Now, Johnny, in the previous episode, we talked about what happiness is and, of course, what it's not, dispelling a few myths for some of our listeners. Then we talked about one of the key components of a happy life, living with a purpose. And I know that's pretty scary for some of us. We hopefully, in the last episode, aligned you on a way to start finding that purpose. In this episode, we're going to start talking about the power of relationships in all of that. And how, when we are connected as humans, well, we are well on our way to living a happy life. If you did not get a chance to check out last week's episode, Defining Happiness, please do, we're going to delve even deeper into this concept. Now, in this episode, we're going to be explaining why it's so challenging for us to figure out what actually makes us happy. And there are a lot of cognitive biases in this. As well as, we're going to introduce another important component of happy life and how science could not be more conclusive about this. You know how much we love science over here at The Everton Charm. So let's roll. We want to kick things off first, talking about why is it so difficult for us as humans to actually determine what makes us happy? Well, we're fighting millions of, billions of years of evolution. And all those components need their own thing in order for those components to survive. And so those messages get completely mixed up. And by the time they reach us consciously, they're so garbled that we can't make heads or tails out of what we need. And the first thing that actually gets through is our crock brain. It's going to be we need to eat something. We need to sleep and we need to duplicate, replicate. And here's what ends up happening. We set our sights on that one thing, that new shiny object. It could be a new apartment, a new job, a new car. And we think if we just get that one thing, oh, we're going to unlock this new level of happiness. And when it comes to that newest phone, that promotion, or even getting into a relationship, well, the novelty wears off, right?  Well, the other thing that goes along with that is everything around you, right? Advertising is telling you what you need. And so any time it's not what you already have, right? Yeah.   I can't say that or I can't do this. And I need to I need to be this and work on myself. And but then you're being bombarded with grab the new iPhone, as you were saying, or or this new car. Drink this beer and you're going to feel good. And you're going to have all these friends and and we're inundated with it. We can't get a we can't get away from it. And it's funny. I can't remember it might have been in the book. Sapiens, it's a positive read so much anymore. But there was a study done of just how a child's brain works when it's inundated with advertising and how it it changes from the there was an experiment being done where I believe it was a child was able to have a toy. And he and he was told that if the other child that had the toy was was was bad, but he had the toy or or he leave the child alone. And the advertisement was about that toy. And because the advertising hit that child, he negated that the child was bad in order to have that toy. So it just shows how easily we are influenced by advertising. And we talk about all the time how easily human beings are influenced unconscious subconsciously if we're not aware of it. And by bringing yourself aware of it, then you're actually able to make choices and what you'll be influenced by. But if you do not do that, you're influenced by everything that's hitting you all the time. And you know, I've done so much work just on Facebook alone in trying to get advertising and things out of my way that is going to take me off of my game or take me in a direction that I don't want to go. Like it's and it's ridiculous. And just the maintenance of that becomes a job. And if you think about advertising in general, the whole purpose is, oh, you have this new problem. If we solve this one problem, you're going to be happy. That's the message you're getting from everything and everyone. So, of course, we think that happiness is just around the corner. It's just this next thing. It's this next job. It's this next move. It's this next relationship and an actuality. All of a sudden, that becomes the new normal. So happiness is fleeting when we're constantly on this hamster wheel chasing that next thing. I think that comes into you mentioned hamster. Well, some people call it the rat race, right? Climbing the corporate ladder.  It's difficult to find your way out of that and see the what you're what you're reaching for isn't going to do that. When everyone around you is going is talking about the new car, the new promotion, the new apartment, the new the new iPhone. And it's it's funny. This time of year, obviously, we just came out of the new year. Everyone's had a moment to think about 2018, what they got out of it. Did they meet their goals? Did they reach their hopes and dreams? And one of the interesting things that always comes up for me when I think about the years previously is you set these goals for yourself. You're all excited if I could just get this one thing, if we could just get to this one level of revenue, if we could just get this one promotion. And what happens is all of a sudden, you know, you're in it, the emotions of the moment, you're frustrated, you're not getting what you want. We don't take enough time to look back and go, well, geez, I checked all these other boxes this year. All these other boxes that at the start of the year, January one, if I had said, I'm going to hit all these goals, I'm going to be happy at the end of 2018. A lot of us don't realize that we checked the box and move on to the next one. And we knew this next thing, you know, but if I just get this one thing. So taking some time and practicing gratitude, being thankful for what you have and looking back on all of your accomplishments, all of those goals that you did reach instead of being frustrated with yourself because of the other goals that you've set for yourself. And I think happiness, when we think about it as, oh, just this next thing, it's just around the corner. Well, it's a very, very frustrating experience for us. And no one wants their relationship to be the new normal. And now we're not happy. So we don't want to think about these things. We don't want to confront these things. You know, there's another aspect about it is once you get caught in the hamster well and you you start working on these things and you get to a certain to a certain level, then it becomes all you know, right? You've built these habits that we just talked about last month where now this is this is what normal is. This is how you'll be moving. And now you're set in this thing that's very difficult to get you out because you've you've created your whole environment to support this idea. Right. And let's let's unpack that, right? Because this is the second point. Another reason that we don't feel happy when these big events happen in our lives is because most of your life isn't going to change. Even if you get a new job, you're still driving the same car, you're still living in the same apartment, you're still dating the same person. So even these massive changes, getting that new promotion, moving into that new apartment, so many other facets of our life don't really change. So it can't make that big of an impact. It can't swing you from unhappy to happy. And when we think about it, right? When we move out of that tiny apartment, we get that really nice place. We're like, wow, this is a massive change. Look at the view, look at how amazing it is. And then as we said in point one, all of a sudden it becomes the new normal. The new normal. And that view is not as nice as, well, your buddy's view. He's got a better view. He's got a taller apartment, right? So it's very easy when we're now in this comparative space where we just go on our phone, we go on our device, and we see, oh yeah, my life's great, but look at this other life that's even better than mine.  And so it was easy to think, oh, I'm the guy, I'm Superman. I rule this block. And then you roll to the next block, right? And there's like three, four kids who are dusting you. You're not, all of a sudden now, you're not the first one picked at football. You're now maybe in the middle and you're like, hey, what happened here? And maybe a little bit later, you've branched out, and now you're in a couple blocks away. And now all of a sudden you're the last one being picked. And you find, if it happens early in life, where you can see that there's always going to be somebody bigger, better, faster, smarter, then you can start applying that to other areas to hopefully not get sucked into that. Hamster will of the next thing. The next thing will get me there. The next thing will get me there. Because it's the same game theory. Right, you're still the same person. If you change your apartment, you're the same person. You have the same friends.  