Hey, it's Anfa, and you're watching Anfa Vlog. Today, I'm gonna show you how to make... VACUAL RISE! So in this episode, we're gonna learn how to use Evocoder Antisynthesizer to use your voice to make these cool robotic sounds. Follow me. What's Evocoder anyway? Evocoder is a special processor that takes two inputs. A carrier and the modulator. Then it analyzes the frequency response of the modulator, and it applies filtering to imprint the EQ shape of the modulator onto the carrier, and then it returns that. So if you take a saw wave carrier, which has all the harmonics, odd and even, and then put something like whoa, whoa, whoa, as the modulator, you're gonna hear something that is the saw wave, but doing the oh, whoa, whoa sound. Referring to a previous episode about formants, it's a way to sample formants from one sound and put them on another sound. Usually we sample the formants from our voice and put them onto a synthesizer sound. A quick note. Who made vocoders and why? The vocoder name stands for voice encoder. It was created to enable transmitting encrypted speech recordings way before the digital age, where we could just record a sound file, encrypt the sound file, send it, and we have encrypted sound. So the idea was that you separate the formant information that carries the meaning of the words, we say. You separate that from the tone of your voice, and you encode this in a separate band. So you basically split the sound in multiple frequency ranges, and then you put envelope followers that note the loudness of each band. Then these numbers are written down, they are encrypted, they are sent over, and then anybody turns on a synthesizer and uses filters that recreate the formants based on the numbers received and effectively recreate the speech, of course in a weirdly robotic way, but totally understandable. Enough history. There are two main open source vocoder plugins that I used. First is the TAL vocoder, which is very nice for quick and simple way because it has a built-in synthesizer. So you can quickly dial in a synthesized tone as your carrier and then simply plug in a MIDI controller or a MIDI track to supply the notes for the synthesizer, plug in your voice, and you can go. But there are some other options like MDA talkbox, which is a high quality but very simple in use vocoder. MDA talkbox is a simple but high quality vocoder. These settings teaching the amount of frames. Now it's foo. Now it was low quality. Take a look at the spectrogram. It's talkbox. It's a very interesting vocoder. It means to emulate the sound of physical talkboxes, but that's a different topic. So today we're gonna take the longer but more flexible route of using TAL vocoder, which is my personal favorite vocoder plugin. We're gonna use the newest version that can be downloaded and built from source from GitHub, but also it can be downloaded from TAL get package from Kix to your repositories. If you don't know what these are, there is a previous episode that talks about the Kix to your repositories and you can install these. Okay, let's get making sounds. Here is our Ardor 5 session. I have already created three tracks. The vocoder track, which is a stereo audio bus. That means it will process stereo sound from the input to the output all the time. And we're going to put our vocoder plugin in here. I'm gonna do it right now. If you don't have this plugin in your favorites, you right click here, go to new plugin, plugin manager, and then you type CULF vocoder. You can double click and then hit insert plugin. And this is what CULF vocoder looks like. I'm not going to talk much about what happens right here because it's much more interesting when we have sounds to hear what we're doing. Two notable changes to the stable version of this plugin is that it now allows for sharper Q values for the filter. So you can very have very awesome sharp sounds. And there's also another feature that I ask to be implemented that is manipulating the distribution of the filters. You can rise the lower limit, lower the upper limit, and you can do tilt. That means pushing the more bands toward the highest frequencies or the lower. The cool thing is that you can automate this and get some really cool sounds out of it. Let's close this plugin for now and set up the rest of our tracks. Below the vocoder bus, I have a carrier MIDI track. I call this carrier, this is going to be the source of the synthesizer sound that I'm going to shape with the formants of my speech. I have inserted a Helm synthesizer and it has its default basic patch. I'm just going to disable the second oscillator, so we have just one sort of wave and I'm going to leave it as that. Very simple, nothing special. I'm going to connect my MIDI keyboard and enable the record mode. It works. Now the modulator is going to be my voice. So I have the microphone input one selected already. If I enable now, you probably will hear me double. Now we need to do the routing. So both of these tracks are going to go to the bus. However, the bus is only stereo and we need to put their four inputs because stereo output from the carrier and stereo output from the modulator. Of course, this one is practically mono, but you can record like a choir or several vocals, put them into a bus and then route that bus as the modulator for the vocoder. That doesn't make very much sense because it's only going to smear out your result and make it less obvious to what's happening, but you can do this or you can record your vocal in stereo. So I'm going to disable the output on the bottom of the mixer strip.  And here we have the dash and means that nothing is connected to the output of this track. That's modulator, the carrier. I'm going to do the same, disconnect. Now I'm going to the vocoder bus. I'm going for the input, routing grid. I'm going to switch to the order tracks tab. And here is carrier out. Let's put one dot here and one dot here. That connects the carrier out left to the vocoder in left and carrier out right to the vocoder in right. I'm going to close this. The connections are already done. Now if I play the carrier, you can see that the notes are in, but because we have this call vocoder plugin here, nothing will make a sound until we plug in the modulator. So I'm going to right click on this plugin and go for pin connections because we need to enable the sidechain input. Now it's enabled. Now I choose my track. It's the modulator. And now I just root the audio. So now the carrier, that synthesizer sound, is coming in for inputs one and two and the modulator, my voice, is going for inputs three and four. I can close this. Now if I open the call vocoder, we should be able to hear something. It is, however, very quiet because the mic input is very quiet. So I'm going to mute my mic input. I'm going to make this louder and you will hear the vocoding. Okay, so that's a quick demonstration. The problem is I'm getting feedback from the monitor, so I'm going to use headphones for this to get a cleaner sound. Okay, right now I have disabled the monitors and I will disable the voice recording and listening in. Ah, it's still loud. Ah, it's still loud. Is it still loud? Can you hear me now? All right, for that quick demonstration, I think I'm going to change the framing so you can see my keyboard as I play the notes because that's quite important, I think. Yep, having two cameras would be great for this kind of stuff. All right, so now you can see my face and you can see my hands as I play. That's going to make it a little bit simpler, I guess. All right, so let's talk about what the vocoder is doing. Right now, I'm going to pan the vocoder to the right so you can easily hear the difference between the vocoder and my voice. I figured out that actually using vocoder with a whisper is the most effective thing because otherwise the tone of the note that you say or sing like... It clashes with the tone of the carrier synth and it emphasizes some harmonics that you don't really want. But if you just go with a whisper like... Then you're creating a noise-based sound that isn't emphasizing any particular harmonics. It's just allowing the form and the voice to be clearly audible and sampled by the vocoder. So yeah, whispering is much more effective. So this is our basic vocoder sound and now let's try to make it a little bit more interesting. Wow! The first thing is I would use a gate on the modulator so we don't have notes when there shouldn't be no notes because if I press a key... Right, you just have to... gate. If I disable the gate and press a key... You can hear a very silent buzz of the synthesizer but we don't want this to happen unless I really sang something or said something. It's like... Alright, so if I put a gate... I need to of course put down the threshold. And that basically gets rid of that problem. We can also tune the release and attack and the ratio but the default values seem to work pretty well in this case so I'm not going to touch them. Also a good thing is to apply compression before the vocoder. So I'm going to add a compressor to my modulator which is my voice. Wow! You can see we're clipping sometimes into vocoder and that creates an unpleasant sound so I'm going to want to get rid of that with a compressor. This is real weird. We're not clipping on the mic preamp. We're not clipping. We're not clipping on the mic preamp. Alright, so I'm going to just lower the threshold a bit and make sure that we just don't cross a certain level. I think we need to tune the settings of our vocoder. Double-click and open the GUI. Here it is. