Yawes yawes yawes yawes yawes yawes yawes yalas Niki tukwafמב. Uu na skya rufi ya katare yawes Katar ga ni bana Na waweta Una weka videos tumbili ati I am crying I feel I am in duba at only views We can't see the views dumbili Is ni video ga ni mudukuna piga? Ah, unadua Be they nmi skya kunuku wana lot e so this was the best one Yan impaka odi bedswa ya fuga Nobody else is going Ya, wa mefungu uredi, like si tu mefanyakila kitu, what they wanted, they have got it. Yes. Is it your first time to go to Qatar? Ya, my first time. My first time to Qatar, but not my first time in Middle East. How was it? How was the experience? It was amazing. Yes. Uda jishindi ya mrembo wuko? Ya, ya, ya, wuko na ezafungu wa. Ya? Uko na skiaata ku tamani tu vidoleza mkonoza dey manzeu na jipatandani. Ya, ya, ya, shigi di sana. At least that's why we wanted to come around and come and try it out. We are free. We are free. I can look at you for one more than one second. Uko? Ya, ya, ya, kudiyambo. What was the best experience for you those few days mekwa uko? I can say, ilik yukweli, the best part of the whole journey is every corner na pita. Tumbili, tumbili na ziati nimi mseati tumenda na ewa. Lai, lai, Kenyans are everywhere. Security. Like uko? Like in every 5, 4 to 5 when you na patana now, one is Kenyan. Yes. Security pali mse na kucheku kingia mahali. What unengia uteli mse na kusav supermarket wale wa sewa na fanya usafi. The malls ni nini Kenyans. Like Kenyans kudos. Like Katari is a great country because of Kenyans. Wana main security, wana maintain usafi, wana fanya nini. Big upsana. I wish every Kenyans asa tishikana yuku kuetu tu fanya mambuetu. Yes. Kiariji na mse mapele kwa na kampuni, bana nini ata muafod kujipele. Kauna se majio story? First of all, na ni Kiariji ni mse alikwana ni attention seeker. You wanted to be part of the Odebets movement. The only way he could come through ni ku attack. He wanted, alitaku kwa part of the mbue mbue, ama indurwe nye tu na piga Katari. Odebets, they had a selection. Waluwana select master. Wale wa diyambu krim de la krim ya master wa 254. Waka wacha ma fans na waka chikua winners. Situ kainrana winners. Wali chikua wale master krim de la krim, waka kainrana waka company winners to Katari. Kiariji was not part of the winners, he was not part of the stars. Imi bidi ya bakil. Sayas we speak kiariji na ngorota. Na ngorota proper. Kwa 3 by 6 ya ke safi. Kitanda ya ke ndogo. Yes, so kiariji ni mse, he wanted that attention ama ii pata, but aji ii pata visuri. Anitaka, design paka odebetsu ama mii, check ii kiariji, come, come kiasi. Wacha tu ku pelike. Naba hither I'm gonna do, villaina weza, odebetsu wa pelike na nii kiariji Katari. Ali se ma naji pelika finals. Wapi, wapi. Ata tike tienya na jo ni pesangapi. Kiariji, kiariji ya kadea, kununu ata tiko ya finals, which are by now zinaisha, muna na kiariji ya me punguwa ki doko. Like kweile, ama rudi mu soto. Okay, na kwa ama sota, but na sota zaidi. Design ata isi piga picha. Nuna se ma nii nii. Mutu ona tu kuliti asimu ya ke me punguwa, kumbe ama rudi, shez o ma iPhone ya uha ya. Bu buga uskubali kwa mbi wa evo. Laki ni tumbili. Was there any culture shock? Kambayu uli experience? Culture shock? No, no, no, because I've been to Dubai, so Qatar wasn't anything new. Ni le tu, ni lishanga sana, that ni ni. The kind of food these people eat, ni food tu ya ni evo evo. The taste is different. The accommodations, aru futuflani fani fani, I don't know if Big Bo's ame kusho, but it's not something we're going to talk about here, because it's a take, you're going to censor. Ya, but so far I love the place. Ya, ya, ya. I wouldn't mind going back to katar na upeke yungu. Kitumbili sana mii mii. Jipele ke nyu, jipele kuna kampuni? Yes, mii ni jipele ke, which is fun. Katar is an amazing place. Maybe I can go with nani kairiji pia, I go with kairiji. Ani bebe tu bag ni ni, ni tafti do yungu flani, ni mulipia ni bebe bag. Kwa sabu kukwanya na zani chaji dongapi, kairiji si ni mulipi tu akumudesho na transport, na food, eh, sindio, at least a julika na julika na ukawinje pia. Yes. All right, tumbili. Asante sana tu mefraya mii, Rudi, welcome back. Tu nangoja vi tu me tu pangia? Asante sana, and guys, still you can have a chance to go to Katar, Katasi of all debates. Just place the odds pala ni ni ni ni, 99 shillings only, Katar. Tabisa. Shukran sana tumbili. Thank you. Ah, yeah. Escambot, bot, bot.


Meanwhile, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong, has appealed to the NLC leadership to shelf the planned strike, assuring them that the federal government is determined to address their concerns raised. The minister also noted that one of the major demands of the NLC in their last meeting has been met, which has to do with the release of leadership of the Nigeria Union of Road Transport Workers. The Speaker of the House of Representatives has called on the Nigeria Labour Congress NLC to stay action on the planned nationwide strike action on the expiration of the 21 days' ultimatum issued by the federal government in a speech on resumption of the House from its annual recess. The Speaker argued that embarking on a nationwide strike at this point will only aggravate an already bad situation for Nigerians. The Speaker urged the leadership of the unions to give the House the benefit of the doubt and suspend any planned strike action while it engaged the executive underneath to ensure a living wage for Nigerian workers. The organized labour it appears would embark on a nationwide strike by this midnight following the expiration of the 21 days' ultimatum issued to government. As the people's representatives, we feel unequally share in the pains of our people at these very difficult times. However, I would like to appeal to the Nigeria Labour Congress to consider the various actions being taken by the federal government to alleviate the current issues faced by Nigerians. As promised earlier, this House remains committed to getting a survival wage to all Nigerian workers. The trans-House has assured Nigerians there would be an interfacing between the organized labour and the government to quickly work out a realistic new national minimum wage. And as such, other palliatives to enable citizens cope with the economic impact of first subsidy removal. The downward fall of the Naira to the Dhala, scaricating costs of food and general high cost of living in the country. It is in our considered opinion that embarking on a nationwide strike at this point will only aggravate an already bad situation and therefore urge the leadership of labour unions to give us the benefit of doubt and suspend any planned strike action while we engage the executive.


