Got this letter on the talks with Tony. I got I got a talks with Tony it uploading right now But um, I got to leave in about an hour hour and a half for me But I got this letter on talks with Tony and I say, you know what? I've been trying to get a video up by noon, but I'd be I'd be sleeping in and you know, that's acting a fool So I say let me pop on here and just go live for the people on a lunch break while people on a lunch break People get a lunch break round this time. So, you know 12 o'clock, so I'm gonna try to see here and make sure I got my Then I got my volume on over here. What this is at least one minute Videos needed to start a highlight. Okay, you can save a highlight Um Let me see here So I got two talks with Tony that's in a video Well, really it's just one and it's real light. It's on about 20 minutes But I want to come on here and film this one still happen to film it separately and then upload it So I'm just shooting it as a live. So y'all just understand. It's not a Q&A and Just here to talk about it. So got this great question from somebody Said hi Tony. I pray this email finds you well Would you be able to make a video on society praising slash promoting childbirths out of wedlock? Particularly seen among the black couples in the celebrity world I won't include the name of this most recent celebrity couple to keep things anonymous Although most people will most likely know without exact identification But a well-known light-skinned black woman and her dark-skinned rapper boyfriend recently went public about their pregnancy And it seems that there is both praise and backlash over it From what is being said online? It pertains to colorism as well it being out of wedlock I read that the baby daddy has shared some colorist opinions in the past about black women Do you happen to have you any words of wisdom advice or just overall thoughts regarding the way in which these praised Circumstances continue to affect the continuous struggling state of unity and wholeness in the black community Are there things we as black women should look out for in dating related to being overlooked or Used for such motives Thank you for showing up every day on YouTube to teach us you are forever appreciated best PS including a link to another content creators video responding to the imagery of the recent pregnancy announcement and The couple's public appearance in their relationship if you'd like to watch later when you have time Okay, so I see the couple not I always get this young man here confused Because they kind of and I heard I've seen videos of them being confused by paparazzi So the woman is Rihanna, I know the woman Rihanna Not y'all know I say I don't say names, but I say certain names. I say a list I Reach names a lot of times when I'm not saying names It's cuz I know the people or they know me or they follow me or it's accessible And I just try not to be but not Rihanna know who I am too But not on that level like I've never talked to her or nothing like that But I went on Oprah when I went on Oprah It was in light of Chris Brown and Rihanna the show Oprah did Was in light of Chris Brown and Rihanna when I told my story what me and my girlfriend went through in college on College dorm night and I had to explain it until you know It wasn't like their situation like police and black eyes and all of that But it was just talking about toxic relationships where young people go too far And so I know she watched it and then when we was coming up when on on social media I think because of that and because of that being Me telling my story of an incident I went through in college Rihanna would always post the quotes of another Another relationship guy which he was smaller his brand was smaller than mine So it let me know she was intentionally Not posted mine because mine was just as viral as his this was in Twitter days And so I know she know of my brand and then I met Chris Brown in person at a boxing match and told him that that was me on Oprah telling my story and It although it was completely different I still understood the mindset and now but the guy that this right here is oh ASAP Rocky I'll about say Travis Scott cuz I and so that's what you have to realize is For one is when you look at celebrities we can't compare celebrities to our everyday life because celebrities transcend color so When you as when you When your brand is just the size of Rihanna brand you could be purple You could be see through and a man gonna want to be with you because you're billionaire You're billionaire now Rihanna is you know a pretty woman But to each their own is beauty is in the eye of the beholder now this gentleman based on what he said in the past you got to realize that Let me pull up a picture of the young man cuz I can't really Picture What you have to realize is that we all know that Blacks are Made to hate ourselves based on the color of our skin So he would be labeled although he's brown skin just for the sake of terms in our world He would be labeled dark skin The other thing is when you look at somebody you cannot you always have to rewind their face You can't just look at somebody for who they are with money and fame So he looked very average and normal with money and fame Like it's a difference. Like when you look at Michael B. Jordan Because of the roles that Michael B. Jordan has played He's had to get into a type of shape to where Michael B. Jordan got an eight pack of albs, you know He got just he real built up cuz he do Cree.  He had braids now.  I Can't remember who that was in the color purple and she was shaving them. I Can't remember if she cut him or not But ace out rocky look like her son You know cuz cuz that hairstyle he wear. Oh, that was Danny Glover and so You have to realize his look is associated More so and it's not me being derogatory or anything like that.  I just was looking for a one-night stand I just I did and I thought she was a Puerto Rican and wanted to sleep with me a Puerto Rican and turn kind of find out she do making but Indian Jamaican and black Jamaican and She was a wife kind of fine. She's a wife I'm thinking I'm just gonna talk this person try to get my little wound bound Thank you ma'am and move on with my life and then like whoa, this a wife But I didn't pick her because of her complexion. I do remember a homeboy telling me when I got was you know got my brand going and I kind of Talking on relationship so many people start to come to me a lot of pro athletes a lot of celebrities and so I got thrust into like matchmaking and When I got thrust into matchmaking I remember talking to my homeboy and he was like man, she got to be red She got to be a red bone and I was like man.  She got to have long handle and she got to be red And I'm he was like she got to be like exotic and I was like Okay So it was kind of Confusing to me and then I started to see that and I started to see men had these Preferences like these certain preferences that they had and then when you when you will see it you will see Like if you see a biracial kid Who black and white in a lot of cases when you look at the biracial then let's use celebrities for an example When you look at biracial pro athletes, they why for their girlfriend is white And then it also comes down to the relatability It also comes down to the relatability. So when you look at somebody like a ASAP Rocky, I Don't know any of his music. I just know that he got a huge fan base and he probably iconic in their eyes but I Don't think he made street music like I Listed when I'm studying rap. I listen more so to street music I don't think he makes street music. So like yester. I was listening to NBA young boy And I mean all he doing is Killing people in his music. I was like my I Were falling asleep and I was listening to it cuz somebody mentioned something about a song where he was dissing a bunch of people So I was listening to it and I studied rap. I don't listen to rap for enjoyment I studied to have my finger on the pulse of the culture and That thing woke me up about my sleep. I could mean I normally I could have be listening something fall on the sleep That man took so many lives and a few songs. I listened to I said my I woke up in a cold sweat But this is a ASAP Rocky. I think he more so relate to a White male than a black male. I Think he more so is his fan base probably got a lot of probably about black people in it but the black people in his fan base probably completely different than NBA young boy or Maybe even a little dirt Because so cuz I don't know his music. So that let me know he's making global music He he's making music from somewhere else. So he probably Just don't relate to it the same type of you know Relation and that's what you have to realize too when you see this the thing about it is that's different though is this is Rihanna and She a light-skinned black woman But she's not it's totally different when it's a white woman When a black man chooses a white woman and it's not organic he choosing a white woman out of Relatability or He has a preference and he says oh white women treat me better black men will say that but They are two black people and here's the thing is Their colorism is a very real thing but in Order to beat it in order to overcome it you have to within yourself you got to have Consolation within yourself you have to change your mindset you can't take what you hear sometimes and what you see and Internalize that so you literally have to tell yourself and I saw a lady leave a comment And she says she has always benefited from pretty privilege and she says she dark skin She say her daddy dark skin or her mama dark skin She said her momma told her you beautiful dress the nice gave her a lot of compliments Gave her confidence and she says she has always benefited from pretty privilege as a dark skin woman And she said it's about your attitude. And so here's the thing that I'm noticing is As dark skin people Which me I look at color more literal so I don't call myself dark skin Because I just say I'm a black person because I look at it more literal like light brown Medium dark, you know, I look at more literal, but we will be considered dark skin I got light shining in my face So it made me look lighter than I am just cuz how the light probably ain't got a set right But I'm probably a little dark in real life and so when you look at this thing we and we accept this and we Attempt we internalize it and when we internalize it we take and we start to Project and now we go into the world and we start to look at things like okay hmm This right here Is not I'm not accepted.    