There we go, all the enablers, all those who are powering this conclave, huge round of gratitude from the organizers, the hosts. But now it's time for someone who's really at the fountain head of all this. He's a serial entrepreneur, he's a media mogul, he's a journalist, but more than all he's an eternal optimist, all rolled into one. The founder of Exchange for Media Group, may we have him on stage right now on Ragh Batra, as he delivers the welcome address. Good afternoon, it's my honor and privilege to be here. It's a dream come true, Sneha Valki, who's our head of South in Exchange for Media, joined seven years back and have been telling Sneha that we should do more things in South and Sneha and her team have been able to put this together. So first of all, you know it's customary to thank your colleagues at the end, but up is a people business and I can say that we have in this business the best people working with us. So I'd like to congratulate Sneha, Priyanka, Akshita, Jyotsana for putting this together. Since the time we started Exchange for Media, we've been a national player, we've had an office in Calcutta for 10 years, one person though, but we came to South and we put an office 12 years back here. One of my colleagues who used to precede Sneha as the head of South as an entrepreneur now, Ajay did great work for us on circuit night. So first of all, Sneha, this is the start, I hope you do more in South, not just in Bangalore. I'd like to, you know, it's ironical, Malayalam Anurama has given us a printed diary, no iPads, but next time Sneha you should ask them for iPads, but right now I took my notes on it. But I'd like to welcome some special people, all of you are special, who come all the way and you come to listen to them, Mr. Hemant Malik, he really doesn't need an introduction. He's leading the ITC, fastest growing business, which is the FMCG business, and I've consumed their products. I can tell you, your coffee is fantastic, Sanjeev gave me a hamper and after that I started to buy it. Also I got from Anil Rajput, a big hamper, so I've consumed it, fantastic coffee. I can say that I'm trying not to eat biscuits, but I'm sure my kids like them. Mr. CBL, I can tell you that four years back our first big event, I would say one of the most successful events of exchange for media, because we had Mr. Mark Patterson, he was kind enough to allow us an opportunity to host him and we put our heart into it and we had a lovely evening. I'd like to thank Sneha for being here, Sneha is somebody who doesn't really need an introduction in the media industry. I happened to meet Mr. Karyapa for the first time, but thank you Mr. Karyapa for being here. I've had a lot of great elements in my life in more ways than one. For those of you who are wondering what, he is the president of the brand called Jockey. Somebody I met very recently and I took instant liking to him, I'm not sure he did. In fact when he entered the room I said the one person you should definitely meet is Srinni and the one person you should stay away from is me, but I'd like to welcome Mr. Amit Gupta, who is the president and CEO of the Asian and News Network. He worked with Mr. Rajesh Chandrasekhar on the investment side in media and now he's having to execute what he proposed and became part of. Thank you Amit for being here. Mr. Pradeep Devedi, Pradeep is a friend and is part of almost all our initiatives and I can say that Raj is possibly the most likable person in our business. I'd say that at least my father-in-law and my wife tell me that if you want to do something in life, be like Raj Nayak, I've heard that multiple times. But I can say somebody who can really give him competition is Pradeep. And I say that I know everybody in this business, very likable person. My friend, I had the good pleasure of working with Mohit. Mohit Joshi is here from Hawas. In fact, I remember, I think I'm part of his being called Mojo. Because I saw this Mike Myers movie, I won't go into details. All of your wealthy, so you must be trying to buy houses or invest in real estate via Amit Badwani, the young entrepreneur from Saiya State. He's here, we had a real estate consulate last night here and Amit was part of it. Thank you, Amit, for being part. I've met lots of old friends from the media whom, when we started exchanging for media, me and Naval used to meet them. Devedi, I can tell you our first relationship with Decoran started with you. I have my friend who has multiple roles, who's the president of the ad club. I'm not an expert on media or on the Indian media in South, but I know a little bit about media, the more you know, the less you know. But I can outline five trends that are happening that I've gathered from being here multiple times and on this trip. One is that the dominant player, which was Sun, is no longer the most dominant player. Still very dominant, it is 60% player in the market. But it's not the most dominant, while the market has grown, it hasn't grown. It's pretty much, it's still very dominant, I mean. But in future, there are other players that are, that may take money from Sun. So that's one big trend. Second, and you know, Deccanator and the sponsor, my content is not influenced by sponsor. Pradeep is here from a leading newspaper. Print will continue to be fairly large. I know Srinni is betting a lot of money on digital and TV. And all of that will grow on the back of new brands. For example, if you look at Bangalore, the major categories that represent Bangalore in advertising are tech, BFSI, e-commerce, and FMCG. These are broadly, and the fifth category, real estate. Now in commerce, we've added Amazon, Flipkord, Jabang. If you looked at the advertising over the last one quarter, Amazon, Flipkord, I mean, these are Bangalore headquarters, so I'm talking about them. And the real estate industry in Bangalore is possibly the least impacted relatively, I'm talking relatives. And this is because the real estate developers build brands. So they've stayed in the consumer's mind. I may also say that in Bangalore and in the southern market, the biggest market is Karnataka and within that is Bangalore. Because it's a very large urban population. So print will continue to do well. In fact, I keep saying that the print players have to put a better face. Because we are doing really well, why should we be on the back foot? We should talk about our own stories. The three other trends that I noticed is that most media brands that are national are approaching the southern market in a big way. Look at what colors is done, right? The second is, print is building a solution-oriented culture, and print is no longer print. Legacy brands and print are using TV and video platforms. Video platforms, not mostly TV platforms, which the advertisers and consumers are using. Third, it's happening in every part of India, so it's southern marketism. More and more clients are looking at solutions, experiential, a bundled offering. They're not just looking at pure print or pure television. They're looking at a solution oriented. Digital, digital is the fastest growing. I won't deny that, because the base is small. And the beauty in southern India is, I know in digital Facebook and Google and Facebook in that order are pretty much 85% of the marketplace. But in the southern India, the digital players are growing very fast. And there I say the next exchange for media conclave, apart from the brands that are partnered, will be sponsored by an Amazon Flipkart. Because they'll have a huge advertising-led model now. They want to recover all the money they spend on media. And last, but not the least, which is the most important thing, and I alluded to it by saying that the real estate has stayed a large advertiser. Because real estate brands got created many years. So the new Indian brands, which are local, regional, will, in this competitive landscape, increase their spends. They may not be huge spends in terms of absolute volumes. But when all these brands spend more than they used to, it will become a large value proposition for media owners. These are broadly the trends. The Indian news ecosystem in the south is expanding. Asiannet is, of course, taking the lead there. Almost every player is making a unique offering in the news television space. Because also, we are talking about news products almost 10 months before elections. So all the news products in southern India are geared up to make sure they do unique programming and are able to take unique offering. So southern media marketplace is poised to grow bigger as the impact of GST and demonetization become lesser and lesser. And the compliances from large brands become better. I think the growth in consumers' appetite for going back to some of these products and services, and hence brands like ITC. Spending more in these local markets will accentuate, and that will mean a growth for the Indian media, the Indian language media, based in south and especially in Karnataka and Bangalore. I hope we are at the forefront of creating solutions that help this ecosystem grow. I'm going to talk briefly about what are our new initiatives. In exchange for media, the three initiatives that I will talk about, which I'll immediate. One