All right, good morning. Are there any questions on the last lectures? Anybody have any comments or questions? I believe, has anybody had difficulty finding the course materials? So I should have all the lectures, notes, except for perhaps the last one, which I just sent in to have posted. They should be up on the web. Everybody's found where those are. I've got a number of comments, too, about the slides. So I'll comment again that the population genetics lectures did not have any PowerPoint, or I use keynote slides that were posted, so there should only be lecture notes there. And some people have complained once again about the quality of the slides, especially in the webcast. And I'm sorry about that, but there are some advantages to showing up live to the lectures. I can't make it too easy for you. Well, without any questions, I want to move on to a lecture today that I suspect none of you will really be interested in. I mean, you'll probably just want to sleep through this. It's about sex. And many of you probably already thought, well, I've already kind of had this lecture. Haven't we already done this? You may remember that very, very awkward conversation or speech your parents gave you probably about a decade ago. They always start off when a man and a woman love each other very much that starts off like that. This is not that lecture. After I'm done with you, you'll be so uninterested in sex that there'll be no more parties or anything at the campus for a while. So what do I want to talk about? I want to talk about the evolutionary explanation for sex. And it's important that we go over, first of all, the evolutionary explanation of sex I think is an interesting one. As you'll see, there are some costs associated with sex. So it has been a real enigma of why so many organisms actually undergo sexual reproduction. So I'll try to give the evolutionary explanation for that. And this is also going to be a building lecture for the next one, in which we'll talk about sexual selection. So this sort of explanation for why you see traits out there, especially traits in males that seem so maladaptive. Long tail feathers on male birds, for instance. Why do these animals have traits that seem obviously maladaptive that it's not good to have in terms of survival and reproduction? So this lecture is going to have a couple parts. I'm going to talk about what it is and not the mechanics. There's nothing lurid here. It's just going to be, from our perspective, as evolutionary biologists, let's just dissect sex away and go right to the point.  I want to talk about some of the variety of ways in which organisms accomplish sexual reproduction. It's an evolved trait. It's a trait that continues to evolve, and so there's a lot of variation in how organisms do it, so to speak. I want to talk about the cost, and then I want to talk about the evolutionary explanation. So that's my goal for this lecture, and hopefully I'll be able to go through it all. OK, so let's start off with what it is. And so once again, if you're interested in the details of meiosis and gamete formation, we're not going to be going through that in this lecture. This is going to be kind of a high-end, high-level type of overview of what sex actually accomplishes. Your textbook actually has quite a bit of detail on how meiosis occurs and how gamete formation occurs. If you're really interested, you should read that part of your textbook, or you'll get it in Biology 1A, I imagine, as well. From our perspective, we're going to just look at a cell as a very simple thing. It's just a circle, all right? And this is the nucleus of a cell. I should mention that we're going to be dealing with diploid organisms, all right? That is to say organisms that have two pairs of chromosomes, each copy of the gene is doubled up, and they get one from mom, one from dad. We'll talk about diploid organisms. In a nucleus, of course, is interesting from our perspective because that's where the genetic material is. So what these squiggly lines represent are chromosomes. That's a pair of chromosomes. This would be the centromere that actually holds the two chromosomes together. Here's the squiggly pair of chromosomes, and here's another pair of chromosomes that's straight. Now, we imagine that we have the chromosomes or where all the genes are contained, obviously, and we're going to consider one locus on this chromosome and one locus on this chromosome. We'll call this the A locus, and we have a big A allele on one of the chromosomes and a little A allele on the other chromosome. And on this chromosome, this other chromosome pair will have another locus, which we'll call the B locus, and we imagine that one of the chromosomes, maybe from mom, had a big B allele, and the other chromosome from dad, perhaps had a little B chromosome. Now, the first important point about sexual reproduction is that during the formation of gametes, this is, there's a process in which gametes are formed, you have a reduction division in which the gametes get one of the two chromosomes, one from mom and one from dad, okay? And the probability that any one of these two chromosomes goes into any specific gamete is one half. It's a fair process, okay? Now, I say it's a fair process. There are examples out there in nature where it's not a fair process, where some gene tries to take over the formation of gametes and represent itself in the gametes at a higher frequency. We're not talking about these examples. For the most part, which of these two chromosomes goes into the gametes is fair. So what types of gametes can be formed? So here's an example of a gamete. A gamete, of course, just reminds you as an agarous berm. So we can get one copy of the squiggly chromosome and one copy of the straight chromosome in the gamete. Now, one of the types of chromosomes that can be formed is one that has a big A allele on this chromosome and a big B allele on this chromosome. So that's one of the types of gametes that can be formed, there's three other gametes that can be formed as well. Here's one of them. Let's see, here's a squiggly.  We can have, here's the squiggly chromosome, this trait, we can have the little A and the big B. And the last guy that can be formed, I'm writing too big. I'll just write it here. It can be little A and little B. So this process of independent assortment, this process of independent assortment of the chromosomes into the gametes can create a different type of variety of different gametes.  That is now, that is potentially a genotype combination that's not found in the parents. Maybe it's two heterozygous, maybe it's two individuals like this that mate, okay? Two individuals that have big A that are heterozygous at both of these loci for these two chromosomes. Maybe you have two parents that mate that are this sort and yet they can form young offspring that are homozygous for little A or homozygous for big A. You can get combinations of genes in the offspring that are not present in the parents through this process of independent assortment. So this is one of the themes you'll see in this lecture is that sexual reproduction causes variation in the offspring. So you actually see more variation in the offspring than you might have seen in the parents in this case. So that is assortment, independent assortment. Once again, causing gametes in the, if you have the union of these gametes, you can cause individuals to be formed that are very quite a bit from the parents. The other process I wanna talk about occurs during meiosis during this reduction division, forming gametes called recombination. And in this case I want to talk about what happens on one chromosome. So here we have our chromosome pair and let's imagine we have on one of the chromosomes, maybe this is the chromosome from dad, we have a big A here and a little A over here. Over here we have a big B and little B. Now with just independent assortment alone, you cannot break up the big A, the association between the big A allele and the big B allele. Those two alleles without any other process going on are stuck together on the same chromosome as are the little A and the little B. So the gametes that would be formed using independent assortment alone would always have the big A with the big B. Now you might, if you have other chromosomes in the genome, if you have other loci on those you still would benefit from reassortment or independent assortment, but not if they're stuck on the same chromosome. So recombination is this process actually allows the chromosome arms to exchange. You have this process called crossing over and it really is crossing over. You have this chromosome, basically you have a break form and it basically reattaches to this chromosome over here. So the chromosomes that can be formed through recombination of these two chromosomes are the following.  These are the two chromosomes that are created through recombination of these two chromosomes if the recombination event occurs between the two. There's of course two other chromosomes that can be formed.  These are the two chromosomes that are formed if you do not have a crossing over event between the two chromosomes. Or if you have I guess an even number of crossing over events between the two chromosomes. Now are there any questions about recombination and independent assortment? Again, recombination you might see also can cause variation in the types of offspring that are created. If you have the fertilization of gametes, so now let's just put these into gametes. So this is one gamete, here's another gamete and so forth. You can actually have gametes that are formed that have now a little B associated with them. And so you can actually have individuals that would be perhaps heterozygous for big A and little B which could not have been created before. Again, more variation created in the offspring.  That's all I wanted to say about what it is. From our perspective as evolutionary biologists, all we care about is that sexual reproduction causes independent assortment and recombination which means that the offspring are potentially more variable genetically. You have more variation on which natural selection can operate. Now a little bit about the variety. So as I mentioned, sexual reproduction is an evolved trait and there's a wide variety of ways in which organisms reproduce out there. And that's what I want to go over now. I think I'll just label these points sequentially. So the first thing I want to point out is the difference between esogamous species and anisogamous species. So esogamy versus anisogamy. So esogamous species are ones in which the gametes that are formed are the same size. And as you might imagine, anisogamous species are ones in which you have a difference in the size of the gametes that different individuals form. So for instance in humans, males and females form gametes that are vastly different in size. I believe like over a thousand or a million times, the eggs, a thousand times at least bigger than this sperm.  By definition, the female are the individuals that create the big gametes. So these are by definition females and these are by definition males, which kind of gives you another way of determining whether the person you're looking at is a male or female if you're ever in doubt. Just if you can get ahold of the gametes, you have a sure fire way of figuring out if they're male or female now. So it's a very useful class from that perspective too. Now there are some species, most species out there are anisogamous. We're an example, mammals, most species are. There are a few esogamous species, algae, produce gametes that are roughly the same size and a lot of different fungi also produce gametes that are about the same size as each other. Now this point, I mean this is maybe an obvious point too, but this point will become more important when we talk about sexual selection. It turns out that females, because they're the ones that produce the bigger gametes, invest a lot more in reproduction than males.  