I have talked so far about what to research and whom to research. The next question is how do I research? So there are two primary methods of research. One is secondary research and one is primary research. Primary research is when you collate data and findings which others have collected. So how do you do that? Online search. The easiest is go to Google one of the browsers and do an online search. You can also look at public reports and public databases. I will show you some examples of that. You can also have trends and technology reports which are published by big research companies. And I will show you a couple of examples. That's secondary. Primary research is when you go out to the field and you collect first-hand data. It's not second-hand data. It's first-hand data and therefore it's called primary research. And there are some standard ways that I recommend to you. I will explain this later but some of these techniques are called walk the streets. Another technique that you can follow and I recommend to you is watch the trolley. I will explain a bit more later on. And then of course there are things like focus groups and online surveys. Let me show you some examples. How do you do online search? Clearly you go to a browser. You can use Google, you can use DuckDuckGo, Microsoft Bing. And for the last one year or so, you've got chat GPT. So you can always go to chat GPT or an open AI and you can type in your research questions and you'll get a lot of data. There's still secondary second-hand data. You can also look at academic sources. So some of the world's best are you can go to the Harvard Business Review. You can do it. You can look it up online or you can go to an MIT Technology Review. You can go to Google Scholar or you can just walk to a library, the picture below. You can go to a college library or you could go to a public library. And these are what are called academic resources. Some of it will be paid for and you have to pay for them, but a lot of it will be free. And if you're doing a research for business reasons, I strongly recommend that you actually go for the paid version and get exactly what you're looking for. You can then look at consultancy reports. They're the big consultants, McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group or BCG. They're the big four, KPMG, EY, Price Waterhouse, Deloitte. They're all published, what are called white papers. And you can always go and do a search of your topic and name some of those consultants that are publishing the white papers. So that's another source and get a lot of data for free. And if it's for business, I suggest you go for the paid version. Government database. The lot of government database which has a lot of detailed data. The most important one and the most extensive one maintained by the government of India for India is the website that you see, data.gov.in. And you can see lots and lots of data which is there for you in that database. And other companies and other countries also have government databases. You can also go to financial databases. These are financial journals or financial sites or financial apps which give you a lot of data, financial data. But they'll give you only financial data. So for India, Money Control, Sher Khan, etc., the very good financial databases. And you can get a lot of data on sales and profits, margins, etc. Globally, you can look at Yahoo Finance or Bloomberg, etc. A lot of it will be free, a lot of it will be paid for. If you're doing it for business, I suggest you pay for it. But you'll get a lot of it free anyway. The other thing I strongly recommend that you use is Google Trends. So basically, if you go to a site which is called Google Trends, you can find it yourself. You can type in your search term and from Google, you'll get to know what is a trend. So for example, you want to launch new soap with a new smell in a new packaging. And you want to see what is the trend for soaps. Is it going up? Is it going down? Which countries is it going up? Which countries is it going down? Within a country, where is it going down? Where is it going? All of that, you can get through Google Trends. And you can look at it for different periods of time. Last three months, six months, one year, five years, ten years. Obviously, if you want to grow your business, you want to capture trends which are increasing. But sometimes you find the trends which are decreasing and then you know that if a business is in trouble, because the trends are decreasing, the consumers looking for something else, it's a no-brainer that the market and the customers and consumers are going away from what you are offering. There are also technology trends that come up and Gartner does a very good job of declaring, researching and declaring what are the emerging trends. So this is an extract from a Gartner report for 2022. And you can look at what are different technologies which are emerging, which are mostly on the left side. And they're emerging techs and there's a lot of hype around it. There's a lot of expectations, but they're not yet tested out. And then as you go up, you get a bit more mature technologies where the expectations are also being met. And then you get into very mature technologies which are kind of flattening out. Artificial intelligence, of course, is extremely important. But within artificial intelligence, there are many, many, many subsets of AI, different kinds of AI. And if you look at the Gartner report, you can look at how different AI ideas are on the emerging curve. And I strongly encourage any of you who are trying to develop a tech-based business or a startup to go and study these reports. Now let's look at some of the primary ways of research. Where you are gathering the data yourself, walking the streets, where you just go out on the roads and look around. So if you're doing a survey of cars, which brands are selling, which brands are not selling? What kind of cars are selling, not selling? Big cars, small cars, SUVs, sedan, hatchbacks, what's the easiest way?  And it gives you a feel of what's selling, what's not selling. If your company is making cars, you can also go to a car park and look at how many cars your company has and what is the total number of cars. Very easy way of gathering the first hand data. It may not be very scientific but it gives you a feel. If you are in products, smaller products which are sold in stores, you can walk into stores and look around for your product versus all the other products. And you get a first hand feel of what's going on. And if you meet enough number of shopkeepers, you'll slowly build a database. This is a primary way of doing research. You are gathering the data yourself. Similarly, you can go to a mall if you're selling or you're in the business of products which are bit high end, apparel, fashion, watches, phones, etc. Those are sold in the mall. So you can go and have a look and see if your store or your outlet has a lot of traffic and nobody else has, you're probably in good shape. But if your store is empty and the competitor stores are full, then your business probably has a challenge.  And you watch the trolley at the check-in point or the checkout point where the customers are paying the money. And look at what brands are in the trolley. If you're in the soap business, are customers buying your soap or someone else's soap? If you're in the food business, are they buying your food or someone else's food? If you're in the drinks business, are they buying your drinks or someone else's drink? And you get a first-hand read.  So these are, again, a primary research technique. If you want to do a survey, the easiest way to do a survey is to use Google Forms. It's free. You just fill up, you go to the site, you can do an internet search, go to the site, create a form online, and you just mail it out. And then you collect the data as the data comes in. Google Forms will allow you to analyze the data. And there are other companies, like Valtrix, which also help you do online surveys. And this is how you can do a simple questionnaire design, a customer survey. You can ask the name of the customer, the email ID of the customer, and then you start asking a lot of questions about your products. Again, this is primary research, but this is not a physical walking the streets or watching the trolley. You are doing an online survey. This is primary research, again physical, which is called focus groups, which means a group of people who are relevant and focused on the product that you are trying to sell or the business that you are in.  And if you meet enough number of people, you start getting data, and from the data you can get conclusions and actions. So we've talked about why do you want, why do you need to research? Whom should you research? How to research? What went to research? So there are two kinds of research again. One is ongoing. Most good companies will ongoing do researches. It could be a research of market shares, a monthly market share report. Just to keep an eye on whether the shares are going up or shares are going down. It could be an ongoing every month, every three months, every year, consumer insights. What are the customers and consumers telling you? Shopper research, competitor insights. And there are agencies that I talked about before.  And this is ongoing research. The second is strategic research. You don't do it every month, every three months or every year.  For example, you want to launch a new product. Should you launch this product? Should you not launch it? If you have a new competitor who has come in and disrupting the market, you want to study what the competitor is doing and what's impacting your business. If there's a new disruptive technology that has come in, for example, child GPT, blockchain, et cetera, or if there's a new law, what is the impact of that law? Some tax has gone up. Some restrictions have been put by the government. You have to research what is the impact of that. But these are strategic and these are one-off and they're let when a certain event happens. So this is when to research. In market research, you'll gather a lot of data. So what do you do with the data? So you analyze the data. You can have gigabytes of data, thousands or millions points of data. What do you do with all of that data? And you can do different kinds of analysis. I'm not going to get into those analysis. A lot of it is statistical, but some of it can also be qualitative. So the quantitative methodologies are things like statistical analysis within that regression analysis, conjoined analysis, variation analysis. Again, since this is not a statistics course, those of you are interested can take a course on statistics and actually learn some of those data analysis techniques. But you can also look at qualitative data, verbatim, what the customers are telling you. It could be descriptive.  So it's a descriptive. It's not a data, but it's a description. And if enough people tell you that, then it's probably something you need to act on. Sentiments. I love it. I hate it. Emotions. Cricket. For example, anything to do with cricket. It's a very emotive topic in India. IPL. I love the team. I love one of those IPL teams. Why? So it's very emotive. And then you've got loyalty. I will only wear this dress or this brand. I will only buy this phone, this brand phone. And these are qualitative, not necessarily data. I'm very loyal to this. I'll only go to that restaurant. I will only eat that kind of dish. I like South Indian food or North Indian food. So these are qualitative. I like spicy food. These are qualitative versus the earlier set of quantitative techniques. Again, those of you are interested in data analysis, strongly urge you to take a data analysis course, either on NPTEL or in your college. And therefore, there are all this kind of analysis that you can do. And you can see on the screen, market drivers and trends. And within that, there are many parts of it. Segmentation. Segmentation is different kinds of market. For example, in a car market, you've got big SUVs, sedans, hatchbacks. In phones, we've got tablets or 6.5-inch phones, 6-inch phones, camera phones, et cetera. Food. Again, if you look at segmentation, North Indian food, South Indian food, Chinese food, Bengali food. And then competitor analysis. Which are the companies? What are the financial ones? How big are they? The big competitors, small competitors. Profitable competitors, not so profitable competitors. Computer which offers everything versus a computer which offers only a specific kind of product within that category. And company news. So these are all the market analysis. Because after you've collected the data, you have to analyze. And these are the kinds of analysis that you can do using the techniques that I talked earlier. And based on those analysis, what is the end point of market research? Is to make business decisions. Whether you are the chief marketing officer, or the chief executive officer, or the chief operating officer, or the chief financial officer, ultimately all the market research and the analysis leads to business decisions. All the business decisions. Oh, customers are not getting what they want in this particular area. So our company will launch a new product. Other business decision could be, it's a market which is exploding. The market is really growing big. But we are not present in that market. Let us enter that market. So new market entry. External competition. New companies. New competitors coming into the market. So we need to do something. Improve the product. Reduce the price. Increase distribution. Have more variety. So I need to react to stop the competitor. Internal capability. I have operated for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years using this technology. But a new technology has come. We upgrade our production facilities and adopt that new technology for the same product. Make it more efficiently, cheaper, better. That's an operating decision. And then launch or not launch. And if you are an entrepreneur, do you start up or do you not start up? So these are business decisions, which is the final endpoint of all the MR market research, competitor research, customer research, product research, technology research that you do. Because ultimately, it is all about building a better business. So with that, again, I'd like you to reflect and write down in your journal, you have thought about a product in your earlier reflection point. You would have thought about who to research, how to research, what to research. Now, write down in your journal, how will you research? Primary, secondary. Will you walk the streets, watch the trolley? Will you do Google Trends, Google Search? Will you look at a McKinsey report or a Boston Consulting Group report, et cetera, et cetera? So reflect for three minutes. So I'd like to end this module by sharing with you if you choose a career in market research. Because all good companies do a lot of market research. So there are a lot of career opportunities. Or if you want to research the market for your startup. Or if you want to join a market research company like Nielsen or GFQ or Kantar, any of those good companies, what skills should you start building now? The first skill you should build is learn about research techniques. There are many good courses on NPTEL and maybe in your college. So enroll and learn about quantitative research or qualitative research and understand what is market research, methodology. Do a course on data analytics, which will probably take you in the area of mathematics and statistics. Big data has many career opportunities. It's also important if you're doing your startup. So acquire those skills. Apart from that, you need to have critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is very objective thinking, typically asking the question in any situation, what, who, how, when, why. So there are courses on critical thinking and I encourage you to develop those skills. But since market research also ultimately has a business context, you also need to develop marketing and product management skills because it cannot just be a mathematician or a statistician or a researcher. To be a really good marketing or a good chief executive officer or a good entrepreneur, you also need to get the basics of marketing and product management and I encourage you to do a couple of courses and learn these skills. Finally, it's all about presentation and communication. You may do a great job on researching, analyzing, understanding and coming up with some recommendation, but you have to be able to present and communicate to your stakeholders. It could be your bosses, it could be the company owners, it could be the CEO, it could be your investors, it could be press, etc. You have to be able to present and communicate. And therefore, you must continuously develop your presentation and communication skills. So with that, we come to the end of this first module of my course, Business Fundamentals for Entrepreneurs, Part 2, External Operations. Thank you. Namaskar.


