When we see the internet of things, let's make it an internet of beings. When we see virtual reality, let's make it a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let's make it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let's make it about human experience. And whenever we hear that a singularity is near, that is always remember the plurality is here. Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Audrey is a civic hacker and Taiwan's digital minister in charge of social innovation is known for revitalizing global open source communities such as Pearl and Haskell. Audrey served on Taiwan National Development Council Open Data Committee and K-12 Curriculum Committee and led the country's first e-rulemaking project prior to joining the cabinet. Audrey was a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography and with social text on social interaction design. Taiwan's Digital Minister has made the 2019 list of 100 global thinkers published by Foreign Policy Magazine. She has leapt into prominence in Japan for creating an app that combats coronavirus by showing face mask inventory levels at a glance. In 2016, she became Taiwan's youngest ever government minister at the age of 35. Recently, she was wowed with Japan and the rest of the world with her leadership on the coronavirus crisis. I am so honored and blessed to have you here. Thank you so much for being here, Audrey. Welcome to the show. Yeah, good local time everyone. Yes, it's morning for me. I'm in Hamburg, Germany at 8 o'clock and you're in Taiwan, so we've got quite a distance. But I really appreciate you finding the time to come and speak with us today. I'm going to dive right into it because we don't have a lot of time because you have an extremely busy schedule. But I want you to catch us up to speed. How have you been during this crazy time since actually December 2019 until present where we've seen all sorts of things? Have you had some resilience? How have you weathered all this thing around the world, not just COVID, but Black Lives Matters, racial inequality, and all sorts of other craziness going on around the world? We're quite peaceful here, actually. It's been more than half a year since we relaxed the counter-pandemic rules. Of course, we're not like perfect. It's been seven deaths so far in the past year or so, but it's safe to say that Taiwan has countered the pandemic without resorting to lockdowns. And the other one that you mentioned, the infodemic or the polarization and things like that online. Again, I think we countered without any administrative takedowns. And so I wouldn't say we're completely peaceful here. We do still wear masks, keep social distance, wash our hands until vaccination. But otherwise, the people don't panic. There was no chaos as we did actually in 2003 when SARS, that's the precursor to COVID-19, has hit Taiwan. That was pretty chaotic. And everyone above 30 years remembers that. And in 2004, we resorted to put in the legislative and the technological institutions to make sure when SARS comes again, we do not panic and that paid this time.  In 2003, with SARS and also precursor MERS, and there was all sorts of things that kind of rocked Taiwan and Asia in general. And you guys were well prepared. You knew something could be coming and you're very well prepared. But there's a story behind Dr. Willan and Wuhan. And I'd like you to tell that and kind of how you were able to quickly react and dive into that with preparedness. Definitely. So Dr. Li Wenliang from Wuhan, this time around, posted a year ago around December 30th or so on their social media that there were, and I quote, seven new SARS cases, unquote. Now, his message did not reach the people of Wuhan in general, but they did reach people in Taiwan. So Dr. Li Wenliang quite literally saved the Taiwanese people, because there was a young doctor, the name No More Pipe, a nickname, on Taiwan's equivalent of Reddit or the PTT who cross-posted Dr. Li Wenliang's message and people uploaded it. So after the upvoting, the medical officers in the Center for Disease Control noticed it. So the very next day, January the 1st, 2020, we started health inspections for all flight passengers coming in from Wuhan. And we set up the Central Command Center for the Disease Control and so on, so-called CECC, Central Epidemic Command Center, even before we had the first local case. And so these two taken together made sure that we didn't panic, but rather responded in a very orderly fashion, something that we run yearly drills since SARS that prepared us for. Now the PTT is very interesting because it's not a private company. It's actually a digital public infrastructure. It's run by the social sector, namely the National Tower University. Its entire operating expense is probably subsidized by the National University Education Budget and so on. And the governance is open source. The entire website and the bulletin board system was open source. So because of that, it doesn't serve the advertisers' interests or the shareholders' interests, but are much more interested in issues with public impact, such as Dr. Li Wenliang's message. That is so beautiful to hear and that it was quickly. There are some other things in there that my listeners probably don't know and I want to touch on them. Because of the open governance and your upvoting, you have a system that uses social innovation, social media and technology to not to reply or negatively post or get into debates about things, but upvoting like or dislike, so to say. I'd like you to kind of go more into that, how instead of getting into debates or controversy or rumors or conspiracies, it's more like data that you collect through this upvoting process, which quickly can say, is that a legitimate concern? Do we need to react to that? If you could take us a little bit deeper into this system, and it's one that you created, correct? Or it wasn't around before you started? It's definitely a team effort. I mean, the mask availability map, that was Howard Wu and Fijian Qian from Thailand City. My role is more like an amplifier to make sure that all the different stakeholders are aware of these civic technologies. So you can say that I may connect up between the civic tech on one side and gov tech, government technologists on the other, but definitely it's not my sole whack. That's not the case. There's like literally thousands of people on both sides of these things. Now, yeah, so the upvoting, I think that's quite crucial because we have a very interesting system called the JOIN system, join.gov.tw. It's a combination of petition, like we the people in the US, regulatory pre-announcement like regulation.gov, participatory budget, whether it's no equivalent, and many other things. And so it's role in one, but people on those pro-social social media arrangements like participatory budgeting and e-petition, we design the space very carefully so that people do see, for example, you may want to consider this petition if you have joined that petition, but there is the two columns beneath all the petition topics. One is for the supporting ideas and one is for the ideas that may not support the petition, but there's no way to reply across the two columns. That is to say, there's upvote, there's downvote, there's posting your ideas, but there's no way to address some commentary by name. And quite interestingly, once we take away the reply button, the trolls cannot grow. We see much more nuances and much more eclectic deliberations between people's ideas rather than just attacking each other, the personal attacks and so on, which may be good to sell advertisements, but definitely does not belong in digital public infrastructure. So we call these spaces such as the JOIN platform pro-social media, whereas the more anti-social part of the social media does not apply here. So there's a couple things that have emerged over the years. One is the Copenhagen letter, the other is the Center for Humane Technology from Thurston Harris, and those who are kind of trying to bring humanity back into technology. And a lot of our digital twins, so to say, are being used against us to sell our data and so on. And so I really like the fact that the government is set up so that your social innovation is set up in this way. And I want to dive a little bit more into that later as we get further into the discussion. But this sets us up to a unique time. I think it couldn't have been a better time for us to meet because there's something very similar that happened on January 6th, that kind of happened at the Capitol in the United States. I'm in Germany, but I'm an American. And it was a different type of kind of interference with Congress and things. But in 2004, I believe it was, you guys occupied parliament. In 2014. 2014, sorry, 2014. You were among others who occupied parliament. And I would, I'd like to hear more a little bit about the behind the scenes, what happened in Transpart. I make an assumption, but I'd like it to hear it from you. I don't think there was guns involved and flanks. No, it was thoroughly nonviolent. Yeah, the sunflower movement in 2014 March was three weeks of peaceful demonstration in the occupied parliament. But demonstration is in a sense of a demo, not as a protest, as showing how it is actually possible to deliberate a quite complicated trade agreement, the CSSTA or cross straight service and trade agreements with Beijing, while the parliament were refusing to deliberate it substantially. People from more than 20 NGOs each deliberated their particular aspect. It could be about human rights. It could be about labor conditions, small media enterprises, environmental impact, cybersecurity, and so on on the CSSTA. And we managed to get rough consensus after three weeks of live streamed deliberation with half a million people on the street and many more online. And those were ratified by the head of the parliament. So a little bit different from other jurisdictions. And the occupy was a success. So one of the aspects, for example, talks about whether Beijing components of the then new 4G infrastructure could be considered, quote, private sector unquote. And the rough consensus was no, there was no pure play private sector in the Beijing regime because if they want, they can disappear company leadership, they can install party branches within those large enterprises and so on. So we should not actually treat them as private sector, but should instead run a systemic risk analysis. Every time there is a upgrade or anytime there's a kind of firmware updates on security issues and so on. But the mortars, this will be more expensive than we, if we have done with Ericsson or Nokia or other vendors. So the rough consensus was that no, we're not going to allow Beijing components in our then new 4G infrastructure. So that's just one out of maybe 100 topics deliberated on the street. But you can see in the past couple years, many other jurisdictions are now having the same conversation around 5G this time, but essentially the same arguments. And so for that three week period, did you actually sleep in the parliament where you guys there 24 seven for that whole time? Oh, wow. Okay. And so now you were kind of seen as someone who's bringing in cap five cables and keeping the internet and other things. Did that lead to the request for you to be part of the ministerium and help out? That's right. So once we set up the high speed fiber optic connection and ethernet connection of the occupied area, I wasn't like figuratively speaking. I wasn't there physically, but I'm there in my spirit. That is to say, I watched the live streams and help setting up the live stream for each and every NGOs that participated in the deliberation and the