Our next caller is Jessica from BC Canada. Hey Jessica, how can we help you? Hey guys, how's it going? So just a little background on me and my story. So I used to be a chronic overtrainer and under-eater. As a result, I gave myself some pretty bad gut issues and also lost my menstrual cycle for about six years. As a result of that, I had such low bone density that I ended up breaking a bone. So that was kind of my eye-opening turning point. So that was about two years ago. I totally reworked my brain around how I train and how I feed myself and my nutrition. But in the process of that, I fell in love with multiple types of training. So I started out more like bodybuilding type training, like split training, moved into more of like functional training you could call it, lots of kettlebell work, almost like CrossFit, barbell free weights, all that kind of stuff. I'm also a spin instructor, so I love to obviously the cardio aspect. Another thing as I tend to enjoy like battle ropes, hit training, burpees, all that kind of fun stuff. More recently, since listening to you guys, I got into strength training, more focusing on like that kind of four rep range and all my main lifts. So I guess my question for you guys is, what program of yours would you suggest for me? I do have a kinesiology trainer background, so I do tend to write my own programs and I just can't follow one. I start doing it and then I get in the gym and I'm just like kind of all over the place. So I need some help. Jessica, do you want us to be very direct and straight about this or do you need soft gloves? I need direct. Okay, so I think spinning CrossFit's a terrible idea for you. I think you should be as far away from that as possible. You've already mentioned that you had issues with that in the past, you're flirting with that right now. You're an alcoholic who's hanging out at a bar. Yeah. There's no reason why and the program that's best for you is something like PowerLift. You know, it's a program that's completely focused around, you know, your performance and strength and not around your body, your body image, not around anything of high intensity whatsoever. It's literally just about getting stronger. So if I was going to recommend like one of our programs, what it would look like, it would be like a PowerLifting type of program. And I would ask you to get rid of your spinning class. I would ask you to avoid the classes, avoid the battle ropes, all that crap that doesn't, you don't need that. It's the complete opposite of what you need.  It's really hard, right? When you're in that, you have that state of mind. It's going to be something that you're probably going to be challenged with probably forever. It's very common with people that work in the fitness space. And so one of the best strategies is to take this focus that you have. And it sounds like you have tremendous focus on this particular feeling that exercise provides or maybe the results that you're looking for. I'm looking. Take it and move it to something else because just not having it isn't going to work. It's going to come back. So what you might want to do is take it and focus on strength. So you can become very fanatical about working out hard, doing lots of exercise, dieting. Take that and see if you can direct it towards, can I see how strong I can get? Let's see how strong I can get with squats, with deadlifts, with bench presses, with overhead presses. Now that's not where you're going to stay. Okay, so I want to be clear. If you get too crazy with that, that can become a problem as well. But it is a place that you can shift for the time being. It's going to allow you to exercise in a way that you're probably going to benefit from and it's going to allow you to eat in a way that you'll probably benefit from because it's hard to get stronger by eating too few calories or by under eating. Okay, now once you're there, here's the deal. Okay, I'm going to be very straight with you. The mental component is going to be the challenging component for you. I highly recommend you work with a counselor or a therapist and talk about this. This is a behavior that's going to continue to, you're going to have to continue to work on. It's going to plague you. And the more stress you're under in life, the more challenge that life provides to you, the more likely you are to move in that direction. And you probably already noticed that pattern.  I work out more. I work out harder or I can control my diet. That's what I can control. Everything feels out of control. So I'm not going to eat.  I'm going to be disciplined or whatever. However, you spin it on yourself. So focus on strength.  Put it on strength. And then work with someone once a week and talk about this. This is not something that's going to fix itself. It's something that's going to require a little time. I'm never going to tell somebody they shouldn't do counseling because I think everybody can benefit from counseling. But I also think she's the type of, sounds like a type of person that you have incredible focus and discipline. You just need to shift it. You just need to shift it away. Yeah. That's really what you do. Yeah, for sure. So I actually have gone through counseling and all that kind of stuff in regards to like my body image and how I like go about nutrition. And I've definitely come a long way.  It will be something that's kind of inside of me forever. But I've definitely, my focus when I train isn't even on how I look.   Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think that's why, you know, Adam's original advice of power left. I think that's a good fit for where you're at right now. And mainly the rest periods, I mean, in the recuperative side of that is really measuring that. Being disciplined and really leaning into that a bit and seeing how that then progresses your strength. I think if you can kind of really get in that mindset of what am I doing for my body the most to get it to recuperate, to regenerate, to be able to produce more power in your lifts and to be able to measure that, track that, because I think that being busy is great, but directing that in a healthy fashion is going to be part of your success. Well, Jessica, you sound like a great, I would love for you. So Doug's going to send you over on MAPS Power Lift. So he'll send that over to you. And you're the type of person I would love to hear back from you as you go through it. So please keep us in the loop as you go through it. Do your best to stick to just that and get good at that. And then I would love to hear updates from you as you go through that on your bench, squad, deadlift and know how that whole process is going for you. Okay, amazing. All right, thanks for calling. Thanks guys so much. No problem.  But the question is, I'm struggling. I need to do all this high intensity exercise. Right, right, right. So the self-awareness is I've had this issue in the past. The self-awareness is not. This is an issue that I have right now that I need some, maybe some of that help again. And it's, look, you're in the gym.  Very, very challenging. Exercise is good for you. So you don't want to tell someone to not exercise unless it's an extreme situation. But it's going to be that. It's going to be that constant conversation because what will happen is she'll work out, she'll follow power lift, she'll rest for two minutes or three minutes in between sets. And then she'll be like, I need to feel that intensity. I need to add some more. I need to go crazy. Well, that's the challenge and that's the discipline that, look at that as the training. If she can really shift the focus more on that aspect of it and not so much the tangible of like, I'm lifting more weights and I'm getting all fired up from that, more like how to really read your body in the signals. I love a client like this because she's got, she has the education, so she understands. So she knows, she has the self-awareness that she's already put herself through counseling. I think she's already made leaps and bounds in the right direction and she knows where she needs to be. And you take someone like that that's extremely disciplined and you just channel that in a different direction as far as their focus. And I think she'll see tremendous results and have a ton of success. So I love people like this because I feel like they're much easier than somebody who has been making excuses for decades of why they don't want to take care of themselves. In some ways, it could be challenging. I mean, I actually had a client who went from an anorexic, who started abusing anabolic steroids. So they went from one direction, it was a guy, he was an anorexic before. And then he channeled his focus to building muscle, but then it went in that direction, it went crazy and extreme. It can happen with performance too. Well, yeah, you're right. You're absolutely, but she's also aware of it. So a lot of times people like that that make a shift aren't aware of their issue. They just, oh, I need to get away from this and I'm going to go a different direction and they go one extreme to another. So, and that's why I said, I'll never tell somebody they don't need to be counseling. I mean, everybody I think would benefit from seeing a counselor or having a professional to talk to. All of us would, right? So I'm never going to say not to do that, but I also think that she's in a good place, especially since she has that experience, she is self-aware, she has the education. She's got a channel in a different direction.