Sailors at Fleet Activity Saucebow held the ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the base's newest landing craft air cushion facility at Yokoze. This facility is, no kidding, a world-class facility. And this facility, along with the new maintenance shops, all the tools and everything, allows us a much more flexible, much more operationally ready command and allows us to push the Elkex out much faster. The real important message, though, I think, is that it's operated and maintained by the finest men and women in the world. The Sailor is the United States Navy. And now that they're settled into their new facility, these Sailors are ready to take LCAC operations from the Pacific Fleet to another level. Seaman Andrew Frisbee, Fleet Activity Saucebow, Japan.


Well, here we are at the top of the hour. 10 o'clock, we're pretty informal around here, I know. So I'll just get going. It is so nice to be back here at this science circle. I was saying it feels like a holiday actually. Had a hard time getting to sleep last night, looking forward to this so much. Haven't been in the world so much interacting with Second Life, but I've been doing quite a bit outside of the end world space here, trying to bring in some people. I'll be talking about that a little bit later today. I do wanna thank Chan and all of you here in this circle for always keeping the light alive for virtual world science and this learning space. So good to see some things do continue on and keep getting better and better. I'm gonna start with a joke, it's a Russian one. And I think Russians tell the very best jokes. It's a dark humor grounded in truth. When I was working in Moscow, this is one of my favorite jokes. It's on the difference between an optimist, a pessimist and a realist. And it goes, here's the difference. An optimist learns English, a pessimist learns Chinese and a realist learns to use a machine gun. And that was 1990. Right about the fall of the USSR, was there covering it for a news bureau? And it's still a darkly funny and true joke. And our topic today is hope. It's not blind optimism that everything is gonna be okay, but it is a realism grounded in authentic possibility. And I think that's where hope truly lies. And yes, this is not a time for unwarranted optimism foolishly ignoring the horrors of today, but it can also be equally foolish, I think, to lose sight of the greater possibilities right now, today, and wants to come. Yes, hope does lie sometimes. Hopefully lies straight ahead of us in the days to come. This is a brief interview of our topic today. A little bit about me. You can go ahead and get a PDF file at any point if you like, if you see any of the slides and the links that I'll be sharing are interesting to you. Go ahead, click the little I on the screen here. It'll give you a link to the PDF slides. You can follow along if you like. I'm gonna be sharing my take today from a sailor's viewpoint. I've been a sea captain for a decade here on the Pacific and a chaplain on the side conducting weddings and memorials at sea. So many, so many things can go wrong at sea. Bad weather, bad gear, bad passengers, bad captains. And during a crisis on board, we can lock our head into the boat and we might get scared. Our passengers are for sure. We lose reason and perspective and context when we're afraid. Often we do, we go into survival mode and we tack others and we trust less and we can't always help it but we can try to understand it better. As a captain, you learn to keep your head in the boat during a crisis, often several things going wrong at once and you also keep your eyes on the horizon. Sailors who forget that last part can get walloped by something pretty quick. The horizon really isn't that far away. Even just 10 miles ahead can hide some stuff behind the curve of the earth. So we often get so locked into our heads in turmoil that we just ignore the view ahead. Why do we do that? Well, there's some pretty good reasons why we do that. We know why. It's called the brain's negative bias. And politicians and news media and manipulators use this so well and it's so important for us to understand. Let's say that you get a good performance review at work and they say four really good things about you but there's one critical suggestion where you might improve. What is it we fixate on? It's the criticism that rings through so loudly and that's not necessarily a bad thing and negativity bias has served us well when our forebears were peeping out of a cave. They weren't searching for butterflies on a breeze but they were searching for cracking twigs and shadows on the ground. There's monsters out there. So it's good to have a negative bias. It served a survival purpose but what is wrong is exploiting that for nefarious ends. So we need to understand how this bias works to counter it. And we have a formula to counter our negative bias. Psychology Today reports the magic ratio of five positives to counter one single negative. That same concept also applies to those nasty negative self criticisms. We take way too much to heart. We need to present ourselves I think with more positives and self-compassions and here's the useful article from the New York Times on how to do that. All these hyperlinks are active in the PDF file if you do grab that. I think we also need to moderate our own negativity bias. No one else will but they sure will exploit it. Perhaps there's also I fear a positivity bias that if it's happening now it can't be all that bad that we walk through the storm with a smile as our umbrella the best is yet to come. And you know the old sayings maybe we shouldn't be feeling so optimistic after all if it keeps us from fixing the disasters at hand. 5.6 kilometers away that is pretty damn close. Your rights is thanks for doing the math. I kind of just hold my fingers out in front of me for our fingers is about 10 degrees of arc and it all it all adds up. I spent a number of years before I became a sailor working in the news media in TV and radio and newspapers. I was an anchor and I selected the day's news stories as a news director.  Are you gonna choose a late evening homicide that impacts just a single family? Or are you gonna cover a new diet tip that may add years to everybody's life? Well unfortunately that healthy tip may be a kicker at the end of a newscast if it runs at all there is a saying in news you've heard it that if it bleeds it leads and that homicide is unfortunately gonna go up on top and it hooks people with a negative bias and that's good for ratings. Journalists we zoom in on flames and in Moscow we would zoom in on the protesters until it looks like the whole world is ablaze and in revolt. It's good for scaring people and it's good for locking in their attention and it's profitable. One network executive said it may be bad for America but it's great for advertising revenue. That wasn't too long ago. Journalism it profits off of the bias as do politicians and tyrants and insurance agents. That's a cheap joke. I'm sorry as do many of us. It's easier to scare people than it is to inspire them. To scare them all we need to do is say boo to inspire people it can often take a lot of talk or some special kind of act. Those of you that may have attended some of my earlier science circle talks I've done a number of them here. You know I'm focused on finding our cultural commonalities so we might better understand our differences. My research, my publications have been on trans-cultural themes and images that connect us across cultural gulfs.  Look at these combo two first shot shots. It's hard and not to smile at that, not to feel good about it. And that response is trans-cultural wherever people are in the world. When they see images like this we tend to smile and feel good about it. That's called trans-culturalism. One commonality we share, I've been looking more and more trying to find commonalities between us around the world, hopefully helping to bridge our differences. One commonality we share for the most part is that we are all good and caring and generous people. You don't always get that. Watching the news or interacting with the well-placed bad people in the world, sometimes it seems like everybody is just out for themselves. But in a recent study, and there's a link to that here, 200 participants in seven different nations were given $10,000 each to spend however they wanted and seven people in 10, that's 70% spent most of the money on people other than themselves even when it was kept secret and they got no glory from it. The money mostly went to their family and their friends and even strangers and charity more than they gave to themselves. And the 30% of the greedy selfish people who put themselves above all else, even truth in the planet itself. We know those kinds of people out there. They're the ones so often on display, aren't they, the ones that we see that we think the world is made up of these kinds of people in business and politics, in media. But actually they're just a minority that quite often what we do is we zoom in until once again the world looks like it's a blaze. Here's another little factoid. I found courtesy of Bard's AI platform actually. We were watching one of those pirate movies where they collected a mermaid's tear of joy and they said supposedly these are the most potent tears according to Siller's tale, the tears of joy. So it got us to wondering just how rare are tears of authentic joy and we guess to be very rare given how depressed everyone seems, but Bard told us that tears of joy are more common than people might think referred to a 2022 study in the journal Front Tears in Psychology, which I was able to easily locate. And it says that 92% of the participants in the study had cried tears of joy over the past year, 92%, nine out of 10 of us. Almost all of us then know these moments of joy that bring tears to our eyes, authentic happiness and most of us most likely would like to have more of that. Here's another commonality we all share at least here in the United States is just how sick we are of the current political climate. It may look like everyone is caught up in the news of the moment and that's all we think about and talk about, but 65% of us are just really exhausted by it. I'm a newsman and I'm exhausted by it. And 55% of us are often are always angry about the political turmoil going on right now. Only 10% of us find this situation hopeful. This is a Pew research based here in the United States, but I think publics everywhere may well be feeling the same right now. Here's some more data, what we share in common around the world, according to a survey of 15,000 workers in 12 different countries. A few of us are really flourishing in our work. 55% of us are struggling with issues of self-worth and mental health and report feeling like we're failures. More than 60% of us are struggling with physical health due to poor sleep and poor exercise and poor eating habits caused by the stress of the time. Here's an interesting piece of data that we also share. 