And we'll talk about that in the next lecture. So just remember isogamy and anisogamy, it seems like an obvious point, but it has important repercussions evolutionarily. So that's the first point I wanted to make. Okay, you also have, okay, so you also have cases in which species either have separate sexes, obviously were examples of that, or species that are hermaphroditic. That is to say that a single individual can produce both sperm and eggs. Examples of hermaphroditic species, things like peas, can perform both male and female gametes. Banana slugs, a lot of slugs and mollusks can also do the same thing. If you're familiar with UC Santa Cruz's mascot, the banana slug, that's a hermaphroditic species. Now there's also, you should also realize that with hermaphrodites, you can have, they can either, they can often hermaphroditic species, they can self-fertilize. That is to say a single individual can fertilize itself. It can take one of its eggs and one of its sperm and fertilize itself. Examples of self-fertilizing species are things like peas, which can be self-fertilized. Banana slugs and lots of others cannot self-fertilize. They have to still find another individual and then they can exchange eggs and sperm appropriately to make offspring. You should not confuse hermaphroditic species or this mode of reproduction with cloning. That is to say, we'll talk about this in a moment, but individuals that are asexual, asexually reproducing, often, or they'll produce offspring that are genetically identical to the mom, okay? Hermaphroditic species, because the eggs and sperm are still undergo independent assortment and recombination, the individuals that are formed in hermaphroditic species are not identical to one another. The offspring are not identical. So don't get this confused with cloning, okay? If you're wondering why there's a long silence while I'm writing things down, it turns out I can't write and speak at the same time, so this sort of by necessity. So the next thing I want to talk about briefly is genetic versus environmental sex determination. Now, the species you're familiar with and you've learned about, if you've learned about this in high school biology, for instance, you think about the genetic sex determining mechanisms. That is to say, humans, for instance, have 23 pairs of chromosomes. 22 of those chromosomes are what are called autosomal.   So the autosomal chromosomes, they look identical to one another, okay? At least, if you were to look under a microscope, they look identical, the pairs do. The sex chromosomes differ in size. And one of them, the larger chromosome is called the X chromosome, and the smaller chromosome is called the Y chromosome. You should remember, of course, that these are just labels. If you look at the chromosomes through a microscope, they don't literally look like Xs and Ys. It's just a label that was applied to them. The big chromosome is the X, the little chromosome is the Y.  This is all stuff you probably know.  That is to say, the gametes of the males form can be potentially different, right? Because some of the sperm will have an X chromosome, and some of the sperm will have a Y chromosome.  Now, not all species are like this. Birds, for instance, it's the females that are the heterogamedic sex. Butterflies, the females are the heterogamedic sex. So in these other types of species, once again, the sex chromosomes are labeled, but they get the labels Z and W.  As I said, the females are the type, the individuals that form two different types of gametes, that they are the heterogamedic sex. Sorry? This would be an example of birds and butterflies. So sex determining mechanisms can evolve, and there's a lot of interest, frankly, in the field right now about how sex chromosomes evolve, and it's really been only the last 10 years where people have been able to study how sex chromosomes evolve on sort of a molecular genetic basis.  It's a very interesting field. Anyways, this is just to point out that sex chromosomes can evolve, and that there are different mechanisms, different genetic sex determining mechanisms out there.  Well, it turns out that some species don't have genetic sex determination. The sex that you turn into is determined by the temperature at which the egg is incubated. Now, in the last lecture, I believe I talked about the experimental evolution. I showed two pictures, one of Holly Wickman, who was from University of Idaho in Moscow, and the other photo was of Jim Bull, who's at the University of Texas at Austin. Jim Bull, Jim and Holly, Jim now studies experimental evolution in viruses, but his career started as a herpetologist.  So a pretty remarkable discovery. And in turtles, I always get this confused, but in turtles, I believe males are formed at low temperature, is that right? Yes. And in crocodiles and alligators, it's just the opposite. Males form at high temperature. And of course, the question comes up, if you have a cold season or a warm season, why aren't all the individuals formed of the same sex? And it turns out that the threshold at which the critical temperature above which you have males or females is basically around the nest temperature. So the nests are much more constant in temperature than the ambient temperature of the air. Justin, it's an ecological question, but it is the case that you still get a mixture of males and females in these cases. Okay, so that's another thing, point number three. Let's go on to the fourth variety. I believe the last. Okay, so there are some species that are capable of asexual reproduction and many that aren't. And some that can switch between asexual and sexual reproduction. So what is asexual reproduction? Well, this is the formation of an individual from an unfertilized egg. Unfertilized diploid egg, I should say. So you have mom. There's mom, that's a symbol for females. She produces a diploid egg that's genetically identical to her. It does not undergo meiosis. Okay, it does not undergo recombination or independent assortment. And that egg grows up to be a daughter that's genetically identical to the mom. Okay, so genetic, this is what we think about when you think about cloning.  Now, when I say genetically identical, I mean, except for any mutations that happen to have occurred in the formation of this diploid unfertilized egg, but for the most part, genetically identical. Now in plants, this process of asexual reproduction is called apomicsis. This is what we call it when plants do this. In animals, this is called parthenogenesis. You would think it would have been quite convenient from your perspective, especially if they could have just used the same name for the same process. But of course, plant biologists have to call this phenomenon one thing and vertebrate biologists have to call it something else. But it's the same basic idea. You're forming offspring that are genetically identical. This is something that can occur quite frequently. There's lizards, for instance, that are parthenogenic. Lots of plants that undergo apomicsis. Now, is there anything else I wanted to say here? Is there a question? Yes. I'm sorry. At the best of times, my writing is not very good. Apo, M, I, X, I, S. It's also in the notes, hopefully spelled correctly. Yes, they're female. You're producing offspring that are all female because males don't produce offspring. So the one thing that I'm pretty certain of is that males don't give birth or lay eggs. I'm not being a little facetious, but basically, they're defined to be females because they can produce offspring, eggs that undergo growth, right? So they're defined to be females, but they're clearly a little bit different than the normal sexually reproducing species. All the gametes are the same size, in a sense, so by my definition, that the females that always have the larger gametes, how does this work? They're just called females. Any other questions? Those were good questions. Yes, it's just how they, so it's not clear if it's beneficial or not. That's just the system that evolved. It's clearly not too detrimental. They seem to be able to, about equal numbers of males and females are being produced in turtles and in crocodiles and in alligators, so it's not, it doesn't seem to be a hindrance. It's just the mechanism by which they determine sex. I should say that I forgot to mention one thing when I was talking about hermaphroditic species, so I'm gonna erase this portion of the board. It's remarkable that I forgot this because it's the only thing I did as an undergraduate with research. And there are hermaphrodites that are sequential, so that is to say, you never find both sexes together in the same individual, but they undergo sex change during their life. So there are some species which are called protandrus hermaphrodites. These are male first. They go from male to female. And there's other species, they're called protognus. I think I've got this right. They go from female to male. So an example of a protandrus species is actually can be found in the intertidal area, in the Bay Area. So if you go to Half Moon Bay, for instance, and go out to maybe knee-deep water and scoop up the sand, you'll find these little tiny clams. Everybody know what a clam is? The bivalves, they have two shells. They live in the dirt. They filter water and eat the gunk in the water. And these clams, they're called transonella. That's the genus. They're very small. They're maybe five millimeters at the largest. So it's maybe a quarter-inch in size. And they go from male to female. They brood their young. So the clams that come out of the female are fully-formed clams. They're just little tiny guys. There's probably an ecological explanation for protandrus and protognus species. And the clams, the argument is that they're so small and because they're brooding that you can't hold that many clams in this very small size. So it's the females that have more volume. They're the bigger individuals in the population. So it might be advantageous to be a female because when you're large, because you can hold more offspring. And of course, sperm are very small. So even as a small clam, you can produce a real excess of sperm. So that's the explanation you often see for protandrus-type species. And protognus species and examples or many reef fish are protognus. And one of the arguments there is that some of these reef fish are territorial and where the males defend the territory. So perhaps it's advantageous to be bigger. You better defend your territory. So the males turn out to be the larger individuals. Anyways, there's often ecological explanations associated with protandry and protogyny. There are some just going back to the asexual and sexual capable of asexual reproduction. There are species too, just like there's species that can switch sexes halfway through their life. There are species that can go through asexual or sexual reproduction, often depending upon the environment. They'll often go through asexual reproduction when the environment is stable and it's advantageous to undergo very rapid population growth. And they'll often be sexual when things become more uncertain.  Water fleas, Daphnia, there's another example of that. Now, I believe that's all I wanted to say about the variety, the different types of variety of sexual reproduction you actually see out there.  And so the first thing we have to realize is that there is a cost undergoing sexual reproduction. And we might be able to list some of those costs. Erase this portion of the board. So what are the costs of sexual reproduction? Well, one cost is just you expend energy. So especially males and many species expend a large amount of energy just getting access to mates. So this idea of separating the sexes and undergoing sexual reproduction can be quite costly. There's also, you're probably familiar with, potential for disease, picking up parasites.   And the last thing, and the thing I want to talk about the most is the so-called two-fold cost of sex. So what is the two-fold cost of sex? Well, to explain this, I want you to imagine two different populations of organisms. Go over here. One of the populations is asexual, and the other population undergoes normal sexual reproduction. And to simplify matters further, we're gonna assume that in both cases, the asexual individuals and the sexual individuals, in both cases, they produce two offspring. Now let's look at the sexual, rather the asexual species. So here we have our female, and in this example, this female can produce two offspring, both of which are female. So the population in that one generation is doubled. We're from one individual to two individuals. Now each of these offspring are female, and because they're asexual, they don't need a male. So they can also produce two daughters, and we now have four individuals. The population is doubled again. The point being that asexual species, the population can double every generation in this made-up example, because each individual produces two offspring. Now let's also imagine, so this is the asexual. Now let's look at the sexual species.  So you need to find some male to reproduce with, and then this female, on average is gonna produce one female and one male offspring. Remember, we're keeping the game fairer. In both cases, they're producing two offspring. Now this male doesn't do anything in terms of reproduction. It just provides a sperm for some egg, perhaps. So we won't worry about him, but this female here finds some mate, some male out there she mates with. Shouldn't be a problem.  