Hey guys, it's Alex here from alexfegers.com and Currently pack my bags as I'm about to embark on a rather lengthy journey to London for the said that funny good night London for the Health optimization summit which is happening there this weekend. So I live in New Zealand. So that means I think it's something like a 30 hour trip Three flights. Yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be a big trip one of the flights of 17 odd hours I've done this quite a bit long haul travel, you know to Europe all over America and Asia as well So as a biohacker and someone who's pretty passionate about my health I know firsthand how dangerous or harming this long haul travel is in fact I got an article I'll link to below on the on the dangers of long haul travel, but on the flip side I have learned a few Strategies and tips and tricks to implement to not only minimize the damage to protect the body, but also to help Adjust the to the new time zone to help with sleep and to help sleep on planes and cure jet lag Or get over jet lag rather quickly. So I thought I had all these things out as I was packing I thought you know what? I'm gonna do a quick video real quick. I have got a few articles on jet lag and travel I'll put those links below All the products I mentioned I am affiliated with some of them I use I am affiliated with them because I use them and find benefit from them But it doesn't mean I get a cut if you decide to buy them. I do have discount codes for pretty much all the products I'm gonna list as well So I'll put those discount codes below if you are watching this and you want to go off and buy something So let's look at the performance biohacking things. I'll take with me Obviously, I'd love to take big red light panels and headsets and whatnot But you know the space is an issue when you are traveling long-haul So one of the one of the few performance gadgets I take is This the vi light. This is the intranasal device on I do have the vi light headset Which is like I said rather bulky, so I don't bother taking that with me This is pocket size. It is a little bit, you know, weird shoving something up your nose So I probably won't use it on the plane unless I'm in business class But um, definitely when I'm in the hotel or even at the airport waiting, you know Because it's only a 10-15 minute session one battery pre-start shines beautiful red light up your nostrils into your brain I've got a big review on vi light and why I would use such a device on a regular basis This is helping with brain function Also helps fight like stress and age-related brain issues So travel is a big stress on the body and the brain. So this is my little boost And if I am going to be speaking or something like that at the event, I'll bust this out before I go on stage What else? Another light device is the vi light and This one of mine is actually a rather beaten up It's being used quite extensively all across the world The vi light they're just releasing a new one as well. So Check that out. I think it's got blue teeth and stuff. I personally like the white option Press It's flat. I need to charge it. Anyway, you turn this on and it will shine white light into your ear This will help with circadian rhythms I've got a in-depth review on that and a discount code. So I'll link to that It syncs with your app. Oh, no, it doesn't it doesn't sing with your app You can use the app to Program in where you're traveling to what flight what your flight times are etc And it will tell you when you should use this to help adjust to the local time zone So very very handy if you're going across multiple time time zones London is 11 hours behind New Zealand. So it's pretty much complete opposite to where I am now. It's going to be it's going to be Quite stressful, I guess. So I'm going to be using this a lot performance By hacking I'm using the alpha Alpha Dynamics health mushrooms. This is an extract powder Yes, this is quite bulky, but the great thing about it. They're all single surf So I'm just going to take a hand for these single-serve sachets Mix it with water. You can have it straight. It's not very tasty there Lines main charger and cordyceps. So it helps with energy and also a bit of immune defense So I just take one of these a day. Sometimes I take them when I'm on the plane on those longer trips What else we got? Aeternus sachets This is a relatively new product and I will be reviewing in-depth soon You can buy them in capsules But you can also get these sachets as the powder mix which I like for traveling If you don't mind packing more more supplements, obviously, this is handy as well Or you can just take what you need, you know for five days Whatever put it in a smaller smaller bottle and then it saves up a little bit of space. So this is anti-aging antistress formula from the neurohacker health organism, neurohacker collective So short anti-aging benefits are great But the anti-stress thing is what I'm looking for with this trip because Like I said, my body is going to go through how and back with the jet lag Try to sleep on planes and then the time zone shifts and then the fact that even when I get there It's just going to be go-go-go. I've got 72 hours in London and it's going to be crazy So there's a bunch of ingredients in here to help with cell energy ATP production, etc. So yeah, definitely going to be slamming them. I do also use qualia mines I've got another review on that. I'm not going to take that with this trip I find that the tennis is better for the stress sort of handling stress load The quality of mind is more that cognitive performance if I was going to be over there for like a couple weeks or the time zone wasn't Such a big issue. I'd probably take quality of mine Maybe as well as the tennis. What else we got here My juve go So this is a handheld juve light, which I probably need a charge as well No So I will use this I probably won't use this on the plane because I'll get some weird looks and I don't know if they'll be Too happy with the red light glow, but when I'm in the hotel on the other end You know, I have had some issues with my dental house So I can just hit that or whatever, you know if I want to spot treat areas handy to use What else do we have on the performance front?  But anyway, so saves having to take the big one I'd pop a few capsules in here Just to keep my gut health in check because I'm sure my diet's gonna be out and in fact one of the biggest things with travel is the Misaligned circadian rhythm.  That's all gonna be blown out We're just gonna it's been well known that that caused a lot of issues in your gut microbiome So the seed is gonna help with that. I hope Uh, okay, let's look at some supplements and then we'll look at sleep So supplements I take activated charcoal and this is just if I eat something funky because obviously I'm not gonna be eating food From my garden and farm So if there's something that you know, I don't think it's gonna be the best or I just feel a little bit unwell I'll be taking them vitamin C. I'll be taking a couple of capsules of these every few hours just to keep my immune system up Coq 10 with pqq. So this is what I take for Stress while on the plane to help with some of the radiation exposure Plus, it's just a good supplement to have as well and the glutathione. This is like, you know Again, like the vitamin C immune function. It's not gonna come into focus, but this I'll be taking Because often I get back from trips and I get a cold so I get a bit run down So I'm gonna try to prevent that using these supplements Alright, and now let's look at sleep. Alright, so when it comes to sleep I take a bunch of things because you'll probably know if you've seen some of my work or read my blog AlexFews.com. I'm pretty passionate about sleep and I've got lots of tricks and Products to help me with sleep. First thing I pack is this somni light. It's actually Book reading light but to be honest, it's too big and bulky for a book reading light It's quite heavy, but you know, it's been cool like we got two of these to plan on using them when we're reading at night but we ended up using them as little side lights we just clip them on to our bed and You know, you can adjust them rather than clipping on the book because they put out a really warm orange Light and there's two brightness settings plus two lights. So you can get pretty bright.  We just top it up So I'll take this with me because it'll be great in the hotel You know chances are we'll bright lights and stuff. I can use this at night without getting that bright light Melatonin suppressing Hey Speaking of Melatonin, I'll be taking my Swanwick glasses. So I've actually got two glasses in here I've got my orange lens Glasses which I'll use in the evening nighttime Again to help with sleep I've got a full article on this if you don't know why I'd use orange glasses I check out my article on blue light and then I've also got their daytime glasses, which have a very very faint Yellow lens you can't you probably won't be able to see that on the camera, but I'll use them during the day So when I'm looking at my computer screen or if I'm watching movies on the plane for instance, which I really do By the way, it's kind of crazy. I did like a 36 hour trip and watch one movie I just get a lot of work done, but when I'm looking at those screens Or the computer of my own computer If I can't install or if I can't protect against the blue light obviously with the inbuilt computer screen You can't you can't install flux or iris tech on on those screens. So I'll use this to protect my eyes I've got some articles on the importance of using Computer glasses to protect the red in a health that I read in it. So that's the two glasses. I'll take What else for sleep the two supplements I'll pack for sleep is Sleep 101 from California gold. This is um, this is Just a general purpose sort of sleep supplement. I personally don't take this anymore I don't take any supplements for sleep anymore Apart from magnesium, but my my wife will occasionally take these if she kind of gets asleep You know, maybe she's working up with the baby and a bit restless and she loves these she swears by them So I'll take these as my first level approach to get into sleep and then as back up I have a feeling of it capsules which are very potent and I don't recommend them for everyone In fact, I banned in some countries, but I'll take these if I know like I need to get some sleep Maybe I've got a presentation in the morning and it's like 3 a.m. In the morning I'm wide awake. I'll take this to knock me up, but be careful with this Sleep sleep sleep. I'll also take these nasolata. I've actually got the sport ones But they're the same as the snoring ones.  