Bismillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. We are going to continue on this topic and today we are really going to be focusing on the overall cure for our desires. So every human being has desires. A lot of people mentioned this in the Quran. So we're going to be specifically thinking about how do we go about curing these desires. We've been talking in the last like six or seven classes and discussions about specific desires. So the desire for food, the sexual desire, the desire to be right, the desire to win arguments, the desire to be in control, the desire for fame and followers, these types of things. These are all individual unique desires, each of which have their own unique cures, their own kind of prescription that you can get, right? At the same time, what the scholars of Ardine have done, and most importantly what the Prophet has done, he's given us a kind of general over-the-counter type of cure, right? So he said, okay, if you do these three to five things and you do them regularly and you do them consistently, inshallah, you will be on your way towards spiritual success. You'll be on your way towards curing your desires. And those three to five things are very doable. Everybody can do them. And Alhamdulillah, we're coming up on a month, this blessed month of Ramadan in which we have like 12 or so days left before this month comes, inshallah, that everybody's going to have a chance to work on themselves. We're all going to have a chance to work on our desires. So Alhamdulillah, that's a very, very good thing. And somebody says, As-salamu alaykum, as-salam, as-salam. So as folks have questions, come up, just post them in the chat or in the comments or Q&A section and we'll get to them, inshallah. So as we mentioned, some desires are really strong and others are weak. And so our goal is to figure out how do we go about curing all these desires, inshallah. Remember that the goal for the human being is not to eliminate your desire. It's not that you should never desire food or you should never have a sexual desire or you should never desire speaking or this type of thing. No, it's that you and I have to tame the desire and channel in the right direction. So Allah gave us the desire to eat, to eat permissible things, to eat in balanced ways, to eat, Allah says in the Qur'an that to eat halal and tayyab food, to eat clean and pure food, that type of thing. And to give us energy for worship, what he didn't do is he didn't create us to eat. Like you need to eat to live, right? But you don't live to eat. Same thing with all of the desires. So you and I have to have, for example, sexual desire in order to just continue for the world to function and for populations to grow. That desire is there, but it has to be channeled in the halal way. It can't be channeled in an impermissible way because if it is channeled in an impermissible way, then that obviously hurts us spiritually. So the goal is to channel the desires. And remember that you can channel your desires upwards. Your desires can pull you closer. If you use them correctly, you have the right intention. You can actually get closer to Allah swt. Versus what usually happens is that the nafs and shaitan team up to bring us down. They actually bring us down and drag us down. So our goal then is to live this life with this pursuit. One of our main goals in this life has to be, okay, how am I going to control myself? Now why is this important? Think about it. You and I work really, really, really hard for other parts of life. Like many of us will go to school for 12 years to get a diploma from high school. And then another four years for some six to eight years if you're doing a professional degree to get a degree. And then you enter the workforce. And so we spend 16 to 20 years learning waking up every day, eight o'clock or before eight to have to be at work or be at school by seven, 30 or eight, many people. And then they continue that grind for so many years. 16 years, 20 years. And then of course the work that work grind continues for God knows how long. Now that's for what? For dunya, for like, I want to learn, which is a really good thing. Or I want to get money or I want to have a job. All these things, no problem with them, but that's what we do it for. Allah has given us another challenge, which is that, okay, you can also work hard, but work hard for me. That there are people who strive for the sake of the dunya. And then there's people who strive for the sake of Allah. And you can work hard. You and I can become people who work hard for the sake of Allah. That is totally doable. And that's what we should be aiming to do. So why do I mention that? Because this path to taming the desire for the human being is not a path that we can just completely win in one day. No, we have to work hard at it over and over and over again. We have to be consistent with this. So I'm now going to get into, and these are all things. The goal here is to really focus on Ramadan prep. Alhamdulillah, we're just shy of two weeks away from Ramadan. So let's think about this from the perspective of how do we use the skills, hopefully, that we're going to learn today, to then apply them in the blessed month of Ramadan, inshallah. So the first thing that we want to be doing is in order to cure our desires, in order to cure the heart, in order to bring about spiritual success, is the regular amounts of worship and dhikr. We can't have a spiritual path. We can't spiritually flourish if we don't worship. That's just impossible. Now, I'm going to talk about the basic level, and then I'm going to talk about what we should aspire to. At the basic level, in order for us to get in control of our desires, for us to not be angry all the time, for us to not lose our cool, for us to not let lust overcome us or overpower us, for us to not always feel the need to listen to something or feel the need to look at something or look at things that we shouldn't be looking at, we need to do the basics. And then we start adding more on top in order to help control more and more parts of us and channel them in the right direction. Basics are the five prayers. Now, all of us, we struggle with that, right? Many of us, we struggle either with doing the prayers or with focusing and paying attention to the prayers. So our goal needs to be, how do we come up with a program for ourselves, especially this Ramadan that, okay, I'm going to get on the five prayers. I'm going to make an intention to pray five times a day this Ramadan, and I'm not going to miss the prayers. And if after Ramadan or outside of Ramadan, I struggle with fudger or I struggle with something else, I'm going to make an intention to really, really prioritize my fudger. There's many ways to do this. Anything human being wants to prioritize, you can prioritize.  You can do anything you put your mind to. And I'm not just saying that. I really, really, that's a hundred percent fact because if somebody had a flight early, early, early in the morning at five a.m. or four a.m., even if the flight was at six a.m., they would get up at four o'clock, they would get up at five o'clock and they'd be at the airport on time to catch the flight. But when you and I have this kind of flight that we're going to be, that we're going to have a spiritual flight to the heavens at fudger time, we don't join that, right? Because we just, our nafs is lazy and which desire overpowers us at the time? The desire for sleep. The desire for sleep overpowers the human being when it comes to waking up for fudger or when it comes to praying another prayer. The desire to say, I'll do it later. I want to do this instead. I want to read this instead. I want to watch this video instead. Those are the desires that overpower us during certain times. So the first thing we have to do is establish consistent worship there. It's doable and we need to believe in ourselves. We need to know that Allah would not have given us the worship to do if he didn't believe, if he didn't know that we could do it. We just have to put in the energy and inshallah Allah will take us the rest of the way. Now, once we've established, and this is a big deal in and of itself, once we've established the five daily prayers and we want to get more spiritually advanced and we want to start controlling the desires at a deeper level, then we need to do the following. We need to start adding in the sunnah dhikr, the sunnah dhikr that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would do regularly or he would encourage us to do, of which there are three things that I would recommend that if somebody wants to flourish spiritually, I'm not just talking about get by anymore.   