And thank you for being here again. I know there's lots of places you can be in our beautiful city, which happens to be on a loney land. And we want to acknowledge that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Romitushaloni people who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. And as uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Romitush community. With that, I have a reading list and a really great map that you could check out if you've never seen native land map. It's really amazing. It's interactive. It will let you know what territory you're occupying at the moment. It also lists what treaties have been in place or broken. And then one of my favorite organizations in all of San Francisco Bay Area, Segorte Land Trust, all women led, all indigenous land back organization. Check them out, support them within dollar sign S. They are wonderful. All right, tonight you will be able to ask your questions within the Q&A box. That's at the bottom. And I want to tell you just briefly about some upcoming events. This is part of our on the same page campaign, which is a bi-monthly read. Upcoming after we've done celebrating Salido is Hold You Down by Tracy Brown. And this is the story of African-American sisters who are confronting challenges of family and friendship and personal growth set in the 90s and 2000s in New York. So that will be hitting your library shelves starting Monday, you'll find it. Upcoming events, we're celebrating the American Indian Film Fest, posting free film screenings from November 4th through the 8th. Amazing lineup, all day long films and all free to our public. So please come check that out. They're in their 48th year and we're honored to be the house and the film house for the event. November 1st, the scandal of Cal land grabs, white supremacy and the miseducation with Tony Klatt and Milton Reynolds. And this is all about the outrageous amount of indigenous remains, indigenous ephemera and culture that UC Berkeley is doing. It's just mind-blowing. So I hope you will all come check that out. And tonight we are here to celebrate Javier Zamora and his stunning book, Solido. So without further ado, I would like to introduce our speakers tonight. So again, please use the Q&A. If you would like to use the interpretation service that's available with a tiny globe at the bottom of your toolbox. And Javier Zamora is a native Salvadoran who grew up as an undocumented American. His book, Solido, tells into the complex meanings of home and identity, facing challenges due to his immigration status. Zamora co-founded Undocu Poets, a fight to fight citizenship-based discrimination in publishing. His advocacy led to organizations like the American Academy of Poets and the Poetry Foundation opening their prize submissions to all poets regardless of immigration status. His accolades include fellowships from Stanford University, Harvard, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. His debut poetry collection, unaccompanied reflects on the navigating politics, racism, war, and the impact of border crossing on his family. With a BA from the University of California Berkeley and an MFA from New York University, Zamora's work has been published in many notable publication. He currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.  He studied ethnic studies with the Chicano Studies Focus at also UC Berkeley. His working class upbringing in Contra Costa County, his unique status and sexuality inform his perspective on social justice and intersectionality.  He's involved in implementing the SFPL Racial Equity Action Plan and launched the Racial Equity Library podcast which I'll throw the link to that. And it really highlights historically resilient communities but also are resilient and BIPOC library staff. So I'm very proud of the work that he does. And I am going to turn it over friends to Javier and Hernan. Thank you. Hi y'all. It's an honor to be here with you Hernan. It's an honor to be with you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for writing this book. Like I already said, when I was reading this book you would catch me crying on bar or my cubicle. It was a healing journey for me and I'm preaching for a lot of the people in the audience. Let's just start off with how are you? How are you coming to this space? I'm good. Rested, there's a lot going on in the world. Come here with a heavy heart but trying to be present. What message do you have for those kids and families in Palestine that are currently experiencing similar things that settler colonial violence has embedded into our countries? Thank you for just starting with out of the bat. And that's the thing for growing up and I went to Berkeley in 2008 and there was another invasion of the West Bank at the time and it was a Palestinian student alliance. There's a Palestinian students who at that time kind of taught me so much about what it meant to be an undocumented person and just come from the global south and to live under an empire. And since then, since I became, for lack of a better term, educated, time and time again after every struggle it is always the Palestinian people who make a protest either in Gaza or the West Bank. And as a member of the global south, I think it's our turn to show the same solidarity that they always show. And that's why I'm always present on social media and doing the best that I can to just show the same humanity that they have shown us, every color person that's oppressed and that is living under empire. Thank you for those words. And for the people that heard those words, please take them far and wide. I know there's a lot of going on in the world and it can be sometimes difficult to just congregate right now, but take this moment for yourself, for your bodies, for your families and for your loved ones. What is getting to some of the things on your book. This book is painful for some of us to read but I also wanna touch on the joy, right? Tell us about the joy and telling the story and what he meant to become a kid again. You know, and coming at it from the context of what's going on in the world, even in the midst of tragedy and in the midst of obscene trauma, there are moments of joy because the human mind and the human body wants to survive. You know, we are wired to want to live. And it is in those moments that perhaps we are most human because as I describe in the book, when you are so hungry and you haven't eaten in a long time, whatever that may be, that next meal is gonna taste like the best thing ever. And that's what I wanted to show in the book because time and time again, in the topic of immigration, literal human lives have been flattened to our bodies have been flattened to only be bodies that can experience trauma. And all these things happen to us and that takes away our agency. But if you've lived it, you know that that's not the complete truth, that there are moments of joy, that there is community, that there are jokes, that there are fart wars that also happen when things are rough because they must in order for you to trick yourself to keep on going because if you can't find that joy, you're stuck and you get paralyzed by really being aware of recognizing what is actually occurring around you. Thank you for that. I shared a little bit about this in my introduction, but I myself, and I'm undocumented immigrant and I was a child immigrant as well. Didn't go through the same journey because I recognized my privilege as a Mexican citizen in coming to the US as opposed to Central Americans. But what you just said reminds me of the movie Voces Inocentes and how kids in this war-torn, this like US-funded war-torn country kind of steal the war by being kids, by being themselves and having that joy present. So thank you for that. My next question is as an immigrant, as immigrants, we're often taught to work. We came here to work. We came here to get ahead, to send money back to our loved ones to have a better life. And we're often taught to put our feelings aside and tie our self-worth to what we produce. How have you dealt with that growing up in the US and coming to terms with what the American dream actually is? I have, in a weird way, it is a privilege because one of my coping mechanisms has been to be good at school. And that occurred to me even before I immigrated here. I grew up very poor and rural El Salvador and in a town where you have to pay for your education and given the context, paying for a Catholic school education was very expensive for my mom. And she made sure that I was the best kindergartener so she wouldn't have to pay for first grade because in El Salvador, if you're, for lack of a better term, the valedictorian, you get your uniform, your tuition, and you even get free books. And that was me. So from age four, I knew that I had to be good in order to spend the tuition money on things that I wanted. So every month we would go to Pollo Campero once a month or buy your plate and frosted flakes so we can use that money for something else to eat. And I think subconsciously that made it into the back of my mind. And that once my mom left, being a good student, I got treated like royalty by the nuts. And everybody was making sure that I was like taken care of. So I learned that education could replace the love that my mom had given me when she wasn't there. It that made sense. And once I got here, the same thing happened. My mom knew that I needed to learn English really fast. She gave me like a week break. I got here June 11, by June 18, she gave me homework. I had to learn 10 English words a day. So by the time the last week of August when fourth grade started, and I was in the ELL classroom, I was already more advanced than the other students. And I quickly graduated from the ELL, which we were like isolated in the middle of the soccer field in a portable classroom. And then I got transferred into the regular class. And that seems to be like a metaphor that I'm still trying to impact in therapy because I've had this idea that I learned when I was four of like, you must be the best, you must be the best. And at the same time coming to this country from a war-torn country and being told that I can't share where I come from and I can't share my immigration status. It was like these two opposing forces like going against each other. And I just internalized it all and have suffered from it. And I see that the chat's going off. We can go to the chat after because we can get lost in the sauce. How like given those, given what you just said how have you been able to take care of yourself?  Like you have privilege being in this country. How have you been able to take care of yourself given those two opposing forces that you talked about? I haven't, you know, and that's the honest answer from ages nine to 29 when I started to write this book. I really believed that my coping mechanisms were doing their job. And as you mentioned, as Latino men, we are taught to be silent about what we feel, we don't feel, and we also don't ask for help. You have to do everything on your own. And when you come from a culture that's very close-minded, I learn to replicate what other men were doing and, you know, I'm always very open about it. I started drinking in sixth grade. I started smoking weed when I was in seventh grade. And those were also not the best coping mechanism that I used for a long time. And so I was suffering inside and at that age in seventh grade, I also started therapy, you know, and I don't mention therapy as this one fixed all thing.  