The Black Lives Matter protests and calls to action have enlightened, energized and empowered children and young people like me across the country. And it's also left us wondering how we can really assert ourselves, find answers and do something during this moment of resistance and reclamation across our country. This forum is an opportunity to help young people like me to teach us and to share our thoughts and feelings and to listen to our questions about our community, our country, what goes from there and what our role is in these solutions and this resistance. 10 students from various parts of America will pose the questions today and 10 Black artists, writers, educators, prize winners, you know, fancy people will answer these questions and help us provide answers. This is not a masterclass in activism, but it is a workshop on freedom, a moment where those who have seen history's mistakes and lived through thriving times can now help a new generation like me correct them and we can solve these problems. So thank you all for coming and I hope you enjoy call and response. And I'm seven years old, what are some ways kids in the world can help in the fight for justice and equality? Jace, my God, Jace, nice shirt, buddy. You know what, man, I'll tell you this, Jace, first of all, I'm so sorry that this is even a question that you have to ask at seven years old, first of all. And so to answer the question about how to fight for justice and equality at seven, I think the way I want to frame this to you is to say, first of all, as an adult, we always tell you how the child can change the world. And I think sometimes what you take it as, what young people take it as is that you individually have to do all the things to change the world and that's not true. And so if you want to fight for justice and equality at your age, the real thing that we have to do or that you should think about is what's a small thing that I could do that I really believe in, whether it be how do I say thank you to every single person around me or how do I say, how do I speak to my neighbors every single day or can I make sure that I hold the door? These are small things that feel very small. How can I treat everybody the same no matter what they look like? And if you hammer that nail, just that one little thing, and if your friend down the street picks a thing and hammers that nail, and if your friend at your school picks a thing or a good thing to do for people every day and hammers that nail, then sooner or later, as you guys get older, as you all get older, you realize that you would have built an entire house of equality and justice and a question like this no longer needs to be asked. That's the goal. You change your corner of the world. You fight for justice and equality by making sure the people around you are being treated equally, that you're treating people equally and that you're being fair. And if you continue to hammer, I promise you'll build a beautiful structure where the quality and peace and justice will just be paint on the walls. I appreciate your question, little brother, and I hope to see you soon. Hi, my name is Chiara. I'm 13 years old and eighth grade attending Dearborn Stem Academy. I live in Boston, Massachusetts.  Thank you. Thank you, Chiara. What I want to say to you is I feel like when we say black lives matter, it's us taking control of our past and our present and our future, right? We're changing the narrative that racist white people believe in, right? When we say black lives matter, what we're doing is taking our control back and we're saying that the English language, the language, the use in the United States, as far as our English that we speak here, when we say all, it's a mathematical lie, right? And we can point to that when we talk about the Declaration of Independence, right? When they say we hold these truths to be inalienable, right? That all men are created equal. We already know that they're all never included us. So the short answer is that they are mad and they are scared and they are confused and angry because we don't believe the lie anymore, right?  So the racist white people that you're talking about then have to either reckon with the fact that they have been sold the same bill of mess that we have, right, or they have to change.  They are quite fine with the with the way that all encompasses them and not us. So thank you so much for that question, because I think a lot of people have it. And I just can say we keep saying black lives matter because we know we matter, right?  And who want to make a difference? We're just going to keep coming and doing the right thing for the real reason. Thanks, sis. My name is Raja. I'm 17 years old and I'm from North Carolina. And my question is how can I encourage the people around me to start to care more about the issues that face our society and to want to make a tangible change, especially since covid started, I've started really learning a lot more and educating myself about the different things that are going on in the world. And I'm just wondering how I can help other people start to care more and want to educate themselves as well. Deraja, what a great question. And and I feel that question really personally, as I try to get the folks around me to care more to to see what's happening in the streets, to see what's happening online, to see what's happening around us and to care. And and quite honestly, it's hard. It's hard. It can feel defeating. It can feel like you're doing an uphill battle because sometimes people don't want to care. So my my advice to you is first to tell your story. I think there's so much power in our own personal stories. And we we share from that first person about our struggles, the things that we face, the things that we're up against. That gets people to just care a little bit more. And then I think from there, you keep getting educated, keep learning more, keep finding out more things that are going on. And then share what you learn. Share that with the folks around you. And I think when you tell that story, your own story and tell those things that you've learned, it becomes a little infectious. And then the last part is let time do its thing. This isn't a one day thing or two day thing, a one or two week or month thing. This is the long game. Keep telling your story. Keep telling what you learn. And I think I think I hope I pray that it'll become infectious to those people around you and that they'll care just as much as you do. So thanks for your question, Taraja. Hi, my name is Kennedy. I'm 13 years old and I live in Pennsylvania. My question is, how do I get kids my age to read more books that are written by black authors? Oh, Kennedy, thank you so much for that great question.  My mom was from Jamaica. My dad is from Nigeria, and I was born in New York. We moved a lot all over the place. I'm the oldest, which is something I've always been very proud of and had absolutely nothing to do with. But from the moment I was born, I was given the precious gift of black stories down to even my name on our bookshelves at the dinner table at bedtime from their own lives from black authors across the diaspora. The stories helped me understand that black lives are beautiful, powerful, dynamic, and come in infinite flavors.  They gave me the space to dream of being who I wanted to be. I read to make meaning. I read to ask questions. I read to figure out what I thought, where I belong. I read to laugh. I read to cry, to be comforted or empowered. Black authors offer all of those gifts and more. And I know you know this because you asked this question.  We drip in story. We have a legacy of stories that is so deep and wide and high and long. They are a blessing to anyone fortunate enough to connect with them. So remind them of that. Share the joy of what they are, that if you want to be, I don't know, freaked out a little, you could check out Ron L. Smith. If you want to see girls who are living and loving and thriving in the real world, read Renee Watson. You want to be inspired by hidden heroes. There's Kelly Starling Lyons or Don Tate, Wendell and Hooks. You want to be immersed in lush and lovely fantasy stories. There's Danielle Clayton. You want to sleep tight. You read a lullaby by Tamika Fryer Brown or travel on wacky adventures with the books of Lamar Giles. You want to be hit straight in your heart and feel all the feels. There's Rita Williams Garcia or Nikki Grimes. Tell them about Malika Rose Stanley, about Mallory Blackman, Alex Wheatle, Atenuke, Marguerite Abouay. You know I could go on and on and on. Tell them to check out the Brown Bookshelf, Just Us Books, the African American Children's Book Project, Golden Baobab. You can share all of our particular stories of Black joy, mistakes, innovation, of pain, of struggle, endurance and ordinary small days. We bring our whole Black selves to our stories because we see all the different selves that you are. So Kennedy, just tell them what you already know. Just share the infinite power and beauty of our stories and just let that shine. I know you got this and thank you, Kennedy. Hi, my name is Mason. I'm nine years old and I live in Massachusetts. My question is what role can authors play in the fight for racial justice? Hey, Mason, I am so sorry. I came late to that question and it's such a wonderful question. I think one of the major roles that authors can play is just talking about racial justice and writing about it and letting people know that this is something we deeply, deeply care for, for that we care that everyone can walk through this world safely. And I love that you're thinking about this. I love that you're thinking about authors. I love that you're thinking about human beings just being able to move through the world without having to be afraid. So let's keep writing our stories, as Bemi said. Let's keep telling our stories and let's keep making ourselves and our stories and our histories more visible so that everyone knows that we have a right to be here and that we're amazing. Thank you for asking that question, Mason. My question is how do I get black girls and white girls to believe their skin color is you'll always be great. Oh, oh, my goodness. Parker, Parker, Parker. Oh, my goodness, your statement at the end there, no matter what your skin color is, you will always be great is incredible. And I hope everybody in the world hears that. I want you to know that it is it is just you understanding that this is an issue and that the issue is a problem. Is actually a big jump to resolution. And here's the complicated part. Sometimes you know something and other people are very slow to it. And it is so frustrating. I feel your frustration. It is so frustrating to know, to know that you are right and that like other people are wrong. And if they would get enlightened to your truth, they would feel better. But there's a big thing that I have learned. Sometimes you cannot change people.  And sometimes people will witness your positive transformation. And that's a big word, transformation. Maybe somebody at home can show it is when you keep changing and growing and becoming the person that you are. My mother wrote a song for a great civil rights leader named Ella Baker. And Ella Baker said this, we who believe in freedom cannot rest. I hope you clap in your hand with me. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. Till it comes. And she actually wants you to take care of yourself and rest. OK, she's not telling you to stay up all night long. But she is saying that the road is long and we have to stay on it until we get to where we want to go. So you want to try singing with me? We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. Till it comes. Until black mother's son is as important as the killing of white men. White mother's sons. To me, young people come first. They have the courage where we fail. Hi, my name is Lex. I'm 15. I'm from Massachusetts. And my question is how can my generation help normalize expression of mental health and artistic creativity in our community? This is such a great question. Such an important question. It is such a big question, Lex. And I can't give you everything right now. So I thought of three things that I think that you can do that your friends can do to foster community that makes everyone feel comfortable about expressing themselves. And the first thing is something that you can do, which is to talk about your own feelings and express yourself and surround yourself with people who also feel comfortable doing that because the more you are in community with people who feel comfortable about talking about how they feel is the more everybody in that community and all of the people who are surrounding that community will start feeling comfortable about expressing themselves and talking about their mental health. The second thing would be to listen to understand, which is really different from listening to respond or listening to fix. When you're listening to understand the person that you're listening to feels that they feel that you are trying to reach them deeply and they will be more willing to dig deeper to express themselves further to express themselves more often. And this is really the best way to address mental health is to listen deeply to people. And the third thing that I would ask you to try is to when you are experiencing somebody's artwork, whether you're looking at it or you're listening or you are participating in it, experience it as well to understand it rather than experiencing it to evaluate it, which is again a completely different thing. It puts you in the position to ask questions, to have the artist themselves think more deeply about their work and their connection to their work and how they are expressing the things that they need in their work and they will see that you are really invested in them and their artistic expression. So they will be more willing to do more of that in the future. So these are all things I think that are really simple for you and your friends to do in your friend community, in your home, in your school. And I know it's a much bigger question and this is only a very small piece, but Lex, thanks so much for that. It's a great question. Thank you. Hi, my name is Madison. I'm eight years old. We live in Connecticut. Our question is what is the best advice you could give to young black kids living in America? Thank you. Bye. Wow. Barrington in Madison. That's a question. The best advice. So here's a few things I'm going to suggest for all the young people who are watching today. And this is stuff I learned from my parents and the people in my community. Tracy talked about surrounding yourself with people, the right people. So the people in my community always taught me and my grandmothers, my aunts and uncles, my parents act like you belong in the room. The room is a metaphor for the world, for whatever space you find yourself in. Act like you belong in the room, okay? Which requires a certain level of confidence. Like you got to be confident. So when I was three years old, which was a little younger than you, Barrington in Madison, I went to a school in New York City. It was a preschool. And my mother had read to me a lot of books. She had read to me books by Lucille Clifton and Nikki Giovanni and Langston Hughes. Ask your parents to read you that. And Dr. Seuss. And my favorite book was a book called Fox in Sox. Fox, Sox, Knox, Box. Fox in Sox, Sox in Box. I love that book. I wanted it read to me all the time. So one day when I was in school, at the end of the day, I built a house out of some wooden blocks. And my house was fly, y'all. But this kid in my class came and knocked over my blocks. And I was mad. And so I went up to him and used the only weapons I had, my words. And I said to him, those were my blocks that you flipped. Lest you want a quick payback, better fix my quick block stack. And this kid started crying. Oops. And so when my mother came to school to pick me up, the teachers were like, Mrs. Alexander, we have a problem.  He intimidates the other kids with his words. And my mother said, thank you. We teach him to use his words. Here's what I'm saying to you. You got to go through life. Arrogant, super confident.  No, here's one of my favorite quotes. And I think Muhammad Ali said it. I am the greatest, not because I am better than anyone, but because no one is better than me. And I've tried to go through my life thinking that way. And I suggest, here's my advice. You got to go through life, Madison and Barrington, feeling confident, feeling arrogant.  Yes.  Love everyone else.  Be great. Know yourself. Surround yourself with the right people. Act like you belong to be in the room. That's my advice. Thank you, Barrington. Thank you, Madison. Hi, my name is Adedayo. I'm 16 years old and I live in New York. And my question is, what would you say to people who feel like their vote won't count? Adedayo, that's such a great question. Having just voted today with my 18 year old daughter, this is the first time that she voted and I'm so proud of her. I'm so proud of Gen Z. I'm so proud of the young people who are so eager to vote. I want to say to you that even though little ones in the room, if you care about your school lunches, if you care about the books in your libraries, if you care about the stores in your neighborhood, if you care about where your family can go to see a good doctor, if you care about the things that your government is doing to keep people healthy, then you gotta vote. You gotta vote. You gotta vote from everybody from the school board to the person who runs your block association to the president. It's really, really important. And I also want to say to you, women didn't get to vote until when the 1920 and 1920 and black folks got to vote in 1870. But what happened was then white folks tried to take the vote away from them. And when white folks tried to take the vote away from them, they made it very hard for them to vote. Sometimes they beat them up. Sometimes even worse than that. And that happened for a very, very long time. And even now, when some people went to vote this year, they had to wait three hours, four hours, five hours to vote. This is kind of similar to what happened back then. People are trying to, they're trying to keep people from voting. And you know why that is? Because voting is powerful. Remember enslaved people weren't allowed to learn to read, right? And the reason they weren't allowed to learn to read and write, reading and writing is powerful. And voting is powerful. Your one vote does a lot to change a system.  And think about this tool you're going to have when you turn 18, you're going to be able to walk into a room, cast that vote and change the world. So go do it. Thanks so much for that question. I did IO and I'll see you somewhere in Brooklyn. Take care. I live in New Jersey. My question is I am not old enough to vote. So how can I, in my peers, affect change in our communities? First of all, Stephen, where you at? You at your penthouse roof? Where you hanging out at? I'm trying to be where you are. It's a good question, my man. Good question, brother. You know what, you know, Jacqueline Woodson just said a lot about sort of all the reasons that we should be voting and all the things that we should be thinking about in your questions or what if I'm not old enough. First thing we have to know is there's no age requirement on, on effectively changing something. Right. So first you have to understand that there is no, I have to be a certain age order to make change or I have to be a certain age order. I have to be a certain age order. I have to be a certain age order. So I'm glad that you're already thinking that way because so many people feel like I got to wait until I'm 18 before I can make a change. I mean, I think about Marley Diaz who is on this call on this Zoom, right? Marley Diaz started to change things when she was very young. And the reason why she started to change things is because there was something that she wanted that she could not get. Right. That simple. And so she figured out a way to get it and to make sure other people, you know, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons that you're not going to see that. And also I think there's a bunch of answers I'm supposed to give you right now, like all the ways that you and your, your friends who are 11 years old, could play in protests in your school and in your neighborhood how you all can, can, can make sure that you can ask for what you want when it comes to your school lunches right. Like, like Jack, I wasn't just saying it or what you want to see in your neighborhood. You're not too young for that. Right. person's gonna change every single year. You'll have to reintroduce yourself to yourself every single year. But I wanna, I think sometimes what happens is we tell you all at 18, all of a sudden, you're supposed to have all the tools to go vote and then change the world. But what we never tell you is at 11 years old, this is the time to start developing courage. This is the time to start developing confidence. This is like Kwame Alexander said, to figure out what your version of that arrogance is going to be, right? To figure out how to tap into that greatness. Who are your friends? And do you all agree on the things that matter most? You don't gotta agree on everything, right? Cause friends don't gotta agree on everything. But on the things that matter most, like what's fair, what's right, what's just, right? And the reason why I think this is important, Stephen, is because one day, one day you're gonna be in a situation where it's gonna be time for you to actually make that change or push for something to change. It's gonna be time for you to vote. It's gonna be time for you to stand up for someone who might not be able to stand up for themselves. And if you haven't done that work to figure out where your courage is, you won't be able to tap into it to actually make the change happen, right? So I wanna make sure that you've had those conversations with yourself, talk to your friends about it, ask your friends, next time you're around all your buddies, ask them what they're afraid of.  I promise you down the line, it will be very important. It might be important for you next year. And lastly, what I want you to know is, I wanna say this to you. I love you, I love you, Steven.  