So that's that's just a awkward conversation like yeah, so And y'all know me if I'm talking to my son. I'm talking to my grandkids. Y'all know me. I'll be like, well, yes Oh Yes, yeah, yeah, so your daddy so your mama great-granddaddy was in this thing called They call a couple of plan and Then on over here on my side. We was like so Essentially from what I found your great-great-granddaddy hung my great-great-granddaddy. So Yeah So can you imagine how torn that child is? so now that child so torn and confused and that's honestly what pushed me to black women because When we was coming up in this very real conversation a lot of people don't want to have this conversation now But I'm the one that got a happy conversation When I was probably my cousin five years older than me my cousin I told you about who used to brush his teeth with water He had a perfect smile He had a perfect smile never had braces and this guy smiles perfect. So he used to brush his teeth with water He didn't use toothpaste And so I start brushing my teeth with water walking around here stank breathed it and so my cousin He started dating white girls and I said I was I was so he probably was 10th or 11th grade Could have been 12th and I'm five grades under him.  He said you'll understand one day you too young you understand Because he was talking white girl. I say what in the world going on. So where I so when I got to high school I Know a white girl sent her little sister up to me after the game. We played against her high school I had 25 on uh, uh, uh, I gave him 25. So she sent her sister up to me and Said hey my sister would like to talk to you and she's over there and it was a white girl with curly hair and She had a derriere on because she played volleyball and so I Said okay, it's a different kind of white girl.   They didn't like no bubble But they ain't like no apple bottom They like that they women with a straight back with a long back with a cry candy And so I'm guessing they was thinking about I don't know what it was I'm guessing they was thinking about after the woman had kids when we get married. She gonna fill out White guys like today women to have not much booty. And so and this was the conversation we would have as men and So I started talking to her and there was nothing I'm in 10th grade I wasn't thinking much of it But then I had a little homeboy our point guard because we was at a private school Because I had to go to private school because I went to jail in ninth grade for stealing So my mom and dad sent me to the private school with all white kids because I was at school with black kids And so and we had white kids and Mexican kids too And we would have like race race wars at the school It would be there would be the black guys versus white guys get into a fight We had Ku Klux Klan come to my middle school. So I'm from Polk County, Florida.  So we didn't come from a lot of Money so what happened was black guys started dealing with white girls, but to use the white girls and It wasn't a colorism thing. It was more so like a At that time it was like this way I could get a fresh starter jacket because because white girl Her parents gave her money to buy stuff. So she buy your starter jacket And it was some black girls that if their parents was doing good, they could afford some more But it was so few that it was it wasn't enough to go around So men being capitalist men trying to climb a little ladder. So I started talking to the white girl and Still to this day, I have never seen I don't know White people is trained how to date From a young age still to this day. I've never received a gift like that ever again And this was 2000 this was 1990 this was 2000 in year 2000 The young lady got a treasure box And she got a bunch of little items Little knickknacks from like the arts and craft store and with each item She tied a little string to it and wrote had a little tag on it and she wrote Had wrote the memory that it come from So it's a little Little thing of a soda little thing of a burger little thing of a this and that and it had a memory And it was a treasure box full of little items that represent a memory And then the other thing was a was a board and it was a collage of every single picture She had taken from her little Little cameras that they used to have that you wind up I'd never ever since then receive in my life gifts like that And so you have to realize when you What's happening is and this is what my mama started telling me she says son And it's a tough conversation. Now we have she says son. My mama likes skin. She's she rihanna color And I don't know if she got something, you know, and I don't think she mixed I just think she likes getting black woman She says son white women have everything And then they come to get our best men So at that time I was number five in the county in scorn in basketball And then I had a white girlfriend and my mama told me that she said White women don't want you until you somebody Whereas when you was nobody basically she was saying you had black girlfriends Now you in the newspaper every day for your sports Now all of a sudden white girls want to talk to you and now all of a sudden Their dad is okay with them going to home coming with you because you the star athlete In basketball and football And this was just an unfortunate truth Now me coming from where I come from My family was real Like I don't know the word country Rough around the edges And so it was completely different So I did not relate to white girls And then I had a young our point guard. He was in the sixth grade he He wrote up his dad was white.   I say you tell him So what do you mean?  He the only boy with straight a's no a minuses And he very articulate he the star on the soccer team He start as a freshman on the varsity soccer team But he also in the tech club that just received the grant from mit if y'all know what mit is And is it massachusetts institute of technology?  He was our starting point guard.   So he he was biracial So he wrote an essay in sixth grade. He was in sixth grade. I was in tenth grade He wrote an essay An essay was called Oreo And he said and he could he knew the term orio because that's what he had been called And he said in this letter. I'd never forget it because he he handed to me. He said read this tell me what you think of it And we were walking the basketball practice and I read it.  So I had a white girlfriend at the time I called her and it was because she was at a different school So going to my school, I couldn't there was no black girls at my school It was a private school because again, I was recruited to play basketball at that school And so it was all white school and there was no black girls at the school and You couldn't I couldn't date a white girl at my school because it really was against The it was like an unwritten law So the girl I was dating she was at another school in another city, but they was in our district. We played against them I called her later that day and I said, hey, I'm not going to be able to do this I said, I'm not going to be able to date, you know, a white woman And she was like why she thought boohoo crying and all that she went to cry All that right there. I say listen Quentin just read me his letter And he said he felt like a Oreo He said you feel like a Oreo. He said he's not white enough for the whites He's not black enough for the blacks. I says no way I could put my child through that I said I cannot have my child that confused And now this year 2000 we're in 2022 so it could be a little different. I don't know And so I said, you know what? So she didn't like that now So she wanted to keep talking to me and so she kept talking to me She had a car so Me I'm like a Brampton Popeye So so at at camp she would bring me Lunch she would make lunch at home. I'm talking about the best sandwich And so literally what I want y'all to understand is that especially in the young ages Sometimes it ain't about colorism A lot of times it is sometimes it ain't about colorism. Sometimes it's about economic advancement It's about somebody trying to climb a social ladder It's about somebody trying to get into a circle because they thinking about money or they think about what they could get out of it and so At this time when I'm in the 10th grade. I think the young lady was in 11th grade No black girl. I knew had a car No black girl.  I said, um, I said, hey, how do y'all feel about I asked the white guy I say, how do y'all feel about and this my homeboy? We real close. We've been the partners to to this day You know, we did seven figure business deals.  He said we don't feel about them. We don't consider them white.  This is what the white guy said. I ain't making it up And then when but when I started to look at it I started to notice that majority of the white women That was dating black men. They were actually not pretty They were actually not attractive to white guys But to black men black men saw them as a prize Saw them as a trophy because Even though the woman may not be Like traditionally pretty she still lived in the suburbs She still had a car She still could buy that starter jacket that bomber jacket. She still could get you them air force ones. She still had economic advancement Like that white young lady she followed me and held on to me for years I broke up with her at the six month mark. She hung on to me for four years I had a whole another girlfriend everything she still was there I could call her for anything and she would show up I she would show up and she would She when I went to play football in west virginia, she flew from florida to west virginia I did not know a single black girl from where I was from that could afford a flight It was my first time getting on a plane at 18 when I went to play football in college This the the white girl she flew from Florida to west virginia And then so not only did she have flight money She rented a car had rental car money or no, I didn't I used another white girl car to go pick her up And then brought her to the school She gave me a hundred dollar bill Do you know in 2002 a hundred dollar bill felt like a thousand dollar bill And so the thing about it was and we wasn't even dating we weren't like a relationship So this was so when I wrote my book at 22 I told the truth about this and there was a chapter in there that says why do black men date white women That was a question that a black woman asked me And so at that time all I had saw Was a few different scenarios The one scenario was the black guy who could not relate to Majority of other black people in his surroundings because his parents had assimilated into the white culture meaning His parents got degrees They became educators.  