So welcome to the release of the public accounts for the fiscal year 2011, 2012. So again this year you can see that British Columbia has ended up, in fact we all remember in the first quarterly we had the results of the HST referendum which means that we were required to book the entire $1.6 billion repayment to the federal government in that current fiscal year, the 2011 fiscal year. That is obviously a one-time non-recurring extraordinary expense but you can see that had we not had the $1.6 billion required payback to the federal government we came within $241 million of balancing the budget by the reporting out public accounts. That is a $684 million reduction in spending from budget, something that we're very proud of. We've done I think a very credible job of demonstrating discipline in government in terms of reducing spending and that's something that will not be unnoticed or go unnoticed by the credit rating agencies in the investment community. You can see that the annual deficit therefore is $1.84 billion which is down from the third quarter or the budget amount of almost $2.9 billion. Our program spending was held to 2.6%. That's about 40% lower than the 4.3% that we forecast in the budget of 2011. Taxpayers supported debt to GDP. It's a key indicator as you know that the credit rating agencies and the investment communities look at in terms of government's ability to manage its debt is 16.4% which is below the 17.5% that was forecast in the budget so that will be certainly viewed as another positive sign. Capital spending maintains the near record levels that we've been undertaking and I think this is very important for British Columbians to understand that at the time of great economic uncertainty British Columbia continues to invest record amounts, near record amounts in new schools, in university investments, in hospitals across the province whether it's the Surrey Memorial in Surrey or Women and Children's in Vancouver or Fort St. John Hospital up in the peace country. We are making or the cancer clinic and the new cancer clinic in Prince George we're making record level investments in capital and we're able to do it affordably at a level that will retain the confidence of credit rating agencies. Provincial GDP you can see grew 2.9% in 2011. That's the third best in the country. Behind obviously Alberta and Saskatchewan the oil rich provinces in the country but it's better than the national average of 2.6%. And the international credit rating agencies again are providing British Columbia the highest possible credit rating triple A credit which we are proud of and intend to maintain.


Thank you very much Irene Yes, cool. Good morning everyone. My name is Shirley and this is nothing and we are super excited to be back at open Viscom this year to talk to you about our project data sketches So let's start from the very beginning We actually met online virtually in the data visualizations Centric slack in the fall of 2015 and Didn't meet each other in person in real life until open viscoff in Boston last year those are our happy faces and At open viscoff we had the pleasure of giving talks and hanging out for three whole days where we hit it off Super well so that when two months later when Naughty put up her SVG tutorials From her open this talk I went and dove into it with vigor and I started chatting with Naughty about all of the questions I had of her tutorials and somehow that whole conversation led into us lamenting the fact that we hadn't finished as many full blown visualization projects as we would like and Then I had an idea And I was like hey Naughty fully expecting to be rejected Do you want to collaborate on something? And then she said yes And that's how data sketches was born So in the following week we figured out that we both like the idea where we would create a Visualization each month around the same topic and do that for a year to see how two people would create a sort of Visual to visualization starting from the same seed the topic But then diverging into different paths based on our own interests in history Well besides sharing the end result We also want to write about the creation process and we split this up into the three pillars that we find most important data sketching and coding and Initially we thought we could pull data sketches off at about five to six hours a week But you know real life usually doesn't agree with plans, especially coding plans So since starting in July 2016 we've clocked many many hours into creating a visualization each month And during this talk we'd like to take you through some of the lessons that we learned the challenges that we faced and how we Tackled them and the insights that we gathered along the way So let's start with the data We often get asked this question Do you get the data first and then come up with your ideas or do you get the idea first and go and find the data from that and For us the answer is always always idea first So for example for my November data sketches I wanted to visualize every single line in the musical Hamilton and I built this Filter tool where I can filter by any set of characters as well as their conversations and any themes and then be able to dig into the set of lines from the songs that were left over and The idea came from a question of how do the relationships between the characters change throughout the whole musical and Then what are the recurring phrases and who are they associated with? Now as you can imagine this data set is not available anywhere online save for the lyrics themselves So I had to go through all of the lyrics and know all of the recurring phrases that pure for more than across more than one song group them into broader themes Go through the lyrics manually again so that I can enter them into the computer Associating them with the right song and line numbers and also do the same thing for the characters and conversations Write the script to aggregate all of that information together to get my final data set and a more extreme example For my October data sketches I wanted to put emojis on the well former president Mr. And about mrs. Obama's faces and then I built this tool for exploration where you can go through any of the videos I found of their late night talk show interviews and then go through the whole Entire YouTube video to look at all of the emojis that I put on their faces And this idea really came from a conversation with Eric Cunningham right there I'm where he was like wouldn't it be cool if you could just run facial detection on the videos and correlate their emotions with What they're saying that was like hey Eric you realize this those that like I only have one month for this project And then I was like challenge accepted So I started with first manually gathering all of the late night talk show appearances off of IMDB I then I then went and downloaded or I then went and found all of the videos correlating with those talk show interviews from the host channels Used a new package to download all the videos and their captions and get the timestamp from each of those captions So that I can take a screenshot for every single time somebody talked Upload that to Google Vision API because they give me information about Faces and their boundaries and emotions and how happy they are or angry or if they're wearing a hat And then I took that data and then aggregated it with my caption data to get my final data set What these two lessons in these two months taught me it was if I'm just curious if I have a curiosity There is some way that I'm going to be able to get my hand on that data set whether it's to manually Go through and enter them or write a script to automate them Which by the way, I found I think there is a no package for literally anything I can imagine under the Sun As long as I do all of this responsibly and legally Thankfully not every month. This is data intensive as that So for August the obvious theme was the Olympics especially since we're both big fans And I decided to visualize all 5,000 gold medal winners since the very first Olympic Games in 1896 So each of these circles represents a group of similar sports like water sports or ball sports And then each slice or feather within a circle represents one sport like athletics We have the first edition over here going outward to 2016 The reddish background are female events and the blueish background are male events And then finally each medal is given the color of the continent in which the country lies that won the medal so For example, America's is red Europe is blue and so on and we can see here that there were actually no female events in the very first editions of the Olympics, but we've been catching up since then So I actually found the data for this piece from two articles published by the Guardian for the 2012 games in London However, after getting a rough shape of my visual on the screen I noticed some very obvious medals were missing like hockey from 2012 So my confidence in this data set suddenly dropped drastically even coming from such a respectable source as the Guardian And I therefore had to get a sense of the accuracy of the complete data set But I didn't want to have to go manually throw all 5,000 medals. Maybe surely wouldn't So I found a proxy instead So on Wikipedia I could find the number of events that happened during each of the editions and I then compared that to the number of gold medals I had in my data set and if there was a discrepancy I dug deeper to figure out where and how and That's how I found out that for some of the years