That's the type of stuff they're gonna want. So spiritually flourishing, the goal of your deen and my deen, the goal of this deen is to flourish, it's not to just get by. We have too many of us who just want to get by and as a result, we end up giving in to the whims of this dunya and of other people's values and whatnot. But if we realized how much we had, how much Allah has given us in this deen, SubhanAllah, we wouldn't want anything else. But how do we go about doing that? So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam regularly would encourage us to, first, do du'as, that they are known as the du'as of the morning and the evening. The person who does the du'as of the morning and the evening, the sunnah, the du'as of the morning and the evening, will have tremendous success, inshallah, in their life and any of their efforts that they try to do that day. It will also help us control our desires. It will help you with anger. It will help you with sexual desire. It will help you with desire to eat all the time. It will help you with desiring to drink or smoke or be in an impermissible relationship. All these things, these dikkers, they are a car, they help us control that. Why? Because they are light. And light, what lights do is light actually penetrates, it can pierce darkness. You can have a room that's fully dark. Let's say this room was dark. One candle could light up this whole room. You and I, you all have candles of light inside of you or more powerful than candles, frankly. You have beans inside of you that are just waiting to be opened, but the access has to be open. The access is open when one does regular amounts of dikkers. Somebody asked, what do you mean duaz? What are the duaz? Yeah, that was a great question. So, a couple of specific duaz. You can literally just, I would do two things. You can Google morning and evening duaz, the sunnah morning and evening duaz. And there's little books that are prepared, like not books, I should say a couple pages, that would give you all the duaz the Prophet's home would do in the morning and the evening. So, for example, he would recite, qulualawahad, qul'awdubar al-falak, qul'awdubar al-nas, three times each. There are certain verses of the Quran that he would recite. There are certain duaz, like the duar ab-e-awdubiqum and Hamza at the shayateen until the end that he would recite. So those are some examples. There's also a compilation. So some of the scholars have gone and taken all the duaz from different hadith. They compiled them into what's called a litany, basically in English, it's called, it's called a weird in Arabic, which is a compilation of different duaz. So one that our teachers have told us to do regularly is called the weird al-latif, right? So a weird al-latif, the weird al-latif is the morning and evening duaz that we should be trying to do every day. That's an example for the person who asked the question. So, and someone asks, how can I become a better Muslim? Yeah, so we're definitely, it's a great question. We're gonna be covering that throughout this discussion, inshallah. So the goal of becoming a better Muslim is achieved through controlling your desires. That's one of the main ways. Because Allah says in the Quran, He emphasized, he says, He actually tells us, this is the criteria for success. He says successful is the one who purifies themselves and destroyed is the one who doesn't. So the one who purifies themselves, meaning the one who cleans their desires, they will be successful. The one who doesn't, they are gonna be in trouble. And you and I know, even in this world, when we follow our whims and whatnot, we get in trouble. So the sunnah duaz, first thing, then there's sunnah Quran that the Prophet's son would read regularly. We should read the following surahs regularly. We should read surah Yasin in the morning time, ideally after Fajr. If we really, again, we're talking about trying to attain higher ranks of spirituality. We are no longer just talking about the basics. Five prayers are basics. Alhamdulillah, we gotta get those in. Now we wanna attain the desire. We don't wanna be people who burst out in anger.  We don't wanna be people who just let something else control us. We wanna control our own desire. So now these will help us do that. Surah Yasin in the morning and find a surah that you prefer to read in the evening time. So surah Thulmulk is sunnah to read surah Thulmulk before sleeping or anytime from Isha until sleep, ideally. So that those would be what I would recommend. Is Yasin in the morning and Mulk in the evening. Once one has that down, also add in surah Thulwakea, the 56 chapter of the Quran. Surah Thulwakea, the event, recite that or listen to it if you can't recite, but ideally you recite and or listen and add that after Mughra. So those are the three. If somebody can do the sunnah Duhas, surah Yasin and Thulmulk.  You can just, it's five minutes that we give up on Instagram or on TikTok or on reading the news and we can get these Duhas in. Five minutes here, 10 minutes here, five minutes here and we will, boom. We will feel it. You will feel so good. You'll feel so good. You'll feel spiritually light. You'll feel happy. You'll feel a certain type of darkness removed because these Duhas are very, very, very powerful. And this is why they are the first step. They quiet your mind and they quiet the senses. It's surah Yasin, surah Mulk, which is the first surah in the 29th chapter, surah Mulk and surah Waqaya, Waqaya, W-A-Q-I-A-H in English as the transliteration, surah waqaya. Those are the three that I would recommend reciting or listening to regularly based on different hadith about them and then the Duhas, the sunnah Duhas. So that's the first step, okay? We got that down. Now we go into the second step. So we get the worship and we get the worship and now we go to the second step. And Hamdullah we're coming upon the blessed month of Ramadan. The second step can be facilitated for us. So what's the second step? The second step is controlling our food intake. It's actually hunger and fasting. It's amazing that Allah gives us a command, right? Qutsi ba'alekum assayam, kamakutsi ba'alekum, I'm in qablikum, that the fasting has been prescribed for you. What is a prescription? You get prescriptions when you need a cure for something. Allah prescribed fasting for us to cure the heart. Look, if he didn't make us do it, I mean, how many of us would do 30 days of fasting in a row? Like, never we wouldn't do that, right? Like that's a lot. But Hamdullah Allah is giving, he's like, you've got to do this now. And Hamdullah, Muslims from all over the world, no matter how much we're caught up in other stuff, when it comes time for Ramadan, we will do our best to fast. So fasting helps a lot. What does fasting do? Remember, these are all unseen things going on. So what we're talking about now is like these spiritual cures, these are not happening, you can't see them.  That's not how spirituality works. It's Allah says in the Quran, Allah says in the Quran, Allah says in the Quran, Allah says in the Quran, that one of the first few ayahs of the Quran is that this is a book for those who have no doubt, those who believe in the unseen. Belief in the unseen is essential part of our religion. So believing in the unseen in this case is you knowing that there's unseen effects to your law. There's unseen effects from your prayer. So Allah says, for example, in the Quran, that prayer prevents you from lewdness. It actually restrains you from inappropriate behavior.  