Why do Japanese people live so long? We explore this question in this video and also, what can you learn from them? Perhaps a deeper question is, do you want to live that long? The number of centenarians in Japan has reached a record high of 92,139 women make up 88.5% of this total. Andrew, that is a bunch of people in Japan that are living way beyond 100 years old. Yeah man, I thought you were talking about centurions on first, the half human half horse. But anyways guys, actually so of the top 15 countries as far as life expectancy, Japan ranks number three and is by far the largest country as far as population wise at 125 million. The other large semi-large countries compared are Spain, South Korea and Italy. But really as far as big countries, Japan's life expectancy is killing it. So we got to talk about why and of course I think a lot of people out there, they kind of have general ideas on why Japanese people's lifestyle is different. But let's go into some specific reasons that we researched and found out. Yeah, maybe you guys can take something away from it, make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications, let's get the likes up. But real quick, Andrew, we got to talk about something else that's hopefully going to live for a long time also from the East. Oh, Smala sauce guys, our very own chili oil condiment. You can pre-order it now at SmalaSauce.com. We're very proud of it and it's made with real truffle, it's got real Sichuan peppercorns. So it's numbing, it's delicious, check it out. From Sichuan to Sicily. Andrew, as is with anything that like people kind of know about, but they don't really look into, there is a ton of websites or threads on the internet talking about like, dude, why are Japanese people so fit?  Why do they live so long? I always see like an 85 or 95 year old guy at the sushi spot cutting my sushi, like how are they still like up and running? And listen, I think it's easy for a lot of people to just be like, oh, it's genetics. Oh, look at the body types. They're all skinny. It's like, dude, if you think about the actual lifestyle and actually some of the philosophy, it's quite different than the West. So while genetics may play a part, really it's a lot of the diet and lifestyle and belief. Yeah, and Andrew, it's really the women. The women live dramatically longer. The men, they still do live longer than all the other G7 countries. Right, right, right. But it's not by as big of a margin. I believe the women is like five to eight years. In the men, it's like, I want to say three to four years. Yeah, well, I would say the men probably drink more alcohol too. I don't know statistically speaking. But guys, let's get into the reasons, David. Do you, what are your initial reasons that stood out to you while you were doing research? Well, I think the truth is, Andrew, there's a lot of diet things. So your diet leads to less diseases, less obesity. There's less GI things, gastrointestinal, heart disease, cancers. They eat a lot of beans, miso, tofu, mushrooms, way more plants, way less sugar, way less fast food. Andrew, when it comes to exercise, here's the thing, Andrew. They have less hardcore exercise culture in Japan than in the West. However, they have a lot more neat, which is non-intentional exercise, like way more like walking.  And a lot of the reason why is because they walk a lot. Yeah. They're up, walking around. They sit on the floor, some of them sleep on the floor. They bow a lot. They go on a lot of nature walks and a lot of bike rides, Andrew. If you guys have ever been to Japan, incredibly beautiful nature there. It almost looks like a dreamland, to be honest. They have a lot of community, family, and love. They do a lot of teamwork exercises. Sometimes, Andrew, they do team stretching as a team before work. Right. I mean, have you ever seen that in America? I think that's American companies need to start doing that, bro, because you sit in the chair. That means your hip flexors are all tight. Everything's tight.  You got to get up and stretch. Families tend to really stay together, especially once you get under the suburbs and the rural area. Old people, Andrew, are expected to contribute and work until they literally physically cannot. So that sounds hard on the old people, right? But in return, those old people are also very venerated and respected. So it's like a give and take, a give and take. They have less access to hardcore drugs or even regular drugs. Right. You can get in trouble for importing just weed, like in really big trouble. Exactly. They have less stress from societal crime or societal tension. Although on the flip side, they probably get even more stress from work. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest, there's also is a generally high suicide rate in Japan. That's also a fact that everybody knows. But overall, I mean, I guess the people who decide to live longer do live pretty long. Yeah. And also it does vary. I looked at the regions in Japan, like Okinawa is going to have an even higher life expectancy than Tokyo. If you look at some photos of like Okinawa and the way they live, it's very like island style and nature style. It's even variable within Japan, right? And then lastly, Andrew, it could just be genetic. Some people were saying that the smaller, more muscly, close to the ground nature, you know, all Asians, of course, generally shorter, I guess, than Western people, they have less bone density issues. That's what I read, man. You know, it kind of reminds me of this family guy sketch when they were designing Asians as the Toyota of humans. By the way, this sketch is kind of racist. I'm just saying we'll go along with this archetype, I guess. It is kind of funny. There's this one word, David, that's really interesting called Ikigai. And it actually loosely translates to the happiness of always being busy. And there's a lot of people who have written books about this who are not even Japanese, right? Because they've delved into it to like, wow, Japanese live so long. They have this passion to live longer and work longer. And here are the 10 rules of an author that wrote a book about Ikigai. And it's to stay active, don't retire. Yeah, it is very common. I remember even in San Gabriel, this guy was running this sushi spot where he was cutting sashimi.  