Put up your nose and it helps expand the nostril and to help get airflow So when you're flying at altitude on a plane, the oxygen level in the cabin is much lower than at ground level That can lead to you know, the dry eyes dry nose Whatever the skin issues and all that sort of stuff, but they can also lead to the brain fog the headache effect They often you get after a long haul travel So this helps open up the nostrils and hopefully you'll get better airflow and those issues won't be a problem I haven't used them before I have used them at home and they're pretty cool that I feel like they do help So I'm looking forward to using them on the plane I'll put links to all these products below and and you can't really tell they're in there once once they're in So people aren't going to give you funny looks speaking of Sleeping and funny things on my face This tape I use this to put over my lips and close my lips. I'll keep my lips shut I actually prefer the Somni fix I think the brand is called the mouth tapes when traveling because they aren't as ugly and as weird looking as these Plus they like a little event. So if you need to get out, you know, open up real quickly you can But I'm out of them at the moment and my order hasn't arrived in time, which is a shame So I have to go back to using this tape which I'm sure is going to get me some weird looks But I've used it before in flying and it helps Big time especially with drawing mouth in there and you just because if you can't lie flat, you know Your mouth might open. Honestly, this helps. I swear by what else? Equanimity is another supplement. I went to these big boxes You can they're a tiny little capsules is like seven capsules in this whole box It's actually a little bit ridiculous, but these are Rishi sport oil Organic and very good for helping relaxation and to lower stress So some people say they are an alternative to CBD oil I recommend and use CBD oil when I'm traveling. Unfortunately, New Zealand you can't get CBD oil So I don't bother with it unless I'm they're gonna be in the States for a while and I'll use it over there For instance, but I've got these on hand instead. So I'll take these when traveling from New Zealand to help with sleep And I'm ask This is the silk eye mask from swanwick sleep. I think I got a discount code for these guys I'll put links to all this below. So very important, especially if you're sleeping on a plane and it's bright or You know in a hotel you try to sleep during the middle of the day and they don't have like our kids So I recommend that and then My own pillow. I always travel with my own fellow. In fact, I'm scared I'm gonna leave this pillow somewhere because I take it everywhere with me. So this is from Samina It is Cotton and sheeps wool. That's all it is and it's all organic They've got amazing. I've got the Samina beard and it's amazing. I'm gonna get one for my son as well I've got a review on this me Samina beard and the quality and care that goes into their products So this pillow is one of the healthiest pillows you can get but for me It's I love it because it's super thin You probably won't go to see how thin it is in here on here But I love super thin pillows and it's very very hard to find super thin pillows I like it's a game changer for me in my sleep And the good thing about it being so so thin slim thin is you can fold it up You know, it's not gonna take up too much space So yeah, definitely love traveling with my pillow and then the last thing I'll take which isn't a biohack or anything like that Well, it isn't a little bit, but it's not a performance by hacking It's not gonna help with my sleep is my or ring and the charger So I'll use that to see how messed up my body is and I missed up my sleep Maybe which I hope it's not too bad. But yeah, anyway, that's what I'm gonna be taking on this big trip If you are gonna be doing a big trip yourself Hopefully you got some ideas if there's something you want to know more about like hey Why are you taking that or why are you taking this instead of that? Check all the links below because I'll link to a lot of articles that Explain why I use these things and how they work and whatnot But otherwise just leave a comment below and I'll do my best to get back to you If you want to buy any of this stuff remember I probably get a cut if you buy through my links, but I might have some discount codes below as well And if you're gonna be in London, I don't know when this video will go live But if it goes live before or during the event and you're gonna be in London reach out It'd be great to catch up Otherwise head over to alexfigus.com sign up to my blog give me a like if you enjoyed this if you are traveling I've got some articles on travel health and jet lag over at alexfigus.com so go check them out. Peace


There's really not that much evidence that suggests that size matters a whole lot at wide receiver in the NFL. Addison is only 173 pounds, but he had an unbelievable sophomore season at Pitt, tallying almost 1,600 yards in route to winning the Balitna Cup award. Had he been able to come out and enter the league last year, we'd probably have fewer question marks than we do right now, because Addison transferred to USC last season and at USC, he saw his numbers fall pretty dramatically. The fact that he had that season at Pitt shows us what he's capable of. It's not easy to put together a season with a 2.93 yards per team pass attempt rate and a near 40% touchdown share. So there are concerns because of that dip in production, but Addison is looking like a pretty safe bet. Analytically, he looks like some of the other smaller wide receivers that we've seen come out over the last handful of years, like a Calvin Ridley or Jehan Dotson.


All right, well, good afternoon. Thank you all for coming. I'm here today with Major Crimes Division Commander Matt Clark, here to talk about two critical incidents that both occurred on the same day, October 19th of last week. Before I turn it over to Matt Clark, I just want to set the stage that earlier today we provided the videos associated with both of these incidents, and we will now just provide an overview based upon our follow-up investigation to this point. So thank you, Matt. Thanks, Chief. All right, can you hear me OK? Thank you. Well, good afternoon. Thanks for being here. I'm Matt Clark, the commander of the Major Crimes Division for the Denver Police Department. I appreciate the opportunity to provide an update regarding two police shooting incidents that occurred on Thursday, October 19th, 2023. These are intended to be follow-up briefings based upon information we've gathered after interviewing numerous witnesses, speaking with the involved officers, and analyzing evidence that was collected at the scene. Criminal charges are currently pending in these cases, so there may be information I'm not able to disclose, but to the degree we are able, we'll answer any questions at the conclusion here. We'll just go in chronological order. I'll start with the first incident that occurred in the area of 46th North Avenue in York Street. On Thursday, October 19th, 2023, around 2.35 in the afternoon, the Denver Communication Center received a 911 call from an individual who was reporting a male was in the area pointing a firearm at individuals. This was in the 3,000 block of East 45th Avenue near the Burger King location. The complaint provided a description of the subject, and that description was relayed to the responding officers. Officers arrived in the area shortly after being dispatched and contacted the victim. He specifically advised the officers that he was headed to the Burger King. He was driving west on 45th Avenue from Steel Street when he observed a male in front of him walking in the street slowly. The victim continued slowly driving behind the individual and intentionally did not engage him, did not honk at him or do anything to get his attention. At one point, the subject turned around towards the victim while he was driving the vehicle and pointed a firearm directly at him. The subject then quickly turned around and began continuing westbound again on 45th Avenue. He was also seen pointing a firearm in the Burger King or towards the Burger King location on 45th Avenue there. While officers were in contact with the victim, a separate officer who responded to assist in checking the area was in plain clothes, driving an unmarked vehicle and located an individual matching the subject's description near the area of 45th Avenue and Josephine Street. The officer began monitoring the suspect while waiting for additional information from the officers who were with the victim. At one point, the undercover officer who was in his vehicle observed the subject retrieve a firearm from a bag or backpack that he was carrying. While holding the firearm in his right hand, the subject directed his attention towards the undercover officer and began walking towards his vehicle. The subject stopped several feet from the driver's door of the undercover vehicle. The plain clothes officer was specifically concerned that he would be shot in his vehicle by this individual. So he exited his vehicle, drew his firearm and identified himself as a police officer. Despite being in plain clothes, the officer was wearing a tactical vest over his outer layer of clothing, which had police insignia that identified him as a police officer. The officer gave specific commands to drop the firearm, which were ignored. The subject turned around from the officer and walked away, still holding the firearm in his right hand. Uniformed officers in three separate marked vehicles quickly arrived to provide assistance. Officers followed the subject as he walked northbound on Josephine Street from 46 South Avenue. Now, Josephine Street in that area goes over the below grade section of I-70 and this particular portion is bordered by 46 South Avenue and 46 North Avenue. While officers were behind the subject, they continued to direct him to drop the firearm that he was holding. The subject disregarded these commands and continued northbound. When he reached 46 North Avenue, the subject went westbound and started yelling at officers to shoot me, shoot me. Despite the lack of a suitable barrier to protect the officers, they continued following the subject while attempting to gain his compliance. This included verbal communication by the officers with specific commands, as well as efforts to determine if he needed assistance. Officers were aware that he had pointed a firearm at the original victim and were concerned for safety of the people in the area if he were to be allowed to continue without them maintaining a very close visual proximity. The subject continued moving westbound in the middle of 46th Avenue North. He was facing away from the, or excuse me, he was facing the officers as he walked backwards away from them on 46th Avenue North towards York Street. At this point, there were five officers including the undercover detective, four others who were in uniform in the area, following the subject as he moved down 46th Avenue North. The officers estimated there were approximately 30 yards from the subject while he was walking away. When the subject began walking into the intersection of 46th North Avenue in York Street, he stopped briefly and raised the gun before quickly lowering it. A few seconds later, the suspect raised his right hand, which had the gun and he pointed to the firearm directly at the officers in the roadway. The officers feared he was preparing to shoot at them and they discharged their firearms. The officers stopped