We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast, with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to, I think we're on episode three now. Yes, three. We've done an introduction and this is episode three. This week we're going to be talking about assessments, which sounds like you have to go through a test in order to have therapy. Is that what this is, Bob? No, that's why we laugh in a way because I'm thinking about tests and therapy and some people, of course, set tests psychologically and they find people to fail them. But that's another story. Now, this is really about, you know, once you've decided you want therapists, it's like, how do you find the right therapist for you? Now, 2021 is where we are today and psychotherapy has got a lot more accessible. Yes. I live in Manchester, Ditsbury. So if I wanted to have a therapist, there are quite a lot of them. But the problem is, it's a bit like putting a needle in a map, you know, or a haystack, really. You find someone to suit you because therapy is far better if you actually go on the therapist. Yes, 100%. So there are not many places around that do assessments where you can actually see somebody to talk about what you want from therapy and they can point in the right direction. Very few places around would actually do assessments. There are some places around to do referrals. So for example, well, I can think of a few places, but not many places that do actually half an hour assessments, which point the right direction to a therapist. If you wanted to have a therapist, Jackie, now, for example, what do you think most people do? Google. In near to where you live, I would hazard a guess that's how people go and then they just look at a picture and think, I like the look of them. Is that what you think most people do? That's my fantasy that what people do. Yeah. You just, you Google therapists near me and then those therapists usually have a website or something. You have a look at them, see whether you like the look of them and that's it. That's one way. Obviously not the best way. That's the majority way. I was thinking, if we look at between us, let's just look now. That's one way. Another way is to find somebody, it's by recommendation. Yes. So I was thinking my daughter, when she was looking for a therapist, the age of 20 or 21, even though she was a daughter to psychotherapist, she lived in a shared house and she could have, but she went through us. She could have got recommendations from at least two or three people who had psychotherapy. So you can come by recommendation. It's surprising how many people do actually come by recommendation. That's another way. And they're very popular way actually, though I don't know how many people think it's popular, but it is. They go to the doctors. Yes. No, they say they have anxiety, social anxiety, depression. They often go to the doctors and unfortunately, well, it's a good first port of call, the doctors aren't psychologically trained. No. So they know a little bit about anxiety and maybe a little bit about depression, but they don't really think psychotherapeutically. And even psychiatrists who really, they might end up being heard by, they don't really know much psychotherapeutically in terms of counselling and therapy. So they know a lot about drugs. And some enlightened counselling practices might have a counsellor attached to them. Yeah. So if you go to a counsellor and you say you've got a counsellor then will do two or three, four things. They probably want to send them to a psychotherapist. They might say if they've got a counsellor attached to their venue, they might say, okay, you can go on a list to see a counsellor next, you know, test to RGP. Or they might send them into the NHS maze. Yeah. They might have to wait for quite a long time for CBT or some sort of counselling. But you'd be surprised how many people do go to the doctors first. And then they find out that the route onwards after that isn't that useful. Because they often have to wait ages in the NHS queue. Many GP centres haven't got counsellors aligned to them because they can't afford it. And then they often might get some CBT after waiting a very long time. And then they find out the CBT isn't particularly good for them. But actually, where a lot of them go from a doctor, as I haven't mentioned, it's my last call, is what they call beat the blues website. I don't know if you've heard of it. No, that's a new one. It's a website that a lot of counsellors will send you to if you've got depression or social anxiety. It's basically an online CBT sort of series of questions. And you fill in the, I don't know how many questions there are. And then you go back to the doctor with it and then they may refer you on to a CBT therapy. So a lot of people turn up at my institute having done this beat the blues questionnaire. And they didn't like it at all. So they ended up deciding to go privately. Yeah. See, for a lot of people, the financial side of thing comes into it. And they go to the GP and go in the NHS maze, as you fondly referred to it, because it's free. It's like you say, it's 8 to 12 weeks of CBT. And usually there's no cost to it. That can be the deciding factor for an awful lot of people nowadays. You're absolutely right. And unfortunately, or fortunately, you have to wait quite a long time. Yeah. If you wanted to see a psychotherapist, not a CBT psychotherapist, I don't think CBT is particularly psychotherapy anyway, a psychotherapist or a cancer, you have to wait a damn sight longer. Yeah. I work with, I have worked with a few charities that, you know, particularly connected with the military. That's something that interests me. That, you know, there are funding places where you can access a counsellor for, I think it's six sessions, you know, that is good.  That's really good. So going back to your first point then, you're correct. A lot of people put psychotherapist Manchester. Yeah. For example, an up will come our website, the Manchester Injury for Psychotherapy. That has got over 24 therapists there. And we have an assessment process half an hour with me usually, where I will look at what they want from therapy, and then pass them to a therapist, but their choice was, in other words, match them up. Yeah. So that's that way. And see, just on that topic, that's unique. Yes, it is. You know, one of the, because I made some notes, I'm very good at making notes, so I made some notes that the assessment process for me with a client is as much my skill set, you know, whether I'm a good match for that. It's not that I put them through some sort of a test. I'm also looking at myself, whether I've got the knowledge and the skills in order to, you know, offer support with whatever they're coming with, was you take all that off them. If there's 24 therapists working in your institute, you can sign post them. You know, gender is kind of one thing. You know, if somebody's from the LGBT community, they might want to see a specific, but, you know, ethnicity comes into it. Your cultural beliefs and everything, it's all of it as a bearing in the therapy room. Yeah. And that's why people like the idea of an assessment. Yeah. So they can get matched up by somebody who knows what they're doing. So I've been doing this perception process for about over 20 years, I would think. Yeah. And present time, I would average about five or six assessments for psychotherapists who are fully qualified or people who are graduated. And also, at the Manchester Institute, there's a low-cost therapy system where you can get therapy for 26 weeks of 15 pounds a therapeutic hour. So I might have three or four low-cost assessments as well a week, which might take me up to about, I don't know, nine, 10 a week if it's a good week. Last week, I think it was six or seven. I've just come back and I've had three assessments, two of them were low-cost and one was for fully qualified therapist. But of course, I'm not there five days a week because I do various other things as well.  So that's the sort of major way that we get people. And the assessments half an hour for a low cost is 15 pounds. For fully qualified therapists, it's 30 pounds. But if you go the low-cost route, it's for low-income people. So it's for students or people under 15,000 pounds. So it's low income. Which is a brilliant resource that you're offering to people in the locality. I did the low-cost clinic. That was part of our training when we were doing it. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was good that I was still within the Institute and had the comfort of knowing that I was still part of something while I was training. It's invaluable. It is and there aren't many places around to do assessments for either of those pathways. And I'm very proud of that fact. So many people come through assessments. An assessment is quite a skilled job that I do really. I know I've developed it over 20-yard years. But you have really 20 minutes to get to find out what they want from therapy. And often they don't know what they want, but they're just there. Many come with social anxiety and depression and stress. So then you need to find out what stops them actually getting to the place they want to get to themselves. And there's other things you need to check. You need to check up things like if they've had counselling with therapy before.  Because if they've been in the psychiatric system, they're going to probably have a psychiatrist or they will have, you know, psychotherapy might not be suitable for them because they're fairly disturbed. And psychotherapy isn't necessarily the right venue. So I deal with people from that frame as well that might be quite disturbed. And then I need to, it's a different sort of intake process. But I would think a majority of the people I see are what I call the neurotic well category or the worried well category. And mostly it's things like self-esteem, confidence, social anxiety, depression, stress, the fire. Yeah. I can remember there was a period where I was getting a lot of people that were kind of becoming aware of replaying the same behaviour over and over, you know, keep moving jobs and then getting unhappy and then moving to another job and it not being what they thought and then moving to another job. So sometimes it's kind of when they start to become aware of behaviour patterns. Absolutely. And when they have a large discomfort in life. And the other thing to really remember if we talk about what happens behind closed doors, is this, A, this is a confidential system. The other thing to really remember is especially if they've never come to therapy before, or even if they have to a certain extent, they're pretty scared. So, you know, they're pretty, they're sharing their vulnerabilities, takes a lot of courage to do this. And so part of my job is to enable them to feel safe and secure and somebody who's pretty accessible to talk to and can help them point in the right direction. Which is really what I'm doing, but I've had a lot of wealth of experience. And the other thing, I've got the Manchester Supercycle Therapy, but across the road, I've got the Manchester Wellbeing Centre with another 10 therapists. So I've got a lot of therapists that I can point them to. And matching them up exactly where you started right at the beginning is crucial. Yeah. Because there's so many differences of what people want. You named a few of them from gender to cultural differences to, you know, you're correct. And that's another, oh, that's bad. I have to know my psychotherapists well, or the psychotherapists who work through my Institute and the Wellbeing Centre, because I then can match them up really. It's a very, there is nowhere like it, I know actually. No, I've never heard it being that way. As somebody that went through the training process, it's a very nurturing environment to be in. You know, yeah, I'm always talking about Manchester Institute Psychotherapy. There's so many courses that I think the psychotherapist, psychotherapist counsellors go on where you're in a kind of a bubble and then suddenly released to go and see clients. And as much as it's nerve wracking for the clients to come on their first session as a psychotherapist, I can remember my first session. Yeah. Seeing your client, he was in the mall. Yeah. But yeah, your mind is working overtime. You're just trying to get everything just right before you ease into the process.  