Yeah, he was, I would say, kind of slow at cutting it. But the fact that he was still working and he could get up in the morning and get to work, that was impressive. Yes, yama sushi, that was the spot. Yeah, and they also say take it slow. Okay, don't fill your stomach too much. This is very interesting because even growing up, David, our mom had spent some time in Japan throughout her life. And she would always remind us, hey, don't eat more than 80%, eat at 80%. This is actually a rule in Japan where you do not fill up your stomach more than 80%. That's all you need. I think oftentimes the buffet culture in America or the big plate culture, you want to eat more and more and stuff yourself, but no, it's not necessarily good.  Surround yourself with good friends. Get in shape for your next birthday. That's kind of a philosophy in Japan, to smile, they actually like to smile. If you watch, if you see any of the videos of the old Japanese people, they're like smiling, they kind of have a glee for life. They do, they do. They reconnect with nature, obviously Japan being an island, actually there's quite a lot of nature around, especially outside of the cities. Give thanks, show gratitude, live in the moment, and just discover what your passion is that drives you every day so that you can get up in the morning. Because it is true, the more reason and mission you have in your life, the more likely you are to live long, just like mentally, right? Your heart keeps pumping, your blood keeps pumping, your mind tells you to wake up, you're excited to wake up, so yeah. Yeah, so I mean, we just generally covered everything. I'm sure other people are going to say, all the distribution was this way, the distribution was that way, but I think that in general, you can't deny that those are the pie slices at play here. Of course, if I'm an exercise guy, I'm going to emphasize that portion. If I'm a diet guy, I'm going to think it's more about nutrition. If you think about all these reasons that we listed, and there's even more here that more are applying to the food and diet, but I'm just saying, think of all the reasons we listed so far. Which ones do you think you can apply, and which one is the average American not applying? Yeah, and I think that a lot of people, we're thinking they're eating like tonkatsu ramen and drinking laminé and like doing green tea kick cats every day. That's not true.  This is actually what they eat at home.  Just as far as diet, if everything else is too existential for you, right? Philosophically, listen, high vegetable intake. They do eat a lot of high vegetable, a lot of fermented vegetables. A lot of seaweed. And fresh, yeah. Seaweed is also healthy. Different styles of cooking, not just frying and pan frying and stir frying. They also steam a lot. The tea culture, tea helps break down a lot of fat. It also has antibacterial properties. We know this. Fresh food, especially outside of the city, you have a lot of access to fresh food. Smaller plates and smaller portions. You know this, guys. The smaller the portions are, and the more bites you have to take psychologically, you'll probably fill up faster, right? Yeah, I mean, it's just a way lower caloric intake. Exactly. More body activity, commuting to the train, walking around. And actually, Japanese healthcare system is pretty good. I read that a lot of older Japanese people, they go to the doctor like 10 to 12 times a year. So they get a lot of checkups. And obviously, the more you get checked up, the more likely you are to find a disease. Yeah. I got some interesting questions, Andrew. Do people even want to live to 100 anymore? Like I feel like maybe 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago, that was more valid. But nowadays, I feel like people want to live a high dopamine, high-fueled lifestyle. And Drake with YOLO, I'm here for a good time, not a long time. I remember I heard the first time an Asian say that. I was like, man, that's crazy. You're being so un-Asian right now. But by the same token, I saw where they were coming from because I'm part of mainstream culture too. Yeah, yeah. I think that in our generation, there's kind of this idea that when you're old, you can't live life and you can't be happy about life and what are you going to do when you're old? You're not working. You're just driving slow. People are going to be yelling at you. Are people even going to respect you when you're old? Obviously, in Japan, if you know you're going to be respected by all young people when you're old, David, isn't that going to give you incentive to live longer? Dude, they have a whole... I don't even want to say this, but I'm just going to say it. They have a whole category of JAV that's catered to... You know what I mean? Giving old people props. Yeah, shout out to the old men and women, I guess. No, no. I mean, that's a funny example of like... No, but it's different. They have a Confucian culture that is more venerating elder people, right? Yeah. It's crazy. And if you're a centenarian in Japan, you see an Imperial Japan to Hello Kitty to Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer now. Right. You see in the whole arc. No, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, like we said, guys, yeah, let's just get into the comment section real quick. Somebody said my grandma and Hiroshima will be 104 next year. That's crazy, Andrew. If she stayed in Hiroshima this whole time, that means she survived a nuclear bomb being dropped on it. That's crazy. Shout out to her. Somebody said maybe their diet of raw seafood helps. You know what's interesting, Andrew? So many people debate raw seafood, right?  