firing their weapons when they believed the subject was no longer posing a deadly threat. The subject was struck and fell to the ground. Officers immediately called for an ambulance to respond and quickly began life-saving efforts and that included the application of a tourniquet and the use of medical gauze pads to control the bleeding until the paramedics arrived. The subject was transported to the hospital by ambulance and he continues to remain at the hospital receiving treatment for his injuries. He is expected to survive. Through the investigation, it was determined that four Denver Police fall officers fired a total of 12 rounds from their duty handgun. The closest officer was approximately 59 feet away from the individual. One shots were fired and the furthest officer was about 72 feet away. Investigators recovered a black CO2 gun that is capable of firing BB or pellet type projectiles. That gun was on the ground near the location where the subject was apprehended. The black gun closely resembles a semi-automatic firearm. This is the gun the subject held throughout the interaction with officers. Investigators interviewed the original 911 caller as well as another individual who reported that the subject pointed the firearm at him. The second victim told investigators that he was sitting inside of the Burger King restaurant on 45th Avenue. He was at a table that was adjacent to the window on the 45th Avenue side and explained that the male subject was on the sidewalk, pointed the firearm at him in his seat and began firing. He discharged that weapon several times. The projectiles that were fired did not penetrate the glass or window frame but did leave defects in both. The subject has been identified as 36-year-old Ruben Sanez, S-A-E-N-Z. Preliminary information indicates Mr. Sanez was struck multiple times. He was hit in the arm and the torso. The district attorney's office has formally charged Mr. Sanez with seven counts of felony menacing. As it relates to the officers, the officers who discharged their weapons in this incident are all assigned to the District 2 station, which is in northeast Denver. The plainclothes officer is a detective in the District 2 narcotics unit. He's been with the department for 30 years and was involved in a prior police shooting incident in 1997. The three uniformed officers are also assigned to District 2 in the patrol division. One has been with the department since 2019. He was involved in a prior police shooting incident in 2021. The other two have been with the department since 2022 and have not been involved in a prior incident. The officer's body-worn cameras were activated and captured the shooting incident. The involved officers will be placed in a modified duty status as they complete the department's reintegration program. Let me go through a couple of slides regarding this particular incident, and then we'll answer any questions. So these will be clips from the body-worn cameras. The department has released their clips from the body-worn cameras that were released. And so if you choose not to watch the body camera or just for reference, I'll show. So we're on the corner of 46 North Avenue and Josephine Street at this point. And the officers are approaching him, trying to give him commands. As you can see, he's holding the firearm pointed at the ground in this picture with a pistol-type grip on his right side. The next photo is on 46 North Avenue. He is facing officers walking backwards. He's walking westbound. This road, if you continue straight, will provide an on-ramp to westbound I-70, which is below grade. And again, the firearm remains in his right hand there. This is just prior to a couple of frames before shots are fired by officers. Mr. Sayon has raised his arm. He's holding it up. He is not lowered like he did previously. And the officers fear he's gonna fire and they discharge their weapons at this point. This is a photograph from the Burger King location where we had a victim sitting at the booth table inside the location there. There's six defects visible, three in the glass and three in the window frame. This is a crime scene photograph of the recovered CO2 firearm that appears similar to a semi-automatic firearm that Mr. Sayon has possessed throughout his interaction with the officers. Any questions? Yes, ma'am? So the dog, it was not his dog. The dog belonged to an ex-girlfriend of his who lives in Southern Colorado. The dog's name is Stallone and we're able to report that Stallone was reunited with the owner. Just an instance of what he has. You see the officers approaching him down the street. One officer saying, how can I help you? And seconds later, another officer says I'm gonna shoot you. Is that part of training and de-escalation? Do you work to kind of try to mitigate that? To the degree they're able to, the best approach tactically is to have one individual communicating with the subject so that we're not giving multiple commands, we're not giving contradictory commands or giving different direction potentially. But the officers explained that they had specific concerns that they were trying to communicate. There was certainly a recognition in an effort to try to see what's your name, what do you need, that type of thing, how can we help you? Well, at the same time, trying to gain compliance and have him drop that firearm that posed an immediate threat. Multiple, I don't, I know he was hit multiple times and it's an arm and torso injuries. I know you sat in the hospital still, but is there a condition at this point? I'm just, the last time I was told that he's survivable, I don't have a specific condition. I know he's stable at the hospital. Airsoft type, these airsoft guns that look like real police shootings, is that something you all are considering in terms of higher training officers to recognize them, or are they just look so similar? It's not possible to do that. I think it's very difficult the way that some of these firearms are made to try and make, there's no, sometimes there's no distinguishing rather than what the actual projectile that comes out of the weapon is. I'll move on to the next incident. Yes, ma'am. Do you have a timeline on the internal and DA's investigation? The district attorney's filed the criminal case against Mr. Sayan is, the investigators will turn over the case for their consideration. I don't have a timeline on what that looks like in terms of their review, but once the, that review is completed, it will come back to the department and then the administrative will start at that point. Thank you. All right. Later the same day, on Thursday, October 19th, 2023, around 6.15, there were four uniformed Denver police officers who were working in an off-duty capacity at the Whole Foods grocery store in the 1700 block of Owada Street. The off-duty officers were hired by the business to provide a specific police presence in the store and to be available to handle any issues that occurred at the location. At around 6.15, one of the officers who was positioned on the lower level of the store observed a male enter the business through the Owada Street entrance. The male caught the officer's attention because he appeared out of it. The officer greeted the male, but did not receive a response and the male continued walking past. The officer had no further interaction with him at this point and continued his activities monitoring the store. At 6.17, store surveillance captured the male walking behind the deli counter, which is on the Owada side of the store, while employees were in the area, the subject grabbed a large butcher-style knife that was near a food preparation station in the deli. Two store employees observed this and frantically waved to that same officer to get his attention. The employees indicated they needed the officer to come over for assistance. The officer went to the area and saw the male subject now standing outside in the customer area in front of the deli counter, holding the butcher-style knife in his right hand by his side. The officer notified the other uniformed officers that were present that he needed assistance and they all quickly came to the area. With four officers present, one of the officers began calmly communicating with the subject to gain his compliance and peacefully resolve the situation. The subject generally remained in the same area while continuing to hold the knife at his side at times in front of him. At times it was recognized that he pointed the tip of the knife into his chest and even was pushing in and then he would move it back in front of him. At 6.24, the subject again went behind the counter and switched the knife that he was holding. He put the butcher knife down and grabbed a different knife, which was a 13-inch kitchen serrated blade type knife. The officers worked to communicate with the subject for nearly 12 minutes and during that time an officer attempted to engage the suspect in a dialogue subject, in a dialogue to understand the situation and his needs. He was offered food, a place to stay. He was offered access to a hospital, money and opportunity to charge a cell phone. And this was all done in an intentional effort to de-escalate and safely resolve the incident. Other officers who were present were simultaneously working to clear the area of any customers or employees that were still there. Throughout the incident, the subject remained non-compliant and did not engage in a dialogue with the officers. Recognizing the individual was possibly suffering from a mental health episode, the officers requested available on-duty mental health resources respond to the location. The way this situation developed, however, was quicker than the resources were able to respond to the location. So there were no mental health clinicians at the scene at the time. Additional on-duty uniformed officers were notified of the incident via the police radio and responded to provide assistance. Several less lethal systems were available inside the store, including taser devices and a 40 millimeter less lethal sponge round launcher. After nearly 12 minutes of unfruitful communication efforts, officers described seeing the mail begin to move towards the location of uniformed officers who were positioned in the bakery area. While he previously moved slowly and would stay relatively in the same location, this was different and the officers recognized he seemed intentional in his movement as he began directing towards these officers. Fearing he may be preparing to use a knife to assault an officer. One officer discharged a taser and another officer discharged a firearm. This occurred nearly simultaneously. The round fired by the officer did not impact the subject. The taser was effective and it allowed officers to safely take the individual into custody. He was then transported to an area hospital for evaluation and once medically cleared was held for investigation of felony menacing. Through the investigation, it was determined that one Denver police officer fired one round from her duty handgun. The round impacted the front facing glass of an end the side panel of a freezer that was directly behind the subject. Investigators