Live from the Mandalay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's The Cube at IBM Insight 2014. Here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. This is Silicon Angles The Cube for Flagship Program. We go out to the events and extract the seeds of the noise. We are here live in Las Vegas for IBM Insight, which is IBM's big premiere, big data show and in February with The Cube we'll be at IBM Interconnect, which is a consolidation of all three shows of Pulse, Impact and Innovate. IBM is going to the mega show model, we're excited to be part of that. We are live inside the social media experience, digital experience lounge put on by the social media team doing social business at IBM. Great jobs called Insight Go. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of Silicon Angle Media with my co-host Dave Vellante, the co-founder of Silicon Angle Media and chief analyst at Wikibon.org and Jeff Kelly, a big data analyst at Wikibon to break down the news of the day, talk about big data, industry news. This is our segment where we will share with you our thoughts and analysis and of course our opinions on the news. So Dave, top news today in the world is... Twitter, John. Twitter earnings were out. I'm going to see you all over the... Twitter was getting crushed earlier. It was down six points. It's pulled back a little bit or there's been some buying so we've got some support. It's down about four and changed today. But I mean, John, you were listening to the conference call. You were analyzing the results. What's your take on Twitter? Is this an overreaction? What, in terms of the stock drop? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, first of all, Twitter's misunderstood in Wall Street and in the mainstream as well. I think Twitter is a phenomenal company. I'm really bullish on Twitter. I think what they have is an amazing real-time notification network in the moment. Dick, the CEO, Costello, Costello, whatever he puts it, Costello. He's an amazing guy because he understands Feed Burner, which is a company that no one ever remembers, but they basically manage all the RSS feeds, which sold to Google. He understands this real-time web really, really well. I think he also, Dave, understands the value of the fabric that they've built on a global basis. And I think I like how he's not wavering off his vision. I think that he's holding the line good and he's getting hammered because the metrics that he's being evaluated on are really not the right metrics for Twitter. They're called monthly active users and daily active users, monthly active users, MA users, they say, really more of a Facebook metric. Monthly average users doesn't really encapsulate the value of Twitter. I'll tell you why. Because it's very ephemeral in nature and how people use it as a notification real-time network is not like Facebook. Facebook is a completely different animal than Twitter. Facebook is a place that goes and you're seeing that segmentation be much more of an older demographic. But Twitter is about the people. And that is a really fundamental thing. And so our big vision, as you know, with Silicon Angle and the work we're doing with CrowdChat Venture is we believe that the relationships will matter and that Twitter has that. Second thing is, is that Twitter is now going to new metrics around what they call the cohort analysis. Again, focusing on the people. That's a big data problem and they're focused on it 100%. Third thing about Twitter that's happening that not a lot of people understand is there's a new market that's developing on top of Twitter that's going mainstream with their user base. That is a consumption market. And you hear Dick, Dick the CEO, talk about the production and then the non-logged in users. What he really means by that is there are people consuming Twitter on the backs of the existing core base of Twitter, which means it's ultimately a content play. So you're seeing value coming out of them in the real-time moments, news breaking, the elections, the World Cup, things like that we can all point to. But there's two markets, production and consumption. CrowdChat again proves that immersive in the moment programming is working for users and I think that's what Twitter's all about. And they are years away from breaking out in my opinion in terms of the real value. So I could consider Twitter a buy. Yeah, well I think too that the Twitter itself is trying to figure it out. I mean what happened in July is Twitter had given guidance in the previous quarter and it blew away the guidance and so the stock went through the roof, but the guidance was very conservative. And then what happened this time is they missed the consensus and so now the stock's getting crushed. I think Twitter's trying to figure out, okay, what should we guide because what a company with good visibility will do is they'll say, okay, here's our guidance, they'll beat it by a little bit, they'll just get consistent, predictable earnings and Twitter hasn't figured that out yet. Well, I think they have, Dave. I think you look at the earnings call, a sentiment of the executives. They are hard-lined on staying on the vision and I think you don't see the pandering so they're not reacting to Wall Street too much. They're checking the boxes, they're working with the analysts, they've got investor relations. They are really in it for the long game. I can hear that in the management. The issue with Twitter is, one, they've got to increase the revenue base which they're doing and then the second thing is they still have this baggage on their back around the developer community. So they had their developer event called Fabric, which I thought was a good sign that targeting mobile developers crashlytics. If they can create some stability from a credibility standpoint in the developer community and an embracing and growing ecosystem, then they will be the home run that everyone wants them to be. But I think that's a wild ways down the road but Dave, they're in it for the long game and I'm psyched to see them not waver off the vision. So, we also have Jeff Kelly here with us and Jeff, we were at Big Data NYC last week concurrent with Hadoop World and Strata. We had our big capital markets event. You gave a big presentation. We had this awesome panel with Peter Goldmacher, Amy O'Connor and Abhi Mehta. The sparks were flying. Give us your summary of that event and your research. Sure, so the event was great. We had a great time in New York. So really the summary is we tried to help the Wall Street community, the investment community, understand the Big Data market from the perspective of where to place your bets. There's a lot of talk about obviously all the benefits Big Data can provide to companies and there's a lot of vendors in this space. The vendor market is exploding. There's new startups coming out of the woodwork all the time at different levels of the Big Data stack. So the question from the perspective of an investment thesis is well, where do you place your bets? Do you place it on some of these new companies that are emerging? Do you place it on some of the old stalwarts? IBM here at IBM.  And our investment thesis essentially is that while there is certainly going to be lots of value created in the vendor community, the overwhelming majority of value related to Big Data is going to be created by practitioners. That is, it's going to be created by companies that are applying Big Data technology services approaches to rejuvenate their businesses, to find new lines of business, to find efficiencies, new ways to improve profitability. Of course there's going to be a lot of new companies, new startups, new companies that create completely new industries. Companies like Uber, companies like Netflix. So our investment thesis is really that it's going to be the practitioners that drive the most value and from an investment perspective, if you can tease out who those companies are, who are the companies that are applying Big Data most effectively, that's where we place our bets now. That's easier said than done because as we talked about, and I talked about on the panel, we talked about as well in the presentation, is that it's, the stuff is difficult, it's hard. Just being here at Insight for the last two days, going to some sessions and listening to some of IBM's early Big Data customers and they kind of lay out these, they've got these slides. Here's what our infrastructure looks like and it's extremely complex. This is hard stuff, so just trying to identify those companies that are using Big Data doesn't mean those are going to be the winners, it's the ones that are using it most effectively. But if you can tease out who those companies are, that's where we suggest you think