Good evening and welcome to the British Library. I'm B Roelat of the cultural events team and I'm very excited to introduce a transatlantic Conversation with a certain gleam of wickedness. We have the legendary Joyce Carol Oates And she's in conversation with Kirsty Logan. Kirsty is joining us from beautiful Glasgow Her latest book is a horror collection Things we say in the dark and this follows on from lots of award-winning other books including the gloaming the Gracekeepers a portable shelter and the rental heart and other fairy tales Finally Kirsty is on record as saying basically my life is all books all the time Quite right to and you can of course buy tonight's books here on the platform as well as submit your questions and Feedback we love to hear from you Meanwhile, I'm handing you over to tonight's chair, Kirsty Hello, and welcome to this British Library event I'm Kirsty Logan, and it is my great pleasure to welcome Joyce Carol Oates this evening Joyce Carol Oates has won many many prizes including the National Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship She's the author of over 70 books including novels short stories poetry plays and nonfiction and Most recently she has published a collection of novellas called Cardiff by the Sea which will be discussing this evening The way the event is going to work this evening is we will discuss each of the four novellas Individually and then there'll be time at the end for audience questions, and you can ask your questions just below the live feed So please do join me in welcoming the wonderful Joyce Carol Oates Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. I'm very very happy to be speaking to you So Joyce, I believe you're going to introduce us to the first novella in the book with a reading Yes, I said a few words about the the book there are several novellas and That they all deal with young women in one case the girl is about 12 years old But mostly they're a young woman in the 20s Who are confronted by something totally unexpected that has to do with Working out their own destiny the first novella is called Cardiff by the Sea And when I was rereading it just this morning I was so struck by how so much of it seems relevant to the pandemic and the Isolation and quarantine that some of us have been living through I mean, I personally have been living all alone in my house four miles outside Princeton and in a wooded area and there's a creek in the lake and I'm all alone, you know and through the winter with the wind howling It sort of sounds like a gothic situation When I wrote the novella, I would think I was actually in Berkeley in California wherever sunny But our lives are so unpredictable. We wind up in places Later that are relevant to what we have written so it's as if the world catches up with us so as I said the first of The novellas is called Cardiff by the Sea and the situation is this young woman who does live alone She's an art historian and her her telephone rings She's all alone. She is not married. She's an adapted shot she was an adapted child and she Wonders if she should answer the phone. She sees the caller ID does not recognize it and she's sort of Contemplating does she want to answer the phone or not? So I'll just read this these passages phone rings unexpectedly Not her cell phone which Claire would probably have answered without a second thought but the other phone the landline which rarely rings Just seconds in which to decide should she lift the receiver Seeing that the caller ID is not one she recognizes and calculating. It's likely just to be a robot call Yet this rain last April morning out of curiosity or loneliness or heedlessness She lifts the receiver. Yes Hello What are the shocks of Clara's life for it seems that a stranger has called her Introducing himself as an attorney with a law firm in Cardiff, Maine Informing her that she's the beneficiary of an individual of whom. She has never heard Maude Donegal of Cardiff, Maine your grandmother Excuse me who? Maude Donegal your father's mother she passed away at the age of 87 Well, she's not sure what she's hearing thinking it must be a prank her first instinct is to laugh But I don't have a grandmother that name. I don't I don't know anyone with that name Did you say Douglas Donegal a Pause and the voice at the other end of the line continues disembodied and matter of fact as a voice in a dream But Donegal is your birth name Didn't you know? So that's the beginning of this novella a Young woman who feels that she does know herself. She knows her adopted parents and she's quite content with living in Minneapolis, Minnesota Guess his phone call and she learns that her Her birth the grandmother has just died and left her bequest. So that's the beginning of an adventure It is and it's such a classic Beginning to a story, you know, this mysterious phone call comes out of nowhere how's the person going to react and I would love to talk about expectations and subverting expectations because you know, you mentioned the Gothic and It does hit so many of the Gothic tropes, you know, we have the family mystery. We have this spooky old house We have the young woman who's out of her depth and she's trying to uncover this mystery Also, I won't go too much into details, but I love the part where she's not really sure if she's being poisoned or not So you don't really know what's real and what's not real, but at the same time Claire the protagonist She's very active, you know, we might think of the Gothic heroine as being Perhaps a bit helpless or a kind of fainting flower and she's not like that at all. She's very Active. So how did how did you approach that telling this classic tale but still keeping it fresh and original? We know we used words like like Gothic adjectives like Gothic is a kind of shorthand but I'm not sure if it's always helpful because The last year for many of us many of us have been alone and when you're in solitude you do much more intensive thinking I believe than when we're out in the world because the environment this room in which I am right now The environment is so much more finite and stable Ordinarily we're out in our our neurological apparatus is taking in all sorts of new sites. We're driving our car I would take the train in New York City. I've been teaching at NYU all the the actions of our being in the world Came to a halt for for many of us in the United States in quarantine And it's so unnatural that I think other parts of our imagination start coming alive So I'm not so sure if Gothic is even the word. It's more like a realistic Apprehension like to be realistically and reasonably afraid of the virus is Something that would keep a person alive, you know, it's a survival instinct. It's not really a gothic instinct to To feel that one one's life is in peril. It's almost just a realistic Apprehension of the world now, so I thought that was very interesting to revisit something I've been maybe a year ago or more maybe about two years ago and See how now what might have been considered a surreal experience Now it feels much more realistic when the telephone rings in a quiet empty house and you're making your way toward the telephone and By the way, I rarely get telephone calls from friends and mostly solicitations All my friends write to me by email or text message. So when the phone rings in this house, I Usually have to walk a distance to get it and I'm thinking should I pick that up? Who would that be and that's the Kind of existentially dramatic beginning of this novella I'd love to pick up on what you're saying about this this idea of an existential drama And also, of course, you know, you mentioned the pandemic and how it's affecting us all and I can't tell you how much I Identify with what you were saying. I felt lately. Um, very hungry, but it's almost like my eyes are hungry. I Get so starved of new Things to look at, you know, um, yeah, I just feel like I have hungry Vision in some way, but I wondered how you thought You know, not that you can see the future, but how you think perhaps this time might affect writers Do you think there will be a great forgetting and we will we all just want to never think or write about it again? Or do you think writers will talk about it in their work? Well, Kirstie that is such a good question. It's really an excellent question. I think very provocative and proven now from what I know After the 1918 flu Epidemic there was something like a great forgetting and There were there were very few writers who wrote about it. Catherine Anne Porter has a novella called pale horse pal rider and That has much to do with it with the influenza epidemic But Catherine Anne Porter is a wonderful writer who now I think is little known Even in the United States, but she lived through the pandemic of that time And she almost died and she wrote a beautiful novella about it But almost nobody else wrote about it. And I think a few years later people just were You know, they were not talking about it. The roaring 20s came along in America and everybody was You know dancing and celebrating and spending money and and sort of maybe reacting against all that death Maybe that will Maybe that will happen again or maybe we are in the brink of a world in which there will be one virus replacing another and that will be kind of Systematic and overlapping perils that we have to deal with as a consequence of global warming As I understand it, maybe microorganisms don't They don't get frozen as much when when the soil doesn't freeze to a certain depth They don't die off or they're not, you know, they're not frozen in the winter. So there's more teeming life viruses and other sorts of Perils for for homo sapiens Which was not the case before so we may be moving into a new era. I think we're all like explorers Some of us are I think a imaginatively stirred To write maybe a little more surreal work But other people some other people feel stymied In silence they feel depressed or they they don't know where who their readers are anymore Now because I live in the united states, I've also come through four years of exceedingly toxic political climate with with a good deal of all Of division and anxiety So Many americans actually are like battered spouses, you know and hit sort of hit on the head um In a political and cultural sense And that's been four years of the trump administration now. That's over with so I think we'll kind of been a A honeymoon period now. We were sort of giddy with relief But the long-term effects of that maybe will come back Absolutely, and if you don't mind me asking How have have you found this current situation whether it's politically or or to do with the pandemic has it affected Your work, you know, it's often said that you're incredibly prolific So the work that you've been producing lately. Do you feel it's changed? Well, like most novelists I've been I've worked on something for a long time So I was working on a novel at the time of the pandemic and I just continued with that It may be suffused with a sense of peril and a sort of exaggerated caution I'm not sure But we also live through the same sort of thing by we I mean writers in the new york city vicinity after 9 11 So though the immediate after effect of 9 11 for people in the vicinity of new york city, which is where I am was um numb numbness and shock and inability to work Our students were in a state of Catatonia, I mean People actually didn't know what to say to one another it seemed so Stunning I was not in new york city, but of course I know many people who were and I'm only an hour away from new york city So that was overwhelming also Whereas the virus and the pandemic have been Much more or a phenomenon of duration It started for me in march on march 11th 2020 That was the beginning of the lockdown in princeton in new jersey We were told to go to our houses and stay in our houses That there was this contagion we could spread it to one another and there was immediately such a