is our Indian marketing awards. Mr. Anand Kripalu, who is based in this city, was a chairperson of our Indian marketing. And had jury members who are equally prominent and know about brands and have built businesses on the back of brands. So that's on 7th December at the Leela Gurgaon. We have the India brand conclave in the day. And we have the Indian marketing awards in the evening. This is the 13th year of the Impact Person of the Year. On 11th December at ITC Pareil, we have our Impact Person of the Year. It's been a nominee in the past and I'm sure he'll be a winner with the kind of work he's doing for Group M in this marketplace. We have the Impact Person of the Year on the 11th December. It's a Monday. And I promise you that the Impact Person of the Year this year will be bigger than it ever has been. In terms of the kind of brand owners present, the kind of scale we will do it. It's a television quality event this year. Last but not the least, the exchange for media news broadcast awards are very dear to me. Personally, I think the news ecosystem is very important. I've said that there is a fight for the soul of this country happening in the past. And people like Srinay are in the room. People like Mojo, you know, brand owners like Mr. Karyapa. I think we have to make sure that the Indian news broadcasting ecosystem becomes more mature, is able to do more in-depth reporting and is not necessarily as sensational as it is. I know we all like spicy food. So there is a fight for the soul of this country happening. The news broadcasting ecosystem is at the forefront of making sure that the Indian public at large makes opinions on issues, on initiatives that the government takes. So we have our Indian News Broadcast Awards, which is the ninth edition this year. On 10th February at the Radisson Noida, we do it there because it's next to the news ecosystem. And the first February is the jury. Srinay has been part of the jury. In fact, I remember either he was the chair or he was part of the jury, which gave Arnab Goswami his first award seven years back. So, you know, we did pick up winners early on. This was seven years back. So I just want to say these are some of the exchange for media initiatives that I want to talk about.  When Mr. Karyapa came to me, I said, you know, I'm not running the event, but I'll put in a word I did that we stay on time. But I want to tell you, I talked about print owners don't do a good job at telling their own stories. But in business world, when we acquired it four years back, it was just a print product. We still have a long way to go, maybe another six to eight months we'll be where we want. But we've grown the print product. We built a site which does between 15 to 20 million traffic every month and growing fast. We built a community's business because clients look at solutions. And we build a very large experiential and solutions space. Our latest issue has record advertising. It's a 280 page issue. We're doing a 200 page issue, almost every issue with about 40 to 60 pages of ads. So I do want to talk about the business world. And I think we do very little in business world in the southern marketplace except what we do for the tech company over the next six months we will increase our engagement with everyone that has to deal with business world wanted to welcome you to the first edition of the exchange for media conclave south. We plan to take away, we are not mind readers Rini, but we are going to take it to Calcutta and Chinnai and other cities. We believe that the action is in the states and in the next level cities as we call them. In fact, our vision, mine and Naval's vision is to take the exchange for media conclave to at least top 40 cities in the country, talk about local brand because the growth for media and growth for the business ecosystem will come from these local brand. Thank you for being here and I look forward to learning something about media advertising communication today. God bless you. I guess it is we who learn from you and it was one welcome address. It felt like the keynote, but that's also for the insights shared and really very heartwarming to hear the note on the print media in particular. Thank you so much, Mr. Anurag Bhattra.


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Hello everybody, welcome back to another Adobe Photoshop tutorial on this one. We're in Photoshop 2022 it just released and I'm going to show you how to use a neural filter and how to imitate not necessarily copy, but how to imitate or how to match another photographer's Style so let me show you exactly what I'm talking about So here's a simple shot of a stock image of a girl with some wings sitting on a Sitting on the side of a building. It is not a very good photo. The it's very very dull All right, it's gray and dull and the skies just there's no real life to it But we can go ahead and make some so here is an example of Making some adjustments to it with one click I've made these adjustments and I'm also going to show you how to use another photographer Like if you have someone a style that you're really really interested taking one of their pictures and applying it So let's just skip all that and let's get right into it. So I'm going to delete this top layer and Bang, we've got a image just like I said right when we start the next step You want to go up to the filter and you want to select neural filters? Under neural filters, there's a few there's a whole bunch of new ones But the one that we're looking for is called color transfer Now color transfer has two big options one is the presets So let's just say any of these images. Maybe they're they've got a style here that you kind of like you Maybe let's go ahead with this one just to show you as an example I'm going to left-click on this little abstract painting and You're going to see here that it goes to processing on device and what it's doing is it's basically taking the colors from this and It's matching it to the image now. This is Andy Warhol Way over the top obviously But it's just to show you a demonstration of the technique now Let's say this was close to what you were looking for But it's too it's just obviously too far over the top that is not a big concern right now because what you want to do is You want to output this to a new layer and when you do that the new layer is going to pop on top of it But let me show you now if you left it like this obviously this is far far far over the top What happens when you go to the new layer that you created and you just sort of start to dial up the opacity a little bit? So we're adding in some of the look, but not too much. So there you go like let's say at 40 percent opacity So let's go 40 percent. You know what you've got some of that cool darky Pink dark red orangey look with the nice colors of the sky at the same time You know what you can go always go ahead and dial it back the same thing You can go ahead and start switching out the different blending modes as well So for example in the multiply mode, it doesn't leave the skin color quite as dark and I guess you'd say Saturated so maybe this is the blend mode for you or you know what you can always look at them like linear burn This looks really really nice. Maybe we increase the opacity up to Whatever 45% and then we make some adjustments. So the point is is that this is the original shot This is with the neural filter the color Transfer so let's go ahead and delete that I'm going to show you a second way in this way Allows you to dial in a very specific Image so if you have an image or a photographer that you have in mind Here's how to get kind of close to them.   There we go color transfer left click the button turns it on and Instead of the preset. We're now going into custom left click on custom and now we're gonna be asked for a reference image I'm gonna go ahead and select an image Selecting an image from the computer So I'm just gonna go ahead and click that and then under teaching I've got an image that I want to use as a reference image. So this is the image that we are trying to Imitate I guess that's the best term. It's not really copying. It's imitating or I guess Borrowing its look. So there we go. It's processing on device and presto It's gone ahead and made some adjustments I'm also gonna go ahead and copy this out and make sure that it creates a new layer I'm gonna left click on okay, and it's gonna create a new layer very similar to what we had before But this is based on a very specific image now We have the option to go in and dial back the opacity. So we get the look, right? So we were sort of in the middle here at let's say 60% opacity This is the original this has the look of the image that we selected also keep in mind again that we can sort of Cycle through some of these different not linear burns a bit too dark But we can cycle that darker color looks pretty good actually you can cycle through them and sort of find the different Blending modes and dial in an image or a style that you want But that is how you go ahead and use neural filters and color transfer to copy or imitate a Particular photo or photographer for example. Thanks for watching this tutorial time or stuff coming up.