But dude, this is the weird thing. This is funny because sushi comes from Japan, but everybody thinks that everybody's eating sushi all the time. Right. They're not eating raw fish every single meal. I feel like they eat more like just grilled fillet of white fish. They're still cooking a lot of food, guys. Although sushi is the most popular food from Japan, that's not what every person is eating every morning and every meal. Yeah. No, what is that chain in Japan with the blue logo? I mean, in New York with the blue logo from Japan, like we always get the grilled saba there. There's always like just I know there's a restaurant in New York where the meals are way more similar to homestyle meals in Japan than like anything that we think go-go curry and stuff like that. Yeah, not every dude. Dude, do you think these centurions, these 100-year-old people are eating omakase every night? No. No, no, no, they're not. To be honest, they're eating this. Pop up this photo. Did you see this mushrooms on rice with this fish fillet? No, they're not. With the miso soup, that's what they're having. Somebody said they really stay connected within their community. Social well-being is huge. Somebody said Okinawans are statistically a greater part of that number. Like I said, Andrew, even within Tokyo, there might be a variance. Like people in Okinawa, they might live even extra-nature lifestyles opposed to somewhere else. Just like in America, Andrew, somebody living in Seattle might live a much more nature-filled lifestyle than somebody in Philadelphia. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Somebody said I agree with the take that it's a diet. Everything in Japan is small portions. You can buy a single-wrapped KitKat. You cannot get four gigantic KitKat bars in one package in Japan. How much of it is just portion control? Somebody said obviously they don't have the levels of public violence that we have in the US. They do not need to worry about being murdered on a daily basis. But then someone said yeah, if they don't need to, then why are their suicide rates so high?  Actually a lot of old people in Japan do commit suicide as well.  It is true that obviously it's such a safe place so I think old people can walk around a lot. Obviously we've seen old people walk around the streets in America and depending on the city, it's actually not as safe as you think. That situation is way different. Yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah, that's a very America issue. Somebody said that this is actually kind of a conspiracy because a lot of people in Japan were not declaring their dead relatives to collect pension checks. So some people were saying this centenarian number is inflated. All right, whatever the number is, I don't care if the numbers are fudged a little bit. You just know that people live longer, David. To wrap this up, what are some rules that you researched that you're like, oh, I think that more people in America should adopt that realistically? Okay, realistically, people here ain't living like over there. Right. Because people here would rather live like Andrew, the Dodge Charger lifestyle or the Hellcat lifestyle. Then over there, they want to live like the Toyota Prius lifestyle. Yes, yes, okay. So already there, I guess for me, one thing I'm like, I got to think about it because I know people don't want to live the same. Well, I'm just saying the things that I think realistically people could pick up here are things that I could pick up. Eat until you're 80% full, I think that makes sense. Just don't stuff yourself. What's the point of stuffing yourself? Just smiling and gratitude. I feel like those are literally easy things that you can change. I mean, I think that the whole like changing the culture around you is different, right? Like no one picks their family. No one picks their family environment. And nobody even actually picks the community they're born into, right? Yeah, nobody picks their community that they're born into. Nobody picks their economic class that they're born into. So I understand some people have to eat more fast food growing up. So that's why I'm not going to say, oh, don't eat fast food because I still eat fast food. But I also don't stuff myself full of fast food anymore. I'm actually not doing that as much. I feel better. I feel like I've lengthened my life. But you know what? I still enjoy myself. I think that it's really important to study other places that live dramatically different from America. And not only study it.  That'll be probably available to a very, very, very small fraction of the American population or global population. But definitely look it up on YouTube. You can like go through Okinawa walkthrough. You can just watch those 4K walkthroughs of Okinawa, Andrew. That's three hours long. You'll see how different their life is. There might be somebody walking outside with a tortoise. Yeah. And I'm not saying people that America should become like Japan. And that that is even possible. But I guess if you could pick up a few of these things for your lifestyle, which makes sense, that are relatively easy to do, easy habits to pick up, then do it. Oh, I thought of it. I think the one that I would like to pick up that I'm not saying I'm on their level is cleanliness. They are Japanese people are clean.  No, I'm just I just don't think like if I'm like a 7 out of 10, I think they're a 10 out of 10. Oh, OK. So I'd like to get the 10 out of 10.  By the way, I know that they do smoke a lot of like regular cigarettes in Japan too. So it's not like they drink a lot of, you know, sake too. So who knows if they didn't do those things, maybe it'd be that their their lead would be even bigger. That's true. All right, everybody, let us know in the comments down below which of the philosophies of Japan you would like to adopt to be healthier, live a happier life. Because I feel like none of this said don't enjoy life. None of this said don't drink alcohol. None of it said don't eat fried food sometimes. It's just dude. You know what it is, man? I realize, though, it's probably easier over there because everybody else is eating fish, rice and mushrooms and vegetables for dinner. Over here, if everybody's doing something else, you're just going to feel like you want to fit in with that. Yeah. Let us know what you guys think of the comment section below. Keep it civil. Some food for thought. Until next time, we're going to hop out boys. We out. Peace.