He wasn't tough He didn't wear The urban clothing the black clothes the jabo jeans your whatever he he he dressed more Different whatever that was american eagle hollister Um express and so and it was because his parents Had elevated to another level So that was the one type of black guy that would date white women The other type of black guy that would date white women was the user the one who He don't care if you purple.  We talking high school So we ain't men and women yet the black boy would have the white girl for them jordan's for If on of our forces was in back then for whatever perks he could get and then It was certain see Certain most white people would raise their kids in a way that They get to do whatever they want to do So when I met white girls in high school You could go to their house and they parents would be gone for days And they having house parties they having everybody over there You've never seen that at no black person house You've never seen that at no black person house. No white kid It was white girl. I knew in high school Her parents had a house and then they had another house that was on the land that right across the the driveway But that's what her and her sister would be at and you could be in there doing anything you want to do and the parents be over there But now her mom and daddy told her Hey, we know you have black friends, but we don't think it's smart dad You date Black guys You know, you know, we have our housekeeper. She's black. We love her. She's been with us your whole life She's helped raised you.  She she was crying.  That's not the black man. You won't and so that third one was the get back guy So whenever I when in my past and what I've seen with a lot of guys Would talk to certain white women to stick it to their daddy To stick it to their granddaddy to to like it was rebellion It was saying oh, you think i'm an n-word Oh, you're gonna come up to my school with your with your um in your cruella clan because cruella clan came to my school i'm from central flor and so Cruella clan came to my school And so a lot of black guys started dealing with white women out of rebellion and to Make them pay and it was kind of like a get back. It was kind of like asserting Themselves and so You have to you got to think about it and this that's why I say this a conversation that a lot of times You didn't have People operating from where they operating from but they couldn't identify where they was operating from So they couldn't say oh I You know float ain't on the one now We just the whole south races, but really it raised the air. Well, it raises that in california too and new york too It's like I I realized everybody kind of went through their own version not just in the south We had the cruella clan And so here's the thing The conversations so a guy could be acting from this place operating from this place and not realize it And people looking for love So a lot of times What I noticed with white women I would meet certain white women that would date black guys and they would say I'm only attracted to black guys And they would say I only date black guys But when I got to the root of it it was all the time It was white women who weren't that attracted to white guys that it was something about them It could have been their nose It could have been their lips It could have been their forehead It could have been their their shape their build that made them Outside of the stereo or or like freckles or like red hair that made them outside of the stereotypical blonde hair blue eye That white guys was being promoted to the white guys. They was being promoted this one type of White woman that is seen as attractive to them And so all of the white guys was going for these certain looks of a white woman And then the white women who got left outside of that they ended up with a hispanic or black And that became their preference because that's where they got praised from We go where we celebrate it not where we tolerate it. So if somebody don't like It's a lot of them be overweight now, but that one the case it just some of them just they just look different They weren't never my case. I I never you know When I was in high school, I taught a three in a row and they was all athletes volleyball track soccer It was real fit, but it just they faced was Their face was a little different The face was a little different than what? White guys wanted and and me I I was I was the type of guy when you come up in in like everything about money Me I was the one of the type of guy. I don't know what that's called capitalist, but I was like, uh I want I wanted to go where the money was And so me who got a car who fit who could give me a hundred dollars? I used to be a bomb That's why I could talk about grown boys and bombs because I used to be a bomb When I was in high school in college And so I went to where the resources was Because I and so my whole closet in high school and college Opportunity my whole closet was bought by By white girls Back then the jerseys was in the jerseys was in like, um Fabulous I had a jersey almost every team, but it was white girls buying it And so that is what it was being used for and it's the truth that people don't want to tell with the racial lines And so typically today when I see A white man with a black woman It falls into the same category Either he was raising around black guys and he started to think like black guys be attracted to what black guys was attracted to And he talked like black guys.  So he'd get a black woman The other type of white guy that I see with a black woman is the white guy that white women are not Typically attracted to He's more socially awkward or he's seen as more nerdy or he's seen as more You know feminine he's seen as You know, you see like the tall skinny guys And and so it's really And on the fringe of this is people being pushed out of their race to another race There's people being saying hey, you're not celebrated here So go over there because you might be a prize to somebody And then on the colorism side of it is When it's black people dealing with the colorism is self-hate And so when you when we look at somebody Who has been who is in skin? That they have been made to feel very Bad about their skin They want the opposite Because they feel like that skin is better. So this is what you have to realize This is what you have to realize If you've taken you see if a if a man or a woman Grows up And they are made to hate themselves They get bullied they get talked about Or whatever and I just read this I heard this somewhere the other day that I think it was a black man talking He said how he was bullied.    He was older than me So He was a junior and I was a red shirt freshman and the coach started me over him so he Got upset about that. So the white young lady I was talking to He started to tell on her whenever I was dealing with another young lady So one time I'm in the room with the young lady I come out nothing happened nothing happened because my teammate My other my roommate gave me this Propho liked it that it's supposed to give you some extra time But when you put it on It numb you So if you don't get to go into work That thing go to sleep. So that thing went to sleep that thing went to sleep And so nothing happened But I come out the room and I got a letter on the door from the young lady is a white young lady Tony, I know you're in there with such as such Give me a call when you're done Now a black woman If I was dating a black woman And somebody told her That I was in the room with another woman One or two things would have happened one. She would have never talked to me again Two she would have kicked that door in The white woman put a note on the door I know you in there sleeping with such and such give me a call when you're done It's just two different ways things is handled. But then guess what I found out We coming from practice one day with one of the corner bikes. He's from PG County, Maryland You don't think that girl cheated on you? You don't think that girl cheated on you?  Nobody nobody listen. I already know You tell me or it's over with Okay, okay Okay, one time At the beginning when we first started talking You know, I I slept with such and such I said what? You slept with such and such This was the full back. I was the tail back on the team. This was the full back. He was from temple I'm from urban del florida. We are hour apart I had bet him trying to be cool thinking I'm the man Because of how the white girl was treating me I'm thinking I'm a king That's when I learn They gonna get theirs too.   I kept on my first 48. She said a third name I kept on my first 48. She said a fourth name I kept on my first 48. She said a fifth name I kept on my first 48 two of them was at the same time so I say why you did that? I was crying like a baby I dove in the bed. I dove in the bed crying It was my ego was hurt because I had lost To my homeboys. I had lost to my homeboys They had got me and they had been laughing at me and talking about me behind my back and I thought I was that man I thought I was that guy And so boy, I cried like a baby And then but I say, you know what I can't let them win Because if I break up with a then they don't want So I got that I got to play this off. I got to act like um dawn one This thing to be my bottom B I don't care about who she doesn't slept with because I get to drive her car get jerseys I get money. I get food every day See as as white people they have a college savings Because they economic situation different So they had a college savings. So she had a bank account full of money So she came to college. She told me with over a few grand in her checking I came to college with my suitcase I ain't have a dollar and so I couldn't let my my homeboy win So I just played it off But then I confronted him. I say yeah I talked to her She told me about what happened with y'all Huh?  