the horses were also in the data set winning gold Which makes for an interesting read to see princess and sissy and lady Mirka as women winning gold in the Olympics Well, eventually I ended up figuring out each discrepancy and making adjustments to my data to get it to the point where I trusted it again So my lesson here was that even if I have data from a very respectable source I really need to get a sense of accuracy and completeness Missing data can be harder to find than wrong data And you don't have to check every value like every separate value But think about taking sums and counts and averages and comparing that just a plain common sense Or even better a different data source so Many people dive straight from data to find a visual But take some time and actually sit back and sketch out your ideas on paper We've filled many pages of our notebooks since starting because it helps us think and lay out ideas beforehand But my sketches often are very simple only focusing on the main abstract shape that I want to fit my data into Colors and layout and design these are things I only vaguely think about but don't act on until I have the data on my screen There's just no use for me to think about these things until I figured out that the data actually works once I've morphed it into the main shape So for the Olympics, for example, I had this idea of feathers placing emphasis on the more recent additions But I had no idea if that would look all right once I finally placed all 5,000 metals together so I had to see if the general shape would work before moving on Well, I started laying out the feathers, but it took a few steps until I saw that luckily it did show potential with the actual data But sometimes there's even no use to start sketching on paper Although I will say that's very rare for me, but networks are an exception and for our October month I decided to dive into royalty. I've always been intrigued. You know how into merits the royal families really are are they all cousins twice removed? Well, luckily I found a genealogy data set that contained a gigantic family tree of the European royal houses It was from 1992 So I had to add one or two more generations in the main line of succession, which was a fun night on Wikipedia not So here we have to find a result of all 3,000 people in my family tree The bigger circles are actually the 10 current royal leaders and everybody's connected to their parents their partner and their children To highlight the interconnections you can hover over anybody to see their six degrees of separation light up and how far they reach into the web But you can also click on any person and let's see if I can get to work here and any other person To see the shortest path between these two people because the entire web is connected. They're all family in one way or another But when I started out with this data set, I had no idea what it contained So I just sort of plotted everybody using the most basic network settings And then this happened an explosion of points and lines going out of my screen So I pulled in gravity a bit. I could have used D3 expressed during this part But and then I ended up with a useless hairball So I call it the points by year of birth Well still not helping well thankfully in D3 version 4 you can easily have gravity depend on variables So I pulled the web apart by year of birth as well Which was better, but it was still rather an insightful bundle And at this point I'd already invested several hours into playing with the network settings playing with different types of connections Adjusting my data and I was really at the point where I thought about giving up Maybe I could try a different angle like how much they're spending each year or something But I gave it one last shot and that's when I decided to focus on the current royal leaders So I placed these in a line and then I let the vertical gravity depend on which of these royal leaders You were most closely related to and that's when I finally saw it Insights for example that the Queen of Denmark over here is very central in the web But that we have the Prince of Monaco whose line separated from the rest more than 200 years ago And it was around this time that I also started thinking more about the general design aspects and Networks often remind me of constellations and with my astronomy background I have a bias for all things space, so I turned it into a starting night But I could have never sort of designed this visualization before hand and illustrated or sketched it I had to go hand-in-hand with the actual data and apply my design choices to all of the data Simultaneously so that I could see if the results were both interesting and engaging So Nadi gave us a really great example of when you land on the right visualization earlier on But that's not necessarily always the case for our March data sketches We had the incredible opportunity to work with Google News Lab and their search data dating back to 2004 Which by the way launched this morning, so please check it out. Yay And so with access to all of that data I wanted to look into what people are searching for and specifically what people in a country search for around the world So each of these blocks are a topic that the US have searched for in spring And I can toggle between all of the different weather's whether seasons And see the topics the top topics as well as dig into a specific country and look at the top places there I can also expand on a topic so that I can see the search interests and seasonality for that particular topic and The question I really started out was what are the top search countries which turned out to be Brazil and Then I was like who's searching for Brazil Can I see actually what kind of topics are being searched for around the world in each country including Brazil and can I see the distribution of Those searches across the years and then let me actually get a little bit greedy because I want to see the search interests also Okay, maybe not Okay, so let's step back and let's try for circles for each of the topics and size them According to the search interest and maybe I can show the country is searching for each of those topics by overlapping circles And this is kind of pretty and like bubbly So I kind of like it But those geography play a part in who searches for a country's topics So let's try sorting maybe try sorting all of the topics by distance for a year And that doesn't look really great So maybe I can just concentrate on one topic across all of the years and that actually kind of looks like it might lend Well to a heat map, maybe Maybe not this is really not going anywhere I need to step back But I did notice in an earlier exploration that seasonality is quite common in a lot of the topics So maybe I can keep these sorting by distance because that geography is actually still quite interesting But maybe this time around I can try and filter and group by the seasons and that sounds quite promising, right? Nope, so it turns out that all of the topics are searched for across all of the seasons Making for all of the bar graphs to look exactly the same. That was pretty sad But wait, then I realized that Because there is seasonality the search interest is actually different across all of the seasons So if I just size all of the heights of the Blogs by the search interest I actually start to get very interesting insights like this one that the U.S. Searches for travel more often in the spring than in the fall and Finally finally ta-da. I have my last Visual is my final visualization form that I'm quite happy about Where each of the topics are grouped by the country that they belong to and there's interesting insights like for example, if we just look at the topics for summer Mexico is actually not searched for that often, but Canada is and and and the hotter countries around the world like Thailand and the Philippines aren't searched for that often, but if we go instead to winter the opposite is true where Mexico peaks and Canada drops and Belize and Thailand and Philippines the hotter countries actually go up in search interest So the lesson here was Sometimes Sometimes we don't get the right visual from our first sketch or a second or even third try But be patient and go back and forth with the sketching code Because that will help figure out what works and more importantly what doesn't work so that we can go on to our next step So as expected most of our hours are actually spent on getting the data on the screen and here are some of our maybe less obvious coding lessons So in the very first month the topic was movies and therefore it was immediately clear to me I wanted to do something with the Lord of the Rings and I found this super interesting data set that contained the number of words Spoken by each character in each scene of all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings Amazing So I decided to focus on the members of the fellowship to see we have them here in the center And then to see how many words they spoke at each of the locations around here on the circle Well, no surprise maybe that Gandalf speaks the most But my favorite insight is actually that Boromir who is really only alive during the first movie Manages to speak more than Legolas does in three Anyway When I looked at the sketch for this project I found that it was very similar to a core diagram so I thought I could start from there and then slowly transform the core diagram to my sketch and the most basic thing to me was if I could figure out how to get these cores to flow