The spiritual effect of that will at least reduce the amount you are gonna do, inshallah, ideally, if the heart is in a decent enough state. Either way, it will always help, inshallah. So hunger and fasting does the same thing. It builds a spiritual discipline. For us, we might be like all the headaches and I'm tired and I feel good. That's there, but in reality, there's something else going on. There's something else going on spiritually. So there's two ways to do this. First, the outright days of fasting, of which we have Ramadan coming up, and of which we should try after Ramadan to have a regular amount of fasting in our lives at least one day a month we should try. So now the problem is three days a month, the three white days, or different hadiths say Mondays and Thursdays, but at the very least the three white days, meaning the days of the full moon, 13th, 14th, and 15th of the month. But at least once a month we should try. So we can keep it up a little bit. We keep it, just one day I'm gonna not eat, right? A little, I'm just not gonna eat, right? I'm gonna skip, you're basically skipping one meal, but it's still, it's an amazing thing to fast. What does it do? For all the things you and I have been doing that whole month, it will purify them, inshallah, internally. That should be our intention. Because again, all we collect so much darkness on the internet and talking to people and just our own souls, the stuff we think about, the stuff we look at, like there's so much darkness. Fasting cures it, purifies it. So you do, you're doing your worship and dhikr, now you add in this next ingredient. Okay, so now you're starting to make this beautiful spiritual, all these beautiful spiritual ingredients that you're gonna make eventually a recipe to help you with your spirituality. The one you're not fasting though, the sunnah is still to restrain your food intake. So it's not about always fasting. Most of us, we can't fast all the time and we actually shouldn't fast all the time, right? But we can, after Ramadan, we can control our food. We can stop a couple bites short and this has amazing spiritual effects. And we should try to have a day where we do the following three things in order to ascend to higher stations of spirituality. Again, talking here about somebody who wants to control their desire and achieve states of good character, righteousness, talk about these types of things, not just like I'm getting the basics in, right? Person who's content with the C in the class, that's fine. But this is the one who wants the A in the class, who wants to really crush it. So hunger means just, okay, I'm gonna reduce, if I eat this much of a plate of food every now and then I'm gonna eat this much of a plate of food, I'm gonna eat half the size. Just because it will help me control my nuffs. The more you are hungry, the more the nuffs gets into control. And again, I'm not talking about like starving ourselves or anything, I'm just balanced levels of you limit the food intake. And at the very least, if we can't limit the quantity, we limit the deliciousness of the food. What does that mean? It means don't let your nuffs eat everything at once, unless it obeys you. Your nuffs is like an animal. If it obeys you, I don't know how many folks have pets, but like I recently got a little kitten, very refined little kitten and I've been having a lot of fun with him. And he, when he does a good job with something, learn something new, plays, no, we give him a little treat, right? But not every day. And there's certain treats he really, really likes. So like when he's been extra good on that day, he gets like the treat that he really likes and he sometimes just takes it from us and runs away with it because how much he likes it doesn't let us feed it to him.   You are not going to obey the nuffs. Yes, sorry. Somebody asked a question, what is the nuffs? My apologies, I should have clarified. So the nuffs is the lower self, the ego of the human being. The lower self, the nuffs is the part in us that brings us down. So there are levels of the nuffs, but the basic translation is a lower self or ego. And when it's impure, it teams up with the devil. It teams up with shaitan to basically mess us up, to get us to fall into sin, to get us to do silly things, that's the nuffs. So the nuffs has to be tamed in Ramadan, shaitan is gone. We know that, the shaitan are locked up, but the nuffs is still very much there. And so fasting actually helps to tame the nuffs. That's the goal of fasting, to tame the ego, tame the lower self. It calls you to your lower part. You have another part inside of you known as the spirit, the root, the spirit is the higher part in you, okay? And someone mentioned that this is a little bit hard to understand because your ego is your identity. So that's a really, really good point. It's not exactly like that. So that's why the ego translation is probably not the best translation. Lower self is probably the best transition. It is you, but it's your lower tendencies. You can, through spiritual nurturing, you can train it, you can train this part of you to become better, to become, right?  And you're like, yeah, that was like really my, you know, my, the part of me that I wish didn't come out that much. If we ever have an angry outburst and we do something else, that's because the nuffs can pull you down. But sometimes you have the higher aspects of you, right? Like your, your higher angels and people call it in this culture.  There are parts in you that are bad and there are parts in you that are good. The nuffs you can essentially say in the early stage of spirituality, it's the part in you that's bad. But slowly through training, the nuffs can become good. Well, it can become trained to be good, if that makes sense. So it's not exactly one's like only one's identity. There are many parts to one's identity. Think about it. If you have different parts of you, this is one part and then there are higher parts of you. And then there are kind of the like medium parts, right? Everybody has different aspects to them internally. So the goal with hunger is to cure, cure oneself through limiting the food intake. And that gives clarity and that allows for an internal purification to happen. So hunger and fasting. Then the third one. The third one is moments of solitude. Moments of solitude. Why is this important? The desires many times get stirred up inside of the human being because we are always around people. Always, we're always stimulated. And if, you know, in COVID, we haven't been able to be around people. Many of us, you know, Hamzallah, that's a test and many of us have not been able to like hang out physically, but we're still always around people digitally. We're always around something or another, some show. There's always something in front of us. In order to spiritually progress, the human being needs moments of quietude, solitude. What is the proof for this? That the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he had a long period of meditation in Ghar-e-Hirat before the revelation came. And many of us, we know the story that he would go up there to meditate for long periods of time. And Sayyidah Khadijah al-Kubr al-Radi Allahu Anha, our mother and the wife of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, she would bring him food or they would meet halfway for him to get provision and food and whatnot. And he would go back up to meditate. And it was in one of these nights that he was meditating, the beautiful night of Laylatul Qadr, where Allah then says that, in Nanzanahufi Laylatul Qadr, that then he sent down, right, the Quran and Jibril al-Alayh As-Salam came to him and this famous verse was recited, Iqra, that recite. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, I don't know how to read, slash recite. I don't know how to, and the Jibril al-Alayh As-Salam did it again. And then he hugged him and shook him and this whole intense event happened, this spiritually powerful yet really intense event after these periods of meditating, right? Because that was the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is showing us, and Allah is showing us ultimately that this is the way to attain spiritual openings. You wanna get higher levels of spirituality? Obviously there's no prophecy in Nanzanahufi Laylatul Qadr, that's not what I'm saying, but you follow this example. You have moments of silence and solitude.  But you gotta have moments like at least five minutes a day where it's just you, no device, no nothing, just you and Allah, that's it.  Why is this? Because the senses have to be quieted in order for your thoughts to actually come out. You and I have so many thoughts. We have so much stuff going on. All of these different things we're thinking about and whatnot, in order for us to succeed in life we need to have times where we just hear the thoughts. This one's worthless, this one's important, this, this, that.  