Slightly, only a little bit. I always like that because I try to remember that it's very important for me to help the person feel at ease. Yeah. In that assessment process before we send them off to psychotherapy, because most of them don't know what psychotherapy really entails or what it's about. So talking therapy, use these about how the past effects are present, but it's an hour where people can actually talk about their vulnerabilities. And that's so new for people, even though they know they need to be there for many different reasons, perhaps it's still a pretty daunting prospect. Yeah. Yeah. And I think when you're doing the job day in, day out, it's important to remember that when you see a new client. I only work online at the moment. I'm not seeing clients face to face, but I always offer a 30 minute, similar to, I would imagine, your assessment where they come to me free for 30 minutes just so that we can meet each other and see whether we can work together, whether we can be in a room together. Yeah, that's wonderful, Jackie, because I think it's a really interesting area you've now gone into. So somebody wants therapy. Another thing that may appeal to people, so I'll be really interested in this since you've brought this up, is the people who offer free consultancies, like you've just said there. So if you came for an assessment with us, it costs £30 for the half hour, or if it's low cost, it costs £15. But you do go to therapists, and there's quite a lot of people for different reasons, which offer half an hour free consultation free. And that's, there's lots of discussion about that. In other words, is it, does it actually, for example, what does it model? Is it actually a good space for somebody because they don't have much money? Is it a place where they can learn what therapy is for the first time? And I'll be interested from your perspective, your thinking behind having it free. Very valid point that, usually because I'm only on Zoom at the moment, it's about whether they can access it for a start. Okay, okay. You know what I mean? If there's somebody, I don't want to disrespect elderly people, but you know, they can phone me up and be fine on the phone, but then when they try to get, so the first thing. It's not so accessible, is it? It's making sure that they know how this would be in a therapist. I understand. I mean, there's a lot of reasons that I like the idea of that free consultation half an hour. And that's because people often have a lack of money. Secondly, they've not had therapy and counselling before, so it's like a taster into that world. Thirdly, I think it's a very generous process, unbehold of the therapist or counsellor. So there's lots of reasons I can see for doing it. And the other one you just mentioned in terms of accessibility and Zoom. So it's an interesting one. Again, about when you look for a therapist, some people might be attracted by the fact that it's a free consultation and that might appeal to them and get them into dealing with their mental health. Get them in the right avenue, if you like. Yeah. See, I just shot myself in the foot because it's not something that I advertise. What normally happens is somebody will form me up and contact me and I book a session. And what I then say when they've already made contact with me is, you know, I can send you a link. We'll have a quick 20 minute, 30 minute chat on Zoom and then we'll see how you feel from there. So it's not. Yeah, I don't advertise that. So maybe I've just shot myself in the foot now. I think it's only generosity of soul. And I've said before, there's many therapists and counsellors that offer that. If you go on to one of the biggest directories for finding counsellors and therapists, there is on the net, which is cancellingdirectoryco.uk. There's far too many.  But if you go through the first time down to six or seven pages, you'll find that quite a lot of people give half an hour consultancy free as a way of, I think, you know, supporting people coming into psychotherapy or counselling for the first time. So you're not alone in that. No. And like I said, for me, it's more the fact that I can assess, you know, their needs and whether I have the right skill set in order to work with them. That's that's my, you know, reason for. Good. So in terms of finding a therapist, let's go on. The directories, counsellingdirectoryco.uk is very good for finding a psychotherapist in your area. And what I particularly like about it is that you'll be able to see a picture of the person, you'll be able to see their CV, and you'll be able to hear what they offer. I really like that. Another really good online sort of directory, if you want to put that ways, psychologytoday.com. Now that's that's a really good one. It has the same process as counselling directory, but there's not so many, there's so many on counselling directory, be there for a long time, trying to, you know, searching through them. I think what you've got with, you know, psychologytoday is that it's it's it's more there's more information about the therapist and counsellor on that psychologytoday website. And then of course, there's other directories as well. So people often, if they know about them, or they'll be sent to them when they put their name, you know, looking for a therapist through Google, they'll go to these directories. That's another way people often. I think I can remember when I was at the Law Cross Clinic, one of the things that we had to do when we were working in the Institute was have a business card. Have a business card, yes. And I can, I can remember, I put my picture on my business card and I don't know whether you still feel the same way now, but you said to me that you didn't think having a photograph was a good idea on a business card. No, I still hold by that. And the reason why is because people will project onto that photograph. 100%. Whatever they want to project onto it. So we're talking about the counselling directory and everybody's got the picture on that. I don't know why, but my head went to Tinder, you know, the dating app. Well, I do know about it. It's kind of like that for therapists, isn't it? It's like I like the look of them. I don't like the look of them. They remind me of my dad. That's cool. It's as happy as it is in terms of projections. Yeah. So I'm not really one that likes the idea of photographs. Having said that, I haven't been on counselling directory for a long, long time to look at how many people have photographs on it. But I know there is quite a few of them. And it's the same in PsychologyToday.com. They do as well. So there's directories. There's not that many Institute centres like ours, but there are some places. Now, I know another couple of centres but they do referrals instead of assessments. So they might get a 10 minute phone call with somebody who refers them to a therapist at their centre without a sort of detailed assessment. So there are some referral systems around. I don't know another assessment one. So those other avenues recommended, as I said, is a high one. But the really important thing is that I think is somehow it's important to get to a therapist that will suit them. So the next thing I'm going to say is really, really vital and unfortunately not followed. And that is for the people that don't go through assessments systems. They don't go through referrals. They don't go through directories. Or even if they do, they go to a therapist. It's very, very important they get on with them. Too many people just stay in the therapy or counselling, hoping it will get better or think it's their fault. My tip is that if you don't get on with that therapist, leave them. Now, people watching, listening or watching to this might say, oh, you've got to give them a chance. Okay, give them a chance, but not forever. Not for, you know, have a certain bounded amount of time where you can see if you can get on with them. Don't just stay there because you could re-applicate your history. Yeah, 100%. I completely agree. And I think that's why I like doing that initial assessment because you get a vibe. You get a feeling, do you know what to mean? And it's both sides as well. I remember, I had somebody who came in last week or a week before and she said she had some counselling or therapy. I said about a year ago, I said, did you get on with them? Oh, I stayed with them for six months. I endured it. It was not a good experience. I said, well, how come you stayed? Oh, because I didn't know I could leave. Oh, bless. I said, I basically thought, I've basically worked out I could. I said, well, thank goodness you've come here at last so we can get you to somebody who suits you. And sometimes that experience can be enough to put people off therapy altogether. Fortunately, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, too. I saw someone I got about a month ago and she said, oh, I said, I always ask that question, see, have you been in counselling there before? She said, yes. I said, when? 15 years ago. I said 15 years. She said, yes. I didn't get on with the therapist. I did leave after about six or seven sessions, but it put me off so much. I said, well, thank goodness you've been brave enough to come here. She said, yeah, that's why I've come to somebody with an assessment system. So I'm going to be appointed to somebody who'll suit me because I don't want to have that type of experience again. But you are right. Some may never come back. And it's a big step. It's a daunting step for somebody to reach out and then to feel like they have to endure therapy. That's not meant to be. Not meant to be that. No. It's a sad, indictment dog profession. But on another and on another level, not everybody gets on with everybody. Not. You don't have to. The question is, do you have to go with your therapist for therapy to work? Not necessarily. But I still think if therapy has a better chance of working, at least you have a certain amount of rapport with the person that you go to. Yes, which is a very valid point. I need to say or interject in this that as a therapist, I can challenge my clients sometimes and they don't always like that. But in my eyes, that is part of the therapy. But you will only do that after a certain amount of sessions. 100% on the first session. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, not at all. We've already got in the relationship at that point. But yeah, I don't always collude with my clients. No. And I think a professional therapist will not do that. They're not in the business of just a cosy sort of two years of therapy or something. It's difficult. I think that's the other thing. People think you just sit in a room and chat for a therapeutic hour. I can remember after my weekend training, I was shattered just having that one hour of get together at the end of it and feedback and all that sort of stuff. It was exhausting. It is. And I think it's exhausting both ways around. So yeah, we're going around, I hope to the listeners to say, look, assessment places do assessments, places do referrals are extraordinarily useful. 100%. I do think therapy directors are useful because at least you get to read about the therapist that you're going to. And you have some accountability and assessment centres like mine, you have some scans of accountability and with referral places, which is a good thing.  