open to new evidence That might change my mind I'm never in a position where I'm 100% Or 0% in anything And that might sound weak to someone Who loves God 100% And I understand that But from my perspective It shows that I'm being open minded With different points of view And I find that's more important Than I think that open mindedness is actually More of a virtue Than the consistency Of saying I'm never changing my mind That I understand we're coming from I understand that you accept this I understand that it doesn't make sense To you or whatever You're expressing some empathy there I think that can go a long way Helping create a more Friendly conversation Yeah I also know that You'll be talking to an audience And there's a big component with How you will appear to the audience With relation to how you're talking And I know that's not such a big deal As far as like The nuts and bolts of the conversation Who's using the more rational arguments But it's a factor that I think That's considered With regard to how well you're conveying Your idea to someone And if you are, how do I put it Just as unempathetic May possibly rude Or as stubborn as Si is Not only is it not an entertaining conversation That people won't watch But it might actually color your perspective In the same light of absurdity That Si has Because there might be atheists who don't even know What street epistemology is So I think it's good to just show That you're an affable person That you're a really nice guy and you actually are So that's an easy win For you to just invest in While you're conversing with Si I think Doug did So we have another street epistemologist Who goes by the name Pine Creek And he definitely came off as the more Likeable dude in the conversation Even though he was an atheist So you have Si who's like condemning non-believers Left and right, whereas he's having this Really genuine conversation with Doug Who's inquiring about his life Throwing out jokes, making Si laugh It puts atheism in a really Nice context in that Here's a guy who doesn't like atheism Whatever, but yet he's having a good conversation With someone who does identify as an atheist Who is an atheist Who isn't fitting the caricature That's been set up for atheism It's kind of cool I would say that's the key to that I think that's a good goal To keep in mind and definitely Try to think about how I can incorporate that I guess it should really sprinkle the whole conversation You could definitely take a more aggressive approach If you want to, but I think if The easier goals would be Can you work together on A shared Goal between you and Si Because he's not going to move on his positions And it's going to be really hard to have a genuine conversation With him So you could try it where you are Trying to throw the questions back at him But I bet he's going to know exactly how to deal with those And then throw them out And he might ask you some leading questions as well We can talk about ways to handle that as well But I think the easiest wins Are Put a good light for atheism Go to put light for you personally Light for street epistemology And show that hey listen I'm trying to have a productive conversation with you I'm a really nice guy and people call me an atheist And I recognize that I'm an atheist too But that's not a bad thing We're actually a lot of good people And we're willing to have really good conversations with people Even people who won't change their mind I guess any exposure is better Is better than no exposure So go for it, good luck And let us know if we can help Yeah, definitely What do you do with Leading questions? Because I like to ask a lot of leading questions Like do you think you're going to go to hell? Do you want to go to hell? He has scripts that he has scripted out the answers And everything too So he's going to try to lead you down a path Right Yeah, I guess it depends on what I'm kind of familiar with all those leading questions And then I might take a different approach Depending on the question But we talked about how like To defuse the situation And not get stuck in the vortex But leading questions Is to Invite him to like let's figure Theirself together I wonder how we would answer that What would be a good approach Yeah, I think the best way To break the script is just To answer honestly And use your logic Because some of those questions are really dumb questions If you've studied them And know the answers that he may not know Or he may not even have the perspective On You know, like What do you think about sin You know that type of thing and do you believe the murder is a sin? Of course he doesn't know That sin is not real Or he doesn't realize that murder Is factually by definition Illegal Because it's the illegal thing of somebody You know, have you ever sinned? No, I've never sinned Because, you know, sin is not real Sin is a trespass against God And if God's not real Then sin doesn't exist Larry has a very straight forward point Some of these questions That he plans out Will backfire on him With the least amount of thought Yeah, definitely to the honest mind Sure, but to him, no And he's not there to engage in his own thoughts He has a lot of outs for it But I would say Larry's point on answer honestly Like always, it's a great one It also shows that you're trying to be honest too That puts you in a good light I would also say, as you said Change His leading questions Into you asking yourself the question And then express Your thought process As you try to deal with the question And that way you can ask yourself No, the politicians like If you don't like the question You wish he had asked Oh, no That's just honest, I don't think that's good