Thank you everyone for, you know, having a seat on the ground here. We really do appreciate it. It's a way that we can get the most people in this room, and especially for our next speaker, who I think is going to be extremely exciting. You're going to live up to that, right? So I'd like to introduce Alex Halderman from the University of Michigan. He is a professor of computer science and engineering, and a verified voting technology fellow. His research spans computer and network security, applied cryptography, security measurements, censorship resistance, and electronic voting, as well as the interaction of technology with politics and international affairs.  Thank you very much.  You're an expert in everything else. So he has helped discover the cold boot attack and the TLS, log jam and ground vulnerabilities. He co-founded the ZMAP project, Census I.O., and Let's Encrypt. He is a renowned expert in election cybersecurity, and has performed numerous evaluations of real-world voting systems, both in the United States and around the world. After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he advised retail initiatives in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in an effort to help detect and deter cyberattacks. And in 2017, he testified to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee about cybersecurity threats to election infrastructure. He's been named by popular science as one of the brightest young minds reshaping science, engineering, and the world. Alex? I'll get her. Thank you. Thank you so very much for that introduction. I'm here today to talk to you, like many other people, about the security of U.S. elections. But I want to make this a special kind of presentation, and so we're going to do a demonstration, too, a demonstration in which I'm going to actually steal a little election for you.  So I ask for your patience and some wishes of good luck, perhaps. And also, I am going to need a volunteer, someone who can hold a camera steady for me. Yes? Thank you. Please. Hi, what's your name? Hi, Jess. Jess, thank you. Yeah. All right, so I'm going to need you to take this and just I'm going to ask you in a minute to use this as a camera. So before we get to that, though, let's see, many computers that need to work at once. All right, before we get to this, I want to introduce you to the AccuVote TS voting machine. This is an example of a voting machine we use here in the U.S. The AccuVote TS was, at one time, the most widely used electronic voting machine. And it is still to this day the most well studied of any electronic voting machine in the U.S. There have been major code reviews and other security assessments of these machines over the last 15 years by academic researchers, by groups commissioned by states, et cetera. But it's still in use today. In fact, it's used in parts or all of 18 states across the country. Georgia, for instance, uses this machine and its sister machine, the AccuVote TS, in all of the precincts across the state. Now, if we look at other voting technology across the country, it's also a patchwork of different kinds of technologies, of machines like this and others. And in some places it even varies by county. But the AccuVote TS is a good representative machine of touch screen, sometimes paperless, what are called direct recording electronic voting machines. So I'd like to demonstrate the machine for everyone. And I don't think this microphone moves any distance, does it? No. Let's see if we can unhook it that way I can continue speaking. I apparently need to use this for the cameras. Not for you guys. All right, so we'll do a demonstration.  Now, one thing that happens in every voting machine of all types across the country is before every election, officials need to program in the design of the ballots. Right? What are the races? Who are the candidates? What are the rules for counting the votes? And on every single kind of voting machine, that programming is created on a PC workstation somewhere, either operated by the county or operated by an outside vendor or the state. And it's copied onto the machines by officials on memory cards like the card for your digital camera or USB sticks. In this case, it's one of these PCMCI memory cards.  And I'm going to attack the machine merely by altering the programming on the memory card. So I'm going to put the memory card in the slot and this is what election officials would do before any kind of election. No network connection. No network connection to the individual machine. Now, where's my camera person? Would you come up here, please? And I'm going to hit a button here and everyone's going to be able to see what the camera sees. So if you could film the screen here and just follow, you're going to have to come closer. No? All right. The boy, I told you this would be technically demanding. So election officials before a real election might do logic and accuracy testing, just run a few test boats. That's fine. They can do that. But we're going to skip that just for speeding things up. And then after that, they would hit a button here to set the machine for an election. So we're going to do that. I'm going to open a door here. The machine actually has a little cash register style printer. And it's going to print out. It's going to think about it. It's going to print out what's called a zero tape. And this is just going to show that there are no votes in the machine so far. Can you zoom in right there and show zero votes for both candidates? A little down. There we go. George Washington and Benedict Arnold, no votes. All right. Now I'm going to need, let's say, three more volunteers. Yes? Anyone else? Yes? One more. Yes. You guys can be my voters.  And I'm going to ask each of you to cast a vote in or mock election. So the way voting works on these machines like many other DREs is the voter comes in, checks in at the polling place.  Yes? All right. Then I'm going to issue you an activated voter card. This will let you have one ballot. So you can come up to the machine and vote. And we're going to show the voter. Just put it into the slot there. All right. And we're going to run a special election. And this is for President George Washington, the founder of the Republic versus Benedict Arnold, the trader of the American Revolution. Everyone at DEF CON votes for Benedict Arnold. So if you want to be counter here, you better vote for George. All right. So we have one vote. Oh, you forgot to cast your ballot. Got to touch cast ballot. And then it will mark your card as used. And give it back to you. All right. So that's vote number one for George Washington. Voter number two. All right, sir. Here's your voter card.  Yes? Sure. Okay. Now it's going to cast another vote. All right. And no influencing my decision this time, right? Okay. Yes. It's a secret ballot. All right. It's two votes for George Washington. It's going to spit out the card. Now here, I'm going to demonstrate a little bonus attack. I'm going to take the card he just used and give it to our next voter. This voter card I actually made myself back at the time of the University of Michigan. That's why it has an ammo on it. It looks just like the real card, works just like the real card, except it also lets you vote as many times as you want. And this will work in the real machines too. All right. So using our infinite voter card, we're going to have our voter number three cast his super secret ballot. All right. George Washington or Benedict Arnold. All right. All right. So the votes are cast. And just to review for everyone, the real election result, two votes for George Washington. One for that trader, Benedict Arnold. So now we're going to end voting. And what I'm going to do, I'm going to take a administrator card and I'm going to put it in the machine. And the administrator card, this is what an election official might have. I'm going to enter my secret pin. That was the default pin. I'm going to take out the administrator card. Now I'm going to hit end voting. And what the machine does after you end voting is it prints out another one of these cash register tapes that has the total votes for each candidate. Here we go. The results of the election, this is the official results that would be signed. And can you please zoom in on that to show the official results down? Oh, Benedict Arnold has won by a narrow margin. But of course we all know that's not the real result. In fact, malicious code that I loaded into the machine by hijacking this pre-election programming process has stolen the result. It's manipulated the ballots and all of the electronic records of the ballots because of fraudulent results to be recorded. All right. For my volunteers, I want to give each of you a print out of these fraudulent results to take with you as a souvenir. All right. Now while this is printing, let me explain some disturbing facts about this machine. People might wonder, is this the current version of the firmware? Well, it's not the most recent version of the firmware, but in fact this version of the firmware and even older versions of the firmware are in widespread use across the U.S. today. There's no requirement that officials keep the firmware up to date. In fact, this version has already corrected vulnerabilities that exist in some versions that are in fact still used. All right. Let me end this projection. All right. Excuse me, I just have to end it on this side so we don't run out of batteries. Very technically demanding. There. All right. I'll take control of this again. Was that a mission? So this machine, this machine I bought on eBay. It was used previously in Ohio and Ohio sold off a large number of them after they were damaged due to a leaking roof in the warehouse, but most of them still work. We have dozens more of this same kind of machine down in the village for people to hack on. All right. So let me put all of this in context and we don't have that much time so I'm going to have to go quick. We have two styles of voting machines in the country. One's like this that are DREs, touch screens and so forth and also optical scan machines that count paper ballots that voters fill in. Both of these though are computers and both styles of machines have been studied in many security reviews over the last decade and a half. I was part of one in California where the Secretary of State in 2007 brought together a group of respected security experts to do a code review of all of the election equipment in the state. This is an excerpt from one of the reports about this machine, the AccuVote TS, and it details some of the vulnerabilities. Multiple buffer overflows, software updates without authentication, interpreted code, things that could be exploited by voters, things that could be exploited from the memory card, inadequate randomization of the ballot so that ballot secrecy can be compromised. You can forge the cards, all of this stuff. This is in 2007 and there are hundreds of pages of elaborate technical documentation about these vulnerabilities. Still, California decertified the machines. They wouldn't use them anymore, but other states continued to use them and as I said, in many cases, without updating the software. And it's not just these debold machines. Since that time, states have reviewed, there have been independent studies, many, many different kinds of U.S. voting machines. In every single case, the reviews concluded that there were vulnerabilities that could be used by attackers to spread malicious code into the machines, often via the removable media, and compromise votes. So, the fact is, across the U.S., something like 41 states use election equipment that's more than 20 years old. Some states still use voting machines that were designed in the 1980s. These machines are often not receiving security updates. They're often not benefiting from the latest technologies and the only safe assumption is that all of them have exploitable vulnerabilities. Okay, but that's just individual machines. So, if individual machines have vulnerabilities, it seems