recovered a 13 inch knife with a serrated blade on the ground near the location where the subject was taken into custody. This knife was one that belonged to the store. It was one that was previously in the deli preparation area. The subject been identified as 33 year old Latif Robinson. Mr. Robinson is currently being held for investigation of felony menacing, but we are working with the district attorney's office as well as our internal mental health resources and well power to determine what mental treatment options are available for him. The officer who discharged for firearm is assigned to the department's recruitment unit. She's been with the department since 2020 and has not been involved in a prior police shooting incident. Her body worn camera and those of the other officers were activated at the time and did capture the interaction with Mr. Robinson as well as the weapon discharge. And the officer involved in this will be in a modified duty status as she completes the reintegration program. This investigation and the prior are being conducted in accordance with our critical incident protocol with involvement from the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, the Colorado State Patrol and the Denver Police Homicide Unit and the Denver District Attorney's Office. The investigation is monitored by the Office of the Independent Monitor. Anyone with information on either incident that we haven't spoken to or has additional information or video, we'd request that they contact the Denver Police Department or Crime Stoppers. I'll conclude with that and just briefly jump through the slides and then answer any questions you may have. This is in front of the deli of Whole Foods where on the Wawada Street side behind the officer is the Wawada Street entrance. In front of the officer is the area of the bakery and at this point, we see Mr. Robinson with the butcher knife. He's just come out from behind the counter and he's holding it in his left hand. He switches the knife. It's now in this frame, a little time later, he's moved to his right hand and this is again, he generally stays in the same area. He moves around slowly, nothing purposeful with that. But he eventually makes his way back and he's back against the freezer area and the bakery.  He's got the knife in his right hand at this point. And then this is just prior to the shot being fired. The officer who deployed as a taser and then this is the view from the officer who fired her weapon that as Mr. Robinson has now turned and made movements towards their position there. The freezer that is hit is the far back door. It's hit by the gun, the round that's fired.  Any questions on that incident?  It's like stabbing capability. That weapon is more serrated and kind of taken into consideration when you're looking at a situation like this. I think that's still would still be a deadly weapon and the officers would respond, whether it's the butcher knife or that one that could cause significant injury or death to somebody. I know it happens quickly but there's the taser and then the gunshot. When you're let be freeze-frame when the gunshot happens, there is no officer in here. Do you know why if you shot? The officer explained she was concerned about other officers who were nearby her. It may appear there's a significant distance but it is closer than it probably appears on the camera there. So she's concerned for her safety specifically. She articulated as well as the other officers who were present. Tactically, I know if they are that close, should they have been further back? There's a number of options and some of the concerns that the officer articulated was while the area in front of them appears clear, there are still customers and people moving about the store that didn't heed the immediate warnings to leave the area. And there's also concern of people in the bakery area. And it's not visible unless you look from the camera from the Wawa to entrance but there's a pass through into the back, the employee part of the bakery too, that there was concern that there was people there. So the officers maintained that proximity to contain him is what they described but to also protect and provide a barrier for others that were still in the store. The split second use of it, do you usually wait to see if the taser is effective? I mean, I hear that officer asking the other officer to have the taser cockpit ready. Is there a moment where you wait and say, is that gonna work? Some situations yield to that. The officer specifically described that she felt at that point that this was a deadly force situation that somebody was gonna get injured or killed if she didn't utilize the weapon system that she had available and that was her firearm. The reintegration is something that the department's done for several years and we've piloted it. It's been mirrored around the country. It's a rather robust officer centric process to give the officers what we refer to as a tactical pause. It takes them offline. It provides intentional outreach and contact with the officer. They go through a police psychologist connection and conversations. They'll go through decisional shooting scenarios with our virtuous simulators and they'll get a series of different scenarios and increasing complexity so that the department can assess their reaction to those scenarios. They'll go through live fire training at our range. Similarly, increasingly complex scenarios. They'll work through different things that the academy will address any needs that they have in terms of processing the trauma that they've been through, helping their family. They return to the scene, which is an important aspect, take them back to the scene in a controlled environment so that we can see how they're responding to that scenario as well. And then they transition back into the district. So it's just a consistent process that the department uses when somebody discharges their firearm so that we can make sure that the officer is healthy and ready to go back and everybody's comfortable with that. At least eight weeks, typically. It can go longer. Again, it's officer kind of dependent. So some officers need more time and the flexibility is there to allow that. Chief, you want to address? We may never know the answer to that question. I mean, I think certainly one could think that confronting an officer with something that's actually not a handgun could lead to that thought process. Who knows what particular mental health crisis this other individual with the knife was going through certainly was not our intention and either one of those incidents to have to use force, but I think the best outcome of both of the situations would have been for them to drop the objects that they had in their hand. For programming, I know that you said that you don't Well, so this would, neither one of these situations would have been appropriate for STAR because of the arm component there. So, you know, STAR is specifically reserved for situations where there was no one who is armed with weapons since we're only talking about paramedics and mental health clinicians. Can they work in co-work with your officers? So what is probably more appropriate if available for a situation like this would be a co-responder. So these are mental health clinicians that ride alongside police officers. It just so happened in the first incident that none of the officers that were first to respond had a co-responder with them. This other incident that happened with the four officers that were assigned to that store, there was no clinician that was assigned to work that store. Certainly, if there were was a co-responder that was available that could have gotten there in time for them to intervene then that would have been the best situation. Excuse me if I missed this, but was there a criminal history for these? So we don't address criminal histories in these types of scenarios. Certainly we provided the information about who the individuals are. Is it your birthday? I'll make sure the media relations team has that. Do we or the subjects have a home address and could they be considered homeless people? I don't believe that these individuals were unhoused. I'm not positive, but from what I have heard so far I don't believe it to be unhoused. The second time in four months we've been here to talk about two incidents in a day involving officers shooting and firing arms and I know that there have been these situations but it's hard to keep them kind of stacking up. Certainly a concern, certainly a concern. I don't think that it's anything that any officer looks forward to doing, having to use force, but I trust that the women and men that go out and perform this job every day do so with the intention to protect the community. I don't know that that's something that we're necessarily seeing. I mean, what we are seeing is more armed individuals and so we certainly have opportunity to contact more armed individuals. Certainly we recover, I think we're up to about 1800 illegal firearms recovered thus far this year, more than any other year previously and thankfully the overwhelming majority of those incidents are managed without anybody having to use force. I'd like to get your input on Katie's question originally about the idea of these weapons that look like real weapons. What kind of danger does that pose? Well, it certainly poses a danger because they do look like real weapons and I don't think it's reasonable for us to be able to try to make that distinction. I think that there's sometimes we're unable to make that distinction even if we were to see a side-by-side comparison. I think that obviously I'm not gonna be the one that makes that legal determination. It's gonna be the district attorney, but certainly I think that it's appropriate for an officer who believes that they are being threatened by a deadly weapon to respond with force. There's no markings on these guns. Is there orange paint or anything? No, I mean, as I think you saw, there was no orange tip on this. I think if you were to take a close look at this weapon you would have seen something on the grip that looked like not something that you would typically see on a firearm, but as he's holding it in his fist, that's not something you'd be able to see. Nor would you be able to see the cartridge that's inside. Factors who make these weapons. Excuse me? Is that on the manufacturers who make these weapons?  Well, certainly a concern of mine and I would imagine a public concern as well when we have people that are carrying around implements that look very much like real weapons. I think not only was it those police officers who felt threatened by that weapon, it was the individual inside of the Burger King, excuse me, and others in the neighborhood that also felt as though they were endangered from this individual.  And I would imagine they go hand in hand. I would imagine that because there are individuals who feel threatened by the fact that there is an overwhelming presence of real handguns that if they can't get their hands on a real handgun, maybe they can defend themselves with something that's not a real handgun. Thank you.