real time transcripts and things like that that would enable a conversation that's actually fruitful that moves forward by kind of diverging a little bit during the day and converging a little bit during the night. And the next day we can talk a little bit more about more nuances rather than having the same conversation like literally every day as we see in some other occupied movements. And so that's my role. But again, it's not just myself, but rather like literally hundreds of civic hackers. Now, after that, the cabinet reshuffled a little bit at the end of 2014, all the mayoral candidates that supported open government and the Occupy movement gets elected, sometimes surprisingly, even to themselves, and people who did not support this did not get elected. So the newly reassembled cabinet around the end of that year decided to work with young reverse mentors, the facilitators, the enablers of the Occupy by working with the people no longer just for the people. I was then invited as a consultant for a project run by the minister of the cabinet at the time. So around the end of 2014, I started working with the career public service and personally trained maybe a thousand or so career public servants in the art of listening skill. So you're very much to me a global citizen. I've heard you speak Japanese. I've heard you speak some German. I'm busy. Yeah, I'm busy. You speak a couple languages and you do, I guess you're had a lot to do with linguistics, computer linguistics as well. And so I love that, but I want to start out with a question. Do you consider yourself to be a global citizen? And how would you feel about a world without borders, divisions, nations, and separating human humanity one from another? Well, I consider myself a homo sapiens. My community is that of the homo sapiens community.  So I get this more than global, right? This is basically saying I don't have in my mind this binary division that says some part of humanity is closer to me, some part is farther away from me. I think I just belong to one very large community and that is the homo sapiens community. I love that. Taiwan is really 23.5 million people and their broadband is a human right. Everybody's got access to broadband, high speed transportation and these social innovations and digital services to enable them to not only to have a government that's open and transparent, but to have a voice, a seat at the table. What more can you kind of tell us on how that formed? Was that there before you got in as a minister and how have you kind of pushed to make this open data charter open by default and these type of things to push those forward in Taiwan? Yeah, when I was a young child, there was already this idea that public telephone communication is a human right and after that internet is human rights. But in the past four years, we've upgraded to say broadband is a human right, meaning this is not just about downloading speed, but also uplink as well because without the uplink, you can't really voice your concerns. You can only download what other people have to say like radio and television. So anywhere in Taiwan, you're guaranteed to have 10 megabits per second, both ways actually at just 16 US dollars per month. I limited data, otherwise it's my fault like personally. And so we've upgraded on previous promises and made it much more symmetric. The other contribution that I made along with people from the K212 basic education curriculum is that instead of media literacy or data literacy, we now teach media competence or data competence and digital competence.  Now, the primary schoolers are perfectly capable of setting up like air boxes, the inexpensive measures devices of air quality and share it to a distributed ledger. And if you do so, previously unteachable concepts such as GDPR, data stewardship, joint controllership and so on become that much easier to teach and to show because people like very young people are now also data stewards and they can also participate in the fact-checking efforts of our presidential deliberations and platform and debates and learn how to balance the different viewpoints, how to check your sources, how to be factual and things like that. Again, as media producers and not just media listeners and consumers and so on. And so I would say open data and so on grows out of this civic engagement initiatives that see even very young people not yet at the age of voting still very fruitful as contributors to the governance. And once they are of the age to vote, they understand democracy not just as uploading three bits of information per person every four years, which was called voting by the way, but actually can participate in petitions, sandbox applications, presidential hackathon, participatory budgeting and so on, which are much more continuous day-to-day democracy. You've touched on several things in there and I need you to go even deeper and explain them for my listeners. So every year there's a presidential hackathon. You've addressed that. There's also a sandbox and the fork type of governance, zero, as well as air box. And so there's a couple of things, but I would like you to go deeper and explain a little bit more about those. But in particular, I know enough to be dangerous about your air box system, which is air quality sensors and data and monitoring. But I believe there's a close tie to that and COVID, airborne and pollution. And also in Taiwan, China and many places in Asia, it's common not just to wear masks for pandemics, but also because of air pollution. And so there's a tradition of mask wearing. If you could address that, I would really appreciate it. Definitely. So as you can see, we have been masking our pockets all the time. And that's even before the pandemic, because as you said exactly, we see mask wearing as something that protects our own mouth, our own face, from our own hands. That's a very different from the messages that we see across other jurisdictions where the masks are built as something that I don't know, protected elderly, protected vulnerable people and frontline workers that protects others. But in our case, the masks are there to protect ourselves. And so very interestingly though, those appeal to rational self-interest actually made it easier to remind each other to wear a mask. Because if you are not wearing a mask and I say, hey, why are you not protecting yourself? That's very natural for me to say. But if I say, please wear a mask to show you respect to me, that's very difficult to say, unless of course we're very good friends, right? And so quite paradoxically, appealing to rational self-interest rather than any, you know, Confucianism or things like that made it easier for people to communicate to each other the importance of wearing masks. Now, during the pandemic, of course, we very quickly found out that the medical grade masks, lightweight enough to be worn the entire day, that is going to be crucial. And the people really clamored for the government to ramp up the production, because at the beginning of the pandemic, we only had less than two million medical mask production facility per day, but that's less than one-tenth of the total population. But by now, we've increased it more than 10-fold. And everyone can go to a nearby pharmacy or convenience store using their national health card, which covers pretty much everyone's universal, and get 10 medical masks per two weeks at extremely affordable prices. And so I think this makes a lot of sense to make sure that people who develop any symptoms, for example, can get the masks at just, I think it's 14 U.S. cents per mask, and put it on and go to a nearby clinic for a full diagnosis. And that's even cheaper than going to a drive-through test in other jurisdictions. And so that makes sure that the local clinics and pharmacies retain their trust. In fact, it's even more trustworthy because they participate with the local people to ensure a universal mask wearing culture, not just top-down, but rather people who remind themselves. And that in turn reduced our R-value of the COVID-19 around April to be under one, meaning that there's no local spread ever after. We do have like from time to time local transmissions for one person or two people. But after that, it doesn't tend to spread because more than three-quarter people are wearing masks and washing their hands. So can you also address your presidential hackathon, the sandbox and fork gov zero? Certainly. So the mask availability map that you alluded to from the very beginning started by essentially forking, that is to say taking something existing and developing it toward a new direction forking existing air maps, air box maps that shows the air pollution and so on, which is why it could be developed in less than three days since we announced mask rationing in early February last year. Now, that's also informed a lot of people who want to contribute similar maps, but for other things, especially around climate change in the presidential hackathon. So every year, the president gives out five trophies to social innovation teams across the sectors. And the five winning teams receive a trophy, which is shaped like Taiwan with a micro projector underneath the trophy. And when it turned on, it projects the president giving the team the trophy. So it's a meta, the self-describing trophy. And that shows the presidential promise to basically deliver whatever they did in the past three months into the national scale deployment as soon as possible, usually within the first year after they won the presidential hackathon. So for example, there's actually not just one, but two maps in last year's presidential hackathon winning teams. One shows a map of the arable, not really arable, plentiful lands that's currently owned by the government, but does not have any activities. And it's using augmented reality, enable people who plan to plant together to take care of those trees together, kind of an internet of trees, and make sure that people who can volunteer their time into planting and so on can work with the municipal government to get those places for land trees planted. Now, there's also another map that shows all the areas near you that offers free drinking water. And it's like Pokemon Go. It's a thoroughly gamified pro-social platform that rewards people to instead of buying new plastic bottles using their refillable bottles to get water from the drinking fountains. And it can also publish from a notification for the places where people are likely to suffer from extreme heat, like heat damage and things like that to remind them to drink water in a timely fashion. And once you complete a mission of 50 check-in every day, you form a new habits, and that could also be redeemed to get more specialty drinks from the local arable plants producers and so on. So everything is connected together as a way to build more like a solidarity economy across the board to reduce plastic and also to counter climate change and so on. So for all these cases that want the trophy, we make sure that within the next 12 months we take it and scale it into national scale policies. Yeah, I love how that sandbox works, so that if it's shown to work without going through all the red tape of governance and bureaucracy, it's first kind of hacked and tested and tried in this sandbox. And if the data and it's proven to be effective, then you bypass all that. It's implemented and I really love that. And it's also funded by so it's not really funded. There's no impact to the government as far as I understand. That's right. There's no monetary price associated with presidential hackathons. So if it doesn't work out, then we thank the participants. So we all learned something, but if it does work out, then