about placing your bets in terms of investments in this market. So talk a little bit about what you've seen at Insight. You've been here for now for a couple of days, going to a bunch of the sessions, you're probably at the keynotes, do some breakout sessions, talk to some customers, net it out. Well, it's interesting. So in our Big Data Analytics adoption survey, we found that around 30, about a third, 33, 34% of early adopters of Big Data are using Hadoop and or NoSQL. Which we kind of consider the foundational technologies of Big Data and really where most of the innovation's coming from. Now, when you look at the IBM customer base, naturally they're going to be a little bit more conservative. And what I've seen here over the last couple of days is a lot of the sessions focused on Big Data and Analytics, a lot of the customers, the IBM customers, are doing really interesting things, but not, I would say, lower than that 33% threshold are actually using some of these new technologies like Hadoop and NoSQL. We see, I see a lot more of companies using things like DB2 with low acceleration. I see companies doing things with IBM pure data. There are Natesa clients, things with SPSS. A little bit with Watson, not too much. That's still kind of on the cutting edge even for IBM customers. So what I'm seeing is kind of this balance between practical application of Big Data using, trying to leverage the investments you've already made from an IBM perspective because I'm an IBM customer. So, you know, I've invested in DB2, I've invested in pure data. So we're seeing of them doing a lot of those things. Are those scalable, Jeff, though? I mean, talk about that investment, that use case. Take that DB2. Is it scalable? And what are some of the agents of customers at? Well, DB2 is interesting because they've, IBM has kind of doubled down on DB2, taking the approach that, look, we need to help our customers get more value from DB2 so that in line with that they've released what's called blue acceleration. Essentially a in-memory columnar capability that can be applied to existing DB2 installations. The idea there is that you can significantly reduce, you know, your storage footprint, significantly increase performance for both analytics and to some extent transactions. And essentially this plays right into the whole theme of, look, people, business analysts, data scientists, they need more responsive systems. But budgets are tight, obviously. Do we want to invest in a completely new infrastructure? So let's look to what we can do with our investment. You can talk about the survey you did. Our current investments. What's the survey tell you? I mean, when you look at the survey landscape, because you're hitting outside the IBM kind of show concept here, but you're talking a lot of different industries and customers. What is the general theme on analytics and how does that relate to some of the things IBM's doing? Well, I think the general theme is that the idea of looking backwards at data that represents past performance in your business, which is really what traditional business intelligence is all about and traditional data warehousing is all about, that's not going away. But what people want is a more real-time view of what's happening currently in their business and they want predictive and prescriptive analytics. It tells them not just what's likely to happen, but here's what you should do. Here's the action you should take, which traditional business intelligence just doesn't do. Now, IBM, I think, gets this. And I've actually seen quite a few, a handful of sessions, I should say, not quite a few, a handful of sessions where they focus on this, creating an environment where you're getting prescriptive recommendations on next best actions. And that, I think, is a really good way to focus on this market, because it's not about the insights, it's not about the data, it's not about the analytics. What do I do next that's going to drive my business forward? So that's really the general theme we're seeing, and I think IBM is playing into that nicely. So, Dave, I want to ask you about some of the database trends. What are you seeing out there in database from a technology standpoint as it relates to developers? Because developers, as a focus of your hearing, going back to our Twitter news, native apps need data, right? Data changes data. We heard that from Glenn yesterday. Speed is a concern. What's your take on the database and or the software market relative to developers? So here's what I'm seeing, John, is that organizations that were spending like crazy on their traditional data infrastructures, data warehouse, structured databases, SQL stuff, traditional BI, really struggling, frankly, but having to pull more money just to make it get to the next step. Jeff, in your speech, you talked about a snake swallowing a basketball, which is a famous quote from a Wikibon practitioner. Chasing the chips is what they did. What's happening, John, is people are essentially baselining their traditional data warehouse spend, and you can see this in the numbers of certainly Oracle, IBM, you know, it's flat-ish in the software business, and what they're doing is, instead of spending a dollar on that traditional data infrastructure, they're spending maybe 30 cents on the new infrastructure, spinning up some POCs, doing some new R&D projects. So they're not, it's not a one-to-one swap. They're not taking a dollar away from the traditional infrastructure, putting it into the new world. They're experimenting. And that's where the developers come in. The developers come in, they're saying, all right, we need the right skill sets, we need data scientists, we need Rockstar developers to develop this new big data stuff, a dupe, et cetera. Oh, and by the way, we need data integration tools and we need access to our existing data warehouse, and they're trying to figure that all out, right? So the organizations, there's a schism in the organization, there's the old line data guard, they say, well, wait a minute, we have data governance, we have data structures, we have security, compliance, edicts, et cetera, et cetera, and you got the new hoodies saying, look, just give me the stuff and watch. Stand back and watch the magic that I create. Now, the best organizations that we see either don't have that baggage or they've begun to rationalize that schism. But clearly the new developer crowd is moving fast, it's a DevOps skill set, they're designing security in, they're maybe pushing the envelope a little too hard for the comfort of the traditional data warehouse crowd. Now, for every dollar they spend here, they spend 30 cents in the new stuff, the big question is, is there a business model there? And I think there is, we're going to make it up in volume, it reminds me of the joke that Abhi Mettit told last week in theCUBE, but if they can create three to four to five to 10X the amount of volume and activity of data, then that revenue will grow to offset that old world. If they can't, then it's going to be a problem. I think my view, very high likelihood that they will. Well, from the perspective of the industry heavyweights as we refer to them, part of that is the volume, if they're there to succeed in this market, can that volume make up for what they're going to lose in the relational database market, the traditional data warehouse market, but also the other opportunity they have is in services, helping people put all this stuff together. That's where IBM is really well-positioned. Steve Mills talked about that yesterday. He said it's getting more complex and I don't think the need for services is going to attenuate my work. Well, yeah, well, there's an interesting thing happening here where you're seeing, on the one hand, the cloud gain momentum and that's where you take away some of the services components because you're abstracting that away. On the other hand, with big data, big data moving in the cloud is slow going. I think you're shifting the services spend. Yeah, so that exactly. Away from infrastructure. It's shifting towards big data analytics. Absolutely, I think you're right. So I agree that services is going to remain, but you're right, it's going to shift from infrastructure to the analytics. And the other place that I think the industry heavyweights are actually somewhat well-positioned are and as David Floyer has pointed out as well, the companies that own the applications are companies like Oracle, SAP. If you own the application, you own the data, not own the data literally, but you own those applications, you're in a position to certainly continue to capitalize on that. So who's going to be good at that? So the big whales of services, Accenture, Ernie Young, Deloitte, PWC, obviously IBM, I would put IBM at the top of that list, are going to dominate. I would think that you'll also see some specialists emerge.  