like it's still a problem. It's still not as big a problem if an attacker has to target machines one by one. How could an attacker, potentially a foreign adversary, compromise machines over a wide area and try to influence a national election result? Well, there are various things they might do. Some things very public, like trying to sabotage election reporting, trying to sabotage e-poll books or registration data so that voters show up and find out they're not registered. Those could be extremely damaging, but at least we'd know they'd happened. I think a more sinister and worrisome attack, the attack that keeps me up at night personally, is the one you just saw. What if someone compromised enough machines to subtly change election outcomes and cause the wrong result? Would we ever find out? So, how plausible is that? Well, there are three challenges for an attacker trying to silently steal an election. The first one is just that the technology is diverse and decentralized, every state and county running their own systems. Well, that helps in some ways. It hurts in some ways. So it helps if the election result is not that close. But in a close election that's going to hinge on a set of swing states or swing districts, that just means that the attacker has and can tell from pre-election polls this whole set of places to potentially attack any subset of which might swing the national election. So you scan all the states that are potentially going to be in play, find the ones that are most weekly protected, and strike in all of those. So rather than a diversity protecting us, we have a diversity across the country today of strength and weakness. And that's a major weakness for everybody. All right, the second challenge, though, is that the machines aren't connected to the Internet. Well, thank goodness they're not. At least they're not supposed to be. It's actually not quite true. Some of them do connect to the Internet briefly in order to send back results over 4G networks after the election. But most machines are not connected to the Internet, and that's a great thing. However, they're not as distant from the Internet as they may seem. So we talked about that memory cord that I just used to spread malware into this machine in front of you and steal the election. Well, that memory cord, the programming on it, is created on this election management workstation that's running proprietary software that generates the ballot programming. If an attacker can infect that system, well, they can spread malware to every machine that is programmed from that EMS. And sometimes that's every voting machine in a county. Some places they contract this out to the voting machine vendor. One large voting machine vendor, programs the elections for 2,000 jurisdictions in 34 states. That is an incredibly centralized point of attack. And I've been in the room where they do this programming, and it's just an office somewhere. Isn't that a terrifying thought? Well, many other places, like in Michigan, they contract this out to small businesses in the region rather than to big central providers. So in Michigan, about three-quarters of counties use just three approximately 20-person companies in 2016. This is the website of one of them.  No HTTPS. Nice detailed photos of their warehouse. And, oh, here's their staff directory, where you can find the picture, job title, and email address of every person in the company. So if I wanted to attack these guys and steal the next election in Michigan, maybe I forge an email from Sue here, to Sue from the admin assistant, from Larry, the president, asking her to urgently open this attachment. That may be all I need to do to get into their network and spread malware to voting machines throughout Michigan and other states in the Midwest. All right, there's just one more challenge. And that's that more than 70% of votes across the U.S. today are recorded on a piece of paper. And that is just great. This is much more than were recorded 10 years ago. And paper turns out to be a very effective and common sense kind of fail site for things like elections. I mean, paper may seem old fashioned, but did you know that if you fly in commercial aviation on a modern jet with satellite navigation, that jet still, by law, has a magnetic compass in the cockpit just in case the computer navigation system fails, right? That's just common sense that in a critical system, you want to have a physical fail site. The brakes in your car, you want them to work even if the engine control units fail. Well, in voting, paper is that kind of physical fail site. And of course, we all know paper can be tampered with too. But in modern election systems that have a paper backup record, what you end up with at the end of the day is an electronic record and a set of paper ballots. You have these two redundant records that each would require a different set of skills to tamper with at a large scale. And as long as we check to make sure that the paper records and the electronic records represent the same election outcome, then it's going to be really, really difficult to tamper with both of those sets of records in a way that wouldn't raise red flags. And in fact, we don't have to count all of the paper in order to do that kind of check. We can just use statistical sampling. There are very efficient statistical sampling methods that have been developed over the last 10 years or so for elections called risk limiting audits, which in an election that's a landslide might be able to confirm that with very high statistical confidence by examining just a few hundred ballots across a whole state. So this is way more efficient than recounting, way more efficient than the kind of Florida auditing we all remember from 2000. There's just one problem. Most states don't look at the paper. Unless a candidate demands a recount or there are other exceptional circumstances, or the states just don't look at enough of it in a relatively close election in order to have reasonable assurance that an attack would be caught. So to review, unfortunately, hijacking an election and influencing a close national contest might be a lot easier than we thought. They're vulnerable voting machines used in places across the country, and an attacker can use pre-election polling to determine which jurisdictions are going to use them and have a close contest. Then target the service providers that program them to spread malware in the pre-election programming process. Just like I showed here, you can influence a small fraction of the votes and subtly change the outcome. And although there may be paper records in place, we know what the procedures are in every state, and the attacker can ensure that their attack is not detected if they plan appropriately. So what do we do to defend against all of this? And I have just a couple more minutes. So the simple defense, and I think the most important defense that we can roll out in a pragmatic form today, is to make sure that every vote is backed by a piece of paper. And that all states audit that paper to a high level of statistical certainty to make sure that it reflects the same outcome the computers gave us. This is called paper ballots and risk limiting audits, and it's a recipe that can be cheaply and practically implemented today. At the same time, of course, we do have to strengthen the technology as much as we can so that people don't hack in and sabotage the machines. We want to make that as difficult as possible. But I don't think we're ever going to get the technology to a point where all of us here can confidently say that we don't think the best attackers in the world, with the resources of a nation state, can't get in and make things go wrong. So how much progress do we have today? These are the states that have all paper, shown in green. The red ones still have some votes that are recorded without a paper backup. That's unfortunate, but we've made a lot of progress. It would cost maybe another 100 to 400 million dollars to get rid of the remaining paperless machines. Auditing is a much worse story. So the states shown here in red don't do audits that are likely to be sufficient to catch fraud, or they may do no audits at all. The ones in yellow do audits that are pretty good, but maybe they're not always auditing.  The ones in green are implementing the best practices. Colorado may be leading the way right now with risk-limiting audits that they've been piloting over the last several years. New Mexico and Rhode Island also have or are implementing very good post-election audits. And many other states, we hope, will follow soon, but there's a lot more work to do. Still, this is one of the cheapest cyber defenses imaginable. My estimate is it might cost 25 million dollars a year to audit all federal races across the country. This is an incredibly small expense. So let's just look at states that were close in 2016. This is less than a 5 percent change would have swung the race for presidents in 2016. Still looks like a pretty bleak map of states that have both defenses in place today. So what can we do about it? Well, Congress took a positive step in March when they gave the states 380 million dollars in emergency funding for election improvements. And many states are applying this towards improving different aspects of their election security. Still, it's not nearly enough to foot the whole bill for equipment replacement. And I think replacing the out-of-date election equipment is going to take further help from the federal government. More importantly, though, this money came without any new standards and even without any strong guidance about how states should use it. There's now legislation, though, being considered in the Senate just this month and a companion bill in the House that is bipartisan and may actually pass that has the potential to establish some reasonable floors for election cybersecurity in terms of paper ballots and post-election audits being required or strongly incentivized practices for all states to adopt. This is a bill called the Secure Elections Act. The major question is whether between now and the end of August, this bill gets watered down in committee to the point that it's not offering any reasonable protections. So this is something that all of us and our friends could do today to try to advance election security across the country, especially if one of the senators listed here represents you, please call them today and urge them to make sure that the Secure Elections Act provides for voter-verified paper ballots and audits of that paper by people, not merely audits of digital scans or audits that are automated by other computers that might be tampered with, but we need people to check enough of the paper that we can all have high confidence in our election results. So paper ballots, risk-limiting audits, and general cybersecurity improvements. So patch the software on these machines. Make sure our equipment is up to date and so forth. This doesn't have to be expensive. We can get these improvements in place by 2020 if the states and the federal government act together and act now. But we need everyone's encouragement and help to make it happen. Thank you very much.


These frozen meals, they say they feed four people. No, they feed like one person. So what I'm going to show you is how to take this thing to the next level. Let it cook. Now you're going to grab the new Dano seasoning. That's right, seasoning. It's the blue top. It's for seafood. We got shrimp scampi. Sprinkle generously, my friends. Give it a little and maybe a little bit more. We're just adding flavor.  We're not packed full of salt.  After you follow the directions, put it in your bowl. Last step, you're going to need a little bit of the Dano spicy because there's nothing like this on some seafood. Give it a little sprinkle. All right, we got us a little bit of everything. It looks hot, but I'm going to do it because I love you. Wow, y'all need to try that. You can upgrade any freezer made dinner with the new Dano seasoning.