So note that the population is not increased in size. It's gonna remain stable. You're gonna have two individuals, this female, on average, is gonna produce two offspring, one of which will produce two offspring, one of which will produce two offspring. The point here is that in asexual species, a population can grow quite rapidly.  Of course, the census, you go out there and count the population. Of course, you're gonna see males there, and they're gonna count towards the population size, but they're not the ones that are producing the young. So that is the two-fold cost of sex. So the question becomes, if sex is so bad, if it costs so much energy, you expose yourself to the risk of disease, and especially if you imagine a species that is asexual and compared to the sexual ones, how can sex ever evolve in the first place? And just to go back to this two-fold cost of sex, I want you to imagine, here's our population. Imagine that you have a sexually reproducing species. So here's each circle as a person or individual. So we have our sexually reproducing species that's composed of, say, randomly mating individuals. And imagine a mutation that causes some individual to all of a sudden not need to mate. So this individual now can reproduce asexually, whereas all the other individuals in the population are obligatory sexual. This individual's gonna produce females, both of which can reproduce. So this individual, just from what we know about population genetics, the mutation that causes asexuality when it appears in a sexual species, it should spread through the population, through natural selection. So why is it the case that we see so many sexually reproducing species? And it's a case that we don't just think that there's sort of an evenness between being asexual versus sexual. It's pretty clear that being sexual is better. Why do we think that? We think that because asexual species tend to be quite young. They don't persist very long. We can tell that through what's called a phylogenetic analysis, or a phylogenetic tree.  Yes, okay, so this shouldn't be too unfamiliar, but let's make a hypothetical tree. Maybe this is gonna be a tree of lizards and snakes. So here's our lizards and snakes, all of which are sexual at the tip, except what you tend to see are small parts of the tree that tend to be asexual. So maybe you'll find the whipped-tail lizards, and there's some other lizards, for instance, that are asexual.  What does this mean? It means that asexuality must have arisen along that one twig. And it must arise quite common, often, because you actually see multiple species of lizards that are asexual, but you don't see one large, old group of asexual lizards. This means that asexual species, when they're formed, don't last very long. They tend to go extinct at a higher rate than the sexual species do. There's one exception to this rule, I should mention, just to be fair, and that's the Deloitte rotifers. They're very small organisms that live in lakes. They appear to be anciently asexual. They're the only group that we can think of that's like that. All the other cases that are known, the asexual species tend to be quite young. So what is the advantage to being sexual? Because there must be some advantage, or we wouldn't see some asexual species. Everything should be asexual. Well, this is where I'm gonna actually go on to the evolutionary explanation. This is the last portion of this lecture. Evolutionary explanation for the advantage for sex has to do with these processes of recombination and independent assortments that I talked about. And there's two different models. One is called Fisher's model, the Fisher model, and that is a model in which you adapt more rapidly to your environment. So that's one explanation. The other, and so you might know Fisher because he's the population geneticist that I'm so enamored with and that I mention all the time. And the other fellow is Muller, and this is the explanation that sexual species can more easily purge deleterious mutations. So those are two different explanations and I'd like to spend a little bit of time to explain both of these mechanisms. I should mention too that Muller worked a lot in the 1930s. He's the fellow that discovered that radiation, for instance, causes mutations in cancer. They got the Nobel Prize for that. And people at university did all that research at the University of Texas at Austin, but then he was expelled or kicked out of the university because he was a communist, but then he got his Nobel Prize afterwards when he was at another university. So Texas always likes to think, try to claim this Nobel Prize as their own, but it really isn't because they kicked him out, but anyways. So let's talk about the Fisher model. Let's talk about the Fisher model first. And the way I want to explain this is by looking at a population as a bunch of chromosomes. So here's our population.  So there it is. And we all know what happens if you have a beneficial mutation land on one of these chromosomes. So star means it's a good mutation that the individuals that have that chromosome that happen to have at least one copy of it have a fitness advantage. They've survived better, they reproduce more offspring. What happens when we have a beneficial mutation? Natural selection tends to favor it. And you'll find more and more of the individuals in the population over time will tend to have that beneficial mutation. That's quite simple. You guys shouldn't be surprised by that result at all. Now, things become a little bit more complicated when we think about having beneficial mutations at a second locus. So let's imagine that there's a second locus where you can also have another gene perhaps where you can also have a beneficial mutation land on that. So this individual, individuals bearing this chromosome also have a fitness advantage. Now, let's make the example a little bit more interesting. If both of those mutations get onto the same chromosome, this individual's the best. So you have three different chromosomes or four different chromosomes. You have the chromosome that doesn't have either of the beneficial mutations. Those are the worst. These guys that have one beneficial mutation, they're better. And the guy that has the lucky chromosomes that have both mutations on them, they're the very best in terms of the fitness they confer on the individuals that bear them. The scenario clear, pretty simple. So best, good, worst. Now, in the absence of recombination, the only way to get both of those mutations together is to have this mutation land on a chromosome that already has that mutation. The only way to get this mutation with this one is that the mutation happens to occur right here with a beneficial mutation at the second position, the second locus. When you don't have that occur, you have the mutations occur on different chromosomes and what happens? Well, these two chromosomes compete one against the other in the population. And ultimately, the winner will be determined by whether this mutation is better or worse than that mutation. So in the absence of recombination, which is a process that exchanges bits of the chromosome and can bring different beneficial mutations together, in the absence of recombination, these mutations will either fight it out, compete one against the other in the population with the ultimate winner being determined by which of these mutations has the higher fitness or you have to wait till the second mutation arises in the same background. And eventually, this double mutation will win. So when is it likely that both of these mutations will occur on the same chromosome? Well, it's gonna occur when one of these two chromosomes, the chromosomes that have only one of them, one of the mutations, when lots of the individuals in the population are of that type, then when the second mutation occurs, then it's more likely to occur in the same background. So the general pattern in asexual species is that adaptation, when you consider multiple loci together, adaptation tends to occur sequentially. First one mutation occurs, one beneficial mutation occurs, it spreads to high frequency and when it's at high frequency, then it's more likely that a second beneficial mutation will land in the same background and then both mutations can spread to high frequency. So you can sort of see there would be a sequential fixation of the two mutations. First one gets to high frequency, then you get the second mutation landing in the same background and both can go to high frequency. Sexual species don't have to deal with that, right? They can bring through recombination these two beneficial mutations together. So they don't have to wait around for one of the mutations to get to high frequency. These two mutations can be at low frequency and if the two chromosomes happen to be in the same individual and that individual undergoes recombination between those two, then it can form gametes that have both of those beneficial mutations together in the same chromosome. Are there any questions about this explanation? It's basically an explanation for more rapid evolution in a new environment. That's Fisher's explanation. It's bringing together good mutations. Muller's model is a little bit different and it involves deleterious mutations. So once again I'm going to illustrate our population with just as a series of chromosomes. Here's our population of chromosomes and we can imagine that some of these chromosomes might have beneficial mutations somewhere. So those are the good mutations. But you can also have deleterious mutations. That's a sad face. So there's a deleterious mutation that occurs somewhere else. So that's to say this is the most, most mutations are deleterious, right? Only occasionally as a mutation actually make improved things. Most of the time when you have a mutation you break something that's already working just fine. So in the absence of recombination when this mutation occurs, well natural selection tends to remove it from the population. Remember we talked about purifying selection. When a deleterious mutation occurs by itself, this chromosome will have a lower fitness and natural selection tends to remove those types of mutations through purifying selection. One of the processes I talked about when we talked about natural selection. But you can also have situations like this where an otherwise perfectly good chromosome, or even a chromosome that would be quite good because it has a beneficial mutation also happens to be associated with a deleterious mutation. In asexual species there's no way of breaking up this association between a deleterious mutation and a beneficial mutation. It might be for instance that this is the worst chromosome because it has one deleterious mutation. This chromosome is intermediate in fitness. This one might be better than this one because it still has this beneficial mutation that outweighs this deleterious one. And of course the very best chromosome is the one that doesn't have any deleterious mutations at all. So we'll call this the worst, better, better still, and best. Just to think about assigning fitnesses to these different chromosomes. This would be the best scenario to be in. It might be a chromosome that doesn't have any deleterious mutations associated with it but has a beneficial one. Again, asexual species, because they don't undergo recombination have no way of breaking up the association between the beneficial and deleterious mutation. Sexual species can recreate kind of a pristine or a good chromosome by recombining this mutation with a chromosome that doesn't bear that mutation. So for instance a recombination event between these two chromosomes would be able to recreate this chromosome as well as that chromosome in the gametes. But at least it's reproducing at least one variant of the chromosome that doesn't have that deleterious mutation.  So that's the second explanation. And it's not clear which of these two factors, both of them are probably working in real life and out in nature, but it's not clear at least to me which of these two processes is more important in terms of the evolutionary explanation for sex. But these are our best explanations for why sexual reproduction is so widespread in nature, faster evolution and more easily purging deleterious mutations. So that's all I wanted to say. It's a lecture that's quite different than the one your parents gave you. See you next time.