sense of A wonderment and anxiety So those early days the early weeks of 2020 lockdown We're very different from the way we are now Because I took notes on it and I wrote about it actually for the tls. I wrote a little piece for the tls And so that those early weeks are we're different We were all much more insomniac And anxious sort of physically anxious many people could not sit still We'll get up and walk around and then sit down again and go into another room Or look out the window You know or write emails to our friends and we stopped seeing anybody we stopped teaching I I didn't my class just stopped and then I was teaching by zoom So that was I think psychologically very fraught And I don't have anything in In the novella specifically about that But each of my characters finds herself in in these existential situations where it's like the walls are closing in And so it's almost as if I was anticipating something like that when I was writing these In the last last novella in the collection called the surviving child a woman is actually in A house that she sort of thinks is haunted I mean the reader thinks she's probably psychologically vulnerable and imagining things And that's how we are many of us got to feel that way about our own houses Well in that case, yeah, let's mix it up a little bit. Um, let's move on to talking about the surviving child Which as you say is the last we will speak of course about all all the developers in the book But yeah, let's speak about the surviving child actually that was my favorite Of the novellas. I think they're all wonderful, but that was certainly my favorite. So Joyce, would you be able to just introduce that to us and perhaps read? Yes, thank you of the surviving child This the surviving child is One of my very favorite stories of my own also And I wouldn't I would not want to say that it is based on soviet play out that really it is not based on the biographical or the historical soviet play out but What what excited me and sort of thrilled and and terrified me as a theme I remember years ago hearing that the the Mistress of Ted Hughes had Committed suicide in the way that soviet play out And literally in the same way and she had also taken her her child or maybe a maybe an infant with her so The uh First soviet play out committed suicide, but she did not take any children with her She was quite solicitous that her children were protected She was living in london during a cold spell and she put turned on the gas oven Which I think at that time in English society was a way that women are sometimes committed suicide because it was so easy and domestic And so sylvia path did that Ted Hughes had had left her and was living with a woman Whose last name is we sell us asia We sell I may not be pronouncing the name correctly He felt tremendous guilt For having abandoned his wife and he was with this other woman, but the other woman Also felt tremendous guilt because sylvia path had committed suicide and then she herself did commit suicide a couple of years later And I thought about that as we all did. I think it's a sort of feminist mythology or something like a fairy tale This curse like the curse on the second wife or a curse on Ted Hughes And so my my novella as I say it's not really about her It's about a young woman who marries a man Who had been married to a poet who had committed suicide?  She wants to be his stepmother She wants to win up his trust And the novella is really about the second wife Who comes into this world this house a beautiful house In on the seashore In in the United States a bit of sort of a beautiful old house But there's an attic room where the woman poet had written her work And then the garage where she committed suicide. So the woman's living in a house that in a sense is haunted I think if any of us moved into her house where somebody had committed suicide We would feel haunted In some way I mean, maybe not literally in a ghostly way, but in a psychological way So, I mean, I'll just read the little paragraph here the surviving child he's called not to his face, of course the younger Other younger child died with the mother three years before Murder suicide it had been More precisely philipicide suicide The first glimpse she has of the surviving child is shocking to her a beautiful face pale and lightning freckled darkly luminous eyes a prematurely adult manner solemn sorrowful wary and watchful As sharp as a sliver of glass piercing her heart comes the thought I will love him. I will save him. I am the one So the novella is really about her mission to save the boy And as I was reading it, it does sound a little bit like the The idea of the governess and and james is the turn of the screw, you know, I'm going to save these children But I hadn't thought of it at the time I wrote this Absolutely. Yeah, there's the plaque illusion the Henry james illusion and then of course The rebecca illusion as well because she's the The second wife and she's very much overshadowed by by the first wife And what struck me about this one was I think all the novellas are hauntings in a way They're they're all about Women and girls who are haunted somehow and I but I feel this is the most Haunted house story, you know, the protagonist as you said is haunted by by many things by the first wife by this child Who is this sort of beautiful wraith who he sort of never is quite where you think he is and you look around and he's in a different place And but she's also very much haunted by the house and I wanted about your thoughts about haunted houses Whether you think they're a particularly female or even feminist type of haunting Well, again, this is an extremely interesting question. The house is some sort of a trope. I think just generally speaking For maybe the the psyche or it could be the female body And when we're when we're dream many of us dream about houses, I think I mean, I don't know about you but I often dream I'm going to some house Which is somehow familiar like my childhood house, but Unfamiliar like it isn't really my childhood house I seem to be going Through some rooms or in some along some corridor or something It's emblematic of our search For our own inner being I think And the idea of the being a castle As in the old traditional Gothic That may have something to do with there being an exalted ruling class like fate We we don't have that same sort of inherited Omnist feeling in america is much more egalitarian society so We could have the gothic experience With with a different kind of architecture For many people I mean, I'm just guessing but for say steven King for instance The haunted house would just be somebody's childhood house. It could be suburban It could be an ordinary house And when I think of the haunted house Of my life, it was my the old farmhouse where I lived With my parents and brother and my grandparents. We lived in a Um extended family it's called today, but that but many people live with their grandparents or I mean, it wasn't a time when I was first when I was born It was more of a time when I think families lived together Multi generations rather than just a nuclear family So I might think of that old farmhouse And if I fall asleep and have a Disturbing dream, I'm probably back in my old room And this is decades ago You know, but it is but it's not a gothic house that we'd be frightening if you looked at it You know in a photograph it just looks like a fairly ordinary house. It was built in 1888 I always remember that that was on the The foundation of the house 1888 always Stayed with me as such a long ago Time that just seemed like it could be medieval Yes, it's funny. That isn't how everybody has house dreams I always have ones where I find an extra room in my house. I don't really know what that means I do too. I have that all the time And I found out in conversation somebody else has the same dream There's some part of the house that you haven't even known was there And I I have this kind of repetitive dream where It's the it's the same sort of situation and I know where that Room is like it's a it's in a basement. I think I'm going to go and check out that That room but but there's never any resolution like I never find out Anything And then I'll just have the dream again Maybe yeah, I'm sure there's some kind of deep symbolic meaning of what What the room represents or means but I'm very aware that I don't want to miss either the other two novellas Because I would love to hear more about them. So do you want to choose? I'm happy I can choose which one for you to introduce to us or you can tell me you like And let's go for the second one. Let's go from meow down and you can then introduce and help me out down Well, which is great when you were talking about Peril and being trapped. I think that leads us perfectly Well, this is fancy name for a very special cat And I'm so sorry that my special cat Who is the model for this This gothic kitty in that she's not in the room. I do have another cat on the floor here. I have two cats But the meow dow is a feral cat It was in the story A family breaks up A father leaves His wife He will become involved and remarried with a much younger woman But the but the girl who is third she's 12 She doesn't know why her father has left home And she has two younger brothers and None of them understands. I don't think anyone ever understands why a father leaves the family And so the little girl is very Very hurt She's very wounded She thinks of it as like a a bat flying at her face as the image When when her Excuse me. Here's my kitty So we're talking about you kitty. This is Zanchi And we're talking about this very big feral cat Who is in the night he she's in the story And I hate I'm sorry to say that she turns into a vicious murderer I was going to say you confessing something about your cat's secret life now Moving away too much of the story But the young girl whose father has left her Becomes very vulnerable to boys at school. There's just she's getting to be 12 years old or 13 and She's self-conscious about her body and she is a shy girl And the boys are just very rude And then her mother starts going out with a with a man who also seems Kind of kind of threatening to her So this is all I think some it's a very realistic experience for girls about 12 or 13 Almost overnight they attract the unwanted attention of older men You'd say the walking alone along the sidewalk and You suddenly see people looking at you who didn't look at you like a year before And it's just very unnerving At the same time there's a feral colony of feral cats Like right next door to where this girl lives I live in a wooded area and there were feral cats around here And I used to feed some feral cats on my porch just two just two of them So I'm very sympathetic with animals that are homeless And I give I mean I participate and you know sort of taking care of them some some Rescue shelters in the area. So it's a subject that I that I care about personally And in the novella the the feral colony Is uh Is devastated Somebody calls animal control and they just get rid of them and probably all the cats are just Euthanized except one There's a kitten And she's a very fluffy beautiful Cat who grows very quickly becomes a big cat And and this is like the spirit Altar eagle of the girl This cat she she can coddle and sleep and you know and love and embrace this cat She has lost her father and she's she's anxious about The future in her own life So the cat becomes like a spirit consort And I I don't want to give away too much of the novella But I think it does have a happy end A positive resolved ending a good a good ending I I try to end my All my writing on a plausible note that is positive I mean, I can't guarantee a happy ending because that's not That's not realistic But I can try to work out a way that There's a certain integrity remaining and somebody has come through an experience So the girl is probably 13 years old by the end of the novella