I think you can go ahead. OK, so I'm going to start then. My name is Veronica, and I am currently studying International Business Management at Prague College. I am right now in my last semester, and I am from Czech Republic, from Prague. But currently, I'm actually in Oman. And I will tell you a quick story of how that happened. So we actually have a family business in here. We invested in a few apartments in here, and we were planning to rent them for people when they come for vacations here. So in March, the apartments got finished, and we came here just to furnish them for two weeks. And after that, two days before the flight back, everything got canceled, the airports got closed, and they told us that we just have to wait until everything will be solved. So we've been like, OK, that's good. So we can just have two, three more weeks of vacation, and then we get back. Well, right now it's eight months, and we are still here. But anyway, now I get to the point that actually I don't know what I would do if there would be no digital campus or no online learning through Prague College, because I don't know if I would have to postpone my studies or just like I don't know how else I would solve it. So I'm really glad that Prague College actually started this digital campus and online learning. And actually, it provides me, I think, the proper education, like if I would be there present in the physical classes. Also, about the digital campus, I would even appreciate it much longer before, like it would be really useful. Because for example, last year, I was going to the Italy to Rome to learn Italian for some courses. And actually, because we had those physical classes at Prague, every week I had to come back for two weeks to Prague and then back to Rome and so on. So if we would already have digital campus before, I would save a lot of money and a lot of time. So it's definitely good for traveling if we will be able to do that in future. This digital campus would be really cool. And also, I really enjoy just this comfort of staying at home and learning from home. Because to be honest, in the past when there were those winter months at Prague, and it was so cold and dark and depressing, and even I felt bad or sick or something, I still had to go there physically. And that was the last thing I wanted to do. So it's good that right now, actually, we can do everything from home. And also, I feel that right now, actually, all the world and all the business is really heading to the online business, online communication. So this kind of thing, this digital campus, digital learning is preparing us a lot for the future like that. And other thing is, which I like really much, is that all the classes are recorded. Because in past, I remember many times I was in the class, I was taking notes, and I missed so many points or I missed so many discussions because I couldn't delegate between all of it. And right now, in the online classes, I can just join the discussion and not worry much about the notes. And I can just focus what's happening there. And later on, I can look at the recorded classes, which is really also useful. Because when you have those assignments where the due date is like in two or three months, you really forget what you have been talking about in the beginning. And it's really useful to get back to it after. And the last thing I would like to mention is that I was actually in the beginning really not feeling really good about how it's going to be all this online communication, because it felt to me a little bit cold and so on. And I was thinking that maybe I will not get any friends anymore from Prague College and so on. Because before, we all spent time physically there together. And after, even we went for a stand, or we just been spending time together. And so I was really curious how it's going to be. And surprisingly, it's actually nice. Because even though it's online and you see the people just on the screen, I still kind of you can still feel the energy. You can still communicate with them. And also, we have those group presentations or group projects and so on, where we just closely have a Zoom meeting with few people. And I think I got to know them a little bit more like that. And after, we actually even became friends. And we are even chatting in private messages like on Instagram or WhatsApp. And I believe that when I will be back in Prague, I will be happy to meet them. It will be all nice. And yeah, also one more last thing I wanted to say is that a lot of people are thinking that you cannot actually maybe really focus when it's online like this. But for me, I actually feel like the focus, it's more concentrated.  So for me, I think I focus even better than before in the class where there were so many distractions and I was even tired or whatever. So yeah, that's from my side, my experience with the digital campus. Yeah, I would have to agree on all of your points. Like I agree completely. Like I came into this with such bad expectations. But with all the parties and everything that Prague College organizes, you really feel connected. But yeah, hi everyone. I am Tamta and I'm studying graphic design. I just started and I have never even been to Prague. So I'm learning digitally. I'm just waiting for my visa to be printed because printed has stopped because of all the COVID situation and everything. And I'm just at home in Georgia studying. And yeah, experience has been very good as good as it can be on a digital campus. And I really enjoy it. Hi, my name is Mirna and I am currently in Prague. Although I come from Bosnia, I'm a freshman. So I just started this year and I came to Prague with the beginning of the semester. So this has been my first college experience ever. But even regarding the circumstance, it's been very nice because all of the staff and the teachers and other students have been very communicative. And they've actually been very keen on making this a positive experience even with all the restrictions and not being able to see each other or communicate or actually be in a normal environment the way we're used to. But the digital campus is very helpful. One of the good things I think about it was that it started almost immediately. They didn't have a lot of problems with it. They knew how to do it. It was already well organized and it functions completely okay. The lectures are recorded, which is helpful and the teachers are very approachable. For the students who are in Prague, they offer sometimes in-person meetings. If they need some extra help, I can say that for my program. I don't know about others, but I'm sure it's very similar. And even for the students who aren't in Prague, they still offer one-on-one Zoom classes. So the staff is very nice. And I think the whole college has tried to make this experience in this environment and these conditions as pleasant as possible. And the student clubs are functioning as always just through Zoom. So everything that was organized before is still going on just in a little bit different way in a more different way. And that's about it. But I can definitely say that everybody's trying their hardest to make this as good as possible. And just kind of wait it out until things kind of get back to normal or get better. Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. I think one of the benefits that Prague College has is that because we're such a small university, we, the teachers, we're basically, we got the privilege of having very much like a band. Teachers are having an individual approach with their students in their classes. And we can have one-on-one meetings with them. And even now, for my subject that I study, which is creative media production, that's the program I'm in, and I'm currently in my first year, I really noticed that even for some of our classes, we got even, we're split into smaller groups. That way, the teachers are able to really focus on each student really intensely and give them all the time that they got. And I think this way, we're able to get the maximum from our classes as if we were on the campus. And I think that's extremely good. And I think Prague College really does a great job with that. I mean, it's interesting because again, yeah, I'm also a freshman, so I have not been to the actual campus. So it's really interesting. I'm kind of getting used to it. It's interesting how like a year ago, we would not think that this was gonna happen and we're now making it like the new norm. We're completely like, we're almost normalizing it. I think it will be weird to go outside and see people not wearing masks at all, or not even having online school. But I think the benefit is totally like, as Veronica said, like having recordings of it. So then when you actually have a class, you can engage more in the discussions which we really do have in our subject as well. And then just to know if you need to take more detailed notes, watch it later. And even the benefit of having hybrid classes in the future, which Prague College offers where the students that are in the class are in the class, but it's also recorded and broadcasted through Zoom. I think it's a great thing if someone is just sick or missing out, we can have this opportunity to have hybrid classes and not miss out on any classwork or anything. So I'm really, really happy about it. And oh yeah, by the way, my name is Caroline and I'm from the Czech Republic. But yeah, that's what I would like to say about my experience so far, at Prague College. Yeah, also Caroline, as you've been saying that we are usually like studying in small classes and we have like only a small amount of people there. That's always been in at Prague College like that and it was really good. I was before at another college, which was like it was a public university and there were like 100 of people and I actually didn't get any value from that. Like this really at Prague College, they really pay attention to get this one-on-one experience and to really focus on you and you really engage with all the people and all the lecturers. So yeah, that was already before even the digital campus and it's until today and I value it a lot and it gave me much more than on the previous university I've been before. So yeah, I just wanted to add that. Wow, we got a question coming up. What is it like to study in a multicultural environment? Does anyone want to answer it? How do you guys actually feel it online like this? Do you actually feel this multicultural environment? Because maybe you more felt it, you would more feel it if you would be physically there. What do you think? I mean, I say from my experience, I really became good friends with one of my classmates and she's from Dubai and it was really interesting to get to really become friends, even just digitally with someone who is from the other side of the world and get to hear about their culture and their experience and things like that. So I think one of the benefits of going to an international university is that you get so much insight into different cultures and I think that really makes you richer in your knowledge and experience and I think it's a great thing. I mean, so far Veronica is one of the very few people that I know that are from the Czech Republic in our university because we have people from all over the world and I think that's just such a great experience. Exactly, as you're saying, like I had classmates from everywhere in the world and I got to know so much about all those cultures and countries, I even traveled sometimes to see my classmates in other countries and really it's great experience and it gives you so much. So really, really good to work in multicultural environment. Do we have another question? Also, I would add that because we're foreigners and we're going to a multicultural environment, you feel very included because if you went to another country and you are the only foreigner, you won't feel that included and I think that's a very important point. Yeah, that's true. But there's been another question. Could