So what you slept with my girl too? So what you gonna sleep with my girl too? They were so scared. They were so scared because Now Because I look way better than them and I don't say that I know but I'm talking these guys They was looks they was looks challenge and that was the other thing And when I say I look way better. I just took care of myself better. I dressed nice. You know, I looked better than them.   Why you did? And she said well my roommate her roommate was a white woman But a white woman she was she she did her thing now. She was loose and she was open with her looseness And she looked terrible too. She was nowhere near cute her roommate And the young lady I was talking to looked terrible But I just had no I didn't really like it just she shot or shot at me in the library I was in the library doing homework and she shot her shot At that school a black girl never shot.  None None I'll say now come on. I tell the truth now. Tell the truth. Tell the truth.    I was like Like Oh She might have got you cuz Cuz she might have got you I don't know because they was in the we was in the cafeteria. We sitting down at the cafeteria And we in our cell like there be a car This my first cousin my dad and his dad and brother we played football together We was on the same team gas and we were duo. I run a touchdown. He run a touchdown We was duo. He was shorter than me though, but he he he a month older than me And he went to she went to sit down and she couldn't get in her chair and they bumped chairs and in club like We're on to they bumping chairs and this girl here She had been through a struggle Because She was a melanated sister. So you go through stuff people pick on you So this girl here was tough. I remember to this day her name was Jessica Next thing I know Jessica stood up cuz stood up Cuz stood up and Jessica She put a windmill So cold trying to get some leaks in but I It was like I see That right down I learned my lesson I learned my lesson I said new See cuz where I'm from guys and girls used to fight White girls and fights are too White where I'm from white girls and fights are too. I mean white girl punched me in my stomach in fourth grade I was doubled over had to go tell the teacher.  It was no blood no black eye No bust lips. It was that we used to kind of you can't really fight We didn't really fight, you know, and so McCulloch got what now he get what now? I can't say that I can't say that it was a close one though. So I say that to say what I learned And then when I talked to when I talked to the white woman and this how I started to see because this 2002 this 2002 2003 This is where I seen the Emmett Till type stuff Because this woman is she fully grown And I said well why you did it She said because my roommates told me If they could do it we could do it too And that's how her roommate moved her roommate used to get that thing in you hear me She said my roommate told me if they could do it we could do it too So she said whenever you would go out Yo, the other running back the running back that I took his spot The coach put me in started me over him and he was older than me He started snitching And telling her oh tone over here over tone over there over tone over here So then the guys when I went and told them I knew what to happen Then they start to sing like a canary and they say oh, yeah sudden stuff we're telling her though, man So anytime you will be gone somewhere sudden such a teller And then that's when we hit her up when we knew you was over there hidden whoever And I said okay all right and then So she told me that and and then she told him about the two that was together. She said that it was uh She said I was he he asked me to come over And he wanted to talk to me and then I got over there and then he started to try to make a move And I just was kind of afraid of him because he has He has dreads and he has tattoos and he has gold teeth and I just was intimidated by him Okay, so then why you slept with the corner back? Well, he looks the same way. He has dreads too and he has tattoos too And she said I didn't want to sleep with him you know I'll say so I tried to get up off the floor. I said you was on the floor They had you they had you on the floor So you weren't even in the bed She's I'll say And she said I tried to get up on the off the floor and then he put his hand in my chest Like this and then he pushed me back down I'll say that Oh y'all gotta forgive my phone going dead y'all gotta forgive She said I was on the floor and I tried to get up and then he put his hand in my chest And then he put me back down. She told him I'm the second guy So she said she slept with my full back the full back on my team and she slept with the corner back They both from Tampa. They knew each other and she said she slept with them in the same night And then the full back she said she slept with him multiple times. I didn't get the full detail So it could have been two three four five time And so every time I went to cheat she went to cheat and so after that I'll say I am never in my life talking to a white woman again Because at least I was like at least with a black woman If she catch you cheating she's gonna break up with you.  So that's why you've seen so many black guys That was sleeping with white women at these different schools And then the white woman boyfriend find out they white boyfriend find out or they dad find out and then they would say Then they would say He raped me And sometimes of course, it's true But a lot of times it could also be a lie And I saw that with my girlfriend when I was interviewing her on my first 48 interrogation That she was now trying to say She walked over there.  You going over there, you know, I'm cheating So you mad so you going over there what you think you going over there for But then she tried to tell me she was intimidated by them and all of that and I said, okay Well, be that I said, all right. Well, you was intimidated to tell on them You need to go to the dean and you need to go to the dean of students No, I don't want to do that.  No, no, I'm not gonna do that.  Well, well, yeah, kind of one. I did but the other one. No, I didn't I said All right, I by had called dr. Edmond. I by had called dr. Edmond So listen I finished the year I finished the year I I stayed well throughout the school year Come that summer She flunked out She had three semesters in a row. That was 1.7 GPA So she didn't get to come back to school Oh, you know better come back. Oh, man. I'm so sorry about that So sorry about that because I always feel to be done anyways But I just needed to power through that school because I couldn't let my homeboy see me sweat So I walked around with him the rest of the school year So listen, I got my karma what y'all call it. That's a religious belief. I don't believe in karma I reap what I sold I reap what I sold I paid the price because I had been a woman.  I I learned the lesson right there that thing that thing hurt me. Do you hear me?  I know we talk about colorism, but I try to help y'all understand I got with this woman and she slept with five other men while we was dating in that one year So that made me angry and scorn So the next woman I got with I still was ruthless and it's too it's too real, but see a lot of people don't be this transparent and don't speak numbers The next woman I was with I was I was with her she was ace out rocket color. She was my color and But she again Her parents had the guy educated. They had to make money. She was from california. She was from los angeles So it was totally different For her so she taught really proper You know, she was black, but she taught proper.   He was the color of his hat And he was and he was a short guy about looked like five five five seven and You know his his face was kind of sucking in and just kind of He had an interesting look about him. So I could tell he was dealing with colorism because of his wife that he chose she looked at almost like how some creole people look in new orleans and She very proper speak very well very culture, you know, but then the daddy was like He was like A country boy like me like he talked Sounded like he bumping his gums So he was not You know all of this and that but he went her she went him and then they had their kids and So see I What I did this what y'all don't realize The reason why I teach what I teach and I got all these videos on youtube is because I study my experiences and what I realized is that our experience are not that unique Everybody else having a very similar experience But very rarely do we open the notebook and And analyze our feelings and analyze where we were operating from and analyze where the people we were dealing with Operating from very rarely do we get to the root of the problem and analyze the root? We see the fruit, but we don't analyze the root And I started to analyze the root and I started to be able to classify Essentially doing what a therapist what a doctor would do with human study And how they create their theories I just did it in my own life.  