And I think the best places are the places that offer referrals and assessment processes or at least a directory or best of all, a recommendation. Yeah. Yeah. I do think it, you know, like your institute, there's a certain amount of safety and security walking into that building, knowing that that is the job 100% of the time that you do. Do you know what I mean? The experience that is in that building is, yeah, it's second to none. So yeah, go to Bob's. If you're anywhere near Manchester, check out. Or at least somewhere that's got a referral system, or you've got a recommendation. Now, the recommendation might come from the doctors. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that either. So don't just look in the map.  It's not the worst thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely the worst thing to do. And please don't stay in therapy because you think you can't leave. Or please don't stay in therapy because you think that something wrong with you and the therapist by some God divine right can, you know, treat you in the ways which you don't feel respectful as a human being. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And, you know, we, every relationship, which I'm sure we will talk about in the many, many weeks to come of us doing the therapy show, we co-create relationships. And there's a dynamic that, you know, an energy that goes backwards and forwards in that it's not one person is wholly responsible for it, but you've got to be comfortable enough to share some stuff in that room. And if you're feeling criticised or judged or shame or any of that stuff, won't talk about it. You are right. And maybe we'll love to go into this on another podcast. And I like, as I said off air before we started, I could talk forever about these things. And there is the nether points. I know after sensing that there is another point that I may have to disagree with you. I don't have to, but at least I'd like to have another viewpoint. I think it is the, I know enough about co-creation. And I understand and I agree with you in the way that you're talking. However, stroke and I think it is the duty of the professional therapist and counsellor to be the one that actually goes out of the way to make sure the environment, et cetera, is a safe, secure environment in the first sessions for the people who have reached out to be able to talk. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah. And, you know, when we're not just talking about the therapeutic environment, it's the physical environments as well, you know, that the room is at a certain temperature that there's somewhere nice to sit that, you know, it's quiet and it's not over there. There's not a lot of background. There's an awful lot of stuff that you need to be mindful of. Absolutely. So it isn't just about a co-creation but needs to be led by the therapist at the beginning. Protection, permission, importance, that always sticks in my head. Those are the three pieces. Three pieces of the psychotherapy to a lexicon. That's absolutely right. So, really... Holding them in a safe space and that they can trust that you're going to be there holding them in that safe space because it is no fracking. Yes. And I know we'll come to the end of the podcast. So I really do hope listeners bear this in mind that it's important to spend some time finding the right therapist for yourselves. Yeah, yeah. And don't give up after the first one. If it doesn't work out, it's not personal. Try again. Yeah. So what we're doing on the next episode, Bob, have we decided? Are we going to surprise people? Are we moving on? I think it's logical we do that we're moving on to the first session. Okay. Sounds good. The initial session. Yeah. I'm not talking about the assessment. The assessment is the pathway or the paving to the right therapist. So we're going to assume that Joe Blogg's now has got the right therapist, has been matched up or at least recommended or at least gone through the directory or whatever, all the things we would talk. So now they've arranged a first session. What happens in that first session? Now there is so much to this. I think we're waiting baited anticipation, but I would enjoy talking about this. So until the next episode, Bob, thank you so much. Thank you. I shall speak to you soon. You certainly will. You've been listening to the therapy show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.


This study found that combining airborne laser scanning, ALS, and terrestrial laser scanning, TLS, can reduce the error rate in measuring tree parameters such as tree height, TH, crown base height, CBH, crown area, CA, and crown volume, CB. The ALS-derived TH, CA and CB were underestimated while CBH was overestimated when compared with the TLS-derived parameters. However, the R2 coefficient from the regression analysis between the ALS and TLS estimations was approximately 0.94, indicating that the combined use of ALS and TLS can improve the accuracy of tree parameter measurements. This article was authored by Wu Qianli, Siang Jinyu, Taijin Park, and others.


Boom, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakyan. We are on-site in Sioux Falls, South Dakota now. Very excited to be sitting down with Dr. Elizabeth Hague. We are going to be talking about mastering the MCAT. I'm super excited. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. And we have a lot to discuss, and there's so much nuance to this, but then there's also a cool background that we're dealing with, with Elizabeth's. She's an associate professor of biology at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, and also a PhD at Northwestern University in Chicago prior to that in biology and developmental biology and so in the last four years as the project manager at ADAPT-PREP, preparation for the MCAT. And that is extremely important because so many people want to pursue being a doctor, and how do we leverage the right sort of technologies to help people become doctors, make it people that have lower socioeconomic status. How do they enter into becoming a doctor? How do we make it more accessible with the degrees of freedom, enabling people to do what they want with their time in their lives, and then also with the transition in 2015 to the difference with adding psych and so and the cars, critical analysis and reasoning skills. Yeah, I'm impressed. I'm impressed. Good job. Thank you. We've got a lot to talk about. Very excited. So let's start with you. Let's talk about how did you become so fascinated with biology? Who were you when you were younger and how did this sort of come up? Okay, yeah. You know, I think I liked school overall. So I loved my French classes. So growing up in Canada, we learned French. I went to a private school early on and so that's kind of weird that I didn't go into more with that, but I didn't see the practical side of things, which sounds kind of maybe kind of silly, but loved history classes as well. I think in high school, I got the history award. I didn't get the biology award. I got the history award, but there was something achievement based in science that really kind of fed my inner joy, if you will. And so when it came time to choosing a profession someday, you know, I thought, oh, maybe I'll be a doctor or a medical doctor when I'm done with college. So I went into college thinking I would be premed. Yeah. And that kind of spurred me on into a biology track. Took a totally different curve than premed for myself personally. But yeah, now you're get to help thousands of kids around the world. Yeah, that's my goal. Yes. Yes, with becoming doctors. Now, and I and I would like to clarify is the is and we can get more into this later, but then is adapt prep is it also looking to figure out how to help people around the world outside the United States? Good question. So the MCAT varies. Canada, the Canadian MCAT and the American MCAT very similar. But you go to Australia or you go to Europe and you're going to get just a slightly different variety of the MCAT. I think there's one of theirs is called the maybe the GMAT even. But yeah, absolutely would love to help globally and especially individuals who you know, don't have that money to pay for some of the bigger companies. I'll call them the big box stores for MCAT prep materials and being able to afford that and to get the competitive edge that way. For those people who can't afford that, I would love to offer them this tool that, of course, in my opinion, which might be biased, but in my opinion is going to give just as much, if not more quality software to help them prepare for the MCAT.  So I want I'm excited to talk about the the global side of this and the socioeconomic side of this soon and further into the conversation. It's interesting that you you know, when we first met and shout out to Garrett, thanks for introducing us. Yes, you shout out now. Now, what's the when we first met, you said that you were most fascinated with teaching and that you loved when when the students would learn.  That's like really important intelligence to have. Yeah. So tell us about that because now it's been 12 years for you professing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, even I know before when we were chatting about it, I didn't so much mention this yet, but there's always been this teaching vibe in me. So the way that I afforded to go to college was to be a lifeguard and a swimming lesson teacher. So that's that's how I earned my shackles for that. And so there was always this kind of teaching thread there. And then in graduate school, I mean, I got a 4.0 in graduate school. But my passion wasn't so much in acquiring the knowledge. I mean, I enjoyed that it the achiever in me loved it. But my my joy was most abundant when I was a TA a teaching assistant in graduate school. And so listening to that in me is is really what made me decide, okay, yeah, I could be a research professor. But my joy comes from teaching others. So I'm going to pursue more of a teaching professing role versus a research role. And also this this ability to realize that you can be really, really smart. But if you can't translate that to others, if you can't share your intelligence. Oh, in my opinion, it decreases the value a little bit. If your knowledge isn't transferable. Definitely, it loses some some value. Yeah, not to say that it's not valuable. But for me, the most value in my knowledge comes from sharing it with others. I guess that's one way to put it. Yeah, there's a couple things there. The sort of first thing you touched on was this, the translational like the application of research to the world. Yeah, that's becoming more and more critical through people that we interviewed that are scientists. They're like thirsty to have. And that's awesome. Yeah. Right.  