you please tell us a little bit more about a project that you have worked on and you have liked in particular? So, does anyone here have any projects they've already done? Oh yeah, like me personally, we've done so many of projects of course because I'm in my last semester of Masters but for example, currently we are working on two presentations with small groups and I really enjoy that process. Like we always have like Zoom meetings and we discuss all the ideas and do the brainstorming and so on and what we put together is really cool. Like I would never be able to put this together just by myself. So it brings me a lot of value and a lot of new knowledge. So yeah, I enjoy for example, doing those group presentations with another classmates. What about you? What projects did you do? Well, I'm very new but I've actually just become part of a new project as well. It's a student magazine and we'll see how that goes since it's still in its developing stages, but... Yeah, I mean, I'm also taking part in the student magazine and I think it's really excited to see it come to life because so far, you know, it's at the beginning of like the... It's at its beginning, but it's nice to be there all the way from the start to see how things evolve and just be part of it. For my like subjects, we're currently working on some group projects that we're gonna be assessed on but we still haven't like actually finished it or presented it. But I think it's interesting, in a way, you're challenged to work in a group project while social distancing. It's almost like a paradox. It's like group project, social distancing. But I think, especially like Gen Z people, I think we know how to work with media and communications and all these things that of course we... I mean, it's amazing the fact that we even have the privilege to be able to have the internet and platforms to call on and talk to people. And I think it is in a way a challenge to be able to collaborate together on a project from different places. For example, actually we did have one project that we already presented and my friend and I were working together and she's the one all the way from Dubai. We had to make like a little three minute film and it was challenging because we had to use her shots for the film, my shots for the film, we had to have an equal part in it while one person was able to only edit it from their device because if you use spinal cut or anything, you cannot really do it at the same time from two places. It was a challenge, but I think it also was really enlightening and it was fun. So it has its perks, surely some disadvantages as well, but I think also our teachers are very respectful and aware of what the challenges are in this process and they always try to do their best to help us out and give us all the resources they have to give us. What about your thumbs up? There's another question, by the way. How many in class hours do you have? Does anyone want to answer that? How do they mean and how many in class hours do we have? I wonder if they just mean like how many classes a week or... Yeah, I think and how long they last. Okay. Well, I think it usually is two hours for one class, right? And sometimes you have several classes in a row during the day, especially in the first semesters. It usually goes like three classes in a row, two hours. How do you guys have it? Even now in master's I have a little bit less classes than we had in the beginning, but I'm curious how you have it guys now in the first semesters. Well, I don't know if I said it already, but I'm in computer science at Prague College. I'm in the School of Media and IT and we have five classes. Two of them are non-mandatory, but they're like soft skills and academic introduction just to help us with the other classes. Each class lasts two hours and it's approximately two classes a day, but if they squeeze in three classes in a day, then you have one class another day. So it's like that, but it's not too much. And you have a lot of time during the day to work on whatever homework you have or projects. It's not overwhelming at all. Well, I'm noticing that each person has different schedules. I wonder what time to like, how does she have it? Yeah, I have a schedule, but it's not changing like, it's like mandatory every week and I have 19 hours exactly like every week. Wow, okay. Wow, because I was trying to count mine. I got always, there's only one day in a week where I have two different classes after each other. So basically four hours right after each other because one lecture takes two hours. And so in a week, I have a maximum of 14 hours. For each semester, we have three subjects and we have to take all of them and creative media production. For my first semester right now, we got visual storytelling, media and cultural theory and writing there to plot and character. And basically we got always two classes a week for each of those subjects. But really every day I have like today, for example, I had one class and it was only two hours and tomorrow I'm having another one but I don't have multiple classes after each other in one day. And what is actually the timing of those classes? Because I remember in bachelor and H&D usually wasn't from the morning till a little bit of afternoon. And for example in master's right now, we are having it around six, seven o'clock in the evening. Wow, okay. Well, we always have like either, some of our classes are from nine to 11 and then others are from 10 to 12. And then on Fridays, that's when we have like multiple classes after each other. That's the only day, which is Friday. It's like, you know, you wish that Fridays were the ones where you have the days off but in a way it's like, it's not a big deal, it's fine. But on Fridays, I end the latest, which is 2 p.m. Actually the latest I have is till 5 p.m. and it's into, it has, I have it two times a week. Okay, okay. We got another question. Oh, we got two. Okay, so let's go with the first one. Have you joined any of the lecture series or parties? Oh wow, yeah, I have. I don't know if you have, but for the Halloween, there was like, no, it was for the Halloween, I have not joined that one, but there was like a welcome kind of party. I don't know if that's exactly how it was called. There was one at the, like somewhere mid of October, I think that was really, really fun. So many people joined. And I think even some of the teachers joined, which was kind of interesting because it was fun to have a chill talk, you know, with them and we were separated also into breakout rooms. We could choose where to break out rooms. We want to go to based on what we want to do. I know now there's a very trendy game called Among Us.  So it's interesting how creative the school and the people who organized it were with making sure that we really are able to do so many things on like a party, digital party. So that was a really fun experience. I don't know if you guys went to the Halloween one. Well, me personally, I didn't experience any, even this semester, especially because of the time difference and so on or just I didn't get to it. But now that I hear how it is, I'm sure I will join another one, the next one. It was really fun. Yeah, I joined both parties, like the welcome party and the Halloween and Halloween had the same format. Like we had breakouts, rooms and everything. And like on welcome party, there are so many musicians that will listen to it, which was very nice. And on the Halloween party, there was a DJ, which was also very nice. So yeah, we had breakout rooms and everything. We're just talking. It was nice. Also we had a costume contest. What's the name by that? What? The breakout room, what does it mean? Oh, on Zoom, you basically have the opportunity to be, it's usually what the professors do to separate you into like if you have to discuss something in smaller groups, they will assign you to breakout rooms. Okay. So kind of like in physical world, you would have like this group of people talking in the circle about specific topics. Yes, in like a little table and then another table. So basically that's how it is, but. Digital experience of that. Okay. I need to learn new things about that. Yeah. Oh, okay. Another question. How were they run in the digital campus? Okay. So that was related to what was, yeah, we mentioned that. How are your classes assessed? Do you have a lot of exams? I wanna hear your guys experience from different programs cause I honestly am curious. Okay. Can I start? Cause I have two tests at the end of the semester. One is before the winter break and one is after it. They're like the final exams, ICAs. They're graded individually, but they all come sum up to the same grade, but one has more value than the other, the last one I think. And they're mostly written assignments, but the first one, the first ICAs are tests, but some teachers don't do tests. I think one just gave us a written assignment. So I think it depends on the class you have cause different classes have different approaches. We can't write a test in a certain subject. So we just get an assignment. But, and the timetable for it, it's usually in the 10th week of the first semester, the first ICAs, but the teachers can be very considerate towards our schedules. And if they get too crowded, they'll just schedule a test. So we don't have a lot of them in the same day. Some even consider not having them in the same week. Wow, okay. Yeah, for me, we also have like in the 10th week or something. And we also call them, I think it's just ICAs in general, but for the program that I study, because it's so focused on like film studies and visual things, we also work on like group projects that we do collaboratively, but then we're assessed individually. So it's, I think also a great skill to be able to, first of all, present in front of a class, whether it's now through Zoom or even in person, but also, and make sure that you don't drag your group down by your own performance, though you're gonna be then graded individually. Like, of course, it's a great skill to be able to work well in a team and yet at the same time work for yourself because you're gonna be graded for your own work. So for one of our classes, we have a presentation. Then for another one, we have an essay. For another one, we have a short film to make. So it's like a diversity of all things. I think it's like a best of all worlds kind of thing, but that's for the subject, for the program that I study. Yeah, exactly. I have it or I had it in past, very similar. Usually it was reports or presentations or essays or some group work. And there were actually not many tests during all my studies, I guess. In total, we did like three maximum four tests. And I actually like that because I think that everybody just studies for the test and then forgets everything. But at Clark College, with those reports and presentation, you actually have to put your creative energy in and like to collaborate together. And I think you will even remember much more from mid and you will get more experience with that. So usually, as you're saying, in half of the semester, there are some reports to write and then in the end, there are again like presentations or reports or something. So kind of you have three months for one part of the assignments and the other half also again for some assignments. So yeah, something like that, it was yes. I think it's, I think what you said about the tests I completely agree with because we don't get like the, we didn't get so far any exam. But I mean, although of course it's important to check on your knowledge and your skills, what we really have in our classes, which I really appreciate is that we have discussions about things. We have one subject that is very theory based. So while we of course have to, you know, make take notes and all these things, we also are able to talk about things and how we approach it and how we'd see it. Cause I mean, one of the subjects which is called media and cultural theory is also based a lot on like philosophy and