My name's Simon Donner, I'm an associate professor of climatology at the University of British Columbia, and I work on several aspects of climate change, but mostly the impacts of climate change on marine systems, on coral reefs and coastlines, and also on how we can adapt to those changes in the developing world. One of the things I've been interested in over the years is sort of the root causes of what can make people skeptical about the basic science for climate change, or even just make them just not concerned about the problem. And there's tons of good research from psychologists and everything on this, and I've really been curious about the root causes, and where it comes from for me is really just, I live in a city that's, we're lucky we're on the ocean, we have mountains here in Vancouver, and what do people do in Vancouver? They go climb up in the mountains to take a view out over the ocean, and why is that exciting? Because it's vast and it's huge, and it's, you know, ponderous moments. You see the, you know, the grandness of nature and of the earth, and it is, we're looking at things that seems beyond human power. And so I started really thinking about where that comes from. And if you go back and look at most of the major religions, major belief systems and whatnot, the land is the thing that humans control, and the sky is sort of the domain of the gods, and that's sort of the research that I've been doing, and a couple papers about it, but I'm also sort of trying to write a book about this. And the idea is that really our modern relationship with the climate started, you know, around 10,000 years ago when we first developed agriculture and settled into cities, because we went from being hunters and gatherers to being people who depended on the rain to provide food. And that was a really fundamental shift, and really like a paradigm shift in the way, not just we live, but we viewed the world, is that we needed to, we could control the land, but we had to depend on whatever it was that controlled the sky to, you know, provide us with rain, to provide us, you know, with fertility, basically. And I guess what I've kind of been tracking is the ways in which just this sort of really basic assumption that this climate in the sky of an outside of human control for thousands of years, you know, still influences the way we think today, you know, and it doesn't mean that just because you're religious, you're not going to believe in climate change, because it's not actually about religion so much, it's just about the vastness, you know, in history, what we're used to controlling or we're not used to controlling, and you really see sort of the tentacles of that ancient belief in a lot of, you know, sort of skepticism about climate change, the way people think about adaptation and whatnot today. So this does, of course, vary a little bit depending on the cultures, and there's been some good research, you know, pointing out that, you know, the sort of theory I'm presenting doesn't obviously apply to everyone. And in fact, a lot of what different cultures have been trying to have been sort of developed over the years is a way to control the sky by sort of communicating with the gods that lived in the sky, right? It's the idea that you could think of it instead as, well, it's not the sky's outside of direct human control, but we can kind of indirectly control it because we have a sort of religious or belief infrastructure that we use to do that. I should say that what's really telling, and you know, they have to speak to religious historians, which I'm not really about, about that, is that, you know, the major Semitic religion, so Judaism, Christianity, you know, in Islam, come from a part of the world and a time in place where everything was very drought-prone. And so that is where the major civilizations in much of, so the Westernized world today come from and grow out of this, of a place where we were really dependent on the supernatural to provide the weather and the climate for us. So it is true, there's a lot of research today, fantastic research from communications experts, psychologists, et cetera, showing all of the different things to sort of factor into people being skeptical or becoming sort of denialists of climate change and whether it's, whether it's legiosity, it's about your political views, all these sort of different things, they come into play. And I would say that the theory I've sort of put forward, it's not necessarily adding, you know, an extra item to the regression analysis. It's actually what I think underlies some of all this. So if you want to know why does politics influence things? Why does being left on the political spectrum versus right on the political spectrum influence things? What I'm sort of proposing is almost independent of all of that and is trying to like just go into the historical explanation. So, you know, personally the inspiration for thinking about this came from working in other cultures. I do field research, the scientific field research in the Pacific Islands and was really struck by a few different things that I've learned from staying in villages in Fiji and having people talk to me about what happens when there's a drought that people blame the minister or they blame each other for not being devout because they prayed for the rain at the planting festival, it should have rained, right? But also the fact that, you know, people I've met in Kiribati is very common, this is in the central Pacific, really low-lying islands. And these people are learning today that the sea level is supposed to be rising because of climate change and the old men generally don't believe it because there's a covenant in the Old Testament saying the, you know, the seas will never rise again, right? And the story of Noah from Genesis. And so it may be that all, you know, of course all these other factors come into play in defining exactly somebody's modern opinion on climate change, but I'm just saying that there's these thousands of years of history that we should take into account as well. And really what I've taken away from all of it is almost a bit of I'm probably quite forgiving to people that are ardent denialists of climate change in a way that I think upsets a lot of other scientists. But the reason is I'm just saying from a historical perspective, it's not that crazy because for thousands of years it would have been really hard to believe that we could affect the climate. And it's just taking time to transition away from that. It's a really tough paradigm shift. So how should scientists respond and interact with climate denialists? You know, when it comes to actually speaking to, you know, dealing with an individual climate, climate denialist, I don't know that there's a perfect recipe as to what to do. What I, the only thing I advocate is humility. And if you think about it, like if you didn't have the chance, you know, I'm lucky I studied atmosphere and ocean sciences in school, right? If you don't have the chance to sit through and do radiative physics and fluid dynamics classes, right, for years, which is not necessarily something people all want the chance to do, you're going to learn about climate change from like a half an hour public seminar from an item you, items you hear on the news, right? You're not really going to be immersed in the subject. And I think it's, we need to accept that, you know, a 20 minute presentation you give isn't going to be able to upend thousands of years of thinking in the other direction.  And it might be really hard for you to change that person's mind and that's okay. Because if you really think through the history, you can't expect to change things overnight. And I always think about sort of Darwin and the theory of evolution, right?  And people are still fighting about whether they can teach creationism in schools. And so one of the things that I think anyone who just follows the news about climate change as I do, it's my area of interest, I do research in the area. So I, and it's hard not to notice how it seemed anecdotally to me like things like when it's been a warm winter, you hear a lot more about climate change in the news is particularly in Canada, where it's really striking if the winter is warm. And, and there has been a fair number of fair amount of psychological research, where basically pulling people to see what their opinions are about climate change. After after, you know, the previous day was warm or cold. So you call people up say what was the weather last day and do analysis like that. And there's also been experiments, which I just think are fantastic, which where they literally turn the temperature up in a room and discovered that if it's hotter in the room, people are more concerned about climate change, which is just fascinating to me. And I'm oversimplifying the experiment. But so I actually worked with just an undergraduate student of mine, a really sharp guy named Jeremy McDaniels, to look at, you know, to what extent can we see that effect in the data from opinion polls. Now the trick with this, of course, is that opinion polling on climate change is only done, you know, every every year or so. And so we just wanted to see whether the large scale swings in climate was it a warm year or cold year overall? Did it move with public opinion and statistically speaking, it seemed to in the data we analyzed. And so we went sort of the next step and looked at opinion pieces like op ed pieces in newspapers, and classified them as sort of whether they agreed with the scientific consensus or disagreed with the scientific consensus on climate change, and tried to see did that vary with temperature. And it also did, which was really interesting. And when I say what temperature, we're talking about nationally average temperatures in the US. And so I think really what that in what those relationships are saying was that the variability in climate is one of the things that drives public opinion about climate change. And it might be through the sort of mechanisms that the experimental psychologists are finding that it's literally hotter and then you think about it more. But I think my sense was it because you're seeing this influence in the newspapers as well, that I think what's happening is it's sort of more just the movement of the like sort of the issue public, getting excited about an issue, getting less excited about an issue and whatnot. And there's a sort of a feedback effect. So it doesn't have to be warm where you are. But if the country as a whole has been warm, it's going to get reported in the paper, you're going to read about that. That's going to influence your thinking. And then when you got a call from the pollster, you might answer the question differently. Now that again is only going to be for a small fraction of the public, because for whose views on climate change are actually malleable, because you've got a good chunks on either end of the spectrum whose views aren't really changing over time. The take home I got out of the statistical analysis we did of the op-ed pieces and of opinion polls and temperature was really that there's give in the sort of public, average reported public opinion on climate change and goes up and down. They're not huge swings, but there was statistically meaningful and detectable using basic measures. And the best way to make sense of it in our analysis was that there's kind of like a climate change swing voter, that there's sort of people in the middle that depending on the conditions and those conditions might be a change in temperature, but there might be other current events as well. Whatever else is going on in the news, they may say, oh, you know what, I am concerned. I am worried about climate change now, whereas the next year they may not be. And, you know, we call them climate change swing voters, but as far as I understand, there are other papers that have done analyses like this and have found that, you know, people are sort of in the independent part of the political spectrum. So neither left nor right, those are the ones whose opinions were most likely to change with temperature. So it kind of gels with our findings. I should say that there's been more recent publications that kind of challenged the relationship we found. So I don't think the verdict is 100 percent that, you know, that climate variability number one is a number one driver, but I think it definitely plays a role. Could you talk about how different types of El Nino affect, like short-term surface temperature trends? We're getting everything in. I traveled a long way, I'm going to get as much as I can. So one of the areas that the research that we've been doing in my lab for a while is on El Nino events, but on sort of the typology of El Nino events. And there's a lot of scientists, folks in Japan, folks in the United States and elsewhere, that are saying we maybe should be classifying El Nino events into different types, or sometimes they say flavors, which I like that term. And the classification we're generally using is sort of the classic Eastern Pacific El Ninos, the events that most people are used to, like the big 1997-98 event. That's the classic definition, but we also have these events that are where the warm water temperatures are mostly found in the Central Pacific, and people refer to them in the United States as Central Pacific events, or warm pool events in Japan. They're called Madoki events, and Madoki means, is a Japanese word that means same, but different, basically. The non-El Nino events are created equal, and mostly centers around where the abnormally warm water is in the Pacific. Is it right across from the east to the center? Is it just in the east? Is it just in the center? And how does that affect, like, so the average temperature of the planet?  