Everything's processing. And then you have that moment of time where you just talk to Allah about whatever's going on in your life. This can be after the prayer, but I'm mentioning like ideally in addition to that, right? So we're talking about solitude in addition to the time just after the prayer. So have moments where it's just, and this Ramadan, make it a goal. At least five, 10 minutes. Ideally, the best time that we could do this is the time right before iftar. If we're not busy with food prep, if we try to prep our food like an hour in advance, 30 minutes in advance, go and sit for five, 10 minutes in a place quiet just you and God and just make the law and talk to Him. You will see amazing wonders and those will be the best five, 10 minutes of your life for that period and you will want to do it even after Ramadan. Because intimacy with Allah and this love, you remember you and I have a deep desire to love and this religion is about love and Allah has a deep love for human being. One of His name is Al-Wadud and the most loving is one way to translate it according to the scholar. So that's that love that you and I have that Allah has for us that we cultivate for Him in these moments alone, in these moments of solitude. So a couple of ways, you can be physically alone but not actually if virtually you're still active and everything. So I recommend visual stimulation, have moments. We need to go on cleanses ideally but at least every day have moments of the day. A couple of hours or something like that or a couple of minutes, whatever we can manage, put away all the devices, put away the music, put away all the things that can stir up desire. It takes one look at something impermissible to stir up a desire, you get excited about it or one song of something that's gonna bring out the bad part of us and boom, now the desire has stirred. It was dormant and it stirred. You need moments of solitude in order to be able to quiet the senses and to be able to actually think and to be able to progress spiritually. So we have worship and dhikr is number one. Number two, we have hunger and hunger, hunger slash fasting. Number three, we have moments of solitude. All of these are from the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Many of these though unfortunately are forgotten sunnahs. Many of us focus on certain sunnahs which are amazing but we forget some of these like crucial sunnahs related to worship and we have to bring these back inshallah into our lives. This can also be though taking some time to go on a walk, taking some time to think, like it just, it means not being either with people or with devices. That's probably the best way to put, it's one way to put it in the time you live in. Have moments where you're not with people and not with devices and you just have time with you and God and time to think. The third, the fourth one that that leads to is we need to also have moments of silence. What does that mean? For somebody like me who talks a lot, it means just zipping it up every now and then, right? Then why is it? Because the part of us, it likes to talk. Then again, back to this nuffs, this lower self, the nuffs likes talking. It likes talking about itself, likes talking about it's accomplishments, like the oh look at me, I did this, da, da, da, da, da. And then it likes to everything from talking about itself, to posting about itself, to trying to get everybody to like itself, to like it's in it, all those things, the narcissistic attitude, they all stem from the nuffs, right? Moments of silence will help with that. We need moments where we just, okay? Yeah, we're just gonna try to like think that I'm not gonna talk. Meditation is a big, big, you know, it's important, it's a big part of our religion as well. Meditating, it's, you could basically say, meditating and reflecting. Allah describes many parts in the Quran where he encourages us to do tadabur, which is like a meditative reflection, a deep reflection. So have moments though, in order to do that, unlock whatever you wanna get, you want to have moments of silence, okay? Again, not all the time, you don't need to be just be quiet, but we need to have moments of silence, inshallah. Somebody asked a question, that's a good question. Let me get to that just in a sec. So a little bit more elaboration on the nuffs. I'm gonna get to that just a second, inshallah. So then the fifth part of it is night worship, or you could say like not sleeping all the time, not oversleeping. What does that mean? Once you have the basic worship down, the hardest, for example, prayer for most people is fajr, because fajr requires limiting sleep. And the nuffs, again, the lower self, the part in us that pulls us down. The nuffs, the best way to think about it, is the nuffs pulls us down to our worldly tendencies, to our haram tendencies, that's the nuffs. And I'm not gonna get too into it, but you have stages of the nuffs so it can eventually get to a point where it's perfected or close to perfected and it can actually pull you up. But in the most of us, it's pulling us down towards bad thoughts, anger, overeating, sexual lusts and desires, always wanting to be right, trying to have so many followers, trying to be in charge, trying to be in control, trying to be the big man or big woman in town, trying to just like run every desire you can think of, negative traits that we have come from the nuffs and the nuffs being out of control. And Allah says that controlling the nuffs though will help us, it will actually allow us to achieve a state of success. So hopefully that kind of clarifies that a little bit. It's, and I'll get to the second part in a second. So reducing sleep and night worship. The goal is you wanna slowly reduce the amount of like indulgences that one gives oneself. So like if we always sleep through fudger, we have to have days, of course, ideally every day, but we have to have days where we wake up for fudger, because otherwise the nuffs thinks it's, you and I start to think that, oh, it's totally fine. Like what's the point? I'll just make it up and I don't need to pray because I wanna wake up at eight o'clock and fudger comes in at six o'clock. So like that's two hours of sleep. Well, if you and I were to wake up for that prayer, we would actually feel a spiritual benefit from it and we would actually have more energy than we would had we slept through it. It's hard to understand until we start to implement it. Same thing goes for reducing sleep slowly in order to increase our night worship. One of the most important prayers one can do in order to become closer to Allah in order to get spiritually close is the tajjud prayer. Allah says in the Quran, he says, that was the problem to do tajjud and that the more you do tajjud, probably some will attain a very specific station because of the prayer of the tajjud. The tajjud is to pray before fudger anytime, ideally really anytime after Isha until fudger, but generally speaking the last one third of the night, call it two hours before fudger. That can be one minute before fudger or it can be literally two or three hours before fudger. So that is the most important aspect of this. So in order to try and control our nus, night worship starts to become a more and more important aspect of our life. So there's a spiritual effect, reduce the sleep slightly. Don't like never sleep, but don't oversleep all the time. We have to have moments where okay, I'm going to do a little bit less sleep so I can get up and worship a lot because that's what the son of the prophet is someone. He wouldn't sleep for mamosah the night. He would sleep worship for one third of the night, one half of the night many times. So that's part of us. If we want to attain closer stations, that's something that we will do. No, no problem at all to the person who mentioned that. May Allah bless you. So hopefully that clarifies a little bit. In Ramadan, and I think we'll try to end with this. In Ramadan, what happens? We reduce our food intake because we have to. And then many of us reduce our sleep intake. I was just thinking about this other day. I was like, oh Subhanallah, like waking up for work and everything is going to be tough in Ramadan. But Allah is actually setting it up. So say, okay, you pray faster in the day and He wants us to get up and pray at night to pray tarawih prayer ideally. It's not far, but it's a very, very good thing to do. And automatically in Ramadan, then the spiritual cure starts to happen because, Subhanallah, Allah already knew it was good for us. So you and I start to sleep less because we have to wake up for sahur. And that's early as it's very, very early. And then we wake, many times we might go to tarawih or these days we might pray tarawih at home because of COVID. But either way, you know, we have a less period of consistent sleep.  