inward and That actually took less time than anticipated which is very rare for me in coding But yeah, it worked well getting rid of the excess space and now it's ready to handle the Lord of the Rings data And some more appropriate colors So we have nine members of the fellowship So making sure that the centers end up at the right vertical location, but this was looking very squished So I used the same setup that I used in my bad plot and pulled the two halves apart And finally as you can see these cords are now looking rather unnatural And I therefore decided to dive into learning SVD pads And that was the thing that took the longest in this project sort of figuring out how to make these pads look more natural and that's how this sort of new D3 layout came into existence mutated from D3's core diagram and Many people have done a wonderful work that you can use So even if you think you are creating something new you don't always have to start from scratch Just pick the thing that lies closest to your design or idea and start adjusting that Remix what's out there already Sometimes we dream up visuals that are unique enough There's no base for us remix off of for that same movie month I wanted to take a look at Top summer block busters in the last two decades and reimagine them as flowers So each of the colors are associated with a genre and the size and number of petals for the flowers are their IMDB ratings There are some really really beautiful flowers in here I think like the Dark Knight Rises and Slumdog millenair and my absolute favorite is the 1997 Batman and Robin, which is this tiny teeny little thing that I think is super cute And I've gotten questions about hey, how did you make this? How long did it take and the answer is it's actually really quite simple it just really takes a good grasp of SVG pass and in particular the cubic bezier curve command and So how that works is we start out with a starting point of in my case Zero zero and the way that I like to think about it is we draw a line between that starting point and the end purple point and then we take the two anchor points the blue and green and Nudge them out until we get the curve that we want and then drew some of the lines and Made the curve on the other hand Rotated it the petals out and added the colors with some motion blur and And that's it. That's all that it took so the lesson here really was that When we're creating things really understand the tools that we're using because that's how we can go beyond the prescribed examples and in particular our favorite tool our favorite tool is SVG pass because with that under our belt we can make anything any shape that we imagine up for truly unique results So now we've seen two examples of adjusting paths. What about their positions? Well going back to the Olympic feathers, you know all of these circles and slices they depended on you know Depended on each other, but they were very structured. They all follow the same concept And at first I tried to calculate all of the rotations of these circles and slices in JavaScript But after having written like 30 lines of code and still not achieving something I knew I could do an R in two lines. I just pulled all of these preparations into our as well So even if they were visual variables, they have nothing to do with the data only with how it will be laid out on the screen So for example, I pre-calculated the initial rotation that each of these circles needed to have So that eventually the center would end up at the bottom I Pre-calculated the offset that each of these slices would need to have based on their predecessors The only placement variable that I kept in JavaScript to keep it dynamic was the year scale from the center outward because then I could sort of scale the entire circle based on the screen size and Even the metal offset is something that I pre-calculated in R And you can use the same idea of visual variables in networks as well that are static and fixed Just download the final X and Y locations and the next time place them there immediately Saving your viewers from having to run and wait on a heavy-force algorithm So even though they have nothing to do with the data It's perfectly fine to pre-calculate visual variables and attach these to your data set And that's more often the case for fixed data sets than you may think No, sometimes it's just way easier to calculate some things outside of JavaScript Or it can save you a lot of browser calculations making your visual easier to load and as an end of the bit as a bonus It'll make your JavaScript file a lot more readable as well So far we've talked about what I like to call the initial 80% the data preparation the ideation the visualization itself But I like to I think that I like to think that the last 20% is extremely important as well So when I started thinking about the story for Hamilton I wanted to reach a wider audience than usual and that meant that I wanted to make sure that they were engaged enough that They would keep scrolling down the screen So the first thing I did was I had the dots fly in as the as the page loaded into the center to form the Hamilton logo and As the user scrolls down The dots fly apart and dance in the background and then come back together so that I can tell the reader Hey, each of these dots are actually the lyrics and as they go into the first section of analysis Each of these sections actually Correspond with a song so then I highlight the correct song to tell them Where to to tell them where that were what the song is for each section The next thing I do or one of the other small things I do is If the user decides they want to click on a song Ooh That worked cool. Um, I didn't expect the sound to work Um, you can see I put a progress bar on the right hand visualization. Oh, and you can't really see much else um, oh Okay, but it gives users the context of where the song is relative to the musical itself Another smaller example is for our March data sketches where I use animations To explain how to read parts of the project But I don't actually trigger these animations until the user has scrolled into that section So that they can always start from the beginning of the explanation No matter where and how and how fast they're navigating and it's these small Attention to detail and attempts at delight that really make a piece for me because it tells the reader that we really care about their experience And some more examples of what you can do with the light While on a flight back to Amsterdam I was without Wi-Fi so I couldn't do anything essential and therefore I decided to animate the legend I had for my visualization about fantasy books just for fun and Other non essential things that I did are adding animated gifts of the most memorable moments of Dragon Ball Z That took like two hours to go through all of the gifts Or adding a hover with the most detailed information I had from music nerds in my December music visual or turning the top ten songs Is the tiny vinyls or having annotations about weird and silly events that happen in the history of the Olympic games Like Henry Pierce having to stop for ducks in the wrong event, but still managing to win gold So although getting your data on the screen in such a manner as to make it insightful is key It's the other things to add such as animations annotations weird legends gifts and more that can make it truly Unique and special and even more of the light to investigate. So take some time to think about these aspects as well And then we get to the soft of or what I like to call the best stuff When Nadia and I started thinking about data sketches and talking about it We really didn't expect the kind of reception that we've had We thought that if we could just have fun Maybe learn some things and if some of our our friends will enjoy the project that'd be really cool But we've gotten the most amazing responses on both our visualizations and the value of our write-ups and we've gotten to meet Incredible people and talk to them that we would have never had the opportunity Otherwise and we've gained an amazing friendship with each other that we didn't expect at the beginning We just wanted to have fun But when we step back and really thought about the transferable lessons The we agreed that the most important was if you're about to take on an ambitious project Make sure to bring somebody on along the ride with you and make sure that if you're not too responsible like me that the Person that you build that you bring along is very responsible So that you can keep each other accountable and relatively on track for you for your project Make sure that it's someone that you really respect and hopefully that respect is mutual and Most importantly that it's someone that you trust or can grow to trust because that's absolutely crucial to receiving and giving feedback and Finally if you're about to do something ambitious like make a visualization from scratch every single month Know that know that it'll be hard There's there are there have been months where we've been creatively drained and didn't know how to go on but Remember you learn as you struggle and it's absolutely amazing in the amount that we've learned both technically and personally And it's been actually worth the time So over the last ten months We've learned to find data in the weirdest places that it's not blasphemy to pre calculate visual variables that Sketching can help weed out thinking errors But that you can also sketch with code that SPG paths are amazing and math is too But we already knew