Inspirational Buddy, as we journey to take your health back. We are coming to you live from my home office in Makiki and from downtown Honolulu, from the studios of Think Tech Hawaii. Think Tech Hawaii features the hearts of about 45 very different and colorful show hosts. Today, we will be talking story with a young, handsome, energetic, charismatic, successful and inspirational Corey Campbell. Corey Campbell is the CEO and founder of Akamai Training and Consulting, a Honolulu-based company helping organizations develop their leaders and enhance customer service. I've asked Corey to come in today to discuss with us tips to thrive through crisis and to discover the new you. I just felt that we could all use, we could all use some guidelines in this direction. Crisis can destroy us. We all know that or it can create breakthroughs for us. The choice lies in how we face it and the daily decisions we make to own it. Wow, or fall victim to it. What I would like to take, what I would like you to take away from today's discussion is outer circumstances don't control inner state unless we allow them to. We're gonna hear more about that. Exploring ways to stay energized and healthy is critical to maintain your mental, physical and spiritual well-being. Find a system that works for you and commit to it daily. So please, let's all welcome Corey Campbell and let's be inspired. Welcome Corey. Hey Wendy, thank you so much. It's lovely to be here again. I think we were here two years ago about this time. So I'm excited to be back. Exactly two years ago. I mean, it's just great friendship that brings great minds together that way I know it. We've been through a lot, a lot together and having great times and even doing these times, we're still gonna have great times. Is that right Corey? That's it Wendy. And you know, it's funny that today is crazy, right? And so many hard things are happening right now but a big part of it is focusing on the positive things and actually stacking some of that back. And so I wanted to point out to our audience, I can actually see a little trophy behind you. And if I'm not mistaken, that's not a little trophy. That's like two miles behind. Let me show you, this bunker is not little. It's not little. It is not little, it is a big one because why do I have this trophy on my desk Corey? That was actually winning the Dragon Boat Racing Championship last year, which was super exciting with your team, the Juice Plus team. Right and you were one of the inspirational markers on our team.  I mean, you would think you were at work and I didn't even have to pay you or organize it. You just did it because that's just who you are Corey. Is that right? You know, one of the truest things that I know in life is emotions are contagious. And I believe this, right? So if I walk into anything and my energy is off, my emotions are off, it transfers to everybody.  It's the eyes, you know, it's all in the eyes Corey. Yeah man, you know, I felt it, like those moments when I was exhausted and tired and I was like, I don't know if I have another 15 strokes. If I heard one person go, we got this. We got it. And so that's always something that I try to provide for others and I hope to get in return. And I think it's a great message for COVID-19. Right. One of the most frustrating, oh, I just can say one of the most frustrating things I'm hearing from people is that the proximity we're living, right? And now I'm around these people all the time. And I think if we all just commit to that and remember, hey, my emotions are going to transfer to you. And let me pay more attention to that before I go greet you. That can change. Right. And you know, Corey, that's why you came to my heart. I said, you know, we've gone through many months of being in isolation and different changes in our lives. And I thought, you know what? We need to be uplifted. So I thought, I got to get Corey back on. And that's why I said, hey Corey, are you available for our show today? And we're just excited about all of this. But you know, Corey, I know that you've been working very hard up to the point where we started doing a life change and everything was changing around us. So how have you had to pivot your business to thrive through this crisis? Man, that's a huge question. And I'll say this, you know, I am traditionally been an in-person trainer. I work with teams and leaders and try to bring them together. And so all of a sudden, in-person training was completely disallowed. And I remember when my last training was on March 16th, everything, and I was so excited for this year. I had, you know, so many new clients, things going on and everything just got canceled. And I realized right away, and I, and look, I'll be honest, and I think everybody deserves the time to go down the rabbit hole and kind of just, and feel sorry for yourself. Right? And I did, and I was like, God, this was going to be such a magnificent year. And then I started to get to work on, and this is a big belief in mind, just the little steps that I can shift to make my business, you know, webinar based and online. And I thought, honestly, I thought it was going to be awful. I was like, people need to be together the train, but I'll tell you, as soon as you start to shift your thinking around things, you see me yours, right? And I started to go, okay, I'm going to start telling myself that it's amazing to train through webinars in this format. And it started to become true. And I'll be honest, I had a great session, like a four week emotional intelligence session where at the end, people said, I was able to be more real in this because it was just in one breakout rooms that I came in a classroom. So that was pretty cool. Who knows we may never go back to live even when we were allowed to. I think it's possible.  And I'm in my office, it's great. Okay, well, let me ask you a question, Corey. Do you have long pants or shorts on? Or do you have shorts on at all? No, don't answer. I'm only joking. I'll tell you. Beauty, right?  Never, never.  And I think we will become more and more comfortable because like you, you had to go and organize the event, set up the room, make sure everybody got there on time, parking, everything. I mean, like, I could show up to your, your session, I have my water bottle, I have my food, and when you're talking, I can go get more food and come back. That's right. And you continue on. That's exactly right, man. There is so much good to this, but the requirement is changing the thought process in our head, right? Because the moment we go, this is terrible for me and it's going to shut me down, which I think everybody did and should have done. We needed that space, but we got to shift out of that to then find the angles. And there are, there are beautiful stories happening everywhere and there's terrible stories happening. And a big part of it, I think, is just the thoughts we're programming in our head about what's ahead. Right.  So that's very critical that you're having to know that. And of course that's how I'm sure how you train and what you train on that people take breaks and do other things to clear their minds as well. But I know that you've had a lot of challenges during these times. How do you keep your mind focused and positive? That's what we want everyone to learn. I think one of the most critical things is paying attention to how you own the morning, right? And what thoughts you program in. And this is an interesting concept, but if you go to bed at night thinking something, and let's say it's nerve wracking, right? And it's scary. And you wake up the next day thinking the same thing. You are by definition living in the past. Every single, I mean, numerous times throughout the day, we have a choice. And that's why I love this road image. You have a choice to choose one road that's either, the road that's not letting you be yourself and not owning up to your true passion and who you are. Or you have the typically the tougher road, which I call the right road, right? It's like I'm gonna choose the right road and this is gonna be my authentic self going after it. But it takes a lot of work, I think, to be able to put yourself in that state. And I'm really like, I pay much attention to like, what's my thought in the morning? And if it's coming from yesterday, I have a whole, I might not have a whole process, which we'll talk about later in this session of how I shift my thinking around the day ahead to be able to choose that right road, which then my thoughts changes, it changes my actions, changes my behaviors and ultimately changes what happens for me in that day and beyond. Wow. And you know, you're so consistent because two years ago, I heard the same direction from you and two years later, you're still, you know, encouraging that and that is so key. And that's why it's probably stayed on your agenda to continue sharing that point. So, you know, working with your clients as a leadership coach, do you find people respond differently to change? Oh yeah, very different, right? As we know in person, when we see our friends, we see our family members responding differently. There's a great article by Peter Block and I like to reference the different styles of approach that people have to change. And you know, one of the most scary ones is just becoming the critic. And that means I'm just gonna stand on the side, I'm gonna complain, I'm gonna oppose everything and I'm going to let it take me over these negative thoughts. Psychologists will tell you about 85% of our subconscious thoughts running through our head are negative. That's scary, right? Because we start to believe those. So it's easy to fall in the critic state, which by the way, we jump into all these at all times. Exactly. It's easy to fall in the victim state, which