So when we try to articulate happiness as this one thing that's around the corner, if we just get this one accomplishment, we find that to leave us wanting. It's very fleeting. It's not lasting happiness. It's not happiness in your life. Now, there are many of these cognitive biases. And I know, Johnny, we talk about them in our boot camp. We dig into them on Friday. And there are hundreds of cognitive biases out there. We just pointed out too, when it comes to happiness, there's a third that we do want to talk about, which is our mind will often play some tricks on us, substituting one question for another. We might be asking ourselves, how happy does this make me? But the question we're subconsciously answering is how happy does it make me if I think about it? So it's not actually how happy I am. We're actually, our mind is playing a trick on us right here. And I know you love the concept of cognitive biases. Yeah, well, it goes along with cognitive distortions, which are flawed thought patterns that allow you to maintain a belief that would be contradicted by other evidence. So here, a cognitive bias is a belief that is set up, a leaning in one direction, where you feel this is, you've subscribed to it. This is correct. And because this is what you're subscribing to, other evidence cannot get through. Right, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence. So if you're in this hamster world, you have to convince yourself that the iPhone did make you happy, and it was well worth it. All the overtime you worked, all the saving, flipping your old iPhone 8, it was all worth it to get the 10. Absolutely, now, what happens, right? If you allow evidence to come in and say, well, actually, well, I'm not happy. That didn't do anything for me. Yeah, that two megapixels on the camera, the slightly more RAM, wow, it's the same OS. That's it, that's it. That's what I worked all this time. And so once that happens, you open yourself up to being wrong about other things. And if you're not careful, then a lot of the reality that you've constructed for yourself begins to start looking fractured and starts to fall apart. And some of your safety and your comfort starts to be challenged. And that's the main point. When you don't feel safe, then there's a whole lot of other problems that come first. And we were just talking about this and the hierarchy of needs. Your safety is first and foremost before you can do anything else. Right, before any of this higher level thinking we're talking about pursuit of happiness, I gotta be safe. Pursuit of happiness, yeah, let's be alive. I gotta be alive. That's the last thing in my head. And so that information gets in. So this is why, and nobody wants to feel unsafe. I mean, look at everything that we do. It is constructed to keep our world view together. This is the same for somebody. We just did a whole episode on habits and we're gonna go tell somebody to, hey, it's time to start getting up early and hitting the gym. Oh no, I actually had a neighbor tell me that going to the gym works the opposite way for him. Yeah. And I was just talking about challenging some biases. Now, when we think about it, right, how happy does thinking about my new iPhone or my new car make me? Well, it makes me very happy, but that's because I'm thinking about it right now. I'm thinking about my phone, of course, is making me happy. But how happy does that new car, new phone actually make you? Well, a lot, but I use my phone a few hours a day. I take my car on short trips to the golf course. Like I'm not living in my car. I'm not constantly on my phone so it can't make my entire life happy. In moments, there's some happiness tied to it and then it normalizes. There's some moments there that it normalizes. And here's another one for you. Have you ever just worked so hard for something that you wanted so bad, then when you got it? There was, because there was no immediate gratification, it was just, no, that's taken care of, on to the next. Like it was like, it was this thing that you needed. And once again, I think it plays into that safety idea where now that I've achieved this and I got that, I'm good there, now it's done. Right, now I'm gonna shift my focus on the next hamster wheel. And now I'm spinning again. Now what we just talked about and described here is a term called miswanting, or Daniel Kamen calls it errors of effective forecasting. And what happens is we are very terrible judges of what truly makes us happy. That happiness that we're talking about tends to be fleeting, it tends to be misguided and it's riddled with a bunch of cognitive biases. Now, when we think about all of this, let's add a little insult to injury. That modern advertising machine, well, it's spinning a whole heap of problems with solutions that are right around the corner. And we know that as humans, we are very unable to clearly articulate what makes us happy. And by the way, now we're surrounded inundated by Facebook advertising, advertising everywhere that's telling us, oh, by the way, there's this one thing that will make you happy and we're gonna solve it for you. Let's be honest about this. Let's just say that you really enjoy this podcast because you enjoy the science element of it and the conversations that AJ and I have here. These conversations that we're having of human behavior are nothing new to what the advertising agencies have paid for and they have worked out ways to drill and find any crack in your self-esteem in any place and manage to throw in the tire iron and start leveraging. And all of a sudden, now all of our brain power is being used against us, right? With this miswanting, identifying things that don't truly make us happy, well, it can easily set us off course. I think for me, why I was so excited to dive into this and we've all been there where the hamster wheel's beating you down. I go back to Michigan and I talk to my friends in Michigan and some of them have beautiful houses already. Some of them, when they think about me living in LA and the cost of living and just how crazy it is out here to buy your first home, it's easy for me to beat myself up but if I take a step back and think about it like, yeah, my friends who have purchased homes in a different location, well, they're in a different market entirely. It's not even the same. So it's easy for all of us to get caught up on this hamster wheel. I know I've fallen victim to it. Guilty as well. And one of the main things that we try to do with this show is raise our own awareness around these things so that we're not going on these misadventures chasing happiness that doesn't ultimately make us happy. Well, at the end of the day, that's self development and that's our cause. We want not only for you all listening to this but for ourselves to be able to bring these things to a conscious level so we can be conscious of them, work through them and rise above even those things so that we're able to maintain semblance of who we are and what we want and have enjoyable, happy lives. Yeah, and the tools necessary for that because you're always gonna be confronted with advertising. You're always gonna be confronted with what your neighbor has or the next big problem that can be solved with this fancy new gadget but ultimately the tools that we talk about on the show are what we're gonna be using over the course of our lives to develop out a happy, healthy life for all of us. Now, when it comes to scientific research around happiness, there is one study to outlast them all and this is the Harvard study of adult development and in 1938, researchers at Harvard recruited over 700 men for a study that would become the longest of studies ever conducted and in this study, it wasn't at all designed to find the main factor of a happy life but that's what its biggest finding was and that's what made this study so famous. The study found one very clear predictor of happiness and to be honest, it's one of the main reasons that we've been doing what we do here at the Art of Charm for as long as we have. It's not money, it's not education, it's not health and it's not looks. The quality of the connections in your life has the biggest impact on your happiness. Yes. Let me repeat that because I know that it was difficult to digest and you think about, okay, this is a study at Harvard, right? Talk about having wealth, talk about having education, talk about having health. They have it all. They are in the tops. When we think about it, it's very easy for us to go, oh yeah, money, education, health, yeah, those are all things that'll make me happy. Comes down to the quality of the relationships in your life and it's not quantity. Quality of relationships are what matter here. So a lot of us, I know, again, going to social media, we get dejected, we look at the number of followers we have, we look at the number of Facebook friends we have. We compare, right? We're quantifying and we're comparing. This study says that is not at all important. The ones who are most satisfied in their lives with their relationships at 50 were happiest at 80. So it's about building quality relationships that leads to long lasting happiness and fulfillment in your life. You know, and I, there was a lot of studies about depression and anxiety and a lot of countries that it doesn't have the wealth of, of course, of the United States. A lot of third world countries. And obviously their quality of life is not as luxurious as what we deal with on a day-to-day basis. It's probably foreign to alien to, to a day in their shoes. However, the rates of anxiety and depression or they don't even know what depression is. Well, if you think about it, right? In those scenarios, they rely so heavily on community and connection and the support of others to survive. Their survival is dependent on it. Whether it's a tribal setting, a small city, in those situations where you don't have all of the luxuries of a first world country, well, your ability to survive is gonna be dependent on the quality of those relationships. Right now, we can substitute a lot of that, right? If I'm sick, I can go on Instacart. I can go and dial up some food from Postmates. I don't need these quality relationships to survive. It's become fractured because technology will deliver a lot of these things to me. But when you look at third world countries, anxiety, depression, they disappear because they're connected with one another. They foster and survive based on community. And here's the thing, in this study, not only were their participants more happy, at the end, they were also healthier. They had a better memory and they lived longer. Loneliness kills. You know, there's, and how many studies have we brought up about when you're lonely, or I don't have anyone around you, or when your spouse dies, and all of a sudden, the rest of your life starts ticking away rapidly because there is no, your body basically knows that there's no more use for you in community.  