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow! Wow! Alright, so let's have fun and listen to what is happening in this vocoder. I'm actually applying quite a lot of gain to the modulator as you can see which might be causing the clipping. Yep, now we don't have the clipping. Now probably because I'm using high Q we can hear that the filters are ringing. That means they excite so much that they continue to produce a tone when the exciting tone is already dead. Yeah, the good example is when I hit the low C. Now let's change the analyzer to Carrier. And you can see that with that note I have a lot of energy right here. This is 100 hertz. This is probably like 50 or 40. And if I change the modulator, this analyzer mode to modulator we can see the shape of my voice. So that is effectively the sampled sound. Ah, yeah, I can whistle at 1K. But if I just blow into the mic you have this kick drum-like sound and you can see that even on these LEDs that the sound starts on the whole spectrum and then it dies off and the lowest frequency resonates longer. Let's change the tilt and see if that affects it a little bit. Yeah, it definitely rings longer probably because more filters are stacking up here because they are very close. So let's reset this to the default and also make this not high Q and less like that. Ah, I'm going to whisper. It's a very fun feeling when you start using a vocoder like that because you play and you whisper at the same time and you can create very interesting rhythmic patterns and I really like the sound of the skull vocoder when it is at really high Q because it gives me the sound that I really like when people are using stuff like vocodex and fruity loops it gives me this kind of sound when I turn up the resonance. I think it is quite quiet. I think I need more to make it louder. Well that immediately draws Daft Punk to your mind because that's what they are using, a vocoder. Alright, so let's take a look. We can choose the amount of bands we are splitting the signal, the carrier, into. The basic is the eight bands. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds very basic. It sounds very basic. It sounds very basic. It sounds very basic and robotic. The more bands we have the higher the resolution of our vocoding is. Going up to 12 bands. 8 bands. 12 bands. 16 bands. 20 more bands. 32 bands. 32 bands. It's the highest wave solution possible with a conf of coder. It's going to give you the most accurate sound in the form and analysis and audio production so you can make the most awesome sound with your vocoder. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Okay, let's talk about more features of the vocoder. We're at the 32 bands. Now every band has some settings. We can change the level to change the overall balance of the EQ curve we have. I'm going to try to reset that. Oh, it's being carried on. Really nice. Is this a reset button? No, it's not. We need to make it louder. We need to make it louder. It's more or less the same as at the beginning. It's more or less the same as at the beginning. More or less the same. Now I'm pressing two notes that are very close and very low Pretty nice. The cool thing, if you want to accurately represent speech we need to represent the sibilance. And for that we have noise. We can add noise to the bands. Adding noise to the signal. Adding noise to the signal. Effectively adding noise to the signal. We're just changing. Whether it recovers the formance. We're actually making kind of a bypass for the several bands. I'm not sure how to explain it but the more noise, the more regular the sound is. Okay, right now let's play with the synthesizer itself to get this sound more interesting. The first thing I want to do is make sure we start with a clean slate which is the single saw. Then I want to make this more voices and turn up the unison. The problem is, this one is monophonic so I'm going to turn up the voices to 8. I have a problem that the carrier has too much low frequencies sorry the modulator, my voice and that causes bad booms. So I'm going to insert a filter, switch it to 36 decibels per octave high-pass turn it down so it is kind of like 200 Hz boom boom boom boom boom Yeah, much better now. Now we're clipping a bit. I'm going to insert a compressor after the vocoder. boom sake个匆匆 Another thing I want to do is play around with the modulation or with the timbre of the carrier tone of the synth sound itself itself. Let's try it. I want to use some modulation to make the sound sharper, more interesting. Let's use the sine wave and make it very sharp. Make it sharp, make it, make it sharp, make it high, make it pitch, make it high pitch, make it make the high pitch, make it make it high pitch, make it make it high pitch, make it make it high pitch. Give it some motion, give it, give it motion, give it some motion, give it, give it motion, give it some motion. Okay, cut down on the detuning, because it's going to be ruining the sound. Cut down on the detuning, cut down on it.   Funny, another thing I want to do is use the trick I showed you in a previous video, with enabling multiple, with enabling multiple instance of helm, so we get a wide stereo. And that sounds much more interesting. Much more interesting. Po, po. Let's turn it down and pitch it down and listen to what happens. Wow. Po, po, po, po, po. Looney tunes. I'm going to enable, add some reverb. And this time let's use Guitarix Zeta Rev reverb, which is one of the nicer sounding reverbs in the open source world out there. So it's GX for Guitarix Zeta Rev one, which is reverb one. And there is no reverb two, so don't be confused. By that. This is the sound of the reverb. Zeta reverb. Oh, yeah. And be confused. By that. This is the sound of the reverb. Zeta reverb. Oh, yeah. The Zeta reverb is pretty interesting. It splits the sound in two bands. You can split it at frequency X. And then you have separate reverb tail times for the lower frequencies and the higher frequencies. And then you have the damping, which is the low pass filter for the upper frequencies. So you can make it very tall. Or you can make it very bright. You can make the low decay quick. Or you can make the low decay long. And the mid decay quick. Get it bright. Very nice. Very nice and interesting sounds. Also it has a two band semi parametric EQ. Because a parametric filter is the one that can select a frequency, the gain, and the width of the bell curve. So, you know, that's a parametric filter. These are semi parametric because you can't change the quality of the filter. So the width of the bell shape. And I'm not going to go into detail because that's not about this plugin. And we have full coding. Really nice. Okay, I think this is it for that tutorial. It was supposed to be quick and it is... I have 15 minutes recorded.  You can download this session. The link will be in the description. I can play around with it, have fun, make sure that you have... And also, if you're wondering about how to use the helm synth, which is here, I have already two videos about it, about the older version and the newer version so we can learn it. It's a very nice synthesizer. I really like it. I'm using it more and more. The funny thing is, I started using it more after I recorded the first video. So, I learned myself and that's cool. I hope you're inspired. Get creative. Have fun. So, if you have any questions or suggestions for what I should cover in the next episodes, please leave them in the comments. If you feel thankful you can buy me a coffee by paypal.me, please consider supporting me on Patreon, which could eventually allow me to do this as a full-time job. That would be truly fantastic. I also want to make a shout-out to Harry VanHaren from OpenAV, who is literally my patron from day one. Thank you, anyway. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.