She's going on everyone Sam here with late sports cards I'm a 23 Bowman Chrome University football hobby 12 box full case break number three pick your letter style read up list for names Our teams got Edward P with E Jeff M B&T Jeffrey H with M Jeremy B a D F Q S G o and N X Kevin S with W Lane K with H Shawn M with C Tom B with R Troy S with J William G with K L and P. It's good. Look everybody. Let's do it last group break of the night Right here. We'll get into some personals after this Oh, good Lord, dude. That is a bow Nicks Jalen Wright and Drew Aller Roma don't say that is a paid club Nick and laden Robinson Gots X fracture Caleb Johnson Purple Miles Davis to 399 Marvin Harrison jr. Joe Milton Red Sock legend keep their nineties X Fracture Troy Franklin CJ Donaldson Keo White's Watson. I'd say Justice Ellison first refractor Shadoor Sanders Teta Roa McMillan Yep, you went. Okay. Final strike Alton MacAskill to 299 for the a spot I'm not for sure rambling man and make a book. Uh, I guess, you know Come on We've got nice to 50 Jace McClellan gold lava auto for the J-Spot Will Rogers Justice Haynes. Oh First to base auto for Alabama the J-Spot. There you go. Just stuff the e-backs Good stuff Michael Pratt. That's awesome, dude. Okay club Nick swept them too, man It's stuff Arizona Mitch library Frank Gord jr That is awesome So awesome, dude yellow Tyler van dyke to 75 for the T-Spot Mario.  Very nice. Very nice box one is done Box those was a good game me too. That's what I want There's a tonio Gates jr. For the a-spot What Arizona Atlanta or Arizona really? Yeah, Blake shape in for the B-Spot nice one there base auto Laugh at it Rika Hernandez. Have a good night everyone Chill chill. That's red sock legend Dante more. Have a good night.  We're like one two game Jags losing streak away from the Celtics making appearance as the profile picture There's rambling man Marshawn Lloyd and so no Gates jr. Cameron Ward to at 299 Brendan Presley first refractor Michael Trigg Jalen burger I know I know cuz you're not for your college players all over here five year college. Yeah Know what I mean? I know before I go up there, right? Monterey Baldwin mech egg Bucca It's unexpected the lights of Jordan Travis Caleb Williams I'm rising Mario Williams just a beyond spears Marshawn Lloyd first is Dane Keith Kate Stover to 399 Blake Corum. Yeah, Marvin Harrison jr. First Cameron kitchens or kitchens Bucky Irving X Fractor Logan digs refractor and Donovan at Smith Taylor Swift show up in KC tomorrow. I don't know what their Minnesota She was not just a beyond Sanders green to 99 and Cooper leg us thumbs are starting to feel it So many packs do I mean there's 24 packs of box. Oh boxes three cases in a row Johnny Wilson first base auto nice one there J spot true hour Perkins to 75 color match for LSU in the H spot nice one there and grads each spot Shawning Cory Brooks Jordan William Travis Hunter purple shimmer of jacquory Brooks Corey foreman. I think we should do Jackson's are put your request and there's a viewer worthy Drake may first as well. Kate Stover Carson Beck green shimmer to 99 Starks Michael Penex Jr You on Drake may Jim Morris That'd be good, you know, that'd be good Yep, Geron Dickie Harold Perkins put forth on Nolan Ryan It's right Just put a minute just wrap them in yellow like what it seems like he's the right. What's it called? upright Well shepherd to one night You have a football likes blue just to the right Joe millen and Brendan Pressley That's funny dude. That's funny We're doing cards, we're he and Sanders honestly Someone with a killer stash Not like a Clemson QB Mason Taylor yet Teal off yeah, yeah It's probably you pulled over Taylor green to 25 orange shimmer T-spot Boise State When Judgans Jalen Berger, I know we got to put forth on somebody funny like a Yankee or something Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah That's a good one Jacory Brooks to 99 the green auto for the J-spot Lane we're putting Lane on I feel like a giant of some sort Monterey Baldwin to 499 refractor at first thought of Will Rogers Sam Hartman Jaden Dolora purple shimmer Can't will Howard Actually, I have a picture I'll make that a thumbnail really Really lucky I will find Purple 399 Dominic love it Dylan. I made him play football Football one year football because I want to play football Right, I remember you told me that I'm like you play one year. You might love it Didn't love it didn't love it But anyway, we should Reese the first like Conditioning is running running and they're like, I just got braces So, you know just mouth is hurting doing all that and then Then they're getting ready to do the week Oh God Dylan wasn't there. I mean, you know Well Dylan's going with his mom the Puerto Rico that week Nick Singleton and So he comes in He's not playing Eli Holstein Fowling so you could be any weight Yeah, dude, just one team with this team And it more as a story. So, you know, tell them don't don't want to play right? So what is it? Where they put Dylan? He's on kickoffs. I Am I'm telling you right now? This team he was playing they were dudes as big as me So all the kids of his team except Saturday superstars bow nicks on the short print. Oh, nice one there. We'll get that mag. That's awesome First one of those I've seen keep going sir.  I have to I'll look for no waiting to Dylan's coming down And you know nobody's doing and dude green J.B. I'm going to not be his clock He wanted nothing And he had braces Nate I Kj Jeperson 499 refractor auto for the case but they have one kid on the team. That was the animal Jordan Travis Oh, yeah, yeah, dude. It's just yeah, I Just always laughed Yeah See where he was Joining Wittington Yeah, kickoff is brutal for sure. Yeah, Marshawn Lloyd Caleb Williams X-factor will Howard Victor Rosa Yeah, he's a bit there, right Big kahuna kid club Nick for the C-spot Gerson are picking up the Padres in a cosmic Kevin P with the blue J's in both Cosmics Yeah, I'll put it as a thumbnail Friday morning at some point. Yeah Hunter Decker's and mine was That's fine. That's awesome. I like Williams Shoulder Sanders purple mini diamonds Tatara, Yoha McMillan to 399 Michael Hall Curtis Granderson, I like that Caleb Williams I know Wow Plague shape into 150 pink mini diamonds auto Congrats B spot Daniel L picking up a gold standard Niners, but wow a lot of them like every case nice. Thank you there Daniel Fanatics live with Forrest and Jake tomorrow at 10 a.m. Everybody 10 a.m Yep Kobe windman to 299 Xavier Worthy and Sean'll get a full report on everybody who comes in a YouTube chat was not on fanatics live and we'll call you squares Caleb Williams Didn't know I'd that is part of the deal unfortunately Tavion Sanders Stash and trash tomorrow stash and trash show. Oh boy. That's scary Have school I can't join on now That's Oronde Gadson the second to 75 Fair that's fair Louise We will accept that Yeah, we need we need doctors know yeah, we just need a Yep Quinchon Judkins Dylan Gabriel again, make sure you're mine Something triggered in my head And then yeah, it's happened and we forget everything Yeah, this box is pretty solid actually Louise Yeah, these are these have been very solid Oronde What is it? Gadsden the second to 499 for the oh spot on the refractor auto or Gads in the second again This time base auto oh spot cleaning up the hits in this box Yeah Esteem I like VUCA first Michael Trigg Looks like he was yeah, Oscar Delps Yeah, that's why I thought yeah, there you go. That's the guy. Oh, yeah for Shawnu first refractor. Oh my god Really good genetics Jalen Berger to 399 Berger Yes, sir.  Go Phillies is right man. I'm down Absolutely Just this is the last group break and then we're into personals watch a badger We'll do a couple probably like four orders of personals my guess is we'll be able to sneak in tonight and then that'll do it Josh Williams Mackay lemon Marvin Harrison, Jr. Marvin Harrison, Jr. Again Yeah Geez man change in McCarthy. We've got a lot of these for personals too Keep it going kind of an Edwards and Cooley and McHenry will shepherd Oh, yeah, he blew it Heaven Stewart to 150 Justice Allison Even force comes up and he goes that's a bot move Okay, are you kidding me? That's that one thing one thing one thing So bad dude should or Sanders first refractor purple Blake Fisher to 399 and Joe Olt Jordan Winnington and Grant Wells Pack Jatavia on Sanders and Gaston. Oh, that's so funny.  Yeah, Dane key first base auto for the DSPA JJ McCarthy, how do you bring coffee in the bathroom?  I did 75 Elijah Badger on the yellow But it was like months and months after and it was like, sorry We only keep them for 30 days or else you have to go and like talk to people. I'm like, all right I'm gonna do that Don't have any words in Palestine.  I'm like, all right I'm gonna change the profile picture. You have to you have to go and look at it And I just hear him start Crafting off dude like uncontrollably laughing Oh, it's funny Corey Kiner Tyreek Chapel and at Moorhead Green Will Johnson to 99 Caleb Williams Rome does hit me a little bit on this again to Xbox number eight That is camera rising to 99 green auto for the C spot nice one there Utah Yeah, no, that's Cassidy, but no Harper did no Cassidy did Richard Reese to 499 refractor first did he really? Both had him to Homer's Yeah They're dialed right now dialed Corey Kiner first purple shimmer I know you gotta keep that Heading into Atlanta Dante Moore Xavier worthy Travis Hunter first and Brock Bowers Green shimmer Nick Singleton to 99 Parrish Jones first Bo Nix Joe Alts a refractor Donovan Edwards Roman Dunze. Oh, yeah Absolutely Jalen Wright and Devon Leary early Early risers K'd club Nick Donovan Edwards Purple Caleb Williams nice one there to 399 John Reese Plumlee. Yeah thumbs are feeling it tonight the inside of my thumbs right here Are killing me dude Leak neighbors first Todd Brooks That is a Extractor Tleek Williams and Damien Marchant Tray Sean Ward cam rising Jackson Arnold first the Mechag Bucca Orange shimmer Roman Wilson to 25 for the R spot nice one there and beat like Mechag Bucca and Javante Barnes Let me grab a sip of water really quick Opening opening for sure smack It's opening each individual pack absolutely Box nine that is a Riley Leonard nice one there for the R spot that will get an empty box and wrapper There is some ink on the back of that one Send that to the R spots Please never write on these again Cam camper Donovan Edwards orange true orange to 25 nice one there Grats on that one D spot Caleb Williams grant Wells Purple shimmer Jason Marshall brand now or Breylin Allen play quorum John Reese Plumlee There's who nice red shimmer to a five Jada not Congrats on that J spot Very nice first red. We pulled all today. I believe get that into a mag. Congrats J I'm gonna say Monterey Baldwin. Did you get your power ball tickets tonight? Yeah, the drawing was tonight 1.7 Billy Caleb Williams. I don't know see anyone win the power ball is the first one the cash option Someone hit No, not that I see at least the cash option 756.6 million Yeah, I think anybody's ever taken the yearly payout One Which if it's that much money, yeah, you might as well Travis Hunter Jackson Arnold Vonte Moore your Vonte Barnes Nick Singleton Xavier Worthy Bronson Barron Green Jake Garcia to 99 Kool-Aid McIntyre Danny Dennis Sutton Jaden DeLore By when I'd be out in Montana in the middle of the woods somewhere Julio Farooq in a giant What's up, I went to Powerball building a custom compound all the way in the woods of Montana somewhere never be seen again Michael Hall true true Yeah, yeah, oh What do you Sam Hartman to Caleb Downs see you and I are the opposite like that I would pay to have nobody Zero people yeah Marvin Harrison, Jr. Not my family for sure Roman dunce. Yeah, I mean Yeah, that'd be fun Dante Moore, that is a Frank Gore, Jr. 499 nice one there at spot Frank Gore, Jr. Mara Brandon Sullivan Kool-Aid McIntyre Travis Hunter Johnny's a man of the people. I am Jalen McMillan very true. Very true. I am car collection would exceed oh 50 million Preach preacher. Yes, sir.  