And that's okay. Because I want you to be able to tap into this moment and be like, I know Jason Reynolds loves me, I know my parents got me, my friends love me, even if they're not here, I'm never actually by myself, especially when I'm doing the thing that I know is right. Okay, thank you for your question. I'm gonna come visit you in your fancy house, in the water, I'm gonna get me a red sweatsuit, get fly, and we can have this conversation in real life, man, please. The night is beautiful, so the faces of my people. The stars are beautiful, so the eyes of my people. Beautiful also is the sun. Beautiful also are the souls of my people. That was Langston Hughes, and this is us. This is us answering questions because questions are the things that keep us sort of confused or they stall us in our growth or we're unclear about how to move forward. And so we wanted to come together tonight to offer some answers. It may not be the answer, but some answers for you all so that you can spend your time, young people, being beautiful, embracing all the beauty that there is in this world in your life. I think we have a little time for some questions from you all. You all have been watching us on ArtsEmerson's Facebook and YouTube page as well as on the Howl Around page. So we're gonna take a few questions from you all and then we've got a treat, we've got a surprise for you. Question number one is, we're gonna ask, we're gonna ask Jelani memory to answer this question. So Jelani, here's the question. How has racial discrimination affected your journey to being successful today? You run a really successful publishing company, a kid's book about, so how has that kind of, how's the discrimination affected you and your work? You know, I think I can point to definitely some negative effects. You know, I always felt like the odd kid out growing up, going to mostly white schools with mostly white kids who were curious about my hair and my name and where I was from. And that caused a lot of uncomfortability in me as I grew up, but it also created, I think, some resilience. I had to learn about who I was at a really early age and I think that's a powerful thing for young kids of color is to find out who they are. And so I began to try and understand who I was, what was my identity? And now as I think about myself as an adult is I am full of resilience and the ability to overcome things. Do I, am I glad that the discrimination happened as a kid, whether that was not being included or getting left out or getting called names? No, I'm not glad about it, but it is part of what's made me who I am to this day and it's part of why I'm so passionate about pouring into young people, especially my own kids, for them to find out who they are, for them to find out what their identity is and for them to build that resilience, whether they face discrimination or not. Now it's important, Jelani, that these young people know what you're doing now.  Tell us what it is you do so they can see that journey from facing the challenges to now what you do and what's so special and unique about what you do. You got 30, 45 seconds, hold up a book, go. All right, let's see. So I wrote this book two years ago, a kid's book about racism as a way to talk to my six kids about race, culture, color and racism. I wrote that book only for that audience of six and now it has gone on to sell over 50,000 copies and I built a company around it. We have 27 plus books, we'll have 40 by the end of the year and we make them on challenging, empowering and important stories because we think these underrepresented voices need to be heard and so we go out and we find those authors, those voices, those stories to tell through our books. And just one last little bit is we write them all in a single day, we bring in authors so you don't have to be a prolific author that's the best in the world, a good writer, you just have to have a story. Roya, thank you, thank you, Jelani. This next question I'm going to throw to the coordinator of this event, Toshi Regan and I wanna throw this to her. I wanna recognize her for putting this together but also more importantly, maybe we can get another song out of the answer. Cause that was sister, that was so beautiful and empowering. We needed that, we needed that. One love. The question is, and we were talking about this before we started the rally. How are you taking all the racism that is happening in the world today in your life? How do you handle it and are you scared? This is the question we're talking about. This is such a great question. You are allowed to have your feelings. You're allowed to feel what you feel and you're allowed to tell the truth about it. One of the genius things about our people and our journey is that we did use the sounds that our body makes as a way to home ourselves as the way to have something that somebody can't take away from us. And a lot of that ended up being music. Maybe some of you have heard about the spirituals but it's not just the spirituals. We stay in our practice of creating, of drumming and sometimes they would be like, you can't have the drum but we would just be up in here like this and doing what we had to do to be who we are. And there's a great song and he goes, Lord, I got a tree of life. And then you can say everything that's happening to you, right? You can say the bad things. I've been tossed around but I got a right, Lord, tree of life. And these songs are adaptable. So even if you're like, I don't know about that Lord part you can just be like, oh, I got a, you can kick this song any way you need to. And the point is, is that you cannot keep all of this inside. It is actually, you deserve better. You deserve better. So don't keep it all up inside, get it out somehow and keep moving. Toshi, is there one album? Do we say album anymore? Is there one? Yeah, you guys say album. Is there one album that we can offer, that we can share with parents right now so they can get this particular album for their kids? They can listen to it as a family. What's that one big lovely, what's that one Toshi album that you wanna shout out right now for all of us to sort of gather? My favorite record that I've done is There and Back Again. I love that record. It's just one of my favorites. And I love the song There and Back Again. It's kind of a mix of a camp song and like a Sam Cook song and just all kinds of things going on. So yeah, There and Back Again is my one. And my daughter, I think her favorite record is called Toshi as basically my record called Toshi. So yeah. Word, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we got another question and this is from an adult, but we're gonna answer it cause you know, we're gonna answer it cause I don't have any more questions that are coming up right now. So, and I don't know. Well, let me go ahead and say it. All right, Jason. So here's the question. I know you're looking at me like really quiet, what you about to ask me? You already know what you're gonna say. Oh, I got a right. Right, right. And this, I'm gonna generalize this question and not specify it as it already is cause I wanna make it wider. What can white people in particular white, young white people do to use their privilege to fight racism without undermining those with less privilege? I was like, you know, that's a good question. Okay, okay, cool. I thought it was gonna be, what can you tell?  And I don't answer that question. I got refused to answer that question. But this question is all right. How do you use your privilege? First of all, the fact that you even know you have that privilege is step one, right? And the fact that you know that you must use it or that it would be nice, it would be helpful to use it for the benefit or for, to make life a little more equitable and fair for people who don't have it. That's step two, right? So far, we're already halfway there. But the question is, how do you not step on people who might already be doing this work or who might, you know, like, how do you not undermine the people who, black people, how do you not undermine black people? I think first of all, the first thing you have to know just because you have privilege don't mean you got, doesn't mean that, like privilege don't equal a halo, right? It don't equal a cape, you know? Privilege is sort of a superpower, but it doesn't actually make you a superhero. And you have to remember that, which means your job isn't to save people. Your job isn't to use your privilege to save people, right? If anything, your job to support, your privilege should be used as assistance, accompaniment, right? Your privilege is the difference between me singing an acapella and me singing with a guitar, right? Like, that's the point, right? And so the real question becomes, if you are trying to do good using your privilege, then before you enter into any space, the first thing that has to happen is you have to survey the space. You got to know exactly who it is that you're trying to, quote unquote, help. You got to ask some necessary questions first, right? Because a lot of the things that people step in to do have already been done by the person who's dealing with it, you got to see who's, like I have a prime example is like protests, right? So that young people are showing up to protest and droves and they're ready to sort of be a part of a movement and they feel good, young white people and they feel so energized and it's a good thing. But remember that just because you are part of the protest doesn't mean that you have to lead. There are already leaders there, right? When it comes time to talk, just know that you don't always have to be the person talking. There are already speakers there who never get a chance to speak in your job when they hand you the megaphone because you have the privilege is to create space for the other people to then get the megaphone to save their peace, right? Like that, and you take that metaphor and you blow it up and expand it into every other part of our lives. Even as you get older and all of a sudden you're in a business environment and you walk into the boardroom and you don't see no black people on the board and you say, hey, where the black people why is it not diverse? Boy, you see a black woman on the board who never gets to speak. Your job is to say, hey, let's hear what she has to say. It's probably very important, right? Like so these are the things, these are the ways that it works but you never ever ever assume that your job is to be a savior or that you know that because you have privilege you know more than everybody else. That's the thing that becomes harmful. Word. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Ola Bemisola, this is for you. My question is, did I pronounce your name correctly, sister? Yes, you did. Ola Bemisola. Wonderful. My question is, how can I support the Black Lives Matter movement and help other kids support it? We both have daughters, so we both got kids and kids, they wanna know what can they do and how can they get people around them to do the same thing? Like that's a legitimate thing and it's raised on their minds a lot, I know. That's a real question. And it's hard for me, like other people have talked about this before because part of me feels like it shouldn't be on kids to do so much of this work that we as adults in supporting them and doing the things that we need to do, the focus should be on that. But it is a real question for kids. And my daughter, who you mentioned Kwame, she was feeling this very strongly last spring and she wrote about it. She's a musician. She wrote poetry, she wrote songs. She wrote an op-ed. She wrote very honestly about her feelings and shared some ideas that after they were published helped other kids feel like, okay, my feelings are valid. I'm gonna express myself. So that's one thing that I think kids can do is, as Tracy said, speak up and say how you feel and be honest about how you feel and be honest about when you feel like someone might be saying Black Lives Matter or you see it as a slogan or a trend, but you don't feel that it really matters in your day-to-day life to the people who are around you, to the people who may have some measure of authority over you, to the people who are saying things that they're just not doing. So speaking up is one thing.  Ask the adults around you to do their jobs and support you. Other than expressing yourself, speaking up and asking the adults to step up, take care of yourself.  And just knowing that and holding on to that in spite of all the things that can be happening around you and all of the things that can really hurt, knowing that is an act of courage, being joyful is an act of resistance. So I say hold on to those things. Thank you, thank you. We're gonna bring Toshi Regan back in right now and she's going to sing an intro to our special guest.  I'm good, I'm good. You know what I would like to do is uplift Rakesh Kwantu who it did the opening song that you heard and it's gonna enlighten us again at the end.  So I got you Rakesh, he's brilliant.  