different theorists and their frameworks. We're able to discuss it and apply it to real life situations and how, and it's impact on media because I mean, that's what I study in my case. So I'm really grateful for that cause it also enables you to have good speaking skills if that makes sense, you know, not only writing things down on paper, but also being able to execute it and support your argument if you have some kind of statement to say in a confident way. Okay, we got another question. Wait, I got confused. Okay, are there any opportunities for real projects and not only work that is for school assignments? Does anyone want to answer that question? Well, me personally, I didn't use any of those opportunities yet, but I know that we have a lot of those like events once in semester or something like that where the companies like come to the school and they offer you a job and in the specific areas and so on. So actually, I think a lot of companies are actually interested to get people from Pratt College because as we were saying, like at Pratt College, people are really creative. They are experienced in like working with the real life situations, communicating with each other, doing presentations and so on. Because in another universities, they usually just like memorize things. Do tests and so on. So a lot of companies actually from what I remember go to Pratt College to get some talents. So for sure. Also, there is a lot of opportunity to work on real projects, not just school assignments. I think one of the benefits that we have for regarding student magazine is that, I mean, though it still goes under, you know, Pratt College, we have a lot of freedom to be independent and really express what we wanna show in this magazine. So we're actually, I don't know, I can spoil this, but one part of the student magazine is also gonna be a podcast, which I think is really great because it's something that still is kind of under the Pratt College branch. It's still something that, you know, you can extend further and it doesn't have to do anything with your studies. It can just be something that you wanna just extend and do no further even, for example, after quitting studies at Pratt College. I also have for my class because we have a lot of subjects that need to be implemented in real life, but a lot of theory that needs to have some results. Some of our ICAs at the end of the semester are projects, which we have to, for instance, right now we have programming fundamentals and for the last ICA, we have to write a program that does this and that, but it's a project that implements, in which we implement our knowledge and for instance, in the second semester, we're gonna be doing algorithms or something like that. And then again, we're gonna have to write a program which implements those algorithms. So it's very practical, that's a big thing. Yeah. Actually, I think there's a question for you, Mirna. It's about, what is it like to be relocated to Prague and then study online? Okay, yeah, well, it was a bummer kind of, to be honest, but I think what most people have a problem with when moving away or anywhere is the kind of the nostalgia that kicks in, but the college offers a lot of people you can talk to. They told us in the orientation session we had. So if you ever have a need to talk to somebody, the college is always available and they have special people for that, but for me personally, it wasn't that bad. I mean, I was kind of waiting to move away from home because I was supposed to do this year abroad, but things kind of got canceled because of some things. So I wasn't so I was kind of excited to go away, but I'm in a dorm right now because I was waiting to kind of get settled in before I look for an apartment, just to kind of get to know my way around. So I met a couple of people there. I made some friends, I made some friends from Prague College which are from different schools like the School of Business and so on. Plus, I met a lot of different people so it's never been boring. I don't have a problem with it, but I think it all comes down to your personal preferences. But regarding the online school, it functions completely okay. I feel it's a benefit to be able to get in touch with some of the teachers in real life, although I haven't actually used it, but you know, there's still the options. So there is some benefits to being in Prague. I'm just kind of okay with it, nothing special. Would have been better, but you know, it is the way it is. So yeah, that's it. Okay, there's another one. Have your programs been what you expected them to be through your digital campus? I mean, from my experience, I mean, when I was applying to Prague College and I was at what the course offers, I was extremely excited about it. I was thinking of between other schools, other universities in Prague, because I had it settled that I don't wanna study abroad for my bachelor's degree, but when I saw what Prague College had to offer for creative media production, I was extremely excited for it. So I had high expectations from this course and it definitely did not disappoint. Whether it's the actual content of what we study or the teachers, I'm extremely satisfied. So that's for my experience. What about you, Tamta? Well, this is like in the beginning, I didn't expect this because I had this preconception that in college there were lectures and it was very like, lectures telling you stuff when you're taking notes, but what I discovered was that it's more like a classroom which reminds me of my high school, which is in the best way because, yeah, it's like we're in a class classroom where it's more interactive and everything and small class sizes as you mentioned, like others. And I really, I was happy because, yeah, I didn't have many expectations and in terms of what I'm studying, I really enjoy it. So yeah, I'm happy and my expectations maybe we're not met because my expectations were lower. Maybe, but yeah. Another question, how do you find the independent study is it difficult to balance studying and being? Is it difficult to balance studying and being at home? I think you have to kind of, it's a big question of self-discipline. I don't personally, when I have to take my classes, of course, they're the temptation of, just wearing your PJs is big and you just wanna be as comfortable as possible. And in a way there is its own advantage to it, but at the same time, I think to really be motivated and ready to be in the school mode, I really try to do my best to sit by the table and lie things down and address myself as if, not like as if I would go to a campus, but just differently than if I would just chill at home. So I think it's really a question of self-discipline and being a bit sure of yourself in a way or at least for me, cause I can become a very easy, like procrastinator or just lazy person when it comes to things like this. So that's for my experience. Yeah, for me, I find it actually really good. I like that we can actually stay at home and so on. Like for me, it's also, as you've been saying, I also try to make myself, like prepare myself like I'm going to actually to the school. So I dress myself, I put makeup and so on. I put my notes everywhere, books and I'm ready with everything.  So for me, it's great. I agree.    But also that that's the great thing that I love about my classes is that I have always classes in the mornings. So in a way, I already in the morning, right away get into the working school mode and it's all like, you know, I wake up at 11 a.m. and then have classes like 5 p.m. And in the meantime, I do nothing. I think to have classes early in the morning, for me, I'm extremely grateful for it because it kind of pushes me to really, like, you know, get things done. And so I think it's a great experience. It's interesting. Of course, it's not the same as if you went to like a regular school campus, but it definitely has its comfort. And also the fact that you are actually showing your face and you have to interact with people, that makes you focused. You still have to be present and so on. It's a little bit same like when you are there. And yeah, it's like that. I think you can get focused actually, even when you are at home, especially when you show your face and so on, you can just not respond or something. And in my opinion, it's even easier to balance studying and being at home than it would be like being in Prague and physically going to the school because I'm home, there's so much more time. I don't have to, I prepare to really get out because you don't really spend that much time and you don't need to spend time on like commute, like on the bus train, like walking everything, which is also nice. But like now I think I have more time than I would have when I was, if I were physically going. So there's like more time and easier balancing, I think. Yeah. I mean, I don't know for in Prague, the lockdown, the first lockdown started in March of last year, not last year, last school year. So like, you know, March 2020. And so it already started when I was doing my, it was when I was supposed to do my high school exams and it was really interesting. I think back then it was very odd and also sitting in front of a computer for, you know, your lectures would be extremely exhausting. I think now with, I think our bodies got a bit more used to it, but of course it's still not extremely healthy to just sit in front of the computer for too many hours a day, whether it's having classes or watching Netflix or really, you know, anything else. Like, I think, like I try to do my best to still be active and go for a run or something like that. So, yeah. I think maybe the upside of this whole online classes thing is that you have more control of how you spend your time because exactly what Tamta said, you don't have to waste a lot of time getting ready, going there, coming back. And there's always, you know, going for coffee after school and things like that. So when you have online classes, it's just you with your time. And it kind of, it depends on your work ethic and what you choose to do with it. Exactly. I think what is, would really shock me though and what really impressed me was because, you know, when we had like digital learning in my other school, I was kind of okay with it because I already knew all of my classmates. You know, I've been at school with them like in person for so long. So, but here I went to my first year and I did not know anyone. And I was like, okay, this is gonna be so strange to like make friends, make complete, like make new friends. So it's completely random people that you've never met and make, like become friends on screen kind of thing, you know, like that's so, that was such a weird experience, especially because, I mean, for us, first semester started at the end of September, which was like, you know, one week before, one week after, you know, social learning, I mean, distance learning was like announced at least in the Czech Republic. But I'm extremely impressed by how I made so many friends so quickly, even just by calling with them after classes. I have numerous friends in my classes that we're just like, you know, let's call them Zoom even after our class and talk about, you know, whether it's the kind, like what we talked about in the lesson and elaborate on it further or just talk about anything else. So I think that's very exciting. And, you know, if one day we're gonna be grandmas and we can tell our grandkids about it and say how it was back in the days, because hopefully we won't experience a pandemic like this in the future again. Exactly, especially in those like group projects you do, you get to know people so well, not probably much during the normal class when the lecture is mostly speaking, but especially I found or I got much closer with several of my classmates during those projects. So that's also the benefit of doing groups projects here. Yeah. Okay, so there's another question. Is it challenging to meet other students? Do you have any specific ways that you