Students from Yacosca Middle School and the Yacosca Express Youth Basketball Team improved their shooting skills at a basketball camp where they learned from NBA shooting coach David Nurse. I think sports, not just the sports itself with competition, but especially basketball as a team sport, it carries over to everything. I mean, how to work with groups, how to motivate, how to lead. I mean, it's not just there on the court, but it's also going to carry on the rest of their life as well. Nurse worked with them on movement, ball handling, passing, and shooting skills. Several sailors also volunteer as coaches for the basketball teams. Four or five sailors that volunteer from refing to coaching, and it's great for them because it gets them involved in the community, gives them things to do besides just stay in their room and on the computer, gets them involved in the community out here and it's great. Petty Officer Jacob Allison, Yacosca Naval Base, Japan.


Welcome to Emotion with Euphoria the master class series that provides the tools necessary to understand and heal from emotional use and the resources to begin to build a truly It is Sam Bachman, author of Malignant Self-Love Narcissism Revisited among numerous other esteemed publications in psychology, philosophy, economics and international affairs. He is visiting professor of psychology in Southern Federal University in Russia, professor of finance and psychology at the center of international advanced and professional studies. His highly popular website is narcissistic-use.com and his YouTube channels have garnered multiple millions of visitors. Sam, it is truly an honor to have you with us today. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you for the very generous introduction. In the past, you have publicly stated that you are narcissists and that along with your academic achievements and your expertise qualify you as one of the best people to speak to in order to get an insider's perspective on the subject. You have a specific understanding that others don't. Please briefly describe the factors that contribute to producing a narcissist in the first place. Today we believe that there are two developmental pathways to narcissism. One developmental pathway involves classic abuse. That would be physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse and of course sexual abuse. Sexual abuse tends to produce people with multiple personality disorder. For example, borderline and narcissistic. So this is one developmental pathway and the one best documented, most well-researched and most founded on statistics, double blind studies and so on. And in the past 15 years more or less, we are beginning to consider an alternative developmental pathway where the child is actually idolized, spoiled, pampered, used as an extension by the parent. When the parent regards the child as a tool to realize the parent's unfulfilled wishes, dreams and fantasies, where the child can do no wrong is insulated from the environment and from its corrective influences by a parent which interminably idealizes and always justifies the child. So in this environment it seems that narcissism thrives as well. We are beginning to understand that the very concept of abuse had been flawed for many decades. Abuse is any situation which fulfills two conditions. One, the child is not allowed to separate from the parent and to individuate, to become an individual. Number two, the boundaries of the child are repeatedly violated and bridged. It could be in a violent or aggressive way, it could be in a sexual way, but it could also be by treating the child, objectifying the child. It could also be, for example, by forcing the child to act as the parent's parent. It could be by inducing ambient incest, that's emotional incest, where, for example, the mother pollutes with the child against the father and so on and so forth. So there are multiple, numerous ways to abuse children and they all involve these two conditions. Not allowing the child to go away, to form his own life, to not allowing his personality to coalesce. And the second thing, breaching the child's boundaries, forcing the child to merge, infuse with the parent to become a single organism. Now, some children react by developing pathological narcissism. Other children react by developing dependent personality disorder. These are developmental choices. Actually, statistically, the majority of children exposed to abuse, luckily for all of us, end up totally mentally healthy. Without any dysfunction, including no attachment dysfunction. It's a miracle. It's a miracle. But about 15% of children end up with personality disorder. When this child is honestly becoming a narcissist, is there any way to prevent this from happening before adulthood? Narcissism develops at a very early stage. Moreover, we are beginning to consider the very, very strong possibility that narcissism involves genetic factors. Although narcissism does not involve, it seems, brain abnormalities or abnormalities of brain function. In one study in 2013, we found some abnormalities in the narcissist brain. But it's a tiny study and not far from conclusive.  And in both these techniques, immediately, you can see a psychopath's brain or a borderline brain.  That's a borderline. For example, borderlines and psychopaths have deviations of an up to 30%. That's three, zero percent in the quantity of white matter versus gray matter. Now, this is enormous. So, but in narcissism, the brain is normal. So there's immediately the question, why do certain children become narcissists? If their brains are totally normal, functioning is healthy, everything is okay. Why some children, in very few children mind you, we believe today it's between one and three percent become narcissists. And we think there's a genetic predisposition. There's no other good explanation. And so that reduces our hopefulness.  You can eliminate traumatic or post traumatic effects. You can rewire the brain. I teach not only psychology, but neuroscience. So today we have multiple studies that show that the brain is malleable. It's absolutely packed. You can play with it. You can recombine it. It's redundant. Some parts of the brain compensate for these functions in other parts. Brain is wonderful. It's a beautiful, beautiful creation. But where your genetics are involved, that's a problem. We are still not there. We can't tamper effectively with genes. The second problem is that pathological narcissism emerges extremely early in development, even in pre-verbal stages, or not totally verbal stages. For example, it's very common for a child to become a pathological narcissist at age four. So children are not able to articulate what's happening to them. They are not fully self aware, of course. There's no clear boundaries. So they can't tell where the world ends and they begin. They are not totally separate from the parent. So there are many parental artifacts. There are many parental constructs that are inside the child and operating. And so on so forth. It's a big mess to cut a long story short. And that's precisely why I'm trying to reconceive of pathological narcissism. That's my work in the last seven years. I'm trying to suggest that narcissism is not only a personality or not at all a personality disorder, but a post traumatic condition. It's a multiple systemic reaction to trauma involving numerous mechanisms such as, for example, dissociation. And so, and all this happens at a certain age, and the child freezes is ossified. There's a true self which is like Lot's wife. It's a stalactite or a stalagmite of salt. The child is frozen and never continues to develop. And that's precisely the mistake of, of most therapists and therapies treatment modalities when they try to cope with narcissism. They treat the narcissist as an adult. But the narcissist is not an adult. The narcissist is a child. It's a case of arrested development. When you try to treat a narcissist in your clinic or your office, you're dealing with a four year old, with a six year old in the best, most optimistic scenario with a nine year old. If you attempt to use techniques that are adult oriented techniques, such as contracting Therapeutic Alliance decision making, and this will not work with the narcissist is not another. And so I'm very pessimistic with regards to our ability to effectively intervene in early childhood, because we cannot stop this process. What exactly does the narcissist understand once they're all grown up physically? And somebody says to them, what you said or what you've done hurt me? What do they behind the scenes understand or hear? You should think child. You should think child when narcissism is formed, the pathogenesis of narcissism, the psychogenic aspects of narcissism. The child makes use of tools that children have. For example, the child invents an imaginary frame. This imaginary friend is what we call the false self. The imaginary friend of the child is everything the child is not. The imaginary friend is omniscient knows everything child doesn't. Majority friend is all powerful, brilliant, perfect, the server, etc. So everything the child is not compensatory imaginary friend. The imaginary friend put protects the narcissist. It's a protective shield. And that's why I keep comparing narcissism to a private religion. Because if you take a list of the attributes of this imaginary friend, it's God, the child invents God and worships this God. It's a one man religion, one God and one worshipper. And the only case where the worshipper is God. And so to break into this cycle is exceedingly difficult because these artifacts this contract constructs survive into adulthood. When you try to communicate with an adult narcissist, he is immediately shielded by a firewall. And this firewall is the false self. It's a decoy. You never ever communicate with a narcissist. It's a common mistake. You always and exclusively communicate with the false self. And the false self is God. He has God's eye view. He has a synoptic view. He has an omnicotent and omniscient view, etc, etc. Your concerns are human. The false self is God. It's exactly like praying to God or communicating with God and telling God, I'm in pain, help me. So we have personalized God very often. Jesus is one example. But it's not possible to do with the narcissist because there's nobody there. The narcissist vacated himself. The narcissist is not a being, not an entity, not an existence. The narcissist is an absence. It's an absence. I keep saying that the narcissist is a whole of mirrors. The reason you fall in love with a narcissist, addictively, inexorably, the reason for the death of the trauma bonding, etc, etc, is because you're not falling in love with any one. There's no one there. You're falling in love with your idealized reflection in this carnival hall of mirrors. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you said that. That answers the next question I was going to ask. How so many people say they've fallen in love with the narcissist? They've married the narcissist, they want the relationship to work. And maybe they just can't seem to get that love back. And you just said they're looking at their own love reflected back to them. Is that right? It's very right. There's nothing like loving an narcissist. Let's start with the fact. Anyone would tell you this. Your love a narcissist, the world erupts in technicolor. It's the most exciting thrill ride roller coaster. It's an amazing experience. It's a theme park. It's Disneyland rolled into a horror movie. It's it's it's edge of your seat. It's edge of your seat. It's it's uncontrolled. It's always unpredictable and exciting and infuriating and everything is intense and immense. So it's bigger than life. But the the reason it's bigger than life is that you are not falling in love with a narcissist ever, by the way, because nobody there, you're falling in love with your idealized image. Now, here's the thing. Many so called internet partners of the narcissists have never experienced self love before. They are borderlines, they're codependence, they're broken and damaged by their upbringing, by their parents, by their background, by their life circumstances, by their substance abuse, by any number of factors, these people, these women, for example, because majority of women, they never experienced self love, ever. The first time, ironically, that they are able to experience self love is with the narcissist and via the narcissist, all of mirrors. However, it's not real self love. It's not love of the real self. It's love of an idealized, aggrandized, non realistic self. It's love of what you could have been, what Freud called the ego ideal, it's love of your ego ideal. That is why it's addictive. Not only for the first time in your life, you experience self love, which is intoxicating, but you experience yourself as perfect, brilliant, amazing, wondrous, miraculous, unparalleled, unprecedented, omniscient, omnipotent, etc, etc. This is, this is accomplished by forcing you to merge with the narcissist's false self, you become an element, a part of the narcissist's false self. The narcissist never idealizes his partner, he core idealizes. It's very important distinction. The narcissist idealizes his partner, because if he shares his life with an ideal partner, it reflects on him. If his partner is the most beautiful woman in the world, what does it say about him as a man? If his partner is the most intelligent person in the universe, what does it say about him that she had chosen him? He idealizes and gets idealized reflexively. He core idealizes. Now in this process of co idealization, you become an integral part, inseparable part, via codependent merger and fusion. You become an inseparable part of the narcissist's false self. In other words, his grandiosity comes to depend on you. You facilitate his grandiosity in a variety of ways, which we're not going to right now. One of the most obvious is that you provide narcissistic supply, but you become a tool, a weapon, you become a weapon in his arsenal. And so from that moment, you become a part of him, an extension of him. Indeed, when the narcissist first meets you, the first meeting, first date, first time he targets you, by the way, the narcissist can target you without saying a word to you. You may not be aware that the narcissist has been idealizing you for a month. It never says a word to you. But he has spent the last four weeks idealizing you. So the process starts sometimes surreptitiously. The narcissist idealizes you, converts you into a part of himself, then you begin to fulfill a function. When he does that, he takes a snapshot of you. Exactly like a snapshot. He takes a snapshot, and he internalizes this snapshot. From that moment, he continues to interact with the snapshot, not with you. All his interactions, all the psychodynamic exchange takes place with a snapshot. That is why narcissists become infuriated, explosively angry, rageful, when you deviate and diverge from the snapshot. That makes sense. If that person that the narcissist selects is still ideal, and a great extension of him or herself, then how does that rage come in? How does that happen? It's the exact opposite of what you've indicated. The rage is because you are idealized. The thing is this, when the narcissist first comes across you as a potential source of supply, he acquires you. I coined the term hoovering. When he hoovers you, he acquires you. When he acquires you in the process, he has to idealize you, because if you are less than ideal, he is less than ideal.  So he must idealize you. But how can he idealize you? You're not ideal. So he takes a snapshot of you, a literal snapshot. It's called inner representation in clinical terms.  I'm going to interact from now on with that person's representation in my mind. Narcissus confuses internal objects with external objects, exactly like in psychosis. So he begins to interact with a photo, with a snapshot. And then suddenly you do something which contradicts the snapshot. You diverge from the snapshot. You display signs of personal autonomy, of independence, of disagreement, of criticism. You suggest something which implies that you know something the narcissist doesn't know, challenges his omniscience. You give him advice. You offer him help. All these things provoke him because they imply one that he is less than perfect and needs you, needs you for help, needs you for advice, needs you for comfort and support. And the second thing, it means that you have an independent life of your own. Now, if you have an independent life of your own, it challenges the narcissist's snapshot, which is static and totally malleable and controllable, and also provokes his object in constancy. Remember, it's a baby. Narcissus is a baby. He has something called object in constancy, out of sight, out of mind. If you're independent and autonomous, tomorrow you can find another man. Tomorrow you can travel away. Tomorrow you can disappear. It's very frightening. There's abandonment and separation anxiety. Any sign of separateness, any sign of autonomy, any sign of independence, any sign that you have a mind of your own is nothing short of life-threatening. It threatens the inner balance because you challenge a snapshot. You challenge this library of representations and the whole edifice can come crumbling down. You challenge the perfection of the narcissist, his ideal inflated grandiose view of himself, and you threaten the narcissist with potential abandonment and provoke his object in constancy. So, of course, he's frustrated and he's infuriated by your intransigence, by your lack of considerateness, by your inability or unwillingness to collaborate with him in maintaining his inner equilibrium. You're perceived to be deliberately and intentionally frustrating. I mean, it's so easy for you to not be. Why do you insist on being? All I'm asking you is to mummify yourself. All I'm asking you is to render yourself an inanimate object. My audience, when I need to, my sex slave, when I'm up to it, my whatever, I just want you to be an object. I have no problem with my refrigerator. Why won't you be like my refrigerator? If you are not like my refrigerator, you're doing this on purpose. You're doing this to me. You're provoking me. You're evil. You're evil.  This is the trigger. That explains why he would be so angry or she would be so angry. So is there hope for people who are dedicated to their relationship with the narcissist? Many would say just go no contact. And you offer something else. You offer something you call cold therapy. I invented the no contact strategy in 1995. For well over 10 years, psychologists, therapists were infuriated. They were very angry that I came up with this strategy because this strategy caught on very fast. And now it's a standard advice. So no contact is my is my brainchild. And I still stand by it. This is the only effective way to cope with analysis. Cut your losses. Go away. End of story. Don't waste time. Don't listen to coaches. Don't pay therapies. Don't buy books. Don't watch this summit. Just cut your losses. Go away. And yes, do it even if it's your daughter. Do it even if it's your mother. Do it even if it's your boss. Cut your losses and walk away. There is no other effective strategy. I've invented seven other strategies. I invented a strategy called mirroring. It's also a way to cope with analysis. There are other strategies. You can go to my YouTube channel. There is a recent lecture I gave in Budapest how to manipulate the analysis and stay alive. So there I gave the details of the eight strategies that I developed plus another strategy that I had not developed and not my brainchild. And it's called gray rock, which is a wonderful strategy. Core therapy is not for victims. Core therapy is for analysis. Does it work to cure them? Core therapy is a therapy that I developed to eliminate the false self and the false self need for grandiosity. That's all it does. It does not develop. It does not help the narcissists develop empathy. It's too late for that. Narcissists and psychopaths read people much better than you. They are they are x-ray. They're they're human scanners.  