that of course and that it supplies a surprisingly small things can add a sense of delight to your audience and We didn't set out to learn or be confronted by these things like like Shirley said we set out to have fun And in that we definitely succeeded sure it's been intense there were times when we were coding into the night When we would have ran a business TV show, but it has opened up paths and opportunities that we weren't even looking for But happy to have gotten so two more months to go or maybe three and then what? Well, I can assure you we will not keep on creating Visualizations in our spare time at the same breakneck pace but we do want to share Data sketches with everybody and we've had so many wonderful reactions, especially about the write-ups so we've decided to create a data sketches publication on medium and Anybody who has made a visualization and wants to share his or her writings about the creation process can do that here You can do a full data sketches month collaborate with others on the same topic But it's also fine if it's a single standalone project the main point is to show how your final visualization is a product of Iterations mistakes and improvements So please let us know if you ever have anything that you'd like to contribute Well, we hope that you'll join us in our final two months of data munching sketching and coding up our topics and often Weird fun and overly elaborate visualizations. Thank you very much


Today it gives me great pleasure to sign legislation that reflects the total commitment of the American people and their government to fight the evil of drugs. Drug use extracts a high cost on America, the cost of suffering and unhappiness, particularly among the young. The cost of lost productivity at the workplace and the cost of drug-related crime. Drug use is too costly for us not to do everything in our power, not just to fight it, but to subdue it and conquer it. The magnitude of today's drug problem can be traced to past unwillingness to recognize and confront this problem. And the vaccine that's going to end the epidemic is a combination of tough laws like the one we signed today and a dramatic change in public attitude. We must be intolerant of drug use and drug sellers. We must be intolerant of drug use on the campus and at the workplace. We must be intolerant of drugs not because we want to punish drug users, but because we care about them and want to help them. This legislation is not intended as a means of filling our jails with drug users. What we must do as a society is identify those who use drugs, reach out to them, help them quit and give them the support they need to live right. Let me take a moment here and salute a special person who has turned the fight against drug abuse into a national crusade. She started long before the polls began to register our citizen concern about drugs. She mobilized the American people and I'm mighty proud of her. I know the work Nancy's been doing has been appreciated and Nancy's made a special commitment to assist young people who are just getting started to quit and to prevent others from starting in the first place. One young person asked her advice about what to do if offered drugs and she came up with a bit of simple yet profound wisdom. She said, just say no and today there are thousands of just say no clubs all over America. In all of our endeavors here in Washington we're striving for a world where our young people can live happier, more opportunity filled lives. Our goal in this crusade is nothing less than a drug free generation. America's young people deserve our best effort to make that dream come true. The last few years we've made much progress on the enforcement end of solving the drug problem. Interdiction is up, drugs are being destroyed while still in the fields all over the country and overseas. Organized crime is being hit and hit hard. Cooperation between governments is better than ever before. This legislation allows us to do even more. Nevertheless today marks a major victory in our crusade against drugs, a victory for safer neighborhoods, a victory for the protection of the American family. Young people want their government to get tough and to go on the offensive and that's exactly what we intend with more ferocity than ever before. But as I've said on previous occasions we would be fooling ourselves if we thought that new money for new government programs alone will solve the problem. Let's not forget that in America people solve problems and no national crusade has ever succeeded without human interest. So at the same time that government sends a long cloud, loud, clear message, I ask each American to be strong in your intolerance of illegal drug use and firm in your commitment to a drug-free America. United together we can see to it that there's no sanctuary for the drug criminals who are pilfering human dignity and pandering despair. There have been some real champions in the battle to get this legislation through Congress. Senators Bob Dole, Robert Byrd and Strom Thurman, Congressman Bob Michael, Jim Wright, Benjamin Gilman, Charles Rangel, Jerry Lewis, I'd like to single out Senator Paula Hawkins in particular. She took this battle to the public and has been a driving force behind the effort to rid our society of drug abuse. Like Nancy, she made her commitment to fighting drugs long before it was the popular thing to do. This kind of honest, hard-working leadership is what makes all the difference. And now Paula, if you and your colleagues will join Nancy and me, we'll get on with the signing of that bill, making it the law of the land.


So welcome to the Dr. Gendry podcast. Since the plant paradox came out about two years ago, I've been warning people about the seven deadly disruptors, those sneaky health hazards found in everyday household items. Well today we'll be talking about at least one category of those deadly disruptors and a whole lot more. In just a minute I'll be speaking with the author, podcaster, and award-winning blogger Katie Wells. As a mom of six, Katie has developed fast, easy, and affordable hacks for living a wellness-centered lifestyle. Her popular blog, wellnessmama.com, helps take the guesswork out of healthy living, providing simple answers for healthier families through practical tips, recipes, natural beauty and cleaning tutorials, and more. Today we're going to discuss Katie's journey to becoming a bona fide wellness mama and how to jumpstart the ultimate healthy home makeover without breaking the bank. Katie, welcome to the program. It's so great that we're finally connected. I'm so glad to finally connect with you. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to connect. So you were you were waiting for your postnatal doctor's appointment and something happens that changes your entire life. Can you take us there and tell our audience what happened? Absolutely. So when my first son was born, I was waiting for that follow-up appointment, which is in the U.S. where they tell you that you're supposed to be all good, go back to living normal, which I now take issue with, but the doctor was running late because of another delivery. So I was sitting there for a couple of hours and had read pretty much every magazine in the waiting room by that point because I was nursing a baby the entire time. And the last one I picked up, I think it was a time magazine. I was flipping through and this quotes really stood out to me and it said, for the first time in two centuries, the current generation of American children will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And it was such a stark lightning bolt moment for me because I was holding the next generation of American children. I was nursing this perfect tiny baby and I went on to read about autoimmune disease and cancer and heart disease and diabetes and the rates that our kids were going to face all of these things at. And it just, that it really like hit something inside of me and that day I resolved that I was gonna help change that. And I had no idea how I was gonna help change that or any way to even start that process, but I just realized that was not gonna be okay for my child, for any of my future children or for anyone's children, that we owed it to our children to do better. And at the same time, unbeknownst to me, I had the underpinnings of autoimmune disease happening and I was starting to see symptoms that I kept writing off as pregnancy symptoms or new mom symptoms or lack of sleep symptoms, but they would continually build over the next few years and I would end up encountering my own health crisis. So that day began a two-part research journey for me both on how can I make sure I'm giving my kids a better start in life than what those statistics say and also how can I find my way back to health and be a good example of a healthy mom and you know, implement this from our family. Wow! So you mentioned autoimmune disease and what happened with you? Where are you with that? Can you bring us up to date? Absolutely, that's a great question. So it was a very long research process for me and I ended up working with, I think it was eight doctors by the time I finally figured out what worked for me, but through a combination of diet, actually very similar to the diet you recommend, and lifestyle factors and the huge key for me was dealing with emotional stress and trauma, but after addressing all of those, I am in remission from autoimmune disease. I don't have any raised biomarkers and everything looks normal. So technically I on paper no longer have Hashimoto's. Perfect! So you didn't just change your life, you started a blog to help others do the same thing. So was that your aim when you started this blog?  