Hey Jordan Travis Shema Tyler Buckner and laden Robinson There's your link link above Lake Corum. That is again fanatics live with Forrest and jaker Mayfield tomorrow. Okay club Nick a young David Hasselhoff Tori Horton, oh if I win dude, I'm getting a private concert for Dylan of Nickelback So he has to listen to it. God will shepherd Yeah over and over and over and over again Shoulder Sanders first my and Williams to 399 purple mini diamonds Not bad. It was good. Yeah 2150 Blake Fisher for the B spot Notre Dame tackle What now we are Nickelback fans that we are Nickelback truthers here Drake may a club Nick Talk about the the May the Mays Drake Quarterback at UNC his brother played basketball UNC Talk about genetics man Millen to 150 I'm sure Yep, you know saying probably stuff like that Frank or junior probably dead on to be honest dead on Don't like Nickelback or Drake or Beamer Austin Jones to 399 you like the bells He was who you're getting into beef with Winston Judkins Oh Well, well Roman Hemby hashtag go bills there it is always Early risers should do our Sanders Frank or junior nice the 499 Shadoor Sanders going to the S spot There we go, man. It took us a couple of cases to find him again, but there he is Going to Jeremy B. Congrats, Jeremy. Shadoor Sanders coming your way to 499 get that into a man. It's been a good case This is the best case of the three hobbies for sure during Dickie Jackson Arnold Shadoor Sanders first esteemed Kia Watson Winston Wright Braylon Trice Roman Wilson that Xavier Worthy esteem a Tyler Neubin first refractor Blake Corum Another red Hunter Deckers four or five true red for the H spot. That's when their H going to Lane K. Congrats Lane Hunter Deckers on the true red we'll get that into a mag Joe Milton This is a really good case man fourth mag of the case Last box. Good luck everybody. I'll tell you Williams to 499 for the T spot and first base auto Corey Forman going to the K spot will Rogers Bucky Irving purple shimmer of Rashad the benion Marshawn Lloyd blue Kyle My non guy to 199. Thank you. AJ Swan refractor first Shots hunter jam Griffin first refractor Jordan Travis. That's Caleb Williams Tyler Buckner Mario Williams Marvin Harrison base base Dallas Turner to 399 Drake May Jalen Berger That is Dallas Turner extractor Shawning Bucky Irving on the B spot Nathan Smith Justice Ellison Williams to save me on Sanders Marshawn Lloyd Drake May first That is a Cade Stover to 299 for the C spot on the true Aqua in the last group break pack of the night. Good luck everybody Braylon Allen and Dorian Singer first off before we I want to see how many packs we just opened then this entire three cases 864 total packs Same dude bums are feeling it. All right. We've got Taliq Williams Corey Foreman Blake Fisher Javante Barnes Frank Gord Jr. Riley Leonard Donovan Edwards Richard Reese Cam Rising Elijah Badger Dane Key Oranda gets in the second twice Blake Schapin KJ Jefferson jacquory Brooks Monterey Baldwin Harold Perkins Johnny Wilson Blake Schapin Antonio Gates Jr. Jayce McClellan Justice Haynes Mags we had a true red to five of Hunter Deckers Shaddour Sanders to 499 Jadon Ott to five and a Saturday Superstar short print of bow Knicks I'll do it for the break guys. Thanks again for the filth up next is personal


Hi everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage and welcome to lesson two of our brand new reading mini course. So what we're going to do today is continue on with our reading course and if you missed lesson one, so in lesson one what we did on Monday was we looked at the real reasons why people struggle and we looked a lot at vocabulary and we gave away a vocabulary improvement plan.  What we're going to do today is all to do with reading skills. So a lot of people talk about reading skills, especially skimming, scanning, things like that, but not a lot of people know what they really are and more importantly how to use them on test day. So we're going to look, a lot of these, going to look at some reading skills that you might not be aware of and how to improve your reading skills and use them. On Friday, so today's Wednesday, yeah, on Friday we're going to look at a strategic approach and how you can use strategies for all of the different types of questions and that will be our third and final lesson on Friday. So today you're watching it now, but on Friday it'll be at 11am. So let's get going. Before we get into lesson two, let's have a look again at this because this is what the whole of this mini course is about. The main reason why people struggle with IELTS reading is they focus on this, they're just the top of the pyramid, which is tips. They want tips and tricks and hacks and shortcuts and they ignore all of these things which are way, way, way more important. So in lesson one we talked a little bit about mindset and how that's important, but we'll talk about that throughout this course, including today. On Monday in lesson one we looked at vocabulary and why the reading test is as much a vocabulary test as it is a reading test. And if your vocabulary isn't at a certain level, then you're really, really going to struggle. So if you haven't watched lesson one, you can go back and watch that after this one. What we're going to look at today is to do with strategy and sorry skills and then on Friday we will look at the strategy. So let's have a look here at what we'll be doing today. So just to state again, we'll be looking at skimming, scanning, we'll also be looking at close reading. This is probably the most misunderstood or the most misused of the reading skills and we'll talk about the real problem. When it's related to skimming, scanning, close reading, all of these skills, we'll talk about the real problem, the real reason why people aren't using these correctly and why you'll get into trouble if you don't understand these and you don't work on them. Also as a little giveaway today, what we're going to give you is full access to our fundamentals course. If you haven't done our free fundamentals course, we're going to give you instant access to that today for free. I'll tell you a little bit more about that at the end of the video. So to explain what, this might seem a little bit weird, but I'll show you this in a second, to explain what skimming, scanning, close reading, what these skills are, I'm going to give you a little bit of an exercise. So how many angels are there outside Rockefeller Center in New York, in Manhattan in New York? So I was here in December, we went to see all the Christmas lights and the amazing place. If you ever get to go to New York, definitely visit Rockefeller Center at Christmas time. So what I'm going to do to explain what skimming, scanning, all these things are is I'm going to try and answer this question just using Google Maps. So I'm not going to use Google search or not going to use Google images straight away or anything like that. What I want to do is just use Google Maps to try and find this. So to think, and this is to help you understand what skimming, scanning, close reading is. So here's where we are. So we're in a little place called Northern Ireland. So if I need to find out where Rockefeller Center is, what do we do? So we don't zoom out and then go to France and look everywhere we can in France and look everywhere in Germany and look everywhere in Norway and look everywhere in Algeria and Chad and all of these places. Now what we're going to do is we're going to zoom out and we're going to scan quickly for the United States because we know it's in New York and I assume that you know New York is in the United States. So we quickly go over here, we scan over here. Okay, it's not Canada, it's not Mexico, it's the United States. Now what do we do next? Do we go to every single state in America and try and find Rockefeller Center there? No, we don't go to California or Texas or Florida or anywhere. So we scan very, very quickly to find New York because that's going to help us do that. So New York's up here. So let's zoom in on the Eastern Seaboard here and we have all of these different places. We're going to go into New York to try and find Manhattan. Okay, so there are five boroughs in New York. We've got Queens, where my sister lives, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island and Manhattan. This is where Rockefeller Center is. So again, we're using scanning to find out where it is. But when we get here, there's a lot of different places and stuff to see in Manhattan, obviously. So we have to pay a little bit more attention here and try and find Rockefeller Center. So if we scan here and try and find it, boom, here it is. And let's remind ourselves of the question. How many angels are there outside Rockefeller Center? So can we quickly scan the pictures of Rockefeller Center to find out the angels? No, we need to look at it a little bit more closely. We need to look at it in a little bit more detail. So let's do that. So here's one that kind of looks like an angel. So that might be, then if we go in here, we can't scan this very, very quickly. We can't skim it to get an idea of how many angels there are. To answer this question, we have to look at it in more detail and actually spend time and count them. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, ten, eleven, I believe. So what's the answer? The answer is eleven. So just by doing that, we used many different skills that you will use on the IELTS test during the reading test. We used scanning to help us find things really, really quickly and locate the correct location. But we didn't use scanning to help us find the correct answer. We just used scanning to help us locate it quickly to save us time, to bring us to the place Rockefeller Center where we could find the correct answer. But then we needed to shift and we needed to change skills and use close reading or paying more close attention to count how many there were. And that's similar to what you'll be doing on the reading test. So let's take it from a more abstract example to what you do every single day. So most of you will read newspapers every day and you use skimming, scanning, and close reading every single day when you're reading newspapers. So let's try and answer another question. Let's try and think about a movie that's in the cinemas right now, Mary Poppins. My question is, is Mary Poppins good? So that's the question I want to answer. So is Mary Poppins good? Or does the newspaper think that the Mary Poppins is good? So if we look at the front page of a newspaper, can I tell if this newspaper, The Times, thinks that it is good or not? No, we've no idea because it's not on the front page. But are we going to use close reading? Are we going to look in detail at every single story to find the correct answer? No, it would be a complete waste of time. Are we going to use skimming to find the correct answer? No, we're not going to skim the front, this story and skim this story. Because again, that would be a complete waste of time. What we're going to do is we're going to go through the paper and scan and look for those keywords, which is Mary Poppins. Or we could look for keywords like movie reviews or cinema reviews or cinema or something like that. Or synonyms of that to try and help us find it. And then when we do, we could look at the title.  So does that help us? Probably not. We're not certain whether this newspaper thinks that it is good or not. So we're probably going to have to look in a little bit more detail. So let's look at the first paragraph. Hopefully you can see that. Can you see that on that? Can you zoom in? Yeah. Okay, so if we look at the first paragraph, there are two ways that we could find out whether this is good or not. Or there are three ways really that we could do this. We could skim it very quickly, which skimming just means reading quickly to find out the general point that is going on there. We could do that pretty quickly. So if we do that when you read it quickly, you kind of get an idea of whether it's a positive or negative review. But would you feel confident answering that question? Is this movie good? Probably not. You probably want to do something else. So the second thing that you could do is you could scan for positive and negative words. So if we do a quick scan here, charmless, hard smiling, memorable, good, hummable, does it really help us? No, there's some positive words and there's some negative words. What we would need to do is actually read it in detail. And if we read this in detail, we need to spend a little bit more time doing that close reading. Then we can understand that just from this first paragraph, we understand that this is not a good movie. Or in the opinion of whoever wrote it, the reporter doesn't think that it's a good movie. So again, demonstrating the different skills that you use. But these skills are very, very different. And some of them are useful in certain contexts. Like for example, let's say I want to go see Mary Poppins. Scanning is going to help me find the times. So what I would do is I would look at the times in the cinema and find the correct time for me. That's going to be really, really, really useful. But scanning to find out whether it's a positive or negative review in that context was useless. Because there was some positive words, some negative words, didn't really help us. Skimming gave us a general idea, but didn't really help us. We needed to combine that with close reading. So you see how important it is to use these