the narcissist apologises to you, when they express regret for something that they've done wrong, when they offer an apology or excuse for some fault, insult or failure, when a normal person apologises to you, it's because they feel regret or guilt for what they have done, they can see the effects that it is having on you, they have empathy, they are able to understand and share your feelings, it's very different with the narcissist, when the narcissist apologises to you, it's out of their concern for their own welfare and interests, an apology from a narcissist is a self-seeking behaviour, and it has nothing to do with them feeling regret or guilt for what they have done, it has nothing to do with them recognising how their actions have affected you, it can be very confusing when the narcissist apologises to you, it makes them seem more complex or less easier to understand, they use apologies as a way of restoring the relationship or their engagement with you to its original condition, before they made the fault, insult or failure, they use apologies to start over again and put an end to any bad feelings which may have resulted from certain things they have said or done to you, they want you to forget about that, they don't want you to focus on their negative aspects, because that's going to get in the way of them getting what they want from you, what they have learned from studying people who might be normal or healthy, is that apologies can help to further manipulate and deceive their targets, if they give you a mistaken impression and cause you to believe something that is not true, it means that they can still get what they want, despite what they might have said or done to you, they will even tell you what they are apologising for, they will have this fake epiphany, where they suddenly realise what they've done wrong, they suddenly realise how they've affected you and now they want to make amends, now they want to compensate or make up for a wrong doing, they make it very believable, it makes you want to give them another chance, but if you do believe in them and give them another chance, this will get you into a lot of trouble, the narcissist is only apologising to put an end to your feelings of hurt and resentment towards them, it's not because they have any care or concern for you, it's all about relieving their worry, nervousness when ease, and it does make things very difficult for them, it does make things very inconvenient, if they need something from you, or if they want you to do something for them, if you're mad, they have to put in a lot more work to make you happy, the easiest way for them to deal with that is by giving you a fake apology, they don't have any care or concern for you, it's just so they can keep you under their control and continue to use you, they're not sorry for what they've done, they just don't want to lose their level of significance and importance to you, they're apologising to you because they're still more of them to get out of you, you're still a good source of supply, you're still able to attend their needs, the more valuable of a source you are to them, the more likely it is that you will get a fake apology because they're not done with you yet, they still want to keep you around, they're not sorry, they're not concerned with how their actions have affected you, the only thing they're concerned with is losing their advantages or benefits from being with you, because they put so much time and effort in grooming you to be in their source of supply, so the last thing they want to see is all of their time and effort going to waste, when they apologise to you, it's just to make you comply with their wishes or commands again, it's just to keep you following their agenda, so they can continue extracting what they need from you, their apology is just to get you to comply, that's really all it is and that is why they can apologise to you and you can discuss what they did wrong and how it affected you, but then they'll go and do the exact same thing again and again because they really don't care, they really don't have any concern for you as long as the narcissist still has use for you, as long as they can still get someone out of you, they will continue to play the part that you expect to see from them, fake apologies, fake epiphanies, future faking, whatever you want to hear, whatever will help them to maintain their position with you, you might mistake it as them actually having some concern or interest in you, but it's just to keep the transactions going, they've managed to get a constant flow of exchange from you, so the last thing they want to see is that diminishing in strength or quality and apology between our narcissist is nothing more than a tactic which they use to influence and control you, it keeps you trapped, it keeps you expecting things to change but nothing ever changes because they're just using the apology to prolong a favorable situation, they're just using it to buy time so they can continue get what they want from you, it doesn't mean that they care about you and that is why you will notice no matter how many times they apologize they always go back to how they were before, nothing ever improves because their apology isn't about them having a genuine concern or interest in how their behavior is affecting you, their apology is nothing more than a self-serving self-seeking behavior to preserve the position that they have with you, thank you for watching, I hope this video resonates with you, please like, comment, share and subscribe, click the bell icon to receive applications for my future videos, if you're lighter than 8, my PayPal link is in the video description, coaching inquiries, you can email me at narktofevercoaching at juma.com, thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon


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Welcome to the Creative Life Show brought to you by Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Phyllis Bles and President of the American Creativity Association's Austin Chapter. We are here today to answer the question of whether kids are afraid to be creative or merely unwilling. Joining me to answer this question is a panel of leaders in four organizations that are keeping creativity alive in the world today and safe for our children. Coming to us from the group hosting the annual World Creativity and Innovation Week is their Deputy Steward, Bethany Schwann. Aloha, Bethany. Aloha, thank you for having me. You're so welcome. Going around the room in a little north of where I'm sitting today in Austin, Texas, from the Canadian Network for Imagination and Creativity are Michael Wilson and Peter Gamwell. Aloha, Michael. Aloha, my pleasure. And to you, Peter, Aloha. Aloha. Phyllis, it really is a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting us. Oh, you are so welcome. We're looking forward to hearing from your team. And moving around the world to really right now to a little bit of north of Texas and in Oklahoma, we've got the National Creativity Network represented by Susan Nakalman and George Zucros. Aloha, Susan. Aloha, Phyllis. Thank you again so much for inviting me to be part of this. You're welcome. And Aloha, George, and you're in Minnesota, right? Oh, no. Never say that to us. We're in Wisconsin. Aloha, Phyllis. I'm just wondering if you were saying— From the Badger State, it's all good. All right. So moving around the room, well, I've checked you all in, I think. I'm Phyllis Bleece calling in on behalf of the American Creativity Association. Now to get started, I want to share with you the opening questions raised by Sir Ken Robinson in a profoundly moving TEDx, which is to this day the most watched TEDx show ever. And it was produced in 2006, I think. He made the case, a very moving case for creating an education system that nurtures, rather than undermines, creativity in the world for our children. But it's called our school's killing creativity. Sir Ken asserts that creativity is as important in education as literacy, and it should be treated with the same status. And he goes on to say that schools beat out of children their courage to take a chance or to make a mistake, be wrong about something, and that if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never be creative. And by the time these children get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity, the capacity to be prepared to be wrong. And then they become frightened to be wrong. And we now have companies around the world that are just like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And we are now running a national education system in most countries of the world, maybe all, where mistakes are the worst things that you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. So Sir Ken believes passionately that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we are educated out of it. And this panel today is going to be addressing these questions. And I ask you, panel. Do you agree? And why is this that we're educating creativity out of our kids? And to just double up a little bit on these questions, I had a viewer just before the show who knew the show was coming on, call and ask me about what has happened to the generation of kids who were just starting school in 2006 and who are now in their mid-twenties. They're all in the workforce right now. So opening up the panel, would someone like to speak to this? I would be delighted to speak to it and state unequivocally from the very beginning that kids are neither afraid nor are they unwilling to be creative. The critical fact there is that when you come across learning cultures, classrooms, schools, families, which determine to set in place the right balance of conditions, then the natural creativity, the natural potential that lies in every single child and every single adult will flourish. In 2001, I did a PhD study with a group of grade 8 students and the whole point of the study was to teach them their language and literature curriculum using the arts as a catalyst for six months. And boy, did they ever rise to that occasion. These were ordinary kids in an ordinary school and they'd never had that type of approach before. It took me two or three weeks to focus on trust building. That was a huge part of this. But once they got into it, and once they understood that what I was asking them to do was to interpret their learning in a way that made sense to them, that could be to art, drama, music. I didn't care. And it awakened that learning culture with those kids. And Peter, I want you to stop there just for a moment. I want to point out that in education, about 15 years ago, we had a budget crunch in the Austin Independent School District. And the first thing that they wanted to cut was the arts. And so this is so innovative. Using the arts as the medium within which to reach out to what I'm hearing, bringing the kids in, imagine cutting the arts and music. The two big things were art, music, and Spanish as a second language. All three were the first things cut. It's awful. Yeah. And I think you have something to show us today about the results of that. Is that true? We have a... Well, it's the next... What happened after that study? A remarkable opportunity came along for me. And I was appointed superintendent to the Ottawa Carton District School Board, which is a very large school district here in Ottawa. And my responsibilities were leadership for the entire district, and that morphed into leadership and creativity. So I led a creativity movement, which at the time was not welcomed by everybody because the focus of the ministry was we need to get the marks up in mathematics and literacy. And my focus was to say, you know, what we need to start with is embrace the idea that every kid has a seed of brilliance within them. And it is our foundational responsibility to set in place the conditions to find out what that is, to grow them from that in the context of a strength-based culture, because deficit thinking tends to take people down rabbit holes. And yet it is so common in organisations for a series of reasons. And by getting those... By embracing the concept of a seed of brilliance in everybody and embracing a strength-based approach, you foster a culture belonging, which for me is the most important thing. So, yeah, we led this... It was a 14-year initiative, seven or eight events each year. Each of them focused on two or three things. Number one was the celebration of the brilliance in everybody and the idea that you need to flatten the hierarchy. So it was... When you walked into one of the events, you didn't have to wonder what it was about because there were creative initiatives, hundreds of them, from schools, from the community, from the indigenous community, from the multicultural community. And it was just a wake with brilliance. And over a period of time, this had a deep impact on the culture and teachers started to take risks. And I think we have... There was one teacher, I'll just finish this briefly, one of the teachers, a lady called Rebecca Chambers, she'd been following this movement over the years. And she made a decision, she made a decision to fundamentally transform the way she shaped her high school social studies classroom. And so I followed her for a total, I still follow Rebecca, of six years. And I've got hundreds of videos of her kids. No exams, no quizzes. She took those kids on a journey. First of all, a journey of self-understanding, whom they were as learners. And she taught them that there are many different pathways to learning and to knowing. And that the more of those they explored, the more they would awaken themselves. And then she introduced the concept of the power of community. So all of them were encouraged to go out into the community and do things.  