And then you got HP, HP's big services company, but it's sort of EDS, outsourcing. Kind of CSC, like that to me, they've got to figure that out. Maybe build services around Vertica, but IBM's very well-positioned there. No, probably number one. I mean, they're number one in your report. But they have skill sets that others don't have. Well, right, and they give IBM a lot of credit because they continue to, they've been investing in the analytics space for years. You know, they've got their research and development labs. I mean, they've got some of the smartest people in data science you're ever going to find. So they've made these investments. You know, this isn't new for IBM. They're not making a decision now. We've got to start investing in and smart people related to data science. They've been doing this for years. People like Jeff Jonas, I think, is coming on later. So yeah, they're very well-positioned. It's going to be a little bit more of a challenge, I think, for those services providers that are more focused on traditional infrastructure. How do you make that transition to focusing on data science and big data analytics? Because they're in the same position that companies are. There's a skill shortage out there. There aren't that many folks out there that really understand this stuff really well. So they've got to attract them, attract those people just like any other company might. So they're going to have a little bit more of a challenge whereas IBM's been making this investment for years. This isn't new for them. So Jeff, I want to pivot back to the news here on Google and Microsoft. Two other players in the big whale space. We're not going to talk about HP for now, but Azure is hot. They've got the cloud. They've got the same kind of analytics we're seeing here with IBM. We're also seeing Google conference coming up next week. We're going to be covering the Google Cloud. So you've got the Compute Engine.  So we'll be live there as well. So cloud is hot. Cloud is a big part of the show. Dave, I want to get your thoughts. Amazon's right around the corner. We have Microsoft Azure. The public cloud of Amazon has certainly changed the game. Integrated stacks, you're hearing Steve Mills here at IBM talk about the software integration. So again, Amazon's pacing that out, but Google's a secret weapon too. They have a massive cloud and Microsoft with Satya Nutella going strong and going all in on hyper-connected enterprise, cross-platform developer tools and certainly big data in their cloud offering. What's your take vis-a-vis those guys? Well, I think that, I think Derek said it right. He said, I love Andy Jassy. They've done the industry a great service by starting this whole trend. Amazon's cost structure is, to me, it's big advantage. And I would say Google and Microsoft as well. They are essentially taking what used to be infrastructure outsourcing, which was a very expensive proposition. And they're sticking it behind an API and automating it. And so the marginal economics of infrastructure outsourcing are going to start to look like software. So all those services that you used to acquire from CFC and IBM and EDS and everybody else, Amazon essentially created that capability within an API. Now, can others replicate that? Yes. Is IBM doing things that replicate that? Absolutely. That's what the software acquisition was about. The cloud acquisition is very much like a DynamoDB capability. The big question is, can they do that at scale? And to the extent that they can, they can compete on a cost basis. To the extent that they can't, and by the way, they're nowhere close to Amazon's scale yet. To the extent that they can't, then they have to add value other places. Take Oracle, for example. Oracle is going to get you in the red stack. They're never going to have close to the scale of an Amazon, but they're going to get premium pricing for the application and the database, and they're going to make it up in margin. IBM is sort of a halfway house there. They're not going to... Halfway house. Oh, sorry. A way station. Deference to Pat Gelsinger. That's an inside joke for everyone who's watching theCUBE. That was the Pat Gelsinger famous line where I called Hybrid Cloud the halfway house. That I've filmed correctly. A little offensive. And then you got the fish eye from Pat on that one. We'll call it a way station. Intermediar point between the final destination. What I say when I have say halfway, what I mean by that is, IBM is open, but it doesn't have, and it certainly has the database with DB2. It doesn't have the volumes that Oracle has. It doesn't have as much application juice. Having said that, it's got a lot of SaaS products. So I think IBM can also make it up in margin. They've got the whole business outcome language. Companies that talk business outcome and can deliver business outcomes tend to get higher margins. And that's the bottom line. So I think IBM's strategy is a good one. I think they can, by the way, they have no other choice. We heard from Phillips earlier this year in August, the edict that they're putting forth, and I think this is a must watch video for every CIO, how everything they're doing is going to be subscription based in the cloud. I think IBM's recognized that. They're moving in that direction. Oracle, by the way, has recognized that. I don't know, John, has HP recognized that? HP's really recognized the fact that they have to build their own cloud and build their enterprise solution around it. I think HP's behind a little bit compared to IBM. IBM's way ahead in terms of integrating in other software components. I think the foundation is solidly set at HP. So I think HP's in good shape, Dave. I got to say, from the HP cloud event I was in San Francisco last week, they are getting it. So the leadership there is strong. I would give them an A on that one. Good leadership on their innovation engine. Not so much. They're banking on cloud foundry. They still got some work to do to wrap some innovation around it. They go to market really strong. So I think HP's go to market their leadership as strong, and I think they understand the value proposition. Their only weak link is their innovation engine with cloud. This is still a little bit disjointed, but I hope to clear that up at HP Discover in Barcelona. But Dave, I mean, they're in good position. They're like IBM. They got a huge client base, so they just got to tool up pretty quickly. All right, excellent. Jeff, any last thoughts on Insight? Well, again, I do enjoy this show because there are quite a few practitioners here that are sharing their stories. So that's always fun to come and hear those stories. I like the name change. Insight, a little bit catchier than IOD. But yeah, it's been a lot of fun. Looking forward to catching a few more sessions before the day's over. But really, IBM, as you mentioned, I think they're well positioned in this market. What I'm not hearing from practitioners, and I've talked to some attendees about the IBM's issues with Wall Street and the buybacks, et cetera, et cetera. And most practitioners aren't interested in that. They're not too worried about that. IBM's making this transition. They know they've got to do it from kind of the old model to this new model that embraces cloud and big data analytics. It's going to take a little bit of a while. They may take a little bit of hit on Wall Street, but practitioners seem to be pretty excited about it. They're really looking to IBM for some thought leadership. And to what I can see at this show, IBM is for the most part providing that. All right, Jeff, thanks a lot for your analysis, Dave. It's a midday break here inside theCUBE. This is theCUBE live in Las Vegas for IBM Insight. Inside the special digital experience lounge, the social lounge, Insight Go, they're calling it. IBM's social media team really bringing a new digital experience together around influencers, around openness, around content, really building that organic community. Great job for IBM. And of course theCUBE's proud to be a part of it. And then we're going to be going wall to wall all day today, extracting the seedling noise. We have a crowd chat up and running crowdchat.net slash IBM Insight. We've embedded theCUBE live stream in there, so you can look at that and comment, and we're going to open that up for the whole world to watch and make comments. So please join us. We'll be right back. We'll be here all day. Got any questions? Put it in on the crowd chat. We'll answer them. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante and Jeff Kelly will be right back after this short break.