83% of the workers said they'd be willing to work less, earn less to be happier. They'd work as much, but they'd accept a lower rate of pay if they could just be happier in their work. Any teachers here, what we call that, a career in education, don't we? And of course, something else we share in common, malady is the down hill, the downward slide in all of our environments. The United Nations says billions of people are endangered by the climate crisis, a toxic air pollution, diminishing food security, disease, outbreaks, drought, floods, leading to toxic levels of malnutrition, anxiety and stress, hard to be hopeful about that. But one thing we can do is try to feel a little more empowered dealing with it. Go ahead and check out the link on this slide in the PDF to the UN climate action link. Maybe you'll find some positive outlets for our anxiety, our anxious energy. So where is the hopeful news? If there is any, we all share a common space in the disasters. I think we all share a common space in hope. Here are two reports you might wanna check out. The first is Bill Weir's report on CNN covering how to unscrew a planet, talking about our screwed planet. Well, he offers some fixes here. That's what the segment's called. He has expert guests coming in and sharing hopeful results and carbon removal and solar-powered travel and climate intervention and just increasing a global awareness of what works. And my favorite example was countering the hunting to near extinction of baleen whales and the missing whale wastes that used to feed entire ecosystems, which are now starved ocean deserts. But there was this trial underway of artificial whale poo made from volcanic ash and rich in nutrients and they sprinkled this over a patch of sea. And with just four days, there was fresh phytoplankton and just five days after that, it was full of fish. And there is a YouTube video here linked to that CNN report, Bill Weir. He is the CNN chief climate correspondent. He does a really good job. There's also a transcript, if you prefer transcripts, I do, I just wanna get to the data. It's about a 40-minute long video, but I guarantee it'll make you feel hopeful about the future. There's also more hopeful news on this slide. A NPR has a recent report since the use of electric vehicles and solar power is catching on so rapidly that we might still yet meet our climate change goals. And we may even set some higher goals. I wish I could follow the chat a little closer. That's where the good stuff is. But I'm trying to keep my eyes on my notes where I get too lost, where I'm talking about. There's also lots of hopeful things happening in health and science. The New York Times has a recent report saying that it looks like we're in a golden age for medicine. We're on the cusp of an era of astonishing innovation to come, a limitless horizon for CRISPR-powered therapies and cures, that's been talked about on this very stage of CRISPR developments. There's also vaccines for our most infectious disease coming, there's cancer treatments and weight loss. And experts say we can't even imagine what's gonna be coming over the next 30 years as we advance at an exponential rate. And here's an exciting update from popular mechanics. Popular mechanics, it's a frequent source for great breakthroughs, I find. In this, it's a combination of interests of a Nobel Prize physicist and intersecting with biology and our psyche. It's a recent experiment that suggests our consciousness, our sense of self is a quantum wave process facilitated by microtubules and nerve cells of our brains. And like every quantum wave, it has the ability of superposition to be in multiple places. At the same time, we're kind of doing that right now, aren't we? And also there's an entanglement that allows very distant particles to join. That's part of the quantum wave process that our brain receives like a television program. And through this, the scientists say our individual consciousness might connect with the whole universe. And we've had moments like that, haven't we? Well, we feel like we're connected to everything and everybody, that oceanic experience. Well, scientists are saying, well, of course, and here's the mechanism on how that happens. And I'd say that is some hopeful news, isn't it? Before we look at some more examples of hope on the horizon, let's look at what's happening in parts of academia, which quite often feels hopeless to us working in it, especially in regards to the metaverse and virtual world education. I wouldn't call this news especially hopeful, but there is often opportunity in a crisis. So we hear, I've been meeting with educators and administrators and university officers and program heads and course developers. And I've been giving presentations about virtual world learning. I bring them in quite often using Zoom so they can experience it from their comfort of their Zoom platform without having to sign into second life. And it's been working quite well. Oh, thank you for sharing that link on consciousness that it is right there. My most recent presentations typically focus on their main question is, well, what about the headsets? And you can see here, it's a common question over all the metaverse hype that's been happening. Somehow we've gotten the impression that the only way to engage virtual world learning is through a spendy 3D headset. That's a message that may well have been amplified by Mata, Facebook, Apple, Sony, and all the rest certainly looking to get a new market in those headsets. But I've been teaching marketing and tech courses since 2000, following these issues closely. We've seen lots of breakthroughs come and go in 3D, 3D theaters, 3D TV, 3D games on the Oculus. And I've tried them all. I've really wanted them to work. I've bought the headsets and the glasses and the custom TVs and the pricey DVDs. But none of it has really clicked, has it. Did they even make 3D movies anymore? We were so sure that that was gonna take over. And now the 3D metaverse is shaking out its offering. But in the meantime, we have work to do in our own virtual world with educational practices apart from any specific platform or dimension. I've been saying, and quite often, I think, upsetting people that I think it's a mistake to conflate and confound what we do in virtual world learning with the metaverse, at least as it's being hyped right now. If you have a stake in the 3D educational metaverse, I'm sorry for some bad news, but in the short term, it's really not looking good. Already the metaverse is tumbling down in the hype cycle and the stories are coming out, what colleges should do next as this begins to fade away. Once the initial 3D novelly and the headsets begin to age, I think early participants are wondering if it was a smart investment that's certainly being borne out by some of the news reports, some of the comments. One innovation consultant, he consults with a number of university presidents and vice presidents. He told me that administrators speak of their twin campuses, that's what they call them in glittering terms on the record, but then they tell them their regrets about what else they could have bought for those hundreds of thousands of dollars and once the initial funding dries up, universities are gonna be at a loss for additional funding, especially as their attention turns to other pressing issues such as declining revenues and artificial intelligence. The administrator linked in this story from inside higher education, there's no paywall on that, some of these may have a paywall, but it says this multiverse technology is inevitable, but it has a long way to go, maybe another 20 or 40 years, he says before it becomes widely accessible and affordable and just universal. You can get this article, very interesting article through the slide here. I guess the slides again, I guess all you need to do is click the little I, the information I at the bottom of the screen and it will take you to a PDF of these slides. These days when I speak to administrators and I teach for four different universities on one of those adjuncts that somehow managed to squeeze a living out of it and I'm speaking with administrators left and right and these days almost all of them have artificial intelligence as their top issue. Oh, I don't wanna add more noise to all that's going on, but I do wanna share just three quick impressions that I've had as an educator specializing in tech as far as admissions go, admissions officers have been wringing their hands and tugging their air over students using artificial intelligence for their applications and their personal statements. And how are the admissions officers to distinguish actual skills? Yet, I just saw this recent report that says that by 2024, 80% of all admissions offices will be using artificial intelligence on their own to review student applications rather than using human eyes. It's just inevitable. They say already about 50% according to the article link here, 50% of admissions offices are using artificial intelligence to review a student applications and writings. Also in cheating as educators are scrambling to catch artificial intelligence, cheating some of the teachers I know are already using artificial intelligence to design courses. One teacher told Howard just three pictures and three prompts to an AI platform. She generated a valid lecture with slides and a reading list and discussion topics and an exam. I don't know if she was trying to warn us or if she was just bragging and then in the workforce tried to download the PDF a 404 error file not found. Oh, well, that's just awful. Click the little I. I don't know. It's downloading for me when I click the link. Somebody just got it. Okay, you might want to try again says it just worked for me and it worked for Gus and it worked for Sumo. If it gives you any trouble, get me at the end of the session here. I'll email you a direct link about that. Let's see. We were talking about artificial intelligence. Oh, employment already. There is such workforce demand. Do you remember when the internet first started companies were waiting in the parking lots outside of community colleges hiring students right outside their classes? Well, we're seeing something similar now in the workforce that if an applicant actually said they were able to cheat their way through a college degree with artificial intelligence, that might actually be a good interview talking point. But I think what we need to do is keep our human communication skills sharp. There's a good case study on this actually after the industrial revolution when machines were making everything handmade has become a selling point, handmade clothing, handmade sweaters, a hand-packed milkshakes, you know, the human touch. Maybe someday it's actually gonna be a marketing point. We'll pay extra for human brain-made content or a movie that uses actual sets and no CGI. That's gonna be a plus for us. We're gonna pay extra for that. Artificial intelligence also, well now it's after everyone, now we're really beginning to take it seriously. Software publishing, computer design, programs designing programs now. Professional services such as legal and marketing and banking and accounting. They say the best defense against getting cut is more education. I certainly agree with that and a diversity of skills to navigate the shifts. We should be expanding our skills, not turning them over. CIS was able to download at Chrome. Yeah, some browsers I know are fussier than others. Thank you for following up on that, CIS. Here are a few cheat sheets. If you decide you wanna join the ranks and turn your life over to artificial intelligence, these are two really good cheat sheets and these prompts, I just copied those to direct artificial intelligence and just how you want them to go about collecting information, what mindset, what voice you want your AI to use, some useful stuff here again available in the PDF. Let's go ahead and look at just what is gonna be happening in the future looking ahead to 2040. We've looked at some of this stuff before but in the interest of countering our negativity bias, let's go ahead, let's review some of this positive stuff on the horizon. Let's quickly turn to the national intelligence officers who since 1979 have been making predictions 20 years into the future. This is a coalition of government, academic and private sector and senior experts on a range of regional and functional issues. There's a link on this to this report. Some of it hopeful, some of it not so hopeful. The pace of technological developments that is certainly gonna increase even faster, ever faster exponentially in certain fields. It's gonna transform our lives and health and climate change and productivity while also creating some tensions between the social fault lines that we have especially along the technological divides, educational divides. We