Like domestic flights rather than international flights because I feel like international flights They are like more likely to be confirmed and if there are any changes that will let you know But if for domestic flights I would like confirm that because I remember two winters ago I was flying from my home city to Beijing and then from Beijing to DC And then I know from Beijing to DC that one is for sure But then the flight from my home city to Beijing that morning was cancelled So I was glad I tried to confirm it the night before so like I didn't miss my flight So I just like took a train instead to Beijing so I feel like confirming flights would definitely be good But it's not like necessary


Hello, good afternoon. My name is Judith Mason and I'd like to welcome you to today's webinar Express. Sustainability, is it time for marketing to grow a conscience? Organised by CIM Midlands. Before we get started, I'd just like to go over a few things so you know how the event will work and how to participate. The presentation will last for approximately 30 to 35 minutes, followed by a short 10 minute Q&A session. You'll be able to post any questions you have by typing into the Ask a Question chat box in the Q&A panel, which you'll see on the right-hand side of your screen if watching on a laptop, or across the top if you're watching on a tablet or smartphone. You can send in your question at any time during the presentation, and we'll attempt to answer as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end. If you want to share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag CIMEvents, the webinar is being recorded and we'll share the link to the recording with you over the next few days. And finally, you'll also be emailed a short feedback survey after the event, which we'd love you to complete. It'll only take a few minutes and all survey responses are anonymous, so please do let us know your thoughts. So I'd now like to hand you over to Sarah Duncan, who is our guest speaker today. Thank you, Judith. Hello and welcome to the webinar today, which, as Judith just said, is sustainability. Is it time for marketing to grow a conscience? I'm a Sustainable Business Development and Ethical Marketing Consultant and also an expert advice trainer. I'm the author of the Ethical Business Book, which was printed in 2019, and I'm delighted to say was won a commendation in this year's Business Book Awards. It's a fast moving topic and I'm actually in the process now of updating and adding whole new material to the book. Talking of fast moving, this is an express session today, so we don't have much time and I'm going to pack quite a lot in. Over the next 30 minutes, I'm going to look at climate versus COVID crisis, why bother being better, the role of marketing, the power of purpose, challenging the brief, paying it forward and sustainability in action. What do we mean when we talk about ethics and sustainability? Now, that might seem like quite a straightforward question, but actually, I think things have changed quite a lot over the last couple of years. If you go back to 2019, a lot of the conversations I was having, particularly in the boardroom, were all around the climate crisis and the spotlight was very much on environmental issues. We had the likes of Greta Dunberg, Extinction Rebellion, Pushing the Cause and campaigns like War on Plastics. People were talking about carbon footprints, carbon neutrality, reaching net zero. And in terms of businesses, it was those businesses that were seen to be trashing the planet that were being exposed and vilified for that behavior. But if we fast forward to now, we have the COVID crisis. And one of the things that's done is somewhat shift the spotlight from just the environmental stuff to the importance of the societal stuff. We have a newfound appreciation for our key workers in the NHS. And we've seen governments able to suddenly do things for humanity that they weren't necessarily racing to do in the past. For example, the Everyone In program in London, which tackled homeless people during the pandemic, certainly the early part of it. And we've had this new focus on community. But it's also exposed a big area of inequality in the world. We've seen the Black Lives movement come to the fore. And we've also realized that the pandemic has had a much greater effect on those people in poorer scenarios. So from a business point of view, that shift, if you like, has gone from businesses being vilified for how they treat the planet to businesses not doing right by their people being exposed as the villain. But what it has done is it's helped us, I think, all understand this interconnection between the planet, the environment, people and society. And that one doesn't work without the other. He puts it brilliantly. He's written a book by Gatenborough in his recent book, A Life on Our Planet, which I really recommend, by the way. He says, we often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is we must make sustainable changes to save ourselves. Whether without us, the wild will return. In other words, the planet has been around for a long time.  We may damage the planet to the extent that we can't safely inhabit it, but the planet will go on. So I think sometimes the conversation here, we've forgotten that we need the planet for us to be able to be safe and to thrive in the future. This is another great look at it from a lady called Christiana Figueres, who's the author of The Future We Choose by the former UN Executive Secretary for Climate Change. And she very rightly looks at it and that we're facing two world health issues. We've got COVID-19, which is an acute condition, hence it's getting so much attention at the moment. But we mustn't forget that we've got the climate crisis, which is an underlying chronic condition. It's not going away. It's really important for businesses to be treating both of those and not lose sight of one or the other. One of the best areas that I always fall back on when it comes to this area of sustainability and understanding this connection between people and the planet is the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals. I could talk about this for hours. I don't have time today, but these are the goals that the United Nations Member States adopted in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. And the interesting point here is that they're not just about climate action, life on land or below water, but they're also about people's right to quality education, gender equality, zero hunger. So where do we go from here? Well, we have an issue with business, with this embedded psychology around growth and short termism. We know from businesses that we're constantly saying, how can we grow next year? How can we do more? How can we sell more? But equally, we have this short termism with quarterly reporting. And those are those things could be said to be the enemy of sustainability. So there's a real challenge there. Having said that, there's a lot of talk now about green recovery. And this is how to recover from the pandemic in a responsible way. Just this week, we've seen the UK government pledging 12 billion for their green industrial revolution plan, which includes boosting UK manufacturing of electric vehicles, becoming a world leader in carbon capture and storage technology. And the goal for the city of London to become the global centre for green finance. We've also seen Prince William and David Attenborough come together with the EarthShop Prize, which is encouraging people to innovate in the area in a sort of entrepreneurial way. 50 million has been offered to support 50 environmental projects around the world over the next 10 years. So there is certainly a drive for things to be to be better in the future. Why are we bothering to be better? Why should a business want to become more ethical and sustainable? Well, to set the scene here, humanity currently uses the equivalent of 1.6 planets to provide the resources necessary to produce goods and absorb waste from humans. And that's set to increase. So, as brilliantly put in Paul Gilding's TED Talk, The Earth is Full, infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is unsustainable. We are living beyond our means. And I'm sure many of you will have seen things like World Overshoot Day, which uses the same calibrations from the global footprint network and says that this year it was August. By August, we have used up all the resources on the planet. Anything after that, we're kind of in the red. So when asking businesses why they should be better, the answer should be because they know they're potentially depleting natural resources or encouraging over the consumption, party even to exploitation of people and contributing to that whole area of inequality. But let's be honest, that's not the case with many businesses. There are some businesses, don't get me wrong, there are some fantastic startups that have been built around really strong moral principles. And there are bigger businesses now that are being driven, great changes is being driven through really enlightened CEOs. But a lot of the businesses I talk to, they're doing what businesses do and that's react to market forces. And it's these market forces that I find really interesting and they're really compelling. There is a rise in more conscious consumers and we'll be talking a lot more about that in a moment. But also we're seeing employees being more attracted to and committed to companies perceived as having a higher moral purpose, standing for something beyond just making a stack of cash. And good businesses tend to keep good company. So we're seeing like-minded companies working together, which is great from a business-to-business point of view. There are cost savings to be had by cutting out inefficiencies. And then a really interesting area of managing risk, with as governments step up to those responsibilities that they've promised through the sustainable development goals, we will be seeing or should be seeing good behavior being incentivized and poor behavior being penalized. So by getting our house in order now we're potentially stealing a march on future legislation. And then there's the fun bit, which is improved marketing. What comes with that authentic compelling and engaging marketing that comes with that? Now, one thing I should say is I'm not against business at all. I help businesses. I help businesses, but hopefully do well by doing good. For me, profit is not in itself a bad thing. Businesses need to be commercially viable. There's a great quote, it's hard to be green if you're in the red. So it's not about profit being bad, it's how you make the profit and what you do with it that matters. And here's something that probably many of you have seen. It's a structure called the triple bottom line or the three P's. Again, I could talk about this for for hours, but I'm going to skip through it here. The most important thing here is it's a business model that prioritizes healthy profits, but also by maintaining healthy people and a healthy planet and balancing those three things and encouraging businesses to set really clear and tangible goals for their social responsibility, environmental responsibility and their economic responsibility. And the key thing there is particularly when it comes to the non financial reporting area which is not as established as financial reporting, but there are tangible goals for serving society and preserving the planet. But we're here today to talk about marketing particularly and is it time for marketing to grow a conscience. Okay, so brace yourself. This is a quote from a book called Good is the New Call. Marketers have