the five team that did have their ideas work out basically gets the funding from first the municipal government that sees this as something that's proven that actually works, but also from the economic sector and the social sector, who often volunteered the budget and the time respectively. So in 2018, the World Economic Forum listed Taiwan as one of the four global innovators in the world. But even before that, Taiwan has been singled out time and time again for being innovative, using social innovation for doing things in a very progressive and different manner. Most recently, like I mentioned earlier, Japan is really looking towards you, honoring you not only for different things on your progressiveness. This brings me to kind of a semi-controversial question and that is, what in the hell is wrong with the WHO? They are not allowing Taiwan to be part of showing their examples that they work and I believe they feel that there's some kind of a tie to China. And so I know in March of 2020, there were some online interviews of the WHO and Taiwan that they were wondering, why don't you look to some of our innovations, our data, what we've experienced, how it's working for us. And for some reason, I don't know if it was a minister, but he pretended like the telephone call hung up. I'm sure you're aware of that. Then again in November of 2020, the same thing. It's like they're don't seem that the proof is really there in what you're practicing that it's a better model. And so my question is, is there any hope that you'll eventually get into the WHO or that are you going to kind of hack that system and bypass those so that other countries say, even if the WHO doesn't let Taiwan in, we're going to follow some of their success stories and implement those regardless. Yeah. Well, nowadays, of course, we conduct most of our meetings online as we are doing right now. So there of course is ways to hack is maybe a okay word to use here to convene online meetings with ministerial counterparts around the world, even if it's not within the official like the World Health Assembly. That said, of course, Taiwan's exclusion from the ministerial access of the World Health Organization probably costed many other jurisdiction at least 10 days of time around a year ago in January because you can see we started this whole health inspection from the 1st of January, but as late as the 14th of January, the WHO was still saying that there's no clear evidence of human to human transmission, which is of course not what we are rolling out. So and what what I'm trying to say is that even though we ahead and still have limited scientific access, it's very different because the scientific even the top scientific expert that we do have access with doesn't necessarily translate into ministerial actions unless of course, like in Taiwan, where at a time our vice president is also the top epidemiologist authority person that wrote literally the textbook on epidemiology. So if you know, all other countries have vice presidents like that, then maybe scientific access is somehow equivalent to ministerial access, but it's not the case. So I think having ministerial access would really help the world. And what we are now seeing is limited scientific access, which is not sufficient. And so I want to dig just a little bit deeper. I won't go too much more. But so on one side, what I'm hearing from the WHO side is there's a fear of continued relations with China and Taiwan. But I want to ask you on the flip side, has China responded to how Taiwan has solved some of these problems and done some things and said, oh, wow, we're going to implement those. We're going to take the rulebook or some of the things that Taiwan's doing. And you see China implementing that and seeing success from that. Well, we did send a couple experts from Taiwan to visit Wuhan to gather information on the outbreak and control measures implemented in Wuhan. That was in 12th of January last year or almost exactly one year ago. But far as I understand, the bilateral communications and so on are mostly on the scientific level. I'm not aware of any ministerial level collaborations in this particular regard. Okay, great. Thank you. So I really believe that you guys are a leader in many respects and to just kind of put the COVID to bed as much as possible. The serious thing is I want to ask you when you get the vaccine, there's now there's discussion that you still would need to continue to wear a mask and keep social distancing because you could be a carrier. You might not get it yourself, but you could be a carrier, which would mean that these measures with social distancing and mask wearing would still need to continue, which is not a problem for Taiwan. They've been doing this all along. They also went back to baseball games and other events, big concerts and events as well, with minimal amount of deaths or impacts, as you mentioned in the beginning. As a futurist, as somebody who does social innovation and is thinking forward, how do we get into a world or what are your ideas or thoughts of moving to a world where when the next pandemic comes, when the next thing that we're not going to the next level where we're wearing a gas mask, a space suit, an oxygen mask, just to interact with each other, to continue business, but that we can not return to a normal life, so to say, but a different life where we can still interact one with another. Do you see some innovations or some things emerging that will help in that respect, regardless of the vaccines? Well, in a sense, we are wearing our cameras and microphones and earphones at the moment. We are wearing them so that we can communicate. I would argue much more clearly than if both of us are in the same room and having to wear a mask. I see you just fine, even though that we're literally hours apart in terms of time zones. So I think the telehealth and telelearning and other communication technologies are going to be here for the long run, mask or not, or vaccines or not. And I personally participated in a lot of virtual reality communications in the past year. I had this co-creation session with the artists and curators from the new museum, New York, and we wore this XR space, which is a VR with no kind of wires and no controllers. I just control it using my hand, and it's very lightweight. I can wear it for hours, and it has a 5G built-in. So there's connectivity, even if I'm not indoors. So I can bring my surroundings to PS in other places to enjoy this co-presence. So we had artistic creations on the top of the Matterhorn Mountain in Switzerland, and which is very difficult to get to a place, even for very healthy people. And that really is quite enlightening in terms of the overview effect that we had on the globe. If you want to talk about global issues, I highly recommend to have it at a summit in VR in either a very high mountain or even in the International Space Station, because it's much easier to see us as a holistic being when you're up there as compared to a trap in a simple room. I love that. I speak a lot about the overview effect and that cosmic perspective. I believe it's very important. The last thing I want you to discuss regarding the COVID and some kind of things. You have this, have launched Fast, Fair, and Fun. There's some interesting, beautiful things that have come out of that. Can you explain that for us? Certainly. So Fast, Fair, and Fun refers to the three pillars of social innovation when it comes to counter pandemic. The fast part I already alluded to, it's this advanced deployment of not just flight inspections, but also the central epidemic command center. Now the CECC is a life press conference arrangement with all the different ministries reporting to the health minister, and the health minister has been holding a lot of life press conferences that respond not only to the media who can ask any question and the press conference only ends when they run out of questions, but also from people calling in to like the toll-free number 1922. And anyone can call in and get the scientific explanation. And even like last April, there was a young boy who called saying, hey, you're rationing out masks, but all my classmates who are boys have those blue masks, but all I get is pink mask. And I don't want to wear it to school. And the very next day, all the medical offices in the CECC press conference were pink. And the ministry even said that pink panther was this childhood hero or something. So the boy become the most hit boy in the class where only he has the color that the heroes wear. And the fair part pertains to the mask rationing. And people can see before their eyes more than 100 different tools that shows the real-time availability of medical masks and people who queue in line can see when people queue before them, swipe their national health card actually reduced by 10 every time anyone swipe a national health card on the real-time inventory of that particular pharmacy. So people can trust each other much more through this participatory accountability. Now, finally, the fun part. The CECC has a spokes dog. The name is Zhong Chai. It's a Shiba Inu. And we explain social distancing in terms of when you're indoor, please keep three Shiba Inus away. And when you're outdoor, keep two Shiba Inus away. And remember to wear a mask. But why would you wear a mask? Because the mask protects your own face against your own unwashed hands. So that's a very cute dog putting their hands to their mouth. And so what I'm trying to explain here is that once the clarifications, the scientific measures have a more viral quality to it through humor and cute spokes dogs, it tends to make sure that conspiracy theories are valued beyond one, which means that it would not go viral, which is how we counter the pandemic in the infotemic with no takedown or lockdowns. Beautiful. I really appreciate you going into depth. A lot of my listeners probably have never heard of that before, have never heard of the wonderful things that Taiwan is doing. And so it's good to go a little bit deeper into that. You obviously have, although you're still young, a very broad and long breadth of knowledge. You started when you were fairly young and also left school and did online type of your own Internet MOOC type of learning and education, which was absolutely fabulous and amazing. I really want to get into my hardest question for you and then that I have for you today. And it's the burning question, WTF. And it's not the swear word that we probably, some of us around the world have been asking over the past year and a half. It's really, what's the future? I want you kind of your perspective and also as a minister, what's the future? Where are we going? In Taiwan, we're caught between the Eurasian plate on one side and the Philippine Sea plate on the other. And those two plates bump into each other all the time, causing endless earthquakes. So we learned to be quite resilient when it comes to earthquakes, typhoons, natural disasters, and so on. But on the other hand, it also kind of literally raises Taiwan, the top of Taiwan, almost 4,000 meters high, which has broadband connection, by the way, is called the Jade Mountain or Yushan. And it grows by two and a half centimeters every year, thanks to the earthquakes, skyward. So whenever people ask me about the future, I say, well, the future of Taiwan is raising skyward. And this is where we are going, right? Instead of just focusing on the left wing or the right wing, we just focus on the up wing. That is to say, the common values, despite the different positions, quite different at sign, but also the innovations that can deliver those common values and leave everyone better off. And so our future is definitely