It's so early, it's so cold.  You don't want to talk to anybody at sahur or seri time, right? But spiritually there's some effects happening, effects happening. And the people who miss out on this, they miss out on the spiritual effects. They say, oh, I'm just going to eat everything at night and just like, so I can get a good night rest and they'll eat it like right after Isha and go to sleep and not wake up at sahur. Well, they miss the spiritual effects, right?  Let's say coming to the masjid or you come to some place and everybody comes to get a million dollars. I guarantee you 99% of people would not miss it because they want the million dollars. And so you come every day and you'll keep getting a million and they'll keep coming, right? Because for money, most of us, there's never enough. But first, then we're like, oh, I just got to do the bare minimum. Well, now we need to call ourselves to have higher aspiration, higher motivation, higher himma, make this Ramadan Ramadan where you try to discipline yourself. You try to tame your desires or you try to go above and beyond just the basics.  Allah-u-Akbar, that's already amazing. But do more. We're talking about this next week, Inchallah, but we'll try to do the fast of the eye, the fast of the mouth, the fast of the ears, meaning you stay away from haram inputs in all these areas.   You do this consistently for a year, you won't even know that you'll be completely a different person because it's such a consistent effect. It's a light that purifies the heart, that illuminates you, that makes you into a very, very much a human being who's focused on good character, who's focused on the presence of Allah and who's focused on trying to be present with Allah is what I should say. So let's try that this Ramadan, inshallah, and inshallah we will pray and hope that everybody has a very, very blessed Ramadan. If there's any questions now, please feel free to post them. Somebody said, are we allowed to watch Netflix during Ramadan? I mean, I would, I'm not gonna answer like whether it's not necessarily allowed or not. I would stay away ideally from Netflix and from television in Ramadan if you can. If it's really difficult, if somebody really feels a need to like, they have to watch it, then don't watch anything that has like naked images, that has shooting, that has violence, that has blood, that has curse words, that has relationships that almost rules out like most shows that are out there. But if there's something that isn't, that might work. But I would try to fast from TV, from Netflix, from some aspects of social media, at least the like dangerous aspect of all we do is scroll and just kind of keep going, the kind of scroll of death or whatever it's called. We just, I would try to stay away from that, yeah. But it's not like, as long as what you're watching is okay, it's technically okay.  And for the person who wants to climb in nearness to Allah and again, we're talking here now about higher stations, but everybody can do this. Allah gave all of us the capability to do this. They will use all their time wisely, but they will try not to use their time in things that are going to be quote unquote, waste of time in Ramadan. Because you're in Ramadan, you're in a state of fasting, you're in a spiritually blessed month. So we should try to be put on in our time, we should try to learn. If we can't do that, we should try at least not to do something that will drag us down, inshallah. And somebody mentioned Ertugol. Mashallah, yes, Ertugol, I've heard a very, very, very powerful show. Yeah, so maybe that could be one that could be a spiritually uplifting, documentaries, type of things. They could be fine if one needs to just do what they need to do. Everybody's in a different state. You know what I mean? Like sometimes you're just so finished, you just gotta get through the day and that'll be all the different kind of schedule for yourself and different things you do versus when you're like, are in a good zone, you can do extra things, you can do some Quran, you can do some bikr, you can like help somebody out. In those moments when you have that Himmah, that energy, don't let Netflix or anything bring it down because it'll just make you stay sedentary and do that. But in the moments where you're just so finished, you can't do anything, okay? There might be some more room for this stuff but in Ramadan, we should try to limit it either way, yeah. Okay, cool. So we'll do one more question just cause we're here at Muqr time, at least where I'm at. If anybody has a question, please post it, insha'Allah, question related to desires or to Ramadan or to anything else. Insha'Allah. Alhamdulillah. All right, not seeing, someone asked me what I do for a living. I work in tech startup for a living, yeah. All right. Not seeing anything else. Okay, alhamdulillah. Okay, so insha'Allah, definitely next week, I think it's gonna be our last week for this specific class and we're gonna focus it all on Ramadan prep. So insha'Allah tune in, we'll do next week, Wednesday, 7 p.m. PST, try to keep it to about 30, 40 minutes, focus on Ramadan prep, insha'Allah. And is there a book or anything that explains what Nafs means in Islam? It's a really good question. The book I would get, there is a book called The Beginning of Guidance, The Beginning of Guidance and it's translated in English. I would get that book, is that that will generally explain many of these concepts we're talking about, many of which are pulled from that type of book. Masha'Allah, someone says I'm deaf. Is it okay to put Quran, even if I don't hear it well? Allah bless you and may Allah reward you for enduring what I can't imagine how much himma and resolve that takes. It's totally okay to listen to it, to look at it, whatever you are able to hear. Yes, that's a great idea. Putting Quran on loudspeaker, somebody mentioned if they're not able to hear fully, is a totally great idea, totally allowed to do, as long as you're not doing it in a bathroom or an unclean place, otherwise it's totally good. And even if one can't not, if you can't read, if somebody can't recite, it's good to listen. If someone can't listen, it's good to recite or to just look at the words. Just looking at the Arabic words has a powerful spiritual effect and make the intention that one day I wanna get to the point where I can do this insha'Allah. Okay, cool. So don't see any more questions. So if there's nothing insha'Allah I'll end with a short prayer. Bismillah. Alhamdulillah.  Make the Ramadan easy for us, ya Allah.  Allow us to tame our desires in this month and allow us to turn our fair over to you and allow us to not be worried about anything, ya Allah, and remove our stresses and our depression and our anxieties and our difficulties and our problems, ya Allah, ya Rabbil Alamin, ya Allah, we ask you, ya Allah, that you gaze upon us and that you draw us near to you, ya Allah, Rabbil Alamin. Wa Sallallahu alayhi wasallam, Badabah Salam, corporate dialog with our friends, adhesive, Thank you, elderly,謝 devastated


Your W-2s are out, which means it's time to start your taxes. Most of your taxes can be done for free. Visit your local Navy Tax Assistance Center to participate in the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance and Electronic Filing Program. This program offers free tax filing assistance if you are active duty, retired, or a dependent, and have an adjusted gross income less than $57,000 a year. For a complete list of commands offering the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance and Electronic Filing Program, visit the Navy Jagcore website. For more tax preparation resources, check with your Command Financial Specialist or Fleet and Family Support Center. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Tony Rosa.