And I think that was the beginning of learning to understand that what I thought was helping wasn't truly helping and learning to what the metaphor that my therapist uses is that your body is like a race car. And that's the only car that you have, but you can choose to who gets to drive that very fast and lethal car. It could be a good driver or a bad driver or a reckless driver. And so I'm learning to change the driver given the different situations. And that's just awareness. And that comes with years of therapy. I'm at year four with Dr. Carolina Franco.  Thank you for that answer. I saw and heard in one of your interviews that you talked about The Body Keeps the Score, another book that you also quoted in in the beginning of your book and how after writing this book, there was like certain aches in your body that were alleviated. Can you touch more on that? You know, part, in you here, I want to say that people have told me different things at different times and I just wasn't listening. I wasn't ready to receive what they were saying. But for some reason, when I turned 29, I think I was finally ready to receive every advice. And one of those advices was to read this book that had been published a long time ago. And what was illuminating, and I never finished it. You know, I read up to the part where I was comfortable reading. And the two things that I learned from reading that book is that the aches that I've experienced in my body come from somewhere. They don't just come from nowhere. The left side of my body always has hurt and it still hurts now from time to time. But I have learned that and I, you know, my wife was my first editor of the book. And there's a paragraph, a section I think in the first try that we tried across the desert where Chino is pulling my hand and it's my left hand. And then the next paragraph, or I asked the question, it's like, I don't know why my left hand's hurting. And then the next paragraph is like, oh, Chino is pulling me and running away and like spilling me like this. And I think I truly believe that it is this hand, which is the one that he kept on pulling is the reason why my left side of my body is always the one that feels things. On the other hand, I suffer from this thing called eye migraines, which less than 2% of people suffer. And it's whenever I'm stressed out, I go blind. Only on this side. And I go blind for like five minutes, 10 minutes tops. And that is also from trauma. And like all of these things, and I have, I've done all the tests, and I have what my doctor and I ended up doing is every time that I get one, I write it down. And I have a long notes folder of like eye migraines. And by the moment that I stopped writing this book, the number of migraines has gone down. I have one every three months now when it used to be two a week or three a week. And so literal things that once you're finally ready to process the trauma that you have survived, which for me took me 21 years, eventually you will get to a place if you really want to, in which you can see it and hopefully dispel it and live with it. Because it's not gonna go anywhere. This happened to us. And sadly, we have to live with it, but we can learn how to better live with it. And I think that's where I'm at right now. Thank you for that. People are in the chat are healing as well. I'm gonna ask you something that Chino asked you in the journey. And if you could have anything right now, what would it be? Peace, world peace on the grand scale. But on a more smaller scale, I would have nachos. Shrimp nachos. It's interesting how the answers vary when you're hungry and in survival mode. Yeah, you know, it's weird how I react to food. I think because of my trauma, food to this day brings me so much joy. And I get like visceral reactions.  So it's like, and again, this is how the body reacts because I can, I still, I'm still healing from having extreme hunger and thirst. Thank you for that. Nachos and peace. The next question I want to ask you is about memory. The book is written in such detail that even I got flashbacks reading your book. I'm like, how can he remember so like minute details, whether it was like the way you were positioned or just like the building you saw in the background, how were you able to recollect all those memories? And you kind of touch on this a little bit, but how and where was your body storing them? You touched on that a little bit already, but how were you able to recollect all these thoughts? You know, I've given multiple answers, but I don't think I've given this one. Trust. Trust when you are a survivor of any trauma. Your brain doesn't want it to have happened.  Because if you doubt yourself, maybe there's still hope there. There's still hope that that thing that you're trying to heal from didn't happen. And the biggest thing in writing this book outside of like moving back to Tucson of having a green card and the ability to go back to El Salvador of using Google Earth, of like using Google to see the faces of the moon, the temperature, et cetera, et cetera. Outside of that was trusting my dreams, trusting my memories, trusting that I lived it. And that is the most radical thing because from a micro level, again, the brain doesn't want it to have happened. So it makes you doubt yourself. From a macro level, this government and the journalism, the coverage of immigrants in this country, also there's a lot of erasure that happens and you begin to believe that erasure. From 1999, I wanna say until the crisis at the border in 2014, nobody was talking about this. And as a survivor of that precise thing that nobody was talking about, it was a huge erasure. And I'll imagine not talking about something and then seeing it on every television in every newspaper, like 24 seven, that was shocking and traumatizing, which made me distrust myself even more. So from 2014 to 2019, when I was 29, that distrust was exponential. And so I've had therapy has also helped me begin to trust the narrative and the liberal neuron connections that I have in my brain and to say, yes, this happened to you and it's okay that it happened to you and you can go back into your nine year old shoes and trust that narrator, which is that little kid that is still inside of you. So trust. That's a little Javiercito for giving us this book. And for you that you're doing the work that in specific, a lot of men don't do. Like you said, like as brown men, we tend to internalize these things and just not talk about them. And then we're wondering why our back hurts our shoulders hurt. So thank you for that. And I would say not only brown men, I think it's a problem of patriarchy and power. Silence benefits the patriarchy. So we have to undo that as well. So I'll speak more on that. You know, and I've also said this and I also kind of like want to correct myself. It's not only brown men that have been taught to not like share their feelings. It's men in general, across all cultures. And I think that is just the power structure, you know, and the, which another word for me, it's the patriarchy, it's all tied together. And so it benefits those in power, which is traditionally men to not say anything and to buy into this code of silence. And I think just, and that is detrimental to making any sort of change and to really begin to speak about what we see that is wrong. And because we have learned to be silent, we just keep our mouth shut.  If that makes sense. That makes absolutely sense. My next question is on your preparation for writing this book. How did you knew that you were ready to write the book? And it's a two-part question, but I'll start with that one. I was extremely angry. I was so angry that, again, going back to the coverage and during the, the presidency that I lived through, you know, 2016 to 2020 were rough because, and they were rough for this particular reason as a previously undocumented person as a border crosser. I've always suspected that this government doesn't want us here, not people, the government, but nobody had said it in their own, in their words. And then we will not meet because I still can't vote, but Americans elected this president that literally was saying like the number one that most powerful person in the United States was saying that he didn't want us here. And that really hurt. I think we're all still collectively healing from that. And that not to make it about anything, but that is what us people who are traditionally oppressed and from the global South have to live with. And again, not to tie it, if you're following me, this is part of the power structure and the patriarchy because this codes of silence that has silenced me and those that look like me in this country where there's no other way different people react to it differently, my form of coping was anger. But then my therapist reminds me that anger, anger is not a primary emotion. It is a secondary emotion. So if I was so angry, that also means that I was extremely sad. I was so sad to finally be on the ground and so sad to finally be at Harvard. I was invited to be a Harvard fully paid for a year. They gave me my office. I finally had a green card. And yet this motherfucker was in the presidency. And I was so sad that I thought all these things going back to the American dream question that all these things that I was looking forward to because I truly believe that they were gonna give me happiness and that having a green card is gonna fix everything. And yet it didn't. I was in a deep depression that was translated externally as extreme anger. And so that's how I began the construction of this book from a moment of anger. It's interesting that you touch on that point. I had a mentor. She's in the PhD program at UT Berkeley and talked about how when an undocumented person gets a citizenship, it's not this joyful experience that due to them experiencing being undocumented in this country and all the shit they had to go through, all the hurdles they had to go through and are still going through that it takes away that expectation of like, well, okay, like we got some sort of relief. Thank you for touching on that. I don't know anything else to add to that. I would equate it to the similar moment. There's like just this metaphor of making it to the finish line, right? And if you follow that metaphor, once you make it to a finish line, you get this, at least I do, this vision of completeness and a reward. Usually there's like a trophy that you're going after, right? And for us immigrants, I think especially if you're actually all immigrants, but for me, I think it has a lot to do with you're a child. When you're a child, the United States gets sold to you as the best country in the world, the country that's going to fix everything. All you have to do is make it to that finish line. And that finish line is a literal line, that's the US-Mexico border. And once you get there and you live day one in this nation, you understand that you're not coming to the full house house. You don't live in Baywatch Malibu. Your parents have two or three jobs. You live in an apartment that your parents rent out to other people. You, your idea that has been sold to you in shows and Disney and television doesn't exist for you. And so the finish line equals a depression. And now that I have the privilege of having papers, it is, I would equate it as the same thing. It's like you make it to the finish line, the US-Mexico border, you get the physical green card. And then you realize that not a lot of things change. That the dream in fact is not a dream. That because you have been living the nightmare, it is very difficult to forget the nightmare and that nightmare haunts you and it will haunt you forever. And instead what you must do is think about what that means and hopefully have access to mental health so you can talk to a professional about it. And yeah, so I want to read that research because that I haven't seen many examples of as well, what happens after you get the papers, you know. Thank you for touching on that. And I guess for to like the second piece, it would be what advice do you have for undocumented writers? I'm gonna leave it at that. I'm gonna leave it open for you to interpret. If you can be truthful, be truthful. I would say from a legal perspective, I wouldn't advise you write non-fiction if you want to get papers and if you want to write about your own story. I would write poetry or fiction because, you know, and I guess, yeah, this is getting recorded and it's gonna get circled. So I'll leave it at that. But to make it short, I think I will be a forever green card holder. I don't think I would be, I can become a citizen anytime soon because of the book that I wrote. Because I have an EB-1 visa, which is an Einstein visa, a professional visa, visa given to me because I was a writer and because I wrote a poetry book.  