And what's come out of our research really clearly is that the Eastern Pacific events, which are the real classic events, like the big 1997-98 El Nino event, they are globally warm. You can do the statistical analysis and show those years in which, after those events form, are warmer than all of the years on average. But if you actually take out the Central Pacific events only, they're not warmer than average. And so it's really just saying that the old line that a lot of climate scientists use saying, oh, it's an El Nino year, it's going to be warmer than normal, isn't actually always true. It's true for certain types of El Nino events, and it's actually the other types of events are not abnormally warm. And I think what's really relevant about that now is that we haven't been having those large Eastern Pacific El Nino events in the past 15 years. We've had a number of El Ninos, but they've been on the Central Pacific variety. And so every time one of these things starts developing, people start saying, oh, next year is going to be really warm because we have an El Nino event developing. But they need to take into account it's not like the big monster Eastern Pacific events. And the Pacific Ocean's been in a state over the past 15 years because of longer term variability that it's hard to generate those big Eastern Pacific events. And so we get the Central Pacific ones, which aren't globally warm. And if you add it all up and do the math, it helps explain why the rate of temperature change on the surface has been slower the past 15 years. And the Pacific Ocean state's going to change pretty soon. We'll go back into a place where it's easy to create those Eastern Pacific El Nino events and the rate of global warming will increase again. This year has been really fascinating, I think, for all the obsessive El Nino geeks like me. We've been looking at the temperature updates every few days basically to see what's happening in the Pacific. We had, I think, back in May and June, ocean temperatures developing in a way in the Pacific that made it look like this was going to be one of the big Eastern Pacific monster events. And it isn't. It is not going to turn into that. What we have right now is, depending on who you ask, could be classified as an El Nino event. The Japanese government agency that does this work says, yes, it's an El Nino event. None of the US agencies has declared it one as yet. And it's because this is one of these sort of mild in between events. Until the data is all in, six months from now, I can't say for sure. But just looking at this week's temperatures, it's December right now, it looks to me like what we would call a mixed event. Where the pocket of warm water is sort of in between the center and the Eastern Pacific. But it doesn't, it's not going to stay seated way over into the east over the Galapagos and everything. And now those, those big events like that, those are the ones that really drive a global temperature. I do expect though that this mixed event, it's got enough warmth in it that we are seeing a global impact from it. And I wouldn't be surprised if 2015 ends up being the warmest year ever. But 2014 will, depending on the agency, because there's different climate data sets, will, some will list it as the warmest year ever, you know, in other, in other data sets it will get the silver, the bronze, but it's going to be pretty close. It's going to be a photo finish, basically right. And you know, a lot of people think it's pretty amazing because this hasn't been a full El Nino year. And, you know, although the globe is warming, we've got this noise, you know, of ups and down variability on top of that noise. And so generally the records tend to get broken when we have a strong El Nino year. But you don't need El Nino to do it, right, because the globe is warming anyways. And I think what's happened is that, especially the past 15 years, we haven't had a really strong big El Nino, Eastern Pacific El Nino event. The ones that really drive global average temperature up. We've had these central Pacific ones that don't have much influence. Do you have advice for scientists who are struggling to find a balance between doing science and advocacy? You know, one of the things I talk, I talk about science and advocacy a lot with my graduate students, but also just with people around the university at UBC.  Should I go to this event? Should I be part of a protest? How will it affect my career? How will it affect science? And, you know, my advice is always just to be thoughtful about it. And in fact, it'd be almost thoughtful about it.  Do your research, read up on what are the impact, you know, there's so much psychological communications research these days. What is the impact of doing this activity? Will I be effective at engaging with people given my background? Really do the research and really do the self analysis. I think one of the mistakes we make is just not thinking enough about ourselves and our motivations and recognizing when, you know, maybe you want to speak about an issue because you are an expert, but maybe you're also personally motivated for some other reason. And if you're going to be doing that, that's okay. But you should be aware of it. Yeah. What do we need to do to save coral reefs? Most of my research over the past 10 years has been on climate change and coral reefs. And, you know, I get asked all the time, but what we should do to save coral reefs? And the stock answer is, well, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid ocean acidification and frequent bleaching events. But in the meantime, we can work to help make reefs more resilient by reducing terrestrial runoff and reducing overfishing and everything. And that is absolutely true. I mean, we want to do everything we can locally to make reefs more resilient. But I think we have to be careful with pushing that message too hard because it's true that you can make reefs more resilient to bleaching, for example, by by reducing all these local stressors. But in the end, if we are on the business as usual trajectory we're on, it's hard to envision a world in which there's many corals left a hundred years from now. And that's not just our modeling answering it. It's fieldwork, it's geology. You can look at reef gaps in the historical record. And so it's not to say we should give up on conservation. But I think people who work on reefs that want to care about their future have to be talking about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It's just unavoidable. You know, I think like a lot of people who went into becoming doing climate science, they probably started at some stage just because they were good at math and physics. And for me, you know, I actually wanted to be a physicist for a while and I was more interested in things out in space than things on our own planet. But I was also somebody that spent a lot of time outside, spent a lot of time like a lot of young Canadians hanging on lakes and whatnot. And I was really interested in my local environment and how it changed from year to year. And so I got driven to studying climate change not because not out of a great concern for the planet at first. It was really out of my own personal scientific curiosity about how the lake looked different when it was a dry year versus a wet year and how it would affect the biology. And I came into studying climate change because I wanted to understand climate. And you just couldn't avoid studying how it's changing. It's been a lot of fun the past few years doing blogging and doing things on Twitter. And we've made some videos, I think, that are good and bad.  Should I be doing outreach or whatever? I said, you should do what you enjoy and what you think you're good at. You know, and for me, I've just I've really loved the chance to interact with people and engage with people. I mean, I find that as much as I love research, I mean, teaching is such an exciting part of our lives and our job. And I also just, you know, I take really seriously the fact that I'm Canadian, I'm at a Canadian University. It's all public money. And my job, you know, I'm being paid by taxpayers' dollars to try and answer questions. And so those questions are coming from the public, I'm going to answer what the, you know, I'm going to answer them for the public. And so I spend an inordinate amount of time answering questions from the radio and TV or whatever. And to me, it doesn't matter if it's a national thing or it's just a local station. It's all important as long as people are listening and I can sort of do something to deliver back the fact that they're helping pay for my existence. We should do it. So one thing that's definitely changed at universities in the years is that, you know, we're trying to collect, you know, universities are living in the era of big data, too, right? And so we collect data on what the students think about your classes. And a lot of faculty complain about it, right? Because you wouldn't want sort of the popularity of a class to completely dictate what students learn because sometimes popularity doesn't line up with what is maybe the most important things for your education. But but I love it because you get this great detailed feedback on what worked and what didn't. And I find that if students were found one part of my course popular and some other part unpopular, but that unpopular part was the part that I really think they need to learn. To me, it's like, why didn't do a good job at it? And I have to think about how to engage them differently. So I think it's fantastic. It's, you know, I'm a scientist. Give me the data, you know, so. So if I had an elevator pitch for global warming, let's see. I got to really practice this, I think I would say, you know, stuck in an elevator stuck in an elevator with somebody.  I usually say, you know, despite what you would, despite what you may have heard, it's all real and it's all and it's all just basic science, its physics and chemistry. And the key thing to know is that this isn't some new thing that Al Gore kicked up a few years, cooked up a few years ago. It's rooted in the basics of physics and chemistry. The experiments on this started 200 years ago. So yeah, you might see some headline that questions some aspect of it in the news, you know, tomorrow, but that can't affect the core because the core is so grounded in what we know at this point that you'd have to tear up most physics and chemistry textbooks for us to be wrong.  I thought that was your kind of your defining. It's curly and it just I just I get it shorter. No, no, it's actually we're going to just put a wig on a chair and just animate it. It's the wonders of computer technology. We're going to spend most of our mook budget adding all the curls back in.


Hey guys, welcome to another video from TrendingReviews, so I've just picked up the Galaxy S9 Plus and I'm going to give you a quick unboxing. I've just got the package today and it's still in its wrap-in, so let me go ahead and take that off. Right, so let's go ahead and look what's inside. It's got the SIM card tray opener just at the back there. You've got your user guide, quick start guide inside. Come back to that and take this out. I've been using the Google Pixel 2 for a while now and having a look at this, it's made me realise how much I missed the design for the Samsung Galaxy phones, specifically my S8. So looking at the S9, I can see it's got almost a very similar design as the S8. Obviously the fingerprint scanner is right down in the middle in prime location now. Let's go ahead and see what else is in the box. So you have your plug, you've got your USB connector to transfer all of your apps, data, contacts, all that kind of stuff from any other Android phone that takes USB Type-C. You also have a USB Type-B to Type-C adapter here. Let's see what we've got in here. We've got the USB data cable and charging cable here. We've got some pretty cool AKG headphones. I'm going to be doing a review on these specifically as well so make sure to subscribe to keep an eye out for that one. And you've got some extra earbuds as well for the headphones as well in case you lose them. So that's pretty much everything you get inside the box. I'm going to be giving you a full review on the Samsung S9 in specifically the camera quality so make sure you subscribe and keep an eye out for that. I'm just going to go ahead and do the peeling of the back and front protectors here, which is some of my favourite parts of the unboxing of a new phone. Let's go ahead and do that. You can see it looks pretty awesome. Compared to the previous S8, I can see that the sides don't have sort of that metallic reflection. It has more of a matte finish, which I think is pretty cool. The design is pretty much the same as the S8 Plus. I've got the S9 Plus here. I'm going to be trying it out for the next couple of days and I'm going to give you guys a review of how that's gone. If you've got any questions on the S9 Plus or anything in terms of accessories, then do drop me a comment below. I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Keep an eye out for my reviews for the S9 Plus camera quality comparisons with my Google Pixel 2 and so on. And I'll also be doing a review on these headphones to keep an eye out for that as well. I hope you liked the unboxing guys. I will catch you guys very soon. And if you did like the video, give it a thumbs up and see you guys next time.