different skills but understand that they are very, very different. And they're kind of like having different tools in your toolkit. It doesn't matter how good the tools are, you need to know how to use them and when to use them in order to really, really help you. So let's think about the different reading skills that we have. So when you ask most students or most teachers, like what are the skills that students need to be aware of or what are the things that will help me in the reading test, they'll normally talk about skimming and scanning. So that is true. They are two very useful skills to have, but that is just a small part of the story. Because if you go into the test and think, all I have to do is just skim and scan and then find the correct answer, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. If we go back here, could I just skim and scan this and find out the answer to the question, which is, is Mary Poppins good? No, wouldn't really help us because there are other skills that we need to be aware of. Maybe not necessarily a skill, but very, very, very important, which is why I've included it here. Number one, you need to understand the question. I would include this as a skill in itself, because if you immediately just start reading and you don't understand the questions, then you're going to be in a lot of trouble. If you can't understand the questions, you won't be able to answer those questions. Seems really straightforward, but you wouldn't believe the number of students that do not do that or don't take the time to do that. Also, I've included here synonyms. If you are trying to find the location or find the correct answer where it is in the text, you need to be aware of when you're reading the question that the keyword might not be in the text. It might be a synonym of that. You need to be aware of that. So skimming and scanning, but this really just gets you to the point where of location. The scanning helps you find out where it is, but it doesn't help you find the correct answer. So if we go back to, there's a reason for all of this. If we go back to our Rockefeller Center analogy, if we go back here, oops, nope. So let's go into maps again. So let's go to map of New York and YC. So if we go back here, not available. Okay, excellent. If we use this one, nope. All right, so if we use that one, it doesn't help us answer this question, it just, but it helps us find the location. All right, so that's why it is very important to understand the difference between these. But the real thing is you need to be aware of how important close reading is. It's really, really, really important that you understand in detail what is going on.  So for example, with true, false, not given, doesn't matter if you're really good at skimming and scanning and even close reading. If you don't have the confidence to say, based on all of this, I think it is not given or I think it is true or I think it is false, then you're going to be at a loss. So these are all of the things you really need to think about. So again, these are important, but they're not the most important. And they're just two tools in an array of tools that you need in your toolkit. So think about how most students use these skills. So most students just think skimming, scanning, find answer. So what about the question? What about understanding that? What about close reading? So when you are thinking about these skills, think about all of them being used, but not as in step one, do this, step two, do this, step three, do this, step four, do this, step five, do that. It's not a step-by-step system. They are just tools in your toolkit and you need to be good at all of them and be aware of the difference between them and how they are used for each different type of question. So let's look at why, if you just skim and scan and then do that and use them in order, why you might be in trouble. We'll look at two of the most common types of question. So we have matching headings, which a lot of people complain about and ask for help with and true, false, not given. So for matching headings, you're not going to look at the questions first, you're going to look at the text first and you're going to skim the text to get the general idea. So you're going to read it quickly. That doesn't mean read the first sentence in second sentence, means read everything pretty quickly to find out the general meaning of each paragraph. Then you will go to the questions and you'll try to understand the questions. Then you will read it quickly, or sorry, in more detail. So here's where you read it quickly. Here's where you're reading it more slowly, thinking about the answer and then you're going to decide your answer, which is in contrast to true, false, not given, where first you're looking at the questions. So here you're looking at the questions second. Here you're looking at the questions first, then you're going to scan. You're not skimming at all. So you're not scanning at all when it comes to matching headings. You're not skimming when it comes to true, false, not given, you're scanning more. Number three, then you're going to read things carefully and then decide your answer. So if you think about it in a very simplistic way, which is what most students think is just skim, scan, find the answer, you are going to be in a lot of trouble because that's applicable to some questions, but it needs to be a little bit more nuanced for all the other types of questions. So let's have a look then at how to improve these skills. So let's look at how to improve your scanning. So I'm going to give you some exercises that you can do either on your own, but it's better if you have a partner. So you can do it online with a partner or with a partner in your physical location, or if you're in an English class, you can do these during class or after depending on what your teacher wants to do. But to improve your scanning, find an article, it'll be a newspaper article, as long as it's in English or it could be like an online newspaper. Identify some important words, so not too many, like five to 10 words. Change some words to synonyms. So let's say change 50% of those words to synonyms and then swap with your partner. So give your partner your article and the words and then what you can do is you can turn it into a game, you can race to see who can match the words or who can locate the words as quickly as possible. So when you locate the word, you underline it or highlight it and the first person to identify, to scan and identify all of those words, including the synonyms, wins. And if you do that regularly, you're really going to improve your scanning ability. As most students think that this is easy and they just will be able to do it naturally, but it's a skill you do need to work on. In my experience, some students really don't, are not able to do this well. So if the more you practice it, the better it's going to become. So it's going to improve your scanning and your vocabulary at the same time. Let's move on to skimming. So again, you can do this by yourself or but it's better to do it with a partner. So again, find a newspaper article, look at each paragraph in the newspaper article or it could be an academic journal or it could be anything really and create a title for each paragraph. So set yourself a time limit, it could be one minute, two minutes, five minutes, depending on the length of the article. Look at each paragraph and think about if I had to create a title for this paragraph, what would it be? Then swap your text and your titles. So it's better to cut these out so that the person has to match each title with the appropriate paragraph. So you're just creating your own and then swapping with the partner and create a time limit and whoever matches the most in the time limit, two minutes, five minutes, whatever it is, wins, really, really simple game. But by creating your own titles, it's forcing you to kind of reverse engineer the whole system. So thinking about how you would summarize what's contained in the paragraphs yourself and then helping you skim really, really quickly by matching those with your partner's article. So just a really simple, easy game. You can do it by yourself. And maybe the easiest way to do it by yourself is do this and then once you forget about it, like do it a week later and try and match them up yourself. Improve close reading. So again, you can do this by yourself or but it's better with a partner. Number one, find an article. Again, it doesn't really matter. Write one comprehension question for each paragraph. So take each paragraph and think not, so remember you're reading for detail. So think of a comprehension question that the person can only find out what the answer is if they read the paragraph in detail.  They're really thinking about the detail in the paragraph and come up with a question to do that. Again, just swap with a partner. Time limit, whoever gets the most correct in the time limit wins. So you can make a little game out of it. You can do this yourself as well. So again, they are skills, like any skill, like basketball, football, any skill that you are trying to get better at, you need to do those things and those are just really easy little exercises that you can do. So to summarize everything, if you want to improve your reading skills, number one, you need to understand the difference. You need to understand the difference between skimming, scanning, close reading, understanding the question, coming to a conclusion and deciding the correct answer, understand what those are and the differences between them. Number two, practice thoughtfully and regularly. So what I mean by practicing thoughtfully is actually think about where you're going wrong. Think about your strengths, think about your weaknesses. Those little activities have been designed to really make you think about that. So if you're getting anyone's wrong, think about why you got them wrong. Think about what you need to do to improve and you need to be doing these regularly. You can't do these the night before your test. Like if reading skills are something you really need to work on, work on them every single day for weeks, four months and then you're guaranteed to improve. And number three, have a step-by-step strategy for all of the different question types. So we looked at a very simplified version for matching headings and true, false, not given. By the way, this is not a full step-by-step strategy for these ones. These are just very simplified versions of the ones we do to just help you understand the differences between them. But for, there are so many different types of questions there are true, false, not given, yes, no, not given, multiple choice, matching heading, short answer questions and they go on and on and on and on. All of those different types of questions are testing different subskills, testing different methods. So you need to understand that all of them require a unique step-by-step strategy. And if you can understand that then when you're going into the test you'll be able to just do it on autopilot because you've practiced it so many times that you know, okay, this is this question. So now I'm going to skim, scan, do this in what order you need to do it in. And they provide a framework that will help you practice in the same way over and over again, they really, really, really do help. So we'll be looking at those in lesson three. So today's Wednesday on Friday, a little bit earlier because Friday's stuff to do in the afternoon. So at 11 a.m. UK time on Friday we're going to have the third and final lesson and that is going to focus completely just on strategies and how to use them. So if you want the fundamentals course because a lot of you on Monday we're asking how can I improve my listening? How can I improve task one writing? How can I improve task two writing? How can I improve speaking? How can I improve all of these different things? All you have to do is get our free IELTS fundamentals course. It covers each of these in five videos. Each video focuses on one of these to help thousands and thousands of people get the scores they need. You can get it today absolutely for free. Just click the link. If you are on Facebook, you'll find it above the video. If you're YouTube, you'll find it below in the description. All you have to do is just click that link and follow the instructions. So I think that's going to be it for today. We don't have time for any questions but let me know what you think about that or let me know if you have any questions in the comments and I'll go back and have a look later and hopefully you enjoyed that. And if you haven't seen lesson one, you can go back and watch that and I'll see you live at 11 a.m. on Friday for lesson three. Thank you very much, bye.