It was incredible to see what she did and how many lives she transformed and continues to. I was into one of her celebrations of the extraordinary because she didn't do exams. She had the kids present through metaphor in a setting, in a resource center, and you've got to glimpse into this.  But he had created a jail for himself. So I interviewed him for a jail. So, Saxon, I'm sorry we'll see you in this state. Tell me a little bit, what's going on, Saxon? I'm being restricted by school. How on earth did that happen? School is such an open place. Well, there's a lot of stuff that we're forced to do. There's a lot of stuff that we're forced to learn and we don't really have freedoms within learning those things. Okay, can you give me an example of that? Have you felt that right the way through school, Saxon? Through most of school, I mean, like this class is a little bit different, but I would say for most of my classes, I've been told how to learn, I've been told what to learn, and I've been told what to present. That's very interesting. So this class is a little different to that? In what way, Saxon? Well, you see we have inquiries, which basically we pick an issue and there's freedoms and restrictions within those, but we're given a lot more freedoms than any other class I've ever been in. What's that done for your thinking? I think it's opened up my mind a lot and I've learned to think different ways. I've learned to think way more creatively and I've been given that opportunity to think a lot creatively, a lot more creatively than any other class I've ever been in. Well, I have to say, the metaphor that you're using of the jail and the handcuffs, it's very powerful. Thank you.  Never. What made you think of this? Well, I think this semester hasn't really been a great semester for me in terms of grades, but I've been kind of frustrated because I've been thinking that in a lot of these projects, if I was given the freedom to do what I really wanted and to show what I really wanted and how I wanted to, I think I could have done a lot better and I think I would have learned a lot more too. Do you mean in your other subjects? Yes. Very interesting. If you had the power to do it, well, let me rephrase it. If you could give advice to the public school system, thinking of the young people coming behind you and how you want their experiences to be, what would that advice be, Saxon? I would say that I think we need to treat everybody as an individual and not have them as cookie cutter people. Everybody's different and I think that everybody learns differently and if we could figure out a way to have everybody learn the way that they learn best and the way that they want to learn, I think that everybody will be way smarter and will advance as a race. You have a remarkable mind, young man. Oh, thank you. Don't ever forget it. Thank you so much. Hey, no problem. If everybody could be allowed to learn in the way they learn best, it would make the world out of his, out of the words, out of his mouth. And he had no idea I was gonna ask him that question. He'd never seen me before and I loved the way he ended it. If it could be personalized, I'm not using his words, but if it could be personalized, I think we'd have a better race. What a beautiful way to put it. Anyway, I've got hundreds of those videos with these kids, not just from this classroom but from others. It's just a matter of embracing the idea that all of those kids and all of the adults as well have got seeds of brilliance and providing the autonomy to set in place the culture which cultivates that. So, Bethany, you were nodding when the student first started talking and you were smiling and nodding and I know that you are now the deputy director for the World Creativity and Innovation Week. And I wonder if you could share with us what he might have to look forward to being part of once he gets out of school. Does he step away from any possibility of being understood as a creative, imagine an innovative young man or what's happening on this global stage, world stage? Yes, great question. It's interesting. Saxton brought up quite a few amazing points in his interview. The thing that struck me the most about him was his mention of compliance. We are not allowed to do things in classrooms. We're not allowed to step out of bounds and creativity by definition is thinking differently, approaching problems differently, divergent thinking. And so it's interesting to see him really understand that from the courses that he was already taking and how different that course was that he was in. Globally, we are trying to strengthen and promote divergent thinking and just approaching everything that you do in a potentially different way, whether that is traveling to work via a new route or celebrating with your friends and asking different questions, remaining curious as you grow and as you experience life, making connections all over the place. And it's been fun to see how much growth we are actually receiving at World Creativity and Innovation Weekend Day. We have grown quite a bit over the past two and a half years that we have had it. We have, I believe 160 countries now celebrating with us, everything from education to government to private organizations and individual people. So it is quite amazing. And just before you go too much further, we have two slides giving the audience sort of a gestalt of these 160 countries. And when the show, you see the show, you'll be able to freeze the screen and take a look. This is the first set of countries and the next slide, Michael, continues the count. And I would say there's something for all, in 160 countries, there's pretty much something for everybody to be doing what? Like during this week? Yes. Day. So you talk about a week and a day and that sounded confusing. And what are you talking about? Absolutely. So the week is April 15th through the 21st every year and it is celebrating everyday creativity. So it is celebrating with your friend, trying something new, attending an event or a seminar or speaker. It is, and then the day is promoting the world and making the world better, using creativity and innovation to promote and further the United Nations, 17 sustainable development goals. So not only increasing your own creativity in the everyday creativity, but also promoting the UN's SDGs. Okay, so now, so that's what we do every day. And I think we have another slide showing some of the celebrations going on in the world. Is that from last year? It is. So that's a 1,797 total celebrations equals four celebrations per person? With the little people are representative of four celebrations. Okay. So that's how that chart was built. But yes, we've had 1,700, close to 1,800 individual celebrations with world creativity and innovation week and day. And it has been a little bit of everything from education to the weist of children, kindergartners and preschoolers up through Fortune 500 companies, using creativity and understanding the importance of creativity and innovation in their everyday work. So there's a little bit for everyone and you can find great examples of celebrations and places to get connected on our website. Okay. Well, and to talk to one of those celebrations, coming up in April, I'm not sure if it overlaps. I'm sorry, I lost track of that. But Michael Wilson from Canada, from Ottawa, could you tell us what the Canadian network for imagination and creativity has in store for the folks, is it in Ottawa? The light on that? Yes, I'd be pleased to. First of all, everything that scenic does, that's the Canadian network for imagination, creativity. We call it scenic because Canada is a very large country with very few people. So there's a lot of scenery there. So scenic, you know? Anyway, and scenic was formed, oh, for recent, we're the new kid on the block because I noticed when I was invited to speak at a conference at the University of New Brunswick in 2017, I thought it was just another arts conference. And I found out that the person running the conference was Dr. Mary Blatherwick, who heads up an organization called the Atlantic Center for Creativity. I organized a conference in which creativity was used as a motivation guide for all sectors of society. She had members from everywhere at this conference, from architecture, to law, to the medical network, to government officials, to educators, to everything. And I said to her, Mary, you have to go national with this. We have to make this national. And she said, okay, and so we did. And we invited people from across the country to join us in the steering committee. And we've got people from Vancouver and the Maritimes and Ottawa, quite a few people from Ottawa. And of course, with us today is my distinguished associate, Peter Gainwell, who's a member of, not only a member of Scenic, but a driving force behind everything they do, as you might imagine from his talk to you, which actually it's a little while ago. Also, everything Bethany mentioned is also embedded in what we're trying to do on a national basis. And we have a number of unique characteristics. One of the most interesting to me is something called our monthly idea jams, which is actually a word I stole from Peter. And it's a monthly relaxed conversation in front of a fireplace about a topic relating to creativity that's introduced by a presenter. And we spend an hour on Zoom, having a casual, relaxed discussion about it. And sometimes we have conversations sufficiently deep that people actually cry on the air because they fell a first opportunity to speak deeply about themselves without the fear of being judged. And aren't we talking about the fear of being judged, whether it's kids in school or adults in life. And so that's the general frame of what we do. And of course, we've got another one of these idea jams coming up on Thursday evening, the day after tomorrow, and we'd like to invite everybody here to join us for that session. And it begins at seven o'clock. Eastern Standard Time runs for an hour. And I know Bethany, you've been to one or two of these. And so we invite all of you to join us. It's completely harmless, but it allows us to have relaxed discussions about any sector of creativity that we're involved with without fear of judgment from anyone. We accept the opinions of all. And so as I'd like to tease people, we invite everybody and their colleagues, their friends, their enemies, their relatives, and we even accept pets. So I'm speaking on me. The link that is that on your card when we do the outro, will the link to the idea jam be there or do we need to leave it in the notes with the show after it posts? Either of those will get you to where you wanna go for Thursday night. Some of you are on my list, sir, for seeing if you get nasty annoying notes from me all the time. And you'll see directions about that. So people can self-subscribe to this mailing list and then get invitations. And then there's an honesty happening too. Yes, now I just wanna frame that. I'm gonna let Peter speak because once he starts, he won't be able to stop. So I've just talked about the macro of what we do. The wider implications of what we're trying to do. But we're trying a big experiment now in Ottawa, Canada of going to the micro of what we've been talking about. It's a bit like Peter, interviewing that student, his jail sentence as it were, and an indication through one person of what is wrong with the public school system, at least in Canada, I have no idea about how things are in the light in USA. And this is another example of going from the wider field to a specific example, right here in Ottawa, from a usage made from an old school and from an illumination of a school for social innovation at one of the smaller universities in Ottawa. And without talking about it any further, ladies and gentlemen, here he is once again, Peter, get him out, Peter. Oh dear, you only thought you were running this show, Phyllis. I'm afraid that ship has sailed. Okay, so yeah, Michael mentioned to me about seven or eight months ago about this idea of having a live idea jam. And I think I referenced earlier that we had done seven or eight of these events every year for that 16 years of the creativity movement with the school district. So it immediately got my juices flowing. And I immediately, I think we immediately knew what we wanted to do and it's grounded in this. The world is in a state. It's a mess. And there are all sorts of people out there who are