It is up to one person that interviews you for them to deem you worthy of citizenship or to check all the background and everything that you have said and done. So I'll leave it at that. But if I would just say that I would be as truthful as you can be and sometimes fiction is truer than non-fiction. Thank you for that. One of my, we got two more questions and then we'll open the Q&A. And you kind of touched on this a little bit. Did writing the book have any impact on your immigration risk slash status? Yes, next question. Right. So I asked you this before, but you moved back to Arizona, which is like a place where this book takes place through Nogales. Can you touch on like how that experience being so close to somewhere where it was really traumatizing for you to even be in the first place? When I was undocumented, I would have never felt safe living and even visiting Arizona. Because you know, last election Arizona was blue, but it hasn't been blue when I was undocumented. I first visited here with TPS, which is the temporary protective status. And in 2017, when I was 27, in Tucson, if you drive to some parts, you will see Border Patrol agents. If you drive a little bit south, you will see Border Patrol helicopters. And that, when I first saw it with TPS, when I was 27, was re-traumatizing. I had PTSD. I was here for four nights. I couldn't sleep those four nights. And so, fast forward. I came back when I was 29 with a green card back then. I felt a little safer. I had a therapist by then and I was with my now wife then. So I had a support system. And living here has, for lack of a better term, is exposure therapy. I exposed myself to the landscape that almost killed me. And in hindsight, I have stayed here because now I've had the ability and the privilege to build better memories than the ones I had in my mind. Tucson, for me, was the place that almost killed me before I moved here. After moving here, Tucson, I can now see is the most biodiverse desert in the world. It has the best Moscow selection, but that's nachos in the world, in my opinion. And so different happier moments. We've lived here for three years. I got married here. So I'm really taking this landscape back for my own sanity and for my own healing. We love that for you. My next question is on chosen family. Patricia, Carla and Chino were your chosen family throughout this journey. How did you grapple with this concept of chosen family as you grew up away from chosen and blood family? So I'm gonna leave it at that. It's still a struggle, you know. I strategically chose one of the epigraphs to be from this book called Sacrificing Families, written by Lacey Abrego. In the book, the gist of it is that immigration means that you sacrifice your family, your sacrificing relationships that without therapy and even with therapy are perhaps you can never rescue or repair ever again. And in this journey, I did or they chose me as their family, but because of the trauma, because of the anti-immigrant country that we live in, I genuinely did not want to speak about them and couldn't speak about them because I would break down every time that I even thought about them until I was 29 and started writing this book. So family to me is a very complicated topic.  And I didn't see my grandma, mom for 19 years. And finally, after my seventh visit back to my country, now that I have a green card, our relationship looks something like what it used to look like. And this is what immigration does. This is what separation does. And even with my mom, you know, finally she's in therapy, but we're finally beginning, even though I lived with her since I moved to this country, it has been a wild ride with my mom. My aunts who I mentioned in the book, I don't really talk to them anymore because of the, they're anti-vaxxers.  And when you're undocumented and you feel powerless, God and this big G God seems to take over your life. You know, we see it time and time again in undocumented families because you don't have anything. And so it's complicated. And I think these are just the realities of what it means again to be from the global south. And for lack of a better term, live as a second class citizen in this country, which is something that I think I don't hear out loud as much.  Thank you for that. And the question that a lot of people have been asking is how you've been able to make contact with Chino, Patricia or Carla? No, and I love, this is the most asked question. And no, they haven't reached out. I don't know if they're still in the United States. I don't know if they're still alive. Carla is only three years older than me. So if there's anybody that has seen the book on Instagram or anything, it would be her, which makes me think that, you know, you don't want to remember your trauma. I didn't want to remember it for 20 years. And so you have to be ready to tackle that. This country would be re-traumatizing to them, especially Chino and Patricia, because they were adults.  Their book, their version of my story would read a lot different. It wouldn't be as naive as to the dangers that I was facing. And so I can't imagine what it would be like for them to have this kid that they helped now be all over, you know, Instagram or to like, for this book to be in a bookstore, in Target even, you know, it would be re-traumatizing. So I completely understand why they haven't reached out. And that's if they're alive, you know? And I don't want to reach out to them because that, again, it's their call. It's their agency. Thank you for that. We'll go into the Q&A. I have no further questions. Thank you so much for answering. No, thank you. This has been great. Honestly, like one of the best interview type things that I've done. Thank you for that. A lot of people in the chat are asking, what's next for Javier Samona? Is there a sequel? I don't know. I'm trying, you know, I'm trying to write a novel. I only have 20,000 words. So give me like five years to complete it. I have 13,000 words, which isn't much of what happens after. I don't think it's going to be a memoir like this. It's still going to be a memoir, but in short story. I really want to talk about what it means to live with that depression, you know, as an undocumented kid and to live with that silence and how that silence gets enacted when you don't know what's going on. So yeah, those are my two projects. Sounds good. The next question we have from the chat is from Duygu. I sorry if I put your name.  And they ask if you don't mind sharing, what was it like to get to know your parents after seeing and starting to live with them again? That's what I want to write about. But a short answer is that my dad was a stranger. He left when I was one years old. And again, to bring it back to trust, I think the biggest thing that I've had to relearn is trusting anybody, you know, after trusting the strangers that I never saw again that became my family, Chino, Patricia and Carla. I have deep, deep trust issues as a grown up. And also like learning to trust my dad first. He's my literal biological dad and he's wonderful, but he took me months to consider him my father. My mom, I hadn't, I remembered and I hadn't seen for four years. And that was also weird because I expected, you know, my mom suffered postpartum and she was a young teenage mom and she didn't have access to mental health. And as a little kid, I hope that she had changed, but she hadn't. And so that was rough as well growing up. So yeah, it took a while. Thank you for that. Next question is from Natalia Martín. What impact would you like you, your book, to have on those people who might be currently considering to migrate through the desert? I don't know, you know, people don't choose to migrate. If they're considering crossing the desert, it's for a reason. I would just want to remind them of the dangers if they haven't already tried, I think. Not a lot of people are aware of what could happen and how dangerous it is. And if they have already tried and they know what it is, I would just wish them luck. That's it. Thank you for that. A lot of these questions you've already kind of answered. One of the questions is, do you still believe in Cadejo? Absolutely. You know, when, you know, survivors of trauma, and it is also like in psychological terms, it is difficult to accept that you survived, especially when you're part of a group you know, I'm still unsure whether Cele is still in the desert or hopefully he made it out. You know, a lot of cocolizo is certainly still in the desert, you know, and I always, not then, but as I got older, I was like, why me? You know, and this is also something that we don't talk about. Thousands of people die a year at the U.S.-Mexico border. Tens of thousands of Central American and other mostly now Asian Cubans and Venezuelans die trying to cross through Mexico. And as a survivor, I'm like, why? And as a spiritual person who doesn't believe in, you know, Western religion, I have gone back to what is, who could have protected me? And that would be my ancestors. And, you know, I am now at Pipil from El Salvador. And to me, getting back in touch with my native roots, my indigenous roots, of which Dacadejo is a myth, has also helped me heal. And now I know for certain that it was my disappeared uncle and his fiancé, María de Los Ángeles, and my tata, la abuela, Fina, who were protecting me, at least them three and also others. My abuelito, Capirucho as well, and they're all inside to me. They're all Dacadejo. That's who they mean to me. So, yeah, I still do. Thank you for that. Just on building up on this question. When I was immigrating myself, there was like a lot of, they would take tremendous care of the kids. They would carry me and my sister through the desert, or they would make sure that we were safe at all costs. And it was like, my mom told me that after we had crossed, they make sure that the kids crossed because they knew like, they were like a lucky charm. Like if the kids crossed, then we crossed even if they don't in a way. And when reading about Dacadejo, I'm like, you were Dacadejo to them in a way. And that's how I was able to grapple with that concept. I'm like, you in a way were also their lucky charm, or like someone looking after them. That's how I was able to process it. Now I'm like finishing in talking to you, but... I received that and I appreciate that. You know, because from a psychological point of view, group dynamics, everybody fulfills a rule, right? And what I haven't believed, and I'm beginning to believe more and more, is that I also contributed something to the group. And I'm talking about the four. You know, Patricia was nourishment and protection, Gino as well, friendship, protection, Carla also towards me, and comradity as well. And I never think about what I contributed to. But I think, and what Carol, my therapist likes to remind me, is that