Core therapy cannot deal with this. There's no way to cure this. Also, core therapy doesn't help with interpersonal relationships because interpersonal relationships involve other dynamics like abandonment, anxiety, and so on. There's no way to render the narcissists an adult. I am not the first one to have said it, by the way. I don't want to take credit where credit is not due. Much before me, there was a guy who wrote the book, The Peter Pan Syndrome, and he described narcissists, and he said, narcissists are children. And much before him, there was a group of psychoanalysts, and they came came up with the term puer a eternus, the eternal adolescent. This is a long pedigree, a long tradition of knowledge and studies and scholarship. There is no way. That's why no contact is the only viable strategy. There is absolutely no way to render the narcissists an adult. End of story. That would be hard to just let go and not want to help that narcissists raise with inner child that rose the long ago. Yes, it's true. The narcissist lures in his victims, his so-called intimate partners, by harping and provoking their maternal instincts. The narcissist looks for mother substitutes, and many women fall in this trap, and they mother the narcissist with the false hope on the false premise that if you give the narcissist enough love and compassion and holding and acceptance and warmth, somehow this will trigger the long delayed development of personal growth. That is malignant optimism. There's no such thing. It's nonsense. Even in therapy, where we know what we're doing, we cannot induce growth in narcissists. We can eliminate the grandiosity part and eliminate the false self part, and therefore make the narcissists more bearable. If the person wants to be autonomous and self-actualized, they would have to forfeit that in order to have a peaceful life with a narcissist. There is a very long millennia old tradition of self-denial, of annihilation of the ego, of disappearing as a form of enlightenment, nirvana. Nothingness, suspended animation, elimination of ego functions, elimination of your separateness, merging with someone else, that someone else could be God, that someone else could be the narcissist, that someone else could be a nation, that someone else could be a football club. We all deny parts of ourselves in order to in order to belong, belonging, being accepted, conforming. They fulfill critical psychological functions which are as important as self-actualization. The majority of humanity outside western civilization believe that disappearing and vanishing and suppressing who you are is the way to happiness. It is western civilization and only in the last hundred years and that came up with individualism. Individualism is frowned upon and considered counterproductive and destructive in the majority of cultures in the world. Ask any Japanese. So we must be very aware of cultural context, societal context, period context. These are not absolutes. These are not absolutes. You can be self-actualized via self-sacrifice, via self-denial. So the women who are happy with narcissists they feel that they are sacrificing themselves and denying themselves on behalf of a greater good. It's a cultish frame of mind. They believe that the narcissists in their lives are superior for example or have an important cosmic mission or are worthy of the sacrifice and the self-denial or that by merging and fusing with the narcissists they will attain a higher level of being even more self-actualization than they can by themselves. They think there's a synergy. Like if they team up with the narcissists they become double what they are. If the one partner agrees to be with the narcissist and the narcissist is happy the way they are and the both partners agree would you recommend that as a way to raise your children? Children is an entirely different story. I'm dead set against narcissists having children. It's a question of consent. There's a difference between an adult who willingly knowingly, self-consciously, sacrifices herself, denies herself, annihilates herself, annals herself, merges and fuses with another person because she believes this caters to her emotional needs or will make her a better person. She believes her self-actualization is by eliminating the self. It's a legitimate course of action and very common in most cultures of the world but that's an adult. That's an adult. It's a consensual act ultimately if not at the very beginning. At some point you know what you're doing you know. So children it's not the same.  Children are brought to the world. They have no tools to cope with the narcissist, with his demands for merger and fusion, with his stultifying influence on personal development, growth, separation, individuation and all the healthy processes. I don't think narcissists should have children. In an ideal world they would have been barred by law from having children. Narcissists, psychopaths, borderlines. People with cluster B personality disorders have the potential to produce unhappy children and unhappy adults and this potential is inordinately large where a normal parent you know is three percent likely to produce unhappy children. The narcissist is eighty percent likely to produce unhappy children. Why breed unhappiness? Why breed dysfunction? All children of narcissists have dysfunctional attachment. All of them have identity problem. It's known as identity disturbance or identity diffusion. All of them have problems with gender differentiation and other forms of identity dimensions. Many children of narcissists have dissociation in order to cope with trauma. All children of narcissists are traumatized. All, no exception. All children of narcissists are exposed to a very unhealthy and dysfunctional form of relationship between their parents. The wrong type of interpersonal relationship. The wrong model and they carry this model forward. It's an intergenerational problem. I mean I don't think narcissists would have children. Absolutely no. I don't. I don't have children. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to be audience with? The only thing I would add to this comprehensive interview for which I thank you is that narcissism is way beyond the mental health problem. It's an organizing principle. It's an organizing principle even of institutions and organizing principle of some human practices such as for example politics. It's also an explanatory her manuitic principle. It imbues life with meaning. Even for victims, when a victim tries to make sense of her life, of her world, of her emotions, of her cognitions, she can say ah that's because my husband is a narcissist. So narcissism makes sense of the world and in this sense, narcissism is really a religion, a kind of religious practice. Now unfortunately, because narcissism has these dimensions which are extra psychological, have nothing to do with psychology but have to do with the world. Narcissism permeated the world. Narcissism affected the design of technologies such as social media. Narcissism affected the design of devices and electronics. Narcissism affected the certain practices like show business, like politics, like law enforcement. Narcissism is now used by everyone from political commentators to cultural critics. They use narcissism to explain what's happening and what will happen and to predict the future. We increasingly are having more and more narcissistic civilization. Our civilization is becoming more and more narcissistic. Why is this bad news? It's bad news because this means that narcissism is becoming a positive adaptation. In a narcissistic civilization it pays to be a narcissist and it does not pay to have empathy. It does not pay to be normal and healthy. It does not pay to have no insight into the narcissist's mind because if institutions are narcissistic and the people who practice within these institutions are narcissists and you don't understand narcissists you are at a disadvantage. So you need to study narcissism and then you need to emulate narcissism and then you need to become more and more narcissistic just to cope. Many victims perhaps the majority of victims adopt narcissistic and psychopathic behaviors and traits trying to cope with their narcissistic and psychopathic abusers. So we have even a clinical term. It's called narcissistic psychopathic overlay. It's when a victim is exposed to such horrific narcissistic and psychopathic abuse that the only way for her to survive is to become a narcissist and a psychopath and you see these in forums online. People lose empathy. People attack each other. People are aggressive. People are explosive and these people are not narcissists but they had become narcissists. So in July 2016 the famous science magazine New Scientist came up with a cover story possibly the most shocking cover story I've ever seen because the cover story was parents teach your children to be narcissists. It's a positive adaptation. We are headed towards a narcissistic and psychopathic future and if you don't fit in if you don't learn to become a bit narcissistic and a bit psychopathic you're going to fall behind.  This is becoming a positive adaptation and it's a major disaster because and it's my finishing sentence I promise because all narcissists and psychopaths end life or they end an enterprise or they end the business or they end their administration or they end whatever they end their endeavors in a cataclysmic volcanic eruption. Narcissists and psychopaths are self-destructive and other destructive.  Narcissism invariably ineluctably ends in destruction. If we become a narcissistic civilization ruled over by narcissists permeated by psychopaths guided and directed by narcissistic and psychopathic principles we are absolutely doomed. Okay thank you so much for your insight. Thank you. If you would like to keep in touch with Sam Bachman just for watching this interview he is offering absolutely free the A to Z of narcissistic abuse narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder in psychopathy. If not in the bible just go to the email address below and put in your information and it will be sent to you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you very much for having me and I appreciate the plot. Thank you.


I really liked your suggestion that we pray as a congregation at home, but for those of us with young children, it gets quite distracting. And so if we want to, you know, as mothers, cultivate everything that we learned today, would you recommend we, like, pray in congregation, then pray on our own, or, like, focus on this if we haven't laid it? Yeah, my kids are all older now, so it's less of an issue. But I did also have kids that were young. And one thing is you have to do your best. So we're living in societies where we all, we oftentimes can't practice the ideal. And part of learning this is, is at least you make the intention. You know, I have the intention in my heart to pray every prayer in congregation. And keep in mind, this is also part of the modern world, is that people don't tend to live with extended families. So in traditional settings, there were so many people around, it was very easy to pray jama'a, okay? So the rule of, like, only one congregational prayer in your home is the general rule. But if, because of children, that someone prays separate congregations, then that's perfectly fine. And it's actually probably advisable. If you think that having children, the children are, and there's not something that you can have them do to keep them quiet during the time of prayer, that it requires that you be with them, then it might be better to have someone watch the children. And then, that pray a separate congregation after and have other people watch the children after. And if you can, in the midst of that, have that a second congregation where there's still at least two of you praying, then that's great. And so you try to do your best and then try to be creative in terms of how you set up the prayer time, right, where there's some type of activity or something like that. And that might be one of the times where you give them minimal use of something of a device, right? And something tasteful. Like, we shouldn't always use the devices for that, but if you're going to use a device with something tasteful, that might be a time in a limited faction to do that.


Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Thursday, three o'clock, welcome to Condo Insider, Hawaii show about association living. I hope some of you in the last two days had a chance to go down to the Douglas trade shows at the Blaisdell and see all the products and services and seminars available to associations that's well run every year by Ken Cantor. I had a chance to be a speaker there and about three or 4,000 people go through. So if you miss it this year, I hope you can go next year. I've invited Jane Sugimer to come back today. You all know Jane's a co-host with me on Condo Insider. We take turns on this duties and I give her all the credit because she's a lot smarter than I am on association matters. But I always enjoy her here because there's an issue that is often misunderstood by homeowners and boards alike that creates all sorts of consequences that are good and bad depending on the circumstance. And the magic words are priority of payment. So first of all, let me welcome you back over and over again. I wish, I think you should take over my job full time you know that I could retire. No, you're doing a wonderful job and thank you for having me back. And yeah, you know, the topic today is very, very timely because it's part of a bill that's passing through the legislature. Well before we begin, I just want to take this commercial message opportunity to say because I think one of the greatest industry organizations is the Hawaii Council of Community Associations used to be called the Hawaii Council of Association of Apartment Owners but it's the same entity and you're the president, been president for a long time. It's so important that boards have good education and homeowners have good education. Just briefly remind us about HCCA and who they are.  We have people who sit on boards of directors and we have some homeowners who are involved and we are also involved with property managers and what we like to do is we educate, we have these quarterly and more often seminars for the public, for the condominium association and the community that works and lives in condos and to teach them about condominium law and to educate them about issues that affect everybody who live and work around condos and we advocate in the legislature, in the state legislature and in the city council. Right now we're involved in the mayor's bill to retrofit condominiums and I think we've got a resolution that will be very helpful to the condos but that's not today's show and we will get to that. But those are some of the things that we are involved in. Well, it's a great organization. I can tell you being a part of the organization as well as attending your seminars, we get two to 300 people there. Yes, we do. And the seminars have really hot topics, quality education, opportunities for questions and answers and the best of all, you can join as an owner for $10 a year. Right. It's pretty good value when you look at what costs are today, you know, and so. And there are these shows that are free and you can look at them on any device at any time of the day or night and, you know. And your organization through the small money we were able to make on these seminars is able to fund condo and cider and I want to raise by the way, you can double it, how about that? From zero to zero. You got that. So anyway, but I think our mission of education and making sure that laws are good for not only just boards and management companies but the owners and vendors and everybody else, it's a very balanced organization. Right, and we are interested and our focus is on trying to get everybody to work together to make condominium living a positive experience. And about 40% of our population lives in some type of association, so the big item. So anywhere, you know, I've been in this industry 25 years. Priority of payment is misunderstood and you say it to most people, particularly owners, they say, what's that? That, right. So why don't we begin the first part of the show, just talk about the landscape today and then the rest of the show, we'll talk about the bill that's after the break and what the future may take. Okay. So tell us about priority of payment. Priority of payments is in this condo statute. It was in 514A, it's in 514B. And the whole purpose of the condominium, of the priority of payments provision in the statute was to ensure that the association would be able to collect the maintenance fees that they need to run the operations of the association, right? The owners or assessor maintenance fees, those maintenance fees go to pay for the common utilities, the electrical, the water, it goes to pay for the employees that keep the building running and to pay for the property management company that administers to the building every month. And so the building needs money. And so if people don't pay on time, it causes a problem because then the condominium doesn't have the money to pay for the gardener to come or to pay for the electricity or pay for the water. And these are all things that they have to pay for. And the priority of payments basically says that you have to pay your maintenance fees. And the maintenance fees are called assessments, okay? And they're defined in the statute. And late charges and attorney's fees are not assessments. That is clear in the statute. But what the priority of payments says is that if you don't pay your maintenance fee, let's say it's $100, okay? You don't pay that month. The next month, when you pay, or let's say you pay late, you pay on the 15th, which is late, okay? So now you owe a $25 late charge, okay? So that means that next month, when you pay your maintenance fee on time, $100, 25 of it goes to the late charge first, okay? Because that's what priority, there's a priority of payments. And it says that if you don't make your payments on time, it goes first to the late charges and then to attorney's fees, you used to collect these things. So if you have those items that are being charged to your account, when you pay your maintenance fee and you pay it $100, it will go first to the late charge and maybe to attorney's fees, which means you're late. And if you don't know that that's what's happening, the next month when you pay your $100, now you're two months late, you know? And finally, after a while, you might get a bill. And you're gonna say, why am I six months late? Nobody told me and it's because, you know, because of the policy, the management company will automatically apply it to the late charge first and to any attorney's fees and any fines before they apply it to the assessment. And what creates a whole lot of problems is the unit owner doesn't usually get written notice that this is happening. And the reason why is because the statute says if the association wants to adopt the priority of payments rule, they need to have a, they need, the board needs to adopt, you know, have a motion and adopt it. And then they need to send to every unit owner notice of what that the priority of payments rule is now in effect. In other words, let's say the association's been around for 10 years and they never adopted the policy. They can't do that even though it's in the statute. And then if one of the board members finds us, oh, that's a good thing, why don't we do that? It'll help us collect our maintenance fees. So you have a meeting this month and the board adopts it. That means that you tell your property manager to send notices, written notices to all the unit owners to say that the board has adopted the priority of payments rule and this is what's gonna happen. If you don't pay your assessment on time, then you're gonna be assessed a late charge. And when you pay your, when you get around to paying your assessment, it will be charged first to the late charge and any penalties because of the late, late, late payment and maybe attorney's fees. And so that means that you are going to always be behind. And so this causes a lot of problems, I think, with the buildings. Well, let me put my perspective on it. We all know that associations are what I call zero-based budgets. So when they pass the budget for maintenance fees and we're just gonna cover reserve contributions, electricity, maybe management employees, things like you said, it's based on the assumption that everybody's gonna pay. Right. And so if someone doesn't pay, in theory, you're short if you have a balanced perfect budget and paying either your electricity or putting money in reserves, whatever it may be. So the statute allows them to charge late fees. Right. And if they still don't wanna pay, then they can be charged legal fees. Right. We're at a collection of that matter. But along the way, you sometimes get fines and you have other charges which we'll talk about in a minute. So the idea behind it, as I understand it was, that when a person makes a payment, the priority payment specifies in what order that money will be applied to outstanding charges. Right. I'll guess that. And I'm gonna just, so there is a standard, if I'm gonna just read it real quick for you, this is normally, it doesn't apply to everybody, but this is kind of the industry standard. At first goes the legal fees. Second goes the fines. Third goes the late fees. If you happen to have separate meter billing on the association, then it goes to utilities. Then it goes to what we call other and some associations have storage lockers and parking fees and other types of things. And then it goes to special assessments. And then finally, the last dollar goes to regular assessments, which is maintenance fees. Right. And if they didn't pay and they got somewhere up before and they only paid their maintenance fees, they have a shortage which then they can be foreclosed on because the money was applied to something else. Right. Is that a pretty fair way to analyze it? Yes, that's a fair way to analyze it. So you know, it's interesting because I've seen it recently in court cases locally here in the last couple of months where judges have said, well, show me where you notified all the owners of your priority of payment policy. When did you adopt it? And sometimes this has been for decades and nobody really knows where the priority of payment policy. They know they've been doing it for decades but finding the minutes of the notice 20 years ago becomes an impossible task. And the judges said, well, that you can't prove that. So notice to the owners is a very important part of this and because it's a disclosure kind of an issue. Right, and part of the problem is the fact that most owners don't even know. They don't have a clue about the priority of payments issue until they get caught in the morass and they can't figure out how to, you know, fix it. Yeah, and the second part of that equation from my perspective is, they don't know about the priority of payment policy and then most of them don't know about Act 187 and their opportunity for almost free mediation where the first hour is split between the owner and the board in this case and the balance is paid through the condo education fund which is paid by our registration fees that they have almost free opportunity to go resolve this. And frankly, unfortunately, some owners, they take this fine they've got for the parking in the fire zone and it basically thunder knows that it and even though they're getting notices, do nothing about it and all of a sudden it's $100 and there's a late fee and $100 and it goes on and it goes to the lawyer and you have the first lawyer's letter and all of a sudden they're being foreclosed on for $5,000 because they have ignored it for lack of a better word. Right, and that's what the problem is that until it gets to a substantial amount of money, it seems like either the unit owner ignores the communications that's getting from the association or the association is not giving proper notice and what is really egregious is when you have these sure-pay situations. When nobody gets notice, when you're on a sure-pay, you don't get a monthly notice to show you what you owe and so when this priority payments happens, because it happens automatically and you don't get a notice of what is owed and what's being applied, sometimes you don't find out until it's a huge number and maybe it's like $1,000 and it's like, wait a minute, where did this happen? How come I owe $1,000? And then you have to look at the prior statements and say, ah, there it is. That's where you missed the payment and then it started being applied to all the late charges and you can't, and because you didn't get a statement because you're on sure-pay, you didn't know. And in that case, it's like, who's at fault? And fairness, and then we're gonna take a break. Let me just say this. Management companies typically send a 30, 60, 90 day, like this is a friendly reminder and it would show that $25 late fee they didn't pay or it'd show $25 due. The problem is owners always look at that and say, oh, the check just missed it in the mail and they ignore that. They get these little friendly reminders because they're not official, they're saying, oh, by the way, that should trigger the memory to say, why do I have a $25 balance? But it doesn't. So we get into this issue where you get a lot of upset people and I'm gonna tell one little war story but right now we're gonna take a short break, come back and what's happening in the legislature on this issue but we're gonna be right back with Condo Insider talking about priority of payments. Be right back. We have this crazy thing going on today. I was just walking by and all these DJs and producers are set up all around the city. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music.  