skyward. And I think that resonates quite well with the overview effect, the kind of cosmic direction that you're referring to, too. That top of the world feeling, and I definitely sense that when I meet people from Taiwan, when I speak to you, when I've heard you in the past, it's this very positive, optimistic outlook of the future. And it really being an island, you are probably one of the first hit from earthquakes and typhoons and hurricanes and all sorts of climate catastrophes and crisis. And you have to figure out how to have that resilience. It's beyond sustainability. You actually need to say, well, we could be the most sustainable place in the world, and tomorrow a hurricane could wipe out all that sustainability. You need some resilience. So the day after or the hour after that hurricane or earthquake that you have internet, that you have electricity, food, water, all those essential services to communicate with the outside world. And so I love that you talk about resilience is so vital. It's measured minutes, by the way, the minutes after the earthquake. Yeah, minutes after the earthquake is absolutely. And that's also what's seen with your response to the COVID and minutes to hours and days. You are already implementing things because of upvoting. And so I love that that tells me that you have a strong resilient and also very futuristic infrastructure that you've built to make sure to prevent those things. And that kind of takes us into a little bit more of your social innovation of Taiwan. So you're trying to prevent dystopian narratives and stories for Taiwan and or digital dictatorship. Whether it's the social dilemma or the Facebooks or the fake news and all the things that we've seen bubble to the surface more and more over the years. You kind of talk about code, which other people say is an algorithm. So code is basically physics. And you also say that, and I've heard this when you spoke to Yuval Noah Harari, that you really cannot break natural laws, you know, the laws of physics. And a code that is encrypted with biases is a bad algorithm or a bad code. And so what are some of the things that are you doing moving forward to get the opposite of dystopia into your codes, into this long-term vision of the future? Is part of that the upvoting or is it much deeper? Is there a lot more involved in keeping it unbiased, keeping the fake news and those things out of it? Yeah, code is millable to coders, of course. But to non-coders, code could be as non-mailable as the laws of physics. It's determining what can happen, what cannot happen, what's transparent, what's opaque, things like that. And so to non-coders, code establish a normativity that is kind of legal by design, like physics, which is quite different from the laws that's more jurisdictional, more text-based normativity, where it's actually possible, may or may not be illegal, like civic disobedience, and so on, depending on the interpretation. And so we really need to build what I call assistive intelligences that make sure that the code is co-governed by the people who could be impacted by the code. And by assistive, I mean like my eyeglass, right? My eyeglass is aligned to me, meaning that I want to see more clearly and it helps me to see more clearly. If rather it shows a advertisement that I have to count from 10 in order to close it, then it's not aligned to me, it's aligned to the advertisers. It's also accountable in a sense of actually my eyeglass just kind of distorted, broke a little bit a couple of days ago. And I bring it to a nearby repair shop and they did not have to pay the original manufacturer like $10 billion or $10,000 in license fees before they can correct the eyeglasses spilled and so on. And I can even do it myself if I learn about the craft. And so that's its open innovation, means that anyone can fork or to repair it to make sure that it continues to be aligned. Now, this alignment and accountability when they're both governed by the social sector, then I call it a people-public-private partnership, where the people sets like in the PTT, the Taiwanese equivalent to Reddit. In the PTT's case, people co-set the normativity, the norms like, for example, disclosing all the money spent on the advertisements during our elections, the campaign donation and expenditure, and the public sector ratifies and amplifies that norm by essentially providing a structure open data for everyone to see the campaign donation and expenditure. And then the people and the public sector pressures the private sector like Facebook, who in 2019, Taiwan became the first jurisdiction where Facebook publishes in real time as open data or the social and political advertisement during election and bond forum sponsorship of those messages during our election. And that's a norm set by the social sector and ratified by the political sector, and we negotiate the private sector's conformance to those norms. And so I think this people-public-private partnerships has a lot going to make previously authoritarian intelligences more assistive in a sense of citizens' direct control. I love that. And so you've used the term as well, trans-cultural republic of citizens. That's right. And that's what you've really described there. And I think that is so beautiful that we have that kind of openness or that you do have that because you're setting an example, a sandbox for the world, so to say, of what works. And it's a bigger test bed that has proven on 23 and a half million people. And it's really working. So I love the way you describe that. I want to move into another area. It's similar to the burning question, but it's more whether it's AI or this singularity. What does a world that works for everyone look like? Yeah, it's literally my job description. So I might as well read my job description, which respond to the singularity issue. And it goes like this, when we see the Internet of Things, let's make it an Internet of Beings. When we see virtual reality, let's make it a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let's make it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let's make it about human experience. And whenever we hear that a singularity is near, that is always remember, the plurality is here. So the plurality, as you alluded to in the Transculture Republic of Citizens, says that it's quite natural to have 17, actually. I think it's the same badge as you're wearing, this pin. And more than 17, really, are different values. But they all work with each other if we can listen at scale. If we cannot listen at scale, then naturally, people see it as more zero sum competitions where only one vision get to dominate. And that's the singularity worldview. But if we can listen at scale, then all the 17 values can work with one another. And so we can realize the Transculture Republic with all the citizens. And this part of my pin says Taiwan can help, by the way. Yeah, so it's global goals and Taiwan can help. I love that. It's absolutely beautiful. So I've seen you wear your SDG shirt. I've seen you wear that SDG pin before I've heard you speak about the SDGs. We've actually spoken virtually at some of the same conferences over the years together. One of them was Odyssey Connect, I think was the last one that we spoke together. You tell a video in and it was a beautiful talk. I absolutely loved it. But I want you to tell us a little bit more because you actually go real deep in the SDGs. You go into the targets and the indicators, especially with number 17. But with the others, to me that tells me that you also feel that the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals are a goal, a roadmap, a plan for the future to get us to a different 2030. And I'd like to know you as minister, but also as Taiwan and what your thoughts and feelings are about the SDGs and how you're implementing them, how people should see them and view them. I'd love to hear that. Yeah, we have six municipalities and three of them already with more coming have filed the voluntary local reviews or VLRs that describe their contributions to the SDGs. So if you're interested in that, you can check out si.socialinnovation.taiwan, that's T-A-I-W-A-N, the GOV, the TW, and you can download all the three and coming more municipalities voluntary local reviews. So you can see this is a communication device that is not just about the national level governments, but also how the local municipalities reorient their work to communicate across the different sectors. For previously without the emphasis on the SDGs, the economic development, the social development and justice, and the environmental sustainability tend to be seen as silos where each burial talk mostly to the stakeholders related to those different aspects. But nowadays with a national focus on, for example, circular economy, I can share saying, hey, you see this jacket is made out of recycled plastic bottles and coffee being waste, that is to say this cup probably contributes one to one-tenth of this jacket. And this is obviously something that's more sustainable environment-wise, but it's also pretty good business because it's upcycling and also works with social cohesion. There's many fashion designers in Taiwan that now works with people who would otherwise be very difficult to get employment, but get into a kind of sewing of these recycled, upcycled fashion clothes and even sign their name and how many hours they put into it. And so this is what I call a mutual accountability or in SDG terms, 1718, that's availability of reliable data. And once this is enhanced, then everyone can be accountable to everyone else across sectors. And that in turn, encourage effective partnership that's 1717. And the Taiwan can help part says that we're happy to publish all this without any strength attached. And that's not a sharing and open innovation, which is 1716. I absolutely love that. And so for our discussion today, and my audio listeners won't be able to see this, but this is a coat made in Bangkok, Thailand by Yano Designs. It's also upcycled with recycled materials, hand sewn, hand crafted. And so I know you wear a lot of those type of those outfits and products and try to really act on upon those. So I wore this beautiful piece for you today as well to show that we're very much aligned. I really, really am so glad that we had this time and we had to push it back a few times because of your parliamentary meetings and that you were doing. So we had to push it back as worried that we might not get to do it, but it fell right at the right time. So what happened to the U.S. at the Capitol was a way not to do it, a way that things can go horribly wrong. And you probably not one to one had the same experience in 2014, but that is the way to do it the right way, the way to do it so that there's an outcome, a bipartisan outcome, an outcome that's better for democracy. And I want to touch upon that before we go a little bit about democracy because the maps, the borders, the global citizenry that we hear and talk about is much different in the digital world. The digital divide sometimes we say because, and we're even talking about, we need some digital delegates, some digital ambassadors and you're a prime example of that because our digital world is forming new boundaries, new maps that are not the ones that we're used to. And so I want to kind of ask what is the future, this digital world, this digital democracy that we see for the future, and one that's positive for us all that kind of gets rid of the bad and negative things that we're seeing going on around the world and have seen with Brexit and the Trump vote as well. What we're seeing in Taiwan is that all the four major parties in our parliament have signed on the