Have you ever wondered what it's like to be sober after you were addicted to drugs and alcohol? Well in this video, I'm going to talk about my sobriety and how much my life's changed, so stay tuned. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And many of you out there who are familiar with my channel, you know I talk about mental health and addiction, and I've shared little bits and pieces of my story here and there, but this is a video that's long overdue. I just want to kind of talk in kind of a macro sense of how much my life has changed since getting clean over five and a half years ago. So my sobriety date is June 23rd, 2012, which is interesting because that's also my actual birthday. In 2012, I was turning 27 years old, so I got sober on that day. And when I look at my life now, I can see such a huge change, and it took a long time. It took a very, very long time to see significant changes, but one of the best things, one of the best things about just getting clean and sober is waking up and not having these panic attacks. The panic attacks were brutal for a variety of different reasons. Waking up and wondering where the bottle was, where am I going to get a drink from, what time is it? Is this constant thing that we're doing? Or it's like, where are the drugs at? Did I use too much last night? Am I all out?  Who did I call? Who did I say terrible things to? Because I had a habit of texting or calling every ex I've ever had in my life, calling my parents, crying and being all depressed and stuff like that. And it was just, it was embarrassing. And I never knew what happened. You know what I mean? And there would just be this panic waking up in the morning. But one of the biggest things too is like, I'm not a slave to anything anymore. Like that's the most brutal part about addiction. Like one of the things that keeps us in our act of addiction is that we have this false idea of control that whole, I could quit if I wanted to, but I just don't want to.   And it was a mess. Like I was completely reliant on something to make me feel a certain way or make me act a certain way. It got rid of my social anxiety. It got rid of my depression, you know? But that was how it used to be. But then it started fueling my social anxiety and fueling my depression, fueling my hatred towards the word, but I always needed it. It was a constant struggle to find out where is it coming from? How am I getting this? And today I live this amazing life where I don't need anything, anything at all, any kind of external substance. Now I am on an anti-anxiety, anti-depression med, but something completely different. This is something where I don't got to worry about who am I going to lie, cheat, or steal from in order to get this thing. I go to the doctor, they give me a prescription and we're good. But this is also another reason why I've done videos on this in the past. And even though I'm not some big like anti-weed guy, you know, I voted for the legalization of marijuana here in my state of Nevada. But like there is just this freedom of not needing any type of external substance to make me feel a certain way. You know, I don't need anything aside from meditation to help me relax. You know, I don't need anything to not feel lonely or depressed, aside from the love and support for my friends and family. Speaking of friends and family, one of the best parts about my sobriety is that I have these people back in my lives. You know what I mean? My son has a father. You know, my friends have a friend. My girlfriend has a boyfriend. My mom, my dad, they have their son back. My sister has her brother back. These are all people who came back into my life and they're they're very supportive. But it's not even just about like they're back in my life and they invite me over to Christmas dinner and stuff like that. But they actually trust me now. You know what I mean? They're not questioning what I'm doing.  When I first got clean, I was laid up in the cardiac critical care unit here at a hospital in Vegas and they called her and said, hey, you might want to come down to Las Vegas because we don't think your son is going to live tonight. Like my mom does not have to worry about getting that phone call. You know what I mean? And and that's that's probably the best gift I can give her aside from just, you know, my recovery. But other than that, it's it's a beautiful thing that I'm somebody. I'm somebody that my family can actually turn to now. So my mom is in recovery as well. She just celebrated 12 years sober just this last fall. And she can turn to me and we could talk recovery.  Don't don't be calling me about your problems. But like now my mom can can actually call me. And today I was talking to my group about this at the treatment center I work at, like when my grandma passed away a couple of years ago, like my mom was able to call me and talk to me. And I was able to walk her through it and be supportive for her. Like that's something I couldn't do when I was still getting drunk or high. Speaking of my grandma passing away, like my grandma was my number one. She was my number one. She was at the top of my list. Like when I got clean, I was like, if anything happens to my grandma, I'm going to get high over it. Like that's how I felt when I first got clean because I grew up, you know, my mom was an alcoholic. I had a family who I didn't feel like they really loved me or cared about me at all. But my grandma was always there. My grandma made me feel like I was the most important kid in the world.  I'm like, now I know that since she's gone, at least she got to see that. And man, it's difficult because I see a lot of people who keep relapsing or going in and out of their addiction and they're losing their loved ones. And their loved one never got to see them cleaning what they could have become. And part of the reason I'm even doing this video is to give you some hope that that you can do this thing, right? But aside from that, I would say one of the best parts about my recovery is, is that I don't want to die anymore.  I want to live. And that's why I try to live every day to my best ability. That's why I come here and I make these videos and stuff like that. Time is my most valuable asset. We talk about it in the recovery community, like we're living on borrowed time and I take that seriously every single day. Like the people who are close to me, like they know this about me. But my my window for BS is very, very small. Like things that waste my time, waste my energy. I got I don't even give time to them because life is so precious and I shouldn't even be alive today. But the the great thing that happened to me as a result of my recovery and I will do another video about some of my first few months in recovery. But I didn't want to live when I first got clean. Like I was like, what's the point of even getting clean? I'm still depressed. I still want to die. I don't have anything right.  See, back when I was using towards the end of my addiction, every single night I was going to sleep with a handful of pills and a bottle of rum and I would just hope that I wouldn't wake up in the morning. Like if there is a God, please do not let me wake up tomorrow morning. Because I don't want to live like this anymore. And I found that there was no hope for me, right? And every day I'd wake up sun shining in my window and I was like, damn, I got to do this again. You know, like I just didn't want to live and something happened. And I realized that not only could I stay clean, but I can live this amazing life clean. Like a lot of people who meet me now and see this smile on my face and even knowing that I struggle with depression and anxiety, they wouldn't realize how bad it actually used to be. So like, I always tell people that, you know, especially the newer people I meet and they're like, what's the best part about being clean?  But the last thing, the last thing that I talk about, one of the best things, aside from not wanting to die that I get from my recovery is this thing called hope, hope, hope, hope. Most of my life, like I didn't start drinking or using until I was about 18 years old, but I can honestly say, even before my addiction began, from the time I was a kid, little, little kid, I had no hope, no hope at all. Like my entire life and it just got worse in my addiction. Every day I was living a life where basically my train of thought was no matter how bad my day was, tomorrow's going to be just as bad or worse. That's the way I live my life.  Today I have hope no matter how bad my day is, no matter how bad my day is, I still have hope. I have hope that when I go to sleep, there is at least this much of a chance, at least that much of a chance that the next day will be better.  So now I have hope and, you know, shameless plug real quick, but that's actually why I titled my book right here. That's why I titled it hope because, like, if I had to describe my sobriety in one word, it would just be hope. So if you want a copy of that book right there, it's up on Amazon. I think it's only like four or five bucks. It's an ebook. But anyways, anyways, I just wanted to share what it's like to be in sobriety after almost a decade of being an addiction. So I hope that this gave you some hope and, you know, leave comments down below. Let me hear about your experiences in recovery. If you're somebody who's struggling with addiction, leave a comment down below. If you know somebody who's struggling, leave a comment down below. No, screw that. If you know somebody who's struggling with addiction, please share this video with it, share this video with that person to give them some hope and show them that it's possible to get better. All right. But anyways, if you like this video, do me a favor and give it a thumbs up. And if you're new here, click right below this little box. Hit that subscribe button because I'm always making videos about addiction, recovery, a lot of stuff about mental health. So check out some of the other videos on this channel. There's also a couple of thumbnails right to the left of me with some other videos, but anyways, thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.