But I am so excited to introduce this next person and you can go to Levar Burton.com and see all the spectacular things this man is doing. So without further ado, please welcome Levar Burton. Thank you Toshi very much, I love you. Every single one of us, every single one of us is here for a specific purpose. If you're here, you are here for a reason. If you have a body, you have come here to do a very specific thing. We are all on a mission, we human beings and that mission is to deliver our gift. We all have something special that we are here to offer the world. Like, I love to read aloud. And when I was in the third grade, I had a teacher named Mrs. Twig. Mrs. Twig would sometimes want to go to the teacher's lounge and make herself a cup of tea and she would put me in front of the class with a book because I was the best reader in third grade. And Mrs. Twig knew that when she came back with her cup of tea, that there would still be order in the class, that the kids would still be in their seats and everything would be good. Well, Mrs. Twig, outside of my family was the first person to recognize that I had a gift, a talent and that's what I want to share with you today. Not only do you have a gift to deliver but you don't have to be totally responsible for discovering what that is. We all have people in our lives that help us define why we're here, what our specific offering to the world is. We don't have to do it alone. So I'm gonna ask you to engage in an experiment with me.  Just 30 seconds, focus on that person, send them some love and appreciation and I will watch the time. None of us gets through this thing called life alone. We are never by ourselves on this journey. I'm offering every single one of you who are in this moment, peace, and blessings this day and every day. We are in this thing together, y'all. Thanks for joining. Thank you, thank you. LeVar, go ahead and stay on the video and I'm gonna bring everybody else back on one by one in a second. But LeVar, tell us the name of a Jason Reynolds book that kids should read. Mm, boy, my mind just went blank. I put you on the spot. See what? I think you read from Look Both Waves. I know, Look Both Waves, thank you. Look Both Waves, Look Both Waves, absolutely. Jason's one of my favorite storytellers. I love that, man. I love me some Jason Reynolds. Kids, y'all gotta read Look Both Waves. It's short stories, LeVar cosigns on it. Tracy, can you come back on? Can you name an Ole-Bemme Solar book that kids should read? Oh yeah, I'm gonna go with Two Naomi's. I love, and that's a series, so it's a Too Far. There's Two Naomi's and then Naomi's too. Word, word. Hey, Ole-Bemme Solar, can you come on and name a book by Tracy that everybody, all the kids that are listening should read. A book, I can name a whole series, the Jumbies, the Jumbies, the Jumbies. The Jumbies. The Jumbies, Rise of the Jumbies, the Jumbie Guys Revenge, Jumbies all the way. Jelani, come on back on. And we've already seen one of Jelani's books that he's written, so we know which book that is. A kid's book about racism. We're gonna ask Jason to come back on and to name a book by Jacqueline Woodson that you recommend we all read. Ooh, there's so many of them. I should probably name the new one, but the truth is that the one I love, one of the ones I love the most, gotta be Brown Girl Dreaming. Brown Girl Dreaming. I think it's a masterpiece. Brown Girl Dreaming. Toshi and Letta come back in. And Toshi, you recommended a couple of albums. Can you share with us Letta, some work by Letta that you think we all should pay attention to? Oh yeah, you should pay attention to Letta as a human being. You should pay attention to Letta. Letta is a powerful part of the residency I have at Arts Emerson and has designed a project. It's a five book project and it is a collaboration between artists who are gonna make these book covers and then the book covers are gonna be in public safely and people are gonna be able to write their own stories and put them into the book. And then the book will travel around and keep gathering stories. And one day when we can all be together, all of the books will be someplace where people can actually view them and move through them and probably have to make a digital platform. But that's Letta, like Letta be thinking about all kinds of things. So yeah, just Letta as a superstar. And I do have to shout out Jackie's last book because Jackie, I've been waiting for Jackie to do a sports book forever. I'm a big sports fan and my favorite sport is football. And I have been boycotting the NFL for like eight years because of how they've been. And Jackie's latest book is Before the Ever After. And it is such a beautiful story about a young musician and about his dad who is a football player. And it's basically my whole thing. So I gotta shout that out. And it's in Burt's. Shout out to Jackie and it's in Burt's. Five of Burt's. Shout out to Jackie. We love you, Jackie. We love you, Jackie. We are the genius of Genius, Jackie. And Jackie's getting this love because she's a certified genius. All right, Jackie, can you share a book by Kwame Alexander? I gotta shout out Muhammad Ali. Come on, man. Becoming Muhammad Ali is fire. If anyone has not read it yet, well, it's new. I mean, we can talk about the crossover too. We can talk about your body of work, but I think the thing about being such a Muhammad Ali fan and getting to see his young life in Kentucky and his early days as a boxer and seeing it in both prose and verse is fire. So I'm all about seeing myself some caches clay on the page and you brought it. And let it nearly, I just gotta throw your ear into the mix, you know, which is a brilliant collection of poetry.  Thank you. I want to shout out Marley Dias gets it done. So can you. And Marley wrote that book. I want to say that she was like eight. Six.  Three and a half years old. Right. Yes. That book really sums up night. Getting it done. Like we got to put in the work and we've been trying to engage and entertain and empower young people throughout this entire Q&A call. They put out the call. We responded and one love to everyone. Thank you. I mean, can I say something right quick? I'm sorry, really quickly just because we got to make sure we give our flowers LeBart Burton and American Cornerstone. Right. And I think we got to make sure why we have him while he's upright, he's breathing, he's healthy and he does everything he can for us. He ain't that old. I know, but still. I mean, I'm saying like, but he been around, everybody on this call, he been around all like, we all have experiences with him in some capacity. And I just want to make sure that he knows and that the world knows that like, he's one of the greatest living Americans and he's woven into the fibers of American culture in a way that not many people are and we just have to acknowledge him. Yeah. And because of him, we're all here. I mean, thank you for, you know, telling that original story and reading rainbow and all the ways that you made us realize how much our stories matter. And the truth is, he doesn't age. He doesn't age. Look at him. He doesn't age. And look, when I first met him, I said, bro, hey, you look like this. He said, I live in California. That was his response to me. All right, look, thank y'all so much for tuning in. Toshi Regan is going to take us out with a final special treat. Oh, no, not true.  Thank you so much. And I want to say, VJ, you can kick us off on home. Thank you so much for taking care of us tonight. Thank you. Good night, everyone. Good night, everybody. Love y'all. Yeah. And now the sun is burning, I had to pull the trigger. I had to raise the sound, I had to make it do it. I had to pull the crowd so I could be everything. And what is for you?


What's good, everybody? Chris from gashescasebrakes.com doing 2023 Panini National Bowl VIP 10-pack break random first letter first name number two Here's our list from A down to W with a couple combo spots in between the way it works If you get spot B hit some bright ceiling goes to you so on and so forth for every name on the card Let's put it on the car. All right. Let's do it though random dice our list Brian all the way down to Aaron grab the last two spots for last boss mojo Thanks everyone for getting in and those letters from a down to W Patrol the dice in randomized. Good luck y'all six and three nine times nine times for both one two three four five six seven eight and nine ninth and final time Aaron with the last ball mojo down to Matt nine times for the letters one two three four five six seven eight and nine ninth and final time The Q plus O plus all other letters combo down to E plus F plus you so our combo spots Will be our bookends. I'll give you a minute if you want to trade see if anybody's here in the chat That's in this break, but this is the way it shakes out right now Aaron with Q plus O plus all other letters Nicholas with C and K Ben with D Steven N Matt with A and P Austin with S George would be Scott with T Matt with L Sean with M Brian with J Michael with G Brian with W and Aaron with H Jason W with R and Matt with E plus F plus All right. We'll pause the video real quick. We'll see if there any trade chatter I'll let you know if there's when we come back when we do work 10 packs of the national gold VIPs. Yeah, back y'all. Thanks All right, we're back no trade chat. So let's just get right to the dang thing. Let's do it 10 packs the VIP gold national packs I Actually, I've seen what's in these I didn't break this. I think Joe or Jason broke the first 10 And I haven't even got the store so switch screens There's a 10 packs right there, but let's double check so I do know how to count one two three four five six seven eight nine I Can count I promise you Let's get started y'all. Thanks again. Good. Oh, what? first up Bijan Robinson nice on the Cracked ice there Mickey Mantle Bijan 95 out of 149 Spot B going to George the Mickey Mantle going to spot M and Sean Kevin Garnett on the red crack dice spot K It's gonna go to Nicholas and a rated prospect. Ah, man Thompson spot a and Matt in this twin Afsar to top five picks in this past NBA draft The Kevin Garnett red cracked ice 156 out of 199 Three go from the back first. Yeah So we got Greg Maddox spot G Purple crack dice George Bretz To for spot G a G pack for Michael four out of 50 To Hall of Famers right there Cracked ice go from the back again Yanis on the hyper one more G She'll crack dice gonna be Mariano Rivera Spot and it's gonna go to Sean Robinson 65 out of 149 Porto you go to our website jazby's case breaks calm get a spot to a break come back here when it's full We'll get you man.  That's gonna go to Bryant 148 out of 199 Gonna be Christian Christian Christian pull this Christian pull this is our first soccer Green on the cracked ice Keegan Murray Nice one for spot K. Nicholas the green 17 out of 99 Nice rookie from the Sacramento Kings Seven part from the back is an auto. Wow That's why we maybe do it from the front rated rookie John Mechie the third spot J. And Brian We are not nice queen with the chrome who hashtag who do you collect? John Mechie the third nice We hit an auto last card in that pack Gonna be another White blue cracked ice to John Robinson one more for George and spot B 119 out of 149 Gonna be Alan Iverson on the base for spot A and Matt Other red cracked ice another Mariana Rivera for Sean and spot M 156 out of 199 I Further away, I go the better it looks all right second to last pack pack nine Gonna be J. When during spot J and Brian's on the base Of the red of the crack that's on the nice rookie Jabari Smith junior a little bit of a color match for spot J a J pack 198 out of 199 On the Jabari J pack And the last pack things again y'all I'm an upload number three right after this another 10 packs in Last one. I see some double color here. So we'll start off here But another green cracked ice gonna be Randy Moss Spot are that's gonna go to Jason and a tiger shy. There we go. Good luck y'all For the cowboys Troy Aikman I had a sharp right there spot tee and Scott non numbered He's animal print short print animal print short print types non numbered Troy Aikman nice tiger shy For spot tee and a nice rainy moss going to Jason 17 out of 999 All right, thanks y'all pretty nice right there baseball basketball Football little bit of soccer just a little bit With some nice color got an auto John met you the third It's nice stuff though Thanks again y'all another 10 packs will be up on the site Jaspies case breaks calm. Thanks again y'all. Bye