talk to your friends outside of class? Well, I kind of already started talking about it, which I said, I haven't met anyone even if they were in Prague already. I know one of my classmates is in Prague already. He's from Ukraine. But I have not met with any of those people. And yeah, as I said, I would talk to the rest of my friends through Zoom or just message them. We have group chats for our classes, which is nice because you feel like you're not all alone on this. And even though I feel like the workload that we have, I'm managing it well. That's also a question of time management and work ethic as Myrna said, but still sometimes you can be overwhelmed in your classes with the amount of work that you got and assignments. But when you, and it can then be extremely exhausting and overwhelming to feel like you're all alone on this. Like having group chats and stuff for your classes and for your projects is so nice because you realize like, hey, we're actually all in this together. And if we need, we can help each other out. And that's extremely valuable, something that I really try to cherish as much as I can. Well, I think there are several specific ways how we meet other students. Like, first of all, like in our classes, like it's very easy to meet our sort of classmates because all the group projects that you mentioned. And otherwise, I think we'll be like on the like digital parties, we like exchanged Instagrams and that's how you can communicate and meet people from other classes and other schools. And everything, that's also a way to meet other people. And also, like the different groups, like if you join like this event magazine that you've mentioned, like that's you meet people from there too. And also there's a music society, for example, that I joined, I met people like that. And also there's many groups and associations that you can join and meet other people. So I don't think it's challenging at all if you want to meet other people. It's just very easy. Yeah. Okay, another one. For those of you who have just started studying, what is it like to study in all in English online? Well, from my experience, I went to an international high school, so for six years. So for me being in a first of all, multicultural environment was already something that I felt comfortable in and something that was not new to me. And studying in like all classes in English was also not a new thing to me because I'm bilingual. I and I speak both Czech and English. I feel completely comfortable, but I don't know for how to, I know that Mirna is from Bosnia. I wonder how it is for you. Did you have English classes before? Yeah, I had English classes. I mean, I, but I've had, you know, English knowledge of English before because I went to these courses as a kid and I went to two elementary schools. One was in English. So, but I think to get into Prague College, you need to have a certain certificate of a certain level of knowledge of English. So it has to be, I think, B to or C or something. But I think since there's a lot of people from all around the world who haven't had the opportunities to speak English as much, the teachers are very considerate towards it and they'll always repeat something if somebody doesn't hear it or understand it. If somebody says something that somebody doesn't understand, they'll just rephrase it and it's not actually a big deal at all. And the tempo of the classes isn't too fast. So I mean, for me and for the people I know, it hasn't been a problem. Yeah. Well, for me personally, actually when I started, before I didn't have much of a background in English, I was studying German much more. So I just knew this basic English from movies and serious and so on. So when I came to Prague College and I like heard all those business terms, I was totally lost. So in that case, they actually put me to this foundation year where they prepare you for everything. They teach you about those business terms and so on. And then after that, I went actually to the proper bachelor program. So for me it was like this. I would say I had similar experiences as Caroline because I went to international high school like for four years. And if I didn't study in English and I wasn't in a multicultural environment, I think that would be weird rather than the opposite. So yeah, it was simple. And yeah, the tempo of the class is slow as you mentioned. So it's nice. I completely agree. Like I think I remember back when I was in high school, I went to a Czech state school for six years and then I went to an international high school. And I remember back then it was also a huge jump for me because suddenly I would learn all, for example, if I would have science classes like chemistry, I would learn all the scientific terms in English and I'll be like, hold up, what am I supposed to write down? And I mean, I think my studies prior to studying at college prepare me well, but I think, I know of my other classmates who study creative media production with me. They don't, they didn't have that. And they, I know when I would talk to them about like how they're coping with it, with having all classes in English now at uni, they said that, you know, they're grateful that in our classes in our school, we really have teachers that, again, because we're such a small school in a way and we have small classes, the teachers are able to really explain things into more detail and slower and explain it more than once to someone if they don't understand, have individual consultations with them. I think that's the huge benefit of going to a private university because you get that individual approach. And especially if, for example, studying in English is new to you. And I think that's extremely handy. Okay, now another question is, can you sum up your experience in the digital campus over all benefits and experience? Does anyone wanna answer that? Get our line start. Okay, so the benefits and experience, I think we kind of all said a few things, but if I would like sum it up, I guess one of the benefits, I mean, okay, so let's start with the, let's start with the benefits of this experience. Surely, recording, the fact that all classes are being recorded, first of all, for those who, for example, are unable to attend the class, so then they can rewatch it, but also even if you were present and yet it's still recorded, so you can watch it then, and you know, back a few days later to refresh your memory, to make more detailed notes and things, that's a huge benefit. I think back before the pandemic started and we had to, we were basically, schools were forced to start online classes. No one ever thought of that. You would not record your classes down, you would just have to take the notes down quickly if the teacher would speak fast and you would not have this opportunity. So I think definitely the fact that classes are recorded. Secondly, there is certain advantage to being able to study from the comfort of your home, obviously. I know that some people, unfortunately, they may not have the best relationships at home or even maybe poor internet connection and stuff, that can be a disadvantage. Sometimes, of course, it can happen that the internet just cuts off and you cannot join the class, so you join five minutes later, but I think, again, the teachers are extremely understanding towards that and they don't tell you off if that happens, because it's just digital stuff and the internet can do this and it's not your fault. Does anyone wanna continue with the? Yeah, actually, I think that one of the worst things that I can think of is the internet problem because a lot of the kids have connection problems, so you'll just see somebody disappearing from time to time. But the thing that I was really, I mean, impressed by, because back in high school, my school didn't, we had this thing back home where each school, high school would have an online week just for the sake of it, even before the pandemic, but my school never had it. And when the pandemic started, they had a rough time adapting to the online learning, but here everything just started right away and everything was functioning and there was a strategy to how we'd be done. Another crucial benefit, I think, would be to record the classes and until you have a need for them, you never actually know how crucial they are, because I can't even remember how many times I've had to go over some things and it was right there. So I guess the bad thing would be, I guess the distance between the students, but everybody's working their best to overcome that. So, I mean, overall, it would be a positive experience. It would be a positive experience. It's just that there's always a few bumps and bruises along the way, but everything's going as smoothly as it can. I mean, I have a friend who told me she was homeschooled from a very early age. And when she told me her experience, she was like, you know, for me it was a complete normal thing and then when I came to study university and went to campus, that was super odd to me, but in a way it was a great experience and I enjoyed it. I think, you know, as for now, even though we see each other's faces on Zoom and stuff, it feels in a way also like you're kind of homeschooled and so it's interesting to experience it, but of course, being able to gather in person and stuff is extremely great because you feel connected. You don't, I think people who are, you know, if you're a natural extrovert like me, being just closed and isolated in your home where you live and sit just in front of the camera is almost kind of sometimes depressing, but I'm extremely grateful, again, that for our school is having all these online, like, you know, clubs and stuff that we can join or like these parties. So we're not trying, so they're really trying their best not to make it feel like something that's a pain, but rather something that we can enjoy and I think Brock College has done an excellent job with this. Yeah, I agree with everything you said and I would just add that also another benefit is for the people who actually work in the normal job that I know I had a lot of classmates who had to like go early from the work to attend the class in the university and they like missed many hours like that. So with those online classes, they just could have watched it back, just recorded. So that's really a big benefit that you can actually focus more now on your proper work if you actually got to work. And another thing is also it prepares you a lot for this future digital era and communication online, which probably is gonna happen in the future and it will be more and more of those like online meetings and online presentations and everything is moving kind of more to digital. So I think this digital campus is actually preparing us for this also. And another thing is if we will be able to travel in future, also you don't have to come back just for the class and you can stay where you are and just attend the class online from there, whatever you go. So those are the other benefits I would add to this. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I imagine that in the future, universities wouldn't even be like on physical campuses because it's so much easier like you need less resources and less money in short to teach. So I think, yeah, it really prepares us for the future. One of the biggest benefits I would say is that I can attend classes in my pajamas and I can't sleep in longer. So for lazy people maybe. This is a little bit nice. I think also another advantage is I mean, if you think of it, the future of businesses, all branches, businesses, media, everything is online. And so being able to really prepare yourself well for having like business meetings, sometimes are held online. Or I know I'm sure Veronica knows it because she's pursuing this career path or me who I'm striving to pursue more like humanities and film studies and branding and advertising. Again, I think it is gonna come like it is gonna result in a useful skill for us to be able to communicate. Because again, if you think of it, now we see on the screen just our faces, right? But body language is an insane part of communication that unfortunately right now we lack. And so to be able to express ourselves well and be explicit and execute things well to what we're trying to say, whether it is for presentations or just general communication, I think we're gonna be able to become even better and better at this and it's gonna be useful skill in the future, I think for sure. Okay, so thank you everybody who was watching this and hopefully you found it interesting and useful. Yeah, thank you very much. I hope we will be able to see some of you hopefully in the future on campus as well. And if not, then on the screens on Zoom. Yes. Okay, so thank you and bye, have a good afternoon. Hopefully you answered all your questions. Yeah. Yeah.