I want to hear what you have to say about this. Yeah, that that problem solving and that investigation is fascinating. I'm not saying that I don't value that. But my passion wasn't there. I think my passion I became the most alive when I was teaching others transferring that knowledge. But yeah, research is fascinating. There was I don't know if you saw my Facebook page. There was just a case of a girl who or a young woman who was able to regain sight because of gene therapy. And so there's so many useful science projects going on right now that it's it's pretty fascinating to watch. And so my hope is yeah, I probably won't ever well, I won't create say a research project that will solve someone's, you know, medical issues. But maybe I can play a part by helping people from a from a greater array from a more diverse population to cultivate their passion to pursue medicine. Some of them might even pursue research, maybe MD PhD type students as well, and bring them to the table that normally wouldn't come to the table and help them transfer their knowledge in ways that would be useful to a greater population. Yeah, I love thinking about what different cultures from around the world will bring to the global collective knowledge base once they have the full potential to bring their like their culture and heritage principles to specific fields that are emerging. So yeah, so that translational was super important that you brought up. And then within this whole idea of intelligence, because we've now had this is just such a blessing that we after these billions of years of evolution have this what's a pinnacle potentially of humans now taking stewardship of this planet. Sure. And so now it's become what is that intelligence? Is that intelligence? If it's just baked within you, then okay. But really being able to pass it on in relatable ways to augment other people's perspectives is so valuable to to the next generations to have them be better stewards and whatnot. So I'm really happy that we that we chatted specifically about that as well. I want to know, because this is really important, we like asking this to people that are professing, because when there's so much to gain from your experience over a dozen years of like, what have been some of these key takeaways for you with teaching to students that that you think would be really important to teach about right now. To teach about to other professors or to teach about that's a good question. Yeah, people watching. I would like to hear both. Yeah, to just to normal like audience of like, this is just this is what's been really interesting about about being a professor. But also to potentially like, yeah, what can help other people become better teachers as well? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. And I think not enough people ask that question, you know, as a new when I was a new professor, I tried to do a lot of reading of what does make a great professor. And there's not a ton out there. In fact, one of the first books I I read or one of the first articles I read talked about, well, the really good teachers are so busy teaching that they're not writing articles about being good teachers. Yeah, so it's awesome to have someone like you asking these questions. Now, for for me personally, what I've seen is if you anchor new knowledge to current knowledge, that's the best way you're going to retain it. And and when I'm when I'm saying that it that's more like factual knowledge type of stuff. It's not so much thinking out of the box being a creative, you know, new knowledge developer, it's more okay, how do you learn what's already out there. And with that, with my students anyways, if you anchor it to something they already know, it's going to make it more. I don't know, it's worth more connectable. Yep. The the example that pops into my head every year for microbiology that I teach, we learn about the lack operon. I'm going all science geeky on you. So what is that again? Yeah, yeah. So the the lack operon, it's a series of genes within bacteria that help them process lactose as an energy source. And so in our microbiology class, we look at that lack operon to say, how does a cell something as simple as a bacteria cell know when to turn certain genes on and off. And I equated that to me wanting a Jeep someday. And what the limiting factors are, and what the promoting factors are in me attaining this Jeep someday. And so it would be well, incurring bills would be a limiting factor if I spend money on other things. Yeah, that would limit things like that. You know, this is usually like a 20 30 minute class. So I won't I won't too much. I see where you're going. Okay, so it's in order for the biological process to commence, you need certain certain things present in the environment to make gene transcription happen. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And that would be the same thing with you wanting to get a car, which is a very relatable example for students who are wanting to earn a vehicle or whatever that may be. Yeah. Yeah. Or we can talk about enzymes and dating services. So Oh, that's so cool. See, this is like this is good science communication practices. Yeah, yeah, because they can relate to or they understand. Okay, here are these two people that out in society, they might come together and form this product of a couple. But if there's a dating service, and they both are attracted to that dating service, it's going to be more likely that they find each other. And this and again, this is right up the alley of, you know, 18 to 21 year olds and how does that relate to enzymes? So how that relates to enzymes is that, you know, there's certain substrates or chemicals that can come together and form a different product. But the enzymes presence is going to speed that reaction. It's going to make it more likely that those two substrates come together. It's catalyzing like the app is a catalyzing. Yeah, like the dating app would be a catalyzing agent. And that they're like, Oh, yeah, we get that. We get that. That makes sense. Interesting. Yeah. I love these relatable science communications. They're so good. Yeah, they're so good. There's so many of them. Okay, so that's a huge principle in teaching and professing is making things relatable to like to the generation where they're at currently. Yeah, and that gets tough, right? So when I first started teaching at the college level, I was only 26. And I was more in that timeframe with those students. And now as I approach my 40s, sometimes it's like, Oh, I think this is really cool.  So to stay on top of that as well. Yeah, is kind of a cool thing. So then it's interesting that a professor would then need to be keeping up with the newest technology trends and what the collegiate students are using in order to try and make the science relatable at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah. So let's let's talk about MCAT. Sure. Because, you know, you were you taught me about this earlier, and it was really interesting learning about this from you that in to first of all, there's the AAMC, the Association of American Medical Colleges. Yeah. Yeah. And they make them cat every year. Yeah. Okay. And then that and that's for just the United States and there's one for and for Canada as well. Yeah. And then there's differences for ones in Europe or Australia, China, Asia, Middle East, where people have different medical. That's my understanding. Entrances. Yeah. Yeah. But they kind of follow some similar scientific principles of biology, chemistry, physics. Yeah. Okay. Now, now this is what got interesting is in 2015, there was this additional of cars. Yeah. So then a quarter of the test became cars, which is critical analysis and reasoning skills. Reasoning skills. And then which is really important because that's basically like parsing information and taking key takeaways from it. And then psychology and sociology became a quarter of it. And then the other quarter is the biology, chemistry, physics stuff. The other half is that. Yeah. So so then that gave ADAPT-PREP now, where you're a PM at that gave ADAPT-PREP kind of it's a it's an ability to kind of come in there and say, oh, well, now that there's this new addition, we can come in there and and provide this assisted the software that assists with learning. That is $200 versus like you were pointing at earlier. The $1,500 plus course. Yeah. You got it. Yeah. So now, yeah, tell us about like the this MCAT-PREP.  And it's again, it's a low cost, but you provide more than the high cost. So it's like, it's hard to, you know, how do you give people? Yeah.  Like how, how do you get people to believe, hey, this is a quality product, even though it may not have that super big price tag of some of these other big box stores, if you will. And, you know, hopefully with time and students talking to other students to say, hey, this really does work. That's how it's going to propagate among pre-med students. And, you know, I've even seen a couple, there's a couple schools that we have arrangements with. I won't name drop just for, you know, I don't know if it's legality issues or what not. But to, to hear back from them, yeah, our MCAT scores are increasing using this software. And it's pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So it's, it's having an impact. Yeah. And that brings me joy, too, because there's nothing worse than doing something, for me, anyways, than doing something that has no value, right? Yeah, that's no value. Yeah. But so the, the premise of all of this is that students are paying for their undergraduate classes, right? They're taking the physics class. They're taking the chemistry classes, the biochemistry classes. And yet there's this mindset out there. And I don't know if it's like a, you know, a marketing thing that has happened over the years where, oh yeah, you did all these college classes, but now you have to take this other course and relearn everything. And I could see with, with some of my colleagues, they're like, no, we do a good job in the classroom. You shouldn't have to relearn everything. And I would agree with them on that sense to kind of cultivate this idea of you don't have to relearn everything because that's not the best use of your time. Now, what is time? No, just kidding. Yeah. Yeah, no. I love asking that question. I know you don't, we won't go there, but, you know, the best use of their time is having had these college courses or these university courses. And then instead of relearning everything, figure out what you learned well and figure out maybe what you didn't learn well. Maybe, you know, maybe it was because you didn't cover that in some of your classes or maybe you didn't learn it as well as you thought or retained it as well as you thought. And so that's where Adapt Prep comes in. And as a student takes practice exams, they can kind of assess, did I learn things well enough? Where am I weak? Or where did I learn things incorrectly? Right? Yeah. Because you don't, you don't know that you don't know something until you get it wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's, that's where this comes alongside. And then instead of, you know, instead of reading this textbook and that you already know 80% of, you want to focus on that 20% that you don't know so well. And that's where you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck as far as investing time into MCAT preparations is review that 20% or learn that 20% because you already know this. Yeah. Why, why keep going over that? Yeah. But that's where people are comfortable, right?  It's, it's, I'm going to teach stuff in my classroom and put stuff on my syllabus that I'm really confident I know things about. And as, as someone prepping for the MCAT, you can't stay in your favorite areas. Totally. Because you're going to get this stuff on the test too. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a, that's a very valuable principle for life in general is that Pareto principle of that, especially for something like an MCAT that there, you have this sort of like 80% understanding of certain materials and that feels good. And then this other 20% you basically need to focus 80% of your time on the 20% of the material you don't know. And then slowly work your way into having a more well rounded. And so this is like the adaptable MCAT where you're, you're in a certain field of study like biology and you may not know certain things. So you're adapting the questions to become more and more difficult with them over time. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. So yeah, it's part of the basis of the software then you take a, so there's four sections on the MCAT and you could start out just working on one section if you wanted to. You take a full length exam, which is about 90 minutes. The MCAT in total is about a seven and a half hour exam. So it's, it's pretty crazy, but so crazy. Yeah. So you can take, you can take a full length exam and, and we start you off relatively easy. And that's, that's something I, I still kind of question of maybe we need to start people off really difficult. But our scale of earned level, so the scale of difficulty is one to 10. And we give students an exam starting off at level three. And based on how they do on that first exam, the next exam they take will either be more challenging or less difficult. Yeah. That way we can meet the student where they're at and then help them go to where they need to be. Yeah. Yeah. And so that the software is going to adapt according to that level of difficulty for them. Yeah. Yeah, that, that, that process of adapting is a, it's a closed loop feedback system. And that's seems to be a huge aspect of, of the future in terms of technology and adaptability of, of, of information, dissemination and knowledge gaining slowly building up over time. Yeah. So how this, this is a big database. This is like 1200 or so questions. Yeah. The cars, the car section has 1200 questions in it. And then we have about 1200 in the chemistry, biochemistry section or chemistry, physics, biochemistry. And then 1000 each in biology, biochemistry and psych and social. And we're constantly working on. So one of my roles as project, I'm project manager. So trying to coordinate and disseminate that that we exist. But my other role is a content writer. So we're constantly adding content to the question bank, which is kind of fun. It keeps me learning. So yeah, yeah, there's new, new and new and more new, yep, to continue adding and making the questions non biased and non leading and also the kind of stuff. Yeah. And, and there's definitely a language of how AMC writes their questions on the MCAT, that sometimes, you know, someone who's writing for AMC may not take as academic approach as maybe I would. And so that's been great for my own teaching experience to realize there's different ways to get at whether this person has this knowledge. And I might ask a question a certain way because that's been my training, whereas somebody else with slightly different training will ask, you know, it's getting to the same end point, but with a different question. So, so for me, for me, not only am I working on developing this software content, but I'm also learning how to be a better teacher at the same time, which is pretty cool. That was a lot of babbling. I love that. I love that right there. That was so good, because it's so true is that that is a good way to become a better at whatever you're doing in life is to be looking at the tip of the industry and the cutting edge of the industry and then bringing it into the dissemination, the best ways of disseminating. And that is again, that's like storytelling. That's, you know, you have to decide on whether something is going to be a multiple choice or a short answer or a long answer written. That's all very difficult. And that's like life skills, right? So it's it's beyond just the MCAT. It's these are these are skills that these individuals will take into the rest of their life of, okay, I've got this knowledge. But in the classroom setting, I'm, I'm being asked the question in this way. In the medical setting, I'm probably going to be asked in a different way, but still needing that knowledge. So can I decipher the way or can I even anticipate the way I'm being asked or even assess? Hey, you're asking that different than when I was tested on it. Do I still know what you're talking about and get the answer? Yeah, because there's like, there's a big difference between knowing an answer to a question versus seeing the question and answer in a real life scenario, and then needing to add some sort of knowledge from another domain to it, or, you know, that's kind of the critical analysis and reasoning that you have to do to make a decision. Yeah, you know, you see this piece of writing that might not even be, well, probably it won't be from your field of expertise, it'll be from dance or history or what not. And you have to reason within the text and also reason beyond the text. And we want doctors to do that, right? Totally. Because you're not going to have the typical textbook patient every time. Exactly. And if you if if you have that patient, or if I'm the patient and you know, my doctor's like, Oh, well, you don't check all the boxes, like in my textbook for this. I don't want that kind of doctor. I want someone who can, okay, this and this. So maybe this. Yeah. It's it's at times there's a protocol. And then at times it's figuring out how to potentially do things off protocol that are actually much better for the scenario at hand. And you want to be agile, but also be be on protocol as needed as well. So it's kind of like, adaptability, adaptability. We had, we had a Dr. Robert Lustig on our show. And he's a pediatric endocrinologist. And so when we're when we're talking to him, he was he was very upset at how the physicians are now having this, instead of doing eye to eye with patient, it's like eye on computer screen, doing electronic medical record right while, yeah, instead of the bonding. Yeah. And so I'm curious to hear what your perspective is there. And like, what's going on with the MCAT related to electronic medical records and stuff like that? Yeah, that's a good question. So a couple of things there. Fortunately, there's been some problem solving, I think. So there's been entrepreneurs that have come in and developed what's called a medical scribe. So there's several different companies across the US. Yeah, we was what I told him, by the way, I was like, we're we're going to just really quickly be able to enter in the audio into text and fill in the or that too. Yeah, yeah. So one company that will give a shout out to M. Modal, M. Modal is one of the scribe companies. I think there's another one scribe, scribe America or something, where oftentimes there's there's students who will take a year off between undergrad and medical school or a couple years off, and they'll be a medical scribe and what they do is they're the ones at the computer for these physicians. Now, most of the hospitals that have medical scribes are typically the bigger hospitals that you're not probably going to see a scribe at a rural hospital. But I think that's that's starting to solve that issue, because I would agree if you're not looking at that person, you're you're you're losing a ton of communication. Yeah, yeah, emotional relatability. Yeah, non verbal cues, non verbal cues, all this kind of stuff. And then and then it's interesting. So then these companies that you were listening that are doing the scribe, that they're they're they're they're doing audio to text. And then you have to look at the text afterward. Is that what they're doing? No, what they're actually doing is they're training individuals to sit in the hospital or the clinical room with the doctor and parse for the key points and write them down. Oh, they're typing they're doing that. Yes. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Oh, cool. So so then the physician is having the one on one and the scribe is filling in the health record. You got it. Oh, that's that's very interesting. Yeah. So that that that's kind of one of those things where someone had a great idea. That's a good solution. Yeah, that's a good solution. I also think that soon we'll be able to go directly from audio to text and have that text input into the health record. So it'll be like a parser for the for the audio to text, which is basically what the scribe is doing. They're the parser. Yeah. Yeah. And then the doctor can go back and make sure and look at it afterwards to say, Okay, did you really translate what I was saying? And then there's always this other I mean, there's so many facets to to being in a in a clinical setting with a patient because then you wonder what's going to happen with insurance and liability cases, right? It's like, well, we've got your audio right here. You know, is that going to scare people away from the health care profession? I don't know. Oh, yeah. That's that's another that's a whole other tangent, right? Yeah. Oh, man, that's a really interesting point though, is that we're approaching the end of privacy in many ways. And so if I if that that is a HIPAA compliant medical safe zone and if that audio is now being leaked into wherever else. Right. About my yeah, or does it make and so not only HIPAA kind of privacy issues, but does that make the physician even more? What's the word I'm looking for? Cautious in their treatments or in their diagnosis, it's like, oh, my goodness, is this going to come back and haunt me? Whoa. Yeah. So there's a lot of there's a lot of things to think about and worry about becomes on on so much pressure. They're on a lot of pressure and everything becomes described. Everything becomes written down what the so everything's being analyzed on what they're recommending, how they're recommending it and what dosages to what patients to what etc. Like, you know, the which protocols are they following for what? It's like that's starting to be interesting. So you see, sorry, you see a good side to that, right? Because totally as a patient. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's going to make me feel more confident because if this doctor screws up, I've got record of it. That's right. And maybe hopefully, you know, going the more optimistic route, this is going to allow or enable physicians to be more accountable, right? Yeah, because it's like, I better be on my game every time because it's getting recorded. Whereas if it's not, can I, you know, can I become a little less cautious? We're seeing that exact same thing happening with police officers now because the cameras. Yeah, so that's true. You can't, yeah, can't potentially be overly aggressive and hurting people that are not committing crimes and whatnot. And all this different type of stuff. But shout out to all of the good police officers and firefighters and physicians and physicians that are keeping good care of humanity. I want to also follow up on that optimistic route with physicians and AIs because I have a I have a strong feeling as well that potentially where we could go with the end of privacy could be a very good place with transparency that what about your biometrics really needs to be needs to stay hidden from the rest of of humanity? Yeah, because as long as all of these nodes of individuals that have all their biometrics are opened, the data side, no data siloing is great, then we can have the best possible ways of treating each other and making sure we stay in the best health possible. And also with physicians on their side is that them having total transparency with the way that they're prescribing certain remedies and whatnot and making diagnoses can then be more easily data can be analyzed on those things. And then we can see who's doing the best, why they're doing the best, how we can help other people do better. Actually, yeah, there's a lot more data database treatment, like, okay, the data really does show that this is this is happening well. I don't have you watched the movie Gadica? Yeah, yeah. So it's starting to really sound like we're approaching this Gadica totally reality, especially with gene sequencing and things like that. And so while we have these amazing tools that we're developing, I think it's always a good idea. Just take a step back once in a while and say, okay, we're developing this to be used for good. But what's the bad that could be a consequence of this? And just to be careful about that. And then how do we ensure that that bad doesn't come to fruition? That's right. Yeah. And so going back to the MCAT, that's where I'm excited that in 2015, there's now this psychology and sociology aspect to the MCAT, because it's requiring