says, oh my gosh, whoa is me, right? And I have no control over this. The world has handed this to me and now I just, this is it. But we know that doesn't benefit us, right? And it's easy to fall in that one. You know, another style is the bystander, which just says, hey, I'm just gonna stand on the side. I'm gonna wait and see what happens. But ultimately, where we're headed, right? Where we wanna go is the navigator role, you know? And I often reference the Hokulea as a great example of this. They figured out how to sail, right? Without any instruments. So they said, I'm gonna take this challenge and I'm gonna go own it. And I'm gonna hunt for information that helps me through this. And that's the approach that I think we should all strive for. You may not have it every day, but if you have a day of victim mentality, then let me get in the navigator tomorrow. That's important. And you know, those are very key points, those four points right there, Cori, because honestly, I mean, like you said, we're all human, we're all gonna experience it. And it matters how long you stay in each one of those numbers, one, two, three, or number four. And you know, yeah, we all went through all that and then the pity party and then let's stay on the side and all that. But yes, the best place to be, honestly, is in the navigation. And so when you can get yourself into that zone and into that level and create your days, according to that, it's powerful. It's so powerful. And that's exactly where I wanna start my day and where I wanna be ending my day as well. And it does take some work at getting to that point, but we have time and we can do that and it's just becoming better at what we do daily. And Wendy, that's a very simple tip for that, is just stop yourself and go, where am I right now? Am I a critic, bystander, victim or navigator? And just that simple question alone can kind of break that mental pattern of thought and go, all right, I'm in victim mode. Let me step out of this. Exactly. Exactly. And I think everyone should copy that slide and put it on their desk so that they can see and just take a visual, where am I today? And take a look at it and analyze it and then figure out what do you want? Where do you wanna be? And that's a key right there. So what is the secret to thriving through a crisis, Corey? Through crisis, I think the biggest challenge is and it all starts with maintaining control of our thoughts. We all know this, right, Wendy? When you are in a state of stress and you're nervous, do you perform at your best? The reality is no, the example I often give people is if you lose your keys, right, and you're trying to find them and you're running around stressed out and yelling, you don't find them. When you've calmed yourself down and go, let me think differently. And that's built into the science behind our brains, right? We release cortisol, our stress hormone when we're stressed out. So if we wanna manage ourselves through a crisis, the first place we gotta start every morning is going our thoughts. And again, I really believe, I am a weirdo for systems, I need them. So I think everybody needs the morning system. And here's another quick tip. If you wake up and you check your cell phone or the news, and that's the first thing you do, I would suggest you consider what a shift helped me because that makes you very reactive, right? The news right now is negative and it brings us down. Oftentimes whatever's on that phone, whether it's email or a message or whether it's a social media thing about what's happening, it brings us down and we get reactive. So on those first 30 minutes, right? That gets you into your thoughts. And when your thoughts shift, your energy changes. And as we know, life is about energy, right? And when we walk through the day like, oh, this is gonna be, I mean, we walk into a day going, this is going to be awful. We are right, right? So we'll literally change our energy. We ultimately change our life. And so I really believe though, it kicks off with this attention, right? It's self-awareness of our thoughts. And then, you know, actually steering them in a different direction. Mm-hmm. All right. So, you know, yeah, it all starts with controlling our thoughts, exactly. So do you have any tips to help us to do that better? I think one of the most important things to be aware of the understanding our thoughts is how our bodies are structured and our brains operate. And so you'll see this on the diagram here.  The first system that it goes through in our brain is called the limbic system. And that's where our brains attach a motion to what has occurred. And everybody's familiar with the fight-or-flight response. That is managed by your amygdala, which is a small gland inside the limbic system. After that, it slowly proceeds all the way to your frontal lobe, which is where your brain attaches ration and logic. Now, we often wonder like, okay, so what this means, right, is I respond with a motion before I have thought rationally through it, which is why it's so easy to shoot off and yell at someone. And then later on go, I wish I hadn't done that. And we're wired that way for survival, right? As everybody knows, you go all the way back. We were built to respond with a motion in case a tiger came in and we had to get stronger and more powerful than ever before. The danger is we don't have tigers now, we have other people doing things that send us into that same response. And what I find right now during crisis is our gauge is a little bit shorter, right? Like, if somebody does something, we're already kind of a heightened emotional state. So we gotta just go, we have to know, okay, I am processing in my limbic system when I'm full of motion and if I want to have the right decision in this matter, I should probably just give myself some time before I say something to my husband or wife or my children, give myself a little bit of time. Psychologists say an emotion takes 90 seconds to run through. After that, what happens is we turn that emotion into a thought, okay, now I'm upset and then it triggers another emotion. But if someone near you is doing something that upsets you, remember, right? It's not about that person, they're in a tough space and I can, by me responding differently and helping them through this, they'll do that in return, right? And truly, spread aloha. I mean, I think that's the greatest thing we have in Hawaii is remembering the spirit of aloha and saying, I'm just here to help you and it's not about what you're giving me in return and it's all tied into our brain science. Right, and that's so key. Even when you receive a letter or an email and you wanna respond, if you need to respond, you may write it, but do not send it. Don't send it, okay? And then you just go back another hour later and you read it, your response, you read the situation in the response. Trust me, you won't send it. And then you rewrite it the right way and that will help a lot. Same idea was what you're sharing with us. Just take your time and think about things that have processed. So there are so many things causing frustrations today, Corey, how can we avoid some of those triggers? I think one of the most important things to be aware of is this concept of an unenforceable rule. And what that is is that's simply something that you have decided is the way the world should operate and you put it on everybody else in situations and when it doesn't happen, you get upset. And so here's a great example and some people might even be upset of me for saying this but an unenforceable rule right now is whether or not someone else is wearing a mask, right? And there are two very different opinions on that. We're not here to talk about that but whatever your opinion is, if you see, I mean, if you see somebody else not, you can send yourself into a frenzy or if they are and you're not, you can spend a whole period of time on that. But for me, it's not about masks. This is about family members, this is about friends. This is about me going, you know, my husband, my wife, my kids should do this. And then when they don't, I get so upset and it drags into my day and it triggers me and then I change who I am. And so one of the most profound things I've done for myself is I literally sat down and I wrote all my unenforceable rules in my life. And the ones that I, an unenforceable rule means you don't have control over it. Which allows you, once you've identified I don't have control over this, you can release it.  I have no control over this. I'm just gonna let this go. And I think that's the key to thriving in a crisis is identification of what's causing you that trigger. And then realizing it's unenforceable, I'm going to release this from me right now. Right, wow. Pick your battles. Right? That's right, that's right. Wow, that's important. Especially when everyone's in isolation and lockdown and family mode and you know, everything, the triggers are all there, right? They're all there. So is there a formula to thriving through crisis mentally, physically and spiritually? I think, so there is I believe a typical kind of formula and I learned this from Tony Robbins and I really love this. And basically, you know, we need to have a strategy, right? To make sure that we are controlling our thoughts, you know, controlling our energy, those things. But a strategy doesn't mean very much when it's not backed up by the right story. And you know, great example, we've all had great strategies to diet or to exercise more. They're easy to break pretty soon because the story behind that strategy is, ah, you know, I like this food, I don't wanna work out today and all these things. And so we gotta change the story in our head. And that's why I love saying crisis creates breakthroughs.  