And she has asserted herself rather than being a victim She's she's uh, she sort of lashed out against her adversaries Because of the cat the cat gives her strength This cat has sort of run away. So I'm sorry I'm glad that we got to see the cat anyway What I found really fascinating about the the use of of the cat in this story Is the cat is domestic but also a predator and again without giving too much away Also in this novella and actually in the others the the one that we Think perhaps is the victim or the one who's going to be victimized actually ends up having a surprising Strength and I wondered if that was a subject that you had consciously decided to explore in the book Yes, that's a theme that's very that's very uh important to me The the empowerment of girls and women I think partly we can take that empowerment As as a sort of exemplary way of responding That rather than seeing ourselves as victims We see ourselves as people to whom something has happened that's unjust And we want justice And I don't think the word victim Needs even to be in the vocabulary Once you think of yourself as a victim Then that seems like being like an invalid, you know, and people feel sorry for you or It doesn't seem healthy to me. I would rather think of some injustice And you simply want justice and that's very logical That's sensible that that's legal in a way. There's a kind of moral legality If you have been harmed you want justice. So the girls and the women In my writing very often are struggling I wrote a novel called my life as a rat recently And that did come out also in In the in the uk And and this is a girl who has to extricate herself from her own family Because they are very stifling and they and there's some problem with the family She has to detach herself from her family But it's at great emotional cost But she does She's probably about 21 Or 20 at the end of the novel. She's managed to to make that break I think that the the great Torment it's really emotionally a torment for many women and girls Is to assert themselves as individuals If somebody who loves them Wants them to be different In other words, you may have to make a break with someone who doesn't accept you Even though you love them so much. It could be your own family Like you you love them so much But it will break you To conform to their idea of you And I I find that a very heart-rending subject Hmm, absolutely. Yeah, I love this idea of yeah, not not a victim but something Someone who something's happened to you and seeking Justice and I I think those ideas Um bring us really nicely onto the the last novella in the book this sense of Family and not quite being who other people want you to be So the last novella is phantom wise 1972. So would you be able to introduce that to us, please Joyce? Yes, well phantom wise Makes illusions to Alice in Wonderland And some of you probably you might remember this poem by by Lewis Carroll, he talks about Alice of course Alice in Wonderland Alice Was a real girl and Lewis Carroll Was was writing about her. He was obviously Infatuated with her as an emblem of innocence Alice Lydell. She's we we can also sort of Envision what she looks like because her picture is very very uh, very well known and my my young woman's name alis al y c e and she is An undergraduate student. She has left home also And she becomes involved with one of her professors And then she later she's rejected by him And then she becomes involved in a very Daughterly way with an older professor.  It's more like Father daughter or like Lewis Carroll with alis Lydell and this Novella begins with um, it's really a flash forward When we read it, we're not sure if it's flashback Or present tense, but it's actually fast forward And it's about this long. It's very short italicized Out of the steep snowy ravine Clutching at rocks her hands bloodied And all the while snow falling temperature dropping to zero degrees Fahrenheit How still the soft falling snow or mid racks the yearning the temptation to lie down and sleep He'd wanted her to die He wanted to kill her with his hands, but she has escaped him. He will not follow her She vows. He will not find her ever again So this is the young woman and she's being followed by somebody I won't say who it is, but it is it's one of the people whom I just mentioned But somebody who wants to kill her But she seems to be escaping from him sort of going through the snow Yeah, I was hoping you weren't going to give away the ending there because my heart was in my mouth the whole time that I was reading those Final pages. Yeah, it was um incredibly tense and Unbeautifully written. Um, yeah, we're going to chat a little bit about phantomize 1972 and just a reminder to Everyone that if you have questions for joists, you can put them in the box just below the live feed And they'll come through and I will put those questions to joists as well so first of all, I would love to um to dig into this a little bit because um as we were saying All the stories are hauntings in some way, but what I absolutely loved in this one is that um I don't think it's a spoiler to say because it's revealed right early on that um Alice the protagonist is pregnant and she's unexpectedly pregnant She doesn't particularly want to be pregnant And I'm just going to quote from from this novella Haunting to her now the dark menstrual blood that refused to appear like a shadow that when you glance up startled has vanished Has not been there at all And I just absolutely loved that. I've never seen that before, you know haunted by Your own period or the lack of period that you want to come. I just thought that was so Fascinating and it made me wonder. Do you think Are we all haunted by something? Is every person in this world haunted by something? well in this particular case, it's It's 1972 So in united states abortions were really not Very um passable. They were illegal Now, of course, women and girls did have abortions Before 1972 but in the in the later 1970s there were abortion clinics. It was much more a possibility You know, it would still be traumatic And it was nothing that was treated lightly So at the time of this like 1972 it almost feels like a death sentence, you know If you did actually have an abortion It might be like a slaughter. It could be, you know, the doctor wouldn't even be a real doctor. Who knows Some parts of the united states are reverting back to that the state of Missouri just Just I mean, I think yesterday Passed laws that are banned abortion in the whole state Now that doesn't mean that women and girls are not going to get abortions. They will But they won't be legal and they won't be very dangerous. So they have to leave So this I deliberately set the novella at that time when To be pregnant as an undergraduate And it was sort of an accidental thing that happened.  I hate to use it, but She was forced to endure a sexual experience that she didn't really She didn't really want but she didn't want to Cause any any trouble either. I mean, she liked the man. She she did like him She might have felt she was falling in love with him But what happened was to her almost like an accident You know, it wasn't exactly a violent rape, but it was not really consensual Anyway, she is pregnant. So that's such a physical and existentially real situation And but she's an undergraduate. It's 1972 and Part of the story is When we do find someone who loves us That person would love us if we were pregnant.  And so there is that possibility of an of a Almost like a selfless love that we can aspire to and hope for In contrast to this more brutal Narrow minded almost sadistic love Or sexual desire that this other man felt for her I hope that hasn't sounded confusing But it's like there are two men two two possibilities Of love with a man one is this brutal sort of self-serving love of one man, but then the other man It's more like a genuine A genuine love of her and respect for her So he would be very happy If she had a baby and but the other one wants an abortion Absolutely, yeah I was wondering as well In terms of of haunting or even maybe feeling Prayed on or followed by something. I'm even thinking about feral cats following somebody around. Do you think writers in particular feel Haunted or do you think writers feel there are certain subjects Just because I I saw a lot of um overlaps and it was almost like the novellas were in conversation and Also overlaps with your other books and it was like all your books are in conversation with one another and I wondered if there are certain Things that you're haunted by or things that follow you around maybe like feral cats Well, all of us work out of our memory and whether we're writers or our creative artists of any kind Or just normal human beings we think a lot about the past If there's something unresolved and mysterious in our past we tend to think a lot about it So writers and poets Especially a certain kind of lyric poet Will write about the past Sometimes it's commemorative like Much of irish poetry is commemorative about ireland sort of looking back at 19th century and early 20th century ireland in a nostalgic and romantic way Much of american literature is looking back at an an earlier time before in so much industry People think that america took a sharp turn In a tragic direction around about 1963 when john kennedy was assassinating I think looking at looking at a long distance We see an act so so traumatic culturally when President who is beloved and sort of young and handsome. He was assassinated sort of in plain view It's like a fantastically Horrific act of Something unnatural Like a ritual like a tragic ritual in in plain air It was thought that sort of america Had a nervous breakdown And the 1960s are fraught with assassinations I've written about some of these situations. Of course the assassination of martin luther king is melcom x Robert kennedy And other there are many assassination attempts that didn't actually take take place But everything just sort of fell apart in a way in the 1960s 1970s brought the end of the vietnam war But very belatedly it was just when going on and on and the generations became very Very angry at one another and dissociated And those divisions between like pro vietnam war people and anti They're still with us today in like the pro trump people and anti trump people The divisions in america between what we call red states and blue states and people who believe in Freedom of choice for women of abortion And those who are against abortion and outlaw it Those divisions in the united states really came started to become very clear in the 1960s And extremely clear in the last five six years in this country We're hoping that there might be some A little more unity now. So a lot of my writing takes place during during that time There's the division between a one way of life and another way of life I tend to write about young women and girls who are more Of an of an educated or literary Class not necessarily wealthy But just people who care about books People who love who love poetry or love music or art people who are more traditional in that sense And they may have some relationship with traditional religion But they're not they're not evangelicals. It's more like a more of a spiritual religion My own feeling is that religion can be very Positive for people if it doesn't if it's not punitive I think the unfortunate element of religion is that it's so much of it is punitive wanting to punish And this doesn't seem to me inevitable that religion has to have that punishing side to it. But that That really happens historically Absolutely, it's interesting that you mentioned about, you know, the red or the blue states or the pro or anti various things and it has always seemed to me as as an outsider Looking at the u.s. There's a lot of very binary Thinking, you know, you have to be this or that and there's really not much in the middle and I've often wondered Whether that comes from it being