We should standardize an intro for this. That's what all real podcast entertainment shows do. Yeah, we're a little line on branding. I feel like that would be nice. I feel like if we just set our brand better, then more people will be able to get into it. And if we want many people to get into it, because it's the most insane S9, not a real show show. And so we need that initial branding marketing to get them into a show that is not about marketing or having any sort of defined motivation. I feel like the fact that the routing market's calculator is this obscure niche of a niche of a niche is the biggest part of the appeal. I know. Yeah, you're right. But I feel like no matter what, it will be niche. It will be that it's totally unbrandable. It's so obscure, but it's also so specific. I kind of like the idea of making it a show that kind of carries itself like it's a big deal in spite of being the least known thing. I love the fact that even though the BCP or the reference calculator is completely like basically unknown, it shouldn't be. It was like no one cared. Like no one watches it. It has the most dedicated fan base of any PCP show. And no matter what, no matter what release or when we release it, no matter the content of the video, people will rejoice that there's new reference calculers. And then you'll have comments on the normal PCP episode saying Ben and Munchie, just keep doing our reference calculers. Like you're better on that. Just keep doing that. Well, we don't spoil them. We don't spoil them with the RFCK content. Yeah. I would like, here are the two things that I want to increase its brand. And these are the only two. I want to have a standardized intro that will take literally less than two seconds and I want to release it in monthly. We should definitely release it in monthly at the very least. Are we on right now? Yes. Is this going to be on the show? This discussion? Let me just make sure. Yes. That's fine. I'm just wondering. Okay. Okay. Our intro. How about... Okay. This is genius. Okay. It's like we each say one word, but like you take turns. So it's like rowdy. Fuckers. Cop. Killers. Fuck. That's pretty good. I mean, it's a start. Let's... All right. So RFCKers, cop, killers. And then we should both at the same time play and then whatever. And the thing about the verb play is that it's not like a let's play specific thing. So we can have RFCKers play me channel or we can have RFCKers play being in the park. Like in real life. Yeah. Or maybe it could be something more like do or like... Do New York. Or like on. Roddy Fuckers cop killers on Broadway. Yeah. The musical. Imagine Roddy Fuckers cop killers the musical. RFCKers cop killers in the Sports Resort. I like that. I like that. We're in it. So Roddy Fuckers cop killers. Actually now I'm thinking do you like Roddy Fuckers cop killers or do you like Roddy Fuckers cop killers? Oh, okay. In Canon. You are the cop killer. I am the Roddy Fucker. Okay. That's... I always forget. Yeah. Yeah. After the Roddy Fuckers cop killers, there should be like a sound sting. Like a sound effect of like gunshots. Like... That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I'm like, Roddy Fuckers cop killers. Maybe like some police sirens. Yeah. And I love... I love those guys. That we never played particularly violent games.   Like we just came over to selling drugs and killing crooked cops.  I love that. Okay, okay. So we're gonna go with in. Okay. I think we do Roddy Fuckers cop killers. Go back and forth like that. And then should we do in? In. And then title? In We Sports Resort. Okay. I like that. When people hear that intro and get strapped in, only to find that the podcast is primarily like We Sports and My Little Pony drama. Yeah. And then like... It's like long sections of us saying um and then and. And then also like punctuated by moments of us getting really mad about how the video game is too hard for us to play. The We Sports episode was particularly like incredible. We thought it was a competition, but we were both so geared up and ready to like just like try our all that none of us talked.  God, the motion controls just don't work. But you can't do it. But now we're here. We have the webcam fixed. Yeah. We're ready. Oh yeah, this is Roddy Fuckers cop killers live. Take two. Yeah. Take two.  Um, should we... I think picking me up by the way, the microphone. Wait, say something.  I'm in this episode too every time. Yeah. I'm just really on the couch in the same room. You're on the Switch one. Was I? Yeah. Cool. I think you were in that room. That's right. That's right. Yeah. We're doing strategy fuckers. Yeah, you're on the chapters. Oh no. We were coming from the intro. You're on. You're on. We're coming. Fuckers. Cops. Killers. And we sports resort. Baby. Mother fucker. Fuck. Cops. Yeah. I'm...  We're... I want Diggie to make some sort of rap. But I also want him to be rapping. I want him to like write a rap for us to produce or something. Yes.  The ghetto capitalist revolution is here! Yeah, what the heck? Handle bar. He's getting too many gimmicks, he's getting over complicated. Yeah! He's like a bum now!   You did it.  You know what, actually, hold on, let me experiment with drugs. I think this guy was the original bug that started the bug war. I think this is the genesis of all of the bug war activities. Yeah, this is Joey Bug War. Joey Bug War. No, just Joey Bug, Joey Bug. I think it was named after him, you know, Bug War, Joey Bug. I think the color you originally had was the best. You think so? Yeah. We can't have everyone be black. That's true. That would be it. In the words of God, we can't have everyone be black. Oh my god. I'm gonna make some white people now. That can't possibly go wrong. Yeah. Fucking, okay. God creating humans fake. Like humans evolving fake. The real shape is higher conscious beings are just playing like me maker. Whatever means they make on a lower level of conscious, like a lower dimension. It's just me makers all the way down is what you're saying. Yeah, exactly.  And those are what probably lower dimensions. What do you think? Like this? Like this? I think the one you were just on. This one? Yeah, I think that one's the best. Okay. Make them really thin and really like small. No, not fat. Yeah. Yeah, like that. Small. Yeah. He's a bug. He's Joey Bug. It's not small. It's pretty small. Okay. Should I quit?  Joey Bug. Jorg. I'm gonna be honest. I like Joey Bug War better. Right. It's fine. Joey Bug. Oh. Joey Bugwa. Joey Bugwa. Is that a threat? Yeah. Joey Bugwa. Joey Bugwati. Okay. Joey Bugwa. Yeah. Female. Female Joey. Yeah. Like a kangaroo. Yeah. Definitely a favorite. Birthday is... He's a few months late, but he's still ready to smoke that weed. That's Joey Bugwa. That's very Joey Bugwa. He's a creator? God. He makes all the best of me and stuff. Save him quick. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Joey Bugwa. Joey Bugwa. You open the Bible. Oh look it. Oh look it. Oh look it. Oh look at him. What a good little booge. What a good little booge.   Not Mario. Pokemon Battle Revolution. I love that game. You've never even heard it. Wait. What's Battle Revolution? Battle Revolution was like the other stadium. Like stadium for weed. You made that up.  You're asking me blown out.     Disintegrated. Whoa okay. He's got nice hair. That's Lieutenant Surge.  Create a guy who his wife just divorced him. And so he burned down his house with his kids in it. And now he's on the run from the cop killers because he is a cop. Oh. That's a twist.  Yes. Cop, regular cops can't hit you. You're a special branch of the police. The cop killers.  The ratty fuckers cop killers are good boys. We're civil servants. Like with us around, people don't have to live in fear of police brutality. All I have to do is wear that Oscar brutality. The mayor gets like a speeding ticket. Get me the cop killers. We got to clean up this city. Oh yes, service to me. Our pleasure. We'll take our payment in the, we'll take our payment in the, please. Oh my God. Literally, yeah, literally, yes. Um, please send, please send one month's worth of rent and pizza. For every job. Forever, yeah. Don't make us buy it ourselves. Pay our rent and give us the pizza. Yes. We do not deal in money. We deal in debt tops. We do it, we do it for the convenience. You think we got on this job? We think we got on this job to make money? No, we got it. We got it because we wouldn't have to think about it. You know, it's easy.


All right, welcome back. It's time for our very first hot topic, and we have been joined by Mr. Joe Fermi-Daguru, Chief Strategist, Westphalia Resources, and want to take a look at the mandate given by the President to Nubu, to NEC, to find out ways to cushion the effects of the failed subsidy removal that Nigerians are going through. Good morning to you, Mr. Daguru. Good morning. All right, so Oil Marketers Association have identified with the President on this move to remove the fuel subsidy. In fact, they have indicated interest to donate about 50 to 100 buses, 50-sitter buses to the government with regards to cushioning the effects of the removal of subsidy, and have also invited other corporate organizations to emulate them. How do you see, first of all, this mandate coming from the President at this point in time to NEC? First of all, we have to acknowledge the fact that the President, Mr. Bola Mehtinumbu, has started on a very good note. Let's put it that way. And every effort to ameliorate or to reduce tension and pressure on the people of this country, Nigeria, should be applauded. But you see, people have been hearing a lot about palliatives and measures to support them for a long time. But it seems that the people that are supposed to enjoy these palliative measures call it that way. They've not, in the past, I don't know how this one will work, but in the past, you will see that it's like, it's one-sided. The execution of this program is always the issue. We have lots of ideas, but my concern has been, how will this be executed? No amount of buses do we give that will really touch every commuters in this country. Yes. And I think one thing we have to see is that people are now coming to that fact that if the genuity of removal of subsidy is going to make us have a better living condition in this country, they are going to go for it. The people and the citizens of this country, I mean, they are ready to go along with Mr. President and to see that they enjoy the benefits of this removal. So any movement to reduce tension, like I said, to reduce pressure, to reduce pain will be appreciated. And I think people are seeing it and they want to feel it now. It's enough. We've been talking and at the same time, they want to feel the impact. And by the way, you have to understand that now that they are seeing a sort of communication coming out directly to the people, is helping the martyrs as well. And that's the way I feel. OK, well, there's no longer any need for us to say that is placing the cart before the horse. This thing should have been done before the pronouncement was made because there was time between May 29th and the 30th of June that the subsidy should end. So a lot of people expected the president to say, OK, subsidy will end because it was not covered by the budget on June 30th. But before then, we're going to do X, Y, Z, which is part of, some of these things are part of the things that were supposed to be done. But if he has given marching orders to the neck to fashion out ways in which people will not suffer anymore because of this removal of fuel subsidy, what, in your own opinion, are some of these things that need to be looked into, that need to be addressed, that need to find ways to make sure that they are done in the shortest possible time so that it will alleviate the sufferings of the people? It's one of those things is this. If within May 29th, like you said, you know, there are policies and there are procedures and there are pronouncements as well. Within the few days that it came in, he wanted to, I'm just saying this, I'm not with them there. He wanted to make sure that, look, he promised the people that this would go and he would just make sure that this would begin to fill what he promised. And I think, could you ever, we kind of used to panic buying. Even if you say you are going to increase the VAT, people will start loading their homes with so many things and so I think that is part of it. The government says some state, look at Kora state, so look, there's no point coming in five days a week anymore. Let's try three days a week and they do stay and all these initiatives are beginning to come out and the people are beginning to see that, yes, it seems these people have us in mind this time around. I think whether