I was their blind hope. You know, I was so naive, but naivety that actually turned into a superpower. You know, whenever they asked, or whenever they wanted to give up this little nine-year-old kid, it was like, no, I'm going to make it. I'm going to see my parents. And so, thank you. That means a lot that you would call me. The next question is from Gabriele Steiner. Are there takeaways you hope to impart to second-gen folks? In example, American-born children of immigrants. For context, your writing has helped me tremendously to understand my mother's trauma slash history, who's also from El Salvador and came as a teenager, undocumented for I don't even know how long. Thank you for your work. I hope, you know, and again, I don't think a book like mine has existed for a reason. Trauma is difficult. Nobody wants to remember how they got here. My dad took 14 months to make it here. And I've only talked to him about a few instances of his time in Chiapas. That's it. My mom took two weeks. And she still hasn't fully told me how she got here. Oh, oh, an image that she has. And there's always one image is of her drinking water from like a puddle. And that's it. And so I hope that for the second generation, this book could just begin those conversations, those very difficult conversations. That if you're lucky, your parents going to want to share my parents don't. So I also understand and don't expect them to. Because again, everybody has their own healing journey. And so just just that, like I the takeaway would be that this is very hard. And it's very difficult to talk about. And if they talk about it, that's a huge privilege that you should share. Thank you for that. One of the other questions we have was, what was it like returning to El Salvador? El Salvador for the first time? You can actually listen about what it was like. I did an episode for Latino USA called the return. And it was because I self deported for lack of a better term, because I had to because of how I came into this country, I had to interview at the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador without knowing whether they were going to say yes. And if they said no, I would have to stay in El Salvador for 10 years until I could reapply. So there was a lot of anxiety. Just that, even if I had gone back with papers, it would have been hard.  You know, I again, I couldn't sleep. It was re-traumatizing. I don't even remember much of it. And this was this was like, I went back the year after the peak murder rate in my country. So I didn't even feel safe walking to the market. Which is like two blocks away. So I just spent two months inside. So it was it was bad. We are coming to an end. Is there any words of wisdom? Anything else you would like to share with us? I'll leave it. I'll leave it open to you. I hope that people not only care about immigrant children or children from the global south. But let's not forget the adults, the parents, the grandparents. Because and like this is so this is why it's hard living right now with all these people. Because we are seeing it if you have lived it and you come from the global south and you are a brown body in this world. You would be triggered because this is the erasure that we are witnessing is the erasure that we always feel. But now it's real. They're just proving our point. And so there's always this. It seems that human beings only have empathy for children and women. What about everybody else? Why can't we just have empathy for everybody? Everybody's human and everybody deserves equality. So just and thank you all. You know, it's thank you for being here on a Thursday night. It means the world. We should do this again. You know, this was very special. And thank you everybody. Let me know to close everybody out. I would like to do an exercise. If you have a water, a water bottle or water near you. I would like to do an exercise. If you have a water bottle or water near you, please grab it. And we're going to take three sips. Let's take our first sip for our bodies, nourish our bodies first. The second one is going to be for our families. And the third one is going to be for our community. And I would like to do an exercise. our bodies first. The second one is going to be for our families. And the third one is going to be for our community, our loved ones, and the wider world for the ones we wish peace for. Thank you Javier, Anisa. Oh Javier, thank you so much. This was very special. And I know you see that love pouring in through the chat. Friends, thank you so much for being part of this. There's tonight's loop. You can pick that up. It's more everyone. Thank you. And on. Amazing. Thank you. All right.


Good evening. This is crime classics. I am Thomas Highland with another true story of crime. Listen. The sheriff of Nairsboro places a skull on the table. Now a tibia. Now a tibia. These bones have recently been dug up from St. Robert's Cave, a favorite tristing place of the town. And now he puts a femur on the table and the skeleton is almost completely reconstructed. A jawbone. Fingers and toes. And just let them lie there. The sheriff can see for himself who the skeleton is. Daniel Clark, all right? So that's what he's been doing these 15 years.  The noise it made. Crime classics. A series of true crime stories taken from the records and newspapers of every land. From every time. Your host each week, Mr. Thomas Highland, connoisseur of crime, students of violence and teller of murder. Now once again, Mr. Thomas Highland. The Huxley Seminary for Gentile females is extinct now and the moral might be drawn from that. Last year on a stroll in London, its campus was defined for me. A triangle bounded now by a barber shop, a sheer sharpener and a free kitchen for a type of wanderer. Gone is the ivy. Gone the girlish laughter. Vanished the sound of silver bells that spilled the young ladies from classroom of Greek to classroom of how to conduct oneself at five o'clock tea. Silent now the small excitement of selling these. Only the imagined echo heard of Mr. Aram's Latin class. The problem, for example, of the Latin's preference for the use of the gerundit. Concilium urbium capion darum. A plan of capturing the city. And it was so important that it be right for Janice was 17. And it was necessary that Mr. Aram approve her Latin for this was her plan of capturing Mr. Aram. I do hope I'm right. Of course you are. And listen. Yes. When an adjective modifies two or more nouns of different gender, the agreement is as follows. The attributed adjective agrees for the nearest noun. As for example, multi-erbis, opida, vikikrei. Yes.  Thank you. I think now you've made up all the time you've missed so that I shall not have to tutor you in private anymore. Mr. Aram. Yes, Janice. I love you. Child. I love you truly. Homo laudandus es. Oh, please don't try to prove anything to me in Latin, Mr. Aram. Child, many girls fall in love with their teachers. Oh, every girl in school is in love with you, Mr. Aram. And I love you the most. That's very sweet of you. And I don't care that you're married. Please, Janice. Look, at this poem I've written to you in the corner of my book. Oh, please read it. All right. Well, I know there's some mistakes and syntax, but... I think you've expressed yourself quite clearly. Sincerely, too. I think you'd better go now, Janice. Don't you think I'm beautiful? Lovely. Truly lovely. Oh, I think you do love me. You're just afraid to go. No, I'm an older man, Janice. Then my wife and I are blessed with happiness and love. And I cherish the life I have with her. Then what of me? Why, if you truly love me, you will suffer a broken heart. It will make you more beautiful still. I'll go. This was no singular occurrence in the academic life of Mr. Eugene Aram. The young ladies, each gentle female of them, were caught in the web of his tender and warm charm, though never caught in his embrace. For Mr. Aram was a good man, an understanding man, a scholar of Greek and Latin and Hebrew, and a gentleman in any language. He was 38 years old, and for the last dozen years, his chief devotion was Ellen, his wife. For example, that very night.  Very well. Hold out your hands. All right. Now, open them. Well, well, Eugene. If you wonder how much I wanted this for you. My dear. Yes, dear. To have bought this, how you must have crimped it.  I call it saving for your joy. Ah, you're my beloved. Yes, yes, I know. How is school today? Well. You're smiling. What happened? Tell me. One of my Latin students. Oh, again. This one taught to woo me with an interesting Latin construction. Oh, poor child. Oh, well, it will pass with her at the party of Zolium. Only to fall prey to Mr. Black in manners and number section. Oh, come now, let us not judge. You're too kind. Well, there's not time in this life for malice. Too gentle. Too good. Truly. Do you believe that? No, of course not.  Come, sit you down to your meal. This was no singular homecoming in the domestic life of Eugene Aram. His wife, the whole being of her, was caught in the web of his tenderness and his love. And she, unique among women, was caught in his embrace. Some other things to know about Mr. Aram, though his salary was a small one, he gave a considerable portion of it to his church and to charities. Each holiday would see him bringing baskets to the poor, and his name was breathed in prayers all over the neighborhood. How, you might ask, did he get along at work with his employers, for instance? He said, and as all the tutors here at Huxley, you are truly a trice. Well, thank you, Mr. Huxley. I am here in letters from the Proctors of the University. Mr. Aram. Oh, yes? Of course. That's very sweet. Oh. Having two pounders of proof that Latin and Greek are cousin languages, and not mother and daughter languages. Yes, I wrote a paper to this effect and sent it to you. I have outlawed you. Thank you. You're a good man. Thank you, sir. A truth, color, and... Hey, no, please. Yes. Then this fool, the gentleman, must be Eugene Aram. Am I not right? Who are you, sir? Morban. Yes? I've come for Mr. Aram. Come for him? To arrest him. Arrest him? For murder. Sheriff. Yes, sir, Mr. Aram? Will you loosen my shackle, please, for a moment, so that I may dip a snuff? Of course. All right. Yes. Too tight? No. Hey, Sheriff. Yes, sir, Mr. Aram? You said... A murder. Which is the reason you are being taken? Murder of the Mr. Daniel Clark. That's right, sir. Who is Mr. Daniel Clark? He was a shoemaker. Why am I called to attest to his murder? You've been named? By who? Mr. Theodore Housman. Housman? Housman. Who's he? You don't know him? No. He said he was a good friend of yours. I don't know him. I don't know him. I don't know him. He's a good friend of yours. Fifteen years ago, that is. I never heard of him. Well, sir, this is the way it was. Last month or so ago, a workman was digging in the limestone pits in Nersbury. You remember where they are? You remember Nersbury, don't you, sir? It's been so long since I lived there. Ah, please, sir. Fifteen years. Well, to go on... Yes, please. This workman was digging and comes across a skeleton. Now, the townspeople there couldn't for their life figure out who the skeleton was, since pride is taken in resting people proper in the graveyard. Yes, I can see what the problem was. Well, someone remembered that fifteen years ago, a certain Daniel Clark shoemaker disappeared. And it was remembered, too, that Daniel Clark had a close friend still about, named Theodore Housman. And you spoke with Mr. Housman, I take it? Yes, I did, sir. And Mr. Housman proved conclusively that the skeleton taken from the limestone pits was not Mr. Daniel Clark at all. Then I don't understand. Well, he took us to St. Robert's Cave. Sure as where to dig, I'm