helped to create a culture of materialistic excess has led to a cancer of overconsumption. And even today, marketers are all too often guilty of greenwashing or brandwashing. Marketing their brands and corporations as paragons of virtue while ignoring insidious practices and reprehensible behavior behind the scenes. Ouch. I first read that and it really resonated with me because as someone who's been in marketing for most of my career it did make me question whether I was indeed a super villain and how in my role as marketing I could have a more positive impact because I think there has been times in my career where I have been a bit of a super villain as well as being a superhero as well and I certainly wanted to encourage marketing to take on the role of more of the superhero. As C.S. Lewis says you can't go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the end. This comes from a book called Authentic Marketing by Larry Webber and it takes us on a little history trip back to the 1860s through to the 1920s the production era where companies essentially pushed products at people believing that if they developed a quality product it would sell and by and large it did. If we then look at the 1920s to 40s we saw supply often exceeding demand and this meant that companies had to turn up the volume on the hard sell. We then enter arguably the more sophisticated marketing era in the mid 20th century and this is where there was a shift from the needs of the seller to the needs of the buyer and we saw broadcast advertising emerging and giving companies new ways of capturing attention to interrupt and to manipulate but we also saw this being done way more creatively. Then as you evolve into the mid 1990s we had a recognition that acquiring new customers was more expensive than keeping current ones and so the marketing began to value the role of relationships and brand loyalty. We started using data for a lot more and became way more sophisticated with audience segmentation and then of course the internet came along and social media changed everything the power shifted firmly into the hands of the consumer and they now had the strongest and most important voice in the conversation so it's all about engagement. In his book he suggests that we now are evolving into a new age the age of authentic marketing and as he says he believes the missing critical piece is moral purpose because this has the potential to propel companies by adding values and ethical impact customers crave and demand so it's responding to that rise in more conscious consumerism. I'm sure anyone on this call who is in a marketing capacity will be having to think about what conscious consumerism means for their sector and as I said earlier focusing this people and planet that is not just is my product green enough for the conscious consumer but is it thoughtful enough is it caring enough for the conscious consumer? I love this quote from Mary Portas every pound spent is a vote for how we want to live and that's really what conscious consumerism means but I think that there's more than just the sort of dark green conscious consumer already there and already making their purchasing decisions based on these thoughts about the people on the planet and the impact. I think there's a growing number of conflicted or compromised consumers now these people are still buying products they're buying them because the quality is good the price is good it's convenient but potentially they're conflicted or compromised by something about the brand that doesn't sit comfortably with them that could be tax avoidance it could be dubious supply chain credentials it could be the packaging something comes in whatever it is it's sitting uncomfortably with them and they'll continue to buy their products at the moment because of those other factors but the minute someone comes along that does all those things but also has a more ethical or sustainable approach to their product that has a moral purpose it'll be an easy switch so that really is the competitive advantage element without purpose without ethical credentials I think someone comes into your marketplace and matches all those other quality price convenience points but is able to display more care, more attention it will be an easy switch for people and I think we'll see a lot of bigger companies falling foul of this over the next few years some already have I mentioned there the P word the purpose word being used a lot at the moment and not always brilliantly I have to say it's not easy establishing a purpose it's talked about a lot and I'm afraid has been hijacked a little bit by marketing just to say here and again I could talk about this all afternoon but your moral purpose your brand purpose should be greater than the products you make or the services you provide if it's used to simply boost a brand image or attain a short term goal the impact will be short lived to this is not something that can be brainstormed in half an hour this has to be something that is riven into the very fabric of the business it's that thing that sits above the product or the service it's the thing that customers can buy into that employees can buy into that sets you apart from the competition you have to live it purpose minus performance equals simply PR this is a framework that I feature in my book it's originally from the Conscious Capitalism Field Guide and I think it's a really nice template for helping businesses establish what their purpose could or should be and the most important question here for me is where can we have the most meaningful impact which big problems or needs in the world are we capable of solving and I think if you can establish that and then layer over what you're passionate about what you're good at and what people are prepared to pay you money for then you can get closer to this elusive brand purpose that so many people are talking about at the moment the question at the beginning of this session was is it time for marketers to grow a conscience or is it actually going to push that further and I'd like to think can marketers become the conscience of a business and I think they can as marketing people we should have the skills of persuasion of communication to be able to help people consume better and I think that's where we become the superheroes but first of all we've got to change we've got to stamp out green greenwashing we can't be complicit to making people believe that a company or a brand is doing more to protect the environmental society than it really is we need to uphold the reputations of the brands that we're working with and ensure that they're not greenwashing to protect their brand reputation and it's not just out and out lies it's asking whether a marketing claim is too little it's too insignificant in the grand scheme of things and it sort of makes this look a bit ridiculous is it too triumphant is it an isolated claim that we're making an overly big fuss about or is it too late the competitors have been doing this for ages and it just highlights how late to the party we are so it's all about challenging and using using our understanding of consumers and conscious consumers to challenge the marketing claims this is a framework that I've recently put together with some clients and it's designed to help professionally challenge and interrogate marketing claims because it's not always easy sometimes people feel too junior to challenge sometimes in a client agency relationship an agency may not feel comfortable challenging too much they may think it comes across as negative but I think it is our responsibility to challenge everything that we're putting out to consumers and so this allows us to look at things from first of all a legal point of view legally can we say this have we checked the source have we validated it particularly with parental claims that some of these can be highly scientific and I think it's really important that those claims are verified by people who know what they're talking about they're not biased if you do feel that you don't have the authority sometimes I think it's good to be able to fall back on something like this to say can we get this wording signed off can we make sure we know that we have everything completely and thoroughly checked so that's great if we've got that legally we can say this that's fine but then morally should we say this are we overstating are we missing something out and for me something that's really important is asking what could customers be wary of here and do they have any right to be wary and should we address that I think if you can answer all those questions and you've done everything you can to make sure that you're not complicit in sending out bad messages but if any of those things come up with negatives or unsure answers then go back check clarify, challenge further and change where necessary I'm hoping that or I'm sure some of you out there are working for companies are very progressive in this area and really mindful of how they operate and if you have influence is something called pay it forward we are after all only as good as the good we do now paying it forward was something else that I first read in Larry Webber's Authentic Marketing and what it does is ask of the brand who in the world would most benefit if they had access to our products or service brackets but can't afford them and how can we set up a program to provide access to our products to those people who really need them this is done brilliantly and very effectively by a number of brands now and it's like a sort of bog off reinvented if you remember if you go back as far as I do we used buy one get one free to encourage people to buy more stuff they didn't need in this instance it's buy one give one free and there are many great examples of this this is just three from that I cover in the book Tom shoes for every pair of shoes you buy they give a pair of shoes to someone who really needs them as well as other things now mindful chef they have their one feeds two program with every meal purchased they donate a school meal to someone to a child in poverty now at the time of me writing the book that was one million they've now donated over five million just through that program and hey girls which tackles period poverty in the UK by giving a free box of sanitary towels to women who really need them for every box purchased we can all do our bits and I think all brands can can embrace doing this better and become more heroic I'm going back just to finish up the session to our sustainability goals the UN sustainability goals these are a great area to get inspiration of how your brands can get involved but they can be a bit sort of lofty and feel quite removed so I encourage everyone to have a look at the good life goals which were established by the world business council for sustainable development and they've taken the 17 sustainable development goals and they've made them much more accessible they've changed the language it's the language you could use at home with the kids in a school room or in business and they have some fantastic resources including a whole area for business if you look at here's one of their cards that they have for each of their goals this one is each better which comes from the sustainability goal zero hunger and it gives you five very tangible ways in which you can get involved from a marketing perspective here's how Levi's example has taken one of those goals save water one of the tangible areas which is save water when brushing your teeth washing and cleaning and taking that as inspiration for their don't wash your genes campaign so that's a really good example of sustainability working through interaction thank