premed students to have some background in psychology and sociology. You know, they didn't necessarily have to have any psych or social going into med school years ago. But really, that's that's a big part of being a physician is being able to understand beyond the physical to be being able to understand the psychology that we maybe, you know, don't necessarily have those litmus tests for. Yeah. That's a huge addition in 2015. Absolutely. I'm so happy that it did happen. Yeah. And then the cars. Yes. Those additions were huge. When you taught me about them, I was like, whoa, that's great. Like that's a huge advancement in the right direction. And we'll see. I mean, I think there may be another one of those advancements that happened into the MCAT in the next couple of years with artificial intelligence. Yeah. I don't know. We don't know. Interesting. Yeah. And then we'll have physicians learning better about how machines learn and how machines can help with the medical processes. Right. Right. Well, and that's kind of what our software does in a way to the AI that's built into our software. It's, you know, the students are hopefully learning from our software, but the software is also learning based on their performance with our questions and adapting the question bank to the user, which is pretty cool. That's one of the most crucial aspects about these closed loop adaptive technology platforms that exist that is, I think, catalyzing much more success in the dissemination of these complex sciences and experiences to people that can go out and become their best in the field. Yeah. Now, let's talk a bit on SES and socioeconomic status because this is so crucial. We were democratizing the cost of these products down, down, down, down, which is enabling more and more people to pursue I hope so, yeah. with economic freedom. Yeah. Yeah. This is great because you're down to 200 now. Yeah. That's the cost. Yeah. So fortunately, so it would be my boss, the owner of Adapt Prep MCAT, he's very on board with this philosophy of, hey, not only are we going to help students do well on the MCAT, we're also going to help students who may be in a lower socioeconomic class be able to afford this competitive edge that some other individuals get. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know where I was going with that, but I'm happy that that is, like that has to be baked into the morals and ethics of the organization in order for other people to actually reap the fruits of, there's like, there's so much research that points to the more and more that investment of financial rewards go into production, into democratization, into making more economic degrees of freedom for other people that the better a society is and that the more that it goes into hoarding and whatnot, the worse the society gets. Yeah. So it's kind of like, it's interesting that it's always been like that. History has always been showing that principle. And so to have it baked into your morals and ethics, that that is such a crucial investing back into the production to make it more available to more people. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, while this is just a microcosm of the big picture, right, we're helping students prep for the MCAT, but maybe, so this is like dreaming big, right, maybe we're also having an impact on healthcare as a whole because if we can help or enable more students from a diverse background show that or demonstrate that they are ready for med school and that they're fully capable for and they've got that high MCAT score now, get them into healthcare, that diversity is going to improve healthcare. Yeah. We were talking about that at the beginning as well as that the more of the cultural and heritage that comes from around the world to solve some of these challenging problems, the more of these different philosophies and techniques that we can explore and pursue to actually come to solutions to the pressing problems. Absolutely. Yeah. And there's some great books out there, the one that comes to mind and I'm kicking myself because I can't remember the author, but it was The Spirit Catches The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down or The Spirit Catches Me and have you, have you heard of that one? I don't think so. It's a fascinating book. I used to have my anatomy and physiology students read it and because it brings in all these different facets from treating an individual. Yeah. And it tells the real the true story of this Hmong refugee family out in California and how they were, they had an epileptic daughter and she went to receive medical treatment for her seizures and the American medical approach was so different than the cultural heritage in treating this individually. You know, culturally in the Hmong population from my understanding anyways is that at the time epileptic individuals were seen or are seen as shaman. You know, very, very wise and something spiritually gifted. And so you don't necessarily want to end the seizures. Whereas from an American medical perspective, it's like, no, you have to be on all these different medications. Let's, you know, this is our goal. And so to see these two, dare I say opposite, kind of polar approaches and how they butted heads. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah, that's the that's the interdisciplinary understanding of medicine. Yep. Yeah. And then a social worker comes into that picture. And really, you know, she could see, it was an American social worker. So she could see the perspective, the cultural perspective of the American medical professionals. But then she got to know these people themselves. And it ended up being, yeah, it's a fascinating story. I won't ruin the end of it. You should ruin the end of it. Ruin the end of it for you. You should teach us the end because so many people won't read it or watch it. And so that's why I always say it's not even ruining, it's sharing so that people can kind of shortcut if they need it. If they need to, yeah. Well, I mean, so it ended up being that this unfortunate, I shouldn't say fortunately, unfortunately, this woman who was, or this girl who was struggling with seizures had a grand mal seizure. So one that put her into a vegetative state. And so now the medical professionals, there's not much more they can do. And the family's approach was so optimal that this girl lived into, I think she was like 21, 22, maybe even older when she passed away. And the medical professionals were just blown away by that because a typical patient of theirs that had that same experience just lacks in the follow-up care from their family members or from the, you know, maybe the convalescence home that they get put into or I guess it wouldn't be convalescence at that point. But that this woman's life was as long as it was because of the quality of care that her family gave her.  But they were caring for their daughter as best as they knew how. Yeah. And so, yeah, seeing you read this book and at one point you're ticked off at the medical professionals and at the other point you're ticked off at the, you know, the family. And then you're ticked off at the infrastructure that is child protective services because they ended up taking this kid away from her parents. And that's when she had her biggest seizure actually. And so there's, it's just this conglomeration of real life messiness. Yeah. Yeah. The interdisciplinary approach and that's something interesting for physicians as well that are going through the process of aspiring medical students to become doctors because, and even for, yeah, existing doctors, existing professors, existing students across basically any discipline is that having a multidisciplinary approach to whatever we are practicing, it opens our perspective to adding in some of the, oh, well, what is the culture, this culture that is literally present for me? How do they feel about what's going on right now or what does someone of high or low SES or this religion or that religion or this skin color, that skin color? Why do those things matter in building out a complex nuanced perspective on every single issue around us? I'm glad you brought up that interdisciplinary because that's so important to, especially as you go to attempt to master the MCAT, what is so important is, again, that's why you added this psych and social, that's why you're adding critical reasoning and analysis skills. Because you don't want a doctor, well, in my opinion anyways, you don't want a doctor that absolutely, I mean, to some extent, follows the protocol to a T because that protocol isn't going to fit every individual. So we really want to recruit people to the profession who know the protocol but who are, throw out adaptability again, who are adaptable enough that they can adapt to the situation, they can adapt to that person. Going back to the whole medical records and scribing and stuff like that, that doctor really needs to be in tune with who's in front of them in order to fully grasp how to treat them. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Maybe in the future on the, on mastering the MCAT, there will be a portion of like emotional intelligence where they'll have to like look at the different complex facial expressions. Sure. Well, it's funny you say that because in the last two years, and I don't know enough about this realm to speak maybe adequately about it, but there's a new test that health profession schools are requiring as part of their admittance test. I think it's called CASPA. First time I heard of it, I thought CASPA. No, maybe it is CASPA actually. CASPA might be the the centralized application service for physicians assistant. So all these acronyms in my head, but yeah, yeah. So CASPA is this kind of this moral and ethical type test for individuals who are applying to PA school or a couple med schools that I know my students have applied to have used it as well. They already are getting into that of are you ethical? And again, what does ethical mean, right? Yeah. Because there's no protocol for that. There's a lot of different opinions on what is an ethical decision. But our society's trying to create tests that will measure that. And again, that's where diversity is going to be so critical because you need that diverse input of what is ethical. Yeah. Yeah. Whoa. We may be entering like more like emotional intelligence and ethical intelligences in the decision making. I love hearing that because that's that creeping into our political and economic and scientific infrastructures is critical. Absolutely. To prosperity. But again, it all depends on who's defining what's ethical. Yeah. Yeah. I think on a very a strong collective intelligence there is super important. So what else closing out? What else should we know about mastering the MCAT that maybe that you've learned that a DAP prep is providing? Like what else is really important that we may not have touched on? You know, I've talked about it so much in so many different situations. I always forget what I've shared and what I haven't. But earlier when I mentioned the 80 percent versus 20 percent. So really learning about yourself to say where do I need to put the effort in? Yeah. Kind of a side note tangent. When I first started with a DAP prep MCAT I was I was still wearing my professor hat a lot more. I actually wasn't even employed by a DAP prep MCAT. I did a survey of my students and also several hundred students throughout the United States and asked them different questions like when do you know you're ready for the MCAT? And it blew me away because here are these people that are supposedly being trained as scientists and their answer was the majority of them. I know I'm ready for the MCAT when I feel ready.  