open parliament initiative. So that's in conjunction with the National Action Plan on Open Government. We're also doing our administration. So there's an extremely strong, like I call it quite partisan, right? All four parties consensus on the democracy being not just once every two or four years, but something that you can deepen every day. And so the answer to your question I think is this idea that democracy is a technology. Many people see democracy as kind of a fixed set of rules that we just kind of practice ritualistically. But the fact is that democracy is applied social science. We can apply new voting methods, right? The ranked choices, and nowadays in presidential hackathon for the past couple years, we use quadratic voting. A lot of inventions that has proven its merits, for example, the Assyrian community, can be actually taken into our day-to-day governance. So I would say that so-called on-chain governance, right? Digital governance is one of the prototypes that we can see that democracy itself being forked by a lot of different innovators and merged into management of rough consensus and running code, something that the internet government has always been demonstrating. But now people are seeing it's not just about worldwide communication, which was the original issue internet was set to complete, but rather also about, as we talk about today, pandemic management, infodemic management, climate change, and pretty much anything in the sustainable development goals that will require this planetary and beyond communication infrastructure that shapes democracy itself as a technology. So I would say if you see democracy itself as a technology and you shape the technology to be an assistive one, meaning it's aligned to citizens and it's accountable to citizens, then that's a very optimistic future. And even in the more authoritarian counterparts, AI still doesn't enslave people. People enslave people through AI. So we can actually see democracy itself as something that is more assistive, more conductive to solving those global issues. And that is a vision that I'm happy to work with pretty much any homo sapiens. I absolutely love that. And you're someone who really empowers homo sapiens of all genders. You really hit it on the head well where you say that all the sustainable development goals are systemic. They're a system. They're tied together. There's no way to take the siloed approach and just take one and just address that without touching on the others because they're all a system tied together, but they all cross-connect in one way or the other, whether it's the targets of the indicators, but it is a true system. And I love how you really do that in many different ways as a person, but as well as the digital minister. And I thank you for that. The last three questions I have for you are really for even more so for my audience, the younger audience and those who are the techno nerds, the singularity nerds, the ones who really want to follow your lead or your example on what you've done in the past. If there was one message that you could depart to our listeners as a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change their life, what would it be, your message? Yeah. I think it's the message that I just shared that democracy like well semiconductor or really any open source project, democracy is a technology and it's our job to improve that technology. What should young innovators in your field, whether it's becoming a minister, getting in parliament, getting into politics or in technology or using technology as a tool be looking at for ways to make a real impact on their world? I think empowering people who are closer to the pain is the way to go. So talk to anyone who are currently suffering and find out how you can bring technology to the people rather than to ask people to adapt to technology. You're a very quick learner and you started at a very young age with several abilities, but a lot of it is the journey as well. You've had a journey and I've even seen followed you over time and seen that development, but what have you experienced or learned in this journey so far that you would have loved to know for the start? They say, wow, if I would have known that back then, or had a little bit more foresight, I would have done it differently. Is there anything? No, I think this is not my personal journey. It's just the journey of first the free software movement and later on forked into the open source movement, which are now merging back. And this is also the story about open access, about open science, open innovation of all sort of participatory accountability mechanisms and much more. And so this is not about one particular lesson or another to one particular person, but just about this idea that all the journeys, even though it may diverge, it will eventually converge when you hold this shared values across different positions in mind. So I've known that from the start. So I wouldn't say anything to my younger self. Thank you so much, Audrey. It's been a sheer pleasure. That's all my questions. If there's anything else you'd like to add, this is the time. Otherwise, I wish you a wonderful evening, and I hope we can see each other very soon again and in person or at an event. I'd love to have that see and speak to you again. Definitely. And my party message is, as always, live long and prosper. Live long and prosper. Thank you so much, Audrey. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye.


What's up everybody it's Jason here for jaspyscasebreaks.com we're doing another 2022 top scrim update sapphire edition baseball five box hobby break random teams number two and again guys we're doing an early bird giveaway spot So again if you bought one of the first 16 you have a chance to win a free spot Look for some rare autographs out of here that are gonna be on card But you get at least two base pair card parallels numbered of 99 or less So here we go guys. Here's the dice trailer. Here's the customer names that bought in early So the early birds and then there's all the 29 names that bought in So we use a dice roller randomize the Randomize the customer names here for the early birds winner gets pasted here at the bottom under Gabe last momo Joe and then we'll randomize with the same dice roller the list of names and teams Let's roll it. It is a Six and a five eleven times. Good luck one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven and 11 times D Mac the early bird winner congratulations So there's your little plus sign there for the free spot. So again 11 times Names and teams now one two three four five six seven eight nine ten 11 Tristan at the top down a carl and 11 times here one two three four five six seven eight nine ten 11 Angels down at the Tampa Bay Rays. So Tristan you have the angels Dilo you have the Rockies Tristan with the Cardinals Devon with the Red Sox D Lo with Astros Annie with the Nationals John with the Dodgers kept with the tight Rangers D Lo with the Twins Anthony with the Marlins Brian with the Wild Tuck Joe Pizzley of the Mariners. Whoa Rich with the Blue Jays Devon with the Pirate Jose with the Diamondbacks rich with the Brewers D Lo the Yankees Andy with the Royals D Mac with the Braves D Lo with the A's Gabe last momo Joe Phillies D Lo the Cubs D Mac with the Reds It's your free spot Michael with the Orioles D Lo the Guardians Stacey with the Giants and with the Padres D Lo the Mets travels with the Tigers and car with the Rays All right, if anybody wants to trade, I'll give you guys a quick minute and Then Steven says I just do you mind please telling Tony my new Instagram Locked me during my three been baller play Wait, what do you mean by that Steven? Hold on. What do you what what do you mean by that Steven? Oh, are you talking about you did a personal today with Teddy? No, is that you're trying to make it you got blocked over got you But you're saying that your account got blocked. Oh He didn't block me. It was the app Okay, so you're trying to do your three box break. Right? Are you trying to say I don't know how Instagram would do that but I can give you kind of like a Little tutorial if you need that I'll show it to you right now Actually, let me pause the video. Hold on guys. I'm gonna see the trade window I'm a closer. I'm gonna still pause the video so we can do some trades. I want to quickly do this, too All right, you guys welcome back. No trades though. We did have some trade offers, but nothing was accepted Now let's do the break All right guys, here we go. I've got a little Julio rookie debut It's going to pistol in the Mariners. We got MJ Melendez Little green Number to 75 Let's keep it going 75 Maybe who knows Alexis Diaz Daniel Duarte rookie combos there for the Cincinnati Reds number to 50 and Stephen Kwan rookie green For the Cleveland Garden is going to deal over 75. Of course, you know, have some good good players over there Oh, is that a red? I think we got our first red. Oh, it's a rookie. Oh my god. That's a one-of-one That's a that's one of those We're calling on poppies last night Pad parishes or something like that We're gonna save that stack for last. Oh schnikes that's a one-of-one rookie coming up and Ryan For the Guardian or sorry not Ryan Brian Lavastita to 50 All right, here we go guys. Good luck It is a rookie. It's Brandon Donovan for the St. Louis Cardinals That is still going to you Tristan and that is a one-of-one. We'll take it We'll take a one-on-one. Yeah, he's a Drafted Cardinals number seven on June 18th For 1997 From Germany. It looks like Yeah, Mike Brasso just have any five and Nick Allen Go Number to 50 Denilson LeMets to 25 Alrighty guys last box again guys. We do have another case. So I just posted up number three So if you guys want to run it back you can later tonight Part of the Julio. Let's keep it going and Montero rookie for the Colorado Rockies D-Lo to 50 and Colby Allard For the Texas Rangers to 75 All right, there you go. That's a lot of nice color here Didn't manage to get a one-of-one, which is never too shabby So appreciate it guys again number three's in the store fresh case Jaspies case breaks calm


We're here from the NDSU Extension Service. Today, we're going to show you how to create tasty freezer meals to save you time and money. Many of your favorite recipes can be used as a freezer meal. Otherwise, NDSU Extension and other extension websites have some great resources for recipes. Once your recipes are selected, check what you already have on hand, and then make your shopping list. Now, don't forget your freezer bags and your labeling tools, such as a permit marker. This next recipe is a Green Monster Smoothie. It's something that we like to do at our house for a quick breakfast on the go or a nice snack in the afternoon. And really just a few ingredients here. We've got about a cup and a half of fresh strawberries washed with the green removed. We've got a half a banana here. So we're going to get a lot of color with these different fruits. We've got about two cups of spinach. So as you can tell, this smoothie is going to be full of vitamins. Then we need about a tablespoon of frozen orange juice concentrate, about two ounces or a half of a single serve yogurt that we had frozen slightly, so it comes out a little bit easier for us. And as you can see, cooking at home is a little bit messy, so don't worry about that. Then we're going to, again, kind of smush everything down so we're getting out all the air in our bags here. We'll seal it up, try to flatten it out again. Now this is pretty much ready to go at any time. The only thing you're going to want to add is about a quarter to a half a cup of liquid just to help to break things up once you are putting it in the blender.