Her lips was kind of like Look like a little swollen right now And so that look got a little set of nostrils on you got a little plump lip I got freckles Almost kind of got reddish color half White guys did not White guys did not think she was attracted. So she went to black guys But she didn't realize that black guys was using her And so this what this where the conversations we don't like to have There's to come and say just the truth that we don't like to have and then I talked a lot of white women and for the longest I'm gonna tell y'all I for the longest After I wrote that book what daddy never told his little girl. I had to become the guy That was like the truth bearer Because a lot of white women who date black men will hire me And when they were telling about their relationship, I would tell them I said listen You honestly need to consider being with your own race because You rarely gonna find a black man that genuinely love you for you That genuinely is with you for pure reasons I said it's very very rare. I said it's typically two types one that's using and the other one that hate itself Now if you find one that don't hate itself, he loves his blackness And he loves you I say that that's an exception to the rule but the guy you telling me about and the last guy and the last guy and now one of them Fall into organic natural real love.  They would be completely blowed away That I told them this angle of it and and expressed it like that because they couldn't see it They thought that every single interaction they had with a black man was completely pure completely organic completely real And i'm like no that's not I'm like because if it was that natural and organic, we would have never had slavery We would have never we wouldn't have discrimination. We wouldn't have systemic racism If every person of another race that you date with that you sleep with is pure and organic I mean That means that nobody sees color. No your color is being seen And it's being used or it's being appreciated one one or the other, but it's being seen you are seen There a colorism exists It's a real thing and we got to really get to the root of it for our own life and so When you think about it and you analyze you know dark skin light skin couples And just you kind of got to analyze them and you may not know how the person how they think and feel You may not know But for the same reason some dark skin people want a light skin person That's the same reason some light skin people want a dark skin person It's the same reason it's not liking the skin that they're in And it's just you know Um, just because a man is treated badly hurt by a woman doesn't make sense to treat the next woman like crap She doesn't deserve it. Yeah a lot of stuff that we do as humans don't make sense Ain't nothing gonna make nothing evil don't make sense. Nothing bad makes sense. It just is what it is It's just life, you know And so it's it's kind of like and sometimes you got to take it out of relationship context and it's like if you go buy a car And You're the car supposed to be 10,000 But you pay 15,000 for it and you find out after you didn't drove it off a lot You find a couple months later.   It's not fair to the guy in her next relationship that she goes in guarded It's not fair that she that she blames him for stuff He not doing it's not fair that she give him two strikes before he even stepped to the plate.  This is a tough conversation, you know, and it just And it's different. It's always gonna be different variations. You know, it's it's gonna be pure situations to where people are different races and different colors Skin complexions and it's pure and it's organic Like they just met and it wasn't a motive Now when y'all say something like this rapper ace out rocky y'all say he even said colorist things in the past And then he get a light skinned woman. I saw somebody say that his family from Barbados like her family I doubt that's the connection because Yeah, island people don't care that much by being with the island people because typically When you from an island, you know how the people on your island is So a lot of times like my wife tells me jamaican women really don't want no jamaican man And I hear that from every island every the milica republic porta rica All of them say they don't want they own man because they know they man. So I assure you ace out rocky and get with rihanna because His family from her family from barbie. She from Barbados if his family from Barbados I can assure you that ain't the reason But if he doesn't say colorist remarks in the past Then that would make sense that he would get him a light skinned woman and But when you look at him, you also will realize his skin tone is not praised So it will make perfectly perfect sense if he have some self-hate And want and is a colorist because of how he's been made to feel about his complexion That would make perfect sense. And so that's what we have to understand. And so it's really like what I tell women Is you're not being overlooked like This is a man who don't These type of men not the ones that's organic, but a man who's looking for a preferential complexion He's not overlooking you.    I'm beautiful. I'm beautiful. I'm beautiful. I'm handsome. I'm handsome.    You got to, you got to think everybody attracted to you.  And so when you invert that thinking, it's going to change a lot. It's going to change a lot. Lovey dovey, it's not really no Q and A, but you're not wrong for that. And I'll tell y'all something about not trusting female family around your man. You ain't wrong for it. You should keep boundaries because he will touch them. And if they vulnerable, they will let them touch them. And it happened all the time. It happened every day, having every day. So I don't blame people for that. Like my wife, she don't, she don't have me talk to her sisters. She don't, I can't call her sisters. Like she don't tell me they call my sister and ask her or her sisters don't call me. And even though those her blood sisters, she gets boundaries. It boundaries. And if I had a brother, my brother won't be calling my wife because I know he ain't blind. I know he ain't blind. My wife look good. I know he thinks she look good. No, bro. What you need? You can ask us. Yeah, got your speakerphone, bro. What you need? What you got a question about your girlfriend? Okay, yeah, ask us. Yeah, so speakerphone.  You got to have boundaries. You got to have boundaries because, because human, humans, we are flawed. And if we give them too much space and we give them too much, and it just, it ain't no, it ain't no expectations in place. It ain't no boundaries in place stuff could happen. And we got to be real about that. You got to be real about it. See me, my wife, because of the work I do, she got a different type of security blanket because she know I'm a man of integrity. And she know I'm not going to be out here doing all this here talking and then cheating on her so she could relax.   So she chill. But me, I'm not as chill because she don't have the same accountability that I got.  Why are you at that soccer practice? Why are you at them gang? Listen, don't be doing all that. Don't be doing all that. Keep keying with the men. Cause listen to these men.   So listen, keep a little distance. Don't be, don't be talking too long.  And then I'm going to shoot a different kind of shot. You know what I'm saying? And it ain't insecurity. It's just understanding how people work. And I heard all of Ziggler say, the motivational speaker, he Ziggler say, he ain't even go to lunch with women on business meetings. So he didn't even do a business meeting with a woman in a public restaurant for lunch alone. He had to have his wife there or he had to have another business partner there.  Oh, well you got to trust and you got to be tried, tried, tried, tried. And one time a wife said to me, she was like, well, you're going to have me thinking about, well, man, should I not talk? I say that's what the Zach thought you need to have so that you are still have a boundary so that you're not giving too much energy. Cause I say the way men is, if you smile too hard, man, think you want to sleep with them. Look at the news. And you see, you laughing and kicking too hard, a man going to start to think you want to, you might be attracted to him. Men just don't have the maturity to not think like that. It'd been like that since we were little boys. So I have to tell her like, hey, the energy got to be like this a homeboy now. Don't be doing all that kicking and all of that. And, and, and I can't feel bad about that. Cause see the society will try to tell you, oh, that's insecurity. And that's all, listen, we humans, we humans, humans is flawed. And we put your trust in God and for humans, you got to prepare. You put your trust in God and humans, you got to be prepared. You got to have boundaries. You got to have policies and procedures with human. You can't just let it be anything just, oh, will it nearly? No, no, we got to be boundaries and policies and procedures cause a human gone human. And the same thought of, oh, it's just innocent. Oh, it's just innocent. Oh, it's just innocent. That's how my boss, my old boss in the NBA, married man, got caught having affair with a married woman at the office. I guarantee you her husband and his wife thought it was so innocent that they going to different events together and the law had not been laid down. Had his wife laid down the law, this how I expect you to act with this woman, had her husband laid down the law, they would have been more conscious of that. And they Christian people, this is a Christian God, good God, he would have been more conscious of it had the law been laid down.  So it's a difference now between being cautious and being insecure and being controlling. And that's what we got to realize. You still need to set boundaries in your relationship. And don't let nobody tell you that setting boundaries is controlling or insecurity. No, it's wisdom. It is wisdom, set boundaries.  This is a tough conversation. I apologize for being the one that got to talk about it. I know people going to take offense to it. Who who don't, you know, can't see themselves from the outside looking in. We kind of want to believe the narrative that we've painted in our mind. So I know people going to take offense to I apologize about that, but I just got to call it like I see it, you know, some is a strike, some is a ball, some is a file, some is going to be a home run, but I got to call it like I see it, you know, so y'all forgive me. I don't mean no harm. I ain't, I'm not racist. I'm not prejudice. I'm, I'm just real. And I just called it like an ISL. So y'all forgive me for that job. Hey, God bless you. We'll talk soon.