This natural homemade spray on deodorant won't stain clothes, contains no baking soda and causes no itch or redness. My other go-to homemade natural deodorant cream recipe is quite a bit old now, I've used it for a few years and it's still one that I use today as it's really effective, however some of you have been telling me that you don't react well to baking soda and we're looking for another option. So this is the alternative you guys can use if you're looking for a baking soda free deodorant. For some people baking soda gives them an itchy red rash when used on their underarms. The reason why it's widely used in natural deodorant recipes is because it's fantastic for absorbing odours, but some people just aren't able to tolerate it which is totally fine as there are many other alternatives out there, such as this recipe. Now one common complaint with oil based recipes is that they can stain clothing if you don't wait for it to dry before getting dressed. This isn't very practical especially for that early morning rush to work, so I went looking for a quick dry alternative that wasn't oil based, didn't contain baking soda and actually worked. Now I love to use my citrus deodorant recipe along with spraying on this deodorant spray recipe especially when I'm going to the gym just for an extra powerful deodorant, but using one or the other works just fine. The first deodorant recipe I'll be showing you is the magnesium oil deodorant. Now I'm sharing two today as some people find that the magnesium oil deodorant may not be strong enough for them and that's okay, that's why I'm sharing this other deodorant recipe that's a little stronger that works really well at keeping odour away. So instead of using an oil based deodorant spray, we'll be using this magnesium oil to begin with. Now fun fact, magnesium oil doesn't contain any actual oil, though it does feel oily, so it won't leave any stains and is used because it's incredibly effective at preventing underarm odour, plus you get a nice healthy boost of magnesium along with it. You can choose to take magnesium oil yourself and I'll share the recipe to making your own magnesium oil at home in the cards above, or you can buy a ready made version. Just a note before we begin, some people may experience a tingling sensation when they first start using magnesium oil, this is quite normal especially for those who are lowered magnesium and it should fade in a couple of days. Also another note, if you do shave and then spray on the magnesium oil deodorant it can sting a little bit to begin with but it'll fade pretty quickly, so if you do find that it does sting just rub it in using your hands and it will help to stop that sensation. A tip for this magnesium oil spray deodorant is if you want to make it more effective, just mix three quarters of a cup of water with one quarter of a cup of apple cider vinegar and apply that to your underarms after showering. Then let that dry before applying this spray deodorant, this just helps to remove any natural bacteria found on your underarms and helps the deodorant to last longer. Alright, let's get started in making the magnesium oil deodorant. So to begin with you're going to need half a cup or four ounces of magnesium oil and 10 to 15 drops of your favorite essential oils or you can use a mixture. I used a mixture today and I added a bit more of essential oil because I love my deodorant to be really strong and last longer throughout the day so I added around 20 to 40 drops of essential oil for my deodorant today and that was just a mixture of lavender, tea tree and orange essential oil. Then you're just going to need a four ounce or larger glass spray bottle to keep your deodorant spray in. Now it's advised to have a dark spray bottle as having a light spray bottle means that the essential oils inside are more likely to get damaged by sunlight if they come into contact with that but having a dark like amber type spray bottle glass just helps to protect it from light damage and means that essential oils may last longer. But I didn't mind using both a clear and amber glass bottle today because I'll be keeping both in my cupboard in my bathroom out of direct sunlight. So to make your magnesium oil spray deodorant all you're going to do is grab your homemade magnesium oil or store bought magnesium oil then you're going to pour it into your glass spray bottle and add any essential oils that you'll be using then shake it up before you're ready to use it just to make sure that their essential oils aren't separated on top and are mixed throughout the spray deodorant. To use spray a small amount on your underarms and rub it in gently then let it dry for about five seconds and it's good to go. Now like I said for some this magnesium oil deodorant spray may not be enough so for those who've tried magnesium deodorant spray and found it ineffective here is another natural deodorant spray using ethanol alcohol like vodka gin and alcohol like that but not isopropyl alcohol which is that rubbing alcohol you can get because it can be quite toxic when used for long periods of time so just stick to the ethanol alcohol and many have found this to be really effective at keeping odor away. So a few things to keep in mind with making your alcohol based natural deodorant spray so a lower proof alcohol means it'll have lighter coverage which is just odor protection while a higher proof alcohol means it'll have more odor protection so what I mean by this is that on the alcohol bottles they'll usually have a proof reading and you can figure it out from the percentage of alcohol on the bottle as well but usually you'll have it written so if your alcohol says 70 to 90 proof it just means light coverage whereas if it says 90 to 100 proof it has medium coverage and if it's 120 plus proof it has strong coverage so if you want your deodorant spray to be really strong go for the 120 plus proof alcohol also keep in mind it may take some time for your armpits to adjust to using a different deodorant especially if you're going from a commercial one to a natural one so an armpit detox may help with this I'll share how to do this in the cards above but usually it takes around three days to adjust to this deodorant so on the first day it's recommended to spray two to three spritz under each arm in the morning and then again around three p.m on the first day on the second day it's recommended to spray two spritz under each arm in the morning and then again right before going to bed and then on the third day it's recommended to spray two spritz on each underarm and then go the entire day without spraying again So, to make this alcohol-based natural deodorant, all you're going to need is two tablespoons of gluten-free vodka, again, follow the guide that I just mentioned on which proof you'll be going for when choosing your alcohol. I found it was very challenging to find a gluten-free vodka that was 120 plus proof, which was a strong coverage, so I just went with a light coverage, which was around 80 proof from our type of alcohol. Then you'll be needing essential oils, so you can choose what essential oils you'll be using. Again, I'll be using lavender, tea tree and orange, and I used around 20 to 40 drops of those all together. Then you're going to need a Mr. Bottle, this one was just a plastic clear Mr. Bottle, but again if you want to protect the essential oils inside much more, go for a dark amber Mr. Bottle. So, to make this deodorant spray, combine the alcohol and essential oils in a Mr. Spray bottle and shake to combine all the ingredients. To use, just remember to shake before use really well to make sure the essential oils are combined in the alcohol and give each underarm two to three spritz and let them air dry. Apply again after exercising or heavy exertion if you need to. And that's it, that's how you make these two deodorant sprays. So, these are the two deodorant sprays you can make, so this one has the magnesium oil in it and this one has the vodka. I've heard the vodka is stronger because you can adjust the percentage of alcohol, I can't remember what it's word it's called, the percentage of alcohol that you buy. So you can get the 120 plus proof if you want to be really strong or if you want to just be semi-strong, you get the 90 to 120 or the one below that which is like the 80 percent. I've got the light one today, I was having trouble looking for a green free vodka and that was the only one I could find. So if you do come across a 120 plus proof vodka that's also green free if you're the Jack Fox I found it very challenging to find. I'll keep looking but for now this one will do, I just sort of couple it with my natural deodorant cream as well and I'll be super late, I'll smell so good afterwards. I keep them in the bathroom in the cupboard because you need to keep it out direct sunlight because it has essential oils in it and they can deteriorate over time if left out where the sunlight can get them, it'll damage the essential oils and it won't smell as fragrant. So if you want to preserve this deodorant and make it smell nicer for longer you want to make sure that you're keeping it out direct sunlight so I just keep it in my bathroom in the cupboard there just for easy use, I always use deodorant there so it's just easy to have it there or just in any place that's out direct sunlight and it'll help keep it longer that's why also using the dark bottles helps as well rather than the clear ones because it helps protect the essential oils and what's inside more because of the dark outside so that's something to keep in mind as well but because I'm just going to keep it in the cupboard I don't mind using a clear one, so yeah I hope you guys enjoyed today's video, do let me know if you try any of the recipes out or if you have another deodorant recipe that you guys make, please share, I'd love to hear it. Well thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope to see you again in my next video, bye.