at all I think though if he asked you something like Hey, do you think you ever sin And don't just directly say yes or no to him Because that folds you on his script But I would say ask yourself, have I ever sin? Let me see, do I think sin's an actual thing Well, I would have to come to terms With which God am I sinning against And do I believe in the God? No, it doesn't seem like I like that I like that What he's looking for is just He wants to know what you believe But what you're saying we should do Is don't just talk about what you believe Like highlight the method Of the focus on the method That you're focused on I don't want to give you my answer I want to give you like, this is my thinking art This is how I arrived here This is the method I'm using Maybe it's wrong, what do you think? Show your work And even if he says, hey you can't reason without God You can still internalize that and be like I can't reason with God, that does seem like That makes sense because I would need better evidence The ability to reason just seems to be proof That I can reason, and I can't tie that Into a God until I have good evidence For God beliefs, so I guess I'm wondering Right now, what's the evidence that you have To tie all reasoning to a God belief Aside from you just saying that You can't do it without God Just the ability of expressing yourself Out very clearly is The audience will be able to key in more Because you're probably the newer person On the block, they're probably More interested in what you have to say Like a street epistemologist, what's that? We already know what science is going to say We already heard the God arguments But who's this guy who's rationalizing things And really really invested in the method And I think if you just take your time with that Regardless of the questions that you get You'd be able to answer them honestly Show up methodology is really important to you And never be misled down a bad line And one thing that a lot of people A lot of debaters Just let slide and it drives me crazy The atheist experience does this all the time They'll get a caller They'll talk about how the universe Can not exist without God And they assume up front That the God is their God The Christian God And they never call them on this They never say, okay, let's say that The universe can't exist without a God Now can you draw a line Can you give me the reason Why do you think that God Is your God And that's a huge gap that they can't fill I've never heard anybody fill it correctly Or I'm not correctly But even Honestly There's no good Way to fill that gap So just be aware that they're going to do that And then call them out on it I would think Call them out in a way where you're still thinking Because if you call them out He's done this so many times Where he's used to people calling him out But if you're calling him out As you're thinking about it The only way that he can interject is by interrupting you And if he's always interrupting you That looks better for you because you're not The guy that's interrupting him Does that make sense? Yeah, I got you That doesn't seem like a good reason But I can see why you would think that My only issue that I would have Blah blah blah blah blah Exactly And you can say I'm an atheist All these religions are coming at me The Buddhists, the Islamists The Muslims, whatever Even Mormons are trying to tell me That their God is the right God Even if I accept the fact that the universe was created by God Why Should I believe that that God is your God And let him try to fill in the gap there Yeah, and if he says all reason can only come from God How did he get it to his God specifically If he says all reason Or you can only know things because of God How does he prove that Aside from just the fact that X exists How does X existing prove that his God exists And specifically his God But I think just any God at all Is probably like the better justification And then if he is able to demonstrate that How did he get to his God specifically I think that would be really good But the goals, I think the goals would be Show you're an affable guy You're a good guy And See if you can work on a criteria Do Essie on yourself because I'm not saying you can't do Essie on him Definitely try it But if you start the process of When you ask me questions I'm going to show you why the method is important I'm not just going to tell you that the method is important I'm going to show my line of reasoning To get to the answer that I give you And it just Highlights you in a really good light I just said Larry and I We're both willing to help you out regardless Of whatever you need We're really happy for you Essie yourself That's great going into it I'll definitely keep that in mind Okay, Raul Do you have any closing thoughts on this process On talking to Pre-self positionalists Pre-self positionalists What would you say is some good Leaving comments on the matter Because you're coming up at the end of the hour Do you have any final words you'd like to put out To the audience You want to promote your own channel One thing I would say Is that a lot of Pre-self positional apologetics Is coming from a reformed theology perspective Which has a very high view Of God's grace God's sovereignty Okay, we have 30 seconds left I think Raul's How to just cut out a little bit Oh, did I cut up? Yeah, but we have 30 seconds left We would recommend that you check out StreetKnowledge on youtube.com That's your channel, right? Correct, StreetKnowledge, yep And please tune back in next time for more Digital Freethought Radio Right here on Lozo Radio And thank you for our guests who are coming in Doubt or 5, got anything to say real quick?