When we started, and obviously we go to events, we go to dinner parties, we get introduced to people, and always ask, what do you guys do? What is the art of charm? And it's funny how in the beginning, obviously we were focused on dating and relating with the opposite sex so that we could have a very strong relationship. As it's grown, the understanding of building out these social skills, building out connections, friendships, multiple relationships in your life leads to not only our happiness, but ultimately we're seeing the science show we're losing these connections. There's a study on social isolation in America. Miller McPherson and his team found that between 1985 and 2004, the number of people saying there was no one with whom they can discuss important matters nearly tripled. The science is showing that we are becoming more lonely, more disconnected. We've railed on a number of reasons why this is happening, but one of the core values of the art of charm is that these skills are learnable and we deserve to be connected. That is how we find happiness, that is how we find health. So when we're feeling lonely and listen, even if you're sitting there in your car on the subway, wherever you're listening to the show, feeling a little lonely right now, you're not alone. Science is showing that we are becoming more disconnected. We all feel this loneliness. Now we've all seen the studies, heard the studies, the clickbait. Being lonely is just as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, being lonely is unhealthy as being obese, being lonely is just as detrimental to your health as being an alcoholic. What they're all saying is, hey, when you're disconnected, it has serious impacts on your mental and physical well-being. And I think we're paying for now. And one of the things that I wanted to bring up when we're talking about this was, well, I wanted to go back to the development of children in today's world. I mean, it's easily observable. You go to any suburb Saturday afternoon and you don't see any kids outside playing. You don't see pick-up hockey games, pick-up baseball. In fact, like, you know, when I went to, as a kid, my dad would take me to Little League, right? But not only did I have to play Little League once a week and he took me to Boy Scouts once a week. We did those things at my house in the neighborhood, regardless we played pick-up. So pick-up baseball or do camping trips or what there was, we were, if my dad was summer vacation and he came home and I was anywhere in that house, it was out the door you go. What are you doing here? It's not like he was following me around. It was out the door so he could take a nap and I... Even playing video games. It's all the other kids in the neighborhood. We were all shunned and pushed outside. You ended up socializing. You had to.  Whatever the case may be, there was a social component and they've shown that the workload of students from your generation and my generation to now, they come home and they have hours and hours and hours and hours of homework because they want to get into Harvard. They want to be a part of this study. And what's so fascinating is all this work piling up leads to no opportunity for socialization, no opportunity to build these skills to foster these relationships that lead to our health and happiness. Now, we want to make a distinction here. There is a difference between loneliness and being alone. Having some alone time, well, that could be quite enjoyable. Who doesn't like unplugging and being able to read a book and focus and write, get your thoughts down. The older I get, the more I want them. Right, there's tons of benefit to being alone, but loneliness is different. It means being alone when you actually want to have someone around. When you want that physical, emotional connection and someone isn't there, that's a very painful state to be in, especially over a prolonged period of time. Well, and this is the trouble we get into the holidays because we go back to advertising and the advertising is all about focus on family and community because they want you to buy gifts for everybody and so you're in it. How many of our listeners hit us up over the holidays just dreading going home and having to explain to their parents. They're not in a relationship. They're not where they want to be career-wise, right? That's another check-in that happens around the holidays that everyone is anxious about. Yeah, are you moving forward with your life? Do you have anybody who you're involved with? And another thing, I can understand when you were a child, maybe let's say early teens and maybe you feel like an outcast, maybe it is difficult for you to make friends. Maybe you were born in an only child. Maybe your parents put you on Adderall early. Like Adderall, it forces you to focus in on something.  He's taking in his environment. He's meeting all these sniffing all these people. As a child, you should be doing that same thing, well, not sniffing all these people. Now they're saying sniffing is a new one. But you should be all over the place. You should be meeting all these people and playing with all these kids and doing all these great things. And the ADHD thing is like, oh, he can't focus. He's all over the place. Oh, well, we gotta fix that. Straighten it out. And so that's bringing all this focus in and that development of all those social skills becomes, well, now at the older you get, the more difficult it is. But of course, as we know, you can learn those things. It does take time and it does take practice and that's what we do here. And we've all felt lonely, right? I think either the guests on the show, myself included, I know, Johnny, you, we've all felt outcast. We've all felt lonely at times in our life. I think that's part of the human condition. It's normal, right? However, there's a lot of us that, no matter those times that we may feel that way, we know that there's family and there's people who do love us and we long to be with those people. And I think, however, I think for some children now, because of technology, they're not forced outside and maybe it has been difficult for them to meet people, they feel like an outcast when they go to school because those skills weren't built, they are shunned or pushed aside and it may seem like this is going to last forever. However, you said it in the study, it's not about quantity, it's about quality. And if you can meet that one good friend, well, everything begins to start to change. And the other thing that I want to state in here is, it may, if you're in high school and it seems that way and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's there because when you're that young, it's difficult to have any contacts with a complexity of time. We can't forecast the future as we talked about the start of the show. It's very difficult for us to see clearly in the future and make judgments. And this is planning for retirement, you look across the board saving for something, we're very poor judges of the future and planning for it. So a lot of times when you're feeling outcast and whether it's a period in high school or a period in college or even after college, maybe you move to a new city and you're struggling to make friends, you feel outcasted. It's a different culture. It's a little bit different than you're used to, right? I know when we first moved here to LA, dude, we were fish out of water. Absolutely. And now 10 years in, I go back to Michigan, I feel like a fish out of water. So it's interesting, every single one of us will feel outcast at some point in our life. We are focused on building the skills so that you can make that one quality relationship happen. And when you have these quality relationships, happiness springs from it. Yeah, they blossom and your whole world changes. And so what I wanted to end with on that rant was certainly that if you do feel that way, no matter where you are, it's not the end of the world. And it's easy, it takes some time and it takes some effort, but you can make these changes and you can bring people in your life and you can connect. So why are relationships so beneficial to our health? And this was one of the things in researching the show we really wanted to nail down because this is where the science is extremely strong. And the first thing overall, which makes a lot of sense is it really lessens our stress. It completely reduces stress levels when you know that if the worst thing happens, well, you got a couch to crash on.  When we have quality relationships, the stress in our lives are reduced. It goes back to your hierarchy of needs, feeling safe. You feel safe, you feel listened to, you feel heard, right?  And they validate and show that empathy, they're there with you. So when you have quality relationships, you have a support network in good times and in bad times, you can celebrate together and when things fall off the tracks, they can help pick you back up.  