Their offensive line seems to do a pretty good job of protecting Watson, especially in the second half, and start doing the things you normally expect him to do. And breaking off schedule plays to hop in and stuff like that, how tough were they? Yeah, he got out the pocket and extended the plays and found Receiver's Deep, which is what he's been doing all season. So we gotta watch that play, plays like that that happened today in the round plays that they got on us and see what we did wrong and get it fixed. What was the mindset when the offense came back and tied it? What was the confidence level? It was through the roof. We never doubted ourselves. We thought we were in it to the very end, to the clock hit zero. And we just got to limit those big plays that they had and play better defense to give our offense a better chance.  Yeah, you gotta contain him the whole game, and unfortunately we didn't do that. So the outcome, it is what it is. Yeah, he's made a really good job today. What's gotta be the mindset of this team now with a couple games left and you guys kind of don't really control your own fate? Man, all we control is winning this next game this week and taking it day by day. Let's get these practices in and prove and get back rolling. Man, it felt forever for me, but to y'all, it's probably a couple seconds. It is what it is, shout out to Jeffrey for tipping the ball up. And that play wouldn't happen without him. So it's a pretty good athletic play by a big man to recognize and get his hands up there. Man, we got a first round for a reason, you know?  Today you got it to 14-all and it just seemed like you came up one play short. Yeah, in this league, when it's late games like this, the margin of error is really, really thin. So we know that and Houston took advantage of that. And we gotta watch them and make corrections.


Welcome to the Doctor Gundry podcast. You know I'm really excited about this episode because we have got a expert on one of my favorite subjects. Right now over 70% of Americans are either overweight or obese, which means hundreds of millions of us are at greater risk for heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. You name it. Obesity is the cause of all this. My guest today says that this can be traced back decades to the introduction of one specific food into our diet, which now makes up about 60% of the diet of most Americans. And I know you're scratching your head going what is it? Well I'm talking about processed foods and ultra processed foods that are loaded with both carbohydrates and fats. But my guest today will explain that not all carbs are bad. You can't wait for this. He's Dr. David A. Kessler and he knows firsthand the role food companies and the government have played in driving this epidemic. Back in the 1990s he served as the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, under both President George H.W. Bush and President Bill Clinton. He's been dean of both Yale and UCSF medical schools and trained and is an act of pediatrician. What a resume. And Dr. Kessler has just written a brand new book. It's called Fast Carbs, Slow Carbs, the Simple Truth about Food, Weight and Disease. So on today's episode he and I will talk about why fast carbs are bad for you, how our diets became so unhealthy, and what we can do about it. Dr. Kessler, it's pleasure to have you on the podcast. It's a pleasure. So you served in two presidential administrations. What was your role there? And what did it teach you about the way the food industry works? So I was commissioner of FDA under the first President Bush. I was reappointed by President Clinton, stayed there seven years, which is pretty long, pretty unusual for an FDA commissioner to be under two presidents, especially of different parties. You may remember that when we were at FDA, we did the food label, the nutrition facts. And that was probably one of the great battles I meant. I had the privilege of taking on tobacco. I was there for the HIV epidemic. There was only one drug when I got there. And by the time we left about seven years later, that disease had been transformed, not cured by any means, but there were a lot of drugs on the market. But no doubt getting that nutrition facts, panel that nutrition facts, that information, that was a real fight with the food industry. They lobbied intensely. They didn't want to put that information on all packaged foods. Yeah, this is something I actually, I have multiple food labels in my office that I show patients how to read properly, because you're absolutely right. And I think I want you to stress this some more. Food companies actively resisted even these simple labels. And you and I both know, you certainly more than I, the way they tried to prevent real information from getting on to those labels. You know, it almost didn't happen. One day, the Secretary of Agriculture said to me, I'm taking the issue to the president. And I said, what? And he said, we do not at the Department of Agriculture, in part because they represented a large part of the meat, saturated fat, you know, products that were high in saturated fat, they didn't think their products would look very good with that nutrition facts label. He says, I'm taking it to the president. And I said, what? He says, no, we're going to the Oval Office. And, you know, picture the scene in the Oval Office, it was President Bush, the father, Dan Quayle, the vice president, Marlon Fitzwater, the press secretary, Jim Baker, the Secretary of State, Secretary Sullivan, Secretary Madigan, six guys who've never cooked in their lives deciding the fate of the food label. And we had been, you know, up and down. It was August, we were coming back from a little time away with the kids. And we had stopped at a McDonald's. And the, I don't know if you ever, so they had the placemats, those paper placemats on the trays. And we had worked with McDonald's to get the nutrition facts, a prototype on that placemat for some of their products. And when the Secretary of Agriculture said, Mr. President, FDA has lost its mind, it's not going to require the industry to spend billions of dollars, you know, take out that placemat, hand it to the president, and say, Mr. President, if it's good enough for McDonald's, it should be good enough for the Department of Agriculture. And that's how policy is made in this country, because the president sided with us, you know, the six of them were sitting there looking at this McDonald's placemat. So I hope you're not saying that to change policy in America, you need to stop at McDonald's, but maybe you are. Well, I mean, it's sometimes it's not the science that drives every policy decision. But it worked. So how how insidious in government and at the FDA, but in the Department of Agriculture, is, you know, food industry in terms of making policy? Certainly, it's a very sophisticated industry. They have lobbyists throughout the town. And they are listened to. But I'm not sure the word insidious mean is the right word. I mean, if you really step back and ask how did we get to where we are? I don't think it's just the lobbyists of today.  And if you go to Mount Vernon, and you look up at the ceiling, and you can see the sheaves of wheat on the ceiling. And Washington, Washington wrote to Lafayette that he had hoped that one day America would become the granary for the world. And we built this enormous infrastructure. I mean, in part, it was consistent with the soil, the farmlands, we were able to mechanize all grain production. And if you look, you know, it just that the enormity of how much of our food supply comes from comes from starch. It's just processed grains that have been ultra processed that have had the structure just pummeled out of it. And if you look at the the processing techniques, the extrusion, one of the techniques, the thermo, the heat, the mechanical forces that take that kernel of that energy and just use such force in processing such that the surface area of those carbohydrates get rapidly absorbed into our GI tract. And we never asked. We never asked what were the consequences, metabolically, biologically, of just that flood of rapidly absorbable glucose into our bodies. So I mean, did food companies know they were doing this or how did they find that this stuff was so addictive?  I mean, that that wheat kernel, that goal, that energy that which sustained, you know, the species for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, they were able to take that wheat kernel and make it into thousands of products. They not only did they use very extensive thermo, mechanical forces on it, I mean, starch is really the delivery vehicle for fat, sugar and salt. You know, exactly what they knew. They knew what Americans, you know, aid, they knew what Americans kept on coming back for. They certainly understood how to make food hyper palatable. But I think on the metabolic consequences, you know, we've always said, these processed foods are not good for us. But we really have never understood the extent of their effect on our metabolism. No one really asked what was the consequences of just flooding our bodies with these rapidly absorbable glucose. You know, it was always a calorie was a calorie, it didn't make a difference. What that calorie was. And, you know, we, we basically viewed our GI track, I mean, as almost a tube that absorbed these foods, we didn't understand the sensors, the hormones, the nerves, the implications of what it was to rapidly absorb higher up in the GI tract. So the food doesn't even get down into your lower GI tract to stimulate other hormones and other signals to give feelings of satiety and fullness. So you know, there are many different levels upon which that rapidly absorbable glucose, and we've just never really asked the question to what are the consequences mean until relatively recently. So what you're saying for our listeners and viewers is that a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie. And a carbohydrate is not necessarily a carbohydrate the way we have been traditionally thought to think about them. So certainly a calorie is a calorie when it comes to just energy content. I mean, there's no doubt about, you know, the laws of thermodynamics, but the consequences of different types of carbohydrate and how our body handles them. That I don't think has been fully understood. And that's why I wrote the book. It's really about carbohydrate quality, more than anything else, and really destroying the structure of our food. I mean, that's really the bottom line message. What processing does is it takes that kernel, it strips away, and opens up that that endosperm that starch and widely disperses it. So any structure, any fiber, any chance that that food will get lowered down in your GI tract is lost. And then that those mechanical thermo mechanical forces very much increase the surface area of that starch and expands it so our enzymes can get to that and digest that so rapidly that that stimulating hormones, they just have very many consequences. It's, you know, it has consequences at the level of the mouth. Because the the food is so soft, it's almost it's pre digested. We don't chew it goes down in a whoosh that affects eating area. It has fat sugar and salt in it that stimulates our brain. It stimulates the GI P hormones that set off these insulin cascades that affect not only metabolism, but also the brain reward circuits. And if it doesn't even get a chance to get to the load or GI tract to stimulate other important hormones and signals, and we never fully understood the consequences of that process. I think you bring up a good point. I've been fascinated with the Kellogg's brothers, among other reasons, because they were a seventh day Adventist sanitarium in Battle Greek. And I was a professor and chairman at Loma Linda University for many years, which is an Adventist medical school. And I was fascinated that the original premise of Kellogg's corn flakes and the advertising behind it was it was pre digested food. And what they had found at their sanitarium was that they were very big on grains, obviously, but they are their patients wouldn't eat them, because they were too hard to eat. And so they figured out that if they, you know, pre digested it, it would ease the metabolism of breaking down food. And that was actually one of the big selling points that started so serial off in Battle Creek, Michigan. So, you know, the issue is the food environment.  