it was said before May 29th or even after May 29th, you see have some of these said panic buying and these thoughts, but going ahead is the fact that people are now finding PMS, petroleum, you know, the petrol to buy and that there are no cues anymore and they are beginning to even hear some of the effects of this, but I think we need to communicate more. We need to reach out to the people more. It is not just enough to continue to say we want to do this. Like I said, people have had that long time. They want to begin to feel the effects and the effect positively, not the effect of, you know, we want to do it next week. They want to see it done now, but how will it be done now? And those states said, okay, I've increased even salary since January and you know, they go, they said, we've done that, we will do more. Coalers said, we are going to do that. So the more the states, the governors, the local government chairman, they participate. One thing about this issue about this country, sometimes that, you know, I begin to wonder where's the role of the local government? I mean, because the people that we really need, they are the local government that are the worst. So we can continue to just make sure that only the governors, the local governments have to be part of this and they have to, you know, do their beats and they have to come out with their own programs as well. It is not just the federal and the state. The local government have to be part of it. And that is what is missing in the whole communication system. And I think it has to be made so. It has to be done. That has to be reviewed if it is not considered. Indeed, because NEC, you know, comprises of the 36 state governors, the CBN governor and other government officials that may be drafted into it. Now, talking about the effects of the subsidy removal and how to help Nigerians handle it and deal with it, I'm of the opinion that one of the ways to go about it and I'm throwing this at you so that you can agree or disagree with me, that one of the ways of helping Nigerians overcome this, deal with this and appreciate it, is to be seen to be dealing with those who have brought Nigeria to this point, i.e. those who are guilty or found guilty of fraud in the oil and gas sector, those who have been stealing oil, all the people that have been responsible for diverting the palliatives, whatever the amount was, in any way, shape or form, that those people, if Nigerians will see this government present to Nubu, prosecute them, expose them, it will help Nigerians appreciate the efforts in removing this subsidy in the first instance. Do you agree with me or not? Well, partially, let me put it this way. That will not be the first thing he has to do now. I think, you know, don't forget the fact that he's just been there for a couple of days and weeks. So if you have to start running after the corporates or the suspected criminals, you know, then you won't be able to achieve anything. So the first thing is, when this thing is moving on smoothly, you know, we'll begin to look at it, okay? Bring out those who have put us in this mess. It's been for a long time. So, you see, we don't even know the magnitude. We don't even know how, you know, why this crime has been communicated, perpetrated or committed. So the first thing is, get the people the awareness. Get them to be aware that, look, this is the pain you have to go through. It's going to, at the end, these are the things we want to do with it. You know, that should have been part of the program that if this is what we realize, this is what is expected to be realized from this removal of subsidy. We are going to develop this and that and this. People want to know how the money will be spent. And people want to see the money being spent on what you promised that it will be spent on. That, these are the concerns of the people. Then, if you now say, you know, part of it will be, you know, let's get a list of the people. And you probably say, these are the people, these are the suspects behind this.  These people will just be set free after a while. So I think that is not the concern of Nigerians right now. It's how to put food on their table, how to feed themselves, how to clothe themselves, how to live well, how to go to the hospital and be treated well. They keep reading every day. There's going to be a strike. The nurses are going on strike. Doctors are living in the country. So that scares Nigerians more than bringing 10, 20 people and say, these are the people that have been selling your fuel and we are going to send them to prison. I don't think most people really, yes, they want to hear, they want to read it and they say, look, what has become of those people in the past? You have some people here, CC, I've read them. And for the past two, three years, if nothing has been had, so at the end of the day, let me go. Mr. Daburo. Mr. Daburo, without meaning to take us from your mouth, that exactly is the reason why I am thinking this is important because even as Nigerians are talking about how to take care of transportation, how to make sure they don't have to buy food at very exorbitant prices and every other thing because of this fuel removal, part of the discussions I have been hearing from Nigerians is the fact that we must change the narrative. As you have said, what has happened to those in the past who were guilty or who did these things? A change in the narrative, I believe, is one of the ways of making Nigerians find closure as we handle this fuel subsidy removal and deal with the hardship that comes with it. And just to add to that, just to add to that, Mr. Dagonro, before you answer. When that pronouncement was made on May 29, NNPC, that had the resources and everything and bought fuel for Nigeria with the price that they bought, with the subsidy that the federal government gave, went ahead immediately to place prices on the pump. The pump prices were raised up to exorbitant prices and then the federal government is quiet about it. There are people in NNPC-L that should have been asked why it happened that way because the money they used to buy the fuel to come and feed Nigeria as it were was still subsidy money. But they placed that price and then said that the federal government was owing them 2.8 trillion Naira or something like that. Yet nobody said anything about it. We were all blaming the marketers for raising their prices as well. But nobody thought about NNPC and the federal government should have. So what does that do to the image of the present administration as people who will want to build confidence of the people in this government? Yes, you know, Mr. Fermifalano came up and said NNPC has no right to do that. If I'm correct, I think there are a lot of things that will be put in place in Naira's future. And I'm looking at the issue of these people who have been messing around for a while. It's just like if you said, okay, after all, our Naira was redesigned. What happened? Why is the new Naira today? So what should we do? And the central bank of Nigeria is still there. Do we have to query him? If we follow all those procedure of arresting, prosecuting and it will distract the government, in my own view. So let's put actions in place. Let's stabilize the economy. We know there's inflation. Even in Germany, there's a recession. The global economy is gloomy. It's not that fantastic anywhere and everywhere in the world. So let us face the reality. And that is what I'm happy that Nigerians are beginning to understand it differently. So now if, look at the issue of the strike when the laborer said, look, what a good strike.  And the court said, no, you can't do that. That is openness. That's democracy. That is looking at injustice and injustice delivered. So, and everything went quietly. I think we have to now begin to look at the processes. The processes will determine how far these government can go. The processes, we might make a mistake. I mean, I wanna say we now. The system itself, the government might make a mistake, but currently people are long to make them understand that this is where we are. This is where we are going. And if you default in one way or the other, come out and tell them the truth. I think people just want to be told the truth and to see that it's not just saying that we made a mistake. If you make a mistake and you correct the mistake, people will be happy. There's more to be done. People want to build trust. You need to do a lot, a lot more than what we are doing. And I think maybe we can say it's too early because it is the same political party that is in power. That is, I think that is the concern of the people that look. You can't say you don't know this. You know this before you get there. So, now you have to do it. You can't blame another party. You can't blame another person again. It's your party. So, I can understand that. But I just think that taking it this way to say, look, let's begin to move on. NNPC, we now, you know, NNPC is supposed to be a limited ability company, public company, but now the same people who are running it are still there. So, I wonder when they're going to change things gradually.  You disrupt the system. And I think that is what they are looking into. But gradually, I want to believe between now and October, we'll see, you know, changes that people will say, yes, this is what we expect. I think that that's mounting. I was at the petrol station yesterday. I saw a queue. And I stopped by to find out what is causing this queue. You know, I spoke to the manager and he told me that people are coming to the petrol station here to buy because the gauge is right. We don't change them. That if you go to the next one, you discover that you had to find one or two people there. So now, people are beginning to say, I want to have value for my money. And they are ready to give up even to buy, where they will not be changed. I think people are getting more, you know, confident about what's going on that I want to buy this. But then if I say, I want 5,000, let it be 5,000, not 4,500. So a lot will still come into. So not just those who have really are storing the subsidy money, even those who are selling, that are cheating the people, we need to monitor and we need to see that things are done right. Yes, I agree with you. We have to move fast. There's no point delaying all these things. But we have to be steady so that we don't commit blunders as well. I think that's what the government is trying to avoid. Chelsea is requesting 200,000 a month from the government for salaries for... Minimum wage. Minimum wage. And they have said, June 19 is the time they're giving to the government to give them an answer of this request. What do you make of that request? Of 200,000 a narrow minimum wage? Honestly, you know, I don't know how the government of Nigeria would pay 200,000 or states. You know, they have some city cannot even pay 30,000 a year. I don't know how they are going to cope with that. I don't want to say anything about that for now. But for me, I think for a long time, we've been spending as if we're living in Europe. You know, in love of bread, it's almost 1,000. And in case not to kill, it's going to be like 1,500 after a while. You know, so what do you look at that?  