What is going on it's Jacob here today's video is going to cover binge eating and how I get over it I know I know binge eating can affect people from all walks of life today's video is going to cover Binge eating whilst you're on a diet so for example myself if I'm trying to you know actively drop body fat and I go and binge eat. This is what I'm gonna be talking about So how I get over it I can give you all the tips all the physical tips What to eat how much cardio to do to get yourself back down and back on track But at the end of the day, I think the biggest hurdle in getting over binge eating is actually mental and Once you're armed with a few a few things once you're armed with a bit of knowledge about how your body works about how water weight works and You know train yourself to sort of forget about what's happened and just look into the future I think you're in great stead to sort of get over it as soon as possible So let's say for example, I am dieting on 2,500 calories a day and I I feel good about it I get to Sunday and I think fuck, you know, I've I've stuck to my diet definitely lost fat I can have a few things right so I start picking at that and then I'll start picking at that and then I might go and buy something to eat from the takeaway and Before you know it, you know, it's it's really it's on you if you are tracking everything You continue to track on that Sunday. You probably won't go over but you know Sometimes I do forget to track and at the end of the day.  I'll worry about it tomorrow. I've stuck to my diet so well this week.  Just just get some BCAA as we'll get some water in your system Go for a walk and come back and you know, you will be feeling a lot better a lot lighter straight away Depending on how much you ate night before obviously, so that would be my first tip Don't even worry about tracking things these first couple of days, you know, just make sure you limit the salt You limit the sugar you limit the junk and make sure most of your meals are based around a nice clean protein source And what that's gonna do is it's gonna start flushing out that excess water weight that you've you've retained overnight My second I'm just looking my scales over there my second tip and probably the most important would be Don't go anywhere near a scale.   I ate all that food. I enjoyed it. It tasted great, but I can't continue like that I've got to get back on the diet.  Well, you can think about it, but write it down and put it away You know that's there.  Just do what you can on that day and The next day and come Wednesday. You'll be back on track So that was my advice on binge eating and how I get over it binge eating whilst on a diet It's not the end of the world But the last thing you want to do is to go and binge two days in a row I think one day is something you can get over pretty easily Don't go near the scales hit some nice cardio some light cardio Make your meals nice and light around a good clean protein source minimal junk Obviously if you get it, you know, if you're already dieting you're gonna know that already But I think the damage will be pretty, you know pretty minor So that was my that was my video on that. I hope I helped you guys If anything, it's it's more mental getting up that Monday morning You've really got to just crack into it forget about what happened like I've said and you'll be you'll be fine So have a great day until next time That was me. I'll see you in the next one. Peace


We said that if we want to communicate across the Internet or a network using IP-based protocols, the protocols themselves don't have built-in security mechanisms. There's usually add-ons, some extensions that add the encryption and authentication. So we started to go through that when you want to securely communicate in the Internet, there's different options. There's not just one way to do it. So we started to go through using some example stack. Let's encrypt inside the application.  It's good because it's end-to-end or host-to-host encryption in that we encrypt at the start point and encrypt finally at the end point, protecting the data all the way between hosts. Then we saw an alternative, slightly different transport level, where we, as the application, think of it from the application developer, if you're creating your new application, whether it's a mobile application, one for a desktop, doesn't matter, but an application that communicates across the Internet to a server instance. So you're writing the software for the client and server with application-level security, you implement the security mechanisms inside your application. Someone downloads your application, the application includes the encryption and other security mechanisms. With transport-level security, when you develop your app, you don't implement the security mechanisms.  And the common one is TLS or SSL, again, same protocol.  Normally, an application calls an API, a function call that you can think send data. So when you write your application, an Internet application, it calls a function, send data using TCP, and then the operating system sends the data across the network. You, as the programmer, don't have to deal with TCP. It's done by the OS. If you're using transport-level security, what you do is you call a function, which is send data using TLS, for example, using encryption. And then the operating system takes the data that you want to send, does the encryption, does all the security operations, and then sends it using TCP. So from the application development process, it's much simpler. You don't need to implement the security. The OS does it for you. But of course, you depend upon the operating system. No, TLS is just for TCP. And that's one of the limitations here, that TLS is widely supported. There are many operating systems support it, but it's built for TCP data only. If your application is using UDP, then TLS cannot be used. There are some other protocols that work with UDP, but they're just not very common. So not all operating systems support those other ones. So if you want your application to work on any system, it's much less likely if you want to use UDP. So in practice, usually, if you want to use transport-level security, it only applies if your application uses TCP, which is most applications, but not all. So there's some trade-offs there. There's no best solution. Both of them provide end-to-end or host-to-host encryption in that encrypt at the source host, decrypt at the destination. That's good. Let's look at some alternatives. Moving down, encrypt at the network layer. So your application just generates normal data, sends via TCP or UDP, which creates an IP datagram, and there's an extension of the Internet protocol called IPsec, security for IP. And that does the encryption. So that takes the IP datagram, and there's different ways to do it, but you think it encrypts the datagram, or at least encrypts the data inside that IP datagram. So you take the IP datagram, it has a header and data, IPsec can encrypt that data, and it's sent across the Internet. Again, just using normal IP because the header is the same, and it's delivered to the destination host, B, and the IPsec here decrypts the data and sends it up via the transport layer to the application, so the application receives the decrypted data. So there's a third option, network level security. Still, in this case or in this example, it's host-to-host encryption. That's a good thing. If I encrypt it at host A, the data stays encrypted all the way across the Internet until it gets to host B. An advantage of using this is that it works for any transport layer. Whether we're using UDP or TCP, the application just uses them normally, sends to IP, and then that encrypts the data. It doesn't matter if it's UDP, TCP, or something else, even. So this applies for any transport protocol. Any application can use it. So again, as the application developer, you don't need to worry about the encryption. You just, again, rely on the operating system features, in this case, within IP. But again, you are relying on the operating system. The operating system must support IPsec. So if you've got an OS that doesn't support it, then you cannot use this form of encryption. It's not as widely used as TLS. So it's not as widely deployed in practice for different reasons. So you'll see that it's not so common to be used like this, especially for end-to-end encryption. It requires some configuration. So one reason it may be not widely used in practice is because it requires some configuration on the computer. So the person who runs this computer, they install the application, but they must set up IPsec. And it's not trivial to set it up. So it usually requires some configuration changes on the operating system to set it up correctly. Whereas with TLS, there's nothing really to do from the setting up of the operating system perspective to get it to work. So that's one of the reasons why it's not so common. But it's an option. So encrypt our IP datagram contents. So the computer is configured to apply the security mechanisms. And IPsec is the main one. There are some other alternatives, but that's the main one at the network level. Good thing. It supports all applications, transport protocols. So you just install your normal application, your web browser, your email client, instant messaging, anything that you install that's using IP to send data. If you set up IPsec at both endpoints, everything's encrypted across the internet. So that's the advantage here. It doesn't matter what application or transport protocol you use. It's host to host. Or we'll see, at least in that example picture, it was host to host encryption, a good thing. But in the next few slides, we'll see that there's some alternatives where it's not host to host. The problem, it requires support and often some user configuration in the operating system. So it's not something that the user is transparent to the user. So the user must do something, usually set up some parameters in the operating system to get it to work correctly. The next few slides will show a variation of using IPsec, which are a bit more common. And we'll see some advantages of them and used in what we'll call tunneling mode. So staying at the network level security is another way that IPsec can be used. Here, let's say I have my laptop. Remember host A was my laptop, my wireless access point, some router on our LAN. Then there's the internet. And then there's a router at the destination network. So here's some server that I want to connect to. And there's a router that's connected to that. One way to configure using IPsec is to run IPsec between hosts and routers. So in this case, my computer, my laptop, is configured to use IPsec, which means that when my applications generate some data, and I can set it up so that any application that creates data that wants to send across the internet, IPsec will encrypt it. But I can set it up so that IPsec will encrypt it. And what we'll do is use tunneling such that it sends the original packet all encrypted to some intermediate destination, this other router here, which will then decrypt and send on to the destination host. So let's see how that works. So again, I want to communicate it from A to B. And I've tried to draw the IP packet that