One of the things that really got me interested were these proteins that are called lectins, and they're sometimes called sticky proteins. And just to capture the audience, gluten happens to be elected. And it's just one of multiple lectins. Gluten is actually not as evil as a lot of people think. Okay. Inflammation and everybody's, you know, inflammation is the cause of everything. Well, inflammation is caused by a leaky gut. Today, I'm excited. First off, this is my earliest interview that I've ever done. Seven a.m. in the morning. Oh, wow. But I'm here with Dr. Stephen Gundry, who is a cardiologist, heart surgeon, medical researcher who's done over 10,000 heart surgeries and former president of the American Heart Association, but also now in New York Times bestselling author of the Plant Paradox, the Longevity Paradox and the newest book, the Energy Paradox. Dr. Stephen Gundry, thank you for being here. Hey, thanks for having me, Rob. I'm excited to dive in and talk about all the research I've been doing on you. But but but it's good, though, because I think that a lot of people I was talking yesterday with somebody about people don't research their food enough.  Do you know this? I ruined ketchup for them because I talked about how much sugar was in it. Oh, yeah. So I'm I'm excited to sit down with you and actually hear it directly from you. But if you could kind of talk about why you are writing these books now, why are you putting this out there, coming from a heart surgeon and what you noticed and what made you decide to leave that task to become an author? Well, real real briefly, I was a professor and chairman of cardiothoracic surgery and pediatrics at Loma Linda University, not far down the road from here and very famous for operating on people who were too dangerous to operate on children's heart transplants and over 20 years ago now, I met a guy who changed my life, who I call Big Ed in all my books. And he was a big overweight guy from Miami who was 48 years old and he had inoperable coronary arteries disease. That means he had so many blockages in his coronary arteries. You couldn't put stents in them to open them up. You couldn't do a bypass because there wasn't any place to land a bypass.  And were you kind of like the last resort? Yeah, exactly.  You know, if you want to try, I'm willing to try.  And I was kind of six months into this, the last resort. And I'm looking at his movie and I go, you know, I really don't like to turn people down, but I agree with everybody else. There's nothing I could do for you.  I've been on a diet. I lost 45 pounds. This guy's 265 pounds when I'm talking to him. Big Ed. And he says, and I went to a health food store and I bought all these supplements and I've been taking these supplements religiously. Maybe I did something in here. And, you know, I'm scratching my professor beard and going, well, you know, good for you for losing weight, but that's not going to do anything in here. And I know what you did with all those supplements. You made expensive urine, which I firmly believe. And he says, well, look, I've come all this way. Why don't we just get another angiogram and another cardiac catheterization? And I go, all right. So we did. And in six months time, this guy had cleaned out 50% of the blockages in his coronary arteries. Gone. And that's not supposed to happen. That's impossible. At least that's what I was taught. So I'm going, wait a minute, you know, how did you do that? And he starts describing this diet he was on. And with, I mean, it's, the serendipity is amazing because I had this crazy special major as an undergrad at Yale University back in the Dark Ages, where you could actually design your own major. In human evolutionary biology, basically I had thesis that you could take a great ape, manipulate its food supply, manipulate its environment and prove you'd wind up with a human being. And I actually defended my thesis and got it in honors and gave it to my parents and went off to become a famous art surgeon. So he starts describing this diet and I go, holy cow, you know, that's my research project. It's the same diet. Yeah, it's the same diet. And why this was so poignant was that at that time I was 70 pounds overweight. Despite running 30 miles a week, going to the gym one hour a day, eating what I thought was incredibly healthy, pretty much vegetarian diet because Loma Linda is an Adventist institution. So, and you know, I had high blood pressure, I had pre-diabetes, I had arthritis, I had migraine headaches, doing baby heart transplants, don't recommend it. And I was told it was genetic because my father had much of the same stuff. So I'm going, wow. So I called my parents actually who lived in San Diego. I said, do you still have my thesis? And they said, yeah, you know, it's here in the shrine by the eternal flame. And I said, send it up to me. So I actually started my thesis on myself. But the other thing that happened is, let me look at those supplements. And I said, how'd you choose these supplements? He said, well, you know, I just, that one looked interesting and this one looked interesting and the health food store person said, yeah, I'll try that one. And when I started looking at these supplements, I was famous for keeping hearts alive for 48 hours in a bucket of ice water for heart transplant. And I used a bunch of these particular compounds to protect them, to preserve them.  So I started swallowing a bunch of supplements and I lost 50 pounds my first year and I lost another 20 and kept it off over 20 years now. But the important thing is, I started patients that I operated on on my program. And lo and behold, their high blood pressure went away, their diabetes went away, their arthritis went away. And after about a year of doing this, I was actually going into work one Friday, looked in the mirror and I said, you know, I've got this all wrong. I shouldn't operate on people. And then teach them how to eat. I should teach them how to eat. And I probably won't never have to operate on them. Right. And that's a really dumb career. Making yourself obsolete. It's like, yeah, all my colleagues said, well, you're trying to put yourself out of business, which I did, unfortunately. And, you know, it's a really dumb career move, but that's what I did. So I resigned my position at literally the height of my career and set up a clinic in Palm Springs, where I just started a research project saying, look, if you'll start eating certain foods and avoiding certain foods and go to Costco or Trader Joe's and buy some of these supplements, I want to draw your blood every three months and, you know, insurance will pay for it, Medicare will pay for it. And let's just see what happens. And lo and behold, you could document how it worked, that it did work. Who'd have thought? Just switch the food that you're eating.  So this is what I want to dive into, is what foods are the ones, first off, that we shouldn't eat. Because there's some big surprises that I've found. And then obviously in the book, it tells the ones that we should eat. But what are some of the surprises that you came across with foods that we definitely shouldn't eat as humans? Yeah, and that actually harks back to my research on human evolution. Human beings are basically great apes. And we never encountered, never ate a bean or a grain until about 10,000 years ago. And 10,000 years ago is a blink in human evolution. And it's interesting when you actually look at skeletons from humans back then, humans were actually very tall creatures. The average human was about six feet tall.  And then you can actually watch human shrink about a foot when beans and grains were introduced. And our brain size shrunk. And you can actually first document arthritis occurring in bones and so on and so forth. Then you go, gosh, that's not very good. So I was intrigued as well, why are these things so mischievous? And that opened up this Pandora's box of learning about plant defense systems against being eaten. And believe it or not, plants do not want to be eaten.  They were here first. And their defense system is biologic, biochemical warfare against their predators. And one of the things that really got me interested were these proteins that are called lectins. And they're sometimes called sticky proteins. And just to capture the audience, gluten happens to be a lectin. And it's just one of multiple lectins. In fact, if I was going to choose an evil foe as a lectin, gluten is actually not as evil as a lot of people think. But it's... I'm gluten-free, so I want to hear about that. When we dive into it too. Okay. So, you know, in all my books, it's really what I tell you not to eat that really makes the difference. It's not what I tell you to eat. So, almost all grains have lectins. They're primarily in the outer hall. And so, one of the things that's fascinating is we have gotten sicker and sicker the more we've introduced whole grain goodness. For instance, four billion people use rice as their staple. Rice was introduced, cultivated 8,000 years ago. Four billion people go to the trouble of taking the hall off of brown rice to make it white before they eat it.   But it's not. They've taken the hall off of rice. For years and years and years, bread was judged by the whiteness. And only the poor people got the brown bread and the upper class got the white bread because the hall was being removed.  It's like really a whole wheat croissant in France. Why would I do that? Why would I ruin something? So people have all been, part of my job is to study cultures and figure out, well, why did they do this? What prompted them? I'll give you another example. The nightshade family. Nightshades are primarily American plants. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes are all from North or South or Central America. And they were only introduced to the rest of the world, both Asia and Europe by Columbus and what's called Colombian trade 500 years ago. So all of these foods are modern to almost all human beings. And even the Italians refused to eat tomatoes for 200 years after Columbus brought them back because they knew how deadly they were. And most Italian cuisine, tomatoes and peppers are peeled and deseeded before they're used and made into sauces. Because we don't do here at all. Which we don't hear it.  So growing up, I actually had sliced tomatoes when those seeds are peeled on them. And when I went away to Yale, I actually had a sliced tomato with a peel and deseed. And I thought, this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Why would you eat these things? Hey, I don't know about you, but I love the feeling of learning something new. And that's what I feel like every time I watch or listen to the great courses plus. This is a streaming service that you gotta have. It's a world of knowledge for less than what most people pay for coffee every single month. Unless, of course, you're addicted to coffee. And I highly recommend the course called Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior. 