Okay, so if we use what we understand about the energy levels for diatomic molecules that can both rotate and vibrate at the same time, we can understand quite a bit about the colors of light, the frequencies of light that those molecules will absorb. So the spectroscopy associated with row vibrational changes. So if we first think of a diatomic molecule as only behaving like a harmonic oscillator, just vibrating with no rotations, and we say the energies could be one half h nu, or three halves h nu, or five halves h nu, and so on, then we would predict this naive, overly naive prediction would be that it would absorb light with energy of h nu, or in units of wave numbers, nu should be with a tilde on top of it. So if we pull up a graph of what frequencies of light are actually absorbed by the carbon monoxide molecule, so this graph is for carbon monoxide, here's a spectrum of the infrared light that's absorbed by carbon monoxide. The actual fundamental vibrational frequency for carbon monoxide is about 2170 wave numbers. So the harmonic oscillator model predicts that light will be absorbed at wave numbers of 2170 inverse centimeters, and that's roughly what we see here, but you can see that it's not just absorption at this specific frequency, but it's a little more complicated than that. And the reason, so that there's several range of frequencies over which light is absorbed and you can see there's some structure in that absorption spectrum. So to understand where that comes from, we need to consider not just the vibrational energy, but also the rotational energies that are stacked on top of the vibrations to give us the row vibrational energy levels. And remember that the selection rules forbid this transition, we're actually not allowed to absorb just h nu, so we're not allowed to absorb exactly the frequency of the fundamental vibrational frequency. If we go from no rotational energy to a little extra rotational energy gaining one quantum of rotational energy from the L equals zero up to the L equals one state, then we'd absorb fundamental vibrational frequency plus two rotational constants. I've written them here in units of wave numbers. We could also go from the L equals one up to the L equals two. That would have going from two units of rotational energy up to six. So I've gained it four. So there's a bunch of different transitions I can make that gain rotational energy. Or if I start with L equals one and I lose, so I start with rotationally excited, but I end up not rotationally excited, then I've lost those two units of rotational energy so I can lose two units. Or if I start doubly excited and end up only singly excited, I go from six units, six multiples of the rotational constant to four, I'm sorry, six down to two. So then I've lost four multiples of the rotational constant. So you can see there's a bunch of different frequencies that the molecules should absorb. And if we zoom in on the spectrum, if I show you what this spectrum looks like zoomed in on this region around 2000 wave numbers, so we'll replace that graph with the next one. We can see that that is in fact what we see. There's a series of different frequencies at which the molecule absorbs light. There's one frequency in the middle of this diagram that looks like it's missing the hole in the middle of this diagram. That corresponds pretty closely to the fundamental vibrational frequency where the molecule is not allowed to absorb light by the selection rules. But if I increase that frequency by twice the rotational constant or four times the rotational constant or six, eight, ten, twelve evenly spaced lines in the spectrum on the positive side or evenly spaced lines in the spectrum on the negative side, fundamental vibrational frequencies plus multiples of the rotational constant or minus multiples of the rotational constant. So this would be where we'd expect the fundamental vibrational frequency to be and we understand why that one's missing. We also can understand why it has the shape that it has. Remember when we talked about populations of rotational energy levels. The low amounts of rotational energy, those levels are not very populated because they don't have a very high degeneracy. The populations get higher as we go to moderately, rotationally excited molecules because the degeneracy has increased. There's more ways for the molecule to exist in those states. But as we continue to go to even higher rotational excitations, the energy is increased to the point where the populations begin to drop. So each one of these lines would correspond, for example, let's see, the first line above the gap, that would be the L equals zero to L equals one transition. The next one would be L equals one to L equals two. Each one of those lines that we can identify with a particular rotational transition has a height proportional to the number of molecules that are in that initial state. So even the shape of the spectrum is a consequence of the population of those energy levels. There is one mystery, however, which is that for carbon monoxide, the fundamental vibrational frequency, as I mentioned, is 2,170 wave numbers. If we look more carefully at the diagram now, we see that the gap where I told you should be the vibrational frequency, that looks like it's a little below 2,150, more like 2,140 something wave numbers. So 2,170, that would be, I don't know, here somewhere. We don't quite understand why the gap in the middle of the spectrum that we think should come at the fundamental vibrational frequency is actually shifted down to lower frequencies, actually redshifted a little bit from the fundamental vibrational frequency. To understand why that's happening, we need to recognize that our model for these energy levels, the harmonic oscillator, rigid rotor model for the diatomic molecule, real diatomic molecules are of course not harmonic oscillators, they're not rigid rotors. So in order to understand the really small scale details of why the spectrum looks like it is, why we get this point at 2,140 some wave numbers rather than 2,170 wave numbers, we need to go a little beyond the harmonic oscillator and rigid rotor models. So we'll explore those ideas next.