All right, let's play this in full here. It's a longer piece. No sound there are some stepped moments some linear moments and This is flirting dangerously You are wondering if this can be kept as a long piece or Having edits in there. Okay, some of the staging I think we could tweak a little bit Oh It's heavily long And you mentioned that we could potentially just cut this up on a reel and show different shots in between. Okay, I Think as a whole it's a cool idea. I like it You got a couple questions. Do you want to be since we see her from profile? I mean a couple things this totally up to you. Could you or would you Consider turning her over so we don't see her wings so that now That's the wing reveal Then as we might not completely understand what's going on Would you also do this and then do a little flutter or do you really want this to be? That is the reveal. I think either is fine. It's just a question for you But then you can play with little things where she might do this And then right at the very ends do a little bit of a turn around again and then flutter wings Just as the thought But as a shot You know if you want to cut the shorter It could also be something where you start here like you don't have to have this whole entrance front So it's this could be something again. Let me turn over. Let's pretend this will be shorter This could be others moments where she's a bit more facing him. We don't see the wings She just does this we get the points that she's flirting and looking away And then she could have another look maybe compensating for not looking here, right where she does that wink So what if it starts here? To hear she turns around Winks and as she turns as the flutter or flutter and then wink It's almost like I got wings wink wink for whatever reason This one I'd be careful because we are we're fairly close to edges here. I think you'd be okay Potentially cheating and having him here. What do we see here?  So just for balance. You might have him here So that they're closer and you're gonna have that move that camera over so she has a bit more room It's basically that she would be here and he would be here type of thing Because as we're doing this, it's just a bit uncomfortable how close to the edge he gets all the time and her as well Where does me this seems a bit more comfortable, but then it's still a lot of empty space So my question is what are you trying to show in the shot? She's walking He's walking, but then he's gone. She walks through the edge and does this I mean to me it seems like you can do all of this, right? And she can do the wink to turn around wink and imagine that edge is already here Again, I'm talking in a way. That's completely destructive destructive and destroying your shop, but just as a Shot shortening idea Right, so you start here go back. She stops Winks again flutter turn around wink or turn around wink flutter Just to kind of get the audience interested like what is it? She's got wings and then you would start the shot here I mean you can go crazy and what you can do is start here walk walk This or you can be even crazier Where you do this? Stop turn around wink whatever thingy here and the edge is here and Then we cut to this right Turn around jump that makes sense. So let's go back just to be super clear She is here edges here. She turns around but don't have a turn back She looks at him and then we cut to this shot where again He might be here and that way we see a bit of a reaction in him as she jumps down So you compress this whole thing was basically it's just a one ginormously long walk Which I'm not sure on a demo reel if that's needed that it's so long You know, it's it's losing a bit focus and interest so like I said, what if she turns around and Doesn't look back and the look back happens here and then she does Here I'd be careful probably not going so close because we're starting to get very edgy here It's a bit too close. I will probably stay within like that type of framing Maybe at the end when she gets so here we can get closer Like that's where the camera ends. So she's leading the camera, but it's still more comfortable. She can do that That's all cute. I'll be careful with not doing this That's probably just a key. I would just you know cut here not have that That's like introducing one more thing right before the cut But then you can do this that's all cute You can do that and she do she does this here jumps to pick him up Into that and that's really cute. I think that could all work. It's still fairly long, but let me just see So let's pretend you shorten this whole thing She jumps down does this it's really cute. You see all of this Question for you.  She's still looking there, right? I mean it could also be just kiss and she still looks and And then he goes down does this that's fine. I think just for a visual thing I would just cheat this surface and bring it all the way up And I know this is technically not what it is in 3d space, but it's almost feels like it's not that high It's not that dangerous But just to kind of cheat the feeling of he fell down the cliff I'll personally just cheat this and have this all rock face, but then she goes up picks him up Again, this could be a bit further away so we can see a bit more You don't have to but I'm wondering if they could be just be a bit further away Maybe I don't know actually I take this back I think it should be okay, and you can really focus on on the head and it should be messier You're not so clean so that maybe he's turned a bit towards us and he can look down or well I know he's transfixed by her, but he's easy always at what point does he snap out of it? I mean that's a question for you Or maybe he just always looks at her but she looks around so we can see more of the face Or this is all about mechanics and you catching this character and the weight of it Totally up to you because we are cutting back to this then let me just see this also seems long She puts him down fine And has a reaction of come on wake up No, that should be fine No, it's cute. I think that could be okay. Just the My question to you is that I mean at this point he gets shaken and laughs But is he always completely Transfixed I mean he's completely hypnotized all the time. I wonder would that be an interesting thing of Waking him up and doing something is that like I said something where this actually wakes him up Maybe he's all freaking out freaking out until she does this and that moment of pause gets it back into And he's back into leaning forward and being stars in his eyes, and then they continue That could be an interesting contrast for him. So that scare wakes him up And she does that you know like come on this maybe that's less of a wake up more like calm down calm down. It's fine It's fine, and then she has that look and then he gets back to being hypnotized type thing And then they walk out. I don't know that's a thought lots of thoughts lots of crazy thoughts. Let me know You are open to cut changes you say, but I don't know so I'm throwing things out there Let me know what works for you. Thank you All right, there's an email you can sign up you can start whenever you want you can submit whatever you want You get 16 submissions either way a like and subscribe would be awesome. All right. Thank you


Welcome to the Valley Advocate Podcast, featuring interviews that take us deeper into the people and happenings on the local scene. For more podcasts and a closer look at what's going on in the valley, visit us at valleyadvocate.com. Hi, this is Dave Eisencettar. I am the editor of the Valley Advocate, and this is the Valley Advocate Podcast. I'm here with arts culture editor Gina Beavers. And we're here with Eduardo Semeniego. He is a youth worker and advocate for immigrant rights and workers rights here in Northampton. There we go. Okay. Yeah. Could have done that. Yeah. Well, okay. Good. Good. Good. Yeah. I'm so glad to be here. We are very happy to have you. Yeah. So much going on around this now. I mean, I think, so we're recording this on a specific day. It's going to come out in a different day. But I think one of these hard line immigration bills just went down in flames in the U.S. House. Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow and the next day. But all along, you've been kind of organizing here at the community and state level, trying to get people knowledgeable and interested and riled up about this topic. And maybe you could talk a little bit about how that's been going. Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for having me again. I'm so happy to be with you guys. And this is an incredible service so necessary to inform our community. Well, right now, the Worker Center is invested in a couple projects. One of them is our latest campaign for the four provisions that would ensure that immigrants in Massachusetts have the most basic rights to do process in our state. So that fight has been going on over the past few months here in our state. And so that's what my work has been part of. I've been able to organize about a couple hundred of students, community members and advocates from the pattern of value to come with us to the Boston State House or to the Massachusetts State House and urge our Speaker de Lille to take action and protect families here in our state. Because as much as, yes, there is a crisis at the border, there is also a crisis here in our homes. And it's not only such as Lucio Perez's family, you know, they've been separated for the past eight months. He's been living in this church. He doesn't have the opportunity to... In Amherst. Yeah, in Amherst, yes. And he doesn't have the opportunity to, you know, kids or children, his children good night to wake them up in the morning to drop them off at school. They're also separated. And so these four provisions at the hands of Speaker de Lille would ensure that immigrants such as Lucio, you know, when they're stopped by any routine, you know, checkpoint or, you know, even if they skip a stop sign and, you know, you know, the police officers in our state should not be invested in asking people about their immigration status. Their job is to make that our community is safe. And what are... So you said there's four things. What are they? Yes. So it basically, you know, the four provisions say a couple of things. One is that local police will no longer work with federal authorities. So all 287G contracts will be terminated in the state of Massachusetts. We know that the federal government too often uses this 287G contract to deputize local police members as very much, you know, part of ICE. And, you know, they are there in our communities looking for families to take. And so we want that to end. We also want our local police officers to not have the opportunity because it's not at all necessary to ask people about their immigration status for any reason. Third, we want to make sure that when immigrants are detained, they are read their rights and that they know they're informed that they have the right to have a lawyer when they speak with anyone from immigration. That's something that is not afforded to immigrants in our state today and that's something that these four provisions would do. As well as a couple of other things, for example, what the fourth would be very much a no registries for, you know, in terms of, you know, people's religion or race or gender nationality. We should not use people's information. We should not use people's information, you know, to go after them in our state. So that's what those provisions would do. It's super easy. Most basic things. This is a compromise that we really don't want because it's not enough. But it would be a start. And so we're pushing for that. Let me clarify something. Did you say the Miranda rights? So it's basically that when immigrants go into a detention center, an immigration officer can just come and ask them questions. And they're not told that they can have a lawyer with them before that happens.  