Now, it is one of those things that we can even take a look back at our evolutionary perspective of this, right? When you are in a situation of scarcity, well, the tribe really matters, right? You're not gonna survive hunting and gathering alone. You gotta team up with people to catch that deer. You gotta team up with people to grow those grains. So being a part of a team, being connected, led to your survival. So of course, in the worst scenarios, you were protected, you were not left for dead. So of course, when we are connected, we're gonna start to feel healthier, we're gonna start to feel happiness. And that happiness that we're talking about is not the fleeting, I got the new iPhone X, it's the I feel part of something. Another reason that we feel more connected to a group is we feel responsible for people in that group, right? Much like my buddy will send me some chicken pho if I'm not feeling good. Well, if he loses his job, he's gonna be sleeping on my couch. So when we are part of a community, part of a group, we not only feel a level of self-responsibility, we wanna be healthy, happy and show up for people, but we also feel some purpose. We feel connected to everyone else's well-being. And there's a double-edged sword to that, though, as well, because if you have an in-group, then there's an out-group. Yeah, always, and that's just how humans orient themselves, unfortunately. And once again, by being aware of that, you can rise above that. And though it's those people over there, you can realize that those people over there still have the same struggles, the same wants, the same needs, and they're only going about what they need to do to survive. And perhaps if you go outside of your in-group and connect with that group. Have a conversation with them, listen to them, be present. Okay, now all of a sudden we got more to the party. Now, as we talked about a little bit earlier, there's strong science here that we are feeling more isolated than ever. And having no best friends is actually something we're more commonly hearing. I know in the boot camp when we ask our participants how connected they feel, there are a number of them who don't have that best friend to share something with, who don't feel that connected to someone and certainly don't feel supported in those situations of need. And you're not alone. As I said earlier, in 1985, the most common answer was that people had three confidence. By 2004, the most common answer was zero confidence. And here we are, 2019, 15 years later.  You want to wreck that society? Give them Facebook, I'll come support. Give them tech, I'll give them social media. So your solution is booze and rock and roll. Yeah, that'll work. Okay, so let's turn off Facebook. And go to a show and get hammered, yeah. Johnny's fitting in in that society. I feel like I'm in the out group in that scenario. I might be feeling a little lonely. So how do we create these quality connections? I know it's the impetus for the show. It's why we have the boot camps here in Los Angeles. It's why we have the online coaching courses and core confidence. When we feel disconnected, when we feel lonely, it can be difficult to find the resources to actually start connecting with people. And as you said, Johnny, we might start to view everyone as the out group, right? Screw these people. They just don't get me.  Well, that's the bias. That's an easy thing to say. Well, they don't get me. They don't understand me. That's an easy cop out. And it's easy to feel that way. Go to any social engagement that, where you're not the center of attention, where people don't know you're just invited. And I know that you love this scenario. And we designed it as such. So there's a bar slash club here in LA when we first moved that. It was a Wednesday night pretty lively. But the decor and the patrons of this venue, they are full blown Hollywood. They are not people that most of our clients would assess in a natural conversation as, oh, this is someone that I can connect to it. This is someone that is not going to judge me. This is someone that I hang out with back home. It was for that time and day. It was very scene-like. So it was very, a lot of young kids. And they were very tattooed, crazy hair. Yeah, just full blown Hollywood. How would fun. And the decor was set up to look a little bit dungeon-esque. Yeah. And it still, that place still looks done. Yeah, we don't go there any longer. But we used to take our boot camp participants here to practice these social skills, everything that we're talking about on the show. And without fail, every single week we'd show up. And everyone would be a little sketched. A little like, how am I going to do this? These people are not like me. I'm not from here. This is not where I would normally go hang out and socialize. So talk about fish out of water. And every Thursday, this is Wednesday night we go out. Every Thursday we sit down and go through how the previous night went. Give you your feedback, all that good stuff. And every single week we would hear the same refrain. I never thought that I could get in a conversation with that person. I didn't think that they would want to talk to me. I thought they were judging me. I thought they were in the out group. And without fail, you start to realize, you get in a conversation or two, wow, you misread the whole situation. You misread the whole interaction. And we're constantly assessing people by this. They fit in the in group. They fit in the out group. I can't possibly connect to them. I totally could connect with them. Well, here's a thought experiment for our audience. I mean, think about every one of your friends, your closest friends. How did you meet them? What did you think about them before you met them? That's an easy one to go to.  Yeah, till he was nice to me.  But the other side of that is, let's say that you do, you're at this social engagement. There are people there you don't know. You'd like to know them.  You cast some sort of, they're jerks.  And how would that have changed if you could have said hi? If you go through this thought experiment, you realize, well, every time that I have met somebody, there was that tension and anxiety up front. And now that's the person that I call if anything goes wrong. If I'm feeling any anxiety, that's the person I call. So we've come full circle. Yes. When it comes to building lasting quality relationships, and really the core of what we teach is this idea of value, giving people value. And we break down value into three things. Attention, appreciation, and acceptance. So attention, how can I give someone value if I want to build a quality relationship? Well, listen to them. Yes. Listen to what they're saying. Not what you're thinking about, what you're gonna have for dinner, or what you're gonna go home and cook. Actually listen to them. Be present. Listen to their struggles. Listen to their celebrations, their wins, what they're excited about, when their big life events are happening. All of those things, when we start to pay attention to the other person, we start deepening that relationship. Now let's talk about appreciation. Complimenting people, being positive around people, celebrating those wins, letting them know why you dig them, why you like having them in your life. When we show people appreciation, we start to strengthen those relationships. And that last part, acceptance. How do you welcome them into your group, into your tribe? Invite them places. Invite them over for dinner. Invite them to hang out. Invite them to go see that show. You know what you've just said in those three points, right? None of that is difficult. I didn't have to pull out my wallet. I didn't have to become someone I'm not. I didn't have to pretend I'm Johnny, right? Those three things are basic human needs. And when we fulfill them in the people around us, we start building and fostering relationships. But what made those three things difficult? Why is it difficult for all of us to do that? Because in order to do those three very simple things, you have to step outside your comfort zone. You have to be vulnerable. And there is a chance that you will get rejected in those three things. Uh-oh. You will get rejected. Yep. And because of that, we're weighing this. Looking at this, assessing this constantly and going, well, you know, I don't have time for that person or no, they're in the out group or they couldn't possibly be friends with me. Yeah, that's the easy thing to do. That way you don't have to put yourself out there. And we could play that game all we want. We could wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and never leave our house and hope that pray that nothing terrible ever happens and we never have to talk to anyone ever, right? Well, according to this Harvard study, that's not gonna work for us. We're not gonna live very long. You're not gonna be very happy. It's gonna lead to a lot of mental and physical health issues. Okay, so then what is the opposite of that? Well, then it is, what are you going to do to strengthen yourself so that if you do get rejected or things don't go the way that you want them to, that it's no big deal. It just becomes part of the game of socialization. Now, the science of connection was a theme for a month. So if you're just new to the show and you're trying to sort these things out, you understand and definitely agree with us that the quality of relationships is important to your happiness, well, we covered this exact thing. So October was our science of connection month. We talked about how do we form these connections with others and what are the best ways to make those connections strong? You can check those out, episode 723 to 726. We even interviewed some experts on listening and empathy, very powerful month. September, we did a deep dive into emotional bids, which are the genesis of that connection. Episode 719 to 722. And without fail, I'm excited because in February, we are gonna be tackling this exact subject.  