Many thanks for being with us on the breakfast this morning. It's time for us to look at our second conversation and this morning we're talking about stroke. Well tomorrow will be World Stroke Day but it's the eve of World Stroke Day and let's talk about it. World Stroke is observed to underscore the serious nature and high rates of stroke, increasing awareness of the prevention and treatment of the condition. The annual event was started in 2006 by the World Stroke Organization and it also declared stroke a public health emergency in 2010. The WSO now has an ongoing campaign that serves an annual round interference for advocacy policy outreach to support tribes and continue to progress, make progress on the World Day talking about stroke now. Trauma Ezefer who's a physiotherapist and health advocate, she joins the conversation, she's also the director of Expat Physiotherapy Services right here. Nigeria, thank you Trauma for joining us. Hello, it's a pleasure to be here. All right then let's get straight to it. What exactly is stroke? This is something that we hear every ordered time but can you quickly tell us what stroke is? In clean terms, stroke is a serious health condition where that is caused by a reduced reduction or an impediment to the blood supply of the part of the brain.  I would also like to like you know usually like here in Africa we define stroke as when someone is weak on one side of the body. That is hemiparesis or hemiplegia and it's different from stroke because that is just one of the many possible things of stroke. Okay, so what are the causes of stroke and also the risk factors? There are so many things out there some of them are information that you know it's just not officially just a belief widely held belief that we've come so what are the causes of stroke and also tell us about the risk factors? Number one, stroke is not a poison that they match. Let me start with that so you like this abuse of mind. Typically in medical classification there are two main causes let's put it that way two main types of stroke rather and there is the ischemic type that is caused where the blood supply to that part of the brain is reduced due to a blockage it may be due to um um plagues forming in the arteries that supply the brain so you can imagine your water pipe if you have stones lots of stones that just combine in one area it's going to block the water supply to where to your garden so imagine it in that term and then you have the the hemorrhagic type of stroke this is caused when a blood vessel bursts when it bursts the blood vessels so the water pipe supplying your garden just bursts so it means the water is not even going to get to where it's going to. Typically hemorrhagic strokes most of the times are caused by um in high blood pressure in people with high blood pressure and um I would say that one of the most common causes for stroke is poorly managed or managed high blood pressure now there are lots of risk factors that can predispose you to it um obesity is one of it smoking is one of it and very importantly heredity a family history of it I would like to explain this in if you inherited a leg just like your father's you inherited your mother's nose so there's every likelihood you inherited your internal organs and environment just like your father's so you're more prone you're also likely to be prone to those um conditions or those diseases that he is prone to so typically we always advise if there's a family history of um high blood pressure and um like diabetes high blood pressure these are the two most common metabolic disorders among blacks anyway you have to like always get yourself checked and if it's if your high if your blood pressure is high for example you go to your doctor and get it managed it's so simple to manage it it's not like rocket science like our people make it to be and it's not a bad thing you can live a very quality life and excellent quality life as long as it's managed so um other risk factors would also um in some cases um some traumatic events could give you stroke like symptoms like someone that suffered a blow to the head and it could affect the blood supply to that part of the to the part of the brain and then you have symptoms showing enough um I also want to there is stroke has a younger brother I usually like to call it a younger brother it's called transcend its chemical attack now this is where you have symptoms of stroke that occur but does not last beyond 24 hours so yes this person looks like he had a stroke all the typical yeah the fast acronym everybody talks about all face drooping arm weakness um slurred speech or impaired speech occur and suddenly it disappears within 24 hours that's what you call it's transient it's chemical attack it strokes younger brother but I usually like to warn people that it is like john debaptist before the coming of jesus christ you know it comes to for one you are the incoming bigger brother and so if that's happening alone already tells you like you're quite quite more prone to a stroke than someone that has not even had a tia yeah please go sorry okay okay um other risk factors could also include people that have arrhythmia high cholesterol um I've talked about high blood pressure I also mentioned diabetes so these are common risk factors so among those blacks diabetes hypertension um hyperlipidemia or high cholesterol levels um can produce an arrhythmia arrhythmia just mean irregular heartbeat um you might be able to figure out a irregular heartbeat it could in what way are the other effects circulation and thereby you know from the description I gave blood supply to part of the brain being cut off so you might be able to figure out how that goes so these are the um more commonly known risk factor all right all right and shock interesting interesting um it's a lot it's a lot to to chew on I heard you say so that the tia you talked about um uh you said it's it's it can go on notice is that what you say or does it come accompanied with any stiffness or slurred speech impairment that's true yeah cognitive ability in speech and movement and all that now there are main symptoms at least I'm sure by now everyone is familiar with the fast acronym FASC F standing for facial weakness one part of the face being weak um A standing for arm weakness and in other cases weakness of any of the limbs with the leg arm S for slurred speech or impeded speech and then C just means it's time to make a call that's an emergency call so these are the main symptoms but I would like to um put it let people know that there are times the stroke has occurred I personally had a patient and it's confirmed I had a stroke but physically we're not like much physically physically observable symptoms but it affected his speech so sometimes if you are there waiting to see if the arm will droop or the face will droop you know you just might be stuck but these are the common symptoms that everyone can work with so but let's talk let's have for the conversation do you think there's any connection with hypertension and stroke because uh you know sometimes no there's there's always horrors very very much and like I said hypertension is one of the major metabolic disorders that we Africans suffer from and so it looks like it's quite uh more common with Africa in fact Nigeria has a quite um high prevalence um okay of stroke but back to hypertension yes hypertension is a major major major risk factor like I had mentioned because um due to the high blood pressure and one of the arteries supplying the brain which I must also add are quite slimmer that the arteries supplying the brain are quite usually slimmer