you for spending the time to listen to me today I know there was a lot in there but I hope it has given you something to think about if you are interested in the ethical business book then if you use the code ethical business book 50 you can get 50% discount off the book from lid publishing and the details are there and hopefully we'll share those with you afterwards as well talking of free things I also have an online assessment tool on my ethical business blog it's about 45 questions it takes about 5 to 10 minutes to complete and what it does is just give you some initial feedback on your business on areas of opportunities potential resources that may be able to help and I do give bespoke feedback to anybody who uses that resource and if anyone has any questions on this I could talk about this all day as you can probably hear but if anyone has any questions after today I'd happily look forward to hearing from you Sarah at sleepinglion.co.uk that's great many thanks Sarah we're now going to have a short 10 minute Q&A session this is a good one and where can consumers and I suppose nowadays we've got a lot of marketers who've been on furlough or may have lost their jobs and may be looking for a new role how can you identify which are the most ethical and sustainable businesses yeah I mean there are lots of sites now that you can find that we're going to the good and bad of particular sectors I would probably head to the ethical consumer the ethical consumer is I think it's quarterly magazine and website and it has tables on all industries and it ranks them based on their FE score and it looks at environmental staff, animal welfare political staff and how businesses treat their people so it is subscription based but it's a really really fantastic resource okay thank you you mentioned about marketers having a role in influencing obviously there could be resistors in a business have you got any recommendation of how to deal with those resistors and I'm sort of thinking it could be from the top down the management team or if you're managing up I do think that marketers are in a difficult place here because they are often just sort of handed stuff and said go out and make the most of this claim or this product and I would like to see marketing get a much higher seat at the table when it comes to product developments because you are the connection to the consumer but I do realise that's not always the case my most important bit of advice is speak the language of business this area doesn't work in my experience doesn't work if you take too much of a holy of them now approach to it you've got to go with the facts go out and find out what your customers really feel about ethical issues ask the questions get the data and use that data to be able to challenge the board and say we need to do things differently otherwise we're going to be we're going to be losing customers the whole area of the conflicted consumer use the data use the facts and actually in the book there is a section on overcoming resistors as well so people are still skeptical about these things but there are some really really compelling arguments so use that and use the language of business I guess this question leads on from that there's a clear tension between marketing as you mentioned earlier the objective of selling more products and responsible consumption can you give examples of how this can work yeah I mean again this is I could talk about this for about a day but marketing can only do so much but it can influence and I would encourage people if this is a topic in an area that's important to you or important to your business there is a conflict there so I would really encourage you to think about things like or investigate things like the circular economy because most businesses can have a in some way can try and reduce the amounts they are taking in the first place in order to make their product and reduce the amount of waste that comes out at the end so switching from the traditional kind of linear economy to a circular model where we extract less and we waste less there's things like that that marketers can help influence how companies may look at how they make things how they do business and there are lots of really interesting models we're now seeing a lot more leasing of products rather than buying not everyone needs to buy a fancy dress or a drill not everyone needs to own one people can rent them and we're seeing this more and more in fashion we're seeing it in car pooling schemes where they're subscription based so there's still profit to be made and still good business to be made but the whole idea of just buying loads of stuff that ends up being trashed that's the bit that's challenged so I think if marketers could get involved in that conversation more I think it will ease the conflict and the tension Next question is could you highlight any particular sectors of business or industry that are leading and embracing on these concepts and perhaps give us a couple of examples Interestingly if you look at designer fashion there is a lot of really good work being done in that area now it's easier for them because I mean the whole idea of owning something for longer and responsible use of a product fits nicely into designer fashion but that's a good place to look certainly the ones to watch out for are fast fashion in terms of businesses we have our heroes and unfortunately there's not so many of them yet that these don't already spring to mind but Unilever have done amazing things under the initial guidance of Paul Palman IKEA do wonderful things Interface is probably one of the the leading companies that people look up to in terms of purpose led business circular economy I mean a Patagonia is another one that has for many years been challenging the norms so I think a lot of industries most industries or sectors are having to tackle this in one way or another whether it's finance or FMCGs but in each of those there are people doing it really really well and again going back to the ethical consumer if you want to find the people who are doing really well but also the ones that aren't that's a really good place to start okay it's interesting now although your talk has embraced concepts much broader than measuring carbon footprints and so on as much more about ethics and ways of doing business we've got a question now asking about carbon offsetting could you explain what that is and would you recommend it yeah it's a question that I'm often asked when I first go into businesses that their objective is and I ask what their objective is they say right we want to be next zero or we want to reduce our carbon footprint because the focus is very much on the environmental stuff and I often sort of challenge that with the human side of it as well basically with carbon offsetting it is a good thing don't get me wrong as you control your carbon footprint you will get to a certain stage in your business where you can't cut out anymore and in order to offset what you can't reduce you can fund activities or financially support activities that do good things that capture carbon or that help to be carbon positive so you're essentially you're offsetting the last bits of bad that you can't control by supporting projects that are positive in that area and I do think that they're a good thing I do it myself with my own travel and the book and in fact sort of my lifestyle we offset every year but it shouldn't be an easy thing it shouldn't just be a fall into I think you need to really think about it and it's a last resort and be really mindful of working with companies that are reputable it's had a bit of bad press I think back in 2016 there was a UN report that said as much as 85% of projects then weren't necessarily as having the impact that they claim to have so be mindful make sure you find a reputable consultancy to help you with that one but more importantly try to reduce your carbon footprint in the first place and I think we've got time for one final question I think setting this in the context of where we are in 2020 just been an unusual year by most standards we've all made a lot of changes in our personal behaviour that's been enforced upon us by lockdowns of various guys across the country a lot more focus on homeworking like Microsoft Teams which we're using today for this seminar with your crystal ball out how would you envisage future behaviour has it become a habit that will be long term are these going to be permanent changes in behaviour and what would you predict going forwards at the end of all of this I think absolutely we've changed the way we conduct business and I think the biggest areas there as you rightly say travelling to and from a place of work which we've now proved that many many of us do not need to take unnecessary travel just to be in a place of work we can conduct business online and that in itself has a big impact on one's environmental footprint through not using cars certainly not using international travel and planes to get to places so there's some really good behavioural change I think there there's a downside to all of this and that is there are industries there that will suffer because we're not moving around so much and so we do need to be mindful of there's always cause and effect in this debate which is why we need to continue to be having the debate for me I'm encouraged by the fact I made the point I made earlier about how we're now thinking more about communities and humanity as well as our impact on the planet I'm encouraged by the fact that that debate is becoming very balanced and I hope it's that side of things that will also have a really really bigger long term impact on us all Excellent that's brilliant Sarah thanks very much for some great questions there and some really insightful answers and we've all got some food for thought to carry forward after this session and as a reminder Sarah said she is willing to have any follow-up questions via email address that she's given out earlier so if you have any follow-ups please get in touch with her later on and so I'd just like to close this session now by saying thank you to Sarah for today's presentation to see I am Midlands for organising the event we hope you found it interesting and worthwhile our next webinar Express the UK food and drink market 2020 and beyond where to now is on Thursday the 10th of December at 1pm hosted by the CIM food, drink and agriculture group you'll find it listed on the events page on the CIM website where you'll be able to find out more information and to register for the session once again you'll shortly be receiving a survey on today's event and we'd really appreciate it if you could provide your feedback so on behalf of CIM thank you for joining us and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day


Well first he's got to go get an MRI at some point here this morning and as the day goes on and get further testing on that knee but I think the one optimistic sign that occurred last night is that yes he was on the ground in a similar fashion to last year when Bruce Brown kind of fell into his knee but the one saving grace is that he ran up the court ran back down the court had a couple defensive slides and then he realized something was off with his knee and went back he did not move around like that last year so that's the one sign that potentially this is not as serious or a significant of an absence as last year when he missed about six weeks with the MCL sprained in his knee so the nets are going to be hopeful that he's going to be able to you know make it back sooner rather than later but I would expect them to take a cautious approach especially with just two games this week.