Let's say that you're Russia or China, and you're looking for ways to expand your influence on the world order. Unfortunately for you, there is a major roadblock in your way, the United States' nuclear umbrella. Great power competition may be returning after a post-Cold War slumber, and adversaries may feel more confident about flexing their muscles these days, but this long-standing policy remains a bulwark of American deterrence. China and Russia are trying their hands, but their attempts to shift the world order have been obstructed by the presence of allies protected by America's nuclear arsenal, leaving them with far fewer opportunities to accomplish their objectives. So what exactly is a nuclear umbrella, and who gets to hide under its canopy? At its most basic, the United States' nuclear umbrella is a function of its system of alliances. As part of its commitment to allies, the United States has implied both the will and the means to use its nuclear weapons to protect them from aggression. The umbrella currently extends to long-time allies like NATO partners Japan, South Korea, and Australia. There is no formal binding agreement creating the nuclear umbrella, rather it is an informal understanding that the United States will defend its close allies from nuclear aggression with a retaliatory nuclear response. The nuclear umbrella therefore accomplishes two strategic goals. First, it deters other countries like Russia and an increasingly aggressive China from using their nuclear weapons or invading countries covered by the umbrella for fear of nuclear escalation. Second, it prevents nuclear proliferation as America's allies will feel less of a need to create their own nuclear arsenals to defend themselves as they can rely on the United States instead. A good example of the nuclear umbrella in practice can be found in the North Korean Security Challenge. Although North Korea has had a long-standing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, neither South Korea nor Japan, who are most threatened, have responded with nuclear programs of their own because of the implicit American security guarantee. Another example of the nuclear umbrella in practice would be in Eastern Europe. For historical and strategic reasons, Russia would like to reincorporate the Baltic states into its orbit. But unlike Ukraine, these countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are NATO members, with both Article 5 protection and an implicit understanding that they are under the US nuclear umbrella should Russia resort to nuclear saber-rattling. Great news for places like Japan and Lithuania, but what about the rest of the world? Some American national security experts have called for expanding the American nuclear umbrella's reach and guarantees. For example, with the potential for a nuclear armed Iran, the umbrella may need to be extended to other countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, lest it develop its own nuclear weapons in response and create an atomic arms race in the Middle East. Other experts disagree with nuclear umbrella expansion because they believe that it will create new risks to the United States, while increasing the reliance on nuclear weapons and atomic threats for security, and thus the incentive to create them. This is part of the reason why NATO expansion has not been universally well-received in Washington. These experts are also wary of the potentiality for nuclear escalation should the United States overexpose itself on implied commitments to use these weapons of mass destruction. Although it has been a successful policy since the start of the atomic age, the nuclear umbrella is not as simple as it sounds. To be operational, it requires not only American capability and will, but also its security partners to trust that it is committed to using it. Sounds a little paradoxical, right? Well, here's how it works. A security official in Japan perhaps best summarized the problems in that third requirement when he asked, if you were responsible for the defense of your country and you had to depend on somebody from another country, how would you feel? This message quoted in an article for the diplomat from a 2009 meeting raises the conundrum. For the US nuclear umbrella to work, cooperating countries must believe that the United States will actually defend them, and they must believe this beyond the almost ritualistic assurances that American security officials periodically make. Trust is a vital component in the otherwise informal nuclear umbrella agreement. Otherwise, these countries will have an incentive to create their own nuclear weapons despite their participation in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. North Korea poked holes in the NPT when it withdrew from the treaty in order to develop its own nuclear weapons. Although anti-nuclear attitudes are obviously strong among American allies like Japan, long-term security concerns will tend to win out over short-term domestic political controversy. If the leaders of those countries fill the long-term vulnerability in the absence of American leadership, it's far likely that nuclear proliferation will take place. While the international order under stress from actors like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, the United States has signaled to its allies in recent years that it remains committed to their nuclear defense. In a 2019 speech at the Brookings Institution, David J. Trachtenberg, the then-Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Policy in the United States Department of Defense, noted that America had budgeted $25 billion toward efforts to modernize its nuclear triad, intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bomber-delivered nuclear weapons, plus their means of delivery. However, although the nuclear umbrella proved successful in the Cold War, some observers have questioned whether it still makes sense even in the countries that it has long extended to. Although American security officials like Trachtenberg had attempted to assure allies of its continued commitment, President Trump has raised some fears during his campaign and tenure. For example, on the campaign trail in 2016, he mulled whether it would be better if Japan and South Korea developed their own nuclear weapons to defend themselves from North Korea, instead of relying on the United States, which in his opinion, got too little out of the arrangements. Although Trump would later backtrack on these comments and made no such moves as President, his erratic nature rattled American allies and exposed this weakness in the nuclear umbrella idea. Despite the Trump years, American allies still have a high degree of trust in the United States and its commitment to their defense. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the polling firm Morning Consult took the opportunity and asked America's European, Japanese, and Australian allies about their trust in the U.S. nuclear umbrella, among other questions. While people in these nations viewed the nuclear weapons themselves overwhelmingly negatively, they had a high degree of trust in the United States' implicit nuclear guarantee. Only in Spain did more people, 36%, say that their country needed to create nuclear weapons rather than rely on the United States. The people in Australia, 35%, Germany, 41%, Italy, 45%, and Japan, 39%, all answered that their respective countries did not need to build nuclear weapons because their allies had them. These responses were well in excess of those who answered that their nations should build their own nuclear weapons at 28%, 28%, 20%, and 18%, respectively. Other people surveyed, said that they did not know about or have an opinion on the subject. With the unpopularity of nuclear weapons among America's allies, it seems the nuclear umbrella policy is secure for at least the intermediate future. But how exactly does the United States secure its nuclear umbrellas range? Although this is not explicitly stated, the nuclear umbrella policy also means that in practice, the United States can forward deploy its nuclear arsenal on the soil of its allied countries. Such deployment ensures that the means of delivery are closer to potential adversaries, while making it harder to eliminate American nuclear capabilities in a first strike, enhancing the overall deterrence posture. One notable hint of this practice occurred in the summer of 2022, when the United States and South Korea started talks which would eventually result in the return of the blue lightning exercises, which feature potentially nuclear capable B-52 strategic bombers flying over South Korean airspace. The last such exercise was in 2017, amid rising tensions with North Korea. Although the United States withdrew its nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991, blue lightning and other exercises demonstrate the ongoing security operation between the two countries and the partnership's nuclear capability. The United States still deploys nuclear weapons from bases in allied territories as part of its NATO commitments. About 150 American B-61 nuclear bombs are currently on NATO soil, ready to be deployed from bases in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. Although the governments of these countries have never officially confirmed their presence, it is a widely known open secret. This arrangement is part of NATO policy. Although these are American weapons and guarded by American troops, the host country would jointly need to agree to their use. Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have at times tried to remove these weapons from their soil, but have never succeeded. There's one catch here, though. Technically, their presence violates the provisions of the MPT. Since the treaty forbids the transfer of nuclear weapons from recognized nuclear weapon states to non-nuclear weapon states. To get around this, the United States has argued that those weapons would not be effectively transferred until wartime, but as we've just seen, this practice is highly controversial. The United States also used to deploy nuclear weapons in Japan, but withdrew these in the late 1960s and early 1970s after controversy. However, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the threat posed by a nuclear capable North Korea and a more aggressive China, prompted the late former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to suggest that these weapons of mass destruction may need to come back to Japanese soil. In March, Abe pondered whether it would be necessary to return to a nuclear sharing arrangement for deterrence, such as that seen in NATO, stating, we should not put a taboo on discussions about the reality we face. Current Japanese PM Fumio Kishida shot the idea down, but with Russia and China unlikely to stop their attempts to increase their influence and change the world order, it is likely that such debates will continue in America's nuclear umbrella allies in the coming years. There is a final ingredient required for the nuclear umbrella to work. America's enemies must also perceive that the threat is credible, since the object of the policy is deterrence. The United States has never explicitly confirmed the nuclear umbrella as a set in stone policy and in his 2019 speech, Trachtenberg noted that it was important to keep potential adversaries like China and Russia guessing whether the United States would actually use its nuclear weapons. Because the nuclear umbrella remains more of an idea, even if a long-standing one, than formal policy doctrine or treaty, there will always remain room for interpretation among enemies and allies alike. Vladimir Putin clearly did not believe that the nuclear umbrella would be a factor before he invaded Ukraine. Ukraine, which surrendered its inherited Soviet nuclear weapons in 1994, did so on the basis that the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia would guarantee its security. Such guarantees Putin calculated turned out to be worthless. Ukraine was not a NATO member and therefore not covered under the nominal nuclear umbrella. Nevertheless, the invasion demonstrates that US security guarantees are not always iron clad, especially when they don't come in the form of a treaty. Taiwan is in much the same position that Ukraine was before the invasion. It has no formal alliance with the United States and is not covered under the nuclear umbrella. Its neighbor Japan, which China has territorial disputes with, is. Would the Chinese leadership be deterred from invading Taiwan for fear of escalation involving Japan and the nuclear umbrella? Such questions remain unanswered, but they are the most crucial plank in the nuclear umbrella. Just because something has worked in the past does not mean that it will continue to work in the future. This fact means that the United States will need to reinforce its nuclear capabilities, relationships with its participating allies, and the implication, even if informal, that they will be covered under the nuclear umbrella in the worst-case scenario of a rainy day. So what do you think? Is the American nuclear umbrella powerful enough to deter countries like Russia or China from direct and all-out attacks on other nations? What would you change, if anything, regarding this policy? Let us know in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe for more military analysis from Military Experts.


From New America and Slate, I'm Bridget Schulte, and this is Better Life Labs. When you get an email at nine o'clock at night, the question you ask is, do I answer it now? Do I wait till later? And what will that say about my dedication as an employee? David Waldman knows that unhealthy workplace dynamic pretty well. He's Vice President for Human Resources at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest philanthropic organization dedicated solely to health. We really look to solve some of the most entrenched problems in this country around health and healthcare and creating a culture of health. A great deal of what determines our health takes place outside the healthcare system, in the workplace. Long work hours bring increased risks for hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and depression. One study found that men who don't take vacations are 30% more likely to have heart attacks. And for women, it's 50%. To counter those trends and to create a healthy work environment, the Foundation adopted many progressive policies for its staff.  Yet the problems of overwork culture were not going away. Enter Tara Oakman. Hi, I'm Tara Oakman. I'm a senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I came here from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington, D.C. And I was there during an incredibly busy time where we were implementing the Affordable Care Act. Wow. And yeah, there was a lot going on. A lot. And we were all in. It was just constant work and pressure from all sides. And so it was really hard to turn it off. I had twins while I was there. And part of why I left is because I needed to really be thinking not just about my work life, but also about my family life. And when I came here, one thing that I was told were there are no emergencies in philanthropy. You don't have the White House breathing down your back. You don't have a Congress asking, what are you doing? And it was just amazing to me to see that here people were working really in the same kinds of ways. So the Foundation decided to study and redesign its own workplace culture. They draw on the latest research in behavioral science. If they could improve their own work-life balance and health, they'd make their own lives better, and they'd show other employers how to create a healthier, more productive workplace. On this episode of our podcast, which full disclosure is supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, I'm talking with David Waldman and Tara Oakman about the importance of improving not just workplace policies, but workplace culture itself. David sets the scene, describing efforts the Foundation has made over his 19 years there. Our building was actually refurbished with the idea of creating a healthier environment, one that caused people to walk around a lot with hallways that were big enough for folks to hang out and talk about their issues and keep movement as part of what they regularly do. We have an incredibly well-equipped fitness center and provide classes in the morning and at noon in the evening for our staff to stretch and move and get some of the anxiety and the stress of the day out. That said, our folks work at 100 miles an hour. They care so deeply about what we're doing for this country. The fact of the matter is with all we have done, there still is this driving force that moves our staff to work many more hours under the type of pressure that would make you think we were working in the emergency ward of a hospital and we're not. What I'd like to do as part of our conversation is share some of the stories from some people we've been talking with about trying to live a full life when work can be so overwhelming. I'd like to start with a woman named Keenit Howatt. She started her career working flat out at a law firm and for most of her 30s worked very long hours as an attorney for the EPA. There's almost a kind of weird sadistic or masochistic pride, I think, that some people take and being like, oh, well, I work way more than 40 hours. You know, that's the bare minimum, you know? And what is that? You know, why do we have that kind of culture? So Tara and David, what are your thoughts? You know, why do we have that kind of culture where, you know, the 40-hour work week is just for wimps anymore? The way I see it, we worked for many years in an industrial age country. Folks went in for a 35, 37 and a half 40-hour work week. They went in when the whistle blew. They finished when the whistle blew. And then as we started to transition to a more information technology type of environment, suddenly the boundaries of work were lifted. All of the artificial barriers came off. And I think as they started to come off, so started the race to see who was more productive. For some people, I would agree it's just a race and it's just a matter of showing that I can put in more time than you. I know in our sector and certainly in our organization, I think it's less that and it's more I need more time to figure out what we can do to have a greater impact on the topics that we care most about. And because that can be a never-ending sort of assignment, people devote themselves to that differently. The kind of knowledge work that we're talking about here and that lends itself more to this more than 40-hour week culture, it's just harder to know when you've met the expectations of doing a good job. If the finish line keeps moving, when you mow your lawn, you can step back when it's done and see what you've accomplished. But I think for the type of work that we do, there's not that clear-cut end.  