than that supplying other body parts and they're more prone to of course since they're more slimmer they're more delicate so they can easily burst so especially in the hemorrhagic type of stroke it is a major major factor yeah so hypertension is oh it's one of the major things up there in fact I would say that a great percentage of cases of stroke patients I've had have mostly been hypertensive individuals all right like like they say Chioma is prevention is better than cure what what do we need to do what lifestyle choices do we need to make in order to to at least to prevent such from happening because from what I hear you you medical practitioners say the age of this stroke thing is not no longer you know for the old people even seeing children having stroke someone told me they're even babies are having stroke I don't know if that's true so what do we need to do uh what lifestyle choices do we need to make health choices to to make sure we protect ourselves because I don't want to have a stroke uh no you won't have you know me if you have I would um even maybe get you beautiful having a stroke you shouldn't you know doctors so um one of your first things you want to do is to manage your risk now we mentioned the risk factors I would like to keep it simple manage your risk if you know you have a family history of these risk factors atherosclerosis high blood pressure diabetes hyperlipidemia you know you get to manage them and you're not managing them by drinking sand and some concoctions you see your professional if you're diabetic you want to see of course all of them you're supposed to see your doctor if you're diabetic for example you want to see your endocrinologist if you're hypertensive you want to your neurologist you have you should see your doctor who would prescribe the right medications for you now what these medications do like in the instance of high blood pressure is to help to regulate your blood pressure and I must also add how to protect your kidneys because this most of these conditions also get affected kidneys but that's by the way not related now you want to manage your stroke if you are obese you want to lose weight as much as possible and as you can you want to see your dietician who prescribe the proper meals for you you want to see your physiotherapies who is going to prescribe the right kind of exercises for you you want to you want to live healthier you want to sleep better you just basically your main prevention is managing your risk all right thank you as the risk factor changes thank you so much choma is ife for being with us this morning and helping us understand what stroke is and how we can prevent it and what actually costs it we really appreciate your thoughts this morning on the issue you're welcome choma is ife is a physiotherapist and health advocates she's also director expat physiotherapy services right here in Nigeria it's a big issue you know for africans and i lost my grandmother to stroke all right i lost two parents to stroke you know so when i took care of my father you know particularly because he lived with me for in his last days and i saw everything almost everything about this disease i think the the bottom line she said is live right like for me um i've made a health choice i don't take fizzy drinks again so all of you drink all these carbonated drinks i wish you well just so that um i can i can be healthy you know and i'm taking i'm taking more fibers in my your system yes yes in my in my meals i that's a very i don't i don't eat noodles again i don't eat spaghetti again i'm praying to god for the grace to stop eating rice and i think i've stopped eating ever you know so let's see how it goes great wonder great choice right there and that's what it's about we hope that we continue to stay healthy and you know continue to stay alive stop drinking carbonated drinks as well well you can't tell everyone that because people will still always drink carbonated drinks drink a lot of water welcome we need to move now that's the size of a conversation this morning on the breakfast it's been an exciting friday morning we will return on monday or things being equal thank you so much for being with us we appreciate you so much and if you're just joining it's fine to follow us on facebook twitter and instagram to be part of the conversation we've had uh word plus tv africa and plus tv africa lifestyle my name is messia we'll join the newsroom at nine o'clock for the news brief please stay with us and my name is kofi bartels i'll go i'll still try to convince missy to let go of her her minerals and soft drinks see you on monday good morning


What's the word y'all? A few hours ago the Dallas Mavericks traded for Christian Wood and I'm like, man, that's a surprise. We're still in the NBA finals and we've had two trades go through already man. And this one is a relatively big trade if you ask me. The team that was just in the conference finals just added a piece for practically nothing. And I've never seen somebody as polarized as Christian Wood. Okay, that's not true.  But I mean like on the tier of Christian Woods play I've never seen somebody as polarizing.  I mean like people are polarizing on whether or not he can play basketball. I've seen it both ways. This trade happened a couple hours ago and I've seen some used to rock his die hard to my mental say, Kenny, I know this might look like an underpay or that we got finesse but the world will see that Christian Wood ain't that nice. And I've seen people that say this is an absolute finesse for the Dallas Mavericks. But before we talking to it, let me let me give you the package. In case you missed out, which is like, where you been? Where you been at? The trade is Bobon, Sterling Brown, Trey Burke, Marquis Chris in the 26th overall pick and Marquis Chris like towards ACL or something that he's rehabbing. So this trade was salary filler plus 26 to get Christian Wood. And when you look at it like that it can look like a finesse considering if you're looking at the raw numbers of Christian Wood.  And initially, I'm gonna be honest with you. I saw this trade and was thinking about it for the Dallas Mavericks. I was like, I don't really love it. And only reason I didn't love it is because the initial tweet from Shams just say the use of rocks are finalizing the deal to trade Christian Wood to the Dallas Mavericks. There was no context. There was no pieces. And now that I see it's people that don't play in the 26th overall pick. This is a low risk, high reward situation. Bobon, Sterling Brown, Trey Burke, Marquis Chris. How many minutes, real minutes?  