then Jesus is the Israel. Well, no, cause we don't have a passage that says so. Well, so it's not that he's the true Israel, which means that just like he's the last Adam, he fulfilled all that Adam didn't fulfill. He fulfilled all that Adam didn't fulfill. Okay, the word mean Israel means the Lord who saves. Right? But that's not the only word that means that we can find the Lord who saves. Joshua means the same thing. And so I wouldn't extrapolate that to say that that Jesus is the Joshua, the Joshua is Jesus or vice versa. The words have meaning, but they also have application. And so to the point that I think you're making is that kind of when we're talking about Israel and that the church, is that where kind of where you're going about the church being Israel also or the new Israel? Well, well, I guess those who will be outside of the camp, they will say that we say that the church is Israel. We say that Christ is the true Israel and then Jew and Gentile are elected in Christ. That would be the better representation. Because like I said, with your hermeneutics, like even when I be jumping in the chats, I have no problem with your hermeneutics once or whatsoever. Obviously, that's, you know, you're in seminary, but well before you was in seminary, that's the way they would teach it. I would just say, so the way I would disagree is that's not where I would stop. It has to go through a theological reflection, which means it has to be sensitive to biblical theology and somewhat sensitive to systematic theology, although not so much, which means I don't lose track of the redemptive story, which is why we say we have a crystal-centric hermeneutic. That doesn't mean that we ignore what you say as far as your hermeneutics is concerned, but I don't lose scope of the whole story of God's redemptive plan, because if I just go for it from the little historical grammatical hermeneutic standpoint without the biblical theology of the redemptive plan being in mind, I would just end up with Israel as being the theme of Scripture and not Christ. I think this, and there's some guys that I'm gonna use their clips, I think when people, this is me, it seems like when someone says that having Jesus as the theme of the Bible and that those with dispensational hermeneutic don't have that, I think that's a misnomer. I think that they do, and there's a group, there's a, I think it's theocast, and they say some things like, what, huh, what? And so I'm gonna cover a lot of what they say, and a lot of what they say is just wrong. Well, let's, so let's look at it like this. Is there an actual nation of Israel? Yes, sir. Yeah. Now, is everyone in that actual nation going to be saved? Well, no, no one believes that. Are there some people in that actual nation that God has chosen who have not come to Christ just yet in the future? Well, sure. And are there times in the Bible where God makes a distinction between the church and the nation of Israel? Would you say yes? Oh, you're talking about like it's in Old Testament, of course, yes. Any point in time? Are there times where in the Bible that God makes a distinction between that nation of Israel and the true believers? I think that the biggest case would be Paul talking about his kindred and the flesh which is with something you go over a lot, yes. So he does make a distinction, right? At some point in time, whether it's a lot or just a few times, right? Correct, correct. Okay, so the question is, how then do we distinguish which Israel he's speaking of? And so when he's speaking of Israel, the only verse that someone I think could come back and say, well, he's speaking of the church and I don't, and I even disagree with that, is Galatians 6, the Israel of God. I think he's speaking of the nation. And I don't think that it's meant to be taken that people think that the Old Testament through a dispensational lens is focusing on Israel. First of all, you can't get around the fact that Israel is the feature. That's the featured group. Now no individual person is the feature, but someone of Israel is featured. Once we get into Jacob, all we see the main characters of the Bible from the middle of Genesis on to Malachi is a Jew or Jewish people, right? That mean that they are. Right, that's what we call like the redemptive story, the progressive revelation through scripture. That's his chosen people. He chose to work through to be a blessing to many. So of course that's the progressive, that's who he chose to progress his revelation through. So I have to do that. Exactly. And he made promises to them. And I think sometimes when we say that, well, what about us? Well, he made promises to us as well. Now, when he said to them and to us, he didn't say individually which them and which us. We now know today that one of the us is Trey and one of the us is Corey, right? But reading the scriptures, we don't know who individually these people that are going to be saved are going to be, but he's made promises. And he's made promises that those people that are going to be saved, that he's going to put his spirit in their heart, that they will never depart. He is going to cause that to work for them. And he's also made similar statements with Israel, not specifically individually which in Israel, but there will be some. And so all we're doing is showing that God's plan for Israel won't be thwarted just like his plan for us who are part of the church won't be thwarted. He's going to bring them to become part of the church. So would you say then, I guess your focus is on the remnant of Israel? Because we obviously know the Ezekiel 36 from that passage 22 to 28, that we reap of course the benefit of that Jeremiah 31 speaking of, of course, the new covenant. So I guess the focus is not on the nation, that's the sort of Israel, but the remnant from the dispensational standpoint. But my thing would be- No, no, no, no, the focus isn't even so much on the nation. The focus is not on the nation of Israel. Well, yeah, yeah. So I mean, I guess it's on the remnant of Israel. No, the focus isn't even on the remnant of Israel. The focus is on the promise of God. It just so happened that God has promised to save some Israelites and he's promised to save some Gentiles. And those promises, huh? So what's the difference? If it's all going to be regeneration with results in saving faith, what's the difference? Well, the difference is that God says something and that we can bank on the fact that whatever he says, it's going to happen to a T, precisely. So when he says what he's going to do with Israel, he means to do just that. Without us trying to fix it, this helps us to take comfort in even the promises for us. Because you can't say that the promises that he has for Israel, he's alter those, but then he won't alter the promises that he has for us. He is guaranteed to keep us just like he's guaranteed to keep some of Israel, not all of them, but he is going to remember his promise so that his name will be glorified amongst Israel and before everyone else. And that Israel will be a light to the nations as well, which we've seen. And then now those nations will turn around and then be used to bring Israel to him.  Even though those were cut off so that Cory and Trey and others can be grafted in, not into Israel, because we're not grafted into Israel, we're grafted into the olive tree to the root, which also Jews will also be grafted. As a matter of fact, many will be grafted back in. Now, I don't know when, I don't know if those Jews are born yet. Obviously there's still some Jews that are still around that are placed in their faith in Christ but not to the tune that Gentiles are. So at some point, and we have to differentiate between this partial hardening of Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles come in. Well, if that's the case, if the fullness of the Gentiles are going to come in, that cannot mean, that has to necessarily mean that they are separate from Israel. So, because a partial hardening had happened to us, it's happened to them, until he's through with us, us Gentiles sheep. Okay. And like I said, I get what you're saying.  But I'll say this. This is what I want you to do. This is what I want you to do. This is what I want you to do. Send me, this will be gonna dog on it.  I don't need, you know what? You can keep your hair. Come on. Come on. This is what I want you to do. Send me an email and I'm gonna send you my number so we can talk offline. I got you, brother. All right. I got you, brother. I know I'm, we're born to chat, so I'm gonna get out your way, brother. Okay. Let me go ahead and get these other people. I'll talk with you later, Trey. Yes, sir. All right. OG make fire.  