Not really, it's interesting because inadvertently it's ended up helping me reach that goal of helping other families start from the beginning with healthy foundations. It really was just an outlet for me at that point because I joked that if you want to create autoimmune disease, I seem to have discovered the formula, which was in college I was super driven, so lots of stress, really terrible food and no sleep. And if you get all those right, you have a really good shot at autoimmune disease, which is pretty much what I had done. And so I had finished college by about 19, basically just maxed out hours, very, very driven, but had created all these health problems. And so now I was home with this baby and my background being journalism from college. My default was if I have a problem, I research it. And I figure out how to fix it because of the research. And so I didn't, it was just my default to research and write. I didn't know how to not write. And so it was an outlet for me to chronicle and put in one place what I was going through. And very quickly, I realized there were a lot of other people on a really parallel path, unfortunately, which I know in your work, you talk about so much all these things that were seen, especially autoimmune disease and the rates at which we're seeing that. And of course, now knowing that pregnancy can certainly kind of springboard into that if you already have some of those risk factors going. And it sounds so funny to say now, but looking back, it was discovering things for the first time, like the foods we eat have more of an impact on us than just calories, because that's what I got in high school and college nutrition, was that it was about calories. And that was a lightning bolt moment that seems so simple now, but was absolutely huge to realize at that time. And I realized, you know, maybe there are other parents and families that also haven't made these connections. And I think as long as you're just sitting under this calorie amount, and no one's gaining weight, you're fine if you're eating these foods. So it's kind of this whole journey of discovery, both self discovery, and then being able to share that. And as the community built, I realized, you know, community is a huge aspect of health as well. I know we talked about this when you were on my podcast, that's actually one of the statistically most important things you need to get right. And I realized this was building an online community of sorts of support where moms could really be there for each other and learn these things together as we went. Perfect. So since starting Wellness Mama, you've gotten lots of accolades. GreatList.com named you as one of the 100 most influential people in health and wellness, along with my buddy, Dr. Oz and Dr. McCullough, both of my friends. So I mean, sounds like you did this kind of as a journaling exercise initially. Did it surprise you and how much this took off? It did at first. I think like I said, I think there was an element of certainly being in the right place at the right time. And I'm really grateful I got to be there and I got to kind of leave the charge with this community. I very much consider it a community now. I don't consider myself Wellness Mama. I consider Wellness Mama, you know, a thing that we can all be as moms. It did somewhat surprising. I'm lucky that I am married to a tech genius who is really good at SEO. So that definitely helped with the process. He was using me as a testing ground for his paying clients and long story short, it worked. But I think the sad part is the fact that it resonated with so many people means there are so many people struggling with these things. And there are so many people starting to realize all these products we're bringing into our home aren't necessarily healthy for us. And all of these foods that are marketed to our kids are not healthy for them. And all these things that we've been told our whole lives about health may be completely wrong. And so it makes me sad in some ways that it became so popular because it meant that there was a lot of underlying problems going on that we now need to address. But I also am really encouraged by it because I've always said, I think moms are the most powerful force for change on the planet. And I think if you can change the moms and empower the moms and give the moms enough bandwidth to make these changes in their own family, you can completely change our country in the span of a generation. And so from the beginning, that's been my hope is to be that voice and be that support for moms because I really truly at my core believe that moms can change the world. No, you're absolutely right. Now, you're you're the first to remind people that you're not a doctor. And I certainly applaud you for saying that. But so sounds like you're a great researcher. And how did you come up with all your recipes, tips and tricks? You're so right. I definitely always make sure I say that probably too much. I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet or on TV. And thankfully, there are many amazing doctors like you out there educating and doing that job that I can't do. But I also think there's tremendous value like I just mentioned in in moms, I think that you know, mothers were the traditional holders of wisdom to begin with when you're young, you go to your mom or you go to your grandma. There were these like, values and recipes and things that were passed through generations. And mothers were the keepers of that. And so part of wellness mama as well is bringing back that like kind of reviving the idea of mother's wisdom. So I think there's I think the best scenario is a partnership between an amazing doctor, someone like you, and a mom who's doing the research who cares about her kids who's willing to make the changes. And so I don't think they're at all in tension. I think they can work well together and that we need so much both of those things to make the changes that I know you and I both so desperately want to see especially in our children. But I think moms are great at the practical side. So I'm on the ground every day six kids living that life cooking the meals, experimenting in my own house. And I think that's the practical side that is a mom's realm that we are the authorities on. And I think, like I tell, I have a great doctor I work with and she agrees with me that moms are sometimes the best experts in their kids health, especially when working with a doctor because no one cares more. And so I think when you give moms the tools and connect moms with the resources, like the really good medical resources and the doctors that that's when you just you see the best outcomes. So you've got a great doctor who you work with what what kind of feedback do you get from other moms who take some of the information you provide or what they've found that works for them, and then try to give it to their doctor. Is there a lot of pushback? That is definitely a tough thing. And I think geography in certain areas, it's tougher than others. I know in big cities, you can almost always find doctors that align with your values. Now we're seeing the age of concierge medicine where with new laws, doctors are able to work remotely with people. I think that's amazing. We're seeing, you know, that way you can connect with a specialist maybe in another state who you would never have had the chance to connect with. And I know the laws are still developing when it comes to that. But I think I know a lot of moms feel like they have to fight with their doctor. And I think it's twofold. I think it's researching and finding a doctor that is going to have an approach that hopefully will align with yours.  But it also is, like I said, finding that synergistic partner with a doctor and being willing to listen to their advice as well. So I think those two things are very important together. And you're you're in a fairly rural part of the country. Do you find it challenging? You've obviously found a great physician. Is it more challenging, you know, out of the big city?  