And so in that sense this mastering the MCAT with a DAP prep with the software we're developing and continue to develop I'm hoping it's a confidence booster and it's kind of a data collector. It's I'm ready for the MCAT when I score this high on the practices. Exactly that's a good scientific reasoning and that's like that's like if you come in really hot like you know a lot about the subjects then great you may only need to study a hundred hours and you'll be ready but if you don't and you need more practice you may study four hundred hours but then you're going to get the same level of readiness as the person that only studied a hundred hours. And it doesn't mean you're any going to be any less of a doctor. Totally. It's just you need to invest some more resources before you're ready for that next step. Exactly. Very interesting. And now that for me that does kind of segue into what some of these other companies are doing that I've seen. From my perspective you'll take one of their practice exams and your result will score really low. Because they're trying to recruit you to buy their software and their prep materials right.  Oh damn. It's kind of convincing you that you have acne when you have clear compulsion. So there's all this working. It's non ethical. It's not. Yeah. And so with the with the software that we're running our goal is to be ethical as far as based on how you're performing with our software this is where we've seen students end up scoring with the MCAT. Now my software or I shouldn't say my software it's it's Dr. Huffman software mostly. Aside from my software you know I work with students all the time and they're if they don't want to use a DAP prep my biggest piece of advice to them is go use AAMC resources. Totally not sponsored by AAMC but I'm giving them a plug because they're the ones writing the MCAT and they don't really have any incentive to give you a lower score than you're going to be getting. Now sometimes there are years where students will say hey those practice exams were a lot easier than the real thing. Yeah yeah. But you hear that less than what you hear from these private for-profit companies. Yeah. So yeah. Very very interesting. We're all all the way to the in beginning of this last segment when you said that the having this like self-awareness of your own abilities right and having a Did I say that? Dang you make me sound good. That's what we do here. Help people unleash themselves fully. You know you nailed it that having that self-awareness of where we need the most developmental practice and then being able to leverage software to help us both analyze ourselves effectively to know where the where we need to study and then helping us actually do that study to get there. They're so critical. I'm like my mind's going so many places about like you know being able to even leverage tools like this for our ability to learn about whatever subject we want is that you know closed-loop feedback adaptive learning for three-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 20-year-olds wherever you're at. Oh absolutely. Well you know different language apps. I mean now we're going into the field of creating apps which maybe we should stay away from but. You're right though. But it's all there to you know to maximize our potential. You know there's a lot of different angles we could take you know there's philosophies out there to say know your strengths and work with your strengths and in other situations yeah work with your strengths but also know where your weaknesses are because you don't want to be blind to that. No blind spots. Yeah no blind spots and at the very least you can say hey I'm not good at that. Exactly. I'm going to bring someone on my team who is good at that. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah and the another interesting thing that you said was that you pointed at is like this the super duper importance with having an ethical groundedness in the product. Yeah absolutely. You're not purposely trying to mislead people and to thinking that they're scoring less in order to buy your product like that sounds you know those days are over. Those days of this maximizing shareholder value in this business as usual with politicians that shit's over we're so over that stuff we're totally moving forth with more ethical inclusive equality of opportunity for all people economic freedoms across the world maximizing individual collective potential. We care about that so much we talk about that a lot so. But there's and there's I was going to say there's a there's a such a hurdle that we still have to overcome right because in order I mean even I'm not a business person by training I kind of wish I took more business classes and marketing classes but alas nope your instagram accounts pretty good the yeah that's that's our yeah our intern kudos sharp you weren't running it though I was I was good yeah yeah and it's been fun to see how our intern Felipe has has really taken the baton there yeah yeah shout out to Felipe good work because the links in the bio over the that is really strong it's a really strong account we got some powerful quotes there it's like yeah yeah but and to go back to your other point of yeah we to to market ethically at a price you know exactly but to to keep living as a company and sustain growing yourself and growing yeah and and getting out there and being known to people that's what we and not so that you can last I think we face that same thing that's the industry challenge artists and entrepreneurs that are starting up face that same thing it's a huge challenge yeah and doing it ethically even though having tremendous patience because it's better to be super patient and do things ethically yeah then exploiting and trying to run really fast and then you'll just your soul be corrupted yeah yeah we're you know the the expression used to say nice guys we should gender neutralize it right nice people finish last yeah and my my hope with this is that nice people or maybe we'll switch it a little bit ethical people won't finish last that yeah we've we're hitting this point in culture and society where ethical nice people if you will be like they're gonna come to the forefront yeah yeah they'll be the people that um help they're there are in many ways the ones that are opening this overton window to the possibilities of the most ethical grounds possible and moving other people to say look at how cool this is if we progress completely ethically together yeah as one yeah and together's together's point yeah there's like a transition from survival of the fittest to survival of the friendliest oh i like that yeah that would be good yeah yeah i'm glad you dig that one that's a good one that we learned as well okay couple quick power round thoughts on the way out um we like to ask these questions to our guests on the show okay uh-oh uh-oh do you think we're alone in the cosmos oh man you know that is a great question we won't know until we know right i mean if you're if you're in a room by yourself are you alone in that room yeah what do you what do you think if you well i mean unless there's you're alone as far as being alone as a human being uh-huh but what else is then there is there is there an energy force around us what do you think i i'll see this is where i'm going to get in trouble with with the people in my community and maybe even my family but i think there is this energy force around us that we haven't been able to measure yeah um yeah i i think that's a legit thing yeah you know and it's it's weird things like when my dad passed away a couple years ago we started seeing heart shapes and i i never would have like keyed into these kind of things and so this is going to get like really weird and maybe too sci-fi for you not at all we talk about stuff all the time good deal good deal and that stuff's like yeah um and so i was on a hike at one point i was volunteering with my son's boy scout troop and and taking these kids on a hike and i'm like oh this is something my dad would love you know being out in nature he would always take the dog for a walk out in the trails where i grew up so it really made me think of my dad and no joke within seconds i look down on the ground and there's this heart shape what was an acorn split in half and it left that heart shape um yeah yeah so it's it's there's there's something going on where maybe there's some messaging my kids use it against me though because we went to the the humane society um to look at potentially getting a cat and there was this oh it's the ugliest cat but it had hearts in its fur and they're like grandpa says we have to get this cat yeah what but sure enough there's hearts in the cat so i've got another cat you ended up adopting that cat yeah we did adopt that cat even though you know i couldn't bring myself to pet it for like the first three weeks because you could feel every vertebrae in its back it was nasty yeah whoa yes i'm glad that you think that communication that energy force kind of there's there's something out there the the when when when we limit our our our i guess what we when we collectively believe to just what the perceptions of this physical vehicle are yeah that is limiting in so many ways that we're not enabling ourselves to see what exists beyond the perception of this vehicle and there are people that have been training the muscles of perceiving past the three-dimensional reality that are really good at that yeah and whatever exists out there is exciting i'm glad that you have had experiences in that and so yeah that's why we ask yeah do you think this is a simulation oh like that what is that one show that movie where it's like cameras and everybody's just true it is the Truman show right is that the kind of simulation you're asking about but there's a lot of different ways to take this question i was gonna say is this where like the behind the scenes people come out that have been following my life and say surprise this has been all just oh you jerks you know who wrote the script during this year to this year because that oh man have you ever watched Battlestar Galactica yeah yeah so that kind of that things are on repeat sometimes like i would buy into that yeah are we going to be on repeat until we actually do a good job of what we're supposed to do yeah as a human race yeah totally totally yeah that that's that's an option that you know this between the spark of life and the spark of death that what exists on the other side of that is maybe just the cycle of potentially reincarnation into different planets orbiting stars are the same one or recycling back into the same one there's a lot of people that would get mad at me for saying that but we're saying potentials potentially yeah i mean you look at laws of thermodynamics right energy can neither be created nor destroyed and i'd like to think i have energy more so on some days than others but if my energy can either be created nor destroyed when my physical body dies what happens to my energy yeah potentially just buried into the i don't know the dirt potentially and then you grow trees that have fruit and etc in that sense my energy transfers into a different form true and then it may not need to be like a soul that transfers but a tree is transferred yeah um and last question is what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world oh hmm visually or energy wise you get to i get i get to choose oh there's some my mind's like buzzing on that one my my first my first thing that i went to is more maybe it was because i watched that empathy video that shout out to david savash yeah yeah yeah was it 131 or something yeah anyways we've had it twice on the show yeah okay yeah but in my life i would say empathy has been huge yeah and so there's a beauty in beautiful empathy yeah you know and and maybe it goes back to the m cat stuff too yeah of empathizing with individuals i promise you i didn't plan this this isn't scripted but this is where my mind's going um empathy