would be created in the normal case. Assume no encryption. Then what happens is my application creates some data, maybe TCP is being used, and eventually an IP datagram is created. I've drawn it here as AB data. Maybe I'll just show what that means. Here's our pictures. In this case, so this is our same one, what do I mean by this AB data? I mean that's an IP datagram, the original one. So what's an IP datagram? The IP header and some data. So that's created in the normal case. And the IP header, remember, contains a number of fields including a source address and a destination address. And if host A is sending to host B, the source address when this is created will be A and the destination will be B, the IP address of A and B. So there's our IP datagram. And instead of me drawing it like this all the time, I've just summarized it as in that picture up there. So A sending to B, source address is A, destination is B, the data is what's inside, whatever the application created. That's the normal IP datagram. That's created. But then what IPsec does is it can take that entire datagram, encrypt it, and put it inside another one. So we take this, so that's created, and it's supposed to be sent across the internet to B. But IPsec takes all of that, and we can think we take it and encrypt the contents. So we take our original IP datagram, draw it again, and you'll see that this is our source address is A. So the same datagram, but encrypt it. That is take the entire contents and encrypt that. So it just becomes a random set of bits, but then put that inside another IP datagram. So really attach a header. This is done at computer A. So the first IP datagram is the normal IP datagram created. But then IPsec goes to work. It takes this, encrypts it, and then attaches a new IP header, where the new IP header has a source address of A. It's coming from A and a destination address in this example of router Y, which is if you scroll up, you can see this router here. Because we've set up our computer. So this assumes we've set IPsec on the computer to do the encryption and send the data to router Y. We'll see what Y does when it receives it. So this packet is this AB data. And this second one I've drawn here is summarized here. So the encrypted original packet in red and this new header, which is the source of A, destination of Y. That happens at computer A. Remember, our aim is to get data from A to B. In this case, the IP address here, the source is A, destination is Y. So computer A has an IP address. So whatever the IP address is, the original packet, the source address is the computer that creates it. The destination is who we want to send it to, A and B. We take that, encrypt everything, including the header. Now, if we encrypt the header, there's no way to send that across the internet, because the routers need the header to be able to know where to send it. So what we do is we encrypt all of that and attach a new header where the source is still A. It's coming from A. But let's send it to Y, this router. We send that. And now we send it who to, where we send it to the next device to reach the destination Y. We send it to our access point. So this is, say, my laptop up to the access point. That's normal. The access point gets it, sends it to the next, the local router inside SIT. And then we use the normal internet routing features of, this router X has a datagram. Header says, source A, destination Y. So it uses its routing table to say, OK, I need to get this to Y. So I send it to the next router, which is some next router on the internet, which gets it. OK, destination Y, they keep sending until it reaches computer Y, router Y in this case. So between A and Y, all the intermediate devices, they just look at the header and look, well, who's the destination? Who do I send it to to reach this destination? And the result is that this one eventually reaches Y, router Y. Router Y receives it. And router Y is running IPsec as well. And it's configured. OK, it's received an IP datagram, destination Y. What it does is it recognizes this is an IPsec datagram. It removes the outer header. It decrypts this data. It was encrypted before. It decrypts, because that's the receiving endpoint. And we see what we have left. After we decrypt, we have this original packet left. We decrypt the red part. We get this back. And router Y is configured. OK, we have a datagram. We've just used IPsec. I've received a datagram and decrypted. And actually, the destination is not me. It's B. So what router Y does now is realizes, OK, I need to send this further. I need to send this unencrypted datagram onto B. So router Y now sends it to B. And B receives this datagram. And that's shown here, this AB data. So this is one way that we use IPsec. We don't have to use it on the endpoints. We can use it on the routers as well. And we'll see the advantages in a moment. So the result, A encrypted the datagram before it sent it, sent the encrypted datagram to Y, router Y. When Y receives it, it decrypts and sends the original datagram onto the final destination B. And you see, all right, the red line shows us where the data is sent encrypted. So if anyone intercepts on the wireless LAN in this access point on this internet here, if someone intercepts, they see the encrypted form of the data. They cannot see the original data. So we still have our protection across this portion of the path. But we don't have any encryption between router Y and host B. The data is sent unencrypted. So this is not protected. So there's a disadvantage. But often it may be safe because if host B is inside some physical LAN, so inside some company LAN, and the router is the router for that LAN, then we may trust these links inside the organization. It's common that within an organization, we trust that no one can get access, like get access to the building and intercept on the links. Or it's much harder to do so. So we send the data unencrypted to B. What's the advantage? Why do this versus what was the previous one? Why do this one instead of this end to end or host to host encryption is better because we encrypt all the way. But the advantage of doing the decryption and encryption on the router is that we don't need to have this host B configured to use IPsec. It's just a normal host. It doesn't use any security mechanisms. Now imagine this destination LAN has not just host B, but thousands of computers inside. So this is the router for some organization. And there are thousands of computers in there. Rather than every computer have to be configured to use IPsec for end to end encryption, it's the router that does it on their behalf. So the router provides the security across the public internet portion of the network. But internal on the organization, we don't use any encryption because we trust internal networks, but not external networks. We could, and with all of these examples I go through, we can use multiple levels of encryption and also encryption across different portions. So we could apply some encryption here. But the advantage of doing everything on the router is that we don't have to set up these computers to use IPsec. As I said before, IPsec involves some configuration on the computer. You need to have the software set up and you need to have some configuration parameters set. So if we've got thousands of computers inside some organization, then instead of having to configure every single one and make sure every operating system supports IPsec, just do it all on the router. So at least from if this is internal to the organization, at least the external communications are protected using encryption. So this is a trade-off again, using network-level security but not end to end, but using a router as one of the endpoints. And an example where this is commonly used, again, here's our internal organization, let's go to that picture, an example configuration is that here's our, the separation is that this is our internal network inside some organization. And we trust that. So we don't need encryption across the links inside the organization because it's very hard for someone to intercept on those links, assuming we're only protecting against outsiders. And the rest from this organization is external, the public internet. And maybe this is one of the users that's working at home. So one of the employees and they need to access the internal network to do some things working at home. And between the router Y and the rest is the public internet. And the organization cannot trust the communications across the public internet. So what they do is that the home user has their computer configured to use IPsec. The router that connects into the internal network is configured to use IPsec. And they're set up such that they encrypt the data between the home user and the router. Effectively giving this home user secure access to the internal network, to the organization's network. And they can be set up such that they can do things. There's some other extension so they can do things as if they're sitting on this network, as if they're internal to the network. Because by encrypting all across the internet, no one can intercept. And this is the concept used in a virtual private network. So this concept of, well, we have a private communications across a public internet by using encryption across this portion, the public form of the network. And it essentially allows this host A to communicate on this internal network as if they were actually had their computer on the internal network. So that's a common setup of a virtual private network to allow an external user to access an internal network, to connect into your work from home, for example. Any questions on this example of IPsec? Here's another one. We don't have to run IPsec between hosts and hosts. We don't have to be host to router. We can even be router to router. Here's, all right, so in this example, let's draw it again. As an example, this is RungSit. And this portion is our campus. Whereas this part is the public internet. So although it's not to scale, so this is a server at RungSit and our router that connects the RungSit campus to the internet.  We don't trust the internet. It's a public network. When we send our data across it, assume someone could intercept. So if we want secure communications between computers between our two campuses, we can use IPsec in this manner. Run it on the routers that connect our internal network, so internal here to the external internet. And from this router at RungSit, from the internal RungSit campus to the external internet, run IPsec on them. So again, host A sends something to host B. There's no encryption used here. We send it across the wireless LAN. We trust the internal network as an example. We hope that no one will be able to intercept across this portion of the network. We send it internally to our local router. And then that is set up to encrypt the data there. So the original IP datagram from A to B is the data. That datagram goes to the access point. It goes to router X. And then the IPsec at router X is set up to take that datagram, encrypt it, and add a new header saying from X to Y. And it's sent across the internet destination Y. So from the routers and the internet perspective, they see a datagram. It needs to get to Y. So it's sent across the internet. It gets to router Y. IPsec receives it, decrypts, or removes the outer header, decrypts, and we get the original datagram back. And it sends it on to B. And B receives exactly what A created. So in this case, we have encryption across the public network, not internal. The advantage, even more so than before, none of the hosts need to be set up to use any encryption.  