It's time for Mackie Gab and listener Graham brings us our quick tip of the week. Within Control Center on the iPhone, you can have the flashlight icon available, tapping on the icon turns the flashlight on and off, but if you tap and hold, you get presented with an icon that lets you choose between four levels of brightness, whichever level you choose is remembered for subsequent flashlight activations. For tips like this, plus your questions answered today on Mackie Gab 960 for Monday, December 19th, 2022.


Hello, and welcome to this presentation of the STM32 Low Power Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter Interface. It covers the main features of this interface, which is widely used for serial communications. The Low Power Universal Synchronous Asynchronous Receiver, or LPUART, provides full UART communications at 9600 BOD when the LPUART is clocked using a low-speed external 32.768 kHz oscillator, or LSE. Higher BOD rates can be reached when it is clocked by clock sources different from the LSE clock. Applications can benefit from the easy and inexpensive connection between devices, requiring only a few pins. In addition, the LPUART peripheral is functional in low power modes. It comes with transmit and receive FIFOs with capability to transmit and receive in stop modes. The LPUART is a fully programmable serial interface with configurable features such as data length, parity that is automatically generated and checked, number of stop bits, data order, signal polarity for transmission and reception, and BOD rate generator. The LPUART can operate in FIFO mode and it comes with transmit and receive FIFOs. It supports RS-232 and RS-485 hardware flow control options. The LPUART supports dual clock domains, allowing for wake-up from stop modes and BOD rate programming independent of the peripheral clock. The multiprocessor mode allows the LPUART to remain idle when not addressed. In addition to full-duplex communication, it also supports single-wire half-duplex mode. Here is the LPUART block diagram. The LPUART clock, LPUART KERCK, can be selected from several sources. Peripheral clock or APB clock, the system clock, the high-speed internal oscillator or HSI-16, or the low-speed external 32.768 kHz crystal oscillator or LSE. TX and RX pins are used for data transmission and reception. Pins NCTS and NRTS are used for RS-232 hardware flow control. The driver-enable or DE signal, which is available on the same IO as NRTS, is used in RS-485 mode. The LPUART has a flexible clocking scheme. Its clock source can be selected in the RCC, and it can be either the peripheral clock or APB clock, the system clock, the high-speed internal oscillator or HSI-16, or the low-speed external 32.768 kHz crystal oscillator or LSE. The LPUART clock source can be divided by a programmable factor in the LPUART PRESC register. The registers are accessed through the APB buzz, and the kernel is clocked with LPUART KERCK, pre-scaled or not, and which is independent from the APB clock. The maximum BOD rate that can be reached is 9600 BOD when the clock source is LSE, and 21 MB when the clock source is at 64 MHz. The frame format consists of a set of data bits in addition to bits for synchronization and optionally a parity bit for error checking. A frame starts with one start bit, or S, where the line is driven low for one bit period. This signals the start of a frame and is used for synchronization. The data length can be 9, 8, or 7 bits with the parity bit counted. Finally, one or two stop bits, where the line is driven high, indicate the end of the frame. The previous slide described a standard frame. This slide shows an example of an 8-bit data frame configured with one stop bit. An idle character is interpreted as an entire frame of ones. The number of ones will include the number of stop bits as well. A break character is interpreted as receiving all zeros for a frame period. At the end of the break frame, two stop bits are inserted. The LPUART supports full duplex communication, where the TX and RX lines are respectively connected with the other interfaces, RX and TX lines. The LPUART can also be configured for a single wire half-duplex protocol, where the TX and RX lines are internally connected. In this communication mode, only the TX pin is used for both transmission and reception. The TX pin is always released when no data is transmitted. Thus, it acts as a standard I.O. in idle or reception states. For this usage, the I.O. must be configured with the TX pin in alternate function open drain mode with an external pull-up resistor. In the RS-232 standard, it is possible to control the serial data flow between two devices by using the NCTS input and the NRTS output. These two lines allow the receiver and the transmitter to alert each other of their state. This slide shows how to connect two devices in this mode. The idea is to prevent dropped bytes or conflicts in case of half-duplex communication. Both signals are active low. For serial half-duplex communication protocols like RS-485, the master needs to generate a direction signal to control the transceiver or physical layer. This signal informs the physical layer if it must act in send or receive mode. In RS-485 mode, a control line driver enable is used to activate the external transceiver control. The DE control line shares the pin with NRTS. To simplify communication between multiple processors, the LPU-ART supports a special multiprocessor mode. In multiprocessor communication, it is desirable that only the intended message recipient should actively receive the message. The non-address devices may be put in mute mode using two methods, idle line or address mark. The LPU-ART can enter or exit from mute mode using one of two methods, idle line detection or address mark detection. The LPU-ART can operate in FIFO mode, which is enabled or disabled by software. It is disabled by default. The LPU-ART comes with a transmit FIFO or TX-FIFO and a receive FIFO or RX-FIFO, each being 16 words deep. The TX-FIFO is 9 bits wide. The RX-FIFO default width is 12 bits. This is due to the fact that the receiver does not only store the data in the FIFO, but also the error flags associated to each character, parity error, noise error and framing error flags. Provided that the TX-FIFO and RX-FIFO are clocked by the kernel clock, it is possible to transmit and receive data even in stop mode. It is possible to configure TX-FIFO and RX-FIFO thresholds used mainly to avoid an underrun overrun issue while waking up from stop mode. The LPU-ART is able to wake up the MCU from stop mode when the LPU-ART clock source is the HSI or LSE clock. The sources of wake up can be a specific wake up event which is triggered by either a start bit or an address match or any received data, an RX-NE interrupt when FIFO management is disabled or FIFO event interrupts when FIFO management is enabled. This table lists the LPU-ART events that can generate an interrupt. This table lists the FIFO event interrupts when the FIFO management is enabled. The DMA requests can be generated when received buffer not empty or transmit buffer empty flags are set when FIFO management is disabled. The DMA request can be generated when the transmit FIFO not full and receive FIFO not empty flags are set when FIFO management is enabled. Several error flags can also be generated by the LPU-ART as shown in the table. The overrun, parity and framing error flags are each set when the corresponding error occurs. The noise error flag is set when a noise is detected on the received frame start bit. The LPU-ART peripheral is active in run mode. The LPU-ART interrupts cause the device to exit sleep mode. The LPU-ART is able to wake up the MCU from stop mode when the LPU-ART clock source is the HSI or LSE clock. In standby mode the peripheral is in power down and it must be re-initialized after exiting standby or shutdown mode. The STM-32H7 devices embed a single LPU-ART instance. Compared to the USART the LPU-ART doesn't support synchronous, smart card, IRDA and LIN modes. It does not support the receiver timeout, modbus communication and the auto-bod rate detection features as well. This is a list of peripherals related to the LPU-ART. Please refer to these peripheral trainings for more information if needed. General purpose input output, reset and clock controller, power controller, interrupts controller and direct memory access controller.