feeling that deeply and they need some hope. So we were talking this through and one of our wonderful colleagues, Goran, who's up, well, you know, Goran very well, don't you, Anthony? He said, why don't you call it this? I've been listening to what you're saying. And so it's called creativity as a force of social transformation and odyssey. And as soon as we got that title in our heads, it was easy to organize. And the first thing we decided upon was there would be no keynote speaker. The thing was, well, there's actually gonna start up on the Friday night with just a sort of a get to know you. We're working with a broadcasting program located in a school. These amazing kids are gonna be there through the entire thing documenting it all. So yes, it'll be a sort of a meet and greet and but with some very intentional conversations on the Friday when they get there on the Saturday morning, they're gonna walk into a human library and the foyer of this amazing old school which has been transformed into a social center for the most underprivileged organizations in Ottawa. Indigenous groups, there are, there's food banks. I think there's women's shelters. It is remarkable what they've done with this building. So it speaks to the very topic that we're talking about. So we've got 10 or 12 organizations who are gonna be in that human library and we have one of them, just to give you an insight, is something called Orchidstra. Is that the Venezuelan thing, isn't it, Michael? Yeah, that's from the El Steema project in Venezuela where a famous conductor at that time was concerned about poverty in villages and towns throughout Venezuela and he had an idea of giving them all European instruments and giving them free music lessons and it began playing classical music in these villages all over Venezuela. That idea has been exported all over the world and Peter's talking about the example of that exists in Ottawa, which is enlightening itself and reason alone for all of you to come and join us at the event. The lady whose brainchild this was, Tina, she is a tour de force. So she's actually gonna be there right through the conference but in the background of this human library we'll have eight to 10 of these musicians playing to give us a wonderful ambiance. And then the rest of the day, so we're going to give everybody a passport.  So what are we gonna do now to, so all of us within our own sphere of influence can do something more. I'm sure people are already something more to make the extraordinary happen. So the final thing I'll say about this is that I reached out to the local school district and said, would you like to partner? And they instantly said yes. Now there are five, I think partners who are involved with us, including universities, school district and a couple of others. So I think this idea that boy we need this right now has really capitalized people's thinking. So thank you so much. Now, I know there are activities in the Innovation and Creativity Week, which is Innovation and Creativity Day has been put on the map by the United Nations. And then this week is built around it. I know Bethany was gonna speak to a couple, one in Australia, what they're doing. You'll have to excuse me in terms of the dates, but does this Odyssey overlap that week? Absolutely, April the 19th and April 20th. So the idea for the audience is to be thinking, well, we could do that too, or what could my school do? Or what could my company do? To put out a shingle the day of, on one of the days in Creativity Week. And really if you were to contact any one of us, especially our guests, George Sucrose and Susan McComment, who are aggregators of creativity actions around the world. And we'll talk about that, get your notice to Bethany, look up her card on this show or after this show. You can kick off something in your own city, your own school, your own company.  Yes, absolutely, thank you. So our founder, Marcy Siegel, who many of you know, used to say that World Creativity Weekend Day could be like Mother's Day. Many people celebrate it, most people celebrate it, but you celebrate it in your own way. Some people buy their mom's flowers, some people give her a card, some people make her breakfast in bed, right? So that's kind of the entire goal here for creativity. However you want to celebrate it, however you want to do something differently, by all means we would support and help. We are run by a student organization out of Miami University in Ohio currently, and we are also here and set up to help support. We can do brainstorming sessions, we can offer past examples. There are many elements and resources that we have to help anyone consider how they could celebrate World Creativity and Innovation Weekend or Day. And this costs nothing, they can go right? Correct. 100%. W-C-I-W-C-I-W-O-R-G.org. Okay, .org. And then you'll give them support. You know, it would be very cool for teachers to call and get support to do something like what was happening in the school Peter showed us. And just scout troops, girl scout troops, boy scout troops, skateboard, skateboard groups, you know. And do we, now it is really, it's a question. We have some time left on the clock. Do we want you to, I wonder if we want you to introduce what's happening in India or did in India and Australia or George and Susan, we haven't heard from you yet today and I wondered if you know of anything that's happening or maybe we'll come back and look at some of those examples and you, Susan, you're the, just help me with the alphabets here. You're the direct, you're the co-director and George, you're the director of the National Creativity Network, right, NCN. And so maybe George, if you would talk a little bit about the resources that you are aggregating and how people can get on that list and be fed by it. So please say a little bit about NCN and your dreams for it and how we can support it and how you can support us. So thank you, Phyllis. You know, I think what we'll do is quickly do an origin story because every superhero has an origin story. And in this case, our superhero is Susan McCallmott and her work with Sir Ken Robinson. So we can touch on that because I think it goes back to your original question, are schools and everything else killing creativity? And it's not the schools because there are good teachers and there are good administrators and there are good, there's a lot of good people out there who wanna do the right thing and do a good thing. But it's the creation of that environment. We've been talking about it where people can fail, but failing isn't the only thing they can also succeed by choosing the things they wanna study and pursuing greatness in whatever those things are. But you know, we start this conversation because NCN flows from the Sir Ken Robinson tree. So we should start there, Susan. And then I'm happy to talk quickly about the NCN articles of interest and other things we're about. Go for it. And I just want to share that in an unlikely place like Oklahoma, back in 2006, I was leading a philanthropic organization at the time, but just sort of convening people from different sectors from education, commerce and culture. And as we started talking about, why was Oklahoma at the top of every bad lesson at the bottom of every good lesson nationally? What could we do about that? And encountered Ken Robinson at the time before he became Sir Ken Robinson, invited him to Oklahoma, started working with him actually as our advisor on creating something that we initially called the Oklahoma Creativity Project. His idea was to create a climate of possibilities. He often would say, we can't mandate creativity, but we can come together and you know, as we bump into one another and let our guard down and start sharing, we can create those environments, whether they be in schools, whether they be in courtrooms, if they're in our homes, that are not fear-based, but they're love-based because he, like John Mackie from the CEO of Whole Foods, said that one of our creativity conferences, you know, you really have a choice to create these climates and these environmental climates that are non-judgmental, that allow everyone to thrive. Or we all know what it's like when we walk into a classroom and everyone's afraid to raise their hand or to ask a question, or you walk into an office situation and no one is able to share their ideas about how to make the company better. So it was Sir Ken's idea that we could start this in Oklahoma and as we started in Oklahoma, our Lieutenant Governor at the time, he's a Lieutenant Governor in Wisconsin, we connected, we flew to Madison on a very snowy icy day and met with the creativity initiative that George was starting up. There were people in New Jersey and North Carolina and before long, as Sir Ken invited us to become part of this international districts of creativity network based in Belgium, there are 12 districts around the world that are connected, that are seeking creativity change, in societal change. Our very first creativity reform in Oklahoma, we had a pre-conference meeting, just inviting individuals from different states and from Canada, we, Peter was our lone Canadian I think at the time and maybe someone else in Alberta, but we started thinking about how we could form this North American creativity network, just connecting live minds on how we could in our own way, plant these seeds of creativity, encourage others and as Sir Ken said, have a thousand flowers bloom. So that is what we're still trying to do, we started back in 2010 with this national creativity network. Many of us, our lives have changed, we're in different places, but we've stayed connected and we've stayed connection, those connections have gone even further internationally so that we are sharing best practices, we're trying to, you know, from the macro to the micro in our communities, in our homes, in our places of worship, trying to effect change and allow people to come from that love-based environment and instead of the fear-based environment for their ideas to help change the world. And as Peter said, we so need it right now, but George has continued. One thing, National Creativity Network is doing and I'll toss this back to George, is to share all of the articles, ideas, documents through a weekly server. So George, would you like to share that it's amazing work and it goes far and wide to help encourage? I would love to and Phyllis, I think you made a slide out of the Articles of Interest. So back in the day, we started what we call the NCN or National Creativity Network Articles of Interest. It has quotes, it has videos, it has all kinds of news articles about imagination, creativity and innovation in all its forms. So it's not an arts-based idea, but the arts are definitely part of it, but it's science and engineering and technology and math and humanities and everything you can think of that inspires imagination, creativity and innovation. It's a free service that we put out every Friday. We're still trying to figure out the mail delivery as we got hijacked, but you can go to the National Creativity Network's website and there are at least four weeks of them archived there. We encourage you there, but I think it's also, as has been spoken about a couple of times today, it's about connection. And so it's a leveraged point because National Creativity Network is a network, Canadian network of imagination, creativity. It's not us being the thing, but us rather connecting to all the good people across the nation, across North America, and ultimately across the world who want to do this work and connecting them, their energy together, their inspiration together. And we're just happy to continue to be able to do it. So. And George, so what we saw a minute ago was the collection of very small snapshot of a collection of the articles and underneath on the left is the link to where people can go and find that. And then we have the next slide. This is just a screenshot of your website, which people can go to. So it's, what is it, www.ncn? It's actually the full, the full word. So it's www.nationalcreativitynetwork.org. That's right. And so people can see that there are downloadable articles of interest in groups by date. And there's just a plethora of information there. Yeah. There's always, there are no quizzes. Nobody has to read the whole thing. They might just like the quotes of the day, they might be inspired by a video. No quizzes, but there are a lot of resources there in all kinds of different ways, so. Well, and if I can just backpack on to an item George said, it is all about connections, celebrations and resources. It is amazing that the four organizations are here today and I am privileged to be a part of this, but we should be sharing this. And the more that we pass and promote and pass this on to everyone else, the better our world can indeed be. So thank you. I love, I love the missive that you guys send out. It's like my favorite thing to receive on Fridays. And my son's always like, what are you doing on Saturday morning? I'm like, I'm reading my missive. So. To that end, Southern Oregon University is in May is having