And then go, okay, that's what I'm telling myself now. Let me change, let me rewrite this script in my head to say this crisis is going to be the greatest thing for me. And because I think that way, I start to open my mind up.  And by that I really mean your physical state, right? I mean, if I'm sitting, when I am feeling nervous or stressed or even in COVID, when I'm feeling lonely, what I wanna do is remain right there. It feels good, like I'm like, I'm angry, I'm pissed. But you gotta change your state. So whether that's, you know, getting up and just standing up and standing differently or doing some jumping jacks or walking outside or taking your pet for a walk, change your state. It starts to impact your story, which then allows you to create a strategy. And we're about to talk about a strategy for the morning that works, but it only works if you commit and you create absolute certainty in your mind, this is the step I'm going to take to shift myself. Wow, and that's so critical. And it's all, you have total control over what you do, how you behave, how you react, like you're saying, just take some time and enjoy that moment or don't receive it and let's figure out how and what we can do about it.  And I know this from speaking to you a few years ago, but you know, setting up the morning is so critical to our success throughout the course of the day. So how do you do that effectively, Corey? Thanks, Winnie, yeah. And you know, what you're seeing here obviously, so years ago, I started looking into morning rituals and I learned everyone that I could. I mean, there are many and I started to build this into a structure that worked for me. And ultimately, you know, Akamai is the business name. It was really important to me because to me, when you operate, when you live Akamai and you operate of a place of consciousness and awareness and trying to do the right way and living in an intelligent manner, it starts in your morning, right? When the sun comes up. And you know, Charles Darwin had a great quote, which has come back to me 10 fold during this time. And he said, it's not the most intelligent nor the strongest animal that survives. It's the one most responsive to change. And so what I like to do is I like to run through six steps in my morning. It's built to the acronym Akamai because it makes it easy for me to remember. And this is what we embrace at the company. But it starts off attitude to gratitude and I'll run over each step. The idea here is you do this for one minute or more if you want, but at least you can finish this whole thing in six minutes and create an entire different roadmap per year day. So gratitude, I like to write three new things I'm grateful for every single day. And I really believe you should write them in the same journal because then on those days where you have a bad day, you can go back and read those. And they say Wendy, gratitude is the greatest structure to defeat fear, anger, tension. When you own this every day, I mean, you're one of the most grateful people I know and I value that so much about you. After gratitude, moving to knowledge, right? Our brains are constantly, they're growing or they're not growing, right? They're putting thoughts in. And I like to think of my brain as a garden and I go, I wanna feed it healthy thoughts because if I don't, weeds will grow just as much. So for one minute, I'm gonna pick up a book. I'm gonna listen to a motivational clip on YouTube, something to feed my brain a different thought process. And I actually find sometimes just looking through a book for one minute, I can find a little piece of information that I go, I needed that today. Right. Absolutely. And then after the third, the third minute is affirmations, which this is okay.  Scarily, they run them even stronger about ourselves, right? I'm not gonna be in my best day. I'm tired. I'm not gonna do a good job. So affirmation statements, sometimes these are misconstrued, like people go, oh, is this where you say you're amazing and you're great? For me, they're more tangible. I am going to do this thing tech Hawaii and my thoughts are gonna come clear. I'm gonna know exactly what to say. You know, if I have a client meeting, I'm gonna walk in with energy and I'm gonna, the way that I greet that person is gonna change the entire meeting. They're very concrete and tangible for me with affirmations. And I'm building myself up for one minute for what I'm going to achieve that day, which can be really, really powerful. So powerful. So fourth minute then we got mindfulness. This is a hot topic for everybody and I love it. It's just about bringing you back center. So after I've kind of built myself up, then I go, okay, let me give my brain this minute of peace and quiet to breathe, to infuse myself with oxygen. I believe in, you know, a structure. So let me just take long, slow, deep breaths in for about eight seconds, hold it for about 12 seconds, breathe out for about six. It's a great way to kind of bring it to life. And then just think about this moment right here. If something's caused you tension in the past, tell yourself I can't control the past. If you're worried about the future, tell yourself I have no dominance over what happens in the future. I have this moment right here and I'm gonna own this moment. And then that turns into activate for the fifth minute, which is just, you know, when you know this, right? When we change our body, we change our thought process. So for one minute, we're gonna activate whether that's jumping jacks, whether that's just movement, whether it's walking. And during that physical activation, we're gonna activate our mind and we are gonna visualize the day ahead. One of the things I love to do and it's great tip, just visualize your first minute, two minutes walking into the office or when you start and how are you gonna own it? And the last one is intention setting. And that's just setting a roadmap for the day ahead. If we don't have a roadmap, all the obstacles can knock us off. I have five questions that I like to ask myself to lead me forward for that day. That's amazing. And you know, that's so easy to remember.   So that's so critical. So do you have a system? Do you have a system you use to set your intentions every day? Yeah, for the intentions, Wendy, and I'm glad we have an opportunity to share this with the group. I tell people every time, finding the questions that work best for you, but I ask myself five questions every single day. What word describes how, who are you gonna be today? What task absolutely must be done? What person do I need to connect with and how will I do that? Fourth one, or third one, so one piece, I ask myself this, one piece of advice that a high performance coach would tell me, because I feel like we can give better advice to others than we can sometimes give to ourselves. So I flip it around. And the last one is the most important. What's one thing I have to do to take care of my mental or physical well-being today? I write these every day. I try to commit to these and no matter what happens throughout the day, my day might get taken in different directions. I commit to doing these five and I'll always find, there are days where maybe I miss it in the morning and I always actually, I'll go back and I'll write these because I need this map for where I'm headed today. Wow, wow, okay, so if our audience wants to take one thing away from our talk today, Corey, what concept would you say is the most important? You know, I mentioned earlier that I believe our minds are like gardens and so it's this, right? We've offered a number of different tips and ways to set your morning up, control your thoughts, pay attention to those around you, realize we need a little more time before we make our decisions, learn about unenforceable rules, but it all ties into this, right? We're gonna stand guard by our minds and go, I'm gonna feed healthy thoughts and I'm gonna water those healthy thoughts daily because the other thoughts will grow just as quickly if not quicker and they'll grow more profoundly. So I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna create this sensation of purpose, a foundation to kick off my day, a belief in myself and what I do and who I am and why I'm here and you started off the session when he's saying this, outer circumstances don't determine who we are unless we allow them to. And so I'd love for everyone to walk away. My big passion in life is helping people transform how they view their lives to live more energized and engaged and inspired, but it takes work and I'll leave you with this thought, it's mental fitness, right? Our minds, it's just the same thing as physical fitness. We work our bodies out and we go, okay, I want physical change. We probably should all dedicate and commit to working our minds out and getting that mental fitness. And one thing COVID has given many of us is more time to do that, which is actually a blessing for all of us. So I would say mahalo to isolation, not to COVID, mahalo to isolation for a long distance.  So Cory, unfortunately we've run out of our time because we could go on and on, but I just wanna say mahalo to you and real quick, how can we get in touch with you? Sure, the easiest way is my website, www.acamaitraining.com. I've also got a free gift up there for you guys.  Please check it out, please use it. There's all the questions, the intentions, but yeah, also you can always email me at Cory, C-O-R-E-Y at acamaitraining.com. That's amazing. So people listen up, be inspired by Cory Campbell. He's already inspired me and I'm ready to get going again. So thank you so much Cory and mahalo to Cherise for having a beautiful haircut on you. I love it. Yes, we'll see you all again soon. So aloha Cory Campbell and Wendy Lowe. Aloha everyone.