They're going through the immigration courts. And so in that case, they're not afforded a lawyer just like anyone else, you know, US citizen would.  And how and how is that going? I mean, how are you doing in enacting those four provisions, getting that getting that over the line? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to be completely honest, I am incredibly disappointed in our elected officials. I have lived in a ruby red state, the state of Georgia before where Republicans controlled the three houses of government. And they obviously go after immigrants. But then I come here to the state of Massachusetts, where at one point we've had the three houses of government controlled by all Democrat representatives. And we have absolutely zero to show for, you know, in terms of immigrant rights here in our states. And so we're doing the best we can. Yesterday, we saw thousands of people pouring into the Capitol. We know that people are angry. People are frustrated with our elected officials. And yes, there are some of those who have come out and who have, you know, stated clearly that they do not stand with Trump, that they do not stand with Governor Charlie Baker and that they want every Massachusetts family to be protected. And yesterday, I saw the state of Massachusetts come out as I never seen it before. And I'm excited because for the first time, since I've been here in Massachusetts, I was shocked to see, you know, how people are so moved and so touched to go out there and knock on the doors of Speaker DeLio to demand that he protects families here. So tell us your story, Eduardo. Yeah.  Yeah. Yes, I am. I came here when I was 16 years old. And, you know, for different reasons, I eventually lost my status. My family, you know, has never been here in the United States. What country? I came originally from Mexico to the state of Georgia.  I went to high school there in the state of Georgia. That's where I learned English. I was taken in by a pastor from the church in Kenesah, where I lived, you know, Pastor Agustin Vega. And he supported me through my life of high school. I eventually ended up graduating as a student body president of my high school, president of junior achievement, president of Hispanic honor society.  And I left that office of my advisor with tears in my eyes and just my dreams just shattered. Because that's when I found out for the first time that I actually didn't have a social security number. You didn't know? I didn't know, no. And she told me that, you know, the Georgia Board of Regents had just passed a new policy three months ago in 2010 and basically prohibiting everyone in the state of Georgia who doesn't have a social security number from even applying to the top five colleges in the state of Georgia. These are the same five colleges that during the 1960s prohibited even African Americans from applying to these same five colleges. So we are seeing history repeating in different ways and affecting our communities. I eventually, yes, was able to come here with a full red scholarship to Hampshire College because of so many people working together. But, you know, it's not enough. And so my work, you know, that's my work, you know, ensuring that we're pushing for access to education for people of color, that we are pushing for protections for immigrant families and that we make Massachusetts a more welcoming state for everyone. And you've also been working on an immigrant bill of rights in addition to the four provisions you were talking about before in terms of getting driver's licenses and in-state tuition. How's that going? And what kind of support or opposition have you perceived on those ideas? So I would say that before this, the latest fight that we were having in the nation was the DREAM Act. They pushed for the DREAM Act. And we know that from Massachusetts, we were able to turn out people from here to Washington, D.C., to New Hampshire to also support our neighbors in their states pushing their senators to support the DREAM Act. And so we know that the overwhelming majority of people support the DREAM Act, but at the moment, the Senate is controlled by Republicans and the House is controlled by Republicans and they have not been able to come to the table in compromise with just common sense measures. We have at the table people like Stephen Miller before it was Steve Banner. Yeah, Stephen Miller is one of the White House policy advisors who's a very hard line immigration kind of anti-immigration policy advisor. Well, we could call it an anti-immigrant white supremacist. That's why he is. And I think that there is no doubt about that. There has been so much context to his anti-immigrant stances since he went to UC Berkeley in California. And so in so many of his speeches, Stephen Miller, in stages in front of thousands of people would make fun of the people cleaning the college. He would request insane things, such as he would throw the trash right next to them and he would ask them to pick it up. So this dude is now running our immigration apparatus in the United States. And this is exactly why we're in this mess right now because of Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and Secretary Nielsen. Mm-hmm. Yes. It's a trifecta right there. It really is. But even in the state of Massachusetts, aren't there some things that our own state legislature could do to counteract what's going on at the federal level? So yes, I think that this is the opportunity that we have at the table right now where the Senate has already adopted these four provisions in their final budget proposal. Now, this budget from the Senate has to be conciliated with the House of Representatives. And so right now, they're debating it in the conference committee where senators and representatives write the final budget bill that they will send to Governor Baker, and the House representatives are holding hostage these four provisions. The Senate has already approved them, but representatives, House representatives, led by Speaker DeLio, have not come out to support these provisions. I don't know what we need to do to come to the point where they see that Massachusetts is in a whole different place and that they are stalling progress in our state, whether it is on criminal justice reform, whether it is on the minimum wage, whether it is on protections for immigrants. Those who fall dies in our state will say that, yes, we are continuing the progress that we've had for the past 30 years in Massachusetts. But as someone who is out there engaged with different communities, we know that that's not true. Our state is stalled, it's stuck, and we need to get out of there. And now is the time for our speaker and for our legislature to do the right thing and stand up to Trump by passing these four provisions in our state. I'd love to know what you make of the additional attention that this family separation policy has had. I mean, I think that for a long time, immigration has been an issue that people have thought about. But I think that the recent uproar we've seen has been a whole new level. And I wonder what it's been like for you to kind of observe that and what your thoughts are about that. Oh, yes, I have so many thoughts. OK, bring it on. What are they? I mean, this is one of the most horrendous images I could have imagined in my head. And to see children being separated from their mothers as young and three, four, five months old, being ripped away from a mother's arm, to be put in cages, to be able to have to be taken. These kids are being taken care. But other children of other immigrants, imagine that image, how this dressing, the cries, the calls for their mommies and their dads. This is the most horrendous thing that we could be having in our country right now. And one of the things that I take a bit of frustration with is with people saying things such as, and I quote, this is not the country I know. This is not America, because this is us. And we have seen it before. We have seen it. We have seen it when we took away the children of indigenous people. We have seen it when we took away the children of black slaves in our country. We have seen it when we had the internment camps in the 1930s. We have seen this before. And these images are horrendous and it will be a shame that we have to carry for the rest of our lives. That this happened under our watch. And so I think that now people are coming out. People are infuriated and they're furious because this is happening. But we have to take actual collective action and we have to move on from that narrative that this is not our country to we must defund the Border Patrol. We must abolish ICE and we must ensure that these agencies that we have created are not using our taxpayer dollars to go after our families, to go after our black and brown children, to go after mothers and fathers. We have to make sure that our taxpayers' money is not going to do what we've done for so many generations. Take out our anger on the most vulnerable. And so I think that's where we are today. And I feel there is hope that, my hope is for people to take action. At this moment, as an undocumented immigrant myself, this is no moment to ask for permission. This is no moment to be afraid. This is moment for courage and that's what I want my community to have. To have courage and to demand what is right. I think when we do that, we are doing our best. And right now, that's what we want Speaker Delia to do. To do what is right and to do what has been demanded of him by the great majority of Massachusetts residents. And that is passing these four provisions and sending a strong message that the state of Massachusetts does not wanna be complicit with what the Trump administration is doing at the border and across this country. And with the Pioneer Valley Workers Center and a lot of other activist groups, I understand that there's going to be another action at the end of the month, on the 30th. Is that right? Maybe you could talk a little bit about that. Yes, yes. So we'll have a couple different actions, but there is one in particular. This is the one on June 30th that you were mentioning. And basically in this action, we'll be talking about family separation at the border for sure, but also family separation within our own borders of Massachusetts. And what does that mean? That means that every day families are separated in Massachusetts because they cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment here in Massachusetts with our minimum wage. Families are being separated because their moms and dads are being sent to prison simply because they smoke weed on the street. Family separation for all those reasons and because of our immigration laws. And Lucio will be speaking at Fish Churches of Amherst on June 30th next to Congressman McGovern, who will be joining us on that day, as well as a couple of their community leaders and faith leaders across the Pioneer Valley. So we invite everyone to come on June 30th, Fish Churches of Amherst and it should be powerful and this is an opportunity for you to stand with us and we'll have action items for you to take action right there with us. And yeah, I think what we're doing is our very own community's effort and I think that's something powerful to see, so to change something. Yeah, what an exciting action that people can take part of. We'll have to make sure we have the address. Yes, please, yes, absolutely. Yeah, well, if it's Lucio, you know where to find him. That's true, yeah, I know who's there. Yeah, well, and as far as other actions, you yourself have walked, I think it was 250 miles. Maybe you could talk about how that went. I love that. I'd have never forget that. Yeah, oh my gosh. Let me just massage my legs a little bit because that hurt. Hi, was that from where you were? That was at the end of the year, actually, I think. At the end of the year. Right, we know you're right. Yes, you have the date. Yeah, it was cold, it was going to be great. Yes, it was definitely in favor, yes, that's right. And so for that, what we did is we created this action around the push for the Dream Act. And 11 of us walked 250 miles from New York to Washington, DC, 11 of us, why? Because there is 11 undocumented immigrants living in the United States. 