I think it's a combination of both. I think organizations set the tone and we can all do more, which is really a large reason why we've engaged in this project to try to figure out organizationally what can be done differently and behavioral economics is a hopeful answer to that question. But I think the other piece of it is the drive in our staff members to try to find the answer. So one thing we've learned is that people kind of exaggerate in their heads how much other people are doing. And so if one person is doing more, working later and sends emails at 9 o'clock at night than other people that are getting them thinking, well, everyone's working and so I should be working and then it's like, okay, well, then I need to be checking my email and therefore I'm sending email and it's sort of a vicious cycle. And so as we are thinking about solutions, one thing we're thinking about is, okay, well, we don't want to necessarily stop that person from working if that's what they really need to do, but how do we kind of cut that cycle? So maybe their email gets sent at 9 a.m. the next morning instead, just kind of putting structures in place to protect everybody else. Yes, and I think that's an important point. How do we make sure exactly to Tara's point that we respect the desire of someone to work but don't let that drive the organizational culture and what's the right way for an organization to intervene in that situation? And that is difficult and delicate. Right, right. Yeah, you don't want to, you want to nudge, not shove, right? Exactly. So let me play you a bit more from the conversation I had with Kenneth Howard. After working as a senior attorney at the EPA, she landed her dream job. She became director of a leading environmental nonprofit. She loved the work, but she worked so hard she began to feel real impact on her health. Eventually she found herself facing a really difficult decision. Let's listen. I was working at that public interest organization, you know, much in the same way I did when I was at the farm and at EPA. I was pouring myself into, and I think more so actually because this was my dream come true. This was my job. I wanted my whole life, you know, and it was so fantastic. I really cannot say enough good things about that experience, but the clock is ticking and I also really wanted to have a child and I finally made the tough decision to leave that job. And very shortly after that I was able to have a child. I had problems with losing pregnancies. I don't know that any medical person would say there's definitely a connection, but I can tell you that from my body I think it was critical that I take the stress level down a notch in order to have a child. My body knew I just needed to have more space and be better to myself physically in order to carry a pregnancy to completion. So Tara, what do you think? What does that say about the way we're all working and what we value? I think kudos to her for deciding that. It must have been an incredibly difficult decision. It's sad. It seems like you should be able to have your dream job but be supported in that in trying to minimize the stress. I don't have the silver lining for that. Unfortunately, I think it is more common than we all necessarily admit and that's why talking about these issues coming up with solutions for all of us is really important. David, one thing that strikes me in all the different conversations that we're having, there seems to be this almost religious belief that the only way that you can do your dream job, the only way to do really excellent work is almost to sacrifice everything else. In your years of watching people work, I mean, is that really true? Is that really the only way to do excellent work? Absolutely not. Some of the most successful people that I've worked with have found a way to manage the balance and it is usually not in the earlier part of their career because that tends to be the time when you're doing everything you can to impress the people around you for the potential of future opportunities. But as people gain more wisdom in the workplace and in their career, I think they get to the point where they're able to ask themselves, what do I really want in my life? In the case that you just conveyed to us, the person made that decision and had to go to a greater extreme than I wish were the case. My initial reaction was, you lose some really great talent. Here was someone who was very devoted to the organization. It was her dream job. So one can only guess how important she was to the organization and what that loss to the organization meant. And to me, that's just a shame. So organizations have to find a better way to help people balance. And I would add, I've been doing HR for over 30 years and I think of workshops I did 30 years ago with staff focused on the exact same topic. So it really hasn't changed despite the fact that many organizations do try to find ways to create that balance, but there just haven't been enough good examples of where this is actually working. Well, one of the places that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is looking for help with workplace culture is the field of behavioral economics. Unlike older traditional economic models that try to predict what a so-called rational actor would do, behavioral science recognizes that human decision-making is much more complicated.  So next I want to share a bit of a conversation I had with one of the leaders in the field, Dr. Jeff Pfeffer. He's a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford in the Graduate Business School. He's done a lot of research on work culture and impact on our health, and he's found some pretty startling things. We need something to kind of as a baseline measure, and so we brainstormed for a while and we figured out one possible baseline measure would be second-hand smoke, which is a known carcinogen and heavily regulated. And it turns out almost all of the workplace practices we looked at, economic insecurity, absence of health insurance, long work hours, shift work, absence of social support at work, absence of job control, had health effects as large as second-hand smoke. We estimated about 120,000 excess deaths in the United States annually from exposure to harmful workplace conditions. And so yes, the workplace has hazardous to our health. So how is it that we've known about this and how is it that we haven't done much about it then? I think we haven't done much about it in large measure because the costs have not always been well-quantified, but also unlike the case of perhaps polar bears or penguins or other forms of endangered species, the assumption is that human beings can take care of themselves. There is a very market-based ethos in the world which says, you know, employers offer work, people accept the terms and conditions of that work, and if they don't like it or if they feel sick, they should go find themselves another job. The absence of job control, the long work hours, the economic insecurity that comes from layoffs are not only harmful to individuals, but they are not very beneficial to the economic well-being of the companies for whom these people are working. So that we really have put ourselves in a lose-lose situation. My bottom line is that we ought to be as concerned about human beings as we are about polar bears, that we ought to be concerned about human sustainability. So, David and Tara, it's pretty astounding. His meta-analysis, they found there were 120,000 excess deaths just from the way we work. I'm not surprised to hear those statistics. I think another challenge is that many employers don't necessarily take the long view in thinking about their employees and investing