As the raging effects of the fuel subsidy removal continues, the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria has said the federal government must break NNPC's monopoly on importation. We'll be looking at that on the program this morning. And also we'll be having off the press where we look at the headlines on the dailies. Very good morning to you and thanks for joining us. My name is Nyam Gul Agadji. It's another very, very wonderful midweek and we do hope that you're having a wonderful time. If you're monitoring what the traffic situation is like, to some it might be very, very good because the traffic is free in most areas in Lagos state. But it does not mean that you will have to overspeed because the roads are freer than they usually are. Go to last map page that is the traffic management agency of Lagos state. You will see a quotation or a quote rather that carefulness costs you nothing. Carelessness may cost you your life. So as you find the roads free enough for you to just, you know, have fun on them, just remember all the time that you need to be careful because for everything that you find good, there's also something bad attached to it unless you use it well enough. So a free road might be very good, might be fun for you, but if you don't use it well and carefully you might end up never using it again if you know what I mean. But let that not be your portion this morning or any other time. And then if you go to that page you will find that there was a truck that was stuck somewhere, probably when it was raining, it was stuck in the gutter somewhere in Merrill. And I do hope that it has been cleared at this time because it was posted one minute ago but it's also possible that inside that one minute the truck has been cleared because we know the ripple effects that one obstruction somewhere in Lagos can cause. It could start from Ojodubega for instance and it reaches the island because of one thing that has happened in Ojodubega, that's how Lagos is wired. So we do hope that that truck has been removed because if it hasn't then we may be in for a very tough ride in some areas in Lagos here. So you will also find that the Kula movement from Mobustik in words Kenu is appreciable up to Kenu but a slow moving traffic proceeding towards or in what Alhaji Lukman and swimming pool. Holandia way on roads at Djibadi okay to Jesus house is appreciable. Now sometimes when I read these things from last month I get to find out some areas in Lagos that I never knew existed. So we have Jesus house here in Lagos and we have Holandia way okay. A solo way movement from Jesus house to Kenu is good to connect NNPC roads by Mobustik movement from Kwakum inward and outward international airport down to Nako is good to go. And from 7 and 8 inwards Afarigo intersection is looking good for now. Inward Aswani is good to go movement from Aswani junction to Asafarigo intersection is still looking good but movements moving steadily towards 7 and 8 and all these things I'm giving you are under 10 minutes they were posted under 10 minutes ago. So that means at this time that we're giving you this report the movement is still good wherever you are from coming from to your place of work. If you live in Lagos you have to learn to move early enough because if you move early enough a lot of times the traffic is free enough for you to move. But if you move a little bit later than 7 o'clock for instance if you're supposed to be at your office at 9 o'clock there's a tendency you could be at your office at 11 o'clock or even beyond. So learn to move we are early risers in Lagos state and I do hope that you're one of them that arises early when you get back home sleep early as well so that you can rise up early. The weekend is there for you to enjoy yourself if you have to unwind. So weekdays do your best to do the needful if you're running your own business as well well it's the same thing rising up early will help you get to your shop but then you don't have to sign a time book so if you have to take your time well we can understand with you but for those people who have to sign a time book or clock in to any office you have to rise early enough. Sometimes if you're on afternoon duty you still have to move early because if you're on afternoon duty and you have to report at 2 o'clock and you want to move at 12 the traffic might be so bad that you get to your workplace at 4 o'clock or thereabouts and you know what happens when the work when the offices are closed at 4 o'clock. Well it's a Wednesday it's a midweek and a lot of people after work they will go to church they will go to mosque they will go to places that they worship because it's the middle of the week and all that but whatever you're doing remember to put our nation Nigeria in prayer because a lot of things could happen in the few days because like they say hungry man is an angry man and how much this fuel problem is biting people we can't really know until we have gone like two weeks three weeks and if a solution is not found we just don't know what will happen but in your prayers pray that a solution will be found and then the people will choose peace over any kind of emotion that they might have because of this. So when you want to surf the net or you want to go through whatever is happening you find some things on the internet. Senate approves President Chinobu's request to appoint 20 special advisors and if there's anything that we can give kudos to this present administration is the swiftness with which they are acting. Whether solutions are coming or not but at least addressing issues or talking about issues is one thing that Nigerians had been crying about in the past eight years you know labor will go on strike it will take government so many days to talk to them whatever group wants to go on strike will go on strike and it will take so many days and when the government finally talks with them it always ended in some way but this time Joesu went on strike and promptly they met with the president and they called up the strike even though the 21 days that they gave will soon expire before you know it is 21 days we don't know what will happen at the end of 21 days but at least the response to whatever their problem was was commendable so if the government has not done anything the fact that they're talking with the people is good enough for a lot of us so but every government needs a team to work with and now the president has sent a list to the national assembly for approval not a list rather but a request for him to be able to appoint 20 special advisors that will help him run his government pending when he will have the ministers and every other person that should constitute that cabinet of his but for now those special advisors are very key to this administration and the approval has been given let's see in the coming days what the appointments will look like we hear that no particular list was sent to the national assembly with the names of people who are supposed to handle what portfolio but at least we know that 24 will be selected from among Nigerians to do what they need to do to help this administration to grow or to really kick start the way it should kick start well this is our Nigeria we do hope that competence will be considered above any other thing right now we should even be talking about anything when people were crying about religious tendencies or religious biases they said it didn't matter when people were crying about ethnicity they said it didn't matter so right now nothing should matter except competence except their ability to do what you have been asked to do what you have been chosen to do and we do hope that they're going to be patriotic Nigerians who will think about Nigeria above everything else when it is said that interest is what overrides everything in politics our Nigerian politicians a lot of them don't think about the interest of the country they think about personal interest and that way where a lot of them get it wrong so a a pdp person could think about the interest of Nigeria taking a different route from what the apc should take and the sdp the same thing labor party the same thing and all other parties might have their own roots but these interests that they have should always always come together when it's talking about national interest it's just different routes that political parties should take to get