11 million, right? Yes, 11 million. All 11 of you got together. No, I don't know, right? But yes, 11 million. And I think that that's often forgotten. We are diminished to numbers and statistics and quotes and books and press releases. And so I think that that walk was for that. So the community could see us face to face. We had different stops every day in different cities. We came to churches, synagogues. We stopped along the way and we talked about what we wanted our immigration system to look like. And it's nothing like it currently is. But you know. How was your reception in these different cities? I was overwhelmed, to be honest. That was, again, it's something that I always find. Yes, you are amazed and shocked sometimes by the support and the amount of people that comes out to these actions. But I guess I could share just one experience. There was a one point where we came to a neighborhood in southern Pennsylvania. This neighborhood welcomed us and let me tell you, they had food, they had clean clothes. They had, you know, their showers ready to offer for us. It was 18 families. 18 families that hadn't spoken to each other before that day. Wow. Because. People together. Exactly. This is what people do when you're asking for support and the support is legitimately coming from the people that are affected. And so these families came together for the first time to make sure that we had a place to stay, you know, for the night. And they told us, you know, when we heard that the dreamers were coming through here, we knocked on each other's door and we talked to each other for the first time and we came together and we make this happen. And I think that was like something that is honestly, we saw it in every step, you know. That's something that we saw it as so moving and so personal and so powerful because that's the power of people coming together. But then, you know, right there, I think, I'm reminded of the fact that yes, these people are out there and in very rural communities who support immigrants who are here in the United States. Dreamers and parents and families, but you will never see them on mainstream media. Yeah. You will never see the outreach of these families.  And that angers me and that tells me there is something very, very wrong with the way that we're transmitting information. It's very upsetting. I mean, as people. And I wanna hear from you guys.  Yeah, right. Like, it's just, it's super disappointing. And I think that immigration really, there's an opportunity for it to, as you described, be a topic that brings people together, really shows our shared humanity, people learning each other's stories from different places. And it's something that we lose in this echo chamber of just, you know, hatred that gets amplified as you're describing. There's this rise of the culture wars. Yes. In the United States in the last few years that people are, these people are playing to the worst inclinations.  And they seem to be much more vociferous right now. And it's not the first time. So, yeah, I watch CNN. I can't watch Fox, I mean, I cannot do it. But I'll watch CNN and I'll watch CNN. I don't recommend it. Yeah, right, don't break it, I know. It's kind of like, oh, if anybody just... Well, Disney's gonna buy them pretty soon, so maybe they'll have like some cartoon characters like on these panels too. One can only hope. Really, right? But I watch these people go at it, you know, head to head. And it's really no-holds-barred now. I mean, where there used to be some semblance of subject, objectivity, I should say. And professionalism, it doesn't exist anymore. There are things in the country, there are topics in the country of race and immigration that have, it's become a toxic situation that people cannot have. A lot of people cannot have civil conversations about it. I'd love to know kind of with that reality in mind, what you do as someone who is an undocumented person or undocumented resident where you're at, when you approach someone who may just be a middle-of-the-road person who doesn't pay attention or whatever in this environment where there's so much hatred and misinformation out there, how do you approach someone like that? How do you just kind of try to connect with somebody? Yes, and I think you know that right there, I think I would want anyone who's listening to pay attention right here. Because I have lived in the South. I have lived in the state of Georgia. This is a supermajority Republican. This is a Trump country where I lived. And I think that we've gone to the point where yes, the information that is being spread is not even the legitimate feelings of most people in these areas. But we've come to this point where we're trapped in this echo chamber that we can't escape. I remember when I came to this country going and sitting with my neighbors on their porch and drinking sweet-tweet. And this honestly, my neighbors were pretty racist. And I think that I would remember they would always tell me this. And back then I would not think about it, but now it's different. They would tell me things like this. We want you here.  We're so glad that you're here. But we don't want other people here, you know? And so I think that there's that point where why is it that they were saying that to me? Because I was right next to them. I was their neighbor. They couldn't avoid me. They had to talk to me. I went to school with their children. I would hang out with their children. They would take me to their home and feed me. And I would do the same thing. I would invite my friends and my neighbors to come and eat and hang out at my house. And I feel that that connection little by little started to break that tension in that community where I lived. And not only with me, but with so many other people that were moving in, a lot of them Latinos in this small city of Kennesaw. And I realized that the misinformation that has been happening for the past many years here in the United States has detached just real people who might have conservative values into hating. We've talked them into hating people that they never met. And so once these people actually meet people who are different and that interact with them, but without the obvious, Fox News in the middle, things are very, very different. And I'm not saying that that's the ultimate fix. And I'm not saying that we should send people to go and convert racist. What I'm saying is that television and misinformation have poisoned people's minds. And we need to go back and do some work in our communities.  And we're seeing those connections happening at the leadership level in different organizations, but we want those conversations and that connections at the very bottom of our community. And so I think that's what we're doing here. We're being in the community. We're informing people of my priorities as an undocumented person. I would like to have the most basic rights to do process in our state and et cetera, et cetera. And I think those conversations are so important. And I think we can change a lot of things when we do act with determination to change something that we know is wrong. And I've never been afraid to call racism out. And I think that's what brought me here to Massachusetts. And I'm not afraid to continue to do that as long as I'm here. So we have a long fight in Massachusetts, but that fight is being fought everywhere. We just gotta pay attention and take leadership from amazing people that have done this before and who have succeeded. Well, Eduardo, thank you for your work. Thank you for your courage in telling your story. And thanks for coming and joining us. Thank you.  Thank you. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to visit us at valleyadvocate.com.


Are probiotics actually useful for male health? Let's examine if probiotics help male problems like libido, erectile function, testosterone levels, heart health, and prostate. And if it matters what kinds of probiotics men specifically take. Hi, this is Dr. Ruscio, and let's jump in. There is evidence showing that probiotics can help and treat some male specific health conditions. However, with other conditions, we see more of an inferential link with gut health. The downsides are few. In fact, probiotics have side benefits, and the body of evidence supporting probiotics to improve male health is growing. And we should also be a little bit cautious regarding what to look for in probiotics. And we'll expand upon this more later, but you might not be getting your money's worth from your probiotic. Okay, so let's jump in on how, if when men can use probiotics and potentially gain some benefit from them. Regarding sexual health, there's no direct research looking at probiotics as a direct treatment for sexual health. However, there are several studies that show a correlation between sexual problems and poor gut health. Research has found a correlation between IBS and sexual dysfunction. In one study, men with IBS were three times more likely to have erectile dysfunction. And in another research review, men and women with IBS had more sexual health problems. And in yet another study, patients with inflammatory bowel disease had more erectile dysfunction. So certainly some good correlation data here. Also there's a lot of evidence finding that probiotics improve IBS or irritable bowel syndrome. This constellation of symptoms, loose stools, diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain, bloating. In fact, there was a meta analysis or a summary of 20 randomized control trials. And probiotics were shown to significantly improve IBS symptoms. Another well-performed randomized control trial in over 300 patients found that probiotics significantly improved IBS-like symptoms. And there are many, many other studies that have found that probiotics can improve digestive symptoms. And again, these symptoms have been linked to sexual dysfunction. So the interpretation and synthesis on sexual health data sums out to those with IBS are more likely to have erectile dysfunction. Probiotics have been shown to improve IBS. Therefore probiotics may help some cases of erectile dysfunction. There was also one trial suggesting that probiotics may improve testosterone levels and sperm health. But we do want to be careful here because it's only one study and I'm not