essentially a two-party political system or whether the two-party political system comes from America being A sort of binary thinking place. I don't know what the answer is there, but what do you think? Well, historically, there were there were more political parties in the beginning In a very in a very beginning, you know in the 19th and the 1770s in a very beginning there was the pro english Loyalist americans and then those who became the rebels I mean, eventually they became They became the the citizens of the united states, you know But in the very beginning you had people who Maybe within one family were pro king george Or anti the king or pro england and or anti england So it was a matter of it was taking sides, but I think sometimes within one family And many ordinary people didn't have a great deal of thought about it, you know, they think You know farmers or peasants living out in the country. I don't think they cared as much as the the leaders of the colonies of people like thomas jefferson and of course, george washington and tom pain and other leaders were were intellectuals and thomas jefferson's Wrote the declaration of independence and and a number of men signed it, but he mainly wrote it and it's it's such It's like a legal document. He's setting forth these terms of why it is necessary To break away from england because of the tyranny And there had been many concessions made to england the colonists were naturally uh, they were naturally Patriotic for england they themselves were born in england, you know So it becomes a matter of having been Mistreated and jefferson gives all these reasons. I think they're like, I don't know how many there could be 50 You know 50 reasons that he gives and then the boston massacre british soldiers firing on unarmed colonists sort of pushes us over that So once you get beyond that, I think There's much more multiplicity of political factions in the united states. We're in the beginning that we're just two sides Then later on it's it's more confusing in the north. You had the evolutionist movement During the civil war, but but but that was not unified. There were many people in the north Who didn't care whether there were slaves? They weren't fighting. They didn't they didn't really care There were riots in the north At the time of the civil war a men who did not want to fight they didn't care If the south seceded they had no interest. They really didn't care And and so the abolitionist movement we tend to think was very powerful, but it wasn't really it was a gathered momentum with the civil war and Has a kind of romantic Tone to it. I think now but at the time neighbors were divided against one another So it's kind of a long answer to your question about binary So I think that what the united states is and that same thing is true of england and other countries But we are so vast the continent so wide that it's more of a problem. We are a nation of regions There's a new england and there's this north northwestern. There's a southwestern. There's a south There's a midwest there's the mid south And all all these parts of the united states are pretty different the especially in the past new england was quite distinctive And all these regions are not not unified really same as true in canada where you have The provinces are sort of stretched east to west along the border They are much more Relationship with the united states south of the border than they do with with one another And then we are also a nation where urban development Very density of population in places like chicago and san francisco and Los angeles and new york city and Atlanta and dalas and houston the cities are Where the universities are? Cambridge mass and boston you have universities and colleges in a Diverse population of asian americans indian americans Every kind of every kind of ethnic identity in these population density areas But then you have rural rural america Which is sparsely populated states like north and south dakota Almost nobody lives there except in the cities And so you have a rural constituency that that doesn't really feel comfortable with diversity Some of these people far out in the country They have never met a jew They've never met a chinese person. They've never met an indian american or pakistani They've never met any of these people But they they think that they hate them because they've been watching fox news. No So politically it's a matter of conservative people living remotely from the urban areas where You will find extremely developed technology Young people studying computer science who are just who are brilliant Some of them are my students studying molecular biology and computer science and their writers Those are such brilliant young people But they have very little really to do with with elderly people living in northern montana who are Very suspicious of anything that's not American and there is kind of white supremacy And that's the binary there is between the old idea of a white christian nation and a completely new Youth oriented educated diverse population America so that that's what we have now The trump people were or are the white supremacists Who have a lot of strength really and then the the biden people are just this big group of All kinds of people including many many women women of color. Oh, you know That's the binary between those two Absolutely. I feel like we've opened up this huge kind of worms and I would love to just talk to you about this all day But I'm very aware we've got some excellent audience questions So I'm going to come to them and get through as many as I can Um, I thought this was a great question to start with because I noticed that Netflix is going to be airing at an adaptation of your book Blonde quite soon and amy neal asks What are your thoughts on the cinematic adaptations of your work? I can talk about any number of my my um works that we're adapting But Blonde hasn't has not come out yet. I'm not sure when it's coming out sometime in 2021 I think Andrew Dominic who's a very gifted and sort of idiosyncratic and special director Wrote the screenplay he adapted it from my novel Blonde And he wanted to make a movie That Is by a man of course since he's a man, but he wanted to make it a woman's movie from the perspective Of a woman who happens to be Marilyn Monroe And That sounded so interesting to me I've seen it And I found it very very Very disturbing It's it's quite brilliant It's not exactly It's not really the Marilyn Monroe that people Think they know and my novel wasn't really about her either But when I I told Andrew who sent it to me so I could see it. I saw the rough cut And as I told him, you know, I couldn't actually see it all the way through I found it so upsetting I had to stop watching it And kind of come back a couple hours later and then watch it again That I watched it all all the way through in the continuum And I said, you know, Andrew it almost seems to have the feel And the music confirms that of a horror Horror film He said yes, I That's what I was trying for and other words the experience of being a woman in Marilyn Monroe's world In the 1950s Was like a horror film And I found it almost too disturbing So how that will Be greeted by people. I'm not sure Marilyn Monroe was a very complex figure and when I wrote my novel Blonde, I did a lot of research Into her acting. I saw all her movies that I could In chronological order and I could really see her growing as an actor. She's extremely underrated And misunderstood But I do think that many people Just think she's like the young woman in gentlemen prefer blondes Or some like it hot. They just think that she's this ditzy blonde very beautiful, but childlike Now the real Marilyn Monroe Was not like that at all And if anyone was a victim if we use the word victim, I'm afraid she actually What was a victim? And she never I don't think she really um I don't think she escaped there. I think she tried to But ultimately she she she seems to have succumbed to that so it has it has a tragic ending, but it's very well done I think this concept of uh a fictionalized version of Marilyn Monroe that plays like a horror Sounds like an absolute dream. I'm very very excited to to see it Actually, that leads us on very nicely to this question, which is from Jonathan Matheson. It's a two-part question Um, the first part is do you think that the horror suspense short story novella or novel is a particularly american genre? I think of edgar allen po flannery o'connor yourself and steve and kin Um, and I like also the second part of this question, which is you use brackets a great deal. What is your reason? Well, there are really two two Issues there. I'll talk about the brackets. Well, I use parenthetical thinking A good deal because I find that is so psychologically true Like I I may be thinking a thought or even talking in a kind of straightforward way, but I but I have a little bit of a Like a side thought or mitigating a qualifying thought about it, you know, and so putting that in Is a way of of signaling to the reader this little ellipses Like it's a beautiful a beautiful bright Day you could say a beautiful bright ominous day, you know, like it is this beautiful and bright but Something about it is ominous. So you put the ominous in parenthesis because it's not exactly Explicit it's more like something you're thinking, but you don't want to tell You don't want to tell anybody So sometimes I do that and I I found that Is a way of of making the The style a little more True to the flow of our thinking Because we do sometimes say one thing but we really mean another And sometimes we're not noticing something but really we are noticing it, you know, it's sort of pretending not Not to notice it And then the other question no, I would say really Probably the opposite edgar on pole was greatly influenced by the german gothesis and and writers of the early 19th century And we know that the the english ghost stories and The irish ghost stories Are are very famous. I mean That seems to be obvious, you know, steven king is someone who Who would have maybe learned a lot from from 19th century writers and from From h.p. Lovecraft who who also looked back in other words the the americans were really looking back to another another Either to europe or or england for their own influence Washington Irving he wrote rip and winkel I think he was I think he almost appropriated or even He stole the whole story of rip and winkel from some german legend And some of edgar on pole's stories. I think are pretty much appropriated also So it's just kind of it's interesting because it may seem that pole is a is a wild original But he actually isn't in a tradition And so i remember do you know that quote The originality is all about the obscurity of your sources. I wonder if that's true Yeah, that may be true. I think sometimes We're we're really surprised to learn that somebody just appropriated a whole lot of material From somewhere else because we didn't we didn't know it, you know, we just I'm not going to say any names, but there have been some Quite famous novels in the united states that really had a lot of critical claim But they really appropriated a lot of material From somebody else and just sort of put it in there And that's like the best part of the novel that that's happened a number of it's odd It's it's strange Well, I could talk to you all night joys, but unbelievably we are out of time But I just wanted to end on this It's actually a comment rather than a question, which I know people usually dread But I think this is a particularly good one to end on and it comes from natalie baker and I'll read it in full Natalie says only to say that where are you going? Where have you been helped me find my voice as a writer? I've mostly read joys as earlier works And we'll always return to we were the more vanies to feel inspired again and again and again I will always hold a big place in my heart from Marianne. It's been a great pleasure hearing joys I'm seeing her cat And thank you for hosting such a great event. It's made my lockdown and I have to say it's made mine as well So thank you very much um, all that's left for me to say Is please do click books Which is just at the top of the page there to buy the excellent card of by the sea and as you can see I have the uk cover here, which has a very beautiful photo on it Um, you could also get my book things we say in the dark if you want to Um, so thank you so much to the british library. Thank you to b-roll it for organizing the event and most of all Thank you so much joys carol oates. It's been a pleasure Thank you, and we didn't talk about your book and I have read I've read the stories and I I thought they were really really unnerving and uncanny Oh, thank you Really but it but elegant. Yes. Thank you. I'm gonna slush you now. Thank you very much We didn't talk about it. We ran out of time Bye. Bye