sure enough. Another skeleton. Right. Right you are. Which you identified as Mr. Clark's roommate? Right. Right you are. Of course, of course, sir. How do you know it with Mr. Clark? Well, I'm sure I don't know. Besides? Besides what? This skeleton that a school bashed in. What is that proof? That it was Mr. Clark. But how do you know? Why, well, could it be? Come along now. To underline his logic, the sheriff on the dusty ride from London to Nairsboro would repeat himself. Why, well, could it be? And smile smugly. When the carriage reached Nairsboro, the beloved schoolmaster was stripped of his clothes, and some rags to wear, and was thrown into the Nairsboro jail. Fifteen minutes after this happened, he had a visitor, the town stapler. A man chosen by the town folk to staple desperate criminals to the jail wall. Mr. Aram was secured in such a way as hardly to be able to move at all. Certainly, he was immobile to such a degree that he could not dip a snuff. He dearly loved. Fifteen minutes after he was stapled, Mr. Aram had another visitor. Mr. Aram had another visitor. Remember me, Eugene? Bigly, I think. Time for the light. Well, remember me? From when you used to live here? I think. I'm not sure. Teddy. Teddy. Teddy Hausman. Oh, you're the one who named you Murderer. I see. First, I was named... went to trial, too, but I was acquitted. You know why I was acquitted, Eugene? Why? Because I named you. I'm speaking against you at the trial, Eugene. I'm giving evidence against you. I'm the reason you're going to hang. Is there a light enough, Eugene? Can you see who I am? Can you remember me? Crime classics. And your host, Thomas Hyland. And his report to you on Mr. Clark Skeleton and Mr. Aram's closet. The noise it made. Words about Yorkshire County, England. For in it, almost to thwart the boundaries of East and West riding, lies Nersboro. Well, Yorkshire is a county rich in historical associations. The Romans were here, and the Danes, as well as the Celts, and the Normans, and the Northumbrians. So you see, it's really one of the most invaded places in the world. It's one of the most common armies when Yorkshire County was a standing joke. Roman roads can be seen, as well as ruins of all types. And caves are constantly found with artifacts and shards and bones. And in such a cave, the bones of Daniel Clark. I'm sure it's Daniel Clark. For I remember when Eugene Aram dug a hole and put him there 15 years ago. If it's not Daniel Clark, then who else is it?  Who else could it be? But my husband is such a good man. Did you know him 15 years ago, Mrs. Aram? No. No, I didn't. When did you meet him? 12 years ago. In London. Now? I was to market, and he followed me home. Did he? And he walked up the steps behind me. Did he?  But he closed my mouth for the kiss. What kind of a man would do that now? Would a gentleman do it, I ask? My husband is a gentleman. And romantic. And I wanted him to kiss me. Did he tell you where he was from? From there, bro, he said. Come to London to study and to teach and to take wife. And he said he needed to take wife before he could study or teach. Did he say out about a man named Daniel Clark? He spoke of pirates, not shoemakers. Did he say about a man named Theodore Housman? He spoke of philosophers, not liars. Did he? Did he now? He's a poet and philosopher. Did he now? Indeed, Mr. Arab is. A scholar himself, for listen what he has done. What self thought he is in Latin and Greek and Hebrew as well as knowledgeable in other Sanskrit languages. As well as knowing history and doing songs without the back of boards. As well as propounding theories as to the relation of one language to another. Cousins he called Latin and Greek. Not mother and daughter as to Hesel and Loth. Do they now? Beloved by all. Kindly and admired. Yet what? It looks as if he is a murderer. No, I'll never believe it. Never believe it. And why not, Miss? Because I'm his Latin pupil. And I offered him my love. Yes. And he did not accept it. And why not? Because he's a good man. And he has a wife. And you say he could not kill? Oh no, not such a gentle man. You admire gentleness. No more. I've spoken my heart. Moe Bank went back to Nairsboro with definite impressions that Eugene Allen was loved by one and all and that he was a mild man and that no one would believe that he was so horrendous as murder. And nevertheless Eugene Allen was brought to trial and the greater part of the trial was devoted to Theodore Hausman's testimony and this is the story he told. 15 years ago he said he and Eugene Allen had been friendly with Daniel Clark, the shoemaker and one night when they were all together Daniel said I have an idea gentlemen. Concerning what Danny? Concerning a way to make us rich. How? I know of my wife as she comes into fortune.  But she's been coming into fortune now for over a year and I'm still making shoes for the folks of Nairsboro for this idea now. Tell us, tell us Danny. Now all the shop smiths of Nairsboro know that one day I come into a summer morning through through and all I have to do is to buy on credit. An advance so to speak until my wife inherits her fortune. Now that's an idea that I've ever heard one. And on credit you could buy the finest stores. For all of us. Jewels. For all of us. Silver things. For all of us. For me. For me. For all of us. And then we could go to London.  And be giled to London ladies. Where are you from you handsome lads they'll say from Yorkshire mom will say and give us a kiss. And they'll do it. They'll want to. Because we'll have money. And be dressed fine. Then do it Danny. Do your idea. Do your plan. Danny. What? When we're in London. She'll be here to pay the bills. When she gets her inheritance. When she gets it. And Hausman went on with his story. He told how Daniel Clark went to the shopkeepers. And for Mr. Chesney he got several services of pure silver plate. And on credit mind you. And for Mr. Malcolm the jeweler.  And for Mr. Fivac the tailor. Garments of leather and garments of brocade. And all this and more he brought to them and ales and wines to have a party. And you know where they had the party. Teddy said they had the party in St. Robert's cave.  Oooooh. Oh it was easy. Tell us Danny lads. Oh I told Mr. Chesney that I only wanted one silver service. He insisted I take three. I told Mr. Malcolm I was just looking about. And he asked me, wasn't I the lad whose wife is coming into a fortune soon as the court allowed? And I said, yes? He pushed a handful of diamonds and pearls on me. And, Mr. Hyde, the greediest of them all, bolts of brocade and leather he piled me high with. What a fortune it's here. Ah, let us drink and then we'll go to London. And then we'll...  Oh, warm friends.  Gentle, warm friends. Danny, huge friends. Why? Why are you laughing? Ah, the trick the shadow is making this case. Oh, as if you're holding high a shovel above my head. As if... Well now, I believe you've killed Danny Eugene. You have cheated his wife like that? He was a cheater, all right. You take half and I'll take half of what he cheated her of. And what will you do with him? Bury him? Bury him. Bury him. And so Teddy Hausman finished his story. Then you remember the sheriff walked over to a table in the courtroom. My lord, this is the skull we found. The tibia, the tibia. The femur, the jawbone. These are the fingers and toes. This is Daniel Clark, all right. Who else would it be? As sheriff of Nezda, I've been asking that all about and no one can give me answers. Oh, it's Daniel Clark, all right. My name isn't Teddy Hausman. And Eugene Arum put the side of the shovel to him as true as I stand. And what have you to say, Eugene Arum? My lord, I labor not with guilt, but with perplexity. For my whole conduct in life contradicts every particular of this indictment. I concerted no schemes of fraud, projected no violence, injured no man's person or property. My days were honestly laborious, my nights intense insolence. It is deserving of attention, my lord, that no person after a temperate life plunges into the very depths of evil. A man is never corrupted at once. Villainy is progressive step by step. And therefore you cannot believe that a man such as I committed this most hideous of all crimes. Submit me, my lord, to observe a little upon the bones which have been discovered and laid upon this table by the sheriff. It is said that these are the skeleton of a man. But is there any certain known proof which distinguishes the sex of human bones? Perhaps at some future time, scientists will be able to tell the bones of a male from those of a female, but not so today. Now, here is a human skull produced which is fractured. But was this the cause of death? Or was it the effect of natural decay? If it was violence, was that violence before or after death? In May 1732, the remains of William, Lord Archbishop of the province, were taken up and the bones of the skull were found broken. Yet certainly he died by no violence offered to him, for we all know he died serenely in his sleep. More.  I put myself upon the candor, the justice and the humanity of your lordship and upon yours, gentlemen of the jury. Being found guilty by a jury of your peers, it is the sentence of this court that you be placed in nears but a prison, alone, so that you may commune with your soul and ask peace of your maker. And from this place be taken to the gallows, and there hanged until you are dead. And your body shall then be delivered to the surgeons. May heaven rest your soul. New Eugene, the judge himself said that yours was one of the most clever speeches he'd ever heard. I know you didn't kill that man, and all of England knows it. They're forming committees. People are kind. Good news, Eugene! I've gotten up a petition. Scholars and teachers were fending together and he'll save you. You have nothing to fear. That is wonderful of you people. Humanity. Another victory will be yours. You remember me, do you not? Janice, you're Latin people. I'm so out of breath. I can hardly tell you. We've gotten up a paper. All kinds of signatures. Boys and girls. Students from all over England. Oh, certainly they won't hang you now. As you no doubt have noticed, we are left now with an unexplained skeleton. The first one which sent the sheriff to Teddy Hausman. Well, we're left with it. It has never been identified. And nor exactly why Teddy Hausman was acquitted. Wherever true crime fanciers get together, in the case of Eugene Aram as mentioned, there is without fail a discussion as to whether or not he was truly guilty. And nevertheless, Eugene Aram mounted the scaffold June 12th, 1758. The boy is there. He was about to deliver another speech of eloquence when... Needless to say, everyone felt sorry for him. The people from all over wept. Oh, such a nice man. In just a moment, Thomas Hyland will tell you about our next crime classic. Mr. Aram's closet, tonight's crime classic, was adapted from the original course of the 18th century. It was adapted from the original court reports and newspaper accounts by Morton Fine and David Friedkin. The music was composed and conducted by Bernard Herman and the program is produced and directed by Elliott Lewis. Thomas Hyland is portrayed on radio by Lou Merrill. In tonight's story, Van Wright was heard as Mr. Aram. Featured in the cast were Betty Harford, Ellen Morgan, Herb Butterfield, Charles Davis, Richard Peel and William Johnstone. Here again is Thomas Hyland. Paris, France, in the year 1673 will be our next concern. That was the year almost everyone had the virus, the deadly kind. Or, as though they thought, it's listed in my files as the lethal habit of the Marquis de Brunsilier. Thank you. Good night. Facilities of the United States, Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.