to the national interest that is the main thing that is the final thing when you think about personal interest then it puts us in the jam that we find ourselves no ideology no no no no no personal integrity nothing so long as the money is coming so long as you still remain relevant and all that you don't care you don't even care about legacy you don't care about what the people will say when you die today we still celebrate their wallow wars the aziki ways and all the people who fought for our independence and made sure Nigeria stabilized somewhat until we have this democracy that we have now we've had it from 1999 so the labor of our heroes past must not go in vain let's always remember that another thing we we can see is a union lack confirms students killing condolences with family we heard that unfortunate news that a student was shot in a union lack a union lack student was killed and some people were still thinking whether it was true or false well the school authority authority has said that it happened and the condoled with the family and we too our hearts go to the family of the the said student that was killed we do hope that they will have the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss okay they the student was shot by robbers that's what we're hearing and whether it's robbers whether they are killers whether they it's a cult whether it was a stray bullet whatever it is he's dead and because he's dead the family will be very broken we we hope that they will be strong enough to take that when you when you we know how difficult it is if you've ever had a ward go to school we know how difficult it is even for the rich and mighty to train your child in school and then your child is in school and then the life is caught shot all the dreams are caught shot the dreams of the child himself and the dreams of the family that sent that child to school we do know that some of them them hustle by himself that's the word that we like in nigeria to send themselves to school to train themselves in school so all that effort will go to waste give a thing like this happens god will protect us we do hope that the family like i said can bear that loss and may his soul rest in peace now efcc arrange two bankers for two million naira theft efcc arrange two bankers for two million naira theft i don't even know what to say about that one so you take your money to the bank the people from the bank stealing the money okay sometimes this stuff comes from the fact that some people have accounts with the with the banks and they die and then they sit on the money and some people share it we've heard stories like this as well but that is not the main issue that i'd like to talk about in this kind of thing that i've mentioned it's the fact that a lot of people have accounts that they don't let their families know whatever they use this money to do that they don't want their wives or their husbands to know or anybody in the family to know it beats me hollow and then when you die there's not nobody that can come to claim that money because you didn't let anybody know you might have a nex of kin written there you might have some a few people written there as people who could come but you never even informed these people and then the banks on their own will sit on the money and not contact or make any attempt to contact the family or whoever was given as the next of kin or someone who should be asked in case of any unfortunate happenings so if you have an asset you need to have someone who can who knows about it someone you can confide in that i have this in fact why wouldn't you trust your wife or your husband or your children or if you don't have any of these ones why wouldn't you have at least one friend that you can trust or why can't you have a charity organization that you will will all this money to when you die because we see that a lot from the west especially millionaires multi-millionaires willing all their money to charity so that when they die they the money continues to work for humanity why can't you do that if you cannot show your family that this is what i have where i have so this is a very worrisome trend people in Nigeria do not even want to ride wheels but even if you don't want to ride a wheel it it will still happen whatever happens will still happen but right now the story is about two bankers that are reigned for 20 million narrow theft well we do hope they're not politicians as well because we've heard also where people that were supposed to be prosecuted are not prosecuted they are even asked by the relevant of the authority to stay action and not prosecute them well we're not mentioning names right now but whoever commits a crime should be prosecuted the laws are there for prosecution and nobody should cut corners we should start seeing punishment for the bad that is done in a society we should also start seeing reward for doing good we remember a story not too long ago of a friend who who came to the studio and and we're interviewing him he recently won an award when they were giving not not an award well he was conferred with a national a national honor and that was because he found money big money he returned the money we saw another woman at the airport who did the same thing and she returned the money there's still good people in nigeria but we should get to see when people do wrong they get punished no matter how high they are when people do right they get commended not necessarily to give them money or anything else or to give them honors but let's just recognize the fact that if you do good people are seeing and we're helping you to pray to god that your life will be better i might not be able to give you a millionaire because you did something really good but i might be able to say god bless that person that is something good enough so have you ever given someone who is really hungry money to feed or food to feed have you ever done that do you know the kind of satisfaction that comes with that so when someone does right and you commend the person there's a tendency that person will do even better next time so let's learn that in nigeria as well so these people have been arranged that okay they stole 20 million naira okay let's see how that goes but that those will be the top trending that we've had there are so many other stories that we have that we could not just that we could bring to you but right now we'll just take a short break and see what the weather is right now and we hope that it will help you to plan your day when you see what the weather is stay with us


Oh, I think I see this exit. Come on. Come on.  Yes. Oh Great now is it is this a boss battle? I think it is. Oh Yo, what the heck is that? No freaking way.  Oh This is bad This is bad. Oh, please don't come this way. Oh He's coming this way dude What is up you guys realistic gaming here and we are back on this Thomas the shank engine before we get ahead and start with This gameplay this game was created by the same by the same person that made that Shrek horror game and they sent it to me Here we go in here. Okay. He's gone. Oh FYI to let you guys know he did send me an email that he's working on the sonic exe one for us, too So before we begin a round of applause in the comments for our boy Mike, man huge shout out All right, so let's begin with this. Okay controls WSG to move ships to sprint each to pick up slash shoes escape to quit All right, then play tape Looks like I fell asleep waiting for the train wait. Where am I? Oh What? Hey, yo, what? Oh, there's there's us Hello us from another dimension Dude that's pretty cool. Okay. I see the work you'll be putting in the game mic. All right.  Ah, yes, it does magical wonders and it plays music for us.  Okay, uh, do we walk down the tracks Thomas? Oh Wait, what is that?  Oh My god, what is he doing? Please don't kill me. He's just over there.  I can still hear him Whatever man. Oh, look it says where does that radio? Dude that came out of nowhere Okay, it should be right there next to the gate these tunnels haven't been used in a long time So there should be a few rooms to power up the exit Great, so we got to go in here. I think we have to beat this before our battery actually runs out press E. Oh Great. Oh, Thomas is down there, bro Wait what happened I was ready to die out I accepted my fate and everything man Wait what?  He's coming this way.  