You all have been wanting to know who is OG. We need to bring him on. So let's go ahead and bring our brother, OG. How you doing, brother? I'm doing good. How are you, Corey? I'm wonderful. I'm wonderful. Oh, bro. Got a lot of lag here. That's okay. That's okay. There is a little bit of lag. There is gonna be a little bit of lag. So. Oh, good. Well, hey, it's nice to actually get to talk to you. I'm gonna talk to you too. All right. Well, my first question is this, where can we buy one of them shirts you're wearing, man? I really like that shirt. You can go to smartchristians.org and order one from the shop. Nice little plug because all of that stuff, the proceeds from that goes, go to sending Bibles to prisoners as well as supporting Christian youth groups. So yeah, go to smartchristians.org. That's gonna be it. We're doing some work on that. So actually the people that we actually go through is gonna change, hopefully, hopefully in the next few days, the next week or so. So anyway, yeah. Thank you for the plug for that. Reminded me to say that. Very nice. Well, I just wanted to share something with you. Since we, I tell you what, when you talk about some of your past, man, I really, I feel a kindred spirit there. When I first started listening to your channel, well, I was listening like a hawk when you're talking about salvation and sovereign grace, you know? That was like my test for you. Like, man, if you don't get this right, I can't listen to this channel no more.  I was raised Catholic, my entire family's Catholic. And about 10 years ago, I was sitting in County Jail. This is down in Florida. And I was playing out the open court. They got a point system there. Once you get so many points, it's a score sheet and whatever you score out to, that's the prison term you're getting, right? So when you play out the open court, the judge has the opportunity to give you a downward departure to where he can give you less time than what you actually score out to. And for that six months that I sat in County Jail, I was reading my Bible and praying every day, Lord, get me out of this, and I was bargaining with God. And that day I went to court. There was like 14 people in that holding cell. And since I was playing out the open court, I was one of the last guys. And so I sat in that holding cell, listening to all these guys and their stories and this and that. Uh-oh, hello. I did something wrong. Doug, go on it. Hold on, let me fix this right. Let me fix this right. So I'm listening. There we go. Wait, Doug, go on it. I don't know what I'm doing here. There we go. There we go. There we go. I'm sorry, Gloria. We'll come back. We'll come to you next, Gloria. I'm sorry. Go ahead, OG. Okay, so I'm listening to these guys. And anyway, that's how they go to court. And that judge, he listened to my story and why I was in all that trouble with my drug use and that kind of stuff. And he went ahead and gave me that 63 months. You know what I'm saying? And when I got back to that holding cell, everybody was gone. It was full when I went to court. When I came back out, they already sent everybody else back to the county jail. And I got down on my knees in that grubby old jail cell. And I thank God. I said, Lord, I don't know what you're doing in my life, but you know what? I trust you. And I thank you for this time. And so I went to prison and I ended up going into a faith-based dorm. And boy, I tried to defend the Catholic Church with everything I had, man. I love the Catholic Church. But God yanked me out of that system. And so I know my theology pretty well, right? So I'm reading all these books from my Catholic Answers and stuff like that, trying to answer these questions that I'm being challenged with. And it finally got to this place where I'm reading this book and instead of going to the scriptures, they kept going to this papal bull or this or that or these other writings. And I tell you what, man, the first verse I memorized was my she hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And I knew it. I just knew it. That what God said, whatever God said, I was going to follow it. So I had to count the cost. I had to think about my family and what they were going to think if I left the church. It was a hard decision. I really had to count the cost. But I tell you what, I appreciate that you, you know what it is, is there's this, all these arguments going on in the Christian church, whether you're a Calvinist or Armenian or Provisionist or all these other things, right? And it really boils down to when you come out of a system like that, you try to find other people that believe what you believe. And since I didn't really have a category for all that stuff, you're going to be drawn to reform theology, right? But you really helped me just to kind of look at it like, you don't have to be that. You don't have to be a Calvinist. You don't have to be Provisionist. You have to honor the scriptures. And I just wanted to thank you for, I enjoyed this church family. I'm involved with the recovery ministry up here, the people that took me and when I got out of prison. So I deal with guys coming in out of the system. I still contact and talk with people that are still in prison. I appreciate that you do that as well. But I just wanted to come on and say hi to everybody. And I enjoyed the channel much. This is my second church family. Hey man, hey man, I appreciate you. Listen, I would like to spend some more time with you. I got to get one more person on. We may do this again on next week, depending on what schedule is looking like. But I'll try to, if not next week, we'll do it. We'll do it again, get some more folks on. But anyway, OG, thank you so much, bro. I appreciate you. All right, whatever God said. Thanks Corey, God bless. Amen, brother. Now, there are a couple of the folks that are waiting. Let me just say this. I can't bring you on. Gloria is going to be the last one because we're going into three hours now. And so this has got to be the last one so we can move on. But we'll try to do this again. So there's a couple of folks that are waiting.  So anyway, and it's not, I don't want to talk to you. I'll talk to you. So maybe either this Friday, next Friday or the Friday after that we'll do it. And I'll make a note to make sure that when you come on, I'll bring you guys on. So anyway, let's go ahead and bring on Gloria who I kind of just shown you real briefly. Gloria, how you doing?  This is so funny. This is the first time I talked to you a few months ago and I was the last one and I joined mistakenly. And I was like, every, I'm like, I didn't know I was right there being seen and then I heard you say my name. And then I heard you say my name this time. I said, oh no, this is not happening. This is not happening the second time. I'm just doing this and making sure I look okay. And I'm like, oh wow, okay. So okay, thank you for taking my call. By the way, so this is regarding what you have mentioned. This is a conversation from yesterday. It wasn't much of a conversation, but it was like you have mentioned it. And so I was actually the one writing in the comments asking the question over and over again because I was curious because I'm like, oh man, this is something that just, I don't know if it was God, but it came to me once you said the word and there was allegiance. And I said, oh man, is he avoiding asking, answering my question? I'm like, I don't know if he sees it, but I feel like he's not seen it. And- What was your question? Okay, it was about allegiance. So it was about, okay, so when you said that you only place allegiance to God, which I agree. You know, like God is the only one that, you know, like just, you know, the same should be with all of us, but it's just so in the world that we're living in, we have so many ways that we, you know, we're forced to place allegiance to something or someone, or I just say something because it's a lot of organizations. You get what I'm saying, a lot of organizations that we have, you know, that we go through and the best example that I can think of that I thought of yesterday is, you know, in the school system. And so I remember when I was younger, when I was growing up, you know, in school, we had like this routine. We had this, you know, thing that we did every day where we, you know, the flag and we pledge allegiance to the flag.  So it's a lot of things that I've seen and a lot of things that I learned.  So this whole, you know, allegiance, like so there's been a lot of exposing in the, cause you mentioned this too about the sororities, you know, you mentioned about sororities and I've been hearing a lot about sororities, you know, things, people denouncing themselves. And that's a whole nother subject probably for people. Cause I don't want to go too deep and stuff like that. I go deep, so I'm not going to go too deep.  And I'm like, okay, God, like what do you feel about this?  So for me, it just goes deep. It goes like, there's a big old, as they say, rabbit hole of things that we have been like included in.   Like what stands do we want to take on certain things? What's important and what's not important?  Like in the things that we, you know, we might do in the common, the common things that we might do like now that most people still, you know, most people might still do. Like what do you feel about that?  