clear on the magnitude of that effect. So the conclusion here is a one-month trial on probiotics may be helpful and reasonable for men's sexual health. What about heart health? In the Journal of the American Medical Association, they have concluded, and this is probably not surprising to men, that men have a higher incidence of heart attack and heart disease. In fact, even after adjusting for confounding variables like cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, body mass index and physical activity, men were still shown to have more risk for heart disease and heart attacks than women. So there's something here somewhat unique to men. Now, what about this potential connection between probiotics, the gut and the heart? Well, growing evidence finds that there is a connection between the gut and the heart and this is based upon the gut hypothesis, if you will. It correlates heart conditions with poor gut health. In the Journal of Life Sciences, the gut microbiota was concluded and theorized, really theorized to affect cardiovascular disease, including clogged arteries, high blood pressure, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and myocardial fibrosis. Now continuing along this line of support for the gut-heart connection, in the journal Nature Reviews and Cardiology, they essentially concluded that an altered gut microbiota can increase susceptibility to heart disease and the gut microbiota is just a world of bacteria that live in your gut. And in another paper, they concluded and commented that leaky gut syndrome may be the cause or is likely the cause of low-grade inflammation found in heart disease patients. And what about evidence showing probiotics as direct treatment to improve heart health through the gut? So far, there's only one human clinical trial that did assess this in the internal Journal of Cardiology, but the results here were actually quite promising. In this study, the group taking probiotics showed a significant reduction in the diameter of the left ventricular artery and swelling of this artery is linked to heart failure. They also documented small improvements in metabolic markers compared to the placebo group, reduced total cholesterol and reduced uric acid levels. It's important to underscore that the effect size here or the magnitude of the benefit is small. So it's not something that if you're frankly hypercholesterolemic is going to get you back down to normal, but this is a supportive therapy that can move you in the right direction. So to summarize the gut-heart connection, there's speculative evidence, meaning it's of lower quality, that gut health and optimizing one's gut health may reduce the risk of heart failure and reduce heart disease. There's also evidence showing a small positive impact on cholesterol levels and other metabolic markers. And there's growing research establishing this gut-heart connection. We should also discuss the gut-brain connection. Regarding brain health, memory, short-term memory, working memory, processing speed, mood, these are all facets of cognition loosely stated. And it's also important to contextualize that some studies suggest men have slightly higher risk for cognitive impairment as they get older. So what does the research here say? Well, in one journal paper from the journal Nutrients, it was a clinical trial, 12 weeks on either placebo or probiotics, and they found that the probiotics was helpful for patients with mild cognitive impairment when compared to the placebo. And in a similar study, older adults were either given probiotics or placebo again for 12 weeks, and they found at the end of the 12-week intervention period, those who had poor baseline cognition saw improvements in their cognitive function, whereas healthy patients didn't see any effect. And really impressive data here, a meta-analysis or a summary of 19 clinical trials found a significantly greater improvement in depressive symptoms versus those who were receiving placebo. So the probiotics led to a significant improvement in depression symptoms as compared to placebo. And they did conclude, additionally, that a multi-strain or multi-species probiotic was better than a single bacterial alone. There's a little bit less research on anxiety, but there have been clinical trials that have found improvements in anxiety when using probiotics and even very recently, a meta-analysis also finding the same thing. So certainly some promising evidence here that cognition and better evidence that mood may be improved by using probiotics, kind of supporting this gut-brain connection. So in conclusion here, your brain is vulnerable to poor gut health, and I actually learned this myself. I'll share a little bit about that in a moment. And probiotics can help correct this.  And what about weight loss? The most recent high quality data finds there's no significant impact of probiotics on weight. And this is why I and we always look at the totality of the evidence and the quality of the evidence. Both of these things are very important, which is why you've heard me reference meta-analysis, which are summaries of clinical trials and clinical trials. By using this kind of filter system to not look at low quality data and only look at the best quality information, you are assured that the interventions are safe and that the interventions are effective. So continuing with the example of weight loss, we cherry-picked a couple misleading claims, but if we look at a 2019 meta-analysis, the conclusions were that there was a small effect on waste circumference, no effect on BMI, and the study concluded there was no definitive results.  So again, really important that if we look hard enough, we can find a data point that reinforces what we want to believe, but we should be using science, not the footnote of prior belief, but actually inform what our positions are. In this case, unfortunately for weight loss, certainly not going to hurt you, but the degree of benefit is so small that it's essentially non-existent. So on weight loss takeaways, probiotics may have a small benefit. This really nets out to about two to four pounds max, and this is an overweight or obese individual. So if someone who's obese loses two pounds, it's not really considered clinically significant. So probiotics will not be a cornerstone of weight loss, won't hurt, but important to clarify the degree of benefit or the effect size. Now sleep is something that impacts pretty much every facet of health, from cancer risk all the way up to neurodegenerative decline. And the research here, kind of as context, has found that men have poor sleep in women. Part of this might be due to the fact that men have more muscle, and that muscle partially encroaches on the throat, the airway. And so the muscle is kind of a liability for men because you wanna have the largest airway that you can so you don't have these apnoic events or you don't snore and have labor respiration while you're breathing. So men are at higher risk, and there is actually some preliminary evidence that even though men are at higher risk for poor sleep, probiotics actually can improve sleep quality. There was one clinical trial in medical students, and it found that those taking probiotics actually slept better during times of exam stress. And in another clinical trial, participants reported that their sleep quality was better after six weeks of taking probiotics. Additionally, a study in IBS patients found that sleep improved for diarrheal type IBS. And in a group of depressed subjects, they had better sleep quality when using probiotics. So some nice benefits associated with probiotics and how they may impact the gut brain connection or the gut sleep connection. Now what about prostate health? This is coming to something that's much more squarely related to men of course. It's important to contextualize that two million men per year visit the doctor for prostatitis or prostate inflammation every year. And one study suggests that probiotics actually may be beneficial. And let's look at this, actually two studies. So in one study in the journal Prostatic Cancer and Prostatic Diseases, they concluded that the gut microbiome can influence prostate inflammation and may impact prostate cancer. And another study suggested that an imbalance of the gut bacteria may be a primary cause of chronic prostatitis and that probiotics may be a beneficial therapy. So these two papers are more so theoretical. They're looking at mechanisms that they're trying to kind of conjecture in terms of what might be a valuable therapeutic, but what about as we discussed earlier, high quality clinical trial data in humans? Well thankfully here there's two trials. One clinical trial looked at long-term treatment with refaximin and antibiotic combined with probiotics. And taking probiotics reduced the recurrence rate of chronic prostatitis. And essentially the patients who are taking refaximin plus probiotics saw no regression or no symptoms. Whereas in the group just taking the antibiotic there was a 20% rate of relapse or flaring of symptoms. It's important to mention here and tie something together that this refaximin is also used to treat IBS, irritable bowel syndrome and or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And people oftentimes don't appreciate the fact that there are over 20 clinical trials that have found that probiotics alone can resolve small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So essentially there's data showing that this probiotic therapy for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth is of similar effectiveness as an antibiotic refaximin. So it's not surprising to see that when refaximin used for prostatitis was combined with probiotics, you see improvements in the prostatitis outcomes. And another very recent clinical trial in nature of use in neurology found something similar. Different antibiotic combined with a probiotic was found to be better than the antibiotic alone. So for prostate health, probiotics actually have some preliminary and exciting evidence. And to synthesize this, what's the pattern here? Well, again, the improvement seen in prostate health when using probiotics might be due to probiotics antibacterial function thus reducing bacteria potentially in the prostate. It might also be due to reduced inflammation like the heart disease studies suggested. And probiotics may help maintain a healthy balance of gut bacteria which then detoxify estrogens and this may be impacting prostatitis. This is one theory that circulates in functional and integrative medical communities. I haven't fact checked this claim, but we do know that gut bacteria detoxify estrogen so there is some plausibility to this claim. So here, a trial on probiotics to aid prostate health appears reasonable. And so this begs the question, what are the best probiotics for men? And really for men, the probiotics required are not any different than women. If you look at the research studies, you're not seeing in any of these studies for prostatitis or heart health or what have you that there's a special blend for men that's being used. Really most of the time when you see men's or women's on many formulas, not for all, but it's just marketing. So we wanna be careful about that just so that men don't think they need to buy a more expensive or unique probiotic just for them. And what I've fallen into personally in the clinic, this has not been published yet, although we are collecting data on this and we're hoping to publish on it soon, is