I don't think it takes the place. I joke that we actually have to travel farther for a dentist. We love than a doctor, but we use a company called StudyMD. So my doctor is not actually in my state, but she's licensed in my state. And the way the laws work between our two states, I can do a lot of things virtually. So obviously she's not going to prescribe narcotics long distance and she can't set a bone over the phone. But for a lot of the things that would happen with kids, like we there's digital otoscopes, I can send her a picture of an eardrum and say, What would you do in this scenario? Or does this need stitches? Or kid has these symptoms? Do I need to take her in or not? And so for those kind of things, I feel like it's cut down on 80% of my parenting hassles. And also just I feel like I have a doctor literally in my pocket. And I love that technology has enabled things like that. I certainly technology has its problems and parents have lots of opinions about that. But I think it certainly also has its benefits. Cool. Are there virtual shots yet? Not yet. They haven't quite figured out. So when you boil it down, what's the most important thing to keep in mind when you're creating a healthy living environment for you and your family? Boy, that's a big one. That is a big question. And my answer is definitely going to start brought in and dial down, which is that in almost every case I can think of simple as better. I think we can try to over complicate this and we can try to get into like, I need to take a million supplements and I want to try all these devices and I want to do all this stuff. But you have to nail the simple things first. I've said so many times you can't out supplement a bad diet. You can't out exercise lack of sleep. You have to dial in the really simple everyday things and make those a habit first, especially with kids. Because kids were setting up their lifelong foundation for this. We're setting up their taste buds and their ability to eat and choose healthy foods, their ability to sleep, which is I think one of the biggest keys and was one that was a long journey for me to optimize. So I always tell moms, first of all, don't compare yourself to other moms. Certainly don't compare yourself to me because I've been doing this for 13 years. And if you saw me when I was starting, you would laugh. But take baby steps and don't stress. And so I am on monosama.com. I do a lot of small systems and that are easily repeatable. And I encourage moms to implement one thing at a time. Because if you can do one thing at a time and make it a consistent habit and do it for your whole life, long term, that's going to have a much bigger effect than if you try to cold turkey change everything in your entire life overnight, do it for four days and then you quit because you're overwhelmed and you're exhausted. So I have a cookbook that covers my food side. I know you have amazing cookbooks that I love. And then I have the lifestyle detox book, which really walks you through the process of the baby steps of everything in your house and your personal care routine and all of that because it is it is a lot over time. But if you focus on those simple baby steps and start with the really, really easy stuff. So if it's the food category, get rid of the worst offenders first to stop buying the things that you don't want to feed your kids anymore. I always say, start with things like sugar and vegetable oils and refined ingredients. Get those out first. Start with simple cleaning ingredients. They're now totally natural, biodegradable cleaners that make their concentrate and they make cleaners for every part of your home. So it doesn't have to be complicated. And in almost all cases, the natural version is simpler. And just like in life, the more you minimize the less mental stress you have, the more you move towards those natural alternatives, the less products you need in general. And are these natural alternatives cheaper? I know a lot of people are always going, I can't afford to, you know, do all this. You know, I don't have a lot of money. What have you found as a mother, a six kids? Absolutely. The natural alternatives can almost always be cheaper, especially if you're willing to put in a little bit of time and make some of them yourself. So if anybody's interested, I have recipes for pretty much every household product. You can always just Google wellness mama and whatever you're looking for, laundry detergent, et cetera, and those recipes will come up and they are much cheaper than the store bought alternatives. Plus, you're reducing packaging, which is awesome for the planet. There's also things like there's a concentrate called branch basics, which is totally natural biodegradable. And you can use it to make bathroom cleaner, all purpose cleaner, laundry soap, dish soap. It makes everything and it's safe enough to use on skin. I've used it as baby shampoo. It's that gentle and because you're buying one bottle of concentrate, it's way more eco-friendly. It's much cheaper. So I think there's amazing things like that that are developing that really do let us save money and switch to the natural alternatives. And then you don't have all these, you know, plastic bottles of cleaners and things floating around your house because you don't need them. So you're, you know, you're at that cutting edge of wellness and technology. Any anything you've seen that really gets your interest on the horizon or the near horizon that you're excited about? I think the three ones that I've seen the most research coming out recently would be about fasting or fasting mimicking diets, which of course is not new. Every major religion has that in some form and every indigenous culture uses this in some form. But really seeing the data on what it's doing and its impact on so many markers and health. And I think like a lot of things we've talked about, it's a simpler approach. It's just not a getting it's not you have to do anything hard. I think also like I mentioned heart rate variability, it's huge. I think that's going to be an emerging area of research in ways that we can improve that. And one of my personal favorite ones, it's again not new in Finland, they've done this forever. But the research is new is on saunas. And I know that you talked about like there's a lot of benefits for heart health, which you were much more qualified to explain. But how regular sauna use can reduce blood pressure. It's tied to cognitive function, muscle recovery. I also think it's important to sweat every day. And that's often from exercise, but it can also be from sauna and that just uses the body's natural detoxification pathways. I don't think we need to do any crazy detoxes or cleanses. I think the body does it naturally when you just support the body. But I saw recently a study on saunas and inflammation that sauna use regular use, which I think was four times a week or more, lower C reactive protein by 32%. So I think we're going to keep seeing these studies that basically prove back to circle where we started the wisdom a lot of grandmothers knew in the first place, which is that if you sleep well and hydrate and eat healthy and sweat once in a while, that like all of these things are so good for us. So I think I think we're just going to see a lot of really cool research that backs up some time tested things as we move forward. Right. I'll add one more thing. My my wife's mother required that everybody sleep with the window open even in the middle of winter in Connecticut. And to this day, we always sleep with the window open. And I think your point is well taken. Our houses are toxic environments, and they're so well insulated now that nothing ever gets out. So crack the window open near your bed. And again, listen to your grandmother or great grandmother. They probably knew. There you go. So what so what's the the listener going to do? Are there things, for instance, in in household products or in skincare products that the you want a consumer to know if they're picking up and looking at something on the label, are there absolute run high do not come near these products? Yeah, well, and like how you talk about in food, it's almost always easier to say the good stuff versus like all the bad stuff to watch out for because as you probably know, there's over 80,000 chemicals that are found in these things. And very few of them are tested. A lot of them are not approved in Europe, but they're approved here. So by category, there's just a lot of different ones. For instance, a lot of cleaners have VOCs or chlorine or things that off gas into the home, which we now know sometimes indoor air can be up to 100 times more polluted than outdoor air, which is really scary because we're also not spending enough time outside anymore. So we're inside breathing that all the time. And so that's why I say it's almost always easier to choose the good one and just get rid of all of the bad ones at one time. There's also things like trichosan, which is has been in beauty products and cleaning products. And it's and toothpaste. Yeah. And it was used to be antibacterial. But we're now finding it can have reproductive and neurological and all kinds of consequences. And that they're saying statistically, you don't even need an antibacterial substance. If you wash your hands with soap and water the right way, it does the same thing and we don't have to expose our kids to that. I would actually go a step further and say we actually want our kids to develop a healthy microbiome on their skin and then their guts. So I'm a big fan of sending my kids outside to play in the dirt, get dirty. And I'm not sitting there sanitizing them every time they touch the dog or the dirt or anything. Certainly they go to the bathroom, wash your hands, but I'm not a germaphobe when it comes to the rest of it because I think it is important to interact with our environment in a bacterial way. And I think that antibacterial substances have kind of undone that for a lot of us. Additionally, a lot of household cleaners and beauty products for that matter have artificial fragrances. So there are ways to get natural fragrances that are safe, but most of these compounds and these products use harmful fragrances. And this is not just air fresheners, but things like laundry detergent and dryer sheets. If you smell your laundry detergent after your clothes have been washed, that's a special kind of VOC that is designed to stay. It's a set based VOC that stays in the clothing so that it smells good. But if you're wearing that, you are both inhaling it. So you have chronic low level exposure in your lungs. It's also on your skin, which is your biggest organ. So you have constant low level exposure on your skin. So you're getting that kind of from a double perspective. And I know that you probably are the best I've ever heard explaining how food, how it can lead to autoimmune