This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Greetings, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark, the volunteer host of Think Tech Hawaii's research in Manoa. Think Tech is important to me because it brings science from the university to our community. Now for the first time, Think Tech Hawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. Your thanks to Think Tech will run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate what you can so that Think Tech Hawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming like mine. I've already made my donation and look forward to yours. Please send your tax-deductible contribution by going to this website. Thanks for thinktech.causevox.com On behalf of the community enriched by Think Tech Hawaii's 30-plus weekly shows, thank you for your generosity.


You're listening to the OIST podcast, bringing you the latest in science and tech from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University. My name is Andrew Scott. It's a rare treat to be able to share this interview with one of the most engaging mathematicians around today. Tadashi Tokyeda is currently a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Stanford University in the United States, but he started his fascinating career as a painter in Japan. He then moved on to France to study philology, and by the early 90s he'd earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Oxford University and the PhD from Princeton a few years later. Professor Tokyeda visited OIST at the start of November, where he gave an excellent talk about the strange physical properties of a collection of otherwise everyday looking objects. As an example of informative and entertaining science communication, his lectures are well worth seeking out, or failing that, his collaborations with the YouTube channel Numberphile. If you're looking to spark a bit of fascination with the world, you won't go disappointed viewing them. I sat down with Professor Tokyeda after his lecture for an enthralling chat that would take in mathematics, child prodigies and how language frames science amongst many other subjects. I hope you enjoy it. Can you tell me a little bit about the lecture that you gave us? I'm not going to tell you anything about the lecture that I gave you for the good reason, and in fact this is an important point, that you see it's like telling the punchline of a joke and then trying to explain the joke without actually telling the joke. Life is very short and the universe is a wonderful place, and there is so much to see and so much to experience and so much to become more intelligent about. And the only way you can do it is to have your personal, however modest, your personal experience of various phenomena, various happenings, and various events. And telling about something, this is a meta comment about something, instead of doing the actual thing is the worst way to approach science. And I'm not going to tell anybody about this and deprive them of the pleasure of seeing the phenomenon themselves. If you want to, this is a kind of replacement substitute. You can Google my name and the number file, there are lots of videos that they put out online, thanks to the number file, of various phenomena and really magical effects of those curious objects and so on, and you can watch this. Even that is only a substitute. There's nothing that replaces your own touch, trying things yourself and indeed noticing curiosities in nature yourself.  But even watching videos is no good, you should really try those things yourselves and indeed discover some things yourself. There is so much out there. And let me add something that I didn't say last time. People say, well, discovering things difficult and extracting science from everyday life and in the mundane effects and so on that requires talent and special aptitude and so on. I believe that's wrong for the following reason. The reason presupposes a certain belief and outlook on the universe. My outlook is, well, people say, well, I don't like science. That's fair enough. Some people don't like science. And I like science, but I get tired after a while and I can't continue for some. That's very, very reasonable. All, I try very, very hard, but I can't get through some difficulties. Well, that's more human than that, sure. But it's true that however fragile and however weak humans are, there is actually one, shall I say, creature, a sort of morphically speaking creature who keeps practicing in science very, very successfully. In fact, with 100% success, 24 hours a day, seven days a week with no stop and has been doing it for ages and ages and everywhere you go. And that's nature herself. Nature is doing everything in perfect harmony. And in fact, wherever you see, whichever you look, there's some phenomenon that happening. And there are thousands and tens of thousands of laws of nature that have been satisfied at the same time. And many of those laws of nature are yet unknown to humans. But it's amazing how coordinated nature is. It's working all the time.  But nature keeps going. The other side of this observation is that therefore, whichever you look, as I said, and whatever you listen to and wherever you cast your mind to, and in that part of the universe that you are observing, nature is doing something. So nothing is easier than to discover than science because science is happening all around you. It's just a matter of opening up your mind a little bit and making a little bit of effort. And indeed, you have to have an eye for surprises, but humans are born to be surprised and programmed by mother nature to be curious about things. So you just pay attention and pause and then you relax. And especially you shouldn't worry about what other people think and what your social standing is. If you are interested in something, it's interesting. And if you're not interested in something, it's not interesting, but you should just keep looking and everywhere you look, you reach out with your right arm, you reach out to your left arm, you stick out your left foot and right foot. Everywhere you reach, there is a bit of science in there. And so you just meet science all over the place. It's very easy. So starting your career as an artist and then going on to philology and then coming into mathematics obviously is not the standard path into science that most people in the career do. But I think it gives you a very different perspective from a lot of people who have taken a more traditional path. Is there any lessons that you've learned along that way that has changed your approach to science? I should mention one thing. Maybe not everyone knows the word philology. People used to know this, but it means the level of languages. But more specifically, the study of languages. Some people call it linguistics, but the nuance is quite different. Linguistics, especially Chomsky and that school, became very analytical and almost mathematical. I'm absolutely not interested in universal grammar or analytical study of languages. Absolutely not. I'm a mathematician and if I want to do that kind of thing, I'll do just mathematics, straight mathematics. Instead, philology in the glory days of the 19th century meant primarily the reconstruction of the Indo-European family. So people knew lots and lots of languages and their peculiarities and their accidental evolution in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and that kind of thing. And of course, he was practiced outside this Indo-European family for his notably Semitic family, especially languages that have a lot of written records that go way back. You can do science. So that's what philology means and that's what they used to do. But I do emphasize that I'm not at all, absolutely not interested in mathematical aspects of linguistics. I'm interested in the languages themselves and I still am. Okay, that's the explanation of philology. Well, what about the unusual background? Okay, you say unusual background, but I do believe that the unusualness or usualness is in some sense the eyes of the beholder or to be precise of the external beholder. What I mean is, it's a bit to try to say, but every human life is unique, especially seen from the inside. You might look like a boring doldrums and the standard kind of path to somebody else, but for each individual, that person is living only once and they're unique experiences and the experiences are not replaceable by anything else. And so I'm not sure that my experience is qualitatively different from other people's experience in that way. I mean, people struggle through various difficulties and have moments of joy and moments of discovery and sometimes they get fed up and they want to leave and then sometimes they come back and so on and so on. Okay, so I don't think it's that different. And the reason I'm telling this is, people should realize that their experience is unique and it's interesting if you make it interesting.   