Modern media has a morality problem. So many of the most popular movies and TV shows depict awful characters doing horrible things to other people, and instead of treating these as cautionary tales, it seems that we're now supposed to look at them as role models. But when I've talked about this on Out of Frame in the past, I've often gotten comments from people complaining that good characters are boring, or that these shows and movies are just depicting reality as it is — solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. A shocking number of people seem to believe that the world is a horrible place, and humanity is irredeemable.  This attitude is why I have a ton of comments on my videos about Thanos defending his insane and patently incorrect brand of Malthusian population control. This kind of misanthropy is everywhere, and I think a lot of us have just come to expect it. Thing is, the stories we tell each other matter. Stories are our primary means of making sense of the world around us, and they have a profound effect on what we believe. Not only in terms of what we all think is true or false, but in terms of what values and premises we accept. In the words of Rogue One director Gareth Edwards, As a race, we're kind of immortal.  Individually, we don't. But, you know, we reproduce, and we have children. They're sort of clones of ourselves. But the one thing that doesn't copy over, the one thing you can't reproduce, is experience. The human body is like the hardware, and I feel like stories of the software that you sort of load into the new child. But what if we're downloading malware into our brains instead? What happens when the stories we surround ourselves with each and every day tell us the wrong things, and warp our perspective? Well, I actually think we end up with a society that looks a lot like what we've seen for the last few years. Fortunately, I've got some ideas on what to do about all this, and that's what I wanted to talk about today on this episode of Out of Frame. I've talked a lot on this series about the importance of stories, but I started thinking about it again recently when I put out a short episode on the Netflix series Arcane. In that video, I expressed a mild criticism of the show, which I liked overall, by the way, that it didn't have very many morally good characters. And, well, I would have liked to see that. Apparently, this was the worst possible thing anyone has ever wished for, because a lot of folks showed up to make one of basically three comments. Some complained that there were good characters, like Echo and Caitlyn. That's true, ish, but as I said, there weren't very many, and in most of those cases, we don't spend much time with them. Others said that good characters are inherently boring Mary Seuss, and they prefer shows that focus on protagonists with questionable morality because they're more interesting. I don't actually agree, but that's largely a matter of opinion, so whatever. Still others said that the whole point of the show was that no one is morally good, and that we would all regularly do bad things if we lived under the same type of conditions. I have issues with all the other claims, but this deeply nihilistic theme kept coming up again and again across hundreds of comments. The world is too complicated to hold anyone to consistent standards. Good and bad don't really exist anyway, and besides, who are you to judge what anyone does? Nothing matters. I'm honestly worried that this negativity reflects an increasingly common worldview. It seems to be especially pervasive in modern media. In fact, part of the reason I said I was hoping for more characters to root for in Arcane was because it seems so incredibly cliched at this point to tell ultra-dark stories. A depressing world where horrible things are constantly happening to people who are themselves mostly complicit in making their world worse for everyone? Where have we seen that before? Everywhere. Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Oranges the New Black, 24, Oz, House of Cards, Utopia, Sharp Objects, Dead to Me, The Magicians, Vikings, Ozark, Westworld, Peaky Blinders, Narcos, Dark. The list of bleak shows from the last 10 years or so is extremely long. They all feature a cast of characters who range from amoral to downright evil.  The question that I keep pondering lately is, why is this so common? Why do so many TV and film writers push this narrative so often? Going back to what I said at the beginning, a lot of people seem to think that morally good heroes are boring. And while I think this can often be the case, I'd argue that it's a consequence of bad writing rather than an inherent conceptual problem. The whole idea that good people make for uninteresting characters seems to reflect an inverted understanding of reality. What I think is actually happening is that film and TV writers just aren't very good at creating interesting, morally upstanding characters. Not that those characters can't be written well. And in the last few years, I've started to question whether or not most writers even understand what defines good and bad in morality. It's fine to write a protagonist who is a horrible person, if you at least recognize that they're actually bad guys. But lately, it seems like we end up with horrible protagonists being presented as heroes. Characters that used to be pretty good have even been rebooted as much worse human beings. I'm not entirely sure what's going on here, and I don't want to be totally uncharitable, but Hollywood isn't exactly an industry known for its moral compass. Maybe they're just writing what they believe. Maybe they, like many of my commenters, just think that it's more interesting. But there are a ton of incredibly interesting morally heroic characters in cinema and television history. Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Luke Skywalker. Rob Roy, Captain America, Peggy Carter, Din Djarin, Ted Lasso, Mal Reynolds and Zoe Washburn. Eddie Edwards, Leanne Tui, Atticus Finch, John Coffee, Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, Frozone, Naruto Uzumaki, Edward Elric, Sophie Hatter, Christopher Chance, Hubb and Garth McCann. Superman, at least the version from All-Star Superman. Paddington too. What? And yeah, sure, Paddington the Bear. I could go on, but the point is there are all kinds of morally excellent characters that are also rather emphatically not boring. These are people, and bears, who know the difference between right and wrong and who always work to do the right thing, even though it's not always easy to do. And yet none of them are perfect or skate through life without any problems. It's absolutely possible to create well-written, complex, engaging characters who are morally good and yet still have to deal with dramatic struggles. The whole idea that good characters have to be one-dimensional Mary Sue's is nonsense. But in order to write those kinds of characters, you do actually have to have a clear concept of right and wrong. So let's talk about that. Some of you may be thinking that I'm already way ahead of myself. If good and bad don't really even exist, who am I to judge, right? Fair enough. But the thing is, good and bad do exist. On a purely practical note, if you want a free and prosperous society that works well for the vast majority of people, we all need to uphold a specific set of values, most of which flow from the concept of individualism. Some people call these ideas natural rights, but they're anything but natural. They're moral principles we have to consciously choose to live by. But when we do, we make everything around us better. I'm talking about the right to life so that no one has to worry about the constant threat of physical assault or murder, the right to property so that no one has to worry about the products of their productive effort being stolen from them, the right to liberty and due process so that people aren't arrested or imprisoned without just cause, the right to freedom of speech so we can express ourselves, explore new ideas, and uncover truths about the world, the right to participate in the economy trading freely under decentralized power structures instead of being forced to obey the demands of a dictator. All of these rights are based on the core principle that individual people are unique moral agents with their own legitimate expectations of personal autonomy and that our ethics and laws should strive to treat all people equally. Even if you're not religious and don't believe in some kind of divine origin for these ideas, as I do not, these values still matter on both practical and principle grounds. Any society that rejects natural rights will suffer and ultimately fail. So what defines good or bad in people is largely the degree to which someone exemplifies these ideals in their personal lives and supports a society that upholds them for everyone. Good people treat others with respect and allow them to make their own choices. They accept the decisions other people make for themselves even if they don't agree with them. Bad people treat others as expendable or as pawns to be used for their own benefit. They seek to control other people and dictate what they're allowed to do with their own lives and property. Good people create healthy relationships with everyone around them and those good relationships build good societies. Bad people create toxic relationships, hurt their families, friends, neighbors, and anyone unfortunate enough to do business with them. They rob and steal and interact with others through force and violence. Good people uphold institutions that support the protection of individual rights for everyone, not just themselves. Bad people use power to benefit themselves and their allies at the expense of everyone else. The communities and societies we get when bad people are the norm are disastrous, corrupt kleptocracies that impoverish billions. I think on some level most of us understand this reality regardless of the mental gymnastics some folks use to deny it. Now is it easy to break down the world into two simplistic categories of good and bad? No, of course not. People are a mix of both, pretty much all the time. Being bad often brings short-term benefits to the unethical person because they're able to take what they want and not worry about the damage they're doing to anyone else. It's pretty obvious why that would be very tempting in a lot of situations. Being a genuinely good person is a heck of a lot harder. You have to actually think about what you're doing to other people and forego immediate satisfaction if getting what you want would violate someone else's rights. Being a good person means facing challenges and obstacles that other people will never have to bear. And if that's not the basis for great complex drama, I don't know what is. I mean, take Luke Skywalker. When we first meet him, he's just a kid from the middle of nowhere