Deepening relationships. We all sitting here have some loose ties. We have some acquaintances. We have some coworkers. We have some potential relationships. How do we cultivate and strengthen those relationships so that we have the quality of relationships that lead to happiness? We're gonna be hitting that hard next month. The last thing we wanna do, we got a question here for you as listeners. We wanna hear what are you planning to do to strengthen and change the relationships in your life in 2019? Maybe there's a friendship that's gone cold and you wanna turn it around or maybe there's even a toxic relationship that you need to cut bait and move on from. Let us know, we're excited to hear from you. You can always send us your thoughts and questions by going to theartofcharm.com slash questions. You can find us on social media as well and DM us there, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We are at The Art of Charm. We're gonna leave things with a study that a recent gas brought to our attention and she came through last month, Lisa Wimberger and this was a fascinating study for us to dive into. This study called Lending a Hand made us chuckle because it's dark but cute with a happy ending, right? So listen to this, James Cohn, a neuroscientist at the University of Virginia conducted experiments in 2006 in which he gave electric shocks to the ankles of women who reported to be in happy committed relationships. Wow, sign me up for this study, right? You're happy, all right, time to get shocked. What they did is they measured the intensity of the participant's anxiety before the shock started and they also measured the amount of pain the participants reported during the shocks. So knowing you're gonna get shocked, obviously that's gonna lead to some anxiety. Oh, this is coming and then the duration and the strength of that pain, well if you're getting shocked we all know that there's some pain associated with it. Then the researchers repeated the experiment but this time instead of being alone the women were with their partner, the person they're in a relationship with. Same level of electricity in the shock, they found that the same level of electricity produced a significantly lower neural response throughout the brain. So that's already interesting, right?  Here's the kicker, if you are in a troubled relationship this protective effect didn't actually occur. So if your relationship is troubled and you're getting shocked, you're feeling that pain.  So when it comes to connection, when it comes to quality relationships not only do they fulfill us, do they give us meaning and purpose, create that community that we're looking for as humans but they significantly improve our health. You know, when you hear something like that and you think about the human condition and everything that we had to endure in order to live in a society that has things like Facebook, right? Like think of all the developments that had to come for us to have something like that, right? To be able to turn the lights on and they come on every time that we hit that button. I mean, that's pretty remarkable. And to come from a hunter gathers or living in the trees together in a society like that to have this civilization that we have now, all the pain, all the trauma and just think about in the trauma in the last century that we've had, right? To work through, to go through disease, famine, world wars, world wars, genocides, what will it take? And for us as human beings to be able to hold it all together and persevere through all that, to continue building for our loved ones, our society in order for our society to have something a little bit better than what we did. And this all goes to how remarkable human beings are and how important those bonds are to work through all of that. Now, we've covered a lot of ground here. We explained some cognitive biases and the idea of miswanting, how difficult it is for us to label what truly makes us happy. And then lastly, we looked at the Harvard study which found an amazing result in terms of happiness and the impact of the quality of relationships on your life, not only in your long-term longevity, your life, happiness and ultimately feeling connection with one another is how we move through the pain that is life, the ups and downs when we feel connected, part of a tribe, we have quality in our relationships, we're happier, we're healthier, we live longer, who doesn't want that? And as we found in the last study we talked about, we don't even feel the pain of shock when we are truly connected. So next month, we're tackling exactly that connection. What I wanna point out is we have an amazing episode coming up next week with a fascinating guest, Russ Harris, fantastic book, The Happiness Trap. Stay tuned for next week's episode.


In 2014, the Concordat on Openness was launched in the UK. This was the first transparency agreement for animal research in the world. Since then, 128 organisations in the UK have joined the Concordat and committed to being open with the public about their research involving animals. The Concordat on Openness has inspired research organisations across the world and there are now nine established transparency agreements worldwide. Further agreements are currently in development. To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Concordat on Openness, we at Understanding Animal Research are delighted to host a first-of-its-kind conference dedicated to open and honest communication around animal research. The conference will take place on the 2nd and 3rd of May next year. So, save the date and see you in May 2024.


Welcome back everyone. So today is basically our last session on the last series of presentations and we're going to look at the future of global markets. Now to do we will look at three main topics together. So we'll look at the political economic and financial challenges that are facing the EU as a single market. Then we'll look at the effects of anti-money laundering and know-your-customer regulations on the banking sector. Finally we'll look at some of the new trends in financial markets. So let's start with the very first topic on our agenda for today. So what are some of the political economic and financial challenges that are facing the EU as a single market? As we saw last week the UK is one of the countries that are departing and withdrawing from the EU. The UK is basically not the only country that is withdrawing from the EU. There is a threat that other states, other EU member states might be in line to also withdraw from the agreement from the single market. And because of this the withdrawal of particular countries and expulsion of other member states are one of the main challenges that are facing the EU as a single market. Another challenge that is faced by the EU is basically political instabilities and of course the rising and populistic movements in within the EU. And another major challenge that is faced by the EU is COVID-19's effects impact on the economy. And finally labour shortages is one of these strongest challenges that is facing the EU as a single market. Now if we want to move on from the EU and from what kind of challenges that the single market, the European single market may be experiencing within the next few years into understanding what are some of the challenges that are associated with applying the antimony laundering and know your customer regulations within the banking industry. Basically here that we would look at a few main themes. One of these main themes is the costs associated with implementing and with complying with the regulatory requirements. Of course whenever there is a regulatory requirement specifically when it comes to antimony laundering regulations and to know your customers and know your customer regulations there are always they may be costly on the banking sector, they may be costly on financial institutions and because of that applying these and implementing these and ensuring that they are that these institutions are basically in line with the updated regulations this may come at a hefty cost for the banking and for the financial institutions and so if they were to do they would have to invest heavily in ensuring that they comply fully with these with these regulations. Another hurdle or perhaps another effect is that looking at that applying or complying with KYC and AML regulations how it could impact the the banking sector is basically by looking at some of these measures and most and sometimes these measures would have a negative impact on those who come from a lower income background and so complying as from a financial institution perspective complying with these measures may restrict sometimes access to financial services by these segments of the society. Now the other impact or effect of AML and KYC regulations on the financial institutions in general and on the banking sector in particular is that because of its application and because of perhaps sometimes the hurdles in applying it and complying with these regulations financial institutions become more driven to innovate and to find different ways to streamline the process of complying with these regulations and at the same time to make it easier to comply with the regulations with the new regulation and so here