How many minutes did those players play in this recent conference finals appearance? Let's be honest. They traded all of these people that don't even play for them and the 26th overall pick to get a guy in Christian Wood that can, at the bare minimum, he's raising the floor a little bit. And I'm here to talk about that. Like I said, there are some people that think he can't play at all. There's some people that think this is an absolute finesse and that Christian Wood is now gonna be an all star because he's got a playmaker. Reality is, it's probably somewhere in the middle. And that might be when we look back on it, this not be that much of a bad trade for the Houston Rockets. It seems like they're trying to use this pick. And I think they have number 17 to move up higher in the lottery, getting number 13 or 14. So I don't think this trade is completely done for the Houston Rockets just yet. So let's not grade it from that standpoint. Let's talk about what the Dallas Mavericks could potentially be getting in Christian Wood. Christian Wood is a dude that has the ability to roll and be a lot of a vertical threat for Luka Donchich. He has the ability to pop and be a three point shooter for Luka Donchich. And I think it opens up the game offensively for the Dallas Mavericks to a whole new level. Because it feel like you either had to do one or the other. If you saw that Dwight Powell was coming to set the screen for Luka Donchich, you know that Dwight Powell is going to roll to the basket. If it was Maxi Kleba setting the pick, you knew that he was gonna pop out to the three. Now with Christian Wood, you get it either of the way. You feel me? And Christian Wood might have inflated numbers because once James Harden left Houston, somebody had to score the ball. But I think that he can still put up really good numbers. The little amount of time that we saw Christian Wood with a playmaker and it's not a lot of time. The bro was playing on a couple of different teams. We put up pretty solid numbers with nobody to give him the ball. And like last year, he used to Rockets. They got a bunch of kids that are trying to develop. So he didn't really have that. But that small sample size of him and James Harden, remember he signed there like, I want to go win and then they traded James Harden. He like, no, I'm not winning anymore. They had a couple of games that he played together. And this was like James Harden, where he was telling the world that he wants to get traded and he wasn't really completely locked in. I remember Christian Wood having pretty good numbers. Actually, I can go look that up. What am I talking about? Okay, the sample size is even smaller than I remember. It is seven games. Him and James Harden play seven games together in their seven games. He averaged 23 points per game, 8.7 rebounds and then 1.3 assists. It's not looked at to be a passer. But that was when he had an elite level playmaker. And now he has that again with Luka Donchich. And I'm just curious to see how Jason Kidd uses him in the offense, but more specifically in the defense because it don't take a rocket science, you get rocket science as he play for the Rock. It don't take a rocket scientist to watch Christian Wood play basketball.  And when you have a team like the Dallas Mavericks, they hold their hats on defense because they have this crazy guy in Luka Donchich. You can hold them offensively and you need four other players around Luka that are positive defenders to make everything work. And Christian Wood throughout his career has been a net negative. Now there is a world potentially where him being on the last year of his contract, he's like, hey, I want to make a little bit more money. So let me lock in defensively. Or maybe the fact that he's on a team that was just in the conference finals and they're actually playing for something more than lottery balls. He can go out there and actually play more defense. So it's the only time will tell, right? We've seen people step it up once they got to a new situation that mattered more for winning. But we also seen it the other way where like a player is bad defensively and they stay bad defensively no matter what type of place they end up being. And one of the things I saw a lot when I watched Houston Rockets in the last season, but I'm gonna keep it a buck with y'all. Once we got to the second half of the season for the Houston Rockets, I was a possession watcher and not a live game watcher. Like I wanted to see what Jaylen Green was doing. So I'll go back and watch his possessions and not watch the entire game. But again, so take my opinion with somewhat of a grain of salt. This is what I was seeing when I did watch Christian Wood when he played, cause that's actually another thing about Christian Wood. He stays out of the lineup with different injuries. But anyway, he turns into a player that feels like he has to do everything by himself. He has to be the playmaker. He has to be the guy that's holding the ball all the time. He has to create his own shot. And now with Jason Kidd, that has to be gone because it's Luke and Jaylen Brunson. At least that's what they're hoping as Jaylen Brunson comes back. And those dudes are the primary ball handler. Especially then when he gets to that second unit, he is the primary ball handler. And Christian Wood has to get it in the floor of the Oat. And I'm curious to see how that looks for him because I didn't see a ton of that over the past couple of seasons. Wood also became a player that when he wasn't a pick and roll, he didn't roll hard enough or he didn't make the decisive enough decision to pop out completely. And because of that, his pick and roll seemed like luster. But I'm, again, I'm just assuming that when you have Luca Dantzich as your ball handler and you have Jason Kidd as your coach, a lot of that goes to the wayside eventually. I wouldn't be surprised if through the first month of the season, this team is not spectacular. But just like last season, they turn it up eventually and now they find himself as one of the top teams in the Western Conference. But like I said earlier, man, the Western Conference is going to be kind of stacked. So I don't really know. Either way, like I said, low risk, high reward. If Christian Wood is buns, you only gave up to 26 overall pick for him and you can let him walk a free agency next season. If he's good, you give him an extension and now you find you found something in Dallas. But like this just, this feels like a good trade for them. I'm surprised that with the value being so low, that other teams couldn't find this deal or something similar. I guess it was reported. They were looking for people that will be off the books in a year and they wanted a first round pick. I feel like other teams to get there. Now I'm not about to draw up the trade for you myself, but I feel like there are other teams out there that were probably in the early 20s to the 30 that could have taken Christian Wood for that package. Maybe there wasn't that big of a suit, big suitors. Right? Christian Wood has been in trade scenarios for like a year now and they never pulled the trigger. Maybe that was because they didn't find the right deal or maybe it was because people wasn't really that interested. I don't really know. But it is funny to see that last week Bleach Report put together an article that I'd need to find because I saw it and we didn't react to it because it was only a couple trades, but it had like a bunch of trades in it and one of them had to do a Christian Wood being moved. So let me find that. Here's the deal that Bleach Report put together three days ago. And obviously the Dallas Mavericks paid a lot less than two really good rotational pieces and a first round pick. They paid a ton less than this. So it just shows you that us as NBA fans, we don't know a goddamn thing about what it's like to be a real general manager where even some of the most esteemed writers can put together trade packages that aren't even close to realistic and then we see a trade and it's like, dang. All of those players can buy not even close to Brandon Clarke or not even close to the Anthony Mountain and they got a worse pick. You know, a worse pick. And I know there are some like, some things about Christian Wood as far as locker rooms, but I'm a firm believer of one public event does not determine the character of a person. Could he be bad for the locker room? Maybe, but I'm not judging the man off of that one thing that happened earlier this season. Only time will tell, right? Only time will tell. If I'm the Houston Rockets fans, I'm not tripping too much. You got something out of a player that you've been trying