I am James Swanick and today we are talking to Jenny Unglis who is 52 who lives on the north coast of Northern Ireland and Jenny runs a proofreading business and as of today Jenny is 124 days alcohol-free which is incredible and Jenny was one of our Project 90 clients and has a very interesting story to share about her alcohol-free journey. Jenny so great to have you here how you doing? I'm great James thank you it's lovely to be here. What does 124 days alcohol-free feel like first of all? It feels great and if you told me four months ago that I would be four months alcohol-free I would probably have laughed in your face. Why would that have been so ridiculous a notion do you think? Because I think I had tried for so long to kick the habit largely by myself and I just couldn't do it I just couldn't do it on my own and that's why I eventually reached out to Project 90 and it's not an exaggeration to say it's changed my life. Tell us a little bit about your life if you would Jenny give us a little bit of context. Okay so I grew up in Northern Ireland went to England to study at University ended up staying there worked in the civil service worked in Parliament for quite a number of years got tired of politics eventually set up my own career coaching business which I ran for just over a decade then I got tired of London tired of the rat race and came back home to the North Coast and Northern Ireland where I've now settled met my husband got married and within about a year of our getting married pliable stagnos with multiple myeloma which is incurable cancer of the blood and bone marrow. So the next five years really became a roller coaster of chemotherapy radiotherapy stem cell transplants more chemotherapy until eventually it became clear that that his body just wasn't responding to treatment anymore and sadly he died in May of this year at home with me and that really was the point of which I realized my life to go in in one of two ways I could keep pouring booze on my head in a in an ineffectual attempt to deal with the grief and everything else or I could find a way of moving on that was more positive and more worthwhile and so that really was a big turning point for me that was the point of which I knew I needed to reach out and get help and support otherwise I really would end up in a complete mess thank you for sharing that with us Jenny you said that you were married within you were married and then within a year he was diagnosed is that correct that's right yeah take us back to that time if you will and you know tell us about married life for the first year and then when you both receive that news what impact did that have on you yeah um it came out of the blue completely I mean we'd we got married we'd just literally moved into our dream home which I'm still in um everything was looking loosey and Clive went for a a standard check-up just an annual check-up with the doctor and his blood results came back slightly iffy and the doctor said I think we'll get this checked out and we've had lots more tests and it was diagnosed he was completely asymptomatic at that point um so had it not been for the rigor of our our doctor they probably wouldn't be picked up until much later um the fact that we knew from day one it was uncurable and we were really just playing a game of time it was difficult um it was a bit I suppose it was a sort of damocles hanging over our head from the beginning um it was a case of not knowing how long we would have not knowing what kind of quality of life we would have um and that was difficult and if I'm honest my coping mechanism was often afterfall which was not a good coping mechanism but that's that's what I often used just to I suppose what lots of people use it for just to to numb the edges really how old were you both when when Clive was diagnosed um I was in my late 14s Clive was older than me he was 18 years older than me so he was uh 65 um he actually used to be I shouldn't tell you best he actually used to be my teacher at school he taught me classics at school he was a very young teacher and um I haven't seen him since I left school and when I came back here to Northern Ireland we completely randomly met up and and the rest was history so it's I suppose it's quite a romantic story really did he charm you or do you did you charm him well like every other girl at school I'd have the classic teenage crush on him so but um yeah we charmed each other we had lots in common we both love love um language words cricket Tottenham Hotspur so we had lots of music we had lots in common um he was just a great great man a legend really irreplaceable completely irreplaceable um but you know that's something that that I am working through um there are some very very difficult days but again I know that those days would be made more difficult if alcohol was still in the mix and at least I am facing what I have to face with a much better degree of clarity than than I would have found before so um you said Clive passed in May of 2020 yes um just to take us through the last um six months maybe maybe six months to a year and just maybe just describe what that was like for you and for him right up until the the day of his of his passing uh if you're willing to share of course um yeah so it was probably about a year before he died that it became it became clear that that the chemotherapy he was on just wasn't working anymore they tried him on a few different versions I mean I have to say we had good standard care we have we had wonderful care but his body just wasn't responding to treatment so the last year he just apparently became less and less well um by early in this year he was in and out of hospital several times and then of course lockdown occurred so the last three weeks when he was in hospital I wasn't even able to go and visit him that was very difficult um and at that point I actually rang his consultant and said look Clive's not getting better is in said no I said how long has he got he says the talking weeks so at that point I said um I just want him home so we brought him home um um at that stage it was just palliative care and he had three weeks at home with me before he died um and that was that was precious time um we were in lockdown obviously so no one could come and visit and in one way that was sad because they were friends he didn't get to see again and in another way selfishly it was nice because it was just we had carers in and I done that sort of thing and doctors and nurses but most of the time it was just us so you know we had those last few weeks together um and that was that was important to me hmm I imagined for him also yeah yeah he got to see his beloved garden he got to listen to music he got to watch a bit of cricket unfortunately there wasn't much bought on so that was a shame but um yeah we just um you know he gradually got weaker and weaker um and uh he was in bed the whole time but he was um in good spirits really until the last couple of days he wasn't in pain when he wasn't pain we had good pain control so um um you know he slipped away at the end just holding my hand so it was it was difficult but it could have been so much worse so yeah what things did he say to you or did you say to him before his passing um that stick out to you that stick in your memory something that maybe he shared with you something that you shared with him uh a lot of people you know who've suffered death in their family a lot of times they don't get an opportunity to say goodbye it happened suddenly you had um you know a long time real I mean I guess you say five years but probably in the in the last three weeks you had three weeks so was there something poignant or deliberate or intentional that you and he did together or said to each other um looking back we probably didn't maybe talk as much as we could have but I think I suppose in one way everything that needed to be said have been said as you say we'd have a a long time to become accustomed we knew what was going to happen we talked about the the practical arrangements on his wishes and that sort of thing a little obviously everything changed because it came with anyway um but the one thing I remember him saying to me in the last few days was he just said Jenny keep going um I think yeah that was something that that stuck with me and has stayed with me and a large part of my motivation for getting alcohol free and and trying to become that better version of myself really is is because I know that's what what Clyde would have wanted and I know that he would have been so proud of me so yeah keep going was what he said yeah beautiful I want to actually with your permission um read out an email that you sent to me on Sunday February 9th of 2020 oh my goodness yeah I have a for those listening I have a an email list a newsletter I write an email a day a daily a daily email some people love it some people are like get me away from this guy I don't want an email a day in my inbox but for those who are interested in the alcohol free lifestyle people get an email a day from me and on um Sunday February 9th you emailed me in response to um an email that I wrote which was called sorry alcohol this isn't working out I feel frustrated when I'm around you irritable you disrupt my sleep etc etc so I was actually writing like a letter to alcohol and you actually responded to that um and I was actually in Mexico at the time I was on a business mastermind um this is before COVID the COVID shutdown and uh yeah your email says I'll just read it here it says uh hi James thank you for this my situation is that my husband is dying of cancer uh I think that a drink helps me deal with it but obviously it doesn't I need to enjoy the moments we have so I'm just curious you seemed at that point to have an idea that alcohol wasn't serving you wasn't serving your best interests would you just uh maybe elaborate on that a little bit as to what you were starting to come to terms with or starting to realise around that time in February I mean I've known for a long time before that really that alcohol wasn't serving me and I've been trying to to kick it probably for 18 months or so um and with I suppose varying degrees of success but ultimately limited success so I would have a sober stretch and then I drink again and that cycle would be repeating itself I was getting to the stage where I was having longer periods of not drinking but always ended up going back to it um you know eventually that you know and when I it's interesting I don't even I don't mean I don't remember that email I don't remember I knew I had contacted you before long before I joined up the project 90 I don't remember that it was in February but um um yeah I I knew I needed to tackle it and I was struggling to find an effective way to do that like looking back now from the vantage point of four months and just having finished the project 90 first stage and so on um I can see exactly what I was missing and it was the support the community and the accountability and I didn't have that I had friends around me who knew I was struggling five knew I was struggling although he could see I was making some progress but honestly people around you however much they love you if they don't have the problem with alcohol that you have they just don't get it um however supportive they want to be they don't understand and and people can be so well meaning but you know friends might say to me something like well why don't you just try harder I actually went to my doctor at one point for some help and support and he said well why why don't you just have one drink um you know there was no understanding that for some people you know one's too many and 20s not enough um so the thing that that project 90 gave to me was being in a group of