this is one of the perhaps positive impacts on the banking sector that it helps them become more innovative in how they find ways to streamline and to comply with the new regulations. Now if we want to look at some of the trends in financial markets of course the main theme throughout the the past few years was looking at blockchain technology and at crypto assets and cryptocurrencies in general and for us for some of you who do not necessarily know what cryptocurrencies are basically these are digital currencies where all the transactions that are taking place they are verified on particular records and these records are maintained on a decentralized system this the decentralized system is basically the blockchain and these cryptocurrencies basically they have they are now more or less a speculative asset and because of their rise and their because of their rise and because of the mass adoption of investing in cryptocurrencies or in buying into cryptocurrencies this drove a number of central banks to think about issuing their own versions of cryptocurrencies of course these central bank backed cryptocurrencies are going to have a little different features from what cryptocurrencies what traditional cryptocurrencies that we know of bitcoin are and so one of the main things or one of the main trends that we'll be looking into is basically cryptocurrencies in general the other one is basically crypto assets as well and this is perhaps something that we can discuss together at the end of the presentation and see what are your thoughts about crypto assets another main trend that we're observing today is the rise in Islamic finance and post 2008 crisis when we started looking for more sustainable ways of doing finance this has led to the emergence of Islamic financing on an international platform and one of the basics of Islamic finances Islamic financing is basically the emphasis on sharing risks and at the same time the fact that the investments are based on real assets rather than speculative assets and another pillar associated to it is basically the promotion of social justice and financial inclusion to all members of the society and this has perhaps driven the finance the Islamic finance in general to hedge some of the negative impacts of the 2008 crisis and perhaps led to the increased interest in Islamic financing post the 2008 financial crisis with this in mind let us look into something I would like for you to do a little bit of research and look at a new trend an emerging trend in financial and the financial sector and what I would like for you to do is look at crypto assets in general and in particular examine non-fungible tokens do some research and find out if you think NFTs are able to disrupt financial markets or not if so how do you think they're able to disrupt the financial markets if not why do you think they are unable to disrupt the financial markets and do you think there is a point in time that these non-fungible tokens or these kinds of crypto assets are able to disrupt the financial markets thank you very much for attending and I wish you all the best of luck


All right, transitional justice. We're gonna do that today. We're gonna talk about demonstrations and state abuse in Columbia. Perhaps a conversation not unlike the conversation we had a few weeks ago on transitional justice with Nicholas Sussman, also in Bogota. Santiago Alberto, I'm messing up your name. Santiago Alberto Vargas Niño joins us from Bogota. He is also associated with transitional justice and the project Expedite Justice out of Honolulu. Welcome to the show, Santiago. Thank you, Jay. It's a pleasure to be here with you tonight and today for you in Hawaii. Right, I take your point. So, okay, so tell us who you are and why this is of interest to you. I'm a lawyer and PA in political science from Columbia. I have worked at the International Criminal Court in various capacities for over two years and I'm currently working as a legal officer of Columbia Special Jurisdiction for Peace. And I'm also a lecturer in international criminal law at Los Angeles University here in Bogota. And this is a topic that has always interested me because I believe that in order to progress towards a more equitable and fair future, we first have to address the wrongs of the past and to provide a response that is comprehensive to the victims of such wrongdoings.  So I wanna sort of get a handle on the transformation of Columbia. You know, there was a time, my understanding, not too long ago, months ago, perhaps, where you could say that Columbia was peaceful relatively speaking. It had made an agreement with the FARC. Everything was popesetic mostly. And you could also say it was a democracy and people were not unhappy with it in large part. And they enjoyed certain civil rights. Okay, and that was only a few months ago. Am I right about that? And can you tell me also how it has changed and why it has changed? Certainly there was a brief moment of hope, not only for Colombians, but for the international community that have supported a transition out of war and toward a peaceful and democratic society for well over a decade. And this came as a consequence of the signature of a peace agreement that you rightly mentioned between the Colombian government, then led by former president Juan Manuel Santos and the Latin America's oldest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia or FARC or its acronym in Spanish. Unfortunately, as a result of, I would say problematic experiments in direct democracy around the world in 2016, the peace agreement was refused or rejected rather by a slight majority of Colombians in a plebiscite that was held at the end of 2016. As a result of that, the right wing, particularly the extreme right in Colombia was given a boost that allowed it to win the presidential election in 2018. And from that moment onwards, the whole rationale around the peace agreement shifted from trying to implement it as best as possible into trying to defend as much of it as could possibly be salvaged because the incoming administration of Iván Duque was elected on a platform of basically tearing it to shred. This is something that was said literally by a former interior minister, Fernando Londoño-Ollos who is a notable figure of the Democratic Center Party. And so this brief expectation or idea that Colombia would transition towards a more open society would further guarantee the civil and political rights recognized in the 91 constitution and would start building peace was put into an indefinite hold, unfortunately. This has caused a bubbling up in civil society that finally expressed itself in the outbreak of massive demonstrations in 2019 and 2021 with the unfortunate state response of widespread and systematic violence against the civilian population. Well, let me go back and ask you some questions about all of that. Why would the right wing want to oppose and shred the peace agreement? Do they not want peace? Do they want to have Colombia at war with itself? What is their reason? Do they have some sort of ideology that supports that? Or are they just looking for trouble? That is a very sensible question. I would say that their platform wasn't a rejection of peace itself, but rather of the terms of the 2016 agreement, in part because they thought that the transitional justice mechanism enshrined in the peace agreement was too lenient with former guerrilla fighters because it issued away from a unitive approach towards a more restorative justice system that prioritized truth-taking and reconciliation over the imposition of harsh penalties, carceral penalties. And so they basically said throughout their campaign, both for the plebiscite in 2016 and the presidential election in 2018 that they didn't want peace with impunity. But ultimately, I do believe, and this is a personal assertion, that it is good politics for them to have an enemy on which to blame everything that's wrong with the country. So for 50 plus years, the FARC gave them that enemy. And it also allowed them to criminalize the opposition to persecute people who participated in demonstrations or political rallies and to keep a stronghold on a very feeble democracy, which certainly was in accordance with a formal definition of democracy because we had regular elections and peaceful transitions of power, but in a more substantive manner was far from being a democracy. Colombia continues to be a very unequal country where 42% of the population live below the poverty line. We have a majority of lands in the country in the hands of less than 5% of the population. And there aren't many opportunities for people to socially advance. The organization for economic cooperation and development has calculated that it would take an average Colombian citizen, 11 generations to move from poverty to a situation of reasonable income or basic wealth. So since the structural causes of social unrest remain unaddressed, it's good for the right to have an enemy and to say this is all the fault of X, Y, or Z, the armed group. And I personally believe that the peace agreement attempted to introduce such profound reforms, such transformative measures that it would actually lead to a more equitable competition for power. And this certainly does not benefit the those who have held it for the longest time. Well, the right side of the right wing tries to make the peace agreement and thus the FARC into a scapegoat. We've seen that before in the world as governments and leaders move to the right. They always look for a scapegoat. It's a way to advance their power, enhance their power. And it seems to me also from what you said that the