to trade for some time. I mean, if it was this or this trade, obviously I'm mad that we didn't get the Anthony Bowden and Brandon Clarke. But like I mentioned earlier, they have aspirations of moving up in the draft. So we got to see. We got to see if they keep this pick. Who do they select with that pick? And maybe he blossomed into something that doesn't. I mean, we got an expiring contract of a dude that have polar opposites when it comes to people's opinions about him. So I'm okay with the way they went out. They got another guy on the roster in John Wall who's just kind of sitting there. Will they be able to find a suitor for him? Probably not because he's taking that 47 Ms or whatever it is. Let me know in the comment section what you think about the Christian Wood trade. I'm just happy that we're getting trades right now. NBA Finals are tomorrow night. And I'm excited about that. But I want to talk about Christian Wood because now we got Luca Jalen Brunson. Tamar Dewey Jr. will be back. Yep, Tamar Dewey Jr. will be back. Dorn Finney Smith and Christian Wood. I'm okay. Defensively, that scares me a little bit. That lineup right there scares me a little bit. But when you put Christian Wood next to Max and Cleba and Dorn Finney Smith is on the court, you got me on that one. I'm sold. They gave me the two guards, Jalen Brunson and Luca Donchich. And now all of those dudes can shoot. And then at least some of those dudes can play defense. I like that lineup.


Today the church celebrates the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua, a priest and a doctor of the church. He discerned a call to the priesthood and originally joined the Augustinians, but shortly after ordination he wised up and transferred to the Franciscans and became a missionary. He was particularly effective in converting heretics in Europe and is considered one of the greatest preachers in the history of the church. In one of his sermons reflecting on the role of the Holy Spirit, St. Anthony made this powerful observation. Our humble and sincere request to the Spirit for ourselves should be that we may bring the day of Pentecost to fulfillment by keeping the commandments. Likewise, we shall request that we may be filled with the fiery tongues for confessing the faith so that our deserved reward may be to stand in the blazing splendor of the saints and to look upon the triune God. St. Anthony's homily is reminded to us that certain teachings of the church can never change regardless of whether or not people accept them or are faithful to them. But we live in a complex secular culture and are inevitably exposed to a variety of ideas that are incompatible with the truths of the faith. Christians are by no means immune to these influences and sometimes adopt elements of secular thought without recognizing their incompatibility with Christian faith. Like someone who's had too much to drink, we become intoxicated by the ways of the culture to the point where the meaning of truth and freedom become confused and disoriented. In our stupor, we suppress or ignore the beauty of the church's teachings in areas of sexuality, gender, and marriage. And in our subjective version of truth, we water down basic beliefs of Catholicism with so much political correctness that they become indistinguishable from what the world thinks. Yet Christ said to his apostles, whoever hears you hears me. So when we choose to be timid or even worse, to be silent when the church speaks clearly and definitively on issues of faith and morals, we are choosing to ignore Christ himself like St. Anthony, a simple and humble friar who preached the good news lovingly, but yet with fearless courage. We are called to live the gospel with both fervor and humility. We cannot rest while the storms of war, poverty, and economic instability shake us violently. And the tempest of disease, corruption, and unspeakable sins against the culture of life rage all around us. How should we respond? Should we be frightened and unsettled? Should we panic as we listen to news anchors and business analysts and self-assured politicians who sound like prophets of doom? Or should we instead be like Jesus and deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow Him to glory? Those who live in the presence of God have nothing to fear. We heard yesterday, blessed are you, when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. We are called to preach the gospel in its fullness, to preach the truth in love. It must be the truth, but it's always must be done lovingly. Why? Because many in this culture have no idea how much God loves them. That's the beauty of St. Anthony. He preached powerfully, he preached truthfully, but he preached lovingly. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. When I was in Australia a few years ago, I was preaching at an Archdiocese of Sydney. He had me preach at a youth rally with about 700 or 800 middle schoolers there. And during that talk, I said, you have no idea how much God loves you. I got off the stage, there was a young priest ordained only three years at the bottom of the steps. He said, Deacon, let me drive home the point you just made. When I was first ordained, they stuck me at the high school because they figured young priests, newly ordained, they might get some vocations out of this thing. So in my religion class, as an experiment, I wrote on the board, I believe in God, and on the other side, I don't believe in God. And I asked the students to stand under the statement that best represented what they believed. So he said, about 90% of the students got up and stood under, I believe in God, and the rest stood under, I don't believe in God. So he sat down and he raced it. Then he wrote, God loves me, God doesn't love me. And asked the students to do the same thing, stand under the statement that best represented what they believed. Father told me that none of the students stood under the statement that said, God loves me, not one. He said a handful of students stood under the statement, God doesn't love me, but most just sat there because they weren't sure. How could they not be sure how much God loves them? This is the lesson that St. Anthony teaches all of us who are called to preach and to proclaim the good news, the life changing encounter with Jesus Christ. This means that when we live our faith every day through the witness of our life, we will be persecuted and mocked and ridiculed and scorned just as Jesus was when he made his way to Calvary. Life is too short for us to worry about what other people think. We are called by God to be saints, to live our faith with courage and conviction in this time and in this place and to put all of our trust in God. Like St. Anthony who was a man of great penance and apostolic zeal, Jesus calls us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. When we no longer cover the light of faith under the bushel basket of fear and instead radiate unwavering trust in God the Father, he will pour out on us a spirit of freedom, a spirit of love that casts out all fear, that removes all doubt, that eliminates all obstacles that hinder us from being true followers of Jesus Christ. As the scriptures encourage us, in God alone be at rest my soul, for my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock, my stronghold, my fortress, I stand firm. My brothers in Christ, in the spirit of St. Anthony who loved the Word of God and prayerfully applied the scriptures to the everyday lived experience. Let your light shine brightly in this darkened world so that the faithful may see the good works that you do and give honor and praise and glory to God. Amen.