He said that, I'm excited. I saw her do it. Welcome back to Condo Insider. We're having a very emotional discussion even off camera during the break. We're having this vigorous debate about priority of payments that no one seemed to know about that everybody uses where when you make your payments, they're applied in a specific order maybe not through your maintenance fees because you have a fine or a late fee or a legal fee or something else involved in that and it's kind of designed around associations need a hundred cents and a dollar to pay its bills so it's kind of steered towards protecting associations' financial interests and I wanted to tell you because we were talking about that and I just wanted to tell you a quick short story. Sometimes it can be abused. I've heard of a factual situation where a board didn't like a particular owner and they basically said, let's start finding him for his truck that he has, it's too long. Even though he owned it for five years and what if the fine's built up and he won't do anything about it and then we'll foreclose on them and we'll get him out of the building and that's not right either. No, that's not right. And so the thing we have as a challenge as an industry is to explain to everybody what it is and also makes you all aware of their value of mediation rights. Right. But let's go right to the legislature. So what's going on? This issue is before the legislature this year. Right, well it's been before the legislature for the past two or three years and to put it in a nutshell, the priority of payments, the concern raised by one of the legislators is that she has heard stories where people are being foreclosed because of the priority of payments issue and where the, let's say you've got a $5,000 bill and a foreclosure is initiated and that person could lose their home. But out of that $5,000, maybe $1,000 is assessments and another $1,000 are late charges and fines and penalties and the other $3,000 are attorney's fees. And she feels, she felt that it is wrong for a person to lose their home where the total amount of the so-called amounts that you owe the association aren't assessments. And so what she basically did is prepare a bill that says that if you are the unit owner and the association hands you a bill and you dispute that bill because of the priority of payments, some of it is assessments, which are maintenance fees, some of it is late charges and penalties and some of it is attorney's fees. Under the bill, you can, and under the condo statute, there's something called Pay Now Dispute Later. In other words, if you want to dispute with the association, you've got to pay everything, okay? So that means in this situation where there's $5,000, if that unit owner wanted to dispute it, they had to pay the $5,000, even though they disputed the $4,000 in late charges and attorney's fees. The bill would say no, no, no, you pay only the assessments, which are the maintenance fees that are in dispute and you have to keep your maintenance fees current, but during the, what you do is you pay it and then you can dispute the late charges and the attorney's fees and you have 30 days to go into mediation, you have 60 days to complete it. And that's what the bill contemplated. And that way it's almost like a compromise between the association and the unit owner because the association would get 100% of their assessment, which is the maintenance fee that they are charging the unit owner. What they're not getting paid right away are any late charges or penalties or attorney's fees connected with trying to collect that assessment. And the unit owner would have the opportunity to dispute that in mediation and if they lose that mediation or an arbitration, a subsequent to that, they would still have to pay that amount. So it's not like the association is out of pocket, you know. It gives them due process for lack of a better word, the arose.  Sadly, it happens that a lot of people ignore it, we're actually under the statute, but I think an owner who is delinquent on regular assessments maintenance fees has a guaranteed right of a 12 month payment plan to catch up, plus he has to stay current so we can't get further and isn't that correct? That's correct and you know, the statute, I mean, the statute does, you know, talk about payment plans in foreclosure. And you know, to me, I think it's, you know, I've been a board member, I've been on my association board for over 30 years. I've been president for almost 10.  And so we should be looking out for their benefit.  And property management companies make mistakes.  So that's why I think it's important for board members to become proactive and have the unit owners come to them and say, you know, I got this bill and I don't understand why I'm getting these late charges and can you look into it? And they should be the ones, you know, to kind of resolve this and try to, because I think on the whole, most unit owners will pay their bills. They understand they have to pay their assessments. They just don't want to pay the late charges and attorneys fees unless they have to. Well, and some of it's actually unintentional errors by the homeowner. Let me give you an example. You own two or three units in an association. So you send in one coupon with a check for the three units. You know, a lot of this is done electronically today. So that one check they wrote with one coupon for one unit, they end up with a credit balance on that one unit because the computer didn't know any better. And the other two units have delinquencies and the owners thinks he mailed all of three of them. So I think it's important that the homeowners have enough diligence to look at their account. I know in our company, we're in May releasing an app for your mobile phone. Now the seniors don't always have mobile phones, but an app on your mobile phone, they had got that notice, they could go online instantly with their phone and look at what the issue is and deal with it on an app online. So, but it's not always just the manager coming up doing a good job making a mistake. A lot of times owners contribute to the problem because they don't include the coupons. They bundle the checks together. I've seen checks for two or three associations in one check and then we have three coupons. And how do you do that, you know? Because the check's going to be made out the name of association. You really can't write a check from one association to another. It becomes complicated, right? Right. And you know, so the owner, so the people sit on the board because these are their constituents, so to speak. I mean, they got to be the conduit, the communicators, you know, between the property management company and the unit owners. But, you know, going back to the legislation, that's the way it was originally written, but it's been amended. Uh-oh. Okay. That doesn't sound good. And the amendment took out the mediation of the dispute.  Now that portion has been taken out and what it was replaced with is now the associations will have to give on an annual basis a notice to all of their unit owners about the priority of payments and exactly what it is. And if you have, if you're on the sure pay on any renewal of that sure pay, which is every, you know, every time like maintenance fees change, you have to renew the sure pay, right? Because it's going to be a different amount. On that renewal portion, you have to put a notice about the priority of payments and what it is and the fact that, you know, if you're late, that, you know, there's a certain order of payments and that's where your payment will be applied. And I have a problem with those changes only because number one, I mean, I prefer the other one, which would have allowed a unit owner to dispute, you know, the late charges and the attorney's fees. And now there is no opportunity to do that. And, but, you know, what I think, you know, what I'm going to be doing, because right now the bill has just crossed over from the house to the Senate and we're going to have to amend that bill. If that's how they want to do it, if that's how the legislators want to do it, then we're going to have to put in a proviso that it only applies to those associations who have previously adopted the priority of payments, you know, plan, because the statute says, I mean, the only way you can do this is if the board adopts the policy, there's got to be a motion and there's got to be action by the board to adopt the policy and then a notice has to go out to all unit owners. Yeah, our thoughts on that as a manager coming, of course the bill hasn't passed yet. Is that we don't disagree with the disclosure, reminding the owners every year, this is how it works. We don't have a problem with, even with the boards have adopted the policy, reaffirming the policy currently in the board meeting minutes. What we don't like is the pay now dispute later portion. It's easier for us to have that policy. But the reality of it is, homeowners are innocent people who don't understand if they have that fine or late fee or legal fee, why not, yes, insist on you have to be current with your regular assessment maintenance fees. But you have the opportunity to use this mediation because sometimes it's used against you and you could own a lot of money because you made one payment late and the late fees compounded and then you got a small fine and then they sent it to the attorney at a small number and an attorney's letter is a couple of 300 bucks by the time you send the first letter out and if they don't answer it gets compounded. So we agree with you on that. But I also know that we're at the end of our show. We could debate this for a long time. So any last comments real quick, one in 15, 20 seconds, what you wanna say about priority payment? I think it's a bad idea. I think, I mean, I think it helps associations but we gotta fix it. We gotta fix it because it's creating a lot of problems and the current version of the bill I don't think addresses that fix. And I think it still needs to be worked on. Well, I'll support you that and help you with that. I wanna thank all of you for attending and watching Kondo Insider today. We've had a vigorous debate about priority payments. Any event you should know it exists and there are risks and liabilities for you as homeowners if you don't pay your bills on time or all the charges assessed by the association. We're hopeful this legislative session we can approve upon it. So you have a chance for a value of mediation or some other dispute resolution and we're working on that. We wanna thank you for watching Kondo Insider. Thank you, Jane, for being here as usual. Thank you. I'm disappointed you didn't fire me but we'll have to work on that. So anyway, thanks again and aloha.


Starting next week, we have one of the biggest tournaments in the US Open Series, the Cincinnati Open. And it's a combined event, a Masters 1000 event for both the men and the women. And we're going to go through everything you need to know about the Cincinnati Open next week. The event started back in 1899 and is the oldest tennis tournament in America that is played in its original city in Cincinnati, Ohio. And up until 1979, it was actually mostly played on clay courts and then switched to hard courts. And in 1981, it became a Grand Prix Super Series event, or as we know it now, an ATP 1000 event on the men's side of things. The ladies event actually wasn't played between 1974 and 1987, and again, wasn't on the tour from 1989 to 2003, but came back on the WTA. And in 2009, it was promoted to a WTA Premier 5 event, or as we know it now, a WTA 1000 event. And in 2011, it combined in the same week as the men's tournament, and it has been for the last decade, exactly how we see it now with both the men and the women playing at the same venue as one of the combined tournaments on tour. So as I just mentioned, it's an ATP 1000 and a WTA 1000 event. And it's been around for a long time. It's the 121st edition of the tournament for the men and for the women. It's the 94th edition with Alexander Zverev and Ash Bhati, the defending champions. In the open era, the players that have won this tournament the most. Roger Federer, he's won seven titles in Cincinnati, and Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka have both won this title twice. So the tournament is in America, and it's actually in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Linnner Family Tennis Center, which consists of 17 outdoor hardcourts, category three hardcourts, which is a medium speed court, and has three main stadiums at the venue with the center court holding 11,400 people, grandstand court, which is court number two, that holds up to 5,000 people, and court number three, which is a 4,000 people seat stadium. All courts consist of Hawkeye, as they do for most of these major events. Both the men and the women's draw are both consisting of 56 players in the main draw, with eight qualifiers and four wildcards going off last year's event. We have 16 seeds in this one, and the top eight seeds get a buy in the first round. Both these tournaments are major events, as they were last week in Canada. Both the men and the women's tour and a lot of big names play these events. The points distribution from the quarterfinals onwards, we have 180 points for the men. If you make the quarterfinals, if you make the semifinals, it's 360 points. If you make the final of the Cincinnati Open, you get 600 points. And if you win the whole thing, you win 1,000 points. On the women's side, if you make the quarterfinals, it's 190 points. If you make the semifinals, it's 350 points. If you make it all the way to the final, you get 585 points. And if you win the whole thing, you get a whole 900 points. So some big rewards in the rankings for those players who do well here. Prize money from the quarterfinals onwards starting with the men. If you make the quarterfinal, you get $116,000. If you make it all the way to the semifinals, you get $197,000. If you make the final, you get $354,000. And if you get all the way to the title and you lift the trophy at the end, you win a cool $654,000. On the women's side, if you make the quarterfinals, you get $47,000. A semifinal will get you $100,000. Making it to the final will get you $188,000. And if you win the whole thing, you win $255,000. So there you have it, the history of the tournament. And it's been around for a long time. We all know that. We've just seen that this tournament's been around for a while. And we're going to do a draw ceremony and a draw preview, of course, as we always do every week. But give me an early prediction. Who did these going to win this event? We know we have possibly Rapper coming back as well. So it's going to be a huge, huge event on both the ATP and WTA. And with Canada underway now, it's going to be interesting to see who can use this form going into the US Open in a few weeks.