people where you know that the the baseline for everyone was we are all trying to uh reconfigure our relationship with alcohol that was the given for everyone so everyone regardless of where they were in their alcohol journey or regardless of what stage of rock bottom they had got to um everyone had that same basic common aim which meant in fact that much of the time we spent on group calls we weren't actually talking about alcohol at all we're talking about all sorts of other things and that again was what was so precious to me that that on one level we were almost putting the whole alcohol thing to one site because that was a given that was why we were there so let's talk about other things let's talk about how we get more clarity let's talk about how we develop ourselves let's talk about things we're struggling with in other aspects of our lives and um just that sense of community and common purpose was the thing that I was missing um and looking back it means to see that but it took me a long time to realize that yeah it's um it's funny how people um we normalize alcohol don't we like we normalize it it's part of the social fabric it begins when we're children when our parents say to us oh no you can't drink alcohol now you can have it when you're older it's almost like a rite of passage and then the rite of passage turns into well it's just something that you do this is just the norm and then it comes into something that people uh you know offer to you because it's to be a good host you know if you're at a dinner party you say oh can I get you some wine can I get you a beer and it just becomes normalized doesn't it it's just normalized and so it's very challenging um to break out of that societal matrix if you like especially when you're um later on I mean I'm in my um mid 40s now heading towards 50 you're in your early 50s that's like 25 30 years of social conditioning or actually practicing consuming alcohol it's actually a lifetime of social conditioning so where there's particular particular times where you found it really challenging to break out of that social conditioning where maybe people were drinking you didn't want to and then you towed the line and you and you did or maybe there was something that happened that was like you had a breakthrough you want to just speak to that yeah it's interesting I mean you're so right about the social conditioning I mean I was brought up in a in a family that that didn't drink um so it was probably um not even when I went to university because I was I was too much of a swat to drink too much at uni but when I joined the civil service um that would have been the sort of early 90s very very big drinking culture and then I moved into parliament and if I thought the drinking culture was bad in the civil service let me tell you in parliament it was off the scale you know subsidized bars bars open all day drink at lunchtime absolutely drink after work completely you know it just was so embedded in the culture and I'm not saying that everyone who works in parliament is you know is a drunk but for anyone who had a tendency to drink by lot it was just made so easy so that was probably where my my problems began really um the interesting thing is that that's when I move back over here my social circle here it is not a heavy drinking circle my friends I mean my friends are the kind of people who'll have a glass of wine or two if they're out for dinner but they're not drinkers they would be what anyone would call a normal drinker so I was probably the the exception you know I was the one who would be having the the two extra glasses of wine I would be the one who would have more than everyone else um so I wasn't under social pressure in my environment here over the last number of years um so I can't even use that as an excuse to be honest and I realized that you know certainly through project 90 lots of people have often said and lots of people do say this that it's the the social situations that can be the most difficult and can be the most challenging um I have to put my hand on my heart and say that wasn't the case for me because that wasn't what my social environment was like um so I don't even have that as an excuse but I think I increasingly just came to use it as I said as a coping mechanism as as what I've received to be a coping mechanism to take the edge off painful feelings and painful situations and what have you come to learn now about alcohol taking the edge off and dealing with painful situations that it is at best um a temporary fix and at worst um something which actually just makes everything worse you know alcohol doesn't take pain away it just adds to it by the shame the guilt the hangover the not being fully present um you know it brings nothing it adds nothing it serves you in no way whatsoever you um you emailed me or you and I emailed back and forth a few times actually between February and when you actually enrolled in project 90 there's an email here from you later Tuesday I'm just going to share just a couple things in here which is just what you want why you wanted to quit alcohol um if you're willing of course there's nothing I didn't know what you're going to say well you just you very very simply said the two most important things for me would be first and foremost to stay sober to me that underpins everything else uh if you think of an inverted triangle my sobriety is the tip of that triangle without it everything else is bound to topple I'm willing to pretty much do anything to keep my sobriety intact so that was the first one and then the second one was secondly um you said secondly I need to plan and implement the next stage of my life I have a pretty good idea what I want to do it is entrepreneurial but I would be so glad of other's support encouragement and intellectual input obviously underlying everything is my need to process my grief which I know will take a long time Clive was the light of my life and he is irreplaceable but the two priorities above are I believe things that will help me to do that and then you went on a little bit more from there but I guess my question is um did you feel do you feel like you're on that path now because you said back in June your your priorities were to stay alcohol free use the word sober but um I like to use the word alcohol free and then secondly planning and implementing the next stage of your life so that email was sent to me June mid-June um do you feel like you're you're on that on those parts yes absolutely um you know not only have I been alcohol free since the 7th of June I think it was but um I'm I'm in a mindset now where I I just don't see myself ever lifting a drink again um I know people often say don't think about forever think about the next 90 days think about the next six months whatever but I have gained so much in and from the last four months that that I see no way at all in which alcohol can serve me and I see no need for it at all I have no desire for it in terms of what have the last four months looked like um yeah I've I've just made I've done so many things James that I would never ever have done a because I wouldn't have had the focus the energy uh and and b because I just wouldn't have been in the right place to do it so for example I've recently set up my own proofreading business with a business partner um I wouldn't have had the energy to do that um I have I'm currently in the middle of training to be a Samaritan which is a a UK charity which provides a 24 7 listening service to people who are anxious stressed even suicidal it's something I've been interested in for a long time but I've never have been in a position to offer that kind of support to anyone else given the mess that I was in um I started doing studying for a diploma uh actually in trauma and addiction counseling because it's just something that through my own experience really interests me and I would never have had the stamina to do that level of academic study on top of setting up the new business and everything else so my life has changed unrecognisably just in four months which makes me you know despite the fact that I am and I suspect will be for a long time processing grief um it makes me excited about my future in a way that I didn't think I would be capable of being and and that is you know the foundation for all of that is being alcohol free without a doubt obviously when you join our community here the the focus is to get you to rewire your brain around alcohol so you're powerfully choosing the alcohol for your life but you also said there that your main focus or one of those main focuses and what will remain so is processing grief so how was the the community that you were in for those 90 days within project 90 how did that community help you to process your grief not so much quitting alcohol but actually processing your grief I think that was one of the things that was most fundable the group where just fantastically supportive everyone has their own challenges there are other people in the group who were dealing with children with special needs dealing with elderly parents who needed extra care everyone had you know everyone has something in their life that is a challenge and the group was such a safe place where you could share really quite personal feelings and thoughts and you know tears and vulnerabilities and everyone was was so supportive and just many of the lessons that we were taught were so helpful to me one of the things which was most helpful to me specifically in processing grief was something that Kevin coach Kevin said to me very early on which was that life is a series of meetings and partings and I just find that a really helpful and comforting way to look at it sometimes people talk about grief in terms of well one door closes and another one opens and that sort of thing and I find that very final but the idea of you know life is a series of meetings and partings I find a very constructive way to to process some of my feelings so specifically in terms of some of the advice suggestions and approaches that I was given and then more generally in terms of just the supportiveness and open-armedness if that is the word of the group it was somewhere I could come and not be afraid to be vulnerable not be afraid to show myself there were there were times on group calls when I you know I cried lots of people do I always say you're not a proper member of project 19 so you've cried on screen but that's just a demonstration of you know of how how safe a place it is to share and that was something that really really gave me a lot of a lot of emotional support I also want to acknowledge you because you live in Northern Ireland and of course the time difference between Northern Ireland and many of the the group coaching calls that we have is pretty big I have a I'm on a weekly call on Thursday evenings which is Friday morning for where I am at the moment in Australia and what time did those did my weekly group call start Jenny for you what time was it in Northern Ireland when they started for me that was one o'clock in the morning and sometimes we didn't wrap up until nearly three yeah yeah it's supposed to be an hour call but we just got talking didn't we well you know there were times you could have gone on all night to be honest I mean they were great calls but um yeah I I made a commitment at the very beginning and I made this commitment to Kevin that I would attend every single group call now I did miss a couple of the Thursday night ones um because there were a couple of times when I had to have an early start on the Friday morning so but um I mean I was doing a group call Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday and then my one-to-one coaching call with Kevin on a Wednesday um why did I do