with individuals who want to become medical professionals and and having that empathy for them and maybe you know being able to connect with those people i think that's that's pretty beautiful yeah like seeing people where they're at yeah and what they're feeling and coming alongside with them so it's not really a visual beauty thing it's it's more of a an emotional i agree with you totally agree with you on that one that's such a powerful one knowing how to get behind the eyes of another completely in a genuine loving caring way yeah and then it also doesn't surprise me that you picked that because you yourself are professing all the time so you're trying to help students gain you're trying to empathize with them at their level to help them gain the augmentation of perception and then also with the physicians it's not only about meeting them where they're at so they can learn to become a physician but also it's learning for them to empathize with their patients them to learn empathy too that would be a good m cat section are you empathetic that's what we were saying earlier i think we may be moving to potentially moving to that yeah this has been such a pleasure was but thank you for coming out this was not as scary as i thought it would be because see see boom there we go yeah this was fun actually i was kind of nervous about this i'm not going to lie um but no this was good thank you for asking great questions may we may we ask you like what was like what was the thing that was like making him nervous and then what ended up being this experience that made it not nervous mm yeah you know oh man people watching it might think wow she's just insecure i think there's there's always this humble insecurity in me of do i have anything worth saying like or is there going to be value in what i'm transferring um so i think the fear is always there of i want there to be value in what i'm transferring did that make sense yeah totally yeah yeah so what made it okay i you know it's kind of some mental speak you know that inner coach in my head of you can do this let's go you want you just be yourself um go with what you know yeah and yeah good so it was it was good good good i'm glad that yeah good i'm and that's a really important moment for for others to hopefully take from this experience is that you gain this sort of you know everyone sort of has that that that feeling yeah what's imposter syndrome right yeah yeah that and then and then being able to go through the process of of of learning how to crush it like learning how to be confident in your own shoes and disseminate your wisdoms to to other people in the world and then just making it really clear for you know on my end as well for for those interested is that you know we're talking about empathy being so important is that you know when you're always trying to relate to the person that is nervous that is that is you know showing them that you love them and care about them that you generally want them to succeed and that i'm here to to help you unleash your soul to the fullest to the world and that is my role and so you know when that from even messaging to first meeting to talking to everything until now that that is that is the that's the flow of things from my end to the individuals that we get the pleasure to sit down with so that's awesome and it was real yeah you know because sometimes you have people that they've got an agenda and they check off the list yeah but this this was it yeah thank you it was real thank you i appreciate you're real you're awesome i try there's nothing else i can be this is yeah this has been such a pleasure thank you for coming on the show thanks for teaching us about mastering the MCAT there's so much nuance here go check out the links below everyone um check out the depth prep link below and go explore share it with other people for 200 bucks get a really robust way to to train yourself to for the on the MCAT and share it with other people around the U.S. and Canada and even around the world so that people around the world can learn about what it's actually potentially like to do an adaptive MCAT training process and bring that to other places and shout out to all you for tuning in we really appreciate it give us your thoughts in the comments below we'd love to hear from you also go and build the future manifest your destiny into the world everyone we love you let's rebirth the public intellectual together inspire the next generation to build the future much love we will see you soon peace awesome yay yay that was cool that's it yay


Russia has lost more than 4,000 tanks in Ukraine. Russia has lost more than 4,000 tanks since the start of all-out war in Ukraine last February, Kiev's military said. In an update posted to social media, the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said that Russia had lost a total of 4,006 tanks since February 24, 2022, according to Newsweek. The war has cost both sides significant numbers of both military equipment and lives. However, experts have told Newsweek that Ukraine's figure may well not be far from the truth, allowing room for error and a reflection of a pattern of failures in Russia's tank battalions since the early days of the conflict in February 2022. It's a very, very high figure, Ed Arnold, a research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank, told, It's a significant loss. The tallies published by Kiev are probably more accurate than other estimates because the Ukrainians are actually on the battlefield, according to former British Army Colonel Hamish de Breton Gordon. Ultimately, a figure of 4,000 tank losses, even if this estimate is on the high side, comes down to a combination of poor planning, a lack of movement, weak command, insufficient training and turning to older tech to fill the quickly emerging gaps.


Hi, this is Monica Paolini. I am a principal at sense of feeling. It's a company that I started over 20 years ago and I'm an independent wireless analyst and it is a wonderful job. I feel so Lucky to have it and I feel like I have it and it was no merit of mine. It just so happened I got started to work in telecoms without having any background my background I have a PhD in cognitive science and MBA So I work on AI neuroscience I didn't know anything about telecoms, but I thought it was such a fascinating Technology and the reason for that is because it's a technology that has been really helpful to so many people And it can't help so you actually feel it's a technology where you feel good about it I feel good about it every day. And so I've been working on any aspect of it and But more relevant to women I have been starting started to work specifically on how we get women more included This morning. I was in an event and I was the only woman Among 30 analysts. So this is what the kind of situation we're dealing with It'll be nice to see more women and I think that weekend that's what I'm trying to do and I'm doing this through inclusivity, which is inclusivity Sorry, which is a program what I'm doing with the Chris Lewis and the way we do it And I think that is not the only way but an important way to actually help to have more women in telecoms is to talk to have a conversation and To talk also to men to get them in to understand What does it mean for women and men to work together and by doing so to create a better environment? environment because having more women is not just beneficial to women is beneficial to everybody The way I like to think about it is that it's helpful And I know that a lot of people complain about the dangers using telecom social media too much But if you think about how it can help everybody it's a it's a huge technology and I'm extremely proud to be working in this industry


Welcome folks, this is the 4pm market update with Jacob Shoup filling in for Tom O'Brien. He will be back tomorrow. Before the show ended, I was speaking a little bit about Novo Nordus. They got hit with an FDA, an FDA Form 483 at one of their plants. Now it's not down 50% today, I'm not sure what the discrepancy is here. It's up a little bit at the close at 1.27%, let me give the fresher numbers, 1.31%. So it's not hit heavily. Now there's already a shortage on their drugs, so it's unclear whether or not this hit is going to impact them. What it was is they didn't have any limits on microbial, excuse me, they didn't have any microbial control limits, which was substantial, especially if you're making things like pharmaceuticals or that things people are going to ingest. They've had to start producing some Ogovi as well, when before they were kind of contracting that out. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with that. Now this is going to impact Ogovi and Ozenpik. So that's what we have going on with Novo Nordisk and it really didn't affect them too much and again this is kind of strange, I don't know what that 50% is. Some interesting news that's happening, now this isn't a public company but I still think it's kind of cool. This is coming out of Elon Musk as Neuralink is actually about to begin testing on people with ALS and other disabilities. Now the British have developed something as well, it's a chip that they put into people and it's people with tremors that completely stops it. It's actually a really fascinating kind of piece of technology and so Neuralink is about to be testing on people as well. They're putting a mesh over people's brains and this is going to be aimed at people with cervical spinal cord injuries and particularly ALS and probably other motor diseases that inhibit motor functions. So I think that is fascinating. Amazon, now this isn't a big jump for them but it's interesting to see, let's take a look real quick. We have time, down just a little bit, well they're Alexa, you want to put that in your home is going to be a little bit more conversational with you now so we're going to use an AI for the big things. Folks, thank you so much for joining me, we have Tommy starting tomorrow at 9am and we have the standard programming throughout the rest of the day with the man Tom O'Brien at 3pm. Have a great rest of your day folks.


China preparing for war with US. US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned that China was building up its military to prepare for a potential war with the US and he said America must optimize its forces to counter the rising threat according to The Hill publication. Speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association Warfighter Symposium at National Harbor Kendall said the US must be ready for a kind of war we have no modern experience with. Though he stressed war is not inevitable. Our job is to deter that war and to be ready to win if it occurs. Kendall said we're all talking about the facts that the Air and Space Forces must change or we could fail to prevent and might even lose a war. According to The Hill Kendall said it was vital to prepare for war because China is developing its forces at a rapid pace and has created two new military branches a force designed to counter aircraft carriers, airfields and other critical assets and a strategic support service that works to achieve information dominance in the space and cyber domains. The Air Force Secretary said China has been re-optimizing its forces for greater power competition and to prevail against the US in the Western Pacific for over 20 years. US-China relations have reached a low point amid rising tensions over the self-governing island nation of Taiwan which Beijing sees as historically part of the mainland. The US has warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping may seize the island by force if necessary and President Biden has repeatedly said the US would send troops to help defend the island in such a scenario. Washington maintains informal ties with Taiwan and has provided advanced weaponry to the nation.