other part of the scapegoat recipe is you can also scapegoat the left. You can say that the left is soft on the FARC. The left is soft on these people who should be punished more. And therefore you have two scapegoats, not one. Even though those two don't necessarily agree with each other you just create a second one anyway. And now you have more power and so forth. Is it working? Do people buy the scapegoat thing? Unfortunately, to a certain extent they do. We've seen a decline in the popularity of former president Alvaro Río, who is a political figure that still looks large over Colombian politics. And President Duque, current President Duque has the highest disapproval rate anyone has ever reached as a president of Colombia. So there is an awakening, but I do believe that their narrative still holds true for many people who are benefited by the way they tell Colombian history. People who own large plots of land, industrialists, people in commerce, those who suffered also is who bore the brunt of FARC violence. Because it's undeniable that these armed group committed heinous crimes. In fact, the special jurisdiction for peace only a few months ago found that the secretariat of the FARC was responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes in the context of severe deprivations of physical liberty, which were particularly targeted against the most affluent Colombians in exchange for ransom or for political gain. So of course there is reason for them to be angry and there's more than enough reason for them to demand justice. The question is what do we understand for justice? If we take it to mean putting people in prison, well that doesn't solve anything. That doesn't bring redress to the victims, that doesn't transform society and that doesn't allow us to move past those horrible crimes. When instead as proposed by the peace agreement in 2016, you look at a more restorative approach to justice where victims and perpetrators actually find a place to build a common truth and where those responsible for horrible crimes come forward and acknowledge their responsibility, then there is a chance for transformation. And this is perhaps the guardian knot of the situation in Colombia. You have a group of people who have a lot of political and economic power who are opposed to the mirror idea of opening democratic ways, of redistributing land, of granting people access to basic public services because it's in their interest to have voters who see them as the solution and the savior that they portray themselves to be. But on the other hand, you have a never growing group of Colombians who actually want to bet on peace and who demand more participation, even beyond the let's say institutional ways of a representative democracy. And that's why they've taken to the streets. So I do believe that there is a certain resonance of this escape coating, but it's definitely being eroded. One thing that occurs to me is that there was, there was a peace agreement and if people look to the future for the implementation of that agreement, then it got bashed. And so that opens the question of what happens to the human rights violations proceedings that were going on before. You must be familiar with that. I mean, there were atrocities. There were human rights violations, horrible things going on and there was a certain amount of process to deal with that, to find accountability, find the truth, truth commission, if you will. So, but it strikes me also that what you have described is an environment closer to chaos where those efforts to deal with the atrocities, to find what happened, to hold people accountable as appropriate, must have stopped because of all this trouble. Am I right? Well, there's actually a lot of institutional overlap in that regard because Columbia has tried to transition towards peace through the application of exceptional judicial measures for over a decade. So for instance, we had in 2005 at the Justice and Peace System, which was actually approved by former President Trudeau who is now a very vocal critic of the 2016 peace agreement. And that system basically created a specialized chamber in different tribunals across the country that was responsible for the investigation and prosecution of crimes committed by paramilitary groups that were fighting alongside the army in some cases, independently in others, but that had an anti-subversive agenda in the context of which they committed grievous human rights violations and war crimes. They received a lenient punishment of up to five years, five to eight years of imprisonment if they acknowledged their participation in the crime. You also had an ordinary justice system composed of an office of the Attorney General that exercised punitive action against those who allegedly committed ordinary crimes ranging from assault and battery to genocide. And now you have a comprehensive system that is composed of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, its judicial arm, a truth commission to which you referred earlier and also a unit for the search of people who are demeaning in the context of the armed conflict. And you also have recurrent human rights violations. In particular, I would like to bring your attention to today's report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the human rights violations that were committed by security forces in the context of the national strides. So you have a situation in which the lack of measures aimed at addressing the core causes of social unrest means that conflict reproduces itself instead of coming to a close through either ordinary or transitional means. And this only highlights the importance, in my opinion, of staying true to the 2016 peace agreement, implementing the measures conceived therein to address those root causes, inequality, political exclusion, the concentration of land property in the hands of very few people and also a profound reform within state institutions, both in the public forces, but also in government of large so that we finally move away from the Cold War notion of the internal enemy through which we have interpreted political debate and division, which is healthy for a democracy in such a way that we've actually turned politics into a sort of cancer where you are liable to being killed if you're perceived as a leftist or a communist or a socialist or an alternative politician because they are usually associated or they have been associated through Colombian history with armed groups. So yeah, I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it's very difficult to speak about transitional justice in Colombia if we don't actually allow for a transition to happen and that requires implementing a bunch of measures that are already agreed upon, that are part of the constitution, that are in law but which have not been applied by the current administration. Well, that sounds like people in the US complain about those who abandoned the rule of law. If you have a law, then you follow the law. That's the rule of law. And that makes for the social compact, it makes for peace and a given sovereignty. But let me ask you though, we need to discuss the situation on the streets. So the first question is, as of a couple of months ago, there was no situation on the streets and something set it off. Was there a trigger event that set it off and how did it go after that and what is it like now on the streets of Bogota or elsewhere in Colombia? So I think the current unrest stems from all these root causes that we've been discussing, but it was initially triggered by the assassination of a civilian called Javier Ordoñez by the Colombian police in Bogota in September 2019. So that led to a number of demonstrations in Bogota alone demanding the cessation of police hostility towards people exercising the right to peaceful assembly. Unfortunately, the response then was equally violent. It led to over a dozen killings in Bogota alone and this then fueled a nationwide movement that demonstrated from October 2019 until early 2020. Then the pandemic came along and it forced people into their homes in a country where we don't have a strong welfare system. So as the months went by and we continued to observe very strict lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus, those inequalities started to be highlighted. People actually started to starve and they had no money and they had no alternatives to earn a living. And so this kept growing and growing until a brief kind of, let's call it a ceasefire in epidemiological terms allowed for people to start going into the streets and marching and demanding change as a result of a unpopular tax bill that was proposed by President Duque and then Finance Minister Carrasquilla who basically aimed at filling the books with a taxation on consumption rather than income as a way to even the public account because they had been heavily affected by tax exemptions of up to $9 billion that only favored the most wealthy members of Colombian society. So these of course caused a bunch of dissatisfaction because people felt like they were burying the brunt for the favors that industrialists that were close to the government received. These led people to the street. A couple of days after the major demonstrations, the government actually withdrew the bill but you had instances of police killings, of civilians in Cali, in Pereira which is a city about three hours away from Bogota and in Bogota itself. And this only poured gasoline into the fire and it led to more demonstrations and in return, very belligerent Defense Minister Diego Molano only increased police and military presence in the street on the street