need to find ways to get a lot better. That's for sure. There may also be greater international geopolitical rivalries but also advantages to be found by companies with long-term focus and global REITs companies in a lot of ways have become the new nations with ambassador powers even, we've seen that happen. It's also, it's gonna be a huge game changer is abundant and cheap energy, inexpensive access to universal information and healthcare and quality living. And we also of course may face threats of privacy intrusions and technological failures and who knows if artificial is gonna rise up artificial intelligence and conquerors. Let's go ahead as we look ahead. Let's go ahead, let's take a look backward a little bit and just see how far we've come. If we look at some of the trends over the last two decades we're actually doing pretty good according to an article and charts by Dylan Matthews. Dylan, if you're out there update this but what we're actually looking at is just general trends and they have remained consistent. For example, look what has happened to extreme poverty in just 35 years. Yesterday we still have one in 10 people living on less than $2 a day and that's a horrible thing to pass on to the next generation. My generation, we inherited three in 10 people living in extreme poverty. I think we've done a pretty good job of that. You older folks here in the room with me. Next generation, you younger ones now it's your turn. Fix the rest of it. Feed the people. And hunger is following around the world. It's decreased by half in more or large generations. Oh, Philip Youngblood, how good to see you in the room and posting your encouragement the way you do, Philip Youngblood while here is a true Longwood Chan and Phil and Jess. These are the true heroes that have kept us on track here in virtual worlds, keeping the spark alive so much for that. So good to see you here, Phil. What else has changed over the track of time, getting better child labor and hazardous work is decreased by 40%. Please let's keep working on that and some of the slaughterhouses and the fields where I see young children working. Please, let's try to fix that. Also, global life expectancy. Look at the climb there increased by six years over a 25 spread. We're now living twice as long as we did just two centuries ago. And boy, doesn't it feel like it? Child deaths have fallen by half over 30 years. Our children are living and getting healthier. People are getting taller around the world. We're shooting up in height. Look at that jump since the Industrial Revolution. Thank you, Phil. And also due to better nutrition and living standards as we worked less than lived better. Also homicide rates have fallen around the world. Stockpiles of global nuclear weapons are declining. More people around the world are living in democratic countries. People are going to school longer, especially in many of the developing nations. Yeah, poverty is getting a lot worse in the UK. Hopefully these are just cyclical burps in the system. And as things begin to settle out, we'll see these trends taking place. People are going to school longer and also continuing education. I teach quite a bit in continuing education is going strong more access to the internet. That is rapidly rising all over the world. All these grumpy people that feel left out of the changes legitimately. So the cranky people living in the middle or the south. Well, I think if we could just get them, everybody had high speed internet next day delivery of Amazon. I think that might mellow people out a little bit. Also alternative and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are now cheaper than gas or oil per megawatt hour. Cheap energy is so crucial to our next phase. And thank you for that point, Phil, weirdly. And it's so easy. That gets back to my point at the top of this. You missed this, Phil. I'm coming at this from the perspective of a sea captain working at sea and taking people out to sea is that if we get our head locked in the boat during the middle of a crisis, we lose so much that's happening on the horizon. And as somebody here pointed out, the horizon isn't that far away. It comes up so quickly. If we lose sight of what's coming at us, we lose actually quite a number of opportunities that we might develop. One of the darkest points, and this may relate to what's going on there in the UK. This is courtesy of the Guardian, a linked article here, is this new useless class of people as we're replaced by artificial intelligence.  So what are we gonna do with these people? What are we gonna do with us? Well, interestingly, this article says that we might spend increasing amounts of time in virtual reality worlds. It gives a plug here. The 3D, which may provide us with the excitement and emotional engagement that we could be missing in the real world. Yeah, there are so many sad times here happening, Brioni. It just breaks my heart to watch the news these days. We gotta watch it, especially, you know, I was a journalist in Russia for three years, and another three years working in Ukraine on economic development, trying to help these people find a new way, and just to see it all falling apart, it is heartbreaking, the hunger and the death and the destruction of billions and billions of dollars, hundreds of billion dollars spent simply on destroying things, it's heartbreaking. Let's get back to some of the good news though. Here are some interesting perspectives, and I want to share a few of those from some good thinkers out there. And one of these is from Fast Company. So if we aren't gonna be employed and we aren't gonna be defined by our careers, what may be our purpose in life? If it's not to work and earn, you look at the data on people who retire and how quickly they simply drift away from life and their friends and activities if they don't find something to keep them better. This piece from Fast Company, it says artificial intelligence may actually help set us free with a real potential for humans where we're not defined by our jobs, but we're defined by a newer purpose to prioritize the planet and people over profit. And here's another good thinker with thoughts on that. Also in the Guardian from the UK, lots of good thinking coming out of the UK these days, speaking of the Industrial Revolution. And this piece says the change may already be underway in disciplines from neuropsychology to economics that we're coming to recognize that both the natural and the social worlds are as orchestras of interdependence, of survival as an essentially collaborative and cooperative business. We need to get along with one another. We need to seek a global vision wherein we see our lives and our fate as intimately connected to those of everyone else on the planet. I don't know if you were here, Phil, but earlier we looked at a report on physics now that's saying through quantum waves and receptors in our brains that we are indeed tied in to the universal all of the quantum. It's a fascinating study, Phil, if you download the links, I'm sorry you missed that little bit you may have, but there's a link to that article in the slides here. Also I had cheap, abundant power. Let's just click through some of this quickly. What's happening out there in the world? Oh, and thank you, says also posted a link about quantum mysticism. Yeah, they say if we understand what's happening in the quantum world, we just aren't paying attention. It will really blow our minds. As it feeds them with quantum waves, maybe if we meditate long enough on it, it'll all make sense. There are lots of sources out there now for cheap, abundant power, solar, fusion, wind, water, 5G, wireless electricity itself may be beamed around the city. It's a global game changer for sure. There's some interesting articles on all that. In this slide there again, The Guardian. I like The Guardian. It does some really good reporting, especially even what's happening here in the United States. We're either gonna pluck electricity right out of thin air. Scientists at UMass and Amherst, they developed a thin film of protein and nanowires that create power right out of thin air by sucking up atmospheric humidity. Also, tidal power from the sea. Entire towns in Norway powered with tidal energy. Every day along a coast, the tide comes in. The tide goes out. A massive surge of energy easily tapped with some simple spinning giant propellers once we start thinking that way and get our minds out of the fossil fuel mess. Wind energy taking flight. If you drive to Las Vegas from here in California, driving through the desert, you see mile upon mile of these guys spinning in the wind. Also, here's a prototype of an aircraft. We may be a sea flying come 2040. It's basically it's a flying wing. It's a reduced drag and powered with electric fans. More solar power, electric power. There's planes that never need to land at all that are powered with solar power. Seating looks like they're really gonna be packing it in for the passengers. Probably gonna be just simply loaded on with forklifts and our preceded modules there. Oh, I dread flying these days. We may not get our jet backpacks, but soon we should be able to hail an air taxi, nice gentle landings right on our rooftops. A housing is also, I do two guys. I've got a pilot's license. And I think about getting a pilot's license is it's good forever. I haven't flown in 20 years, but all I gotta do is three takeoffs and landings. And I'm good to fly again. Isn't that amazing? Housing is really gonna benefit from some of the newer and cleaner technologies coming, such as these cost and energy efficient solar floating homes. A thousand square feet is a good living space. 12 meters in diameter, four meters high with a roof topped by solar collectors. I want one of these. Also printed homes, here's a good news for the developing world. 3D printed homes created right on site using a local clay zero waste product. Several homes can be printed at once using multiple crane printers, some really hopeful stuff there. And for those of us who like a life at sea, there are some floating cities that could easily become a reality later in the 20s here helping to solve problems such as overpopulation and rising sea levels, construction plans in China here for a prefabricated, self-sufficient island, zero carbon energy efficient producing its own food with vertical farms and fish hatcheries decentralized yet happy living. Here's a plan for Haiti, a collection of artificial islands called Harvest City. The center of the floating city dedicated to urban functions, housing office space and education while the outer areas are made of agricultural lands. Doesn't that look promising? Medical care, we talked earlier about that what's happening with CRISPR developments in vaccines. Medical care is gonna continue with some amazing breakthroughs, robotic deep-filled surgery, heart and brain operations where the doctor may be in Tokyo or New York and the patient is in a remote village across the world or our surgeons may be operating on people on the moon soon from their station on Earth. And robots, robotics are proving perfect for eye surgery. I was just reading an article about workers in Las Vegas and how they're being replaced with robotics, mixing drinks, room service, even cleaning another field where robotics is gonna be taking over. And bionic eye implants, boy I'd like one of these, it can give us super vision powers complete with wifi and Bluetooth interactivity. We can zoom in with our eyes with an implant. That's supposed to be coming out in the very near future. And the singularity, Kurzweil singularity as we build more bridges between our biology and technology, some futurists such as Kurzweil, they're predicting to buy the next decade, 2040s. People are gonna be able to digitally back up their brains. It seems that if we can download data from our brains, perhaps we can upload learning as well, an instant course in Russian or physics. He