All the hosts internal on each of the campuses just use their normal applications to communicate. But everything sent across the public internet between the campuses is encrypted. So this is another example of a virtual private network. So communications between host A and B are private from the perspective of the public internet. So it's shifting the security to a device, in this case, a router that has the advantage of it can encrypt everything for all hosts, no matter how they're set up. What's the disadvantage here? What's the problem? For example, comparing the three IPsec cases, this one versus this one. Let's compare these two first. What's the disadvantage of router to router versus the previous case? Okay, so we have no encryption here. So there's our first problem. We must trust this portion of the network. If we cannot trust it, then we have a problem because someone could intercept our data. But if we can trust it and we'll come back to why we may trust it in some cases in a moment, but if we can trust this portion of the network, then this seems okay. Maybe what's another problem? Performance problem? What's the problem of doing this? A potential problem? If the connection fail or be more specific, if what fails? If, okay. The encryption, everything depends upon this router. Let's say we have not just host A, but we have hundreds of hosts in here, all sending outside. Then everything goes to router X, and that does the encryption. So we depend on this router to do the encryption. Now, all right, if this router fails, then of course we cannot encrypt and send out. But maybe more practical, there may be performance limitations here. Encryption takes time. So now this router must not just receive packets and send, but receive packets, encrypt, and then send. And encryption is actually a processor intensive operation. So we need a faster router to handle the data being sent out. So there's some performance implications there. So this is using the concept called tunneling. And we're not trying to explain tunneling too much, but this idea of we see we're putting the original IP datagram inside another IP datagram. And that's common in tunneling. So we had our original one, header was saying from A to B, we take all of that IP datagram and put that as the data inside another IP datagram. So we have a second header. And this is the concept used in tunneling. We've seen example, I've shown examples using IPsec. There are other technologies that will do this creation of a virtual private network from one point to another. So IPsec can be used in this tunneling mode. Other common ones, you may see a PPTP, L2TP, some tunneling protocols that are used to essentially provide virtual private networks. This concept of connecting host to router or even router to router and encrypting at those points. And the advantage is that the support for those protocols and the configuration that's set up is done only on those end points. So we only need to set up two routers to support this as opposed to set up thousands of hosts. So for the network maintenance, it's much easier. Of course, it does not provide end-to-end encryption. That's our disadvantage. We must trust some portion of the network. How do we trust this portion of the network? Why could we trust this? The wireless LAN is a questionable part. You know that you can very easily intercept across a wireless LAN. It's very easy. And in fact, for a wired LAN, I said the other day that maybe if I was malicious, I could plug a device into there and tap into the wired link. But that requires me as the malicious user to get physical access to this point, to this building. So let's say we have a security guard that watches everyone who comes in. It's much harder to get physical access to the building. But with wireless LAN, with this wireless access point, to intercept, you don't have to be inside the building. You could be outside maybe in the car park because the wireless signal travels across a, is not just restricted to the building. So you could be out on the street and still intercept packets being sent across the wireless LAN. That's why wireless LAN security is a problem. So in practice, we can set up wired LANs which are reasonably secure because you need physical access to the building to tap into it. But wireless LAN is much harder. So if we want to trust this internal network, we need to deal with the wireless LAN. And I think most of you know that you can do encryption across just the wireless link. You can set up your wireless LAN to encrypt the frames just being sent across that portion of the path. An example of, this is an example of link level security. Encrypt at one endpoint of the link, decrypt at the other endpoint. So it's not for the entire path. But it's very useful when some of our links are using wireless technologies or less secure technologies. So with Wi-Fi or 802.11 in the past, there was something called WEP as the encryption protocol, but had some flaws. And the common one today is referred to as WPA, Wi-Fi Protected Access. And there are some variations to it, some different versions and different options with it. But in general, Wi-Fi Protected Access takes our, so our application generates data, IP datagram is created. Normally we send a wireless LAN frame across our wireless link from laptop to access point. Think of WPA encrypts that before it's sent. We encrypt and send such that if someone intercepts by listening in out in the street, all they see is the encrypted frame. They don't see the contents. The access point when it receives it decrypts. So that's another form of encryption. So an example of link level security just encrypt across the links. Both of them need to be set up to do the encryption, to use WPA in this case. And there are different ways to do it, but the simplest way is that I set up my laptop to, as the user, I enter in some secret. And that secret key is also set up on the access point. Okay, so this is convenient if you're using, say, home networks. You know, or you operate the access point. You also operate your laptop, so you can set up and set up, choose the secret key on the access point, choose the secret key or enter it in on the laptop or tablet, and they will encrypt using that secret key. So that works fine. It becomes a little bit harder to set up this key management aspect of it when you have multiple access points and many different users. Because if I set a secret on my access point, how do I get every other student to know that secret without maybe writing it down on a web page? How do I conveniently distribute this secret to you? So that's a problem with securing wireless links, getting, setting up both endpoints to use the same secret. But there are ways to do that in enterprise networks, in large networks. Yeah, so the same issue with the public Wi-Fi. There's an access point that's provided by TOT somewhere in I, down in the other building. And they allow anyone to use it. But again, we have this problem. If you want to use encryption across that, both endpoints need to know some secret. And typically in most simple access points, there's no way for them to do that rather than manually share that secret. So how does the operator of the access point get that secret to every user that wants to use it? Not easy. All right, maybe print it out on a piece of paper if you go into McDonald's and they want to give you free secure Wi-Fi, they can print out a piece of paper, the secret for today and you use it. But that's very inconvenient. So setting up the wireless link to use encryption has an issue with convenience. There are ways that you can use another server that will help with the setup. For example, use HTTPS to connect from some special application to some internal server that will then set up the secret for the wireless encryption. But that gets more complex. But for now, just understand that we can use link-level encryption across, in this example, Wi-Fi, but other technologies also have link-level encryption. How to set that up is something will not go into it. But it's interesting. So many wireless technologies, especially have encryption capabilities. Bluetooth, different wireless networks, mobile phones have GSM, uses encryption for voice calls, sometimes secure, sometimes not. But there are many different link-level encryption techniques. Again, what's the advantage? All data sent across the link, it doesn't matter what application you're using, HTTP, SMTP, email, TCP, UDP, doesn't matter if you're even using IP, maybe you're using other network protocols. It's all encrypted. So that's the advantage. The problem, it only applies to that link. And it usually requires configuration of the endpoints. So setting up this shared secret key on those both endpoints. In reality, we use a combination. Okay, so although I don't have a picture, we could use, in this case, WPA across the wireless LAN, trust the wired LAN, and IPsec across the public internet. So we can start to combine the different technologies and approaches. We can use just skipping back. You'll see that sometimes, although it may not be necessary, there may be wireless LAN encryption and also transport layer encryption. So it's not just one solution that's used on its own. You can use a combination, multiple levels of security. And I think that brings us to the end of this aspect of internet security. Any questions on, so we've gone through application, transport, network and different variations of network level security and just quickly one on link level security, just as an example. Any questions on those four? Could we use IPsec compared to the, how fast or how delayed would you be? Okay, so we said that there's issue of performance. So if there was no IPsec, we have a router receives a packet and just sends it. And if there's IPsec, a router receives a packet, encrypts it and then send it. So what's the performance degradation here? Well, it's a time to decrypt and at the receiver to decrypt. How long does it take to encrypt? Did you do in, you've used OpenSSL, in OpenSSL you can do a speed test. If you just run OpenSSL speed, it will give you some typical results of how long it takes to encrypt data of a particular size. So using AES, how many bytes per second you can encrypt. And I don't remember the numbers, but you can see that it's in the order of, I don't know, maybe tens, hundreds of microseconds per packet, maybe milliseconds, it differs depending upon the CPU. But you can measure that and you can work out how much impact it would have on your applications. But it adds something that's noticeable if there's thousands of packets going through this router per second. But I don't remember the exact numbers of how long it takes. Next week we will finish with just a quick example of secure email. And there may be one or two new slides or some discussion of aspects of, some aspects of privacy, like how people track based upon IP address and cookies. But not much new. Hopefully we'll finish on Tuesday and leave Thursday for some final review and preparation for the exam the following week.


We've placed one molar copper sulfate into the U-tube. We've placed copper electrodes into each half of the U-tube. We're going to pass current through the system. You can see that gas has not evolved at either electrode, so we're not oxidizing or reducing the water. Reducing the copper ion requires less voltage than reducing the water, so we'll see copper metal plate out on the electrode. On the anode side is difficult to oxidize a sulfate ion. The copper metal electrode, however, can be oxidized, and so we'll oxidize the copper to copper ion. The copper ion will go into solution. If we look at the cathode, we can see that we have a bright surface, which is the result of having copper metal plate onto the surface of the electrode. If we look at the anode, we can see that it also has changed appearance at the tip. It's a little shinier because we've lost copper metal from the surface. The copper metal has been oxidized to copper ion.