But one lesson that I drew from coming in from perhaps lots and lots of details, well, I'm not gonna tell you any lesson because I think it's up to you to discover, but let me kind of describe the other side of the coin. So clearly I started doing mathematics seriously quite late in life because I used to do something else. And that had interesting consequences. And again, I'm sorry to keep doing this, but I'm not going to describe those consequences, but let me describe the other side of the coin or the other side of the coin which sounds like the initial side of the coin. Most people in mathematics came into mathematics early. They say, well, typically in your teens, maybe age 13, 14, 15, you get really interested in mathematics and you start doing it. And the important point I'm going to raise and something that is for all of you to think about is that the phenomenon of child prodigy exists as far as I can see only in music and in mathematics. It's very difficult to think of child prodigies in other fields of human endeavor. For example, it's absolutely, it's clearly ridiculous to think about child prodigy in history, right? I mean, of course, no such thing exists. Or indeed in even in sports, I think the only sport where child prodigies can be argued exist is gymnastics. But that's not quite the same because now there's gymnastics for various reasons, not all of them desirable, started lowering the age. That means that young children perform very, very well. But when they grow up, they stop being able to perform because of various physical reasons. So that's not really a child prodigy phenomenon. It's just saying that the optimal age is low. And the child prodigy should mean, for example, like violinists and so on, that a child can do something that adult performers who are also professionals can do and even sometimes better and that's amazing and so on. And those child prodigies can continue to grow. And then when they become adults, they are also very competent performers and so on. I used the word performer. That's because I think child prodigies exist primarily as performers and the mathematical equivalent is problem solvers rather than theory builders and the music equivalent would be composers. It's truly Mozart was a child prodigy in composition. But on the whole, I think performers and problem solvers, the dominant types of child prodigy. And it's interesting, I think, that this phenomenon of child prodigy exists only in music and mathematics and correspondingly, people tend to come in quite early into music and mathematics. So that's a very interesting phenomenon to describe, which I would appear to suggest that these abilities to decode the structures behind music and mathematics might be innate in us or at least an evolved trait. Yeah, it's interesting. So I have no idea. One thing that is true, however, is that innate or not innate involves a lot of training. And the child prodigies are in some sense, well, maybe there's such a thing as talent, you know? But one necessary condition for a child prodigy to exist is the, shall I say, the temperament that could bear with long, long, long hours of enormous amounts of training. And sometimes it becomes an obsession. Well, by the way, in case somebody is going to raise an objection, yes, yes, I'm aware that the child prodigies exist in chess and Shogi, there's in fact a very famous Shogi player, Fujii, who's a high school student now in Japan and who's beating all the masters and then go and so on. But that's if you like a small variation on mathematics, right? I mean, in some sense. So that's part of what I'm describing. So I don't know about inertness and in fact I'm not entirely sure about what people call talent. You know, of course, I think human brain is a very complicated machine and it would be very surprising if there is no innate difference between one brain and another brain. After all, there are lots and lots of innate differences between one body and another body, right? But it's true, I have seen lots and lots of mathematics students in my own field and who are very talented and so on, so on by the standard judgment of the society. But ultimately, it seems to me that, again, on the whole, I'm simplifying. But ultimately, it's really the effort and how much you really like the subject that made the difference as to ultimate success. So I'm not such a great believer in talent. Maybe I'd rather use the word temperament. You see, because I found the, I'm digressing from your question but that's kind of the point of this interview. I find that people talk too much about genius and correspondingly to the phenomenon I mentioned of child prodigy in music and in mathematics, they talk about genius all the time. That's a dangerous word and I'm not sure that it's socially beneficial to talk about genius whether it exists or not, yeah? So I'm saying, well, maybe scientifically you can discuss the concept of genius but it certainly does more damage sociologically than it does good. For example, it's possible to argue and please don't shoot me that, well, you know, of course there are wonderful musicians and let's talk about Western classical music but wonderful musicians nowadays, obviously but they're all performers. Okay, okay, they're wonderful composers but don't we agree that compared with the time of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, a composition in classical music has gone down, right? On the whole. I think it's a fair assessment. I'm a lover of classical music but I think that's the assessment and it's possible to argue that the concept and the belief in genius killed classical music composition. It's extremely discouraging to be told, oh, you shouldn't compose unless you can be Beethoven, yeah? Because the basic, the concept of genius is an invention of the German idealistic philosophers. People didn't talk about genius before and people simply didn't have the concept and it wasn't part of people's thinking. So look at, for example, Italian baroque composers. You know, they didn't care about talent or genius but they're creating wonderful music just on the spot and, you know, they don't have to be tragic, they don't have to have a dramatic life. No, no, no, you just do it because you like it and the same with mathematics. I can say, you know, I'm fortunate enough to be friends and personally acquainted with some of the leading mathematicians of our age but I can say that I have never met a genius. They are all understandable. They are wonderful, wonderful people and they really loved what they're doing and their creations really, you know, open up a whole world for you and so on. But I don't think I ever met a genius. So it's, anyway, in practical terms it's much more useful to focus on other things. So that's why I'm skirting around your question of innate ability. So Oist, to go on on to a different track a little bit. Oist is by definition a very, very multicultural, multidisciplinary institution. And I'm wondering, as someone who has kind of done the opposite and sought out the world and worked in science across it, have you noticed a universality to the science that you see or is there like local variations and if so, how does that affect the approach to science in these different places? I think it's fair to state my predilection, let's say, my position in this kind of thing. Because I have lived in many countries and some of you might have heard the rumor that I know an insane number of languages and so on. And you might think I'm an internationalist but it's the contrary. You see, just as many people quite correctly worry about biodiversity, I get really emotional and upset about the whenever linguistic diversity, in particular, and cultural diversity in general, decreases, is threatened. And I do believe also that the history of evolution tells us that evolution happens and you get interesting diversity and interesting life forms because of speciation. Whenever diversity decreases than the one single species or single idea or single way of doing things that's taking over, usually the world is headed for destruction.  And they say, oh, you know, we obtain this. And that means that we have to do it this way. Every one should be behaving this way and so on and so on. And then they end up doing this. And in some sense, invention of money doomed us to go in that direction. But I do believe that that way lies madness. And in fact, for me, madness means that you abandoned diversity and you started doing every one started running in the same direction. And that's really dangerous. So I am actually a great partisan of people doing things their own cultural ways. And I don't want, for example, English to take over the entire world. And of course, you know, people say, but unless you write in English, you don't get much readership and then that's necessary for your tenure and for your promotion. Ah, yes, yes, we are talking about the same problem, right? Okay, so who can blame the young people for worrying about this kind of thing? But after I got the permanent position, I decided, and I always wanted to do this, to publish in languages other than English. It puts me in mind a little bit of some philosophy I read quite lightly, I have to admit, that said, something along the lines of that, language frames our perception of reality. Would you think that is true for our perception of science? Does language give a certain bent to the approaches that certain people speak? Well, on a superficial level, yes. In the sense that the different cultures, at least until recently, used to do science in different styles. Let's say, mathematics, which is supposed to be the most universal of these, because of course, if you do zoology or geology, things like that, which are geographically constrained, different countries might do things differently, but mathematics is indeed as universal as any human endeavor can get. But nonetheless, if you read, and apart from, of course, the language in which it was written, it's a giveaway, but the Russians write mathematics in a very, very different, write and think mathematics in a way very different from how Americans thought and wrote, and then French wrote mathematics and thought mathematics in a way very different from how the Japanese did and so on. And you could tell instantly which school, which culture it came from. And so much later, I would say. Another thing that I would say about language and mathematics and how the former friends later, it's a bit of the topic that you have in mind is pedagogical. Many people say, oh, mathematics is very difficult to learn, and sure it is, and it's probably one of the most difficult things that you can say. Besides, human brains are not really well adapted to mathematics, it's designed for doing other things. But a lot of mathematical difficulties that people encounter in mathematics are actually linguistic. For example, this is a bit too technical, but there's a definition, very, very precise way of thinking about the limits and continuity and so on, which goes under the name of epsilon and delta. So for every epsilon, there exists a delta such that, and blah, blah, blah. And this is a stumbling block for almost everyone. But when I came into mathematics as an adult already, you know, I taught myself mathematics, and when I came to epsilon delta, I felt no difficulty