disease and how it can cause that low level chronic inflammation. And I think we also like you talk about with the deadly disruptors, you have to be careful about your environment as well because those things can also really cause that chronic low level exposure that over time really leads to inflammation and all kinds of problems in the body. And another one I'm really careful about, I know we're going to talk about it in depth is plastic in general. Because I think with kids, that's one we have to be so, so careful about because it is an endocrine disruptor, especially pre puberty. So for those of us with little kids, it's a really important thing to address not just even having plastic in the environment can be harmful, but certainly if plastic is touching the food or your body, and we don't think about the things like a lot of our clothes anymore are made out of plastic chemicals. And so again, at the end of it, I always go back to go simpler, have fewer articles of clothing, but choose natural fibers, have fewer cleaning products, but choose natural ones, have fewer beauty products and just use natural things like olive oil or you make your own or use natural cleaners instead. Yes, feel around attributed her great skin to olive oil. And that's all she ever put on her skin. And when I go to the Italian beaches or the French beaches, I'm fascinated with the number of people who have a bottle of olive oil on the beach. And of course, they should be drinking it, but they are also putting it on their skin. It has absolutely some amazing properties. But I think your point is really important because our protective agencies like the FDA or the Department of Agriculture. Number one, as I've said, and many people have said, they are controlled by interests that have nothing to do with our health. Big pharma, big medicine, big, big agriculture. But I think the important thing is most of the testing of these compounds naively thought that the minute amount of toxins in these compounds were so insignificant that, you know, there's nothing that these could be doing to you.    How did that happen? So we, as you pointed out, the Europeans, even the Canadians are so far ahead of us. And you mentioned BPA. And I think that's a really good, good point to me. Tell us about BPA. I talk a lot about it as one of my favorite disruptors. But plastics talk about that. Yeah, I am a huge proponent of getting rid of the plastics, both from a personal perspective and an environmental perspective. I think it's a really important thing. And to your point that you just mentioned, I find it ironic that so many of us will, like people will take a motrin, just 200 milligrams, it's tiny pill and expect it to take their pain away. But then they'll ignore the potential that something they're putting in their body every single day. And such a tiny amount could have an effect. And I think as humans, it's easy to fall into that. I didn't notice it in immediate effect. Therefore, it's fine or my parents did it and they survived. So it's fine. But I think for moms especially, we're in an era of we have to take extreme personal responsibility in this.  When they finally realize it's bad, it's too late often. And we're the ones who are responsible for our choices and our families. And so like you mentioned, BPA is certainly one of those. A lot of people don't know that BPA used to be given two cows and chickens to make them gain weight before slaughter, so that they could charge more for the meat. So it's a known hormone disrupter and it mimics the effect of estrogen in the body. This is not just BPA, because people now say, oh, if it's BPA free, it's fine. But you also actually want to look out for all the bisphenol family. So BPF and S and there's, I think, like dozens now. You want to watch out for all of them because they mimic the effect of those hormones in the body. And as anybody who's ever struggled with PCOS or hormone issue knows, you don't want that estrogen progesterone immunizing hormone balance to get messed up. Too much estrogen can be really problematic. And for guys, you certainly don't want too much estrogen because that leads to abdominal fat and all kinds of problems, you know, reduction in testosterone, things you don't want. And unfortunately with plastic, that's not even where it stops. So you mentioned phthalates and like you said, the European Union banned these. Canada is very careful about these. They're especially considered harmful to men and boys because especially if they're in utero exposure because they can lead to from what I've read immune system impairment, reduced testosterone, like I said, fertility problems is one of the reasons these chemicals are saying why we're seeing much higher percentage of female amphibians and, you know, water animals because these are now getting into the water supply. And the really scary part is that we now live in an environment where essentially our planet is saturated with plastic byproducts. They have now found plastic under like 30 feet of ice in Antarctica, which means the planet is saturated. And unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be getting any better. We're using trillions of plastic bags every year. Millions are made per minute. We are throwing away plastic bottles. That's actually the most common waste after cigarette butts.  Plastic takes so long to break down. And then even when it does, it's toxic. So all these compounds are increasingly getting into our water supply. Some people have heard about micro plastics and how those are now saturating our system. But basically every square mile of the ocean from what I've read has about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in it on average. So we are, this is a time when it's not just about convenience that it's not just about us. I think that removing plastics is the right thing to do certainly for our children's health. There's so much research backing that up, but also just as citizens of this world, we have an obligation to really reduce our plastic use because it's become a huge impending problem. Yeah, you know, the the nanoplastic particle scare. There are plastic or fish that we eat and there is plastic in us. I don't know.  Maybe it'll be a good thing. We'll just turn into a perfectly preserved piece of plastic. Facelift from the inside out. Oh, I sense a marketing idea here. You know, we talk about this. You talk about this. I talk about this. Many of our colleagues talk about this.  But you want to keep it simple. So what are some simple things? I mean, how do you get plastics out of your house? Yeah, that's a great question. And like I said, I covered a lot in the Wallace Humber lifestyle detox. If you really want to go deep on it, but also when it comes to your right, it's so overwhelming and intimidating when you try to tackle all of it. And unfortunately, I think stress and guilt are also two of the more dangerous things that we can encounter. So I'm really big on finding an approach, like I said, that is sustainable, that does not cause stress. I often say that worrying is wasted imagination. It's a great Walt Disney quote. So I don't think worrying about it and stressing about it is going to fix it. I think, like I said, make a plan and start small and implement. As you go through and finish products, just don't replace them or replace them with better products. Don't expect it to look perfect overnight. And I'm really big on having systems in every aspect of daily life. And the way I came about this was kind of roundabout. So a few years ago, I was running the blog, I had all the kids and I was trying to do everything myself. And I reached a point of extreme burnout and probably pretty close to a nervous breakdown. And I actually came really close to deleting the blog because I realized I couldn't keep juggling all these things and I certainly wasn't going to let my family fall through the cracks. So the blog had to go. But it also made me realize in that moment, I was like, the blog doesn't stress me out. Work doesn't stress me out. Why is that? Why am I always stressed at home, but not at work? And I realized that at work, I ran everything by systems. Everybody knew the responsibilities, when it needed to be done, how it needed to be done. There were goals, there were objectives, there were measurables, we tracked the important things. At home, I was trying to manage eight people's lives in my head without systems and make sure everybody got everywhere on time, that all the meals were cooked, all in my head. So I basically applied my business system to my house and kind of created, implemented those KPIs and those goals and objectives in every aspect of home life, realizing it wasn't the actual doing that was the stressful part, it was the having to remember to do all the things.  