I don't think we're importing plantain into this country. So a lot of things we have to normalize itself because it's like we are comparing that bread. So maybe one dollar or once one euro multiplied by the street market value, then you get almost that. So I think a lot has to be done into that. But I have not seen government being able to pay 200,000. I don't know if they have that money. But I think we need to bring into the system welfare programs. The welfare programs, you know, in the past we have free health. Can we still have free qualitative health program for our people? Can we still have that today? We have free education. Can we still have those qualitative education today? Free, to a certain level, even if it's not at all levels. Can we still have all those things that we have before? If you say housing for all, yes, not everybody will be able to have that housing program or have a house or a flat. But can we just give the people that would go for the ballot or pay for this and not distributing it among only the faithful, the party faithful, because it is about government, not about party. So these are the things that we have to. What happened after these 52 buses are on the road? Not all the 52 buses or 1,000 or 5,000 buses should be on the road. Some of them would break down sometimes. So the route, what happened to that? We have to improve on our maritime system, on our seaway to make sure that people go through, by boats, by all other means, create a place for where bicycle can be rude. You can ride bicycle on the road that will not be jammed or be kicked up or be killed as well. So a lot of things have to be done. I think more creative ideas will be coming in as we go on, I believe so. And if the government begins to listen to the positive side of it, more people will join. It's not about party anymore. It's not about PDP, NMPP or whatever. It's about Nigeria right now. And I think most of these people should come around, politicians should just be bipartisan and media as well. I think the media has a role to play and stop this, what I could say, Karaoke journalism kind of, so that we don't, let's begin to support government. And if they now misuse the support, if they don't take it, then we can still go back and say listen, you messed it up. Oh, I must tell you that the media is supporting this government. Media houses all over the country are putting out their voices and their content to support the government and the people because we must strike a balance. However, there are those who have also said, we're winding up now because time is not on our side. But there are those who are saying that Nigeria being an opaque nation should indeed have been able to have gotten to a situation where the state governments and the federal government should be able to pay at least 200,000 Naira minimum, which, but we know that the reality on ground, because of wastages and abuse and theft, has made it impossible or make it look impossible for that to happen. But we do hope for Nigeria and I will get to that point where Nigerians will indeed start to leave the way their folio and opaque member nations live across the world. Let me just quickly say it. It's not just being an opaque member nation and all that. You see, you have to see that some of these states are local governments, they are not sustainable. They have debts over and they cannot even pay their debts. So how do they service? And if they take more debts now, how do they service it? It's a problem. Do you see this in Berkeley? Do you see this in Berkeley? Inspiring state governments become more viable, more resourceful and more innovative. That is what they have to do. And the first thing people are expecting now is to cut their codes according to their code, sacrifice. It's not every time you come into the government you have to buy new prado for all the people in government. Let's begin to call, let's begin to sacrifice. Let's show. You see, sometimes you don't even know how much these special advisors, these special assistants, how much they earn and they have them in millions, in thousands and thousands. So people are fed up when you have special assistant upon special assistant, special advisor. So let's cut down the cost of government. People have been saying it for a long time. So you cannot come now and say, look, Nigeria should sacrifice and they see the senator, somebody who went there with maybe a Toyota Corolla coming back home with a prado too for instance or three. And beginning to wear, but every day I say there's consistency allowed. People are getting fed up with that. And I can understand that. Let's begin to cut down on the wasteful resources. We waste resources a lot. And that is what it's painful to people and it's painful to every Nigerian as well. So unless we begin to show, demonstrate that. It's not just by giving bosses and whatever. Let them know that yes, I am part of it. I'm paying my taxes. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. When people see that, they will sympathize with the government. Thank you so much. That's a good place to end this conversation, Mr. Joe Fermilagoro. Thank you so much for your time and insight on this very matter. Welcome, I appreciate it. Joe Fermilagoro, chief strategist, Westphalia Resources has been our guest on the first hot topic. We'll take a break and come back with a second hot topic. Stay with us.


Hi, I am Dr. Ravichan Siddhachari. I am a consultant hepatobiliary and liver transplant surgeon for Manipal Hospital Group, Bangalore. A person can easily need a normal life after the liver transplantation. The patient doesn't undergo liver transplantation. What is his life span? Not more than 6-9 months. He is going to die anyway. So, after the liver transplantation, he will be able to perform normal activities except for maybe heavy exercise or sports. Rest of the things, he will be able to do it. Even he can also go back to his work, what he was doing previously.


We kind of want to talk about the stakes, right? So what are the stakes involved with this issue? Effectively, we're faced with two futures. On the left we have a scenario where Climate changing missions peak before the middle of the century and decline rapidly and the best-case scenario that we can expect is that by the year 2100 we will have experienced only a 1.6 Celsius degree average increase relative to late 19th century The other the other trajectory is the worst-case scenario and Unfortunately, we're on this trajectory. Actually, we're doing worse than this trajectory but what this involves is Emissions don't stop. They actually increase over time and that By the end of the century will have experienced an average 4.3 Celsius degree increase relative to late 19th century so In fact, unfortunately, we are in a Worst-case scenario trajectory plus environment Now what are the impacts of this? We're expected to see a likely average increase in sea level between 0.5 to 1 meter rise in sea level What's what we need to note is that this is not a uniform increase as well So there are certain areas of the world which will experience much more sea level rise than others So for example, the tropics will be 20% higher sea level rise in other places Especially significant risk will be for the small island nations and also the Delta region So Bangladesh for example or even Louisiana and the United States Increased intensity of frequency of heat waves drying up of major rivers Destruction of coral reefs By a massive amount of biodiversity loss and of course negative impacts on agricultural production Including the United States, right? Okay, so those are the those are the stakes that are involved Now we're currently faced with two policy futures I have some quotes here I picked two quotes We have on the left. We have the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. I won't let anyone take us backwards Deny our economy the benefit of harnessing a clean energy future or force our children to endure the catastrophe that would result From unchecked climate change. That's Hillary Clinton November last year Donald Trump is this is a difficult one to pick out which of all the tweets I should pick out January 2014 any and all weather events are used by the global warming hosters To justify higher taxes to save our planet. They don't believe it four dollar signs an exclamation mark I'm not that that's open. We can discuss out later as the kind of interpretations of that So what's you know, what what are we facing here, right? So it's clear that Donald Trump at least in his public speech Denies existence let alone the attribution of climate change to human activity and also it seems that there's a conspiratorial logic to his denial It's an extreme version of denial In his public speech, he's vowed to Repudiate the Paris Accord although that's legally complicated. We can talk about that later if you wish He's proposed to dismantle the EPA to reduce spending He most certainly will drop Obama's clean clean power plan He supports renewed efforts for kind of a renewed Keystone XL pipeline he's He's tagged Kevin Kramer Republican from North Dakota as his likely energy advisor. This is a vocal climate skeptic In general, it's not looking very good for climate policy in the United States with a Trump presidency Although it is hard to to determine his true intentions and how much damage he actually can do But it's clear that he can at least at the very least hold up appointments to key positions and reduce agency budgets Clinton on the other hand, it's quite clear that she's Proclimate policy then we can discuss kind of how much right, but she's proposed to she's promised to uphold the Paris Agreement she wants to increase federal efforts so kind of clean power plan plus right these types of things so It's clear that she would be the proclimate advocate But the sad reality in the United States is that this is a house divided really And if we just looked at say Distribution of climate skeptics vocal climate skeptics in the Senate in the house what we see, you know In the recent 114th Congress, we see that there are 38 Vocal skeptics in the Senate that's 70% of all Republican senators and there are 144 skeptics in the house That's 58% of all Republican Congress people and Because it's such a polarizing polarizing issue What the what's what we've had to do now in the United States is the present would has to circumvent Congress, right? So the the clean power plan all these things are our efforts from the president to circumvent Congress and now actually the clean power plan is in legal trouble So the key point here is that a strong and stable climate policy requires congressional backing But we can discuss that as well later So not only are politicians divided though the electorate the voters are Divided on this issue So here is public opinion data from Gallup on the question of Basically attribution of climate change to human activity Do you believe rise in human temperature in last century is due mainly to human activities? What we see here is that there's a clear divide between Democrats up top Republicans at the bottom so the most recent data suggests that only 38% of Republican voters believe that Humans are causing climate change, whereas 85% of Democrats believe so there is an increase in the independence So this is a good sign Right now 68% of independent voters believe that it's human caused But we shouldn't be too complacent here When it comes to say congressional elections this kind of divide doesn't really or the Independence really don't matter you think about gerrymandering the effects of gerrymandering so forth This has a little bit more of effect on we would say presidential or local elections state elections But if we were to think overall if you just take public opinion overall only one in three Americans believe humans are Not I'm not what I'm sorry one in three Americans believe humans are not the primary cause of Observed climate change and only one in ten Americans understand that over ten over 90% of climate scientists agree on global warming so the major question right so why are Americans so divided on the issue of climate change and Social scientists have been grappling with this question There there are a few hypotheses that have some traction I'll be discussing one of them, which is Motivating my research the first is it could be short-term weather effects of the weather It's cold. It's really cold out there. What's this global warming stuff, right? So we see variation kind of public opinion driven by weather effects the state of the economy when think when times are tough People just climate change goes down the list There's might be some journalistic norms effects in the United States, so Journalists feel compelled to bring in the other side to offer balance but a lot of researchers and myself included are focusing on the influence of an Ideologically conservative contrarian counter movement to climate science and policy So people like Naomi or rescue is at Harvard Raleigh Dunlap Aaron McRite Robert Brawl all American based sociologists This is kind of been true. This is the hypothesis driving their research And so kind of what does this counter movement look like it's been called the denial machine And I guess at the end of the day We're what the argument is that this public opinion data and the division in the house in terms of climate skepticism Is not a ran. It's not it's not generated by a random process, right? This is there's something real going on here behind this and so the structure of this denial denial machine at the top we have Interest groups right so fossil fuel industry corporate America and conservative foundations that seek to Benefit from obstruction of climate policy Either materially or they're driven ideologically to block climate policy So for example to stop government intervention in the private sector Now these organizations then Support materially conservative think tanks and these conservative think tanks are the kind of engine of information for this movement so They these these think tanks leverage their status as a parallel academia they produce policy reports they They're in the media. They hold conferences. They engage directly with policy makers And thus seek to influence policy makers we have