whatsoever. In fact, I didn't even notice that if it was supposed to be difficult. That's because I had been very rigorously trained in the use of languages as a linguist. And so, the idea that if you change the order quantifiers, of course the meaning changes completely. It was trivial, of course. I mean, compared with a task, difficult task of taking apart the syntax of, say, somebody like Fusilides, you know, whose sentence can continue for a page with subordinate clause upon subordinate clause. By the way, he writes really clearly, but in a complicated syntax. Well, compared with that kind of thing, the language of mathematics was very, very easy. I mean, there was nothing to it. I think the fact of matter is most people don't have sufficient mastery of their native language. They never had the experience. They don't have had enough, shall I say, a bit more gently, enough practice of careful use of their own native language. You know, do you speak really carefully, making sure that you understand absolutely everything that you are saying, and every word and every phrase counts? The answer is no, the people just blah, blah, blah, just talk away. So, if you have a really careful habit of careful use of language, it's my personal belief that most of the difficulties in mathematics will go away. And it's just that mathematics is an unforgiving subject where any misunderstanding, any lack of understanding shows immediately. Whereas in the rest of human endeavors, you can keep going by faking for quite a long time. So in that way, yes, the language frames how you understand mathematics, but in that very, very practical way, I think the best way to improve your chance of future advancing mathematics is to practice and improve your native language.  You ever make your subjects very accessible and exciting for an audience. What is your kind of approach to coming up with your communications philosophy? Again, I don't believe that I'm a good communicator, and I believe that lots of other people are simply very bad communicators. And the reason is I don't think other people are thinking. It's completely common sense. I have no intention of claiming any credit for what I do. If you think this passionately, and if your agenda is not some of the things that I described earlier in the interview, but if your agenda is to share surprises and to share, if possible, some of the joy and to make people understand, there are obvious things that you can do. And I'm very surprised that people are not doing it. And it's absolutely obvious to anybody. Well, think of it this way. If you just came back from a very nice trip, lots of adventures and lots of wonderful experience and so on, and you are relaxing one evening, shortly after you return with your family, and you tell the stories. Your family are drawn in, OK, they're on your side. And then you tell stories very well. And I can already hear, imagine hearing laughter and then clapping hands and gasps of breath and so on. Well, you are communicating very well because you have a certain agenda. And as an intelligent human being, you are communicating properly. Well, you do the same thing with science. It's not difficult at all. Absolutely not. It's, in fact, the onus is on the other side. Why are people so incompetent? Well, I can answer that question. I have answered the question a long time for myself, and I'm going to repeat myself. That's because their agenda is somewhere else. And now I'll be much gentler and compassionate. Who can blame them?  You want to have some position of socially recognized position, and of course, security and all that kind of thing. And this society requires that you communicate in a certain way, which is not at all, not at all the way science should be communicated if your agenda is not one of those. What still excites you about the work that you do? Now, that's also a curious question.  But you see, lots of people talk about, oh, that's a common question. What's exciting about your work? For example, when you write a research grant or something like that, you're supposed to describe what's exciting about your project and so on. On the other hand, there are lots of things that one does, which are essential, indispensable for survival, and which is foundational for everything else, about which people never ask, well, what's exciting about it? What's exciting about breathing, for example?  And if you stop breathing, you are no longer. What's exciting about it? It's not exciting, but I do breathe. And then, if there's fresh air, I enjoy breathing. And if it's all smoky, as it happens in California when there are wildfires, then you don't enjoy breathing. So you are aware of breathing sometimes. It's not that you're completely unconscious, you're invisible, but you don't ask that question. What's exciting about indeed living itself? Of course, there are ups and downs. There are dramas in life. But people don't live because it's exciting. People live because it's natural for them, because that's what they want to do, despite everything sometimes, or in some lucky cases, because of some things. But people live because it's a basic and natural way of existing as humans, as indeed biological creatures. And I would say that the scientists, when they are unhampered and unencumbered by those dictates of sociology, where you have to publish in certain ways because you want to enhance your career, because you want to achieve some status, because you want to ensure you have a certain standard of living. And so if they are doing science, where they do science, because almost they have to, because that's their existence. And for myself, I would say, I'm sorry to be a bit sentimental, but if I lost my job and I have to be able to live somehow, but let's say I assume that I have some kind of income, and I have to move to Antarctica and living in isolation, I think after, of course, the initial period of being, I'm really depressed and so forth, and why am I stuck here and so on, I think I'll end up doing science, because that's who I am. That's a question you've always wanted to be asked, but never have, and what's the answer to it? I would say it's a good question, I have the exact answer to that once. The question I wanted to be asked, and which I have never been asked, is what is the question you have been wanting to be asked, but you have not been asked? Professor Tokiira, thank you very much. Thank you for listening to the OIST podcast. Special thanks this week to Professor Takashi Tokiira. If you enjoyed the podcast, why not let the world know about it by leaving your rating or a review, and don't forget to subscribe to be updated whenever we release a new episode. Thank you for listening and see you next time.


What sorts of paintings will be hanging in the museums of the future? Agnieszka Pilat thinks we'll be looking at what she calls heroic portraits of machines, fine art renderings of the technology that freed the modern world from the bone-and-soul crushing labor that our parents and grandparents endured. Pilat's paintings, especially ones featuring SPOT, the Boston Dynamics robot dog, are sought after by Silicon Valley collectors drawn to her valorization of technology, a welcome alternative to the traditional demonization by artists of the man-made world. Her work is rich in callbacks to artists ranging from Da Vinci to Duchamp to Warhol, and she incorporates augmented reality to further highlight how technology shapes our perceptions. A sure sign of success, one of her paintings appears in the Matrix sequel released last year as a representation of art in the future. Born in Poland in 1973, Pilat remembers life under communism as an extended period of conformity and repression that ended almost immediately the moment that the Polish regime collapsed in 1989. She talks about how her father, able finally to operate his own shop, stopped drinking and built a prosperous bakery business. Pilat emigrated to the United States in the early 2000s, landing in San Francisco, where she encountered amazingly wealthy tech workers espousing the same collectivist ideas that had made her childhood so miserable. I was just really shocked, she recalls. I didn't realize that people still think that communism or socialism is a good idea. Moral outrage was growing within me and also a feeling that I need to protect America by telling people what it really means. Shortly after arriving in the States, Pilat stumbled across the work of another Eastern European immigrant. Though she didn't become an objectivist, Pilat responded viscerally to Ram's insistence that you have a right and a moral obligation to yourself to have a purpose and work towards the purpose as hard as you can. As her work gains in stature, Pilat is moving on to a new frontier, if not quite a final one. She's an artist in residence at Elon Musk's SpaceX, where she's looking forward to possibly producing super heroic portraits of machines in zero gravity. Reason talked with her in her New York studio about being upstage by a robot dog, why she wants everyone to remember what communism was really like, and how to best appreciate and protect the economic and cultural freedom we too often take for granted. Agnieszka Pilat, thanks for talking to reason. Thank you, Nick. Great to be here. So let's talk about Renaissance 2.0, a show that you had last fall. What are you trying to accomplish with portraits of machines? I generally describe it that I am a portrait painter, but to be relevant in today's story, the portrait you need to reflect whoever holds power. I like to say that if Andy Warhol were alive, he wouldn't be painting Marilyn Monroe, he'd be painting the machines. When you talk about that the machines hold power, how do you mean that? Sure, sure. I think I might probably call them like they're like benevolent dictators. So I think we are leaning to it and they have tremendous power in that sense, but it's by choice. I mean, the cell phone, we can turn it off anytime we want. So we choose to give them power. You say your patrons are actually the machines of the future. I work for the machine, not the man. Yes, my concept is that how I go to a museum