Hi, I'm Aaron. I'm an editor here at Food Unfolded. Today, we're looking at a tricky problem. How can we make our food system more transparent? Many of us are becoming more and more conscious about the impact our food has on the environment, on the farmers that produce it, and on our own health, and are trying to make more sustainable choices about what we eat. But in order to make those informed decisions, we need traceability, or the ability to find out where and how our food was made. Modern food supply chains are global and hugely complex. Having so many people involved in producing our food creates two main issues. First, suppliers often struggle to collect detailed data about the origin of our food and the journey it makes to reach us, leaving us without the information that we need to make an informed decision about what to buy. Second, a complex system makes it easier for bad actors in the supply chain to lie about the origins and contents of food products, which is known as food fraud. Today, the sale of illegally altered, repackaged, mislabeled, or stolen foods is a multi-billion dollar problem. Some products labelled as organic have simply added the label to boost sales, and are not actually produced in line with organic standards. Merchants in ancient Rome diluted olive oil with cheaper alternatives to boost their profits, and unscrupulous producers in modern-day Italy are doing the same thing. And a major case of food fraud hit the headlines in 2013, when it was discovered that horse meat was being sold as beef on a huge scale right across the UK. In most cases, suppliers and brands are not intentionally withholding information or lying to their customers, but simply don't know what happens within their own complex supply chains. Better traceability in our food system would help us minimize the risk of mistakes and that of food fraud, helping producers and suppliers to protect their reputations and giving us all more confidence in the food that we buy. But how can we bring more transparency to our food system and improve the traceability of our food? Some people believe technology is like blockchain in the answer. Blockchain is a special kind of database that everyone has access to, and once you add information to it, that information is locked in. It can never be removed or altered. In theory, applying blockchain technology to our food system could allow us to trace the journey of our food from farm to fork with complete confidence. Unfortunately though, blockchain doesn't work as well for regulating physical products like food as it does for digital ones. First, blockchain can't verify that the information provided by producers, like claiming those oranges are organic, is actually true. Such a system would also still ultimately rely on attaching some kind of label to our food, so they can be tracked as it moves through the supply chain. Those physical labels would still be vulnerable to being misplaced or swapped, either intentionally or by accident, providing further opportunities for mistakes or malpractice to creep in. And while building trust in our food system is important, there are other barriers to better traceability too. A key benefit of better traceability is to help us all reduce the environmental and social impact of our diets. But first, we need to work out which factors we should track, such as water and land use, greenhouse gas emissions, animal welfare, or the impacts on local communities, how producers could go about tracking all those factors, and then how to present that information on food packaging in a way that is easy for us to understand. That is a huge challenge and not one that blockchain can really help us solve. Improving the traceability of our food would undoubtedly bring benefits for everyone. But rather than seeing one specific technology like blockchain as a cure rule, we instead need to focus on understanding the wide range of issues that underpin poor traceability today. It's quite possible, even likely, that the transparent and traceable food chains of the future will be built on relatively simple systems and strong monitoring infrastructure rather than on cutting-edge technology. But one thing's for certain, making these changes will require collaboration between everyone in the food system that wants to see things change, including all of us.


I'm really excited to be here with Jen Yang. We are kindred spirits, and we wanted to talk about authenticity, among other topics, like what does it mean to be aligned with our souls, in our life, our work, et cetera. But first of all, Jen, welcome to this conversation. I'm really happy to have you here. And I'll just let you introduce yourself, however you want to say that today is great. My favorite part. Yeah, so I'm a, well, I'm a transformational mentor, a soul alignment practitioner. So I work with highly sensitive beings, mostly women, to help them tap into their intuitive soul's gifts. So they get to trust their decision-making power in different transitions in life. Yeah, I think that will just make it short. I like it, yeah, that's good. Okay, so we're going to talk about authenticity today, because while a lot of people who are watching this know that I talk about authentic business, authentic marketing all the time, I don't define authenticity. I don't remember the last time I defined authenticity or talked about that specifically on any of my videos. I think this would be quite interesting to people. But I, I'll say ladies first. Is there something that's particularly alive for you? Maybe you could share with us a little bit about your journey into this idea of authenticity. Why is it important to you? Yeah, how does it relate to your background? Okay, so then I need to kind of have this little flashback back to my feeling journey because I used to work in the corporate environment for many, many years. That was what, yeah, like before 2012, let's just say that. So a good decade or so trying to do the overachieving patterns and learn so many like people pleasing and learned it, you know, and then again, so many of us, especially highly sensitive beings, I mean, we've learned how to survive through the environment that's not really sensitive to the sensitive beings out there. So we need to operate from the place that feels inauthentic yet it helps us to survive, right? And so much compassion to that part of the past, whoever that shared the same past with me, so I lost my hearing one day back in 2012, end of 2012, I think around November or something. So it was a good, I would say a 10 year anniversary, a little bit over 10 years now for me to just kind of like settle in and really reflect back like, wow, the reason why this is just kind of a spiritual conclusion I've drawn upon is I lost my hearing due to the fact that I did not listen to my inner being. It's been calling me for so long, but I did not. I chose to numb it, I chose to escape from the inner calling. And then I, so ultimately I got spiritual spanking from the universe for good, lost my hearing for it. Well, glally is temporary. It's like three to four months.  I thought I knew myself, all that type of awakening syndrome. So that was the initial spiritual awakening for me. That's pretty scary though. I mean, because obviously you don't know if it's temporary or not. Right. And when did you get a sense that it was something deeper than just physical? I mean, that you focus on something that was a greater message? Of course, it did not happen till like a year or two later because I was so much into shock, like absorbing the shock as a highly sensitive person. I was like, WTF, what's going on with me?  And just a lot of venting, I guess, you know? And that time, I didn't even think about the worst soul. It was so far away from me, so far away from me. And so till the point when I really had to sit with the whole entire healing process, I really realized that, wow, you know, when I couldn't communicate with people, the only person, I used person that was able to communicate with the moon, I look at as a personified energy at the time. And I realized how much waning and waxing was going on, you know? And started to understand little by little, but then of course, till the point when I really allow myself to step into this feel of mentoring, it took me another couple of years. So I just have to say, healing journey is not like, oh yeah, you know, I got spiritual awakening and the next day I'm like, I know where my purpose is. It doesn't work that way. Too bad, it doesn't work that way. I think our soul understands, you know, the lifetime of our evolution or the journey of our evolution is, you know, we probably both believe this, like beyond this lifetime, right? And so it's a very, so you might even, I mean, a lot of people, you know, people kind of have this view of the eternity of the soul, say this lifetime is very short, right? And so if you think of it that way, a few years is just a moment, a blink of an eye in the soul's existence, right? Like, you could say you evolved quite quickly, right? I mean, imagine we're sitting here again and connecting where we're in the 60s or 70s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So again, like back to the story, it's like learning to kind of bring myself out of the old self, the human old self of, wow, I'm operating for so much fear, the fear of not belonging to, say, you know, my family culture or group of dynamics is, it's very, very humbling, it's very, very humbling because then I realized the importance of authenticity, but yet don't know how to get there. That's a very big dilemma for me at the time because, okay, so I'm going to be myself more and more and be true to myself, but I'm going to start triggering people because they expected me or social expectation again, expected any of us who are trying to break out of the mold, I just say the mold from the past. It really challenges to really stretch our courage, yeah, the courage level. And then so I was so afraid to own that capitalistic part of me, but which is a part of my nature. So meaning that, you know, when I'm speaking my truth, even my voice is shaking, I have to allow myself to just express. And that itself is really healing at the same time, very scary, very scary. So I remember like, you know, there's a post, also one of our Soul Tribe member, Tamsen shared with me the other day, that incredible post written by Elizabeth Gilbert, talking about shame, tribal shame. And I was like, oh my God, I can feel that poor wound in me because the tribal shame would be like, okay, now you want to be authentic, now you're doing things differently and now you're operating in a way people don't understand you.    