who's dreaming of big adventure. He doesn't know what he's getting into at all, but when his aunt and uncle are killed, he answers Princess Leia's call for help. He's not perfect. He has to be trained in the ways of the force. He makes some major mistakes. He has to learn and grow in order to become a better version of himself. And he has to make difficult choices that don't always work out the way he hopes. But what's never in doubt is his moral code. Luke is fighting against an immensely powerful dictator, risking his life repeatedly to save his friends and bring freedom to the galaxy. And he does it with a sense of redemptive hope and optimism. An even better example might be Mal Reynolds from the Tim Miniar and Joss Whedon series Firefly. He's not nearly as optimistic a character, but that's because he's what might have happened to someone like Luke Skywalker if the rebellion had failed and the Empire captured even more power across the galaxy. And yet in spite of being driven by a deep sense of failure and loss, Mal is consistently making choices to help people in need, defend his crew, trade with other people honestly and fairly, and fight the alliance throughout the series and the movie. In a lot of ways, he's the epitome of what I'm talking about in terms of storytelling. He is a fundamentally good character, but the world has beaten him down. Once again, he's not perfect and makes all sorts of mistakes, but at his core, he's driven by upholding all those principles I talked about earlier. Even when doing so leaves him broke, sometimes broken, and often a wanted criminal. Heroic characters that model good values do not have to be boring or weak. And in fact, they shouldn't be, because being a good person is usually far harder and involves way more personal sacrifices than being bad. So it's a terrible shame that we don't get more heroic characters in the media that surrounds us every day, especially since the media we consume affects our thinking about the world. There's a lot of evidence on this. When we surround ourselves with terrible role models and content that promotes horrible ideas, we start to adapt our own behavior and values to those models. So it's no surprise the kids who grew up watching a lot of TV now believe grotesquely false ideas about humanity and morality, or just wind up falling into the everything bagel of nothingness that is nihilism. Anti-heroes and stories about cretinous villains are fine. I'm not and have never been here to tell you what to watch. But this stuff does matter. The more you consume dark nightmarish fiction about people who do awful things, the more you're going to lose sight of what's good about the world. The long speech I give to young men sounds like you need to hear a piece of it. Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. That honor, courage and virtue mean everything. I'm not saying that every show or movie needs to focus on the positive side of humanity, but we need way more of that in our entertainment media than we have now. Doing the right thing is rarely the easiest way to get what you want, and when all we ever see in the media we consume are people who lie, cheat, steal, and hurt other people, we start to think that that's the only way to succeed in life. If we never provide anyone with decent role models to follow, what kind of society do we even expect to get? That's why it's important to use the stories we tell each other to represent better values. Our ancient myths and legends were mainly designed to do exactly that, but I think we've forgotten about it in modern storytelling. So the next time you sit down and make a choice about what show to watch or what movie to go see, consider choosing one that isn't depressing and doesn't reinforce a sense of misanthropy or nihilism. Consider choosing to fill your mind with stories about how to be a better person instead. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. If there's one thing I hope you take away from this, it's that it's totally possible to have great characters that are also good people. But if you still disagree, let me know in the comments and we'll talk about it. I want to say a huge thank you to all our supporters on Patreon and subscribe star, with a special shout out to our Associate Producers. To Oran, The Sheep X, Connor McGowan, Dan Rich, Matt Curtis, Matt Tabor, Richard Lawrence, and Robert Lawyer, thank you. For everyone else, be sure to leave a comment, like this video and subscribe to the channel, join the continuing conversation on Discord, and follow us on all the social media. I'll see you next time.


Well, my name is Eric Yao and I am a teacher in Hong Kong. I took the AOC program because my, I guess, my dating and networking life wasn't exactly where I wanted it to be and I just needed to, I wanted to up my game in those areas. The AOC bootcamp did meet my expectations in that it offered a wide variety of subjects and covered a lot of areas. I had a lot of fun meeting a lot of guys there. One of the things that I didn't anticipate was just being able to bond with the eight guys that, with the seven or eight guys that I was there with and just knowing that on this journey there were guys that, basically knowing that I wasn't alone was probably one of the things that I didn't anticipate I would enjoy so much about the program. My favorite moment or a memorable moment from the bootcamp, when I first got there AJ was asking about our goals for the week and I really wanted to escalate, I guess physically with women, especially upon meeting them and I was able to do this in the last field night when I actually made up with the girl on the dance floor. Getting out of this program, something that I couldn't have gotten just on my own was meeting those guys and just sitting on those AOC couches, going through those exercises. We could have gone through those exercises about our past, our role models and who we wanted to be. We could have done that on our own, but just being there and talking to the guys and listening to their stories and their perspectives really compounded and made those exercises super useful for me. I am using what I learned at the AOC bootcamp on a daily basis. Even today I was working on the social sales funnel and trying to get a regular social event where I could meet some more people on a regular basis and get some more quality guys and girls into my life. I definitely would recommend the AOC program to other people. In my class there was a married guy, at least one guy with a girlfriend and obviously a bunch of single guys and the program really has something for everyone where they are looking to up their networking, business, career, lives or just their social and dating lives.


I think we can all relate to a time where our emotions made us a slave to them and not them to us. More times than not, the outcome of such circumstance is regrettable if not embarrassing. No doubt that we would like to handle these situations differently the next time they arise. I will lay out in this video how you might approach the task of gaining control over your emotions using the philosophy of stoicism. Let's start by defining the two stoic principles that are integral in gaining control over your emotions, apothea and adoraxia. It is important to note the difference between the two principles. Apothea describes the freedom from the disturbance of emotions. This is different from the English word apathy, which has a negative connotation. We should think of apothea as more closely related to equanimity than indifference. Adoraxia, on the other hand, describes a state of serene calmness, a sort of repose of the mind, if you will. There can be no adoraxia without first achieving apothea. For when apothea is achieved, it allows you to be unperturbed and thus in a state of repose. Adoraxia is a common goal for stoicism, epicureanism, and pyrrhenism. However, each provide a different route to achieving it. For stoicism, living in accordance with nature will produce as a byproduct adoraxia. This means choosing justice over vengeance, benevolence over spite, and good over evil. In order to progress yourself toward apothea and subsequently adoraxia, you must first accept those emotions that shepherd you towards bad decisions. How many do you know so clearly have an issue controlling their emotions but are doomed by them, because the problem is not theirs, it's everyone else's. By when this loss of control occurs so that you can prepare to take a step back, Seneca said if you want to determine the nature of anything and trust it to time, when the sea is stormy, you can see nothing clearly. Nine out of ten times the decision that is made in the moment of hysteria will lead to regret and will only create more issues than the original deed produced.  What about anxiety? So many factors go into each individual's anxiety levels, and of course varies from person to person. Take from what I'm about to say what you can and add to it what you can. In the stoic philosophy, the path and solution to anxiety lies in the individual's ability to differentiate between that which is in your control and that which is not. Epic Titus said, when I see an anxious person I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn't wanting something outside of their control, why would they be stricken by anxiety? After hearing this so many immediately look with disdain towards stoicism while thinking well if it was that easy as just ignore what you can't control, then anxiety would not exist. Here's the thing about apotheia. This is a quality which takes a lifetime of continually reflecting, a lifetime of discipline to accomplish. It's never been stated it would be easy to achieve, but attempting to achieve this may in itself allow you to rein in some of your anxiety, even if you do not reach or even strive to become a stoic sage. One more word of advice from a stoic that may help you with anxiety. Take full account of what excellencies you possess and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them if you had them not, Marcus Aurelius. We quite often forget how much we have in our own lives. Whenever you feel that life has dealt you an unfair hand, remember those things, those excellencies as Marcus Aurelius put it, that you still have. Maybe you will find you have a little more than you remember. These principles seem easy when looked at on the surface, but the truth is that to apply them effectively takes continual practice. The next time you are feeling like you have very little, I challenge you to write down what you do have and think to how many would give all that they have to gain what seems menial and routine to you. I hope that this video may help you conquer whatever emotion is causing you trouble in your life. Make sure you subscribe and check out a few of my other videos if you found this one to be helpful. Until next time, thanks for talking philosophy with me.