today or you go to a museum today and you look at portraiture and you think these are my ancestors. I want to believe that if artificial intelligence and thinking machines progress 100 years from now, 200 years from now, they're going to come and look at the portraits I painted of all their machines and they're going to think these are our ancestors. So in that sense, I feel like I'm building Museum of the Future. One of the pieces of technology you've been working with for a while now is spot, the Boston Dynamics robot. Can you describe it? Sure. So a spot is what's technically is called quadruple robot or cobot, which is a robot that's meant to cooperate with humans. I describe it as a walking drone. It has built in artificial intelligence, but more so athletic intelligence means it really understands the environment very well. So it's got like sensors in its eyes that where it's taking in data and information from its surroundings. Correct. And you can put on top of it what's called load and one of the load is a robotic arm. And so when I work with spot, when I paint, that's what we use, the robotic arm. How do you control spot? When I paint, I really like operating it manually. So it's almost like an extension of my arm. So it's like being back in art school, but you're the teacher. Yeah. Yeah, correct. That's why the pieces are also kind of like almost like children finger painting because spot is really embryonic artist. Just learning. How obvious is that this was painted by a human and this was painted by a machine? Yeah, so they're very different. My work is what I would call contemporary realism and spot works is pure abstraction. It's very line driven and I appreciate having fun with the technology because allowed me to enter that space of abstraction without feeling like I'm a sellout and I'm trying to, you know, do what's popular.  I think spot is the first celebrity robot if Warhol were alive. He'd be totally like obsessed with spot because spot is the celebrity. He'd be painted with spot instead of Basquiat. I think so. I think so. Yeah, definitely. Or Pollack. One of your best known paintings of spot is a pastiche or homage to nude descending a staircase. How does Duchamp fit into your kind of painterly world? When I was at Boston Dynamics and I I went there just with an intention of painting a portrait of spot. But then when I saw the robot go up and down the stairs, it was just instantly for me, oh, this is a Duchamp moment and I have to innovate. So I'm very grateful to Duchamp for that moment for me. And that's why I started doing augmented reality because I thought, OK, the painting has to be really very innovative. It was the first augmented reality painting in my career and it changed me a lot. You were born in Poland and you grew up there. What was the first piece of technology that you were like, oh, my God, I am entranced by this walkman. Yeah, do you remember time when you put the walkman out and you start talking very loud? Oh, this is so great. I remember my brother had a walkman and yeah, and I remember that moment putting it on your parents or a friend. And all of a sudden they're screaming out loud. But I till today I remember the experience. You were born in 1973. So you remember communism, which oftentimes figured kind of citizens as cogs in a machine. Talk a little bit about what was it like to grow up in communist Poland? Let me tell you a story of how I grew up. It's a Christmas morning and we wake up and my mom is running around and very unhappy. I'm like, well, what happened? I overslept. I looked, she looked out the window, look at the line in front of the grocery store. There's a huge line by the time I get there. This is going to be the worst Christmas. Everything is going to be sold out. It's horrible. But this was during the Marshall State, so there was curfew. So you were not allowed to be on the street before, I don't know, eight a.m. or something, but people would line up quietly because they wanted to get food. And that morning at least came with big vans. They put everyone in the vans. My mom in the window was like, oh, my God, this is the best thing ever. She got dressed fat and she was the first in the store. And I remember that Christmas like the best Christmas ever because she was like for tonight she could buy anything.  They wouldn't keep the so they would do they would do annoying things because Poland wasn't that violent, but they would drive you out in the countryside. They let you out. You have to walk all the way home for like hours.  So they weren't like political enemies, but we're going to teach you a lesson. Wow. What else you remember about Poland before the before the end of the communist regime? I remember just lack of hope, like to look for the future. It didn't matter. You worked a lot or a little. You were paid the same. So I remember the despair from in my father's life drinking. And then I remember 89 when market economy opened up and Poland did something pretty interesting. They really let people buy out businesses they worked for on pretty good terms. My entire life, family life changed from one day to another because they just became such a good team and and they build a wonderful business within 10 years. You came to the U.S. in the early aughts 2004 and you headed to San Francisco. How did you feel about San Francisco when you got there? I mean, it was great. I love the weather and all that. But I was very confused about, like, kind of cultural and political views people held in the valley and especially in San Francisco in the city itself at first was like surprise, disappointment and then like call to arms, actually. So talk about that. What when you say you were surprised by the views that people held, what do you mean? I didn't realize that people still think that communism or socialism is a good idea. People in Silicon Valley as a whole, their ideal is very much aligned with what I consider very immoral system. They grew up in Poland, so they're very generous. So it kind of reflects American spirit of being generous and charity. What they don't understand is that it doesn't work in practical terms. And then they don't come in turn with their own guilt, that they have guilt, that they've done well. I guess this is a good place to mention that you also encountered Ayn Rand and you told writer from New York Magazine recently that I would not be the artist that I am without that book, meaning Atlas Shrugged. What is the message that you drew from her work? This was the first time I saw a moral justification for capitalism. And I always knew capitalism worked because I saw it from my childhood. I saw communism, I saw the transition. I saw it from my whole community. What's the essence of that moral defense? That I think that your obligation is to you first. I mean, Rand Rand connects a lot, a lot to politics. Her moral system were more interesting to me, actually. In a sense, again, that you have a right and a more obligation to yourself to have a purpose and work towards the purpose as hard as you can. People who are buying your paintings and whatnot, they are tech lords, right? You know, they are a cent of millionaires, if not billionaires. Are you flattering them by kind of not pointing portraits of them, but of technology and machines in a way that makes them the new aristocracy? Well, as artists, I would have to say we always work for patrons. That's what we do, unless and I don't want to be a starving artist. So patrons are very important to me and patronage is very important to me. And Michelangelo, he worked for a patron too. And I would argue the best artists always work for patrons. Is that also because the patrons end up loving the artwork and they give you a lot of freedom? Yes, correct. They come, they see something, appreciate something you're at. And it's a symbiotic relationship. I'm not flattering them. I'm telling the story I believe in. And I think they see that story on every part of that story. You also said that, and I'm quoting here from New York magazine, they're all egomaniacs, they're all wrapped up in themselves. It's like talking to a fish out of water. They just don't get it. What does that mean? OK, so I have to say that that quote was a bit, you know, it was a long conversation I had with Sean, who is great, the writer. And it's hard for them to relate to day to day staff and they shouldn't. I mean, I had the conversation with actually Richard Branson and I made the case to him that I think he contributes so much to humanity, not just in terms of the economic value, but he's so inspiring. I think the culture of resentment and egalitarianism to the top absurdity. I'm very much against that. I think some people are leaders and their whole life is about contributing. And it's OK if they are, you know, have a bit or more economic value. I don't resent that. And it sounds cheesy, but I love America. This is my service to America as an immigrant from Eastern Europe.  I want to be sell and successful because that's the only way for the work to be seen. And that's ultimately why I paint because I want to tell that story. And that's the only thing we have control over. And we have to learn to get value just from that. What's next for you? You're going to be an artist in residence for a space company, right? Yeah, I am in conversation with SpaceX. So my machines, I call them portrait of machines or heroic portrait of machines. And I want to do what's a super heroic portrait of machine. So that has to be space. And when you say do something in space, you're hopefully you'll be going into space when creating in a zero gravity or upper orbit. Well, I don't know about that. We'll see what happens for now. All the first step I really want to do is to just go to to Texas and see technology from up close, see what excites me about it. You would you would go in space if you could. If I could, yeah, I would think twice about it. That's the ultimate migration, right? The ultimate migration, yes, true, true. Yeah, yeah, I think we're going to leave it there. Agnieszka Palat, thanks so much for talking to me. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.