predicts we may even achieve a path to 700 year lifetimes. This new generation here of millennials and Gen Zers, maybe living a long, long time, we should try to get them off to a good start. Those of us old timers are not gonna benefit from this. Also, they're predicting experts by 2045, just 20 years. So from now that we're gonna be able to load our brain content into low-cost avatars, complete with the particulars of our consciousness and personality where we can even go on learning and having conversations with our descendants. Isn't that a little creepy of a thought? But on the other hand, you know, down the future is just gonna be a given. You mean you guys lived in a time where you actually died and you couldn't pass your consciousness on to others. What a waste of learning and life. That may well be, isn't it funny how quickly technology goes from being scary to being indispensable? I was reading that long ago when slide rules first came out, they were forbidden from classrooms that they thought we were gonna come up with a new breed of engineers that couldn't even do simple calculations. Slide rules were banned in the classroom. Google that, it's true. And as we start living forever, the youngest among us, they're gonna be able to print out new skins and new organs and customized. And no reason we couldn't live forever. You're right, Simo, when calculators came out, those were also banned in the classroom and there was the big fear when auto-correct came out in word processing programs that we were gonna lose those skills. Yeah, I've been around enough. I'm just turned 65 and I feel old enough there using a slide rule in college. I actually had one once it's still floating around somewhere. Quantum computing, lots of stuff happening there. Back to that article where our brains are actually quantum wave receptors. I think there's some fascinating stuff happening here. Yeah, I guess if you've seen one, you get to join our old people's club. Quantum computing is gonna be using transmons and entanglement for subatomic weirdness where we can now perform highly complex calculations in just minutes that used to take eons, 10,000 years to complete a calculation. Now we can do in minutes. Plus they look pretty cool, don't they? I wouldn't mind having a computer like that in my home. But you know, it's the simple things that we also need to keep our eyes on. It's the dames who invented the live straw that can filter out waterborne diseases such as typhoid and cholera and dysentery and diarrhea that kill as many as 6,000 children a day and that only costs $3 each. I have one myself here on this shelf, just in case. And well, as we begin to wrap up here, I see we're coming up on the top of the hour. What I have been doing out there, we can expect some big changes in education. I've been interacting with a number of university leaders and designers as we try to find ways to expand opportunities for all. I've been getting presentations on virtual world education to university administrators and department heads and directors and professors and students, international students in particular, I think this is really gonna be an asset. And I've been giving these tours through Zoom. I haven't been doing much outside of my protected zone here, but I've been bringing a lot of people in from the outside, first timers, just giving them a safe look at what we're all about. It's been working very well, these presentations in virtual worlds on their uses as an educational platform. Here's some of the people that have been coming in, I quote, actually, I just met a presentation on this yesterday to the Virtual World Education Consortium. Maybe they call themselves. On some of these comments, and maybe we can share that here at some point, some of the steps we might take to meet other legitimate concerns and demand of others in academia, especially as we adjust to the multiverse and try to find our way within that, I advise that we try to separate ourselves right now from what's happening in the multiverse and the negative publicity that it's been receiving as some outside forces trying to grab it to themselves. Good sign. I think if people are trying to make money off of it, we must have value here. Slides to that presentation, actually, from yesterday, what's happening in the multiverse, what we need to do to meet some of the comments of these people. Those slides are posted. In fact, if I still have just a couple of seconds, let me share those slides from yesterday. It really applies to what we're talking. It's specifically focused on education and it was called University's Response to Virtual World Learning. Let me do a quick copy here. I always fumble this when people are waiting on me, but actually this time it seems to work. There is, yeah, WAC Education 2023, just what some leaders in academia have to say about our efforts, unfortunately. Our efforts here going for 20 years, some 20 years here in virtual worlds is now being usurped by this flash in the pan universe pitch, multiverse pitch, trying to get people to buy these glasses. Unfortunately, we're being tarnished by some of that as the negative reports come out. And my presentation yesterday, the slides from those provide some thoughts on that. Here is some contact information for me if you'd like to take a look at my research website. There it is on transculturalism in education. Made-a-Mate Tube Mistakes Wild Garden and very poor content, you're right about that. They should have learned. I've got some interesting quotes from a university professor on this very same topic that boy, are we still a long way, 20 to 40 years away from this actually being practical. Yet nonetheless, there are some suggestions there. Cheap suggestions that we might do when I talk with administrators and I tell them that my nonprofit edukari Island here is only $100 a month. They blanch when they consider the 200, 300,000 that they just spent on a twin campus in the made-a-verse. But we saw that here in Second Life, didn't we, all these great campuses built that became ghost towns after the initial fascination wore off. Well, that's what we're seeing right now in the multiverse. Thank you so much, says I appreciate you.  Oh, what a great concert that was. And there was a slogan and it said, now that we can, we must. I love that slogan. Now that we can, we must. Let's try to make it a little less preachy perhaps and say now that we're able, we shall. And I really do believe that providing that we change our ways and our hearts and what I see coming up in the young people and so many people trying to make things better, I can't help but be hopeful about that. However, you know, changing our ways is a pretty big provision without much evidence to give us confidence in it that we are gonna change our ways. Albert Einstein said that it's easier to split the atom than to purify the human heart. But we still keep working at it. Unfortunately, we've come to expecting competence. So our hopefulness has to come from somewhere else. The grand standards, the politicians, the news media aren't likely to be the solution. In fact, quite often they're the problem itself or at least exacerbating the problem. There's this avarice in that 30% that we talked about earlier that is ultimately consuming ourselves along with the planet, which is ironic really, why are we consuming ourselves when we have such abundance? One of the points that should be clear from some of what we looked at today, there should be plenty of stuff for everyone to live well, cheap energy, comfortable housing, open education, safe water, nutritious food, 3D printing of our most everyday necessities. And the problem is always is how are we gonna distribute this abundance? What systems are we gonna turn to? One advantage of being an educator is you get to see this next batch of minds and hearts coming up the teachers in this room. You know this is true. It's so comforting to see so many bright and well-intentioned students rising to the time with so many ideas on how to make things better. It reminds me of our hippie hay days in the 70s, any hippies in the room, you just had a feeling that there was profound change in the air and that's the hope that I hope we're sharing with one another and I thank you for sharing some of your day with me. That brings us right up to the minute of the hour and I thank you.


this is movies you can learn from. And today we're gonna review the Netflix series, Alexander. And I said, deep dive into the classical times. It's a deep dive into how things worked at the management level. And in all the wars they had and the successions from king to king and pharaoh to pharaoh and how you got to be in charge. And you know what? When you study this, you learn so much about our current geopolitical situation. So it's a documentary, but it's also a docu-drama and there are various historians on it. And today Rupemati Kandakar, Dr. Rupemati Kandakar who is also expert in movies and in classics is gonna help us understand Alexander and the movie and understand where Cleopatra fit in this before, during and after Alexander's life. Okay, so wow. Why don't we hear the story in general as covered by the series Rupemati? Aloha J. Thank you for having me on this because it's such a lovely foundation to all our geopolitical talk. This happens, this series on Netflix. Again, I'll thank you and then I'll start again because a double thank you this deserves. So this is a six part series on Netflix and we go back into the ages of 300 BC, okay? And Alexander is a 20 year old boy Macedonian prince. He is prince to the king of, King Philip of Macedonia. And Prince Philip was not such a well-known king. He was, he came after the Spartans had the famous 300 movies that we see that had happened before Philip had come into prominence. And Philip has this boy king waiting to succeed him. And when Philip is assassinated on his second wedding reception, you know, Alexander's mother Olympias who's a very, very prominent figure in this episodic life of Alexander, she takes charge and pushes him to be the king.  And Jay, this series is so wonderfully put together because this boy has become one of the greatest kings ever in the, he's immortalized in the pages of history. And that was what he was seeking.  But when Olympias puts her son in the front, she puts divinity in front of him.  That is the king, Greek king. And Alexander holds the ambition to conquer the Persian empire. Now Jay, we are talking of a period where the Americas wanna discover Asian, you know, we were talking of the civilizations which were there, the Persian civilization, Chinese civilization, the Indian civilization, the Hellenistic Western civilization. And it's a small world. And Alexander is a small entity in this. He's a non-Indian. And he wants to be king of Asia. Now at that point of time, the Persian Empire, Darius II, he's the king of Persia. And he holds a mighty Persian army with the loyalties of every Satrap. Satrap is the province that they have. Such a province that even the Egyptian culture, civilization was a Satrap of Darius. Now you can imagine the whole that Darius has. And many years that this boy king, Alexander, he wants to come to conquer. He sends his generals to fight with him. He thinks it's just a mutiny. He'll catch him at the doorstep. But Jay, Alexander, his greatness isn't his warfare. He's direct. He is sharp. And he's fearless. You know, every episode of war that they have shown, he holds one-fourth, one-sixth of the army that faces him. And he is such a king who has always led from the front. Now Darius is surrounded by his troops. But Alexander goes forth. And he is the one who decides the strategy. So the first war that he has with the Persians, he goes to visit the tomb of Achilles. And that shows you the spirituality that he has. He picks up Achilles', what is that? His shield and his jacket. And he wants to wear that into the, he thinks that, you know, he's invoking the gods. He's invoking the strength of spirituality. And he's taking it on the battlefield. When he takes it inside, you know, he's easy to spot on. And one, at that point of time, they've shown that point very nicely. Historians have seconded that. Alexander could have died on the battlefield that time because he's prominent. And his clitius general, he saves. So he has a very narrow escape at that moment of time. And he wins it, Jay. And he's the 18-foot pipe that the Macedonians, Prince King Philip had introduced, was, and the cavalry that they had, the sharp cavalry that they have, were such an advantage to the Greek side that the Persians did not know how to tackle them. So this viking starts from the coast. And instead of going head on into Persia, and that is his center Babylon, he goes and takes a detour to Egypt. Why? Why? Because he is the student of Aristotle. And Jay, Aristotle taught him about cultures. And we see that Alexander is a king. When he enters any culture, he assimilates the culture into him and he puts himself into the culture. That we see in that very powerful scene when he's at the doorstep of Egypt and his troops are waiting for him to attack and he kneels down before Egypt. He's not kneeling down before the people. He's kneeling down before the greatness of the Egyptian culture. And Alexander himself, he knows by taking Egypt, he would have conquered two civilizations, Jay, the Persian civilization and the Egyptian civilization, the bread basket and the gold provider of the Persian empire would be his.  