a combination of three different probiotic formulas. Allactobacillus and Bifidobacterium blend, a sacrum mochis bilardii combined with a soil-based blend. And this is drawing or extending from the prior finding that found a single bacteria was not as helpful as a multi-bacteria probiotic. And so if we extrapolate that a little further, if we can only get so many bacteria in one formula, we could then add a couple different formulas together to get even more bacteria. And this seems to be at least in my clinical experience more effective than using one probiotic alone. And the analogy I use here is, if you consider a stool like you would sit on akin to your gut microbiota, we wanna have balance in that ecosystem. One probiotic is supportive of balance, but three probiotics are almost like having three legs of support helping to keep the gut microbiota in optimum balance. So that's what I personally use and in the clinic and we, our clinical team at the office, also use, we found it to be more effective. Again, that hasn't been published yet, but we are hoping to publish on that soon. What about buying a probiotic? Well, some cautions when buying. Research has shown that most probiotics don't meet their label claims. Of the 26 commercially assessed probiotics, according to one study, none of them fully supported their label claims. Another study found that 43% of the probiotics assessed contained less than half of the amount listed on the label. And an additional study, they found that only half of the probiotics examined had the specific strains listed on the labels. And even more shockingly, some contained harmful microorganisms. So it's really important to buy a quality probiotic. It's not to say that the most expensive probiotic is the best, but you wanna be careful of some of these shady practices that may not give you the highest quality of a probiotic. So when you shop for a probiotic, look for the following on the label. A clearly listed species, the number of colony forming units, a manufactured date or expiration date, a list of other ingredients so you can determine if there are other allergens, fillers or irritants, and that the company follows what's known as GMP or good manufacturing practices. And also evidence that the product has been tested by a third party. Regarding quality, it's not to say again that the most expensive is the best, but what I'd offer you as kind of a benchmark is if you're finding one or two products that are vastly cheaper than most of what you're seeing on the market, then they're likely doing something to cut corners and bring their costs down. So the most expensive isn't the best, but the cheapest might not be good. And so the question of, do you have to take probiotics forever? No, I would recommend you perform a trial three to four weeks seems reasonable. Re-evaluate, am I improving, am I not? If you are improving, maintain what you're doing until you plateau, then wait one or two months, make sure that the plateau, the improvement peak is consistent, and then wean yourself off and try to find your minimal effect of dose or come off completely. Some people can wean off completely and they're fine. Other people will see a gradual regression of some of their symptoms. So be careful here, not to fall into expected dependency upon probiotics or any supplement. Be objective. Don't expect them to be super helpful. Don't expect them not to help. Be objective, have a neutral expectation, listen to your body. This will prevent plus seabooing or no seabooing yourself and try to wean off and or find the minimal effective dose. And we do have a probiotic starter guide if you wanted kind of a recapping of some of these parameters. And do I take probiotics? Yes, every day. My gut was essentially a mess in college and probiotics were one of a few things that really helped turn the corner for me. And the things that I've noticed most recently, my gut health got much better after adjusting the parasite but there was still a lot of residual inflammation. And that manifested mainly as food reactive brain fog, insomnia and some fatigue. And probiotics really helped me be more impervious of things like having coffee, having wine, eating out that used to kind of trigger me with either some brain fog or some fatigue and was really frustrating. And once I got on the three probiotics that was actually a big turning point for me. So they were definitely helpful for me and I'm eager to share this with other people. And also some of the experiences that we've seen in the clinic of going on the probiotic triple therapy has been quite remarkable. So it's definitely something that I'm keen to share with people especially looking at how probiotics are relatively inexpensive. They're very safe and they have many side benefits. So if we can have someone do this and prevent them from needing to go on an antidepressant and anti-inflammatory medication and a rectile function medication then that would be a huge win. So in summary, I recommend trying probiotics for male specific health issues. They are not a panacea, they are not going to resolve everything but they are a supportive measure that may lead to improvements in many parameters of your health across the board. And probiotics can also be helpful for women and children. I should just make that quick aside. They're not something that only benefits men of course but this video is for men. Okay, well this is Dr. Ruscio and I hope this helped. 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I'm lucky in so many ways. One of such luck was the understanding I had when I became an entrepreneur in July 2008. I knew without doubt that I wouldn't be successful overnight. I understood how difficult it was to operate a business. I understood the level of effort it would take. As an entrepreneur, you often cannot tell which idea will succeed. As a result, I didn't emphasize success in one decade. Yes, I set out to achieve success in one decade. That sounds crazy. But if you want success fast, you wouldn't get the success you desire. Warren Buffett said, no matter how great the talent or efforts, some things take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. In other words, it doesn't matter how smart you think you are or how many books you have read about entrepreneurship. It takes time to build a successful business. You must be willing to sacrifice those years. Given it the time it takes, growing up, I thought like everyone else. Whenever I saw people who had achieved success, whenever I saw great footballers, I imagined they succeeded because they were talented. When I listened to a beautiful song, I thought the musician was talented. I even thought the rich were lucky or talented. Well, all these changed one day when I was a teenager. I read the story of Michael Jackson. In that newspaper article, I read that Jackson practiced eight hours every day. I didn't think that was true. How could Michael Jackson practice eight hours every day? His music and dance were effortless. This story changed the way I thought about success. To this day, I love to study the lives of great successes. That is why I love biographies. Two months ago, I read the biography of Albert Einstein. A month afterward, I read the autobiography of Obafemi Avalor, who was a great politician in my country. At the moment, I'm reading the biography of Elon Musk. Having read the stories of hundreds of successful people in politics, business, science, et cetera, one lesson I learned is this. It takes a large amount of time to achieve success. Don't try to negotiate this. Life is not nice. Don't try to think yourself into believing that if you can perform some magic, you can succeed easily without sacrificing time and effort.  What the public don't know is the amount of sacrifice that go into building a business from scratch. You have to know this as a potential entrepreneur or you'll fail. You have to know what it takes to build a business and be willing to give the sacrifices required to build. You have to forgo normal life and be willing to live in the wilderness for five years or more. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. But you preach against hard work, you say. If you're subscribed to this channel, then you would notice I speak against hard work in most of my videos. Please don't misunderstand my point. Here's what I think. Never work hard if hard work leads you nowhere. My father worked hard as a farmer, but never had enough money. My uncle worked hard as a teacher and retired poor. I don't plan to work hard that way. I speak against misdirected hard work. If I must work hard, then I prefer to run with the horses, then compete with rats. It's better to rule in the kingdom of horses than to reign in the kingdom of rats. So I don't follow the rat race. Robert Kiyosaki said farming, teaching or your job isn't a rat race. It becomes a rat race if it never leads you to where you want to go in life. No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. Play hard. I had a conversation with a friend recently. He said some people return to look for jobs in their former place of work after they have retired. I asked, what if they love their jobs? They don't want to rest, he replied. My friend always reminded me he hated his job. So I understand what he meant when he insisted the retirees should rest. Well, as for me, I doubt I would ever need to rest till I die. Let me explain. You see, I love what I do. So I work every day of my life. Although I don't work on Sunday mornings, I resume my home office by Sunday evening. Of course, I sacrifice some of my working hours for my family. But my point is, working isn't work if you do not like it. If you don't like what you do, find what you love instead and do it. A wise man said, find what you love and you won't have to work a single day of your life. Most people think they are working hard. Yet, if you love your job or business, you'll only be having fun doing it. Because you're having fun doing it, you can enjoy the challenges along the way and remain committed to your dreams for several months or years. No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. Gratification and success. In an old study, some researchers told some children that if they could keep the snacks given to them for a few minutes, they would get more. Years after the study, the researchers followed up on those children who were now adults. They discovered that children who held their snacks until they had more did very well in life than the children who didn't wait. Listen, if I were allowed to rename entrepreneurship, I would call it sacrifice or delayed gratification. There is no shortcut to success. You can't have a baby next month by impregnating nine women. There is no shortcut to building a successful business. Even if you're smart, what then is my advice to you? Be a soldier. A soldier knows he's signed up for battles, pains, endurance, difficulties, injuries, even death when he joined the military. As an entrepreneur, you signed up for mistakes, failures, rejections, and pains. There are no two ways about it. You'll make hundreds of mistakes. Many of these mistakes will be little and manageable while some will be disastrous and will draw you back. You will fail and cry. You will be rejected and even dejected. You will be attacked by scorpions, tigers, and snakes. They will make your journey slow and difficult. That's what you signed up for. Knowing this is how you win. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.