in people and their development and supporting them and wanting to think about their holistic health. And hopefully, as we try to build a culture of health in this country, we really are encouraging this idea of taking the long view, thinking about innovative ways to kind of change these attitudes because it's really the only way we're going to get there. You know, David, you said that you've been in HR and 30 years ago you were running these kinds of programs on work-life integration, work-life fit. One of the things that I've noticed over the years as I've reported about it is that it was sort of seen as a soft, kind of nice-to-have thing. People didn't really take it all that seriously. But I guess what I'm wondering is with statistics like these, it certainly seems that looking at work culture really deserves to be front and center. Oh, you couldn't be more correct with that. Some organizations think about their workforces disposable. And when you think about the fact that the majority of a person's waking hours are spent on the job working, you can understand where stress in the workplace would take a major toll on their ability to function and on their life. This is not something you need a whole lot of research to be able to understand. That's true. Yeah, it is. And, you know, just good common sense tells you that high-performing individuals, whatever their motivation, need some help from the organization to make sure that that high performance is balanced with the type of relaxation that will enhance their creativity. Yeah, Tara, you were talking about where things are better or where people are being innovative. We had a wonderful conversation with a woman named Michelle Hickox who made it up the partner track, made it to the top in her dream job, and she also managed to take summers off for 10 years. I've had a great career in the position that I'm in right now. I love, I love being the CFO of this bank, and I feel like I would look back and say I've been very successful. So I don't think that my, the fact that I did it differently has held me back in any way. If you ask my girls who are both in college now, my oldest daughter just turned 22, and this summer, you know, she was talking to me about how that was important to her, and she liked that I was around. You know, when she needed me to be around, either during the summer or school events or whatever it was, she never felt like that I missed out on anything. So there are stories like that out there of people doing excellent work and making time for their lives and families, but on the other side, I wanted to play for you a story from a guy named Dan Carter who is also very mission-driven. He works in campus safety. He's done amazing work over the years, himself a happy workaholic. He says he lives to work and that he couldn't imagine not working, that that would be a fate worse than death. Here's Dan. I had the chance to meet Leonard Nimoy once in my life, and it's still one of the pinned pictures on my Facebook profile. I'll have to go take a look. But the thing that sort of haunted me the most were the words of his son, Adam, when he was talking about those key years filming Star Trek, because the make-up, he had to be one of the first in the studio, the last out, and because he was financially smart, he was taking paid gigs on the East Coast, so on the weekends he was flying and coming back. And his son said his father wasn't around much and it was very clearly a painful memory and that was just sort of chilling to me because that's exactly the kind of thing I never want to do. And I don't know that I would be able to stop myself, the man at a calling. And I mean, and he literally touched the lives of millions of people. Growing up, the character of Spock, I would come home every day after school and watch the Star Trek reruns. And it gave me so much hope that you could be different. You could be sort of the logical, isolated person, yet still be part of a very collegial group and make a significant contribution. That, for me, was such a powerful lesson of Star Trek. Well, that's kind of what I wanted to ask. I consider a lot of what I do a calling. I think if you go into a profession that doesn't pay you particularly well, it's because there's something else going on. There's something that drives you a question that you have or a passion that you've got. But I guess that's my question to work that way. Is that the only way to sort of deliver on that calling that you have to give up everything else for it? Absolutely not. And I don't think our world would be a very good place if everyone who had a calling gave up everything like that. I just think it was the right thing for me. I think I was never particularly good at relationships. Maybe that was just because of the way my mind worked constantly thinking about other things. And it's not like I don't enjoy people's company. You know, maybe someone will come along and he'll be the right fit for that. But in basically 30s and mud years of looking, I haven't found someone like that. That's Dan Carter. So as you guys know, most of the health research out there and the research on happiness, it shows that having strong relationships that support network is not only integral for your health, but that's really the basis of human happiness. So what are your thoughts on people who are so wrapped up in work that they miss out on that part of life? This is what makes this question of work-life balance all the things we've been talking about so difficult. Because every person is different. I think to the extent that we can help people be more self-aware. That is one of the things with behavioral economics being conscious in the choices that you're making. Maybe we can help them think about those choices in their personal lives as well. You're not going to turn somebody into a different kind of person. But just helping them think through their choices can I think help improve their overall health. And from an organizational point of view, I think it's just fine that the person that you spoke to has made a personal decision to devote themselves totally to their work.  And they stick with that. And that's their choice, and that's fine. I think the key, however, is around organizations not letting those individual behaviors drive organizational norms. You can't allow that person to set a standard or an expectation for work behavior amongst their colleagues. When you get an email at 9 o'clock at night, the question you ask is, do I answer it now? Do I wait till later? And whatever decision I make, what will that say about my dedication as an employee? Organizations have to help with that. It's so interesting. I was just talking with a researcher from the University of Georgia. She studies workaholism. And in her research, what she's found is that there's all sorts of negative effects individually for somebody who works long hours and sort of has that workaholic behavior. But they found no correlation whatsoever to performance or productivity. So that you have... We're sort of fostering this culture where there is all that, like you say, frenetic going 100 miles an hour sometimes. But that doesn't necessarily connect with the actual quality or quantity of work that we do. That's the story that has to get out. Putting more time in doesn't necessarily result in better product. We would argue that it dulls your creativity, especially when you're working and trying to find answers for intractable problems. Not being at your best, not being creative, not being refreshed is detrimental to the type of product you're going to get. Organizations just don't seem to understand that as well as they need to. And if employers don't look at that seriously and understand that they're getting less than what they should, they're making huge mistakes. All right. Well, Tara and David, thank you both so much for talking with us today. It's just been fantastic talking to you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Tara Oakman and David Waldman from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Tara is a senior program officer there. David has worked at the foundation for close to 20 years. He's vice president of human resources and administration. For more resources on working healthier, visit us online at newamerica.org. Click on the link for Better Life Lab. Better Life Lab is produced by New America in partnership with Slate. Thanks so much for joining me for our podcast about the art and science of living a full and healthy life. It's a collaboration with Ideas 42 supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Our producer is David Shulman. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd be grateful if you take a moment to review Better Life Lab on Apple Podcasts. It really makes a difference in getting the word out about these issues. From New America's Better Life Lab, I'm Brigitte Schulte.