I want to say thank you very much for having me and to Ashkan and Justin for introducing me to Ashkan. As I say, I'm a historian so it's a real treat to come to an event like this and meet this whole community. We've been especially welcoming and very unique kind of environment. So, as I say, I'm a historian. I work on the Cold War brainwashing scare and its influence on psychology and psychiatry during this time. And today I'm going to take a close look at the tank isolation experiments developed by John Lilly and Jay Shirley at the National Institute of Mental Health in the 1950s. So together they developed a method of vertical isolation in fresh water.  So this method is kind of widely regarded as the origin of the modern day flotation tank. But it also has this more controversial history related to questions of brainwashing and mind control in the Cold War. And just to give an example of this relationship, I'm just going to show a short clip from the 1963 film The Mindbenders. There's several films based on the life and the research of John Lilly, films like Altered States, The Day of the Dolphin. But I think this is probably the first. The method here is pretty accurate, kind of reasonably accurate as to what they were actually doing. But as you'll see, the effects kind of drift into the realms of science fiction. Now by isolation, we mean the study of what happens to a man when you take away all sensation.  We want to know what happens to the body and particularly to the central nervous system when a man is put into this complete isolation, into the sort of conditions that may well be experienced in space flight. To do this, we invented a perfectly simple piece of apparatus. When a man is submerged in this tank of ordinary water at blood heat, all sensations over a period of time can be reduced to a minimum. He is utterly isolated, lonely, bewildered. Studying his behavior under these conditions, we found we had stepped into a new and frightening world. We seem to be dealing literally with the physics of the soul. The report for Colonel Bogey Longman called it at the time. It tallies with several others read later to scientific confidence held in America on the effects of the reduction of sensation. Longman seemed to go through four distinct stages. Irritation. After the first hour of relative quiet, even boredom, he became childishly irritable, abusive and even comic.   Starved of sensation from the outside world, the surface of the skin itself grew a sensitivity quite beyond normal experience. He played with the water, feeling his right hand to be the size of a dam with a stream bursting through. This extra sensitivity seemed to promote a sequence of erotic hallucinations. Then all sensation vanished, and after two or three hours he seemed to lose confidence in himself as a man. Please, please, it's not fair. It isn't. Please let me out. Panic was the third stage, the voice of the trapped monkey, the wasp beating against the glass, the man on the rack. After five hours without sensation, weightless and disorientated, he was in a state of complete nervous collapse. At last, the comfort and blessing of hallucination. After seven hours in the tank, he vanished into a world of his own. This stage that gave me my clue. Listen, I recognize this. How long has he been in? Nearly eight hours. It's fantastic. It'd take months of solitary confinement to reduce a man to this state. Even if he were kept awake half the time with lights and all the rest of it. You've come into my country. Don't you see? You've been missing something here. This is an experiment on the fringes of brainwashing, indoctrination. No wonder they were after sharp ache. We could persuade long men into anything. Now I'm damn sure of it. Not just persuading them to scratch his right ear. I mean change his most fundamental beliefs. So, great. I don't know if we can have a show of hands for anyone who's had a float experience like that. So, when this first, the critics and audiences saw this film, they claimed that the whole brainwashing element was too far fetched. And this was much to the dismay of the filmmakers who felt they'd based their screenplay on scientific research recently carried out in Canada and the United States. I think this evokes two questions. First, how does this technique come to be seen as being so dangerous in the late 1950s? And second, how has it transformed into something so different that it laid the foundation for modern-day tank isolation? So, to start off, I think it's briefly a good idea to kind of gloss over this idea of brainwashing in the Cold War. Although the concept wasn't really entirely novel, the term brainwashing was introduced to the public in 1950 by a journalist named Edward Hunter. Hunter claimed that Russian and Chinese Pavlovian psychologists had developed powerful methods of manipulating men's minds. So, although a few scientists took Hunter's extreme claim seriously, the term brainwashing resonated with widespread anti-communist sentiments in the US and the ideological conflict that characterized the Cold War. So, we tend to look back on this period as an era of paranoia and conspiracy. But this paranoia nonetheless has a legacy not least within the disciplines of psychology and behavioral science. So, it's within this climate of concern about brainwashing that the history of sensory deprivation begins in 1951 at a secret meeting in a famous Montreal hotel. Present at this meeting were several intelligence officials, scientists and psychologists, and this man on the left, Professor Donald Hebb of McGill University. The minutes of the meeting revealed that the discussion centered around the question of brainwashing and non-coercive interrogation. Hebb then proposed that completely removing sensory or perceptual stimulation, a sort of techno-scientific solitary confinement, might place someone in such a position that they would be susceptible to implantation of new or different ideas. So, shortly afterwards, Hebb receives a grant of around $30,000 for a three-year study on the effects of perceptual deprivation. And they devised an experimental situation that looked like this. As you can see, the subject is placed in a small chamber, they hear the sounds of a white noise generator, their arms are enclosed within cardboard tubes to restrict movement and tactile perception, and their eyes are covered by a pair of translucent ski goggles, which only allow in diffuse white light. So, they're left in this state of perceptual monotomy for up to three days at a time for which they are paid $20 a day. So unsurprisingly, a few subjects managed to stick it out, and by far the most widely reported results were the unusual visions and hallucinations subjects claim to experience. These range from simple dots and geometric shapes to full-blown lucid imagery. So, it was great to see all the artwork and poetry kind of inspired by flotation yesterday, and this kind of some early work that could be seen as being inspired by sensory deprivation. These were done by an artist from McLean's magazine in 1954 in attempt to recreate some of the imagery described inside the chamber. So, this included these eyeglasses wandering down a street, this man in a bath, spaceships, and perhaps the report which remained most iconic to these experiments, a line of squirrels with sacks over their shoulders marching purposefully. Now, the second finding was linked to the question of brainwashing itself. During some of the experiments, subjects were given the option to listen to propaganda records. These records presented evidence in support of paranormal phenomena such as the existence of ghosts. According to Hebony's students, the effects of the propaganda were the only ones that showed signs lasting beyond the experimental period. Two weeks after the test, quote, a number of the experimental subjects, unlike the controls, went to the library to borrow books on psychical research, mind reading, and so forth. There were spontaneous reports of being afraid of ghosts late at night. One man even reported that he was trying to use telepathy as an aid to playing poker. So, it should be pointed out that these results have since been criticised heavily and in terms of both their methodology and the way they were reported, but nonetheless, this was how they were reported, and they helped create a kind of buzz around sensory deprivation research in the 50s and probably contributed to its downfall as well. Well, not its downfall, but its decline in the late 70s, early 70s, sorry. But initially, the McGill results were all classified. But in 1952, before any official publications had been made, Hebony received a visit from a neurophysiologist named John C. Lilly. So, at this time, Lilly's scientific career is very much in the ascendancy. Already by 1952, he studied both physics and biology, trained as a doctor and a psychoanalyst, taken an amateur in professional interest in radio and communication systems, worked on high-altitude research for the military, and had begun pioneering work using electro-stimulation to map the brains of macaque monkeys. So, here you have this kind of 37... Probably better to go back to the other image. You have this kind of practical and intellectual polymath. He's just been appointed the head of cortical integration at the National Institute for Mental Health, and he's proposed to carry out an ambitious project to explore the relationship between the brain, the body and the mind. I think Lilly's ambition as a scientist is only superseded by his self-confidence. He wants to be this Darwin of the 20th century. When