Okay, it's okay to have allegiance to things or people, but in comparison to God. So I have an allegiance to my wife over every other woman on the planet. Okay? I have an allegiance to my children, to my family over every other family on the planet. I have an allegiance to my country over every other country on the planet. But there's a hierarchy in how I have my allegiance. For example, what do I hope, do I have a greater allegiance to this country or to my family? What's my family? I'll move to China to protect my family. So my allegiance is not to the country or an allegiance to a particular political party or a city or a sports team or anything like that. Well, then in the end though, our allegiance ultimately is with God.  Well, it doesn't mean that you actually hate them, but in terms of who you have your preference, you reject them for the sake of Christ. And so it's okay to have an allegiance to the flag. And all the flag is, when we look at a flag, a flag represents two things. Now, for some reason it's taken on different meanings. And I think we kind of saw that with the whole kneeling of at the national happy of the flag. Well, that flag represents the United States flag represents two things, the people and the borders. So yeah, you don't just honor the people in the border. That's who we have. The all the square mileage or whatever of this country, that's our flag. All the people inside, that's our flag. Same thing with the flag of state flag of Texas or the state flag of New York or Illinois. That represents the people in it and the borders of a city, the people in it and the borders. I have an allegiance to, let's say right now in Dallas, or an allegiance to my home state, my home city of Indianapolis, but not of my country. I don't want Dallas to do well and the rest of the country do bad. I have a greater allegiance. I have a greater allegiance to my Lord. So it's okay to have allegiance. It's okay to be four or this is the team that we're on. I have a greater allegiance to the church than I do to non-Christians. But that doesn't mean that I don't have any kind of concern for the non-Christians. I want them to become part of the church. So it's okay to have an allegiance. It really is, but there is some stipulations. There's a limit and my allegiance to the country or even my family or even to myself can only go but so far. Amen. Do you feel like allegiance? Like, so do you feel like that can be also categorized under commitment? Like commitment, we committed to these people. We're committed to, you know, like do you feel like commitment and allegiance? And then what about oath? Like, do you feel like they kind of, you know, like that they have a connection? Like they come, you know, full circle or one. Do you feel like one overtakes the other, you know? Cause there's certain people that take an oath. I don't know if that's a form of allegiance. You give what I'm saying. Well, your oath is your word. Now God wants you to keep your word without question. But this word commitment, I always use that in place of love in the Bible. So when God, so love's word, he was committed, love one another, be committed to one another. So I use that word in that I use commit and various of it to refer to love. That's how I refer to love. That's how you know you love somebody. So love to me is commitment. And so now if you're gonna say commitment is allegiance well then to what extent? Because love commitment is all out. And so I wouldn't put commitment and love, I mean commitment and allegiance in the same category cause commitment means something. If I'm committed to something, I'm committed to seeing it through. I'm not committed to anything like I am my family and certainly not like I am committed with God. So I would not use those same two words interchangeably.  I'm not gonna write a paper over it. So, but again, it's okay to be tied to something or someone to have allegiance or have love for someone or something. As long as you put those things in perspective with God, as long as there is an order to God first, then you're- Right, the hierarchy. Then your walk and then your family and so forth and then other people, your country and so forth. Okay, okay. All right then. It just caught my attention cause it's, I think if I'm not mistaken, I was like, I think you said my allegiance is to God or it's only to God. I was like, oh Lord. I was like, I don't know if you said only but that's why I think you had said so that's why- If I say it only, I misspoke. It's not only the God, but first and foremost, too. So my- Okay, okay. To my family and to my kids and my grandparents. Right. Okay, okay, that makes sense. Cory, one little thing and I don't know if you'd be reading the comments but they're so, the comments are something else. It did catch my eye because before you came to me, the last thing when the guy who was before me was on, I was reading, they were talking about the Bible and they were talking about Lilith. I'm like, oh Lord, I forgot about that. And so I don't know. Maybe you can do a discussion about that because they were referring- Yeah, they have made Lilith- Reference to Adam. There's no scripture that talks about a Lilith. There is a Lilith that refers to an owl in one page. That's what I said, a screeching owl, yeah. But they have made out to be something else and there was no Lilith in the beginning. You know what, I'll try to, if someone can make to me a comment or an email to cover that, I'll try to cover it because I think it needs to be covered, so. Anyway- I think I'm referring to the missing Bibles, the missing, as they said, the missing books from the Bible, something like that. So maybe you can talk about that. I don't know if you've talked about that before. That's something I have discussed before. So yeah, I don't want to hold you up. I'll try to remember to cover that, so. All right, sister. Okay. I've got to run. Thank you, brother Corey. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Uh-huh. Have a blessed night. You too, you too. All right, I know I've got a couple guys waiting, uh, Michael Ray Garvin and Prie. Listen, I'm not avoiding you, but I've got to, I've got to get on.  Uh, I have one more question that I have to ask, ask and answer. I believe I was asked to give 15 observations for Mark nine, about Mark nine one. But here's a better question. Someone asked me this question. I guess knowing that I've watched Game of Thrones, what were the bigger mistakes made at all in all the show? Then when Rob Stark had his final interaction with Richard Carstark? Yeah. I think Carstark, yeah. Yeah. Well, he shouldn't have married the lady. He shouldn't have married the lady. But I think he was, I think they were doomed anyway. I think the phrase we're going to betray him anyway. But no, the bigger, the bigger mistake, the bigger mistake was not just that, but him trusting Phaon and then trusting the, the Boltons. You should have known their history. By the way, apparently there's, there's some, there's some bad history with, with the Boltons. And so he should have known that. So he would be like, what is he talking about? What in the world is this guy talking about? I'm ashamed to say, I'm not ashamed to say it. No, I watched Game of Thrones, started watching in prison and it's just been my thing. It's just been my thing. So y'all forgive me. Anyway, guys, I love you all so much. But someone says, is this, is this the longest life? No, we had a, we've had a couple of live streams longer. I, I actually swore off doing live streams longer than two hours. Here this one is over three hours. We've had some a little bit longer and I am wore out. I am tired. I'm getting ready to go drink me a Red Bull. So I can, I've got a bunch of stuff to do for this evening and tomorrow. So ditching us to watch March Madness. I'm not ditching you guys to watch March Madness. Madness? No, as a matter of fact, March Madness is on right. What did I do? Hold on, hold on. What did I just do? Did I just delete this thing? Uh-oh, what did I do? There it is. Yeah, I'm watching. Look, it's on right here. March Madness is on right here. So no, I'm not ditching you guys to watch it. I'm multi-tasking. I'm watching it while I'm talking to you guys. I'm answering questions while I'm watching Purdue. Anyway, there's lots of going on. So I've got a video screen over here. I've got one here. I've got this stuff right here. So yeah, sorry guys. Anyway, love you all so much. Lord willing, we will see you all on tomorrow. In the meantime, God bless you.


thing for GS also. If I was here for GS workshop, I would have done that with you guys. Sit down and ask yourself, which are the L3 questions? You will surprise how many L3 questions they are asking you now. I hope I have set that benchmark for all of you. See, as a teacher, I can do two things. One is I can play this down and I tell it will happen. Don't take it lightly. This is the standard we demand out of you. Let's see how we can do it. I as a teacher does not want to downplay this level because if downplay it, you will get surprised after six, seven, eight, one year or six, seven months. I want awareness to be there. I want to be there. I want to be there. I want to be there. I want to see Unfortunate that many of you have not even seen or studied this like this. You will ask me, you know, so what's the difference between the regional center and centers in Delhi? I think this is one of the differences. But I can see Shankar Ayes has taken care of some of these L3 level questions also. So, X after G.