Like over five million other people in the last 24 hours, I saw the preview for Shane Dawson's new series, The Beautiful Life of Jeffree Star. But in this video, I wanted to discuss something that I don't see anybody else talking about. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, what I try to do is take different topics going on in the YouTube community and try to see what lessons we can learn from them to improve our own mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And if you're not yet, make sure you're following me over on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul. Alright, so before I jump into this, I just read a phenomenal article by Julia Alexander from The Verge. I'm going to link that down in the description. It's about this upcoming Shane Dawson series with Jeffree Star and everything. But anyways, Julia is a phenomenal journalist and she writes a bunch of great articles over at The Verge. So make sure you check that article out. It's going to be linked down in the description below. Alright, so anyways, let's jump into this. Why am I making this video? Why am I doing it? So my, my thing, my thing, I am absolutely fascinated. Some of you know this about me. I'm fascinated with human nature, psychology, why we do the things we do, why we think the way we think and all that. And I'm really curious why the situation leading up to this series with Jeffree Star is so much different than one year ago, the series with Jake Paul. So this video isn't meant to stir anything up. I'm actually really curious and I would love all of your feedback down in the comments below. Like I want you to kind of listen to the topics that I'm going to bring up and just let me know your opinions and your thoughts and theories down in the comments below. Just wondering why the YouTube community responds certain ways for certain situations and other ways for other situations. Alright. So one year ago was when my channel actually started gaining some momentum because I covered the Shane Dawson inside the mind of Jake Paul series. Now, what a lot of people haven't mentioned or brought up is that one year ago when it was even announced that Shane Dawson was doing this series with Jake Paul, people were freaking out. Like Shane's fans were freaking out. Non-fans of Shane's were freaking out because of this. Jake Paul is a controversial figure and one of the main concerns that everybody had was this wasn't going to be a true docuseries because Jake Paul was going to have Shane Dawson edit out a bunch of stuff, right? This is the narrative that was going on. Like Philip DeFranco even had a whole segment talking about how people were freaking out and concerned that Shane Dawson was making a series with Jake Paul. And I was just kind of thinking about it, right? Like we've known about this Jeffrey Star series for way longer than Jake Paul and I'm sitting there. I'm like, okay, both are kind of controversial, but I pretty much just want to bring this up and have a conversation and just try to see what your guys's thoughts are on why these two situations are different. See, what's really interesting is everybody was really worried about Jake Paul having Shane Dawson edit out a bunch of stuff, right? But I haven't heard that come up at all with Jeffrey Star. But what's really weird is Jeffrey Star is actually known for that. So those of you who don't remember just months ago during the whole James Charles and Taty Westbrook drama that was coming up, it was shown that during that time, Jeffrey Star deleted thousands and thousands of tweets, right? So we have physical evidence that Jeffrey Star is somebody who sweeps things under the rug, but it hasn't come up in the same way that it did for Jake Paul. So something I'm always doing is I'm trying to compare one scenario to another and seeing what's similar and what's different. So in Jake Paul's situation, when that series started, what were the primary accusations against Jake Paul?  All right? Think about it, like Jake Paul's brother did that terrible thing in Japan, but what did Jake Paul do? Now, there were also situations where, you know, he had problems with his ex-girlfriends and everything like that as well. And I covered that extensively when I was going over that. But when we look at the situation, like Jake Paul is a money hungry dick, right? But Jeffrey Star is like a bajillionaire, but it's praised, right? It's admired, it's looked up to. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, okay, why is it bad over here, but not bad over there? But also in comparing the controversies, going back, like one of the most notable ones, and even though this is, you know, from years ago, Jeffrey Star was on camera multiple times dropping the inbomb with the hard R. All right? And going back to kind of scrubbing the internet, like I've covered a few Jeffrey Star topics. And whenever I look for videos of those old clips, it's very, very hard to find. I think the last time I even had to find it on like Vimeo or something like that, like Jeffrey Star is very good at scrubbing the internet of his past. But also in comparing situations, I just released a video about Laura Lee the other day. And if you remember, when Laura Lee and Manny MUA and everybody was all caught up in, you know, drama get in, Laura Lee had some tweets that people deemed as racist. But I also want to note Laura Lee did not drop racial slurs in those tweets, but people are still having a problem with that. But for some reason, Jeffrey Star has been given a pass. And again, I just want to hear from you. Like, why do you think that is? But most recently, and here's what's just kind of on my mind. Most recently, during the James Charles and Tati Westbrook controversy, Jeffrey Star was going off. And we see that Shane Dawson was covering it at that time. And I'm interested to see what's going to happen.  All right. Like extremely serious allegations. All right. So nobody's really wondering how much we're going to see of what was actually happening in that scenario. So again, I want to ask you, the audience, please leave a comment down below. Why do you think the Jeffrey Star series is being received so much differently than the Jake Paul series? All right. Here is my quick theory on it. All right. Jake Paul is not part of the in group. And by the way, I've been reading a lot of books on like evolutionary psychology and group psychology and all that kind of stuff. But Jake Paul is not part of the in group. All right. When you look at people like Shane Dawson and Jeffrey Star, it makes sense. Like that's part of the group. Like it's part of the beauty community group. Right. And Jake Paul was an outsider. So it's kind of this us and them. We're not accepting of people on the outside. Now me, I'm just a dude. I'm not in the beauty community. I'm not a Jake Paul or anything like that. And maybe that helps me get more of a, an outside perspective. Again, this is just my theory, but I think that's why Jake Paul had such a different reaction because a lot of people who are tuning in to Shane Dawson obviously are not Jake Paul fans. There's not much overlap there. So a lot of people were hoping Shane Dawson series was going to expose Jake Paul. What I think, what I think is going on is when he does a series about Jeffrey Star, who's part of the in group, part of the beauty community, people aren't looking for Shane Dawson to expose Jeffrey Star. People just want to get behind the scenes with Jeffrey Star. Now think about that real quick. I don't know. Let me know if you think that might be a good assumption. All right. But anyways, there are some people who have talked about this. Like I don't want to just say nobody's bringing this up. Like there is another YouTuber named that girl Shay. And here's a tweet from her that actually had over 800 likes on Twitter. And it said, listen, Shane was the first boy I legit love since I was young. Seeing him do this series with Jeffrey Star hurts my soul. I don't judge anyone for loving who they love, but I just cannot move past so much Jeffrey Star stuff. I can't.  I can't even watch it. I don't know, man. So again, there are other people out there bringing up this kind of stuff. But obviously this series is going to get millions and millions and millions and millions of views, like insane amount of views, right? And we don't know how many parts it's going to be like inside the mind of Jake Paul was like eight or nine videos or anything. But my final thoughts on this, I will say this. I have faith in Shane Dawson because with all of the skepticism people had going into the Jake Paul series, I think Shane Dawson did an amazing job. He didn't go easy on Jake Paul. He asked him tough questions. He covered some very tough subjects and everything like that. So I have faith. I have faith in this upcoming series. But again, let me know your thoughts down in the comments below about why you think these situations are just kind of received differently. All right. But anyways, before I go, if you want to, I wrote a book called canceled inside YouTube canceled culture where I not only share my experience about being canceled earlier this year, but I actually have a chapter in there why people like Jeffrey Starr are immune to cancel culture. And I also talk about the James Charles situation, just cancel culture and YouTube as a whole. So if you want to check out my book, it's available in both ebook and audio book format. And it's going to be linked down in the description and in the pincom down below. All right. And don't forget to check out that article from Julia Alexander. All right. But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I will be covering this beautiful life of Jeffrey Starr series and seeing what topics we can take away from it and learn from it. All right. But I want to send a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon and a huge thank you to everybody out there who buys my books and merge like this shirt right here with our adorable cat Wyatt on it. Thank you all so much. That all helps support the channel. All right. Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.