that um not just to get my money's worth um I suppose it's partly I am quite an all-in-nothing person but I knew that if this is going to stick and I was going to make this work I had to give it everything I had I was going to throw the kitchen sink at it because I kind of felt if this didn't work for me nothing was going to work for me so I I knew that I wanted to give it everything um and that's what I did and I think I think that should mean good stead yeah you you said to me a couple weeks ago that when when Clive died you had a choice you could keep pouring booze down your throat and sink into a spiral of despair or you could find a way forward yeah it certainly from my from my inspection it seems like you have you definitely chose moving forward especially demonstrated by the fact that you were up at 1 a.m to attend um one of those weekly group calls I had to remind myself of that often when I saw you there I'm like oh it's the middle of the night there but it's fascinating isn't it like even myself you know all human beings will come up with excuses as to why we can't do something or why something won't work or someone won't like me if I do this I mean even I at the moment I'm going through a process of securing a literary agent for my upcoming book um which is aimed at helping people to quit drinking and it's got to the point it's a couple days ago it was at the point we're right begin let's now reach out to my extensive network and try to attract and secure a literary agent and I drew up a list of all the names of acquaintances and friends and you know people in my network that I've I've accumulated over you know a decade or so 20 years living in in America quite frankly and I still felt this kind of like natural um pain in myself like oh I don't want to ask for help I don't want to like reach out to that person I haven't really spoken to them in a year or so and now I'm the one time I am reaching out I'm asking for something or I feel awkward about that it's incredible and I'm usually fearless when it comes to that but um but even me like I felt that kind of like story I was starting to create stories and I had self judgments and then I had fear and then I thought I'm going to spend all this time doing it and what if it doesn't work out and I don't get a literary agent and I've spent all this money and time putting into you know into this project um so that's coming up to me and I coach people on this stuff on how to overcome this stuff you know I'm so it's a very natural feeling but um but you actually just went you know what it's start James's weekly call starts at one in the morning in Northern Ireland and you could have come up with a hundred different reasons and stories why not to attend and yet you still did so what did you learn maybe about yourself in making that choice and sticking to it um well I mean I suppose the whole purpose for me of um of going all in or leaning in clearly as as you guys would say was I supposed to prove to myself that I did have stickability you know that I and also it's funny one of the things which we talked a little bit before about being alcohol free giving you much more clarity one of the things that has been that has become very very clear to me over the last few months is that one of the things that's really really important to me is integrity of my word so if I say I will do something I will do it if I say I will be somewhere I will be there um and it's actually the thing which pisses me off most of my other people when other people aren't like that it's probably the thing that disproportionately irritates me and maybe that's because it's something that's so important to me and that would not have been the case when I was drinking you know everything fell by the wayside um and I constantly let people die but as that clarity came through for me I realized how important that is and therefore having made the commitment to Kevin at the beginning that I was going to be on every call I was going to be on every call um and you know that's notwithstanding the fact that yeah sometimes it was very late at night or whatever but you know what James I looked forward to those calls so much especially in the early days they were lifeline to me um you know we were in lockdown I just lost my husband I couldn't visit friends I couldn't see people um and I'm just having that that community of people who were all rooting for each other you know the calls in the very very early days as you know I'm it took me ages to get going on Marco Polo and start posting other videos and things but I'm actually quite shy um and in the early days the group calls were kind of oh god I hope Kevin doesn't ask me anything and and you know within a few weeks I was actively looking forward to the calls and weekends where oh I'm just gonna have to sit and watch 25 Marco Polo's over and over again because there aren't any group calls so they became something that was a really important part of the fabric of my life um yeah I love that and now that I'm in the alumni group and I only have two calls a week and it's you know it's not that I didn't have other things to do um I've been very busy with the business and was other things but you know they say don't you that that your real your your actions show what your real priorities are you can say something's a priority but actually it's only a priority if you do it yeah this was a real priority for me yeah and I felt that and I sensed that and I saw that certainly you know visually every week when you were when you turned up to my weekly call at 1 a.m northern island time so again I just want to acknowledge you for your commitment and for being on those calls it's such an uncommon hour um and I also want to thank you for um you know inspiring other members as well because you know it doesn't require a big inspirational speech it can just simply be sharing what is going on with you at the moment it can be you saying I'm really struggling at the moment or you can say I've had a really crappy week and that inspires someone it inspires someone else to be able to share about their week which makes them feel better and then that triggers conversation and it triggers healing and it triggers being out sometimes being given the freedom to vent um it's remarkable um how many times I see you know grown adults because most of us are in that you know the youngest member I think we had while you're going through was probably in her late 30s most of the members are late you know 40s 50s 60s um it's amazing when you see people who've never really had an opportunity to just be able to share what's going on for them in a safe space first of all just to be able to share at all because sometimes we're lonely or isolated and there's just no one to talk these things through but then secondly to be able to share in a place where people don't criticize or condemn or make you wrong for whatever it is that you're sharing yeah so in you doing that and you sharing and you being so open and vulnerable about what was going on with you especially with you processing grief um regarding clive that was huge for so many other members I know and they were all touched and inspired by you and and you have left a lasting impact on those people so thank you for that Jenny I think one of the things for me that that was really interesting and valuable about the whole process is when people do share and I think it's one of the reasons why you and Kevin always encourage people to post on Marco Polo as well when someone shares something you never know what someone else is going to take from it and what someone else takes from it and gains from it may absolutely not necessarily even be the central point that you're making but but people will will take their own interpretation or or their own nugget of wisdom from something that someone else posts or says or shares and to me that's the great value of of the group process you know one one person in a group meeting of nine people could share something and each of the other eight people could take something completely different but equally valuable from what that person shares and to me that was the value of the group interactions yeah well Jenny keep going as clive said keep going that's your mantra I suspect for sure yeah yeah and what does just finally what does keep going look like for you keep going looks like making a success of the business carrying on with my diploma which I hope to finish before Christmas and then I've been accepted to do a an msc in psychology which I'll do by distance learning with an English university which will start in January and I will have to write a thesis as part of that and I will probably it's early days yet but I'm I'm interested in the area around people who have had a problem without the fall quite often have issues around career and purpose which are different from people who haven't necessarily had that struggle I think it's a mixture of regret for wasted time wanting to make amends wanting to give back in some way and so I'm quite interested in in some some work around the area of particularly helping people who possibly felt they've wasted a chunk of their life or not lived it to their best ability because of afterfall helping those people move forward and that's sort of area I'd like to do a bit of research in so yeah lots lots on the horizon I love it and congratulations it all sounds very exciting just to let the listeners or viewers know I've actually experienced Jenny's proofreading business which is amazing I'm coming out with a well actually Jenny proofread my book proposal which was amazing thank you so much and then again Jenny also proofread my gratitude journal which is should be coming out early 2021 which is a daily journal to help tap into our unconscious and rewire limiting beliefs and get us and to reduce stress and anxiety so thank you so much for that as well what what is the name of that business and where can folks listening find it and and make contact with you we are called Jackson Ray um www.jaxonray.com which is way is w r a y uh the company's name that because my business partner is is called Strute Ray and Clive's surname was Jackson I don't use his name because professionally I've always been unbless but the name the company was named partly in honour of him because he was as much of a wordsmith as I am and and he would have been proud to see what we're doing so it's just something that keeps him tied into to my life as I go forward beautiful I love it well Jenny thank you so much for sharing with us on this uh on this interview and I so appreciate you being vulnerable and being so forthcoming with um your experience around um you know grief and trauma of course Clive sounds like he was a wonderful man um he and I share the same love of of of English Premier League soccer team named Tottenham Hotspur our American friend American listeners probably don't know what I'm talking about or don't care to but um uh he Clive certainly had very fine taste in English soccer teams so I I acknowledge you Clive up there I'm a huge Tottenham Hotspur fan um yeah so but all jokes aside thank you so much for sharing with us we so appreciate you Jenny and I look forward to watching you on your journey brilliant thank you James thanks for listening to the alcohol free lifestyle podcast I want to load you up with some free stuff right now so if you want to go to jameswanick.com slash guide I will send you my quit alcohol guide which has helped six figure entrepreneurs and top professionals produce or quit drinking you can also text the word quit guide to the number 44222 if you're in the us of course it doesn't really work anywhere outside of the us but if you're in the us on your 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