one colleague compliments him that he's one of five, or perhaps ten people alive, who could carry out such an ambitious project, Lilly replies, I would like to meet the other four or nine sometime. The majority of Lilly's lab is dedicated to this electro-mapping work on the brains of monkeys, cats and later dolphins. But he also dedicates two modules of his lab and a portion of his research budget to human isolation research. And using borrowed equipment builds his first water isolation chamber. That's not it, by the way, but I don't have any images. But it operated towards the same principle. So, there are various reasons why John Lilly took up sensory isolation so enthusiastically at this moment. For starters, isolation is an important practical approach to science. If you want to test the effects of a single stimulus on the behaviour of an animal, for example, you have to isolate it from other stimuli. But the McGill experiment showed that the human or the mammal brain is not simply an organ of stimulus and response as cognitive and perceptual activity persists without stimulus. So Lilly is immediately drawn to the question of what is this sort of non-stimulus-driven consciousness and what does it consist of? But it would also be naive to think that Lilly and his superiors weren't also interested in this question of brainwashing and mind control. In autobiographical writings, Lilly has been open about having to brief government agencies about his work and claimed that it was military interest that led to his decision to leave the National Institute of Health. But apart from these memoirs, we know little about the relationship shared between Lilly and military intelligence. There are, however, some surviving documents from the 50s that illustrate his willingness to align his research with military interests. Perhaps kind of the most interesting or disconcerting paper he writes is entitled Special Considerations of Modified Human Agents as Reconnaissance and Intelligence Devices. So Lilly describes how his tank experiments show how isolation can be used to make a subject absorb information on demand and reconfigure or reprogram the internal generators of the mind. He goes on to discuss how this could be combined with electrostimulation to gain push-button control over the totality of motivation and behavior, and he states, if present theory is correct, this method will lead to master-slave controls directly of one brain over another in greater or lesser degree. The path is a possible one, but the quantities of control achievable are to be determined experimentally. So this report was written in 1957 for a group of military and intelligence officials, but Lilly's isolation research had also been discussed in 1956 by the former NIH director Robert Felix at a hearing in Senate. When discussing isolation, Felix claimed that this method explains how brainwashing works, as when cut off from stimulation, subjects uncritically absorb information fed to them as if it is their own thoughts. And he goes on to say, you can break down anybody with this. I don't care what their background is or how they have been indoctrinated. I'm sure you can break down anybody with this. So the 1956 hearing was reported in local and national newspapers, and it is these reports which inspired Alexander Kennedy to start writing his script for the mindbenders. But probably what's kind of most interesting about these claims being made is it's really difficult to square them with the first-hand experiences Lilly was claiming to have inside his tank. When Lilly wrote to Donald Hebb about the recent fallout of publicity in 1956, he said that people are apparently rather frightened. I find that they do assume that one goes nuts under these conditions, which of course is a lot of nonsense. Indeed, the experience described by Lilly was not one of cognitive breakdown, but instead of cognitive enlightenment, and he described what Freud and Roman Riland had called the oceanic feeling and discovering, quote, a new inner security on a deep and basic level. And this is not unique to Lilly. In 1956, a Texan psychiatrist named Jay Shirley was made an assistant on the isolation project. Shirley has given a technical task to perfect issues with the mask, but he also trains himself to use the tank. And like Lilly, the Velops is very unique passion for the experience, which he records in a diary. So this diary is kind of a fascinating reading in itself. It sort of reveals the kind of politics of working at the NIH at the time and at the University of Oklahoma. But above all, it reveals this intimate relationship the scientists developed with their tank work. Shirley often describes carrying out spontaneous or unplanned exposures. He doesn't tell Lilly, and sometimes he does it at night. His tank experiences are after all different. He discusses major frustration that he can't reach the same levels of disinhibition or the vast accumulation of energy Lilly had described. And he bemoans his inability to think creatively rather than technically about scientific questions. But in spite of these problems, he does experience vivid fantasies and isolation and becomes passionate about the tanks for therapeutic potential. He claims that three days in the tank could be the equivalent of three years of psychoanalysis. In a later entry, he notes his revelation that this is the most important work he will ever do and must devote his whole life to it. And that's kind of what he does for the next 15 years. So during the five or so years that they worked together, Lilly and Shirley had taken isolation work in a very different direction from the original brainwashing studies carried out at McGill. At the heart of this change is their unorthodox commitment to self-experimentation. So through repeated exposures, Lilly and Shirley familiarize themselves with the stressful aspects of the situation, such as an overly tight or a leaking mask, unexpected audio or visual stimuli, and the stimulus hunger that they described. Importantly, they developed an approach which placed experimental control in the hands of the subject rather than the observer. As they described in a paper given in 1960, maximum ego freedom and voluntariness is achieved when the subject is attenuated not only from their physical environment, but also from their social environment. Quote, subjects should choose their own times for beginning, ending, and the total duration of explosion, as well as the control of whatever restraints, voluntary inhibitions, and supports are needed. Privacy also implies trust and respect for the ego of the subject on the part of the observer, i.e. the elimination of any observer encroachment, exploitation or invasion of each experience in the future indefinitely. This approach through isolation experiment is almost the reverse of the approach begun at McGill, or the one described by Robert Felix at the Senate hearing in 1956. The model of the mind is the same, the apparatus and the technology are the same, but the approach has shifted from one of how can we isolate the mind to feed in external information, to one of how can the mind be isolated, isolated mind be protected, or even liberated from its external world. So, those who are familiar with Lily's later work will see how these ideas laid the groundwork for his concepts of the human mind as a programmed and reprogrammable bio-computer. And the metaphor behind his most famous book, The Center of the Cyclone, this sort of quiet state of consciousness at the center or devoid of one's own anxieties, drives and stimulus world. In the 60s, Lily's writings clearly resonate with our cultural ideas and the rhetoric of the emerging psychedelic movement, which promote approaches to mind alteration, which privilege disassociated states of consciousness, uninhibited by previous conditioning, learning and social consensus. There isn't much time to talk about the experimental work surely continued at the University of Oklahoma. But he goes on to build this sort of $20,000 tank which he calls the Cadillac of isolation tanks on something near like 300 subjects through the tank. Some of them sort of interesting characters, like Jerry Cobb who was a potential astronaut, female part of a group of astronauts. There was a sort of campaign to get them a group of female astronauts into space. But I just want to point to a diary entry he makes in 1956 where he simply notes, he had a thought. John wants to know how much of his experience was fantasy. I do too. I think this anticipates a juncture in both of their work, whereas John Lily became increasingly interested in phenomenology and the ontological significance of altered states surely instead chose to interpret tank experiences within a more traditional psychoanalytic framework while retaining the values of ego, freedom and exploration which the pair had developed together at the NIH. Just to briefly conclude, I want to emphasise that the Cold War brainwashing scare had an important influence on John Lily and Jay Shirley's work, not just on the development of tank apparatus, but also the theory and approaches they took to isolation. Historians often describe the early Cold War as an era characterised by concerns about agency, autonomy and the fragility of the self. I think the early work at the NIH of John Lily and Jay Shirley gives one example of the conflicting ways Psi professionals imagined these concerns, developing one approach which imagined isolation in the service of controlling human minds and another which imagined it in the service of the self and human potential. Thank you very much.