Sometimes I found myself probably sabotage myself several times due to the fear of not belonging. It's really deep. Yes, oh my gosh, it is. Yeah, but the fact of your awareness allows you to be stronger because you can now understand the dynamic and say, okay, I am stepping, well, you are. You are stepping outside the tribe's rules and expectations. Thankfully, there are certain tribes like family that always has to, you're always going to be family, right? Yes, yes, yes. And then there are other tribes like your company, right? Or the corporate culture where you are stepping, literally stepping out and endangering your livelihood, you know? Right. At the same time, you can also, and now we are stepping into a new tribe of, like you said earlier, the soul tribe where you create the kindred spirits around you that are also on a greater journey, the journey that you share as souls, right? There's some profound realization is that, what exactly authenticity is then. Still, I don't have a conclusion, but still I feel like since we have this body, human body with us, we are allowed to take up space where we have the right to take up space to really express ourselves in our own unique ways.  So again, like authenticity is so much to do with how do I allow myself to feel safe and safer and safer and safer more and more in my body and know that in this moment, I'm not being, I'm safe, there's no ones coming after me, you know, why am I so scared? So it's like those four legs of the chair, right? When we sit on the chair, we just say, we don't question it, can I sit on it? If I sit on it, am I gonna fell? Right? Am I gonna fall? No, we're not gonna fall because we have that 100% trust with that chair is gonna support us. And can we cultivate that same trust for ourselves? So when we're being authentic with who we are, we don't need to explain, there's no need to explain but just to fully be here and connect on that place of the heart because or else it'll come from here. It knows so well how to project, so well. Really, really beautifully said. I'm gonna have to reflect on that too but I really love this, you know, analogy of a chair and it's like, can we trust our higher self? Sort of, can we trust the universe? Can we trust that relationship or that context to express authentically, truthfully, to express from the whole entire being and not just from here and kind of like protecting ourselves, right? It's such a good question. Yeah, I'm so glad we're having this discussion because it is, you know, for everyone listening to this watching this, like, be aware of the next conversation you're in or the next time you show up, whether you are just using the, I guess the ego's protection of, you know, don't wanna take too much risk, don't wanna take too much space. Like you said, I think it's brilliant that you said, we have this body, we are taking up space just by being alive, we're taking up space, we're taking air, you know, we're taking up space in a room or whatever and any room we walk into and you're right, you're right. That is a nice symbol to say, well, and by the way, our soul is so much bigger, you know, in our opinion, right, than the body. It's like the soul, yeah, so this is really good.  So anyway, so following my guiding post, the inner intuition, the compass, I had to continue to make mistakes without losing faith. Let's just put it this way, rather than say, oh, I'm gonna make the right choice every time since I follow my intuition. No, it doesn't work halfway either because mistakes are here for a reason. And so again, as you have been witnessing my path, learning to kind of allowing my next layers of, you know, what doesn't belong anymore to just drift it away, I'm more connected to the path of the soul alignment. And whenever you feel like, oh yeah, I'm soul aligned. So does that mean that I don't make any mistakes?  We will continue to make mistakes because that's the necessary ingredient, the ingredient for us to really evolve because we almost stays weak. It's kind of hard for human being to evolve, I think, yeah. Is everything just like easy-peasy? I mean, what is courage then? We don't need that. What is trust then? You don't need that. Wow, yeah. It's so interesting, yeah. Because, yeah, authenticity requires the trust and the courage. And like you're saying, why do we need the trust and the courage? Because mistakes or unexpected responses will be there and maybe a lot of the time.  And then it's not, you don't get the acceptance sometimes or the embrace that you expected, that you hoped for. And so what does that mean? Do you then crawl back into the shell of protection? And sometimes we need to for a little while, but it's like maybe there's a bigger foundation for us to rest into. And that's, I'm just gonna add a little bit. Yeah, please, please. So I feel like when you just brought up so beautifully, it's like, okay, so now you see the brutal reality that no one's gonna accept you, right? What now, right? And then that's the reason why I feel the bridge to our soul alignment. It's about self-love. How deep are you willing to go into that, I really have to say darkness, darkness of self-acceptance or self-compassion? Normally we don't like to go to that place. I know a lot of highly sensitive beings who are so spiritual, they're so kind and in nature, but they have a really hard time to embrace themselves with that acceptance and compassion. They can give a lot of compassion to other people, but not themselves. So that's also why I find it so vitally important that to be more in our soul alignment, in our element basically, soul alignment is pretty much in our element, our soul's makeup, our element. We really have to allow self-love to emerge. And self-love is a general term. There's a lot of aspect that we have to cover, right? It's like awareness, empowerment. Are you going to empower yourself when you're going down? How can we take care of ourselves? Or how can we have a playful heart even when we're in the midst of confusion, right? And all of those aspect are part of self-love. Yeah, this is so profound. I mean, you have, I think you've been reflecting and working on this much deeper and more than most people that I know. So it's really amazing to hear it. Okay, so let's, we've talked about authenticity, touched on this. We're now moving into this topic of soul alignment. And I want to hear you talk more about this because soul alignment can mean different things, different people. And I want to know, how do you define that and kind of maybe walk us through a little bit of the map of it? Like what's involved with what you call the soul aligned way? So what's involved with these different pieces of if the soul alignment is in the center, what's involved here? Okay, thank you for asking this because I feel like since my awakening stage all the way up to this point talking with you, I feel like I've been searching for this too myself and still learning, still learning. So I feel soul alignment is not just a term, it can be ground and a being practical. So number one, just looking at ourselves as we're human but we're also a soul in this body driving this vehicle, doing what we're here to do, experiencing, experimenting things. So we get to receive the wisdom that we're able to accumulate for our soul's growth and now we get to carry on to the next, the invisible, the mystical cycle to life, right? If you're believing reincarnation, that's another thing. But when I didn't cover that. So soul alignment basically is about, it's not about, oh yeah, we have this soulful connection and everything is just so rainbows and unicorns. It's not that, but it's more about I'm a human. I realize that I'm a human rather than so, okay, let's go to the soul and we forgot everything and we spiritual bypass everything, right? But then because we got deep knowing of you are a soul. So how do you connect with that truth in your everyday life? Because only what everyday can provide us is this truth of practicality without everyday the mundane. There's no way we're able to allow our human to experiment or to go through life, right? So everyday mundane life is very, very important even cleaning the toilet or washing the dishes, yelling at your kids. There all can be part of the soul alignment way.  There's another way back over there. It's 180 degree over there. It's using it as a pivot moment for us to reflect like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm away from my soul. So the reason why I've been so passionate into the soul alignment is because we cannot forget that we are a soul.  Even when we're making mistakes, can I allow myself to be more gentle because your soul wants to experience what gentle feels like? It's all in the invisible. It's not about the goals that care. Your soul doesn't care about the goal. Your soul doesn't care about the to-dos. Your soul cares about, how do I experience this thing called marketing, for example, then I know, oh, wow, authenticity is really important. I want to learn about authenticity. So it doesn't care about care about marketing, honestly. But our human self cares about marketing. Give me that formula so I can follow it. But the soul is like, let me just try to understand what authentic means so I can just allow this marketing thing just naturally being carried out rather than just, let me fix myself in a way people get my message. Yeah. So first of all, this conversation has blessed me with more and more light as you can see and the afternoons sound as well. The afternoon sound also helps. So this is amazing. And it's such a good point about how ultimately it comes down to the day-to-day moments and to using the moments as a way, like you said, is to pivot as tools to pivot and come back and goals. You write goals. Yeah, the soul says, we have eternity and don't worry so much about that. And there's a much deeper meaning here and a much higher purpose here. And yes, continue to wash your dishes, clean the toilets, do your marketing. And there's also the soul alignment is really why we're here. And this is so great. So amazingly, the time has already flown by but I wanna make sure people know what do you offer? What do you, how do you support your clients in the soul aligned way? Oh, okay. So a newly created program that I just announced is called the Soul Aligned Way. So way is wildly authentically new. So meaning that- W-A-Y, wildly authentically you. I love that. That's great. So, which is actually giving me permission as well that we get to do something that's just out of the box because our soul wants to know new things. So it gets to expand. Sometimes you'll shock yourself like, do I just do that? But it's okay because your soul wants to play. So this program is for any kinder spirits who are already on this path and then they feel the need to connect with the soul more and more on the daily basis. So they don't feel like, yeah, I understand that connecting, creating from that inner landscape can manifest outwards but somehow still feeling like it's kind of going backwards. I'm not manifesting, do you see? But I just want to allow people to experience the Soul Aligned Way. So they understand that they are powerful beings. All they have to do is to align to their soul's element. So here is something that I love to do is also allowing my own essence which is on the psychic medium. So I channeled from the Akashic record to receive their soul's essences. So based on those soul essences, how about taking small or large doesn't matter, your soul align actions every single day in different various aspects of your life, with your family, how are you going to use your soul essences to boost up that vitality, harmony with your family? What about your business? What about your relationship with people? Like we can play it all. So I'm just going to leave it as is. Yeah, really good, really good. And of course there is information below this video to learn more about Jen's, you know, how to work with Jen. And Jen is also active on social media and of course I'll put the links below as well. Thank you for this time, Jen, and for blessing us with these perspectives and this settling in more and more to our soul and our authenticity. So thank you so much. Thank you, thank you so much, George. Thank you, everyone.