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And it has everything that a multivitamin has, plus greens, probiotics, prebiotics, digestive enzymes, immunity formula, adaptogens, and so much more. And I literally take it every single morning. So if you're looking to upgrade your multivitamin or take one nutritional formula that's going to help you cover all of your daily nutritional bases, then you want to check out Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens makes it super easy to get a high quality nutrition. It makes it as easy as possible without the need to buy multiple products. So make an investment in your health today and get the ultimate all-in-one wellness bundle to support your immunity, your gut health, your energy, and everything by visiting athleticgreens.com slash dial. You'll receive a free year supply of liquid vitamin D right now when you first purchase. Again, that is athleticgreens.com slash dial. So grains, we've got grains in there. We've got beans. But there's some ways around certain things. So first off with the beans, you say we can do it only in a pressure cooker. You can have it. But they are lethal if they're taken in the wrong doses. I heard you tell stories about this. Yeah, there's actually very good documentations, particularly the most famous one happened in Boston on a healthy eating school day where faculty and kids in a school were served undercooked beans. And I think 23 of them were admitted to the hospital with severe quote food poisoning. And it was actually the lectins and undercooked beans. Yeah, they were kidney beans, I think you said. Yeah, kidney beans. Kidney beans are by far the worst. They have the highest lectin content. But even the humble lentil, 7% of all the proteins in a lentil are lectins. So they're armed and dangerous. But when you look at traditional cultures that use beans, for instance, much of India and much of Brazil, which both use a lot of legumes, pressure cooking is standard in how you prepare these things. What's the reason why pressure cooking works and none of the other ones do? So you have to have high pressure and high heat to break lectins. The only lectin that's resistant to that is actually gluten. And gluten is such a tough protein that even high pressure and high heat can't do it. I learned subsequently that the Adventists live on a mystery meat that's made out of texturized vegetable protein, TVP. Everything's made out of TVP. And it turns out TVP is made from de-fatted ground up soybean that is extruded under high pressure and high heat. So the clever Adventists had figured out a way to detoxify soy. It's like how did they knew all of this stuff and we just lost this knowledge. We lost the knowledge of the beans. We lost the knowledge of the tomatoes. Is it just because we got lazy or we just wanted to get it done quicker? Yeah, I think all of the above. I mean, the Incas clearly ate quinoa, you know, that healthy pseudo grain. But the Incas wouldn't eat quinoa raw. They wouldn't cook it. They actually fermented it first and they let it rot and then they cooked it and ate it. And fermentation is actually a very good way of eating lectins. In fact, many bean eating cultures soak their beans for multiple hours, multiple days. They change the water. And it turns out that you can actually ferment the surface of beans by doing that and break down the lectins. So it's really fun watching how cultures have figured this out. Yeah, and how we just lost it. One thing I'm really curious about is the gluten because I'll tell you the journey my girlfriend I've been on. So my girlfriend was having eczema for real bad eczema. And I definitely want to hear you talk about skin. And that's super interesting to me. She's having real bad eczema though. And she did a whole bunch of research. Didn't want to take any pills, any of that type of stuff. So then she started researching the no-fod diet. She went on that for a while and started going away. I was like, I'll go gluten-free with you because I've noticed some soreness in my back, that type of stuff. And I was like, maybe it'll help with inflammation. Her eczema went away. She hasn't had it in probably three years, I would say. Her eczema went away. And so we've just been gluten-free since. And the more that we do research on it and the way that it breaks through the lining of your gut and goes into your blood.  What is the reason why gluten does that? And then why is the skin so important to notice when there's problems inside of your gut? So we'll almost start backwards.  And the surface of the lining of your gut is actually the same surface as a tennis court inside of you. And everybody looks down and goes, wait a minute, come on, there's no tennis court in there. And it's only one cell thick. If you will, a design flaw. I mean, I can tell you why it's one cell thick, but it's one cell thick. And those cells are all held together. You're probably old enough to remember red rover, red rover. Yeah, it's not allowed in schools anymore. It's too dangerous. Of course. Yeah, of course. So we all locked arms and two rows of kids. So all the... One straight at them. Yeah, you run right at them. There was always the big guy with his knee up and the girls would scream and it was great fun. So these cells are all locked, literally arm and arm. And they're called tight junctions. And Hippocrates, 2,500 years ago, the father of medicine said, all disease begins in the gut. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And he knew. He didn't have any of our tests. You know, the guy just knew. And he's actually right. So thanks to work by professors now at Harvard, Dr. Fasano. Dr. Fasano tried to figure out how gluten was his interest. Cause celiac disease, extreme form of gluten intolerance and cause leaky gut. And he discovered that gluten, being a lectin, if it could get to the surface of our intestines, could attach and make a compound that would... It's called zonulin and it would attach to another receptor and it would actually break the tight junction. It would make the arms go apart. And there would be a gap between these cells. And if there was a gap, then foreign proteins like lectins could leak through this gap. Pieces of bacteria or living bacteria could get through this gap. And on the other side of our intestines, 80% of all of our white blood cells, all of our immune system line the lining of our gut because that's where a potential attack could come across the wall of our border, if you will. And so these guys attacking these foreign proteins created inflammation. And everybody's, you know, inflammation is the cause of everything. Well, inflammation is caused by a leaky gut. And so one of the things in my research is that what happens is that these foreign proteins, plants are so clever, it's mind-boggling. Plants, we identify foreign proteins by literally reading a barcode of that protein. And all of our immune cells literally have barcode scanners that read a protein and say, do I know this protein? Is it a good guy or is it on the no fly zone? And plants make these proteins, lectins, resemble human proteins. And so our immune system gets all wrapped up and they're sent out almost like with wanted posters at the post office. If you see this protein, kill it and shoot it down.  And so your girlfriend's eczema was your immune system shooting at proteins in her skin that looked like lectins, in her case, gluten. And let me use the best example. Oh, when 95% of us are born with an antibody to the peanut lectin, peanuts or beans, they're not nuts at all. So 95% of us carry an antibody and everybody now knows antibodies because of COVID. So that's how our immune system recognizes a foreign protein. And yet when I was growing up, nobody had a peanut allergy. Kids were bringing peanuts to school, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and nobody was carrying EpiPens to school. Right. Now, of course, we have a massive amounts of peanut allergy. Yes. My nephew has peanut allergy. Yeah. And you go, well, wait a minute, 50 years ago, nobody had a peanut allergy. What happened? Well, back in the good old days, our gut microbiome, the bugs in our gut literally taught our immune system, hey, yeah, I know you guys are looking for this guy, but just cool it. Nobody had leaky gut for the most part, so our immune system wasn't hyper activated. But now, thanks to tons of antibiotics, thanks to whole grain goodness, we all have leaky gut. And so our immune system is hyper on alert. And now they see this kind of innocent peanut lectin and they go, oh my gosh, I've got an antibody to that.  And so is glyphosate a part of that as well? Oh, yeah. That's the other thing. I was on a podcast with a millennial recently, and millennials are often described as the first lazy generation. And it's interesting that millennials are actually the first generation that has been totally exposed from day one to glyphosate in our food, and never been without it. And glyphosate's in round up. And the interesting thing about glyphosate is it's really good at destroying our gut microbiome. It was patented by Monsanto, not as a wheat killer, but as an antibiotic. Yeah. You want to hear something crazy around that? My grandfather worked for Monsanto in, it would have been, I guess, the 60s and developed a, not to go too deep into it, but developed stomach cancer from working at Monsanto. Long story short, it was in so much pain. He came in alcoholic, ended up killing himself. But interestingly enough, in killing yourself, you're not supposed to get any insurance money. Monsanto paid the insurance money to keep him quiet. Interesting. Yeah. So that tells you a little bit about what was going on, being in the 60s and those, inside the, but yeah, it's interesting. You know, there's numerous books written about what they knew and when they knew it. Right. And it's, they knew that it killed bacteria because bacteria use what's called the chikamate pathway. I love that word, chikamate. It sounds like a great swear word, but the chikamate pathway is how plants live, produce energy, if you will. And bacteria use the chikamate pathway as well. Humans don't use the chikamate pathway.   And now there's recent evidence that glyphosate in and of itself causes leaky gut without having any effect on the gut microbiome. Hey, you're the hiring expert for your company. And what you really need is help making your short list of quality candidates. You need a hiring partner who's going to help make your life easier and you need Indeed. 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And before we started doing research with my girlfriend, I never heard anything about the gut. Except for like go with your gut feeling. That was it, right? But you have some extremely interesting stuff about why it's so important and how it actually changes the way that you feel, the way that you think and everything about you. So tell us about the gut and all of the goodness that you have for that. Well, so we used to women understand gut feeling much better than men or trust your gut. And now we've known for a number of years that there are nerves that go between the gut and the brain. And likewise, recent research shows that for every fiber, nerve fiber coming down from the brain to the gut, there are actually nine nerve fibers going from the gut up to the brain. So far more information is actually going up rather than down.  And we presume that there were tissues, neurons that were making this in the gut. And then the most recent advance is no, no, no. All these compounds like serotonin, for instance, that makes you feel good, we're actually being manufactured by the gut microbiome themselves. Isn't the majority of your serotonin actually manufactured in the gut? Yeah, it's all coming from the gut and it's all mostly coming from your gut microbiome. And then as I talk about in the energy paradox, the new exciting research is that there's a whole class of compounds that are called postbiotics. Which is a literal language between the gut microbiome and our energy producing organelles, the mitochondria and our brain that literally tells you, if you will, how to feel, how much energy to make. Giving an example, just yesterday, I saw a woman who had some pretty awful autoimmune disease called Crohn's disease which is leaky gut at its finest. And she had been to multiple physicians, had been placed on multiple medications, was miserable and she was profoundly depressed. And we got her off of all of her medications and she came to see me, she's 15 now. And we were talking yesterday, literally.  