Hey everyone! Welcome to this event, Build Your Cloud Center of Excellence. I'm your host, Lisa Martin, and I have two guests here with me today to talk about the hybrid cloud, the multi-cloud trends, and specifically the complexity. While we know these trends provide agility and flexibility for customers, they also bring in complexity, and this session is going to focus on exploring that with RBI and Hitachi Vantara. Please welcome my guests, Adithya Sastry, the SVP of Digital Solutions at Hitachi Vantara, and Werner Mayer, head of Group Core IT and head of Group Data at RBI International. Guys, welcome to the program. Thank you, Lisa. Werner, nice to see you again. And Werner, we're going to start with you. Talk about RBI, tell the audience a little bit about what the business is, and then we're going to get into your cloud transformation journey over the last couple of years. Yes, thank you. So, we have some banking international working banking groups, so our core markets are Central Eastern Europe and Austria, and we're serving around 50 million clients in this market, so we're active in 13 markets. Got it. Talk to me, Werner, about the cloud transformation journey that RBI has been on over the last couple of years and some of the complexities that you've experienced as you've launched it. Sure, thank you for the question. So, in 2020, we decided that we have to renew our IT strategy, and the aim of the strategy was to change the organization in a way that it can react and adapt fast to the future challenges. So, one of the important pillars for us was that we adopted fast also for new technologies, and this was core Bill and all strategy. So, we're searching for technologies which are fitting to our HR transformation, and we found that the cloud and the public cloud environment fits to this venture. So, we tested that, and we're building up also the competence centers for that and also established the group platform for that, because our aim was to onboard our international group with the 13 units to this group cloud platform. So, that means we have a lot to do to hardening the platforms in terms of security to put in the high standards for that. We have to introduce large-scale programs to train hundreds of engineers. We tested the approach, we convinced the top management and we implemented this program. So, one of the highlights was of course also the safeguarding of the Ukraine, let's say, banking environment. So, we had to lift and shift the complete bank in three months and it shows that let's say our platforms works and let's say the approach is proven that we can scale it over the group. That's a big challenge, a lot of complexity, especially with some of the global things going on. Adithya, these challenges are not unique to RBI. A lot of your customers are facing challenges with complexity around cloud management, cloud ops. What can you unpack what the real issue is here? Yeah, Lisa, absolutely. Before I answer your question, I do want to just say a couple of things about Raphison Bank and we've had the pleasure of working with them for about a year, a little bit more than a year now. The way they approach the cloud transformation journey should be a template for a lot of the organizations in terms of the preparation, in terms of understanding how other companies have done it and what are the pitfalls, what's worked and really what's the recipe for their journey, which is very unique because you look at being present across 30 different countries within Central and Eastern Europe, as Werner said, and the complexities of dealing with local regulations, GDPR and all these other issues that come with it and not to mention the language variation from country to country. So, a phenomenal story there, the journey, and the journey still goes, right Werner? It's not complete yet. But Lisa, to your question, when we look at the complexities of this transformation that most a lot of enterprises are going through, it's not very unique, right? What is unique for Raphison Bank has been the preparation, but as you get into this journey of moving workloads to the cloud, be it refactoring, modernizing, migrating, etc., one of the things that really is often overlooked is, are my applications and data workloads resilient on the cloud? Meaning, how is their performance? Are they just running or are they performing with high availability to meet your customer's goals? Is it scalable? And are my costs in line with what I projected when I moved around, right? Because that's one of the areas we're seeing where, you know, what enterprises projected from a cost savings to what they're realizing a year and a half into the journey is a pretty big delta, right? And a lot of it is dependent on are the applications and the workloads designed for the cloud or are they designed for on-prem, which you're just moving to the cloud. So, Werner, it sounds like what Adithya said is a compliment to you guys and the team at RBI in terms of this being a template for managing complexity. Give us, Werner, your perspective in terms of modern cloud ops, what's in, what's out, what is it that customers really need to be focusing on to be successful? Thanks for the compliment, Adith, and I think it's a great relationship also in the journey. I mean, the whole topic is a complex program where a lot of things have to fit together. Adith was mentioning the resilience, the course, we call it FINOPs, security operations and so on, have to come together and have to work on spot. At the end, it's also, let's say, how we are enabling our teams and how we are ramping up the skills of our teams to deal with this multi-dimensional, let's say, environments. And this is something what we spend a lot of time in order to prepare it, but also to bring up the people on a certain level that they can operate it because cloud cloud handling is different than before. Because beforehand, you have central operations teams that do everything for you, but in this world, let's say, we're also putting the responsibility of the run component of the apps in the tribes, in the application teams, and they have to do much more than before. On the other hand, we have central roles, we have monitoring functions, we have support functions on that in order to best support them in their journey. So this is a hybrid between, let's say, what the teams have to do with the responsibility in the teams, but also with the central functions which are supporting them. And everything has to work together and goes hand in hand. Yeah, and if I could just add Lisa really quick, and Werner hit the nail on the head, because you cannot look at cloud operation the way we have traditionally looked at managed services. That's the key thing. You cannot, you know, traditional managed services, you had L1, L2, L3, and then it goes into some sort of a vacuum, and then also somebody calls you at some point, right? And it really has flipped, right, to Werner's point and Werner hit that nail on the head, because you really have to understand, bring an engineering-led approach to make sure that the problems, you know, when you see an issue that we have some level automation in terms of problem isolation, and then the problem is rather the right individual, i.e., the application engineering team or the data engineering team for resolution in a rapid manner, right? I think. A very important point what Adel said, yeah, so you cannot traditional transport, let's say the operation model what you have now into the cloud, because this will not work. And finally, at the end, you will not benefit on the technology possibilities there. It's a super important point. My vision in the cloud, and this is also something what we're working on, is a sort of zero-obs environment, because without the heat dealing with the automatization technologies and so on, you can do much more compared to the traditional environment, and the benefit of the cloud is you can test it, you can give it the back when it is not working. So it's a completely different operating model what we try to establish in the cloud environment. So really what this seems like, guys, is quite a delicate balance that you're solving for, not the only delicate balance, but Werner, sticking with you, talk to us about some of the challenges that you've had around cloud cost management in particular. Help us understand that. Thanks for the question. So in principle, we're doing very well on the coast side, surprisingly. And we also started the chaotic journey that they said this is not the coast case, because as I said before, let's say one of the pillars in the strategy was the enablement of technology to the benefit of customer solutions to be adaptive, to be faster, but at the end it turned out that, let's say, with giving the responsibility of the operation to the dedicated team, they were working much closer to the coast, and let's say monitoring the coast than we had in the traditional environments. We also saw some examples in the group where sort of gamification of the coasts were going on to say who can save more and make much more out of that what you have in the cloud. And at the end, we see that in minimum, the coasts are balanced to the traditional environments in the data centers, but we also saw that the coasts were brought on much more than before. So at the beginning, we were relatively conservative with the assumptions, but it turns out that we are really getting the benefit, the things are getting faster, and also the coasts are going down, and we see this in real cases. Yeah, and Lisa, if I could add something really quick, because there's been a mad rush to the cloud, right? The buzz was, let's get to the cloud, we'll start to realize all these savings, and all of a sudden everything magically gets better, right? And what we have seen is also, companies for customers or enterprises that have started this journey about five, six years ago and are about a few years into it, what we are realizing is the cloud costs having increased significantly to their projections were early on. And the way they're trying to address the cloud cost is by creating a Phenops organization that's looking at the cost of cloud, structure standpoint, and support as a reactive measure, saying, hey, if we move from Azure or one provider to another, is there any benefit? If we move certain applications from the cloud back to on-premise, is there any benefit? When in fact, one of the things that we have noticed really is the problem needs to shift left to the engineering teams, because if you're designing the applications and the systems the right way to begin with, then you can manage the cost of issues or the cost overruns, right? So you design for the cloud as opposed to designing and then looking at how to be on the cloud. So, Dithya, you talked about the RBI use case as really kind of a template, but also some of the challenges with respect to hybrid and multi-cloud are kind of like a chicken and egg scenario. Talk to us kind of like overall about how Hitachi is really helping customers address these challenges and maximize the benefits to get the flexibility to get the agility so that they can deliver what their end-user customers are expecting. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things we are doing, Lisa, when we work with customers, is really trying to understand, you know, look at their entire portfolio of applications, right? And look at what the intent of the applications is between customer-facing, external customer, internal customer, high availability, production, etc., right? And then we go through a methodology called E3, which is envision, enable, and execute, which is really envision what the end-stage should be, regardless of what the environment is, right? And then we enable, which is really kind of go through a proof of value to move a few workloads, to modernize, re-architect, replatform, etc., and look at the benefit of that application on its destination. If it's a cloud, if it's a cloud service provider, or if it's another data center, whatever it may be, right? And finally, you know, once we've proven the value and the benefit and kind of monetized, realize the value of it from an agility, from a cost, from security, and resilience, etc., then we go through the execution, which we look at the entire portfolio, the entire landscape, and we go through a very disciplined manner of working with our customers to roadmap it, and then be executed in a very deliberate manner where you can see value every two to three months. It's gone other days when you can think as a science project that took two to three years, right? Everyone wants to see value, wants to see progress, and most importantly, we want to see cost, benefit, and agility sooner than later. Those are incredibly important outcomes. You guys have done a great job explaining what you're doing together. This sounds like a great relationship. All right, so my last question to both of you is, if I'm a customer and I'm planning a cloud transformation for my company, what are the two things you want me to remember and consider as I plan this? Werner will start with you. I would pick up two things here. The first one is when you're organizing your company in the HR way, then cloud is the HR technology for the HR transformation, because HR teams need HR technology. The second important thing what they would see is cloud is a large scale and fast-moving technology enabler to the company. If your company is going forward to say technology is the enabler from a future business, then cloud can support this journey. Excellent, I'm going to walk away with those. Aditya, same question to you. I'm a customer, I'm at an organization, I'm planning a cloud transformation. Top two things you want me to walk away with. Yeah, and I think Werner can actually touch on that in the second one, which is it's not just an IT or a technology initiative. It is a business initiative, right? Because ultimately what you do from this cloud journey should lead into business transformation or help your business grow top line or drive margin expansion, etc. A couple of things I would say, right? One is get buying and prioritize work with your business owners with the cross-functional team, not just the technology team, that's one. The second thing is as the technology team or the IT team shepherds this journey, keep everyone informed and engaged as you go through this journey. Because as you go through moving workloads, modernizing workload, there is an impact to receivables through omnichannel experiences, the way customers interact and transact with you, right? And that comes with making sure your businesses are aware, your business stakeholders are aware, so in turn, the end customers are aware. So it's not a one and done from an engagement, it's a journey. And bringing the right experts, stuff, the people have done it, done this before, who have kind of stepped in all the pitfalls. So you don't have to, right? That's the key. That's great advice. That's great advice for anything in life, I think. Talk about the collaboration, the importance of the business and the technology folks coming together. It really has to be, it's a delicate balance, as we said before, but it really has to be a holistic collaborative approach. Guys, thank you so much for joining me talking through what Hitachi Vantara and RBI are doing together. It sounds like you're well into this journey and it sounds like it's going quite well. We thank you so much for your insights and your perspectives. Thank you, Lisa. Good stuff, guys. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching our event. Build your cloud center of excellence.