We wait upon God privately so that we can work with God publicly. We develop relationship with God privately, so we can take risks publicly. Relationship with God in private that doesn't lead to taking risks in public brings no reward. David had a relationship with God in private. Only he and God knew that relationship. He knew that relationship and he knew about God's heart. He knew about the power of the Holy Spirit. He saw how God worked privately in his life when God protected him from a lion and from the bear. But what changed David's public life? What changed David's finances? What changed the fact that at 17 years of age with most of the guys were getting out of their diapers and finally trying to get over the fact that they play video games and won fleshly things and David got king's daughter as a wife. His whole household removed from taxes and buncha buncha money. Why? Because David said in private life others are going to be sleeping. Others are going to be messing around. I'm going to build my relationship with God. And when I come out in public I will not be a coward or a chicken. I am going to take risks with God. And he took risks with God and there came the word. I just have something very simple to share with you. Relationship privately must lead to risks publicly. Risk publicly that is not based on a relationship privately always leads to a ruin. When a person begins to recklessly aim for things that are bigger than themselves and have no private life with God to sustain them they will always get disappointed.


Thank you very much, director. Thank you for trusting me with this important task. I'll do my best to make sure that we will have fruitful event. I count on your support during the sessions, and I hope that all of us present here will be leaving Geneva at the end of this week. A little bit smarter, a little bit wiser, and why not with more friends in real life, not on social network. Please count on me and of course on ITU team for everything you need. Have a meaningful time here at GSR 2018. Thank you very much.


I just found out about this operating system on the internet called Arch Linux. I figured that since our computer has been a little slow recently, we could give it a shot at our main operating system of Jolies. But Byron, does that Arch Linux thing sound like a virus? Are you sure it's safe to put out on our computer? Yeah, it's all marked perfectly safe. I know this because it's candid with Norton Antivirus Professional Edition 2012 and it gave no traces of malware anywhere in the ISO. Okay, first I need to boot up the ISO. Oh, it's just a blank screen with a cursor. Visit the Arch Wiki, huh? I guess I'll do that. Hmm, let's format the disks. Oh, I see. Our computer hard drives. The one with personal encrypted data that we must protect at all costs. Oh, Frick. I just formatted our encrypted secret drive into the Linux file system. Now, why am I meant to keep my lead to federal government information? Frick this. I'm buying a Mac. Marge, what are you carrying back from the store? It looks quite large. It's an iMac, homie. I wanted to replace that crappy old computer we had with a brand-spanking new one. It has all the features of our old computer and it also runs macOS, which is the operating system that creatives and professionals use to do their work. This isn't an autistic tinkering machine like Linux. This is a work device for serious people doing very serious things. Wait, how much did it cost? $2,400 and $2,400 well spent. A Mac lesson lifetime and I expect this one to serve our family for the whole generation. This is truly the answer to all our computing needs. Fast, stable, secure and professional. No more will we need to deal with viruses or spyware because we've ascended beyond mere models and have acquired a Mac. Now, don't mind me while I browse my Facebook.


Alola everyone and welcome to the channel. My name is Philly beats you and in this video We're gonna be taking a look at the move z lunar dance now this move is exclusive to chrysilia and It has a z move to it and you have to equip the psychic z crystal in order to access Z lunar dance now as you can see on this thumbnail It does say fail and there's a reason it says fail But I want you guys to see why this is probably one of the most Pointless moves in the game, and I think game freak forgot about this move I forgot to implement some things to it So let's first take a look at what serbia has to say about the move in general It says lunar dance PowerPoints 10 the battle effect is that the user fans and in return the Pokemon taking its place We'll have its status and HP fully restored and the secondary effect is that it causes the user to faint and completely Heals the next Pokemon So it's an interesting move if your Pokemon is low You know it's gonna die in the next hit and you have another Pokemon that's not completely at full health And you're like hey, you know what this is good idea Let me use some lunar dance in here. Okay on my Pokemon then revive the next Pokemon. That's pretty much what it does But in this video, we're gonna be showcasing showcasing it So we have we have got an experiment set up alright in my party right now. I have a Let's let's let's go show it. I Have an Abra and I got a muck that are not completely healed What we're gonna do is we're gonna do a regular chrysilia Lunar dance on one of the Pokemon and then we're going to revive our chrysilia And again, we're gonna perform a lunar dance except with the z-crystal and see if there's any difference You know because of course we're using a Z move it should give us an accuracy buff or speed buff or something like that, right? Fam we're gonna find out right now. Here we go So we're gonna see regular lunar dance This is my second time doing this by the way guys I ran it first and I got experiment again. Maybe I did something wrong Maybe maybe it wasn't that right before but that's what I'm gonna do it in front of the camera for you guys So let's see. So we got Ratata here level seven. We're gonna do a regular lunar dance just so you guys can see what exactly happens So basically when I do lunar dance, I'm basically just killing myself So chrysilia fainted Adios All right, so the next Pokemon we should throw in should get its HP fully restored. So let's pick our Let's pick our Abra level 9 Abra Here comes our Abra ready to go There it is it kicked in nice. So Abra became cloaked in the mystical moonlight and there we go It's HP got fully restored How cool is that as you can see if you look at the top top left if we look at Abra There's no plus sign. So there's no effects. There's no buffs to him. No attack defense special defense None of that stuff above cuz that's just regular z lunar regular regular lunar dance now.  Let's get back into the fray We got our muck. That's not a full HP. So Here we go All right. Wow Abra up here. He might teleport actually this might not be a good Pokemon to Do an encounter here? So let me just run from this battle because I was just gonna teleport ruin this video. Don't want that happening You gotta find another Pokemon here There we go got a nice drowsy showing up. Let's go. We're gonna throw out our chrysilia again. Here it is and This time like I said, you have to have these psychic z crystal attach the chrysilia in order to use this We're gonna get a fight. We're gonna hit z power And we have the option of z lunar dance here and I'm thinking hey, this could be really cool This could be really interesting, you know, so oh look at that. We do a little cool psychic move It's gonna get I get powered up here Unleashes it's full. This is funny. It's like it unleashes. It's full force over here. Then it just kills itself Like get ready for something kills itself there is chrysilia just failed It failed it failed its lunar dance did did did did did its thing. We're gonna switch over to muck So nothing special when you use the lunar dance on chrysilia still gonna knock out muck does get its full full HP back That's pretty cool. It does the exactly the same thing as regular lunar dance What will muck do but look at this guys look at this It's a tap everything's the same Literally, there's no point in doing z lunar dance It absolutely Does nothing different than regular lunar lunar dance z lunar dance and lunar dance are doing the exact same thing Hello, hello game freak game freak Did you guys forget to add maybe an accuracy buff on the next Pokemon special attack special defense speed something? I can't believe this guy's like this is the one move that game freak forgot about with when it comes to z moves This is ridiculous. Like how how insane is this like I pulled up the page? We have it here. We have the percent effect rate all this stuff and it's a z lunar dance detailed effect There's nothing nothing. I thought maybe on serb, you know, maybe Joe Merrick forgot to update it But no guys it does Absolutely nothing with the z move attached with so z lunar dance is a complete fail in Pokemon Sun and Moon Don't bother trying it if you want to use it in battle It's not even going to do anything lunar dance and z lunar dance are the same thing. So there we go guys I'm bringing you guys a failed z move in Pokemon Sun and Moon. Hope you enjoyed this video Like it if you enjoyed it subscribe if you do the channel and make sure Make sure to comment down below what other z moves you guys want to see in the next videos I take all suggestions and look at every single comment. Alright guys, this is Philly beats you And I'll see you guys in the next video