I believe that. So when the Egyptian culture saw such a benevolent king, it has literally, you know, hugged him back and made him Pharaoh. It was difficult thing for a Macedonian king to come and declare himself Pharaoh in the Egyptian land. But that is the Egyptian culture welcoming him, the Egyptian civilization welcoming him. And onwards, he chases the rise, that is. So he comes to this point where he has to face, that is, at that point, again, he goes to Siva. Now, Siva is in the desert. It had engulfed and destroyed one king before that. But this Alexander wants to pray and invoke maximum spirituality before he goes towards Darius. And Darius doesn't understand what is happening. What is this? Why is this person not focusing on whatever they think he does the opposite? And he's unpredictable. But when he goes to this, the oracle tells him that he is the son of Amun.  You know, there has to be some connection that his greatness was seen through by the philosophers or by, you know, Aristotle accepting him and teaching him about these stories. There is inherent greatness to Alexander. And it is shown so, there's no setup to this series J. It's plain and simple. But the kind of points that they put forth, they're showing the greatness of the king as an individual. The way he deals with Darius' wife, when he captures her, she calls him barbaric. But he treats her with respect. The way the Persians were dealing with the women in war was totally different from what Alexander was dealing. He won her over. I mean, Darius is the king of Persia's wife and daughter were with Alexander. He had won, not only the king and his empire, he had won over his family. So that is a big thing. He could have easily treated them as enemies. And Jay, one big thing is he was setting up fire to those cities which do not obey him. But after he, you know, comes to Egypt, from a small village, he builds a city known as Alexandria. And Alexandria is one of the greatest cities of all antiquity, which has survived, you know, the science of time. So this man was not only architect, planner, construction, how many people do you need to build a city? He just visualized, his vision was so amazing to build a city at the port, which would serve as a knowledge center, which would serve as, you know, as a meeting point, you know, center for people. Alexandria was the center of the ancient world, one of the wonders of the world. So that kind of bringing Macedonian culture into Egyptian and, you know, accepting Egypt as his own land, this is the greatness of a king, Jay. And while we are talking of the king, king, king, we are saying that he, on a parallel note, he's also showing himself to be a god. If a god that what he could do, nobody could have done. The visualizations that he has, the visualizations as a person that he thinks that no person would have thought that he can defeat the person now. He puts Darius on the run. And when Darius is defeated by his own generals, he gives him a funeral befitting a king, means he gives importance to dignity even to the enemy, Jay. And that's what held him very high. So, Alexander was kind of one of the greatest things. Well, you paint a beautiful picture in the sense that here's the boy king and within six years of, you know, being known as the boy king, he controlled an empire all the way from Greece to the border of Pakistan, that is India, as we know it. Huge. It was even bigger than the Persian empire that preceded it. And he was, he became famous and revered and powerful. And he had all kinds of new strategies. And you're right. He did the unpredictable. He always faked Darius out. And he had military strategies that Darius couldn't follow. And at the end of the day, he took down the most powerful ruler in the world at the time, that is the ruler of the Persian empire. But my question to you, with all of that, you know, and looking back at the way things worked in antiquity, the way things worked with these empires and emperors and gods and pharaohs, what have you, was he a nice person?  And a person can't be kind all the time. There will be, you know, waves of anger and everything. But when you're kind to a maximum extent in your life, I think you are a good person. And I think he has been kind to his enemies in war also, outside war, you know, in ethics, he was ethical. He did not, and even when he died, he showed to the world, put one hand out to show that you go without money and all these things, you go without anything. So these kind of things, which he had, he had a very comprehensive aspect of, he didn't go and destroy cultures. When, you know, you have other kingdoms come in, they actually destroy the places of worship.  So that kind of makes him a benevolent king. His soldiers were tired because they wanted, they thought the campaign would end at some time. They did not expect Alexander to get victory on victory and victory on victory to come right across to India. So that was the only roadblock for him was the tiredness of his troops. But as a person himself, I think fantastic. And unless you have a good heart, you're not rewarded with kingship day. Yeah, well, you know, nice guys don't necessarily build the largest empires in the world. But I think he understood about how to deal with his troops. He wrote, as you said, he wrote out front. He took, he took chances. And when he spoke to them, he spoke to them personally. Darius didn't do that. It was a new marvel. He was inventing a new model and dealing with his troops. So they followed him even though he was outnumbered in so many of those battles, multiple outnumbered. And then finally, when he went to Egypt and elevated himself or had other people elevated him, however that worked and became the pharaoh, the God. Okay, that was really not consistent with Macedonian Greek culture because the ruler wasn't supposed to be a God. But I think there was a reason for Alexander to make himself a God. And that is that that's the way it worked in Egypt. So he was playing, can I use the word propaganda? He was playing to the people. He did things that he knew would ingratiate the people he needed to ingratiate, whether that be his army, whether it be the Egyptian people or for that matter, the Persian people. He managed to play to them in such a way so that they respected him and gave him power. And that was in my view, that was the signs of his brilliance and the signs of his ascending to be this great ruler. In only six years, he managed to do this. Now, one thing is of interest. You know, I went and looked it up after the movie and he had blue eyes and he was blonde. And I went to look that up. What happened here? This is a Greek. He's a Greek. He's the son of Philip II. He's a Greek. Why is he have blue eyes and blonde hair? It might have been some recessive gene in Philip's lineage. But I think it made him special and people saw him as a physical person that was different from the other Greeks.  Was it Olympia? She was really a character in the series, wasn't she? She was giving him advice and helping him become a God. And by the way, Cleopatra did the same thing with her son by Julius Caesar. Caesarian was his name. She elevated him. And so what we have with Alexander is that he studied. He was an intellectual. He was ready to do things that the average person, the average general, the average leader wasn't capable of doing. And he understood the value of knowledge, of education and he capitalized on that all the way through. What a guy. But you know what? I think we should take a little time and just examine how these things play out now. Does education mean a lot for a ruler? Does propaganda mean a lot for a ruler? Does talking to the troops? Does playing to the crowd? Does that work the same way? Or is it different? How much can we learn from these experiences and antiquity? And finally, the whole thing about Persia. Now, this is a Persia between 300 BC and maybe, I don't know, sometime after that when all this played out. It was not long after that that Alexander was in charge. But we know about the Persian character. We know that the Persians had a huge empire and we see their character. And we have to back out the whole thing about Muhammad and the Koran and Islam because Muhammad wasn't born until 600 years later in 300 AD somewhere. And the Koran wasn't written for another 300. That is 600 AD. So if we look at the character of the Persians, we need to compare that with how it changed when Islam came around 600 or 900 years later. Can you talk about that? Yeah, Jay, the Persian empire was Zoroastrian, Zoroastrian civilization. They had their own religion where they prayed to the fire. The fire was their God. So now Islam comes in this area. So it's like it accumulates, picks up from the neighboring religions. It will do something opposite what Hinduism is doing. It will pick up something what they're seeing from Persia and they will make it their own. The mosque and the praying style was never what was found in Persia. So there were never mosques in Persia. We don't see them praying five times. There is nothing of that Islamic character anywhere in Persia. The Persians were very close to nature because Jay, any of these empires, these kingdoms were dependent on the nature for their conquests and their accomplishments. So always the gods would be like the God, God of Ra is the sun god in Egypt. They prayed to the sun for other Nile, you know? They prayed for their agriculture, for their prosperity. These kind of things were the gods. You know, you have Zeus, you have the gods of lightning in the thunder like this, something which connects with nature. Mohammed was a prophet and he's known as the son of God. He was never the God, but the Quran that was written, I think it came in much later and it was a more violent version of religion. Zoroastrian was quite mild and Islam succeeded to overtake and destroy Zoroastrianism by the sword. So they always, if you ask any Zoroastrian person, they will say they were conquered by the sword, never by love. Interesting. And that must have changed things or refined them in some way. You know, there had to be a kind of shift over that in the Persian character and culture. But let me say that, you know, Alexander got way east. He came to the end of the Persian empire and went further. He went into India and he went into what is now Afghanistan, and matter of fact, that's how far he got. I don't know if he could hold that territory, but he was pretty good at taking it. And in fact, he established a city. He did a lot of cities. Alexandria in Egypt wasn't the only Alexandria, you know, there were 20 of those scattered around his empire that he built. As you said, he was a real builder. One of the cities he's built was called Kandakar. And I wondered if any really, could you be a descendant of Alexandria and Zendah? They always misplaced the name of Kandakar as Kandah. That always happens, even I do that, but Kandah had enough Afghanistan. That's right. The series about Alexander. How real is that? It's a documentary, but it's also a docutrama and you bounce back between a half a dozen historians who are studying antiquity and they can tell us what it really means, but then we see it played out on the screen. What did you think of that technique? Was that effective? Was it accurate? How did it affect you? Did that point when they're talking of the historians and the archeologists pitching in with every scene or they're talking of the records that are there, it gives the authenticity to the entire episode, the serial and a series. And when you see Alexander, this entire series is focused on the individuality and every part brings out his character step by step.  