Hello, and welcome to our video summarizing all you need to know about the United Nations. Today, we are going to cover the United Nations formation, the aims, structure, and finishing off with a timeline. This video is really useful, especially if you are studying the UN history as part of your coursework or exam, as I'll get into the details you need to know to get top marks. So let's get started. So first of all, let's see how the United Nations were formed. So the League of Nations preceded the United Nations as the first institutionalized system of international regulatory policymaking, but due to its inability to direct and influence its significant participants, ultimately, it failed. On January 1, 1942, the UN, coined by President Franklin Roosevelt, was first used in the Declaration of United Nations. During the Second World War, representatives of 26 nations pledged their governments to continue fighting together against the Axis powers. The Second World War's demands on governmental policy delayed the United Nations' rise to power as a governing force until peacetime began in 1945. On October 24, 1945, the United Nations officially comes into existence. Representatives of 50 countries met in San Francisco at the UN Conference on International Organization to draw the UN Charter. Both delegates deliberated on proposals worked out by the representatives of China, of the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom, along with the United States, between August and October 1944. So the objectives of the UN, according to its Charter, are first of all to maintain international peace and security, then to develop friendly relations among nations on the basis of equality and the principle of self-determination, to foster world-world cooperation in solving economic, social, and cultural, along with humanitarian problems, to promote human rights and fundamental freedom for the people of the world, and to serve as a center where various nations can coordinate their activities towards the attainment of the objectives of the UN. To carry out its functions, the United Nations is structured into six principle organs, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice, and the Secretariat. So for the General Assembly, it's the largest organ of the UN. All members of the UN are members of the General Assembly. Each state can send up to five representatives, but is entitled to one vote in the Assembly. This ensures that all the member states have equal status. The General Assembly meets once a year for three months, but special sessions may be held during times of crisis. At the beginning of every session, the Assembly elects a new president. The functions of the General Assembly are as follows. It can discuss any matter affecting international peace and security. It makes recommendations for peaceful settlements of disputes. It passes the budget of the UN. It elects the non-permanent members of the Security Council. It also elects the members of the Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council. It admits new members to the UN on the recommendation of the Security Council, and the Security Council and the General Assembly elect the members of the International Court of Justice. Decisions are taken in the General Assembly by a simple majority vote. In some important cases, a two-thirds majority vote is required for taking a decision. Regarding the Security Council, it's the most important and effective organ of the UN. It's the executive wing of the UN. The Security Council consists of 15 members, five of them are permanent members, namely Britain, China, France, Russia and the US. The 10 non-permanent members are elected by the General Assembly for a term of two years. Each member has one vote. Decisions are taken by a majority vote of at least nine members, including the five permanent members. Each permanent member has the power to reject or veto a decision. This means a negative vote by any one of the permanent members would lead to a consolation of the resolution. The Council is powerless to act if there's such a veto by any permanent member, although it may be supported by all other permanent members. The functions of the Security Councils are, first of all to maintain international peace and security in the world, then to investigate international disputes and become an appropriate methods of settling them, to call on members states to apply economic sanctions against the aggressor and thus to put pressure on the guilty state to stop aggression, and finally the Security Council may take military action against aggressor if required. For the International Court of Justice, it's located in The Hague in Netherlands. It's the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. The courts consist of 15 judges from different countries elected by the General Assembly and the Security Council. They are elected for a nine-year term. No two judges can be citizens of the same country. Its functions are to settle disputes brought to it by member nations and to provide legal advice to any organ of the UN on request. The Trusty Ship Council was set up immediately after the Second World War. It was set up to ensure the proper administration and development of those areas of the world that were under foreign rule. The Council was also to take steps to help them attain self-government. By 1994, all trust territories had attained self-government. The Council will now meet only if required to do so. The Economic and Social Council consists of 54 members elected by the General Assembly for a three-year term. The Economic and Social Council discusses major economic and social issues. It is mainly concerned with the management of the UN's social, economic, cultural and humanitarian activities. Organizations of the Economic and Social Councils are to promote economic and social progress, to solve problems relating to health, illiteracy, unemployment and more, along to coordinate the function of the agencies of the UN, such as the International Monetary Fund, the International Labor Organization, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and more. The Secretariat is the principal administrative department of the UN. It is headed by the Secretary General appointed by the General Assembly. On the recommendation of the Security Council for a term of five years, they can be re-elected. The staff of the Secretariat is appointed by the Secretary General. They are chosen from among the 192 member countries. It holds a key position in the administration of the affairs of the UN. They organize conferences, oversees peacekeeping operations, drafts reports on economic and social trends, prepares studies on human rights, mediates in international disputes and prepares budget estimates. It is to be noted that the United Nations can achieve success only if the member states cooperate with it. All member countries must abide by the policies of programs of the United Nations, illiteracy and labor is to succeed as a peacekeeping organization. So with the addition of South Sudan in July 14, 2011, there are 193 UN member states, including all undisputed independent states apart from Vatican City. The UN Charter outlines the rules for membership. So first of all, membership in the UN is open to all other peace-loving states that accept the obligations contained in the prison charter and in the judgement of the organization are able and willing to carry out these obligations. Then the admission of any such state to membership in the UN will be affected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. Finally, in addition, there are two non-member observer states of the United Nations General Assembly, the Holy See which holds sovereignty over Vatican City and the state of Palestine. The Cook Islands and Nayou, both states in free association with New Zealand are full members of several UN specialized agencies and have had their full treaty making capacity recognized by the Secretariat. Then onto a timeline of key UN events. In March 56, the Suez Canal War was fought primarily between Egypt and Israel. The Security Council ordered Israel to withdraw from Egypt. Great Britain and France vetoed this. This issue was then handled by the General Assembly. The UNEF was established which remained on the border until 67. To prevent the Suez Canal from being nationalized, Great Britain, Israel and France invaded Egypt. The United States opposed the attack and condemned it at the United Nations. U.S. pressure ultimately forced the invading armies to withdraw from Egypt. After the incident, the UN Emergency Force was created and placed in Egypt to protect the canal and keep the borders at peace while a political settlement is being worked out. Most of the peacekeepers were deployed on the Sinai Peninsula along the Egyptian-Israeli border. On March 67, after continued dispute over the ownership of land, Israel launched strikes against Arab nations leading to the Six-Day War. The Security Council called for a ceasefire and drew up Resolution 242. It was signed by all involved in the war, but the Arabs and Israelis interpreted it differently. However, the UN did succeed in getting an exchange of prisoners. On November 1974, the UN General Assembly granted observer status to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. On March 1979, the USSR invaded and occupied Afghanistan. The Security Council called on the USSR to withdraw. The USSR vetoed Security Council Resolution. In a major defeat to their governing powers, the UN were unable to do anything. On April 95, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 986, beginning the Iraqi All-For-Food Program. The program was intended to bring humanitarian relief to the people of Iraq. It was fraught with corruption. Following Iraq's liberation, it was discovered that Saddam Hussein diverted as much as $5 million of the aid to his personal bank accounts and more than $10 billion was misspent. High-ranking UN officials, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's son, have since been accused of corruption. The Millennium Summit was held in 2000 to discuss the UN's role in the 21st century. The three-day meeting was the largest gathering of world leaders in history and culminated in the adoption by all member states of the Millennium Development Goals. A commitment to achieve international development in areas such as poverty reduction, gender equality and public health. Progress towards these goals, which were to be met by 2015, was ultimately uneven. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed the UN's focus on promoting development, peacekeeping, human rights and global security. The Sustainable Development Goals were launched in 2015 to succeed the Millennium Development Goals. The India-Pakistan disputed over the ownership of Kashmir valiantly renewed itself in 2002. The clashes were made worth as both nations possessed nuclear weapons, UN no success to date. The tensions continued to escalate over the ensuing two decades, leading to a standoff between the two nations in 2019 with the UN still unable to engage with the solution. On March 2003, after the UN failed to act on Bush's warnings the previous year, the United States led a coalition into Iraq. On January 2010, the Haiti earthquake caused between 100,000 and 300,000 deaths, leading to the most UN personal deaths of any tragedy in their history. On January 2017, Portuguese diplomat Antonio Guterres, who previously served as UN High Commissioner for Refugees, became the 9th Secretary-General. He has highlighted several key goals for his administration, including an emphasis on diplomacy for preventing conflicts, more effective peacekeeping efforts and streamlining the organization to be more responsive and versatile to global needs. So that's all for the United Nations. If you found this video useful, give it a thumbs up and do subscribe to our channel where we offer free material that you can use as part of your studies to really get a better grasp of specific areas you might find challenging. Make sure to visit our website where you'll find useful revision guides, model answers and tools to get top marks. Thank you for listening!