Okay, so it's eight o'clock, so we'll go ahead and get started So we have two different presenters today We have dr. Elizabeth doll and she's a pediatric Neurologist in residency right now. She's in her third of five years Rotating with us currently She comes to us from Kentucky and she's going to talk to us about bariatric surgery in Relation to the eyes and then when she's done if dr. Olson comes we'll go to dr. Olson Hi, I'm Lizzie doll. I'm a third year neurology resident and I wanted to thank the neurophthalmology team for letting me rotate with them last month Today I'm going to talk about the ocular complications of bariatric surgery and particular focusing on Associated vitamin deficiencies so first I'll talk about a patient who we saw in our Neuroophthalmology clinic Then I'll give a brief overview of some bariatric surgical options that are available and then I'll discuss Potential vitamin deficiencies and their ocular counterparts namely vitamin a but also touching on vitamin e thymine and b12 And then I'll give the recommendations that we gave to our patient So our patient was a 56 year old woman with the history of hypertension hyperlipidemia Arthritis renal cell carcinoma status post nephrectomy and gastric bypass surgery Which had occurred 25 years prior and had required one revision Her chief complaint was vision changes at night for one year Although at the time that she had she was seeing us in clinic. She hadn't had any complaints for one month She was a very detailed historian and perfectly described a central scatoma Bilaterally she gave the example of camping in Montana last summer and She could not see the stars in her central vision despite this the sky being profoundly dark The symptoms had come and go and like I said at the time that she saw us. She wasn't having any eye complaints at all She denied any eye pain or double vision Of note. She had started on plaquanel one month prior to the onset of her symptoms and Because of this she was receiving regular ophthalmology follow-up. She had normal visual fields and OCT to date there was not ERG available in In Idaho So past medical history as I've already discussed She was on a number of different medications, but I'll focus on the most important which include plaquanel multivitamin Sorry Vitamin D omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin B12 her family history was unremarkable She did smoke cigarettes and used alcohol occasionally She was disabled but worked part-time as a substitute teacher and her review of systems was unremarkable On examination She was 230 pounds her visual acuity was 20 25 on the right 2025 on the left without correction Her pupils were normally reactive without APD Her visual fields were full to confrontation Her extracure movements were full. She had normal stereo and color vision Slit lamp examination was normal with the exception of one-plus nuclear sclerosis in the lens bilaterally and Dilated funnest exam was also normal So ancillary testing included flicker ampster grid a multifocal ERG OCT and 10-2 Humphrey visual fields all of which were normal Here her visual fields on the left and on the right which were essentially normal Then her multifocal ERG which was also normal So bariatric surgery works two ways either through restriction and or malabsorption So restriction Decreases the amount of food that you can take in by decreasing the size of the stomach whereas malabsorption bypasses a portion of the small intestine to Decrease the surface area available for absorption The ruin why Start up here is the most commonly performed and Places the patient at high risk for nutritional disorders the ruin why works by decreasing the size of the stomach through restriction and also bypassing Duodenum and proximal to Junum and And so because of the malabsorption associated with these procedures You get impaired bile salt absorption and therefore impaired absorption of fat soluble vitamins so here is a diagram of vitamin a absorption metabolism and delivery to the eye and so we ingest Retinoids from animal products or beta carotene from green or leafy vegetables. It's a terrified and absorbed From the intestines and delivered to the liver In the liver, it's hydrolyzed it binds to Retinol binding protein and then from there it's delivered to the eye So with bile salts or excuse me with bypass surgery Bile salt absorption is impaired and therefore Fat soluble vitamins like vitamin a cannot be maximally absorbed As we know in the rods Retinol exists as 11 cis retinol and then when a photon of light hits it it undergoes a Confirmational change from 11 cis retinol to all trans retinol and It creates a nerve impulse from the retina to the brain So vitamin a deficiency is actually the leading cause of blindness worldwide secondary to diet but in industrialized countries like America vitamin a deficiency more often results from intestinal intestinal malabsorption or in alcoholics The primary ophthalmologic manifestation of vitamin a deficiency is their ophthalmia which includes Zerosis, carotomalacia Nectalopia and retinopathy So research on vitamin a deficiency to following bariatric surgery is limited and includes mostly case reports Essentially because it wouldn't be ethical to perform a prospective case study or Study with this It's a lesson in his group in the Journal of Obesity Conducted a retrospective study in 69 obese patients who had undergone the ruin Y procedure and They looked at vitamin levels at six weeks in one year and at those two times 35 percent and 18 percent were vitamin a deficient respectively interestingly a Low level of vitamin a correlated with a low level of pre-albumin which Suggests that their overall nutrition state was poor This picture is from Ophthalmology it was a case study on a 39 year old woman who had undergone the ruin Y procedure 18 months prior and had stopped taking all of her vitamin supplementations You can see in the top photo that she has Conjunctival, cirrhosis, carotidus and corneal scarring And then the bottom picture she has a heavily Carotonized surface and there's pooling of the fluorescein dye So it's important to not forget the other vitamins that can potentially be affected with bariatric surgery which include vitamin e and That can manifest as retinopathy Thymine of course can lead Thymine deficiency of course can lead to Wernicke's And includes nystagmus, dysconjugate gays and gays palsy Independently can also cause ophthalmoplegia and nystagmus and then vitamin B12 can cause a Number of optic neuropathies, but pathanemonic is Sico-central scatoma in our patient We measured her vitamin a e and b1 levels and her vitamin a level did come back low at 19 With a normal range of 38 to 98 and so we therefore recommended either increased oral supplementation or intramuscular supplementation of vitamin a On top of what she was already taking Her albumin interestingly was normal so that suggests that she was Nutritionally replete From another standpoint We did also recommend that she discontinued plaque when all although she did have normal ERG and She it was unlikely for retinal toxicity to develop within one month of symptom onset We thought that the plaque when L could have some added susceptibility to the symptoms that she was experiencing Of note. She did have a normal renal function so when I talked to her yesterday she had discontinued the plaque when L and she was going to talk to her physician about Getting on some kind of vitamin a supplementation. That's it Any questions? Yes, sir, so she had you know completely normal exam and at the time that she was seeing us She didn't have any eye complaints at all But it was the night blindness and then we measured her vitamin a level Well, yeah, so she's getting enough oral Me for a normal person. She would be getting enough vitamins, but because she was having impaired Bile salt absorption because of her bariatric surgery, then she wasn't able to absorb those Effectively Well, I mean you could really max her out. I mean, I think giving her like super therapeutic But it does exist in that intramuscular form, which probably would be more ideal And we don't really know which type of procedure. She underwent 25 years ago whether it was a ruin why or some other one but Thank you


For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. The Tokyo Olympics staged after a year's gap have begun in the Japanese capital and it's been staged under exceptional circumstances so to speak. Now let's just be very clear when I say exceptional it just doesn't mean the crowds missing from the stands or the protocols that are in place, the daily testing that that leads and all the people involved in the Olympic bubble undergoes and all these are factors of course making it exceptional but this thing is different these games are different on a major count which is that when we compare it to the previous games right through the Olympic movement's entire history of over 100 years it's for the first time that the majority population of the whole city as well as the country they're against the staging of the games and things are already looking bleak a day before the opening ceremony for instance that is July 22nd the number of cases in Tokyo was close to 2000 above 1900 and this is closer to the number that was the per day number that was there when things spiked in Japan and in Tokyo mid-May around mid-May so it's it's it's already escalating and yes the organizers are trying to convey the fact that this is unrelated to people coming from across the world because they are being absorbed into a bubble being tested and they are isolated from the rest of the crowd but again I mean within the bubble itself cases have happened and speaking to athletes who are their officials who are there and fellow journalists who are there on the ground it's very clear that they are all living on the nice edge because one positive test and you're out of the games be it athlete, be it a journalist or official straight away 14 day quarantine of course if the case is severe treatment etc so so it's very clear from this situation where athletes are being tested daily and they are also worried about this positive results and all that they themselves are unable to focus clearly on the games be in the moment celebrate what the games entail and that is just one of the ids of these games but the other being that the overwhelming demand within the Japanese population that these games shouldn't happen because it is going to create a problems and the International Olympic Committee as well as the Japanese government and and all the stakeholders they went ahead with the games against people the wishes of the people of a democratic country these games are full of ironies such as these and it goes completely against the ethos on which the Olympic moment is is is based and it's completely just adhering to the business side of things which has been the case in the last 2-3 decades or so the shift of the Olympic movement from from idealism to pragmatic business sense