You know, I think that those calories that came from those pre digested foods didn't pose perhaps as great a challenge as they do when you are in the modern day food environment. I mean, my greatest concern is the fact that if you look just a remarkable number by a group at the University of North Carolina, if you just look at weight, blood glucose, blood lipids, and blood pressure, only 12.2% of Americans currently meet those guidelines. I mean, 87% of us are metabolically challenged. And the fact is that we're walking around for most of the day in a positive energy balance. And my greatest concern is the effect of these process rapidly absorbable carbohydrates in that context, in that environment, in that physiology.  And when you take these process carbs, and it's things I don't think the Kellogg brothers on certainly they didn't understand the medicine of this. You know, back when they did it, we were not our bodies warrant majority of us warrant is metabolically challenged as we are today. And those rapidly absorbable carbohydrates to those who are metabolically vulnerable to those who are in this cycle of weight gain, insulin resistance, add those processed carbs to those individuals.  I mean, it's like their process poisons for those individuals. And that's not the way it was centuries ago, when we were barely in energy balance. No, I think it's great. And I want to go back to something you mentioned, which I think is really important, certainly from from my work and my research, these, you know, incredibly processed carbohydrates, as you say, are rapidly absorbed out of our small intestine, and nothing that particularly the slow carbohydrates and the soluble fiber that would normally get down to our large intestine, our colon, where most of our microbiome lives.  And I think you're you're spot on that these highly processed carbohydrates may have the same amount of energy that they had 200 300 years ago. But now the the additional fibers that are colon microbiome needs never never arrives. Is that your way of thinking? You just, Steve, you said it more eloquently than I can. And is it we're learning more and more about the microbiome? Is it the microbiome? Is it other hormones, the GLP one hormones in the lower part of the gut? What's the relative contribution? I'm not sure. But I certainly mean, think about it for a moment. What are the two sort of real stalwarts of nutrition that I think we could all mean agree on, right? I use we know that fiber has benefit real fiber in food. And we know that plants and vegetables, you know, are correlated in every study with improved outcome. And what is it about that fiber and those plants? That is key. They don't. They're the antithesis of rapidly absorbable carbohydrates. So is it that those vegetables and those fibers are good for us because they get to the lower part of the colon? Or is it that they don't have these rapidly absorbable glucose?  But the real problem, I think, and I think that, you know, we have people on all sides of the nutrition debate, low carb, low fat, carnivore diet, pick any diet if you really want to cut through the noise, right? And see, you know, what is it that really makes a difference? And that's why I did the book. I mean, I think the the first thing I think there's several other things. But I think the thing that we can agree on is to limit or markedly reduce rapidly absorbable carbohydrates or as I call them fast carbs. It's not just sugar. It's sugar and starch. It's these rapidly absorbable glucoses that are throwing our bodies into metabolic chaos. So give me an example. What's what's the worst culprit out there? Come on, what's name names? What are the really bad foods?   And the vast majority of that is rapidly absorbable glucose. It's starch.   You look at that label, you know, and I thought we had done a good job. What is what do you think that food is? What's your guess? It's, oh, I could name so many, but it's most of the products that you can pick up in a bag. I just defined the bagel. Right? That's about 4% 4% soft, right? But it just has total carbs. And the reality is it's, I mean, it's starch. I mean, it's refined flour. And it says 0% sugar. It says 0% fat. We thought that those total carbohydrates, or at least I thought, were they were relatively bland, they were relatively innocuous. And I just never lumped them in the same categories as fat, sugar and salt. And that was a mistake. Oh, wait a minute, you're hearing it right here for the first time. The commissioner has told us that that was a mistake. And thank you for saying that because actually, I take something like a bagel or even some of these healthy new chips. And I show people the the label.  And it's great. And it's wait a minute. To read a label, and you know, I'll have you say this as well, you look at the total carbohydrates, and then you take away the fiber, which doesn't count in my opinion, or is actually really good. And that'll tell you the sugar. Yeah, and that'll tell you the sugar content of that product. And then what I do is I have them divide by four, because there's four grams of sugar per teaspoon. And I just did this yesterday in my office, and they were eating a healthy taro root chip, unbeknownst to them per serving, there was actually five teaspoons of sugar in their healthy taro root chips, because they'd been processed.  It's all starch. It's but those that starch has certainly that kernel has the chains of the starch molecules have been cut down that surface area of that starch granule is been increased dramatically, it's going to get rapidly absorbed. And the reality is that it has the same ability to increase blood glucose as some 23 teaspoons of sugar. So even though there's no sugar in it, that starch has the ability to convert and is rapidly absorbed glucose. And that is driving are driving us I mean, in significant part in our bodies into metabolic chaos. You know, I mean, if you go back and you look at the it's really amazing that in 2020, if I say, what's the consequences of this rapidly absorbable glucose from both starch and sugar being absorbed almost constantly in the upper GI? I mean, what's the consequences to our health? And you ask nutritionist that they can't answer. I mean, does that is it just calories that cause obesity? Or does in fact, that rapidly absorbable glucose? Does it increase blood glucose? Does it increase insulin levels? Does you know, which comes first? Is it the obesity? Is it the hyperinsulinemia? It almost doesn't matter. Because in an environment that would have excess caloric intake. I mean, we get caught in this vicious cycle of obesity, and hyperinsulinemia, and elevated glucose.  Because once you're in that vicious cycle, our bodies are really just they're thrown out of whack. All right. So you wrote the book to alert us of this danger. But the second part of the title is slow carbs. So how do we get this train wreck back on the tracks? Well, so what's the best slow carb? What doesn't contain rapidly absorbable glucose when it's ingested? I mean, and, you know, that's, you know, we sort of knew it, but we didn't quite know it in these terms.  They don't have this rapidly absorbable glucose is very little in it. They do not have this the structure just whacked out of it, structure is intact. And it has that that fiber is part of that structure and they are the ultimate slow carbs. And we can talk about other types of grains that mean rye, buckwheat, other grains, their intact whole grains that are more slowly digestible. But the reality is the best slow carb there is, I mean, is the vegetable that we've been talking about. And because they, they have the structure, they have the fiber, they, they resist this rapid absorption in the upper GI tract. Yeah, as you as you know, if I could get people to eat greens all day.  It's, it's impossible not to. And you do, you're right, these these foods are, you can't break them down fast enough, you don't have the enzyme systems and you actually need bacteria to actually break down and intact cell wall. That's exactly correct. I mean, it's not rapidly absorbed. It's the antithesis of these fast carbs. Look, I, I don't think I think it's very hard to eliminate the reality of all fast carbs from the diet. And there's also me the question is what are you? What do you replace those fast carbs with? And that's a great debate and love to talk to you about that because I think there's an enormous opportunity, not only the ability to get back our, you know, our bodies into some metabolic normalcy and, you know, be able to control our weight and to control our blood glucose. But the real question is what do you do when you want to cut these out? What do you replace those calories with?  And, you know, I have great friends who have, you know, I think have seen the problems with these fast carbs and with these rapidly absorbable carbohydrates. But, you know, there was another thing that happened to me as I did the research for the book and I spent a lot of time trying to understand the drivers of acute atherosclerotic heart disease. And, you know, the nutrition community, I don't think is understandably as focused on that as the cardiology community. But we now know that these blood lipids, the LDL, more specifically, you know, the LDL particles who have ApoB on that. The reality is that those are causal. They're certainly in the causal chain of atherosclerotic heart disease. And, you know, part of my job at FDA was to insist on these very large drug trials to make sure we had the data. And the reality is certainly from the drug data, the lower you get LDL, the more you can decrease cardiovascular risk, atherosclerotic cardiovascular risk. We can get LDL down in this country, you know, just to 70, let's say on the average, we can wipe out 70, 80% of atherosclerotic heart disease. And it would be as big a contribution as we've had from tobacco. But that involves getting lipids down, especially LDL particles. And the question is how to do that.  