She says, I am so happy. And she said, I fired my psychiatrist. I, you know, I don't need him. I don't need the pills. And it was all because of, you know, you and teaching me how to get my gut working again. So she doesn't have Crohn's and she's not depressed. And it's like, wow, you know, you don't need any of these medications or you just have to avoid a few foods. Yeah. So tell me about, because the thing that's really interesting about it, and people don't realize how important it is, is I've heard you talk about the fecal transplants to go from one person to another that might be, I've heard you talk about rats doing or you take it to depress fecal matter and put it into a normal rat. I've heard you talk about someone who's extremely healthy and getting fecal transplant from someone who's not healthy. So yeah. And how it actually changes their body physically by having a fecal transplant. Yeah, the most, the most famous human story was a female marathon runner in England who because of some antibiotic overdose, if you will, developed a really a life-threatening infection called C. difficile. And a lot of people have heard about it. And C. difficile primarily, we now treat it, if it's severe, with a fecal transplant from a healthy donor. And as I talked about in other books, we share a lot of our microbiome with family members. The closer you are to a family member or the living in a house, you share a lot of your microbiome. Yeah. And friends share microbiomes. We've talked about that in other books. So anyhow, they found a niece of this one who was a good match. And except she was 30 pounds overweight. And so got the fecal transplant from the overweight niece and went back, she was cured, went back to life, went back to running. But over the course of the next year, she gained 30 pounds. Crazy. She didn't change the way she ate. She didn't change her activity. It was just that she had been given a new set of bacteria that changed how, excuse me, she harvested food and actually made her actually eat more for that bunch of bacteria. Wow. There's a new paper out this morning. On the same sort of subject, you can breed mice to develop high blood pressure. And you can feed mice with a high blood pressure inducing diet that makes bacteria that make you have high blood pressure. But they found that intermittent fasting, time-restricted eating, which is actually a big part of this new book, The Energy Paradox, if they put high blood pressure mice on time-restricted eating, intermittent fasting, then they would become normal intensive. Their blood pressure would go back to normal. And they go, gee, I mean just, they didn't change the amount of food, just the timing of food. And they went, wow, how come that's happening? Lo and behold, changing the timing of the food in these mice changed their microbiome from a microbiome that induced high blood pressure to a microbiome that cured high blood pressure. Well, yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. So, and I see this again, I started seeing this years ago. It's like, wait a minute, these people had high blood pressure and they don't have high blood pressure anymore. What happened? It was really funny. Early on, people would call and say, you know, I'm pretty dizzy. You know, what supplement are you giving me that's making me dizzy? And my nurse and I would look at each other and this isn't, there's nothing in there, so I'm making you dizzy. And we'd have them come into the clinic and sure enough, their blood pressure was pretty low.  And then they call a few weeks later and say, well, I'm really dizzy again. You know, well, come on in here and they're blood pressure low. Well, shoot, let's just, you know, throw these blood pressure pills away. And that's kind of like how all this starts like, wow, food has that much power. Yeah, for sure. And so what does it have to do with, with, because I'm super interested how you can take fecal matter from somebody and put it into someone else and change, but you've also, there's also been studies on rats that were considered, I guess, depressed rats and the way that they act and the way that they were and taking their fecal matter and putting it into a normal rat and it changes the normal rat that had normal energy and everything as well.  We now know that these, as much as we hate to admit it, these little single cell organisms have profound effect on really our entire functioning. They're in charge more than this. They are literally in charge. I always like to say this and my staff hates me to say it, Jack LaLaine, who I think is really the godfather of fitness, who lived in 96. Jack LaLaine, most people know him from the Jack LaLaine juicer, but Jack LaLaine always had an expression that if it tastes good, spit it out. And my staff say, no, don't say that, you know, you have good tasting food, but he wasn't really saying that. What he was saying is you really should be eating for your microbiome and he didn't even know about the microbiome back then, but you should be eating for them and if you eat for them, they'll take care of you and that's my research in longevity shows that other people, research in longevity shows that the more we take care of our microbiome, the more we give what I call the gut buddies, what they need to eat, what they want to eat, they make these compounds called postbiotics that control everything that's going to happen to us, even control our lifespan, which is, I mean, really fun and exciting. What's interesting about it, are you familiar with, have you ever heard of trying to remember his name? Anyways, I can't remember what it is, he wrote the Biology of Belief, but I want to say Greg Brayden, but Greg Brayden's his friend. But anyways, Bruce Lipton. Yeah, Bruce Lipton. Bruce Lipton says, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you're not like when I see myself in the mirror, I'm not seeing Rob, I'm seeing a collection of 70 trillion cells. And I've heard you talk about that literally majority of us in our genes are not actually human genes at all. Correct. Or human cells. Or yeah, about 90% of all the cells that make us up are non-human. But the fascinating thing is that 99% of all the genomic material in us genes are non-human genes. So what genes are they? Yeah, we're nothing. We have 1% say in all of this. And that's in a way scary, but the really exciting thing is with every year we learn what these guys want, why we want to give them what they want, and if we do that, then all these things that we assume are part of getting older go away. There was a nature study that I published or I cited in the longevity paradox in 2018. So a fairly recent study that looked at the influence of genes and our microbiome on our fate. And it turns out that human genes have only a 8% maximum influence on what's going to happen to us. And so 92% of what's going to happen to us is actually non-genetic. And you can literally pretty much wipe out any of that genetic determinant by choosing what to eat and choosing how to behave. It's the environment that's created. Another thing that Bruce Lipton talks about is that he was seen as crazy in the 70s because he was saying it's not the genes that matter. When everyone's saying the genes matter, he's saying it's the environment because you can take a human cell and make an ear or you can take a human cell and make a nose or something completely different. And what he says is it's the environment that actually matters more than the genes that matter. Right. Yeah. Yeah, epigenetics is really what happens. I mean, for instance, I mean we have fewer genes than a corn plant. Really? Yeah, fewer genes.  We have actually, and so everybody says, well, then we have the most genes of any animal. And it turns out that's not even true. The sand flea has more genes than we do. So next time you're walking on the beach and I'm one of those little guys, yeah, so far more genes than we have. Well, so we like to think we're like the most advanced and the biggest, but we're not even close. Yeah, not even close. Yeah. So talk to me about meat because one thing I really, actually when I was researching yesterday, I was watching you talk about organic free-range chicken. And I text my girlfriend, literally took a video of it, sent a video to my girlfriend, texted it to her because she's got a soy allergy. And we don't need a whole lot of meat. We eat a little bit of meat, but when we get it, we try to get what we thought was the healthiest. And people listening to podcasts can't see my fingers do the quotations, right? But when you talk about organic free-range chicken, you're talking about their given soybeans. That was the first impot to my oh my gosh, she's ingesting organic free-range chicken that are having soybeans. She has pretty bad allergies. Eczema's gone, but the allergies are still there. I was like, it actually might be from that. But talk to me about that, the meat industry, but also the organic free-range chicken because for me, that was super eye-opening and I got to go back to Austin Research who has the better meat in the area. Well, you got to look at my podcast on the Dr. Gunnu podcast where we had farmer Dan from Texas who is now excuse me, raising lectin-free chickens. Wow. And he set about to feed his pastured chickens lectin-free food. And it's fabulous, I can tell you. So you live right around the corner from farmer Dan. Do you know where in Texas he is? I've forgotten the name, but It's a big state. Yeah, it's a big state. But yeah, but now his whole business is lectin-free chickens. Well.  And what really surprised me and maybe shouldn't have is years ago, well, in 2007, the Congress passed a law determining what an organic free-range chicken is. And you can label a chicken organic free-range as you can keep it in a warehouse for its entire life with 100,000 other chickens. As long as you open a door to the outside that has a three-yard by three-yard patch of grass, one door. Three-yard by three-yard. Yeah, one door. Nine feet by nine feet. Correct. And it literally is 100,000 chickens. 100,000 chickens. Wow. You can have 100,000 chickens. Wow. And as long as you open that door for five minutes every 24 hours and the chickens have the potential to go outside. They don't have to leave. Wow. Then you can legally label them organic free-range. Crazy. Now it gets even better. If the, and most of these chickens are fed organic corn and organic soybeans. That's primarily what's in chicken feed. If the price of organic exceeds conventional corn and soybeans by double in price, you can legally feed them conventional corn and soybeans and still label it organic because you meant well. Because you meant well. Correct. Oh, that's nice. Yes. And it's technically illegal to give antibiotics to chickens anymore. But there's a loophole. Courser is. If the veterinarian who is employed by the Major Food Corporation on site believes that there is a sick chicken in that 100,000 flock of chickens. Then you can dose the entire flock rather than wading through the 100,000 chickens to find the sick chicken. And it's perfectly legal to give them antibiotics. And so, so getting back to your question.   