I can't run that way There has to be like a room or something here. Oh I see it. I see it.    Oh my god Okay, I can't sprint No Okay, nice.  I wonder if it's multiple. Oh Oh, we got to hurry up. He's coming this way go go go. Oh There he goes Okay, go this is our chance This is our chance. Oh No, he's getting closer go.  I'm gonna check it out. Let's go check it out. All right go in there Thomas. Oh Great Okay, so now he's coming from this way is he not Oh, oh my god Dude, he spawns in right there. He almost killed us. Oh, wait. I see something Okay, security code put two five nine two Two five nine two. Yeah. Oh my god.  Do you have to put it in backwards? Two five nine two finally you have to like do this weird thing. Okay, whatever. Where's the door now? Oh, it's pitch black now great. Oh I think I see this exit. Come on. Come on.   Oh great. Now is it is this a boss battle? I think it is oh Yo, what the heck is that? No freakin way.  Oh This is bad This is bad. Oh, please don't come this way Oh He's coming this way, dude Dude, what in the world is that? That's he's gonna give me nightmares, man. Oh Gosh, I can't even I don't even want to run. Oh I'm scared freakin dead. Okay. This is our time to go go hurry before he turns around. Oh, no, we're dead Please don't kill me. Oh, please don't kill me Okay, there you go.  He's so quick like how does he move so fast? Oh That was a little too close Okay, go. Oh My god, this thing sprints so slow.  Come on. We're right there dude. This is nuts.  This is our chance Please don't kill me. Oh my god the sprint The sprint stopped. Yes train whistle.  No way The dev shouting software shout out to the dev man. You always out do yourself. Hey, my name is right there Release the gaming Corey Kenshin. I was a my name up there with Corey, man. You know, I made it. That's it I quit my career. All right. Well shout out to the devs of the game and Awesome game as always.  That is like a billion times scarier My point of view. All right, you guys. Well once more shout out to Mike the devs Appreciate it. I can't wait for the sonic game that he's gonna drop for us to play. It's gonna be freaking awesome I already know it just by looking at that little clip earlier All right, you guys well, thank you all for watching. Thank you all for the main support and happy holidays Most importantly, and I'll see you on the next one. Peace


Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday, so I have some important news about the movie adaptation of my book Turtles All the Way Down, but first, for context, I thought I would explain to you the practical parts of how a book becomes a movie and the financial implications for an author. So first, there is a book, and in the case of Turtles, the day after the book came out, a movie studio made an offer to option that book into a movie, which means they have the option to develop it into a film for, I don't know, say 24 months. In most books that get optioned do not become movies. Like, my book in abundance of Catherine's was optioned and never became a movie. Paper Towns was optioned three times before it became a movie.  So right now, the studio has the right to develop your work into a movie, and they hire screenwriters who write a screenplay, and generally that's where things break down. The script isn't good enough or they can't attract the right director or they hire the author to write the script and it turns out the author is a terrible screenwriter or whatever. But then sometimes they get a good director and then it falls apart because they can't settle on a cast or a budget or whatever, and occasionally everything comes together. They hire a director. They settle on a cast. They start hiring crew. They're 12 days away from shooting when a movie executive decides, I think I'm going to pull this movie because I don't want to make it because I feel like one of the cast members just looks kind of weird, like kind of unsettling. That's literally what he told me. And if any of that happens, the only money the author gets is the option money. Like if The Fault in Our Stars had not turned into a movie, I think I would have gotten paid $60,000, which is a lot of money to be clear, but it's not like Hollywood fantasy money. So that's how the vast majority of these deals work. You try to make a movie, you work really hard. It just, for whatever reason, doesn't happen. But then occasionally, of course, it does happen. You get the right script and the right director and the right cast and crew and awesome movie executives who do exist, by the way, and they make a movie. And that, that moment, when they commence principle photography, that is the phrase they use, is the moment when authors get paid. The option is exercised and you get paid generally several times the amount of that option. And that, for authors, financially is usually it. Like unless you're wildly famous, you don't get a cut of the box office. So your last paycheck from the movie comes with the commencement of principle photography. In that sense, from an author's perspective, it doesn't really matter if the movie comes out because, you know, you get paid the same. Except, of course, it does matter. It matters a great deal. When I started the movie journey with turtles all the way down, I had no idea how much I would love the script, which was written by the lovely people who wrote Love, Simon. I had no idea how much I would care about the cast and the crew and our awesome director, Hannah Marks, how much work they would put into it and we would put into it together. I had no idea how much I would end up loving, loving the movie, which I just think is truly, truly brilliant. It's about socioeconomic class and friendship and free will. And of course, it's also about mental illness. And it manages to be raw and honest without ever feeling sensationalized. Now, I don't think it would be accurate to say I have no financial incentive in the movie's success because a successful movie sells a lot of books and I do make money from book sales, right? It does vary a lot based on how people respond to the movie and also, like, whether they know it's an adaptation of a book, like, you know, the movie Die Hard, that's an adaptation of a book. And it hasn't, like, become an American classic or anything. It's not like people read that book every Christmas. And I've been on both sides of that equation. Like, the Looking for Alaska show was brilliant, but it didn't sell a lot of books. The Fault in Our Stars movie sold a ton of books. But anyway, even after you've cleared all the other hurdles and the movie is made, there is still one more hurdle. Increasingly, movie studios just don't release movies, even movies that they've already made and paid for. This is a tax strategy, as I understand it. If they believe the movie will lose more money than just not releasing it and calling it a total loss, then they'll take that tax write-off instead of releasing the movie. Now, I'm biased, obviously, but I think Turtles All the Way Down is a great movie. It's scored really well with test audiences, all that stuff. But I am conscious of the fact that it doesn't have, like, superheroes, and it isn't like the seventh sequel in a popular franchise. I mean, it's a movie about free will and mental illness called Turtles All the Way Down. So, you know, I worried about that. Until recently, that is, when I got a call saying that the Turtles All the Way Down movie is coming out later this year on Max. You'll get to see it, and I'm so excited for you to see it, not for financial reasons, but because it is a beautiful, beautiful movie. I know some of y'all wanted, like, a big theatrical release, but in 2024, for this kind of movie, this is a massive win, and it's the right way to share the movie. One thing I don't know about yet is international distribution, but it will be in lots of places around the world, and I'm just so happy and relieved and excited for this to actually happen. And also, since Hollywood isn't exactly beating down the door for the rights to the Anthropocene Reviewed or my forthcoming book about tuberculosis, this may be the last time I get to experience hundreds of people coming together, navigating all those obstacles, and finding a way to make something wonderful together, and then get to share it with an audience. So yeah, later this year, streaming on Max. What a joy.  Hank, I'll see you on Friday.