and these then led to kind of a rehearsal of peaceful demonstrations that are then interrupted by riot control units of the police who break them up in a violent fashion. Then people of course had recourse to thumb throwing and stuff like that, which only led to further violence from the police side. And unfortunately, depending on the source that you consult, there's an estimate of between 45 and 83 people who were killed by police during peaceful demonstrations. The government failed to open an honest dialogue with people around the country, choosing instead to talk to its allies, to strengthen its position abroad. And the crisis remains. The only thing is that people aren't on the streets anymore because the National Strike Committee called for a cessation of demonstrations until the 20th of July, which is our independence day. But then massive demonstrations are expected again. And unfortunately, if the government doesn't apply the recommendations made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights today with regards to controlling the recourse to force, respecting people's right to peaceful demonstration, making sure that those responsible for grievance human rights violations are brought to justice. And in the end, addressing the core causes of unrest, then the 20th of July might be another instance of widespread violence. How is this violence and demonstrations and police violence on the street? How has it affected the country in general? I mean, is this a substantial part of the population? Who is out on the streets protesting? What's the group? And furthermore, how has it affected the economy? How has it affected national health? I mean, how is COVID doing in the throes of all this violence? Well, people on the streets are a very diverse group of collectives from indigenous movements that have felt discriminated by the government to African Colombian communities who feel that they bear the brunt of inequality and violence. Young people between the ages of 17 and 32 who lack access to the job market or formal education. And even mothers of those who were demonstrating initially and who have become involved in the demonstrations as a way to protect their children. The impact on the economy has been very significant. I think Columbia has lost around 10 billion pesos as a result of the blockades of major highways, harbors, et cetera. There's been a spike in COVID infections, but I'm not entirely sure it's attributable to the demonstrations themselves. There's been a recent study published by scientists from the Industrial University of Santander that claims that there is no clear casual nexus between demonstrations and a spike in COVID infections, but that they might be explained by other factors, such as overpopulation, the excessive use of public transportation, big assemblies in closed spaces. And it actually appears to follow earlier research that was done in the context of BLM demonstrations in 2020 around the world, which found that there wasn't a significant statistical increase in COVID transmission rate in countries where there were BLM demonstrations. In fact, in 40% of those places, there were significantly less infections than in control country. So perhaps the fact that demonstrations take place in the open, that people are still adhering to masking policies, et cetera, has reduced the spread of the virus, or at least hasn't had an effect on its increase. Yeah, one thing that strikes me, and I mentioned this before we began the show, is that it just seems like there's an awful lot of, what I wanna call it, altercation, the confrontation with the right-wing governments in the world today. And what's happening in Colombia sounds so reminiscent of what's happening in Ukraine and Russia, what's happening in other places in South America, say Brazil, for example, and Venezuela. And to some extent, the U.S., the U.S. has every indication of going down the same path somehow, people not agreeing and getting into destructive modes and so forth, I mean, what sort of, what do you take away from that, Santiago, that this is happening in so many places and it has a haunting parallel? That's actually very insightful of you to say, Jay, I agree that there is a rise in strongman politics around the world. I feel there are a lot of people who feel disenfranchised and who feel betrayed by a promise of more justice through globalization, through liberal trade and who are now able to see the inequalities of the world in a way that wasn't possible before, thanks to social media in particular. So a large group of the population are looking for someone to blame and we go back to the scapegoating that you mentioned earlier and it's easier, I think, for people in powerful positions who want to protect the status quo to simply say, well, it's the fault of an immigrant or it's the fault of Latin American communities or it's the fault of African American community. When in fact, since the 70s, since Reaganomics took hold of the market, we've seen how there's been a willful and intentional state intervention to protect strong capital, to protect the banking system in the detriment of the weaker links in the chain. People who have no access to healthcare, to education, to housing, who might very likely be replaced by robots in the future, this is not something that is taken out of a sci-fi movie or anything like that, you've seen how there's an increasing automation in all aspects of industry and so they feel like they need a savior and sometimes politicians who are not as nuanced, who are not as interested in open and honest debate tend to have an allure because they offer simple solutions. They tell you, yeah, it's the Mexicans or it's the Colombians or it's the Palestinians when in fact, the root causes are way more profound than that and have actually been engineered by states themselves over a decade. So I think this, if anything, it calls for a deeper education of the people, not only in terms of basic science and literacy, but also political education so that we can learn to discern right from wrongs, truth from life and make more informed decisions. Well, you talk about education, it's sort of like you mentioned it takes 11 generations or the prediction is takes 11 generations to rise out of poverty in Columbia and other places. It also takes generations to educate a large group of people, your citizenry, so to speak. And that raises the question of exactly how confident you are, how optimistic you are about the future of that educational process and for that matter, more specifically, the future of life in Columbia. You have seen it degrade, you are seeing it degrade, you are right there on the firing line, so to speak. And I wonder how you feel, Santiago, about your country, the future of your country and whether those things that could save it and other countries similarly situated can happen within a reasonable time because we don't have forever to fix these things. After a while, it's unfixable, isn't it? Well, I'm both concerned and cautiously optimistic. I'm concerned because I continue to see signs of democratic backsliding from the people in power. For instance, the fact that the government replied to the Inter-American Commission's report arguing that it should not intervene in the internal affairs of Columbia is very concerning because it's a denunciation of basic human rights treaties and obligations that are binding on Columbia under international law. But at the same time, I'm cautiously optimistic because first, I see a generation of people who are not only my age, but younger people who have a more complete idea of the root causes of civil unrest in Columbia and also have proposals of how to transform the society we live in. But at the same time, there's an international climate that is conducive to peaceful and democratic solutions to all this problem. We have in Joe Biden a very different leader to Mr. Donald Trump, who is actually promoting the implementation of the peace agreement in Columbia, who is in favor of multilateralism, who is a fierce defender of democracy and who will therefore not allow the current administration or whoever is elected in 2022 to just kick human rights down the road. And also, since the European Union has been so vested in the implementation of the peace agreement and the strengthening of democracy in Columbia, I feel that there are avenues for that, you know, burgeoning citizenry to bring about the changes that our country needs. This is unfortunately something that we cannot do alone while I continue to put the primacy of responsibility on the Colombian society. I would also hope for international oversight and support through this process, because for instance, it's only thanks to the International Criminal Court, the Inter-American System of Human Rights, the European Union that the peace agreement continues to be alive today, even if it's in intensive care. And now that we have an administration in Washington that is closer to that than the previous government, I do feel that there are great opportunities for national and international efforts towards bringing about those changes. Well, I think this is really a very important point. We're out of time, but let me just state the point that I get out of that. Human rights is an international phenomenon and it takes more than one country to assure it. You have to have a collaboration of many countries to address and ensure human rights, and for that matter, some sense of democracy. Well, thank you Santiago. Santiago, Alberto, Marcos, Nino, really appreciate you coming on. It was very instructive and I really enjoyed the conversation. Aloha.