And I don't want to just sit here, you know, and advocate on the drug side. But we do know that you could reduce a plant based diet, we can reduce LDL by some 40% in any cases. Now, maybe it's not as powerful as drugs and certain people it is. But in others, the drugs are more powerful and can get down lower. But I think as a country, I mean, if we can do three things, if we can markedly reduce these fast carbs, if we can get our LDL numbers down. And if we engage in just moderate intensity exercise, to be able to maintain our insulin sensitivity, limit our fast carbs, get our LDL down. However you want to do it, and engage in moderate intensity exercise, I think we could dramatically change the health. Not only ourselves and our families, but of the entire country. Yeah, I've been preaching for over 20 years now that if if I'm looking at a lipid panel, the first thing I do is look at triglycerides, which in general come from sugar and starch metabolism in the liver. Correct. And lowering the triglycerides is my number one objective. Because when triglycerides go down, LDL follows. And the other great thing that happens in all my patients is that as as triglycerides go down, HDL goes up. And that actually that the triglyceride HDL ratio is the is the ratio that I use in my patients to determine, you know, how I'm doing. And I also use oxidized LDL, because in my humble opinion, it's whether these LDL particles are actually going rancid or rusty, that actually stimulates the atherosclerotic cascade at the endothelial level. But I couldn't agree with you more, if we get processed fast carbs out of the diet, it's amazing how triglycerides plummet, they just plummet. I think that's exactly right. I think it's a combination. I think there's no doubt. You know, there are a lot of terms that that the blood lipid lipidologists can use. I think we're talking about the non HDL, lipoproteins. And that's really the APOB LDLs and the triglycerides. And I think getting those down, however you want to do it. And I think there are a lot of different options. And I think we have to be open to that. But reducing those fast carbs and then markedly lowering LDL, I think is probably the greatest chance to improve your health, certainly when it comes to metabolic and cardiovascular disease. Okay, you mentioned getting fast carbs away from people is hard to do. What help me out here? What do you say? What do you replace these things with on a daily basis? Give me one exchange. What are you trading your bagel for? Well, so I mean, one of the things I did in the book, even though the book, you know, is tries to explain the science and tries to be accessible. One of the things I did is to do exactly that. In the back of the book, I had one of the great PhD dietitians from London helped me do those substitutions. And, you know, my general view right now, is that anything that's not a processed carb, you could eat.  But it's anything you can go to intact whole grains. I mean, in breakfast, you can go to any form of protein. You can go to plant proteins.  And I think that the most important thing is to get those fast carbs out of the diet. But for those people whose saturated fat increases their LDL, and I've seen that you switch people to a carnivore or the old Atkins kind of diet, they bump their LDL on average by about 10% some as high as 30% and that's sending the LDL in the wrong, wrong direction. But I think the most important thing is just cut out the processed carbs. Anything that's not processed carbs, I think is fair gain. Yeah, I'd put a word of warning here, at least from my perspective, that there's no such thing as a healthy whole grain, because when people read labels, they see the word whole grain, but these are for the most part, processed whole grains, exactly getting back to what you're trying to protect against. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I added somewhat and I again, I didn't see it. I didn't fully understand it. But the vast majority of those whole grains, what happens is that they are processed, that wheat kernel is processed just like any other refined carbohydrate, and the brand is simply added back. But the rest of that endosperm is highly processed. And while there may be some benefit, no doubt, to adding that brand back, it is anything but a slow carb. Great. Thanks for clarifying that because I actually have examples of whole grain bread and whole grain crackers in my office. And I, you know, have the patients show me where the whole grains are. And they can't because obviously there aren't any, you know, whole grains in there. It's all sadly a ruse. You know, I think the labeling laws was an amazingly good idea. But I think your point when we started the show was the labeling laws have been so manipulated by companies, the pressure that was put on you as the FDA commissioner. But it was a part we didn't understand the biology of the GI tract. We didn't understand the differences that had made a difference, whether the food structure was intact. We didn't understand that where in the GI tract, the food was absorbed, what it stimulated, both at the level of the mouth, the brain, the upper GI tract, the lower GI attack, the microbiome, we didn't understand that. We focused on fat, sugar, and salt. Yes, there are issues, but we left out, I think the, you know, the bulk of the problem, which is very honestly, starch is process carbs. Great to have you on the program. Where do people find out about the book? Where do they find out about you and what you're doing? Comes out the book comes out on March 31. It's should be at everyone's wherever you buy books. Go to your local bookstore, please. Local bookstore. Absolutely. And it's fast carbs, slow carbs. And I try to make it accessible. I try to make it understandable. There are certainly references in there for those in the health community, but it's meant to be an easy read. And it's the real goal is to change how you look at food. Great. So before I let you go, we always have an audience question. And I'm going to have you help me out on this one if you don't mind. So Valerie asks, what is the healthiest way to gain weight while adhering to plant paradox recommendations? My husband is six six and can't get enough calories to maintain his weight. And I think this is actually a great question because we're talking about fast carbs and slow carbs. And most people think to gain weight, you got to have these fast carbs. What, what do you think? So I mean, I think the only they're probably only two instances where fast carbs have a role. Right. And I think, and one is in the extreme, if you're feeding somebody intravenously, and you, you know, you're in an acute situation, the issue also has to do, and it's more complicated, I think in the very early year of first year of life. Other than that, I think that anything that's not a processed carb would be fair gain to be able to sustain weight. I think that staying away from fast carbs, and if you can do that, but in composite diet to be an energy balance, I think that's the best rule. Yeah, I think that's really important. So I do have people who do lose a lot of weight by following my program. Most of it, you know, obviously, well needed weight loss. But there are certain people who it is difficult to maintain their weight. What I've done is actually increase their nut consumption, particularly macadamia nuts. And I really urge people in this category to use the non lectin containing grains, which are millet and sorghum, and to use lots of the traditional fiber containing foods like yams, like sweet potatoes, like turnips, like parsnips. And I personally view them as a delivery device for olive oil, as all of my listeners know. But on this regimen, knock on wood, we've never been able to not get weight on people. But what I see disastrously is exactly what Dr. Kessler has talked about is many people to gain weight, they go back to the bagels and the chips and all these slow carbohydrates. And yes, they do gain weight. But their lipid profile goes out of whack, their insulin starts going up. And very rapidly, we're back to where we started.  The reality is if you want to lose weight, whatever diet you're going to choose, you're going to have to be on it for the duration. The reason why these all these diet studies are a hockey puck, when you look at the graph, and the weight gain, we start regaining it at six months as people go off it. And the reality is that those fast carbs throw your body back into a metabolic vicious cycle, that's very hard to maintain weight loss when you're in that metabolic chaos. Very good. It's a great place to end the program. And Dr. Kessler, good luck with the book and hope to meet up with you face to face someday. Dr. Gundry, a real pleasure. Thanks for the kindness. Thank you very much. All right. Take care. It's time for a review of the week from Apple podcast Boca Jr. 5553. Love this podcast and the great advice from Dr. Gundry. I am confused about all of the supplements recommended in the plant paradox. Could you give a list of which basic supplements to take daily? Well, I actually do give those lists in all my books. And really, if if I had three supplements to tell any human being to take, it would be vitamin D3 bare minimum is 5000 international units a day. If you're used to the milligram system, that's 125 milligrams. And fish oil, whether you get it as omega threes from fish or whether you get it as long chain omega threes from algae. Those are two of the biggest things that you should get. The third thing is I recommend that everyone take timed release vitamin C about 1000 milligrams twice a day. If you can't find or can't afford time release vitamin C, get yourself some chewable vitamin C tablets put four in your pocket and chew those tablets every four four times a day. It's one of the best things you can do to improve your long term heart health, artery health, and oh, by the way, vitamin C on a continuous basis is really effective at preventing flu as is the vitamin D. So those are my quickie recommendations. So that's it. We'll see you next week on the Dr. Gundry Podcast. We got another good one coming up for you. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.


Food safety starts at the market. Shop for items that do not need refrigeration first. Buy cans and packages that are in good condition. Avoid buying cans that have denser bulges and packages that are torn. Pay attention to sell-by, use-by, and expiration dates. Try to use products before their use-by date. Products still could be safe, but they'll start to decline in quality after this date. Do not buy products after their sell-by date. Stores should take products past their sell-by date off the shelves. Do not buy or eat products after the expiration dates. Products may not be safe after expiration dates. Buy fruits and vegetables that are not bruised or damaged. If provided, wrap raw meat, poultry, and seafood in plastic grocery bags. Separate raw meat, poultry, fish, and eggs from ready-to-eat items, including produce. If using reusable grocery bags, have separate bags for raw meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs. If groceries will be in your car for more than one hour, place raw meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, and other perishables in a cooler filled with ice. If possible, make the grocery store your last stop.