front groups which are kind of public outreach groups with euphemistic names and then this is all feeding into what we call the echo chamber which is composed of politicians media and Social media as well and the objective of this whole denial machine is to influence public opinion and to block climate policy now The talk today will be focusing on conservative think tanks. That's where the majority of this research that I'll be presenting has been looking at So with Travis Cohen, who's at the University of Exeter I've studied the communication of these conservative think tanks the major ones in relation to how how they communicate climate change and There's been significant work on this Kind of question of what are they talking about? By as I mentioned earlier my crime Dunlap in 2000 what they did is they sat down and they read over 200 documents Generated by a set of conservative think tanks took them about a summer and they were able to classify Types of arguments right so there's they really came down to three one is that the science is either weak or wrong The second is that well if climate change was to occur it would probably be beneficial and The third is that any policy that any policy action that we take will be will have more harm will do more harm than good So therefore we shouldn't do anything about it But the since then right so since their their study basically covered the majority of the documents They looked at was 1997 to 1998 since then we haven't really had an update And the problem is that since then we have an explosion of information So they looked at their corpus was 240 documents Since then we know now from our study that there's been over 16,000 documents generated by the largest 19 conservative think tanks on the issue of climate change So one problem is just how do you actually read all this stuff, right? So that's where we come in Travis Cohen and I where we leverage Machine learning and natural language processing techniques to help the compute how allow the computer to help us to interpret these documents We'll go into that in a bit or in the in a bit Now one motivating question has been That that that was driving our study is this notion of the air of science than now and it's is it over right? So in 2002, I'm not sure if anyone's familiar with Frank Luntz is a conservative communication strategist in the United States There was a memo that was leaked that a Memo that was circulated among the Republican lawmakers that was leaked that was authored by Frank Luntz and In it he says should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled their views about global warming will change Accordingly the scientific debate is closing against us, but not yet closed There's still a wind of opportunity to challenge the science. So this is 2002 and Basically what Frank Luntz is saying is that we have to change our game plan We need to attack the science head-on. Don't focus on the policy attack the root of the root of the issue Which is the science? Now since 2002 there's been speculation as to well what's going on here? How are these skeptic groups communicating denial, right? Leo Hickman in the Guardian in 2013 made the claim the real world is leaving behind those who flatly reject the science Underpinning the notion that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet So in other words this science skepticism is dead, right? These people are dinosaurs and we've moved on now You know similarly similar claim from the Union of Union of Concerned Scientists in 2015 It's kind of a lighter version But it says deniers now can see that climate change is real but reject the scientific consensus that human activity Mainly burning fossil fuels is driven by it or is driving it rather Right, so the one issue is that we we don't know, right? We don't actually know what how the evolution of the discourses has occurred, right? Because it's been so difficult to study right the man the immense amount of documents and And so this was kind of an auxiliary test of our study to see well How are they treating science? Are they discussing science more than policy or is it inverse over time? Okay, but the first question is kind of what are they talking about? Not to go into detail, but I'll be very happy to go into detail in the question-and-answer period But what we've done is we've had the the computer has allowed has helped us to cluster all these words So in our corpus We have over 24 million unique words right in this collection of documents 16,000 documents We've been able to cluster these words into themes right so we can think of them as topics and That these topics then are we can measure how similar or dissimilar they are to one another And so what we see is we have these kind of clusters of themes within this huge corpus of documents And what we find is that there are certain clusters here that themes have all to do with science scientific integrity Domestic and international politics are that's kind of corrupted there policy and regulation and energy emissions This right here is green jobs the size of these numbers So each of these numbers is an identifier for one of the 47 topics that we found in the corpus and the size of this The the identifier signifies how important that is or in effect in How how often this thing occurs in the sample in the corpus how important it is in other words So there's some takeaways here We see that the discussion of scientific integrity So this is a tax on scientists and scientific bodies themselves as you know at hominem attacks So that there's a conspiracy or that there's a that the climate change is a hoax or that there really is no consensus Among scientists on climate change the words that they use when they discuss those types of arguments is actually Quite different than the scientific discussion that they have right so they use words that are very similar say to what the words that they use in politics, right and So it's not just when they're attacking the scientific bodies They're not using the same words that they use when they're attacking the science itself And this is important because in the experimental literature Psychologists have found that subjects who are exposed to information on consensus are more likely to support climate policy So in a way here the they are they know there's a strategy to have a specific type of attack on the scientists themselves Attacking the consensus for example Now we can take each of those topics and we can isolate them and we can see how these topics trend over time in terms of intensity of discussion Right, so I've selected two of them here to kind of highlight The way that we would interpret this is these are the probabilities of this topic arising Collapse at the quarter level so first second third fourth quarter of a year If I was to take any point here, I would say okay Well, this top graph is signifying the the evolution of the discussion on cap and trade And we see that it spikes at certain periods When the Lieberman-Warner bill was in effect or was put forward and the Waxman-Marcus bills, right? And the way the way I would describe this is I would say at this point in this in this quarter in 2000 late to the 2008, right? If I was to take an average document pull out a document from this corpus of 16,000 documents About 10% of that document would have to do with cap and trade right? So that's the way we would we would interpret this graph the same can be said for the scientific misconduct There's there's a topic that we labeled scientific misconduct and this peaks when the Michael Mann the hockey stick Controversy arose there were congressional hearings on that then when the so-called climate-gate scandal occurred When there was leaked emails from the University of East Anglia There was a spike about kind of this is a conspiracy so on and so forth, right? So we can do this for each of the topics Well getting back to the original question. Well, are they talking about science or they're talking about policy now, right? And how has that evolved over time? What we see is actually Looking at this top graph and I apologize it came out corrupted, but the gray line the gray confidence intervals are the discussion of science and The blue is policy, right? So I took we took all of these topics and we collapsed them into is this about science or is this about politics or policy and What we find is that discussion of science Seems to be dominant in the pre 2007 period, right or 2008 period Then there's an overtaking by policy, but then again going into the 2013 period again, there's a renewed emphasis on on science now This there's some nuance here with our research, which is that we have these 19 conservative think tanks, right? Well We're assuming that all of them are equally important, right? Well, there's some of them that are only devoted to science and we know that so there's a there's an organization called See it with the acronym is CO2 Sino the short version of CO2 science their major emphasis is that Carbon dioxide is actually a good thing and they review academic literature trying to support this argument And so if we remove them from the sample and then we rerun this we see that well policy seems to be dominant But science and policies seem to converge at certain crucial times So for example when an inconvenient truth came out or when the IPCC Was awarded and I'll go were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and later in 2013 and there's also convergence Well again, is this a fair representation of the conservative think tanks or are there certain think tanks that we should actually be focusing on More specifically right so again influence and power within this space is not uniform But we can focus on one actor the Heartland Institute the Heartland Institute has been Called by the economist the world's most prominent skeptical think tank and they display that proudly on their website and they every year they hold a Kind of a climate denialist pseudo scientific conference They had billboards at one point that were equating Climate scientists to Ted Kaczynski the Unabarmour. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them Kind of a domestic terrorist in the United States And what we find is that we only look at the Heartland Institute starting in 2002 going back to that discussion I'm from Frank Luntz right Steering the Republicans one way. We need to focus on the science This organization took that task and they've been increasing their discussion of science ever since and discussion of policy in relative terms Has been going down What we're working on right now is we're trying to study in the same manner other Other components of this Framework right So right now at the moment we're with John Cook from the University of Queensland we're working on the blog the blogosphere so social media and Kind of sneak peek us to our research to our results thus far a similar type of analysis Shows that if we only look at blogs and by blogs, I mean we've gathered a Little little over a quarter million blog posts from 59 climate change skeptic blogs From 2004 to 2016 we see that in at least in social media in the blogosphere the deniers emphasize science Much more than policy And then we can discuss future research in terms of politicians so forth in the Q&A but in conclusion If we were looking just at this conservative think tanks Their discussion has grown rapidly since 1998 since that last kind of Study that I mentioned earlier on and it peaked in 2009 is declined a little Little since then but it's been ramping up again The discourse touches on a wide range of topics and I discussed the themes that the These higher order themes that we can see the clustering of topics which are politics policy science But also scientific integrity is a distinct theme And it's closer semantically to politics and science and From the discussion after we can see that the discussion of science among these organizations hasn't Hasn't gone down over time if anything has gone up And therefore we can infer that the era of climate science denial is not over why is this important because if There is not at least an agreement as to the underlying cause of the problem by all major actors There can be no comprehensive solution to the problem, right? This is the takeaway, right? and Unfortunately, we don't see that convergence in the United States among these actors at the moment and These conservative think tanks tend to react to the external environment I suggested I showed how the external events happen and then they start talking about it more this Lends credibility to our to our measures But what it also shows is that we need to have these long-time series data generation efforts As we're doing right now at the moment to test kind of key questions