The study concluded that parental involvement in physical activities has a strong correlation with their children's participation in physical culture. Parents' education and socioeconomic status are also important factors in determining whether or not they will encourage their children to participate in physical activities. This article was authored by Aligius Medeczki, Editha Giza, and Przhemislav Medeczki.


Hello everyone, welcome back to another session in dentistry and more. Today we have a topic from Prostadontics but sometimes it is also asked in conservative dentistry that is CAD-CAM. So CAD-CAM is a field of dentistry mainly Prostadontics where the computer either design and computer manufacturing is used to improve the design and creation of dental restorations especially the dental processes which includes crowns, onlays, vinnies, inlays, the bridges, dental implant supported restorations, maybe removable and fixed, dentures, orthodontic appliances all those things. So this technology, this CAD-CAM technology allows the delivery of a well-fitting aesthetic and a durable processes for the patient. So conventionally we were using the lost wax technique. So lost wax technique in the production of metal castings or frameworks, their accuracy is greatly influenced by the properties of the impression materials, investment and casting alloy. This is nothing but a method of metal casting in which a molten metal is poured into a mold that has been created by means of a wax model. So once the mold is made the wax model is melted and drained away. So with the lost wax modeling method the fit of a crown of the dye can be satisfactory but there are chances of errors and same time it is time consuming. So in order to replace this time consuming and the method which has got errors we have computers to replace these designs and processing that is nothing but CAD-CAM. So we create milled restorations with accurate fit digitalization of the prepared tool surface and converting these data into signals for the computer assisted milling. So this CAD-CAM technology which was developed in the late 1980s for dentistry which incorporates milling technology and it significantly reduced or eliminated problems associated with dental castings. Now the CAD-CAM production concepts depending on the location of the components of the CAD-CAM system we have three different production concepts that is JSA production or laboratory production or centralized fabrication in a production center. So what are the components of CAD-CAM? So this is the most crucial part of CAD-CAM that is it has got three sections the first one is a data collecting tool or scanner it is just like the impression method what we commonly do in clinics but here we have scanner in order to take the impression or collect the data. The second part is designing software that is like will be done by the computer or software and finally the processing device. So this is will be a summary of the three techniques this is a scanner we use to record the impression then the computers with help of softwares will determine all the required data then it will be transferred to the milling unit and finally the product will be ready. So the first one is scanner it includes the data collection tools that measure three-dimensional joe and two structures this is just like how we take a three-dimensional impression using alginate using impression components a pretty impression so here we are using scanners and these data we transform into digital data sets so there are two different scanning possibilities one is optical and then the mechanical scanners the optical one is commonly used involves a connection of 3d structures in a so-called triangulation procedure so this is like software and it is more of a technological side so more than dentistry to understand this topic we need to have a knowledge about the computers its softwares and how it works so i'm not going in detail about those parts i'm just giving a brief idea about the concept the components and how it is done in CADCAM so this triangulation procedure or when using optical scanners the source of light and the receptor unit are in a definite anchor and which relationship to in the relationship to one another and this white light projections or a laser beam act as a source of illumination the second one is a mechanical scanner here there is no light instead the master cast is read mechanically line by line by means of a ruby ball and the three-dimensional structure measure so this is like mechanically we are doing without any help of the lights so this is a ruby ball which is measuring or which is recording the impression or in the cast that is three-dimensional structure will be read mechanically line by line so this type of scanner is distinguished by a high scanning accuracy but by the diameter of the ruby ball is said to the smallest grinder in the milling system so this is a ruby ball which will be attached to this one and this will record line by line with three-dimensional details so the problem so with this mechanical scanning is it is very expensive and long processing times will be taken compared to the optical system the second part that is the designing of the impression or the design designing or converting this data into a final model so this is equal to the all the procedures which is done in the lab that is investing wax pattern all those things so with the help of software this crown and fpds frameworks can be constructed some systems also offer the opportunity to design full anatomical crowns partial crowns in lace in lace retain fpds and telescopic primary crowns so the software is available in the market it is regularly updated this is an example of a software the data will be transferred to this software and here we create our final model and later this will be transferred to the mill so that is what I was saying it needs a more of a technical skill than a dental knowledge this is mostly a software thing which can be done by a software expert so there are various types of software is available in the market so the data of the construction can be stored in various data formats the basic format is a standard transformation language of stl data but many manufacturers will use their own data formats specific to that particular manufacturer now the processing device it is a final part where the actual product is created so the construction data produced with CAD software are converted to the milling strips for the cam processing there is a computer added machine processing and finally loaded into milling device so the device processing device are distributed by means of the number of milling accesses there are three times one is three access four access and five access devices so this is a milling device where the three access milling devices so this type of milling device has a degrees of movement in a three spatial direction that is x y z so this mill path points are uniquely defined by the x y and z values so a milling of subsections access divergence and convergence is not possible this demands a virtual blocking all those access divergence and convergence area so the advantage is that it is a short milling time and simplified control also these devices are less costly than those with a higher number of access so this is a basic type of milling device now we have uh this is three access i hope you can see this three access next one is four access milling devices in addition to three spatial accesses the tension bridge for the component can also be turned infinitely variable so as a result it is possible to adjust the bridge constructions with a large vertical height displacement into the usual mold dimension so that part will be added as a fourth access okay so it saves material and milling time so you can see x y z and a so this a is nothing but a vertical height displacement dimension so in five access milling devices in addition to three spatial dimensions and the rotatable tension bridge that is a fourth access the fifth access milling device has the possibility of rotating the milling spindle this enables the milling of complex geometries with complex shapes such as denture brace resins so this is a most sophisticated uh milling device that is five access milling device now we have the milling types two types are there one is a dry processing and wet processing in dry milling process it is applied mainly with respect to zirconium oxide blanks with a lower degree of pre-sintering the advantage is a minimal investment cost for the milling device no moisture absorption by the dye zirconium oxide mold but the disadvantage is higher shrinkage value for the framework but as a wet milling process the milling diamond or carbide cutter is protected by a spray of cold liquid against the overheating of the melt material so there will be a splashing of water so this is useful for all metals and glass ceramic material in order to avoid damage through heat development so this wet processing is recommended if zirconium oxide ceramic with a higher degree of pre-sintering is employed for the milling process so 3d printing also comes with this CAD cam so it is another manufacturing approach to build objects one layer at a time and adding multiple layers to form an object is also known as additive manufacturing or rapid prototyping this is very commonly used 3d printing to recreate the last orofacial structures so it may be used for the fabrication of metal structures either directly either indirectly by printing in resins of access for a lost wax process or directly in metals or metal alloys like fpd, rpd and polymerized processes and silicon processes so the materials normally processed by CAD cam systems includes metals, resin materials, silica base ceramics, in-filter ceramics and oxide ceramics so that was all about CAD cam this was a very brief idea of CAD cam the components its milling processes and the design so the milling designs and the components and this processing device then the designing software then the scanners and the three types of production so it was not an in-detailed session about CAD cam the CAD cam can be taken in 100 slides of a one hour because it involves a lot of technical side to explore about the software and all those milling processes this mainly to write a short note or short essay in university question paper hope you understood the brief idea of CAD cam designing and milling so i'll come up with a new topic in the industry and more thank you