And so I encourage moms to go through the different sectors of their life, whether it be cleaning, meal planning, dealing with the kids and create repeatable systems so that you take the remembering and the guesswork and the mental energy out of it and that lets you be able to implement much more effectively and without the stress. So that might be just create a one week, one week meal plan that meets all of your criteria, gets all the vegetables and then just repeat it until you get the hang of it that way that your shopping list is the same every single week. You know what you're cooking on one day, you have kids old enough, get them involved and let them help you so that it's not all on you. But just create a one week meal plan versus trying to think of how am I going to eat healthy for the rest of my life? Do it when we get a time. When it comes to cleaning, like I said, as you run out of things, replace it with those natural concentrates and then it takes it's just so much simpler and takes the stress out and get your kids involved with that too. Especially once you switch to natural cleaners, there's no concerns about your kids touching it or using it to clean. So you're able to involve them a lot more. So I'm really big on create those systems. They're going to look different for everybody, but in those different sectors of life, whether it's food, whether it's cleaning and personal care, and then just repeat them till their habits. Yeah, it often takes researchers shown that in a new habit can take up to six weeks to establish a new habit. Mark Twain in my in my first book, I quoted Mark Twain that habits or habits are not to be taken lightly. Rather than thrown out the window like bathwater, they must be coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. And I think that was brilliant on his part to realize that and you certainly figure that out as well. The other thing, speaking of my my first book, I found in my research that families in general end up eating about five different meals on a routine basis. And that becomes kind of the set. And it's really kind of fun. And I actually urge families to look at, you know, you will find that there are set things. And if there's five of them and you can establish that pattern, it's so easy to say, OK, you know, five things are set. I know how to do this. You can involve the kids, my grandchildren, you know, love to cook. My mother had me in the kitchen from day one. And I'll never forget. I told this story when my wife and I were dating many years ago. We had her over at our house and my mother cooked a meal. And I sat there and said, oh, you know, I would have changed this spice. You should have done something like this. And Penny said, can I talk to you for a second? And we stepped out.  And I said, what do you mean?  And I said, we do this all the time. You know, she learns, I learned and we're, you know, we're both doing this together.  And this is normal, you know, dinner table conversation. So, yeah, I can't stress enough that you'll find that you will find family meals that everybody eats. And we'd love to experiment. You know, yeah, I think that's a good point. I mentioned this in the book, you know, the plant paradox family cookbook. Always give options and start with, you know, with one thing that everybody can agree on. Don't 95% of the stuff doesn't have to leave your home immediately. Is that what you're finding? Absolutely. Yeah, start with the positive and then build. And kids are so incredibly adaptable. I find that they adjust actually much quicker than adults usually. I think you're right. I think most families do repeat those same few meals over and over. So just find the good ones and repeat those. And also for parents, especially remember that it's not just about changing our habits. We're building these lifelong habits for our kids. And of course, we want them to enter adulthood knowing how to cook and knowing how to choose the best foods and also knowing how to take care of a home and to do laundry and to like these are all skills we want to pass on to our kids. And so I think, yeah, I think that's an excellent point. Yeah, my grandson is now three. We have pictures of him that we posted on the internet where he was given a plate choice of broccoli and I think some cut off pork spare ribs. And he kept pushing the pork away and grabbing the broccoli at age one and a half. And we keep thinking the kids come out of the box of needing craft macaroni and cheese and chicken McNuggets.  It's what we, you know, provide them to try. And it's amazing how flexible kids are if you give them the right stuff. Yeah, and not just provide them. I think it's also really huge. We have to be the example even more. I think kids we have to educate certainly teach them, teach them gently and explain why these foods are good for you. But even more so be the example because they will do what we do way more than what we say. And I've always done that with food, but this really hit home for me recently. I had always hoped because I never thought I could sing. So I'd always hoped my kids would want to take voice lessons. So for years, I would gently suggest you guys want to take voice lessons and they didn't. And then I realized I'm the one who wants to take voice lessons and not my kids. So I took voice lessons and now they're all interested in singing or like if I sit down and draw, they all want to do art. So it's so much more what we do than what we say. And if we make those meal times and healthy foods a positive experience and make it focused on nourishing our bodies, they pick that up so quickly. In conclusion on that be the change you wish to see in the world, right? Absolutely. OK, so what's next on the horizon? You know, I see you on the website. You test out cutting edge health strategies and devices. Do you like red light therapy or near infrared light therapy like Dave Asprey or other bio actors do? I do. And it's part of my routine. I will say. So what's next for me on the horizon is I decided that I wanted to tackle the biggest defenders for families of products that are in our home. So I felt like there were a lot of natural products. And then there were these conventional products that worked really well. And in certain categories, there were not products that did both. And so I'm working on actually creating these products and making them available to families. So we'll be launching with things like toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner, the things that families use over and over with the idea turning on the head, the idea that we absorb a lot of what we put on our skin. So not only is it going to be nothing toxic, we're going to put the good stuff in it so that you can absorb that in contact with it. But I think, yeah, I think I'm a fan of testing out all these cool like health devices. But I do think at the end of the day, it's the simple things. It's the food, the sleep, the movement, the sunshine, the lack of stress and the community that really are the biggest needle movers for our health. But I think it's fun to try all of these things. I'm personally experimenting also with heart rate variability. I think that's going to be a thing we see more research on and it's a fun metric to kind of play with and see. And it's correlated as I'm sure you could explain better with longevity and a lot of things. So I'm working on playing with optimizing heart rate variability and using things like saunas, which I'm a huge fan of, high intensity interval exercise in short amounts, fasting in certain forms. And it's really kind of personally kicking out on that right now. All right. So, you know, since my latest book came out, the longevity paradox, I've always been interested in having my guests help with longevity. So what's one thing listeners can do today to live a longer, healthier life? One thing. That's all I want. It's touched it out on the one thing. So I think the one that has made a huge difference for me, that I wanted to pick one that was easy and free and that could be done as a family. I didn't want to give anybody something that cost money. And so for me, what I've noticed the biggest change even in my lab results and certainly in my sleep is to get outdoor light every day, preferably in the morning and preferably while moving. So in the the first couple of hours of the day, spending time outside and sometimes that's drinking a cup of tea with my kids out on the patio. Sometimes that's going for a walk or sprinting, but getting outside in the sunshine, natural light, which affects circadian rhythm, which affects hormones. I've seen changes in my cortisol levels and in other hormones that I track and also in my sleep. And I think so if I had to pick one, that's the one that cascades into you're less likely to maybe have cravings of your cortisol in the right range. You're going to sleep better if you get sunshine during the day. You're hopefully breathing while you're outside and getting the fresh air and also slowing your breathing. So to me, that is kind of my all encompassing, really free, simple tip that makes a big difference. All right. And I'm going to add to that. Get a dog. I love that because the dog will get you outside. They they will not allow you not to get them outside. And it turns out that families who have dogs, interestingly enough, have far less allergies and far less eczema than families who don't have dogs. And this whole idea of, oh, I have to have a hypoallergenic dog. Believe me, dogs bring in wonderful microbiome. They track it in. They give it to you and give it to your kids. And yeah, and they pull you outside. So get a dog. I love it. So Katie, it's been a pleasure talking to you today. You've kind of told listeners where they can find you. But let's do it one more time. It's easy. It's wellness mama everywhere. So the main hub is wellness mama dot com. That's where all the recipes I mentioned live. But any social media, I'm wellness mama and the books are all titled by wellness mama as well. So if you search that, you'll find all of them. Wow. So just wellness mama. That's perfect. OK, so that's all from Dr. Gundry's podcast. We'll see you next week. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts, because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.