And on double drug therapy, she was miserable, long story short. We got her off of all of her drugs. Her skin rashes cleared up. And she was in the office one day and she said, you know, I'm really happy I'm off on all my drugs, the rashes are gone, but I've got this little bit of eczema on the top of my eyelids, right where my eyelashes are. She said, that's all I've got. And she said, what do you think that's from? So we're going through, you know, what she's eating and she got to organic free range chicken. And I said, so not pastured chicken. And she said, no, organic free range. And I said, well, they're being fed corn and soybeans. I said, tell you what. And she said, I eat a lot of it. And I said, tell you what, let's just eliminate that. Just stop eating that. Call me back. Change nothing else but that. Nothing else but that. Let's just look at one thing. Monthly or she calls, she said, yeah, that was it. Eczema's gone. It was the organic free range chicken. Wow. And I went, wow. And I said, well, of course, it makes so much sense because these proteins, which are foreign proteins, are incorporated into the flesh of these animals. And if you have a sensitivity to soy or corn, and I can tell you huge, I can tell you that in my practice, 70% of people who are sensitive to gluten react to corn in the exact same way. 70%. Really? And that's one of the reasons why gluten-free diets, as they're construed now, in general, don't work for celiac disease. 70% of people celiac, which is the extreme form of gluten intolerance, still have celiac by biopsy a year and a half later of being on a gluten-free diet because most of the foods that are gluten-free are full of lectins, foreign instance corn, or quinoa, or buckwheat. And that's what they're eating. Wow. So just to go back because I want to, I want to talk about, I just want to, for anyone who happened to miss it, and if you were to put all that together, an organic free range chicken can be inside of a warehouse with 100,000 other ones, they have a opportunity to leave for five minutes. They don't even actually ever have to leave. They're given corn, which we can talk about as well. I've heard you say it was outlawed in France at one point in time. Soybeans, which many people are there to soy as well, they're not supposed to have, oh, and if the price of organic soybeans and corn happens to be twice the price of conventional, which I hate the word convention. I think they should call it GMO. And then they should switch the name of it, so it should be corn. Plus all that conventional corn and soybeans has been sprayed with Roundup. Oh, perfect, which is glyphosate, and they have all that. So if the price is double, they can give them non-organic, which they call conventional, because they meant well. And if they think that there happens to be one sick chicken and 100,000, they can give all of them antibiotics, which we all know antibiotics make them fat and huge and grow faster. Correct. Oh, my God. And that was actually passed in the law in 2007. It was introduced by congressman from Georgia from a chicken farming. Of course. Of course. What a surprise. Wow. So I'm trying to process all of that, the fact that that's possible. So when you say pasture raise, and you mentioned that with the lady, so is pasture raise okay? So you've got to know your farmer. Or is there other loopholes in there? You've got to know your farmer. And I'll tell you an interesting story about that. We have a big fan of our program who really changed her life around, got rid of some really awful arthritis issues. She was a young woman.  Unbeknownst to us, she went on a well, I'll just say it, a carnivore diet. And the more carnivore diet she did, the more sick she got. Her arthritis came back her migraines came back and she was getting grass-fed beef and pasture poultry from this farmer. And so she says, you know, I'm doing everything right. It's grass-fed. It's pasture poultry. And we did, she finally, she was posting that, you know, my diet had failed her, blah, blah, blah. And so we reached out to her and learned that she actually wasn't following my program and said, well, this is interesting.  Look at leaky gut. Look at what you're sensitive to and come to find out. She's got a wide open leaky gut again and she's sensitive to corn. And so I said, you need to talk to your farmer. And I said, farmers, even if they're pastured, will supplement their food with, you know, a feed. And you need to find out what's in this feed. And so she did and she actually called me back.  He was feeding his chickens, corn and soybeans and other grains. He was feeding his cows, corn and soybeans, even though they were on pasture. And I said, okay, well, you know, that's good news. Stop eating this stuff. Call me back. And she called me back in three days. She said, you're not going to believe this, but my pain is 70% less than it was three days ago. Wow. Just, she said, my farmer was killing me. And I trusted him. Yeah. That's crazy. So how do, how do, do allergies have a big part of this as well? What, how people's allergies react to that? So, so allergies, so we used to do food allergy testing in our office. And I was never impressed because allergies work on an immunoglobulin system called IgE. And when we finally switched over to looking at food sensitivities by using IgG and IgA and then we won't go into the technicalities and started believing those results. It made all the difference in the world. And I recently had a standard professor on the Dr. Henry podcast talking about her book, The End of Allergies. And she and I both agree that allergies and food sensitivities can be completely eliminated by knowing what you're sensitive to, finding out how leaky your gut is and then stopping that leaky gut. And your immune system literally relearns. A year ago, I gave a paper pre- right as COVID hit at the American Heart Association Lifestyle and Epidemiology Meeting where we took 10 people with severe leaky gut. They actually all had celiac disease, put them on our program for a year and looked at all their food sensitivities, including to gluten. And at the end of the year, nine out of 10 of them, all of them sealed their leaky gut. Nine out of 10 of them had actually lost all memory, all immunoglobulin memory that they didn't like gluten. And completely gone. Now, does that mean we can reintroduce gluten? I don't know. I don't want to make that leap of faith, but when we look at food sensitivities and once the leaky gut is sealed, then we can reintroduce things. Have a gentleman here in LA who developed a severe autoimmune disease, severe pain from his leaky gut. We pretty much got his leaky gut sealed now. Got him off of all of his mischievous compounds. And initially he was sensitive to both egg white and egg yolk. And we took those away. We retested him about nine months into it because he loves omelets. And he was still sensitive to egg yolk, but he was no longer sensitive to egg white. So we introduced egg white omelets, which made him a happy guy. And I just talked to him on the phone a couple of weeks ago and he says, I got to be honest with you, I've reintroduced duck eggs, including the yolk, and I'm not reacting. So he says, I'm a happy guy. That's awesome. Yeah. So I used to have horrible allergies as a kid and in college. And I got allergy shots.  I don't have any allergies anymore. It's incredible. Yeah. So I've retrained. I've told my immune system to stand down. I've told my gut microbiome has educated my immune system and said, hey, we got your back. Go have a donut and a cigarette and just relax. I'm sure that's what you're doing on your days off. Donuts and cigarettes. Tell me about your new book. I know we're short on time, but tell me about your new book, The Energy Paradox, because that just came out last month. Yeah, yeah, last month. So I really had no intention of writing The Energy Paradox, but I was driving into LA. Actually, I was counting to do a PBS fundraising segment. And I got a call on the phone saying that the person who was going to do the segment with me wasn't going to come in today because she just didn't have it in her. And this was a millennial. And I'm going, well, what are we going to do? They say, well, that's all right. You know, somebody else will take her place and blah, blah, blah. And we got through it, but that kept resonating with me for several days. It was like, how can a millennial not have it in them to come into the studio? And so I realized that when I first started my new practice in restorative medicine, that well over 50% of the diagnoses, codes that we use, the ICD dying code, was fatigue and malaise. And looking back, I realized, oh my gosh, all these people presented with being tired, with being exhausted, and part and parcel, that all went away. So I said, geez, I've been an energy doctor for the last 20 years, and I should find out why this program has been so effective in restoring people's energy. So the book holds people by the hand, shows them some nerdy stuff about how energy is made, but then shows people how to get their energy back. The other thing that's striking is brain fog in this country is just rampant. For sure. And it's one thing to say, well, you're 80 years old and you don't remember things you used to, but again, when a millennial can't remember, can't leave their keys someplace, you go, what the, that can't be good. And it can't be good. And we're seeing this huge amount of what I call neuro-inflammation, which if you have a leaky gut, I can pretty much guarantee you, you have a leaky brain. And we can actually measure that and we can measure neuro-inflammation. And it's no wonder that our brains don't work well. There's a war going on inside of our brain as well. And we have an entire set of immune cells in our brain that basically are our neurons' bodyguards, if you will. And these guys actually, if they suspect that mischief is a foot down in the gut, they literally form circles around neurons and cut off their communication to each other to literally protect them. And so we can actually measure this now and we go, whoa, no wonder your brain doesn't work right. And the really exciting thing is you can measure that coming back. You can watch the neuro-inflammation going away. Wow, that's incredible. Man, I feel like we could go for another few hours. I have so many, so many questions I get asked. I'll have to have you back at some point. So before I ask the last question, how can people find you books and also on the internet as well and podcast world? Yeah, so the Dr. Gundry podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, the drgundry.com, you can find me, gundrymd.com is my supplemented food company and got two YouTube channels, Instagram, if you can't find me, I'm doing something wrong. The books, everywhere books are sold. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, please, please, please go to your local bookseller. It's a best-selling book. They'll have it. The booksellers, your local stores have been devastated by COVID and we need to give them all the help we can get. For sure. So last question I have for you, a little bit of a shift, but you went from heart surgeon, working in the actual surgeries themselves to now educating people, making yourself obsolete, but obviously building a career doing it.  The first one is when you stop breathing. The second time is the last time someone says your name. So in between that time, what do you think people, what do you hope that people will think and say about you, between the first death and the last death? Well, I guess, I think the most important thing I can tell people is, and I tell them this in their own health, it is never too late. It's never too late to make a difference. It's never too late to make a change in a mission or career choice.  And the other thing I would tell anyone is never retire. Retirement is, unless you use your retirement for a new interest and pour yourself into that. In my patient population, retirement is a death spiral. It literally starts a death spiral. And never, ever retire. I'm now in my 70s. I work seven days a week. And literally six days a week seeing patients one day a week at Gundry MD and never, ever retire.  And I got more energy than I ever am. Dr. Stephen Gundry, I appreciate you for being here. Hey, thanks for having me, Ron. Appreciate it. Thanks. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you love this video, I've got another one you're going to love. Just click right here and watch it.