He just knows that he can do this. There is a willpower rather than arrogance. He has never said, I will be able to do it. There's a aim in him. He is very single-handedly focused. He wants to kill Darius and show him that pair to pair to pair, they could defeat each other. He doesn't want somebody to assassinate. He could have easily sent his soldiers behind Darius, but he goes behind Darius. He wants to have a confrontation and he regrets that he could not have a confrontation and defeat him. So you see, each part of the series builds on his character and that one scene where, you know, the Gordian knot, which is the knot built by the king of Gordian, whoever. When Alexander comes, instead of untying it, he knocks it off with one sword, a swish. So that kind of, you know, regal, at his, regal, what do you call it? Creativity. Creativity. In his mind, in his mind, it is never that can, will I be able to do it? It's mine and I did it. It's that kind of rawness in Alexander that is brought up in the series. There is no fancy, there is no set. It's just the man that they have shown in the series that is so appealing. And you see the king.  And he takes responsibility for himself. He leads in warfare. He leads in personal relations. He leads in his friends, are his, because when a person becomes king, he may forget his friends. But you see him having loyalty also in every stage. And loyalty towards his, hmm. He's playing for history. I don't know if you know, but Alexander always had his historian with him writing down, writing down, what happened? Writing down about the Gordian knot, which is the stuff of which legend are made. And those legends are really popular with anyone who hears them. It's a great story, you know? And the historians wrote down the battles, the locations, the generals. So when you go and look this part up, when you look up Alexander, you find that we have, we, the world has a huge amount of data about what he did, what he conquered, how he did it, who he can sort it with. I mean, it's amazing how much information is available and how many communities and cultures used his name. You know, he is everywhere. The word, you know, Alexander is just filters through our whole global society. And that's because he had his historians with him and he understood he was playing for the, for history and he was playing for the world and making himself a legend all the way through all this in six years, I would call that truly amazing. Really, I mean, it's really, there's a divinity in his kingship. Nobody could have done this other than Alexander. And you become a fan of his kingship because the kind of, you know, regality in him, Jay, there is no throne, there is no castle when he sets out. What do you see when he is on his horse? He looks like a king. So that is brought out very well in this series. And imagine the real Alexander. There were no trains, there were no drones, there were no, there was nothing to account for any surety in life. He threw himself to the elements. He walks through the desert. He doesn't know the distance he's traveling. He was coming towards India because he knew he thought of yogis to have immortality. But this man, through his deeds, through his warfare, through his conquest, through his assimilation and mark that he had a Hellenistic Western society on the entire world. Just imagine if Alexander would not have been there. The Persian influence on the world would have been much, much more than what we have. The modern Hellenistic Western society, international system has a large influence of what Alexander did at that time to conquer the existing map, Jay. Otherwise we would have a Persian map. That would have been difficult. Well, when you look at this series and when you read up on Alexander and other Hellenistic characters, you find that the names they had are still around. People named their children. The influence was just huge. Their influence was huge on Rome. And in turn, Rome's influence was huge and is huge today. But you know what? The most interesting thing about this, and I'm sure you were thinking about it when you watched the series, is about power, about the transfer of power, about the succession of power, about the connection between power and military and power and propaganda and power and marriage and children, all that. They didn't, you're right. They didn't have any money technology. And they spent all their time talking about power. And I would say, and see if you agree with me, that although power, we say, corrupts, and absolute power often corrupts, absolutely. I don't think it corrupted him. He was on a mission. He was on a mission. But what can we learn from him? This is really an important discussion. What can we learn from him about power in the human condition? Jay, power, hungry, is one of the greed and wants of man. And the more power that you have, the more that you want. But like you said, Alexander never wanted more power. He went always on the next mission. Next mission. So it was never, I have done enough and I can, he could have easily sat as the king of Persia, Macedonia, and sat in his castle. And he didn't need to go back towards India. I mean, that kind of raw power corrupts. But this man had, you know, ambition, which was always overpowering his power. And the propaganda that he used to put forth was never of a king, a tyrant. There was, people didn't be with him for fear. His troops didn't support him out of fear. They were like, his mission is our mission. And they used to follow. When they saw him go on spiritual journeys, Jay, that spiritual journey, it clicks a nerve with you when you're watching the series because you see that this man is after all human and he is bowing down to the divinity. And he seeks his power through divinity. And he thinks he has, he visualizes himself brilliantly as a very powerful entity. So that's why when he sees the Persian army in front of him, he doesn't gauge how powerful the Persian army is. In his viewpoint, he's the ultimate power. And that's why he can tear across any, the visualization of power within you, Jay. I think he was the best form of meditation on warfare.  This man had the power to bring himself together on the field in such a way, he thought of himself as over-empowering the entire army. So that visualization, Jay, is just a sign of, that's why he's immortal in his name because he has done the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the unattainable and the non-implementation of plans that a person has, he has done on the field. On paper, we would never have thought that this would have, he would have defeated, a Macedon prince would have defeated the Persian empire. Never. He understood humanity. It wasn't just propaganda and it wasn't just talking to his troops. It was appreciating the whole battlefield, appreciating what Darius's troops were thinking, appreciating what the Egyptian people were thinking. So he could relate to Lord Humber. He had an intuition, I would say, about what the crowd was thinking and needed from him and that's how he elevated himself, whatever the condition was. It's interesting when we consider this, but let me go a step forward. So we're talking about power and in this country we've had 200 years of democracy and the democracy is fragile. There are many people that think it's not gonna last that much longer and when you strip off the democracy and the rule of law that we got from Britain, essentially, and you look at the people who are in charge or want to be in charge and I guess Trump is a good example of this, it's not about the rule of law. It's not about democracy. It's not about written instruments of collective behavior. It's about power. And I think that what we learned from Alexander and from the series, it's still in play. It's about people who want power and how do they get it? Do you agree? Yes, it's so relevant in today's world, isn't it? Power, everybody seeks power. Everybody, and every leader has to, that I don't know the visualization that they have that they can be leaders of these people. You know there's a philosopher known as Frederick Nish who talks about the lamb, the lion and the child. So the lamb is the gentle public.  Alexander had reached that stage of being a child.  And in today's world, I don't think we go across the level of the lamb. The general society, the general term that happens, people go for it. Nobody is visualizing out of the box. Nobody is thinking of what we can seek to give to the community, to the society, to the world. It's just power, but liberty is at the cost of respecting the liberty of the others. Same way, power is attained by respecting the limits of the power that the other adversary holds. If you want to conquer him, there will be a friction. But when you come into the zone and you try to force yourself like it's happening in all the conflicts that we are seeing, we discuss every day, it becomes a wrong thing, unethical. And ethics is what is missing now, but it was present in the Hellenistic time, 327. Yeah, I agree, I totally agree. So I have a last question for you, very provocative question for you, Root Money. So if Alexander was alive today, what kind of a president would he make? And should he run? I think you and I would go to that country, immigrate to that country if Alexander was president there. But he had ethics and he ruled with logic. We have to not forget that he had Aristotle as his teacher. So we have the Greek philosopher who we still study in political thought. When we study geopolitics and all, he is a big foundation for all our thinking and he was his thinker. So imagine the administration that he has, the spirituality that he has, the respect for the other religion. And when he lay himself kneeled down in front of this Egyptian civilization, he could have conquered and hurt, but when you respect something as good as a civilization, it shows your inner goodness, Jay. And I think this president would have stopped all the warfare that we're having right now. If they didn't listen, he would have gone for the sword. The guardian nod, he would need right now. Just slash it and stop it because we're having such unethical propaganda and unethical wars here that you feel like you need some hero like this. He's not a hero. Okay, okay. I'm gonna vote for him. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a right in vote. No, imagine- Alexander the Great. The making of a God. Rupani Kandekar joining me in the movies you can learn from and we have learned a lot from this discussion about Alexander, the making of a God, Netflix. Thank you so much Rupani. Thank you for having me, Jay. Thank you so much. Aloha. Aloha.