a major creativity conference. And I think if you just go to SOU, look up SOU creativity conference, we can leave it in the notes to the show. That that's a significant, they make a significant annual commitment to a several day conference on creativity and. And for all of our listeners, if they come up with stuff like that and they want to send it to us, we will put it in the NCN articles of interest. And tomorrow I'll be looking at Southern Oregon, going, all right, how do we get this in here? Yeah. And we will display it on our website as well. Nice. Nice. So let me put an aura in the boat, take my aura out of the boat and put it in the water for a minute for the American Creativity Association. I offer that we are the grandmother and grandfathers of organizations. We've been around four decades since 1986, 87, and still are moving forward in this world of creativity and innovation. It was the brainchild of two interesting groups in America. That's Urgo, American Creativity Association, although we've been around the world and have, I was chapter development officer for about 10 years. And we, and I was supporting 60 chapters around the world in most countries, and then many cities of the United States. But the interesting origin story there is that leaders in gifted education, that's a term of art in the US for classes that are focusing on the creativity of the child, not on creativity, but the creativity within the child. So they were identified as gifted. I could go on for quite a long time about the beef I have with calling these children gifted and talented and how isolating, unfair, and as a lawyer, I almost, I could have got involved in starting the Austin chapter, the American Creativity Association, or I could have flown to Washington, DC and got the legislation renamed because as a lawyer, I can tell you when you use as a term of art, which means it's a specialized term, it means something very unique like landlord and tenant in a rental agreement. When you use those terms of art, you already know, you don't know who the landlord and tenants are. It does, it's a generic term. And those terms gifted and talented are not terms of art, they're generic terms. So if you label one child as gifted and talented, you take these people, everybody knows what those terms are and you identify only a few children in a school as gifted and talented, you create division, anger, shame, blame, envy. It has done more harm. So I'm a little bit on my hot seat here and I started the school for the gifted and talented children, which is still going, a private school in Austin, Texas and I really wrestled with this. So I say the words, because it's the truth, I also don't shy away from history and what's the truth. There's a lot of innocence that goes along with our evolving awareness and consciousness. And it takes courage both to use those terms and then to also be aware, self-aware of what we're doing. So to continue on my journey on behalf of the ACA, these teachers across the United States in the classroom and at the university level teaching teachers how to teach this special population, which is, it isn't that not everybody doesn't have different gifts and talents, but these children need fewer, I would call them the XPL children. Then you wouldn't assume you knew who they were and you would have to say, well, what does that mean? Well, that means that they think divergently, that they need three repetitions rather than 20, that they can be highly emotional, that with this population goes a high number of dysgraphia or ADD or ADHD, they're very sensitive. They don't, they can test well or poorly. And then you assemble like 25 characteristics so, oh, okay, that's the LXP kid and we can help them in the classroom and support them. So those, the teachers who taught teachers how to work with this population, along with guess what? The leaders of R&D departments like at Disney, like at DuPont, like at Alcoa, they somehow were having coffee or wine together somewhere, these two leadership groups and especially the leadership at DuPont, which came up with like the Post-it Notes and a lot of our cool things in the late, in the 60s, 70s and late 80s. They came together and said, let's create an organization to advance creativity in every domain, not just in the United States, but let's, they called ourselves, we called ourselves the American Creativity Association. And it's still going, held annual conferences, kept up a journal and mailed it out snail mail when that was required. And I can tell the audience that it also funneled into about nine special interest groups within the larger umbrella covering the arts and communication, but also business and technology, education and training, spirituality, the nonprofit NGO group, government and health and science. So it's applied art, thinking art, it's IQ, EQ, SQ, somatic Q, and that's the ACA. And I have a slide to share with you. We have one of our most recent things is this show. It's called The Creative Life. You can see here, we have over two and a half years of library, you could watch any one of these shows, I think, and just have a very inspirational takeaway. And we delve into many topics where the centerpiece is how do we release access and honor our creativity, innovation and imagination. And so I welcome you to this show and to the ones we have in the past and those going forward, give me a call or an email if you wanna be on the show or recommend a guest to be on the show. This is very inclusive. So with that said, we have together introduced our different organizations. We've given some ideas about SOU and other organizations and we are still left with the question my caller had about this topic of are we killing the creative spirit in our children? She wanted to know what the children who are now 24, 25, how are they being served that generation, but what about today's generation as well? And George, you've got a comment. I just wanted to look to Bethany because her colleague Jim brought forward the notion that the current students are approaching creativity in a way that surprised all of us. Not thinking, oh, how can I be more creative, but I don't need that. So Bethany, can you talk to that? Yeah, thank you. It's interesting. We recently just returned back from a trip to San Francisco and we were taking a senior capstone class out there to do creative consultant work. And as we were turned home, we started to hear some rumblings from the students. And it was interesting to hear the things that they were saying. They were basically saying I don't have to look around when I'm walking down the street because my phone tells me everything I need to know about the location that I'm at. And Jim and I got kind of debating about this. Is Google and our repetitious knows when our children are toddlers, are these things killing creativity? I have both a five-year-old and a 16-year-old, so I'm constantly in the, and no, don't drive off the cliff phase of parenting, but it was interesting to see the students and their reactions to connection and just being open-minded and whatnot as they kind of progressed through this course. And I'd love to hear your thoughts if compliance and the readily available answers that we are giving our children of today if this is hindering creativity. Well, I know I've been talking, and I'll make this really short, but it seems to me it isn't about what we do, it's about what we remove. And my point is if we remove, it's a very different conversation to talk about the stigma of making mistakes, of not being prepared to be wrong. So there is competition in the field for being creative in ways that we did in the past, kept track of time and schedules and finding information. And it's still in the room with us today, this question of whether it's okay. I mean, especially with Google and smartphones and instant access, we'll be having a chip in our brain, we'll be plugged in like borgs to the internet, we'll have all information, but will we be wise? Will we be creative? And will we be prepared to make mistakes and be wrong?  How do we keep alive a strong sense of it's okay to fail, it's okay to be wrong? And they're parallel tracks. I think it goes beyond that as well. I've created a library over the last 10 years, probably 300 videos with students, teachers, parents, business people as I'm trying to grapple with my understanding of how do we get it so wrong? So I don't think school could kill creative. Well, I do, but I think there were reasons for that. Society kills it because we are so committed to thinking in hierarchies which stifle creativity. I'll give you an example. I don't wanna give too many because I'm writing a book about this and nobody will buy it if I tell you all. It's the pathology of the hierarchy of leadership. So that when you think of leadership in a school, say, or an organization, very often that's done in a structured way and people are not made to feel comfortable to speak their mind and speak their truth. And so often that's the first impediment. The answer, flatten the hierarchy. Do not take yourself too seriously as a leader. Take the job seriously and get over your ego. You need to, I think the number one priority of a leader is to create the space so that the brilliant potential informal leadership comes out with everybody around them. The second pathology is the way we define intelligence in a hierarchical way. And that is so damning for so many kids. We tell them that they're not smart when they are absolutely brilliant with shining the light in the wrong place. So that's the second hierarchy. And the third hierarchy is creativity. We are bound and determined to say, these kids are creative, these kids are not. Arts kids, oh yeah, creative, very clever scientists. But we don't look at the mechanic and say, well, you've got some creative genius or the plumber who's working on the most horrendous conditions. So I think those three together need to be front and center in our thinking and need to help us in the re-imagining how we're gonna go forward to cultivate the seeds of brilliance that lies in every kid and every teacher and every adult. One of the things related to all of this is how can we create atmospheres, conditions, structures to encourage creativity? How do we, particularly, creativity is a process and not really individual. It's a collective enterprise. There's some debate about that, but I'm on the collective side myself. And one of the things that Scenic tries to point out is that if we have a group of people, whether they're students or football players, I have to get football in here somewhere. That... If you create for them a sense of groupness, a sense of that you are individually significant and you're significant because you're part of the group, both of those things, and if it gets them into the state where they can laugh at themselves and laugh at each other at the same time because of the same experience, you're beginning to build that level of trust, that level of nakedness that allows you, individually and as a group, to capture the creative potential which is there. I sort of look at this from the point of view how we shut down those opportunities. We're all inherently creative, but we don't all have the same opportunities to express it. And it seems to me it's breaking down barriers to some extent. You know, all societies want to be compliant because we want everybody to understand what the rules and regulations are about getting along with others in society. I get that. But there also needs to be the opportunities for us to individually and collectively to feel as if we can trust ourselves and each other in order to make mistakes, to make idiots of ourselves, as I've obviously had no trouble doing for years. And that we can promote that sense of collective and individual creativity and ultimately improve the significance and the kindness of humankind. Wow. We can't leave on a more thoughtful note, Michael. And so thank you. We will leave it right there to our audience. You have been watching the creative life from Think Tech Hawaii. We have been discussing the question of whether our kids are afraid to be creative or just unwilling or neither of the above with a panel of leaders in organizations that are now promoting creativity, innovation, and imagination. I'm your host, Phyllis Bleece, and the past president of the American Creativity Association and current president of the Austin chapter. Joining me today to answer the question and bring to our attention, ways to keep creativity alive have been our guests, George Zucros, board chair of the National Creativity Network, Susan McAlmet, board vice chair of the National Creativity Network, Susan, I'm sorry, Peter Gamwell, who's co-founder of our Canadian network for imagination and creativity. Bethany Schwann, who is deputy steward for the World Creativity Innovation Week and Day Support Organization, and Michael Wilson, another co-founder of the Canadian Network for Imagination and Creativity. Mahalo panel for joining us and Mahalo to our viewers for tuning in. We will be back in another edition of the Creative Life Aloha.