The wheels are rolling, rolling all along the highway Wheels that keep them rolling every night and day Singin' a song of the men behind the motor tracks A song of safety and service All of them rollin' thick and strong West, north, south, rollin' along The wheels are rollin', rollin' all across the nation Wheels that keep them rollin' every night and day Singin' a song of the men behind the motor tracks Keep them rollin'


Welcome I'll just use that if I run into the audience. Welcome. Yeah, who are you and what do you do? Yeah, so like also I'm Julio I'm from the TU Delft and I currently work in the library and I work on a number of things so Technically I'm a researcher, a lecturer, project manager and also a creative facilitator so I'm a bit of a jack of all trades. I would say what I work on is for I think the Movement of open education. So how can we apply open access principles to education? Also, how can we Enrich education further using this as a basis and apart from that I'm also working on let's say institutional transformation seeing how we can on a large skill change the way institutions the institutions of the TU Delft things about things about Things like this like open access. What do we see here? Is there something you made up? Yeah, so what's what's very nice about this picture is we have a faculty called Industrial design engineering and these are all students who are very equipped to it make technical drawings. So when I Want to draw out an idea in my mind I just I can talk to one of those students sit down for half an hour to sell I'm thinking of this and want to do that and then they just draw something like this. So what we're looking at here is a sort of Journey people can go through when they enter our library and all the kinds of things they can interact with That concern education. So this is I've made this to to show you what For what kind of reasons would some have come to the TU Delft library to engage with education? So for starters people come to our library that doesn't the first things everybody knows right to come to the library because we have books We have readers. We have the Educational collection But once once with there we also see that people who want to publish work Educational work for example have to deal with plagiarism, especially students have to publish student works their their thesis for example, they have to deal with plagiarism and Our library supports them with that as well Then we have a lot of interaction with them in our digital learning environment. So as a library we identify ourselves as information specialists and We train our students with Managing information sources and also working with them using them citing them. This is all done through our digital learning environment and then yes, of course we offer courses we teach students how to deal with information and We we reach students from all and so PG students master students bachelor students with them skills education and then finally we come to To the real innovation part here and that is how can we use all of these things to To make education more available to improve the accessibility and usefulness in the quality of education Yeah, that's right, so I think that We have been working now for almost a year and a half on Designing a a system where we can it's essentially a lean approach to Helping people publish educational literature. So we were talking about how to How to acknowledge the songs excellence when doing research, right? It's the same with teaching but teaching for a lot of Academic staff is is considered essentially Time-sink right you just pour tons and tons of time in it and you don't really get a lot back for it And I think that's a problem. So But the problem here essentially is that we need a way to to to to recognize to qualify this excellence and Way to do that is to or a way that we designed to do that is to start publishing Educational literature throw that out into the world make it available to everyone and then see what the impact of these of these works are How do you imagine that the impact? So, yeah, that's That's that's still In the very early stage, of course because there is no precedent for this Or at least not in education. There is no impact factor of educational material. So It's trial and error finding out what works how you can do this. Yeah, so so so what would you consider a? Variable, right? How many people download something or how many people read it? How many people use it in their courses? How many other universities a part of it? How many people have changed your book into something that they like? So, yeah, is it so far? It hasn't been an easy part So to say is everyone been cheering to you so all that's great what you're doing And if you need more time and money, please tell us and we were willing to give it to you Or is it the heart struggle so yeah at first we had to be pragmatic, right? Because this as any innovation project sounds like yeah, there is golden mountains But this also will cost me hours and hours on end, right? So we started by using these channels that we have with students and teachers. It just let's let's see What's what's the actual problems? What are the sounds that we hear so maybe Dan you can show some of the Okay, so so let me read these out right so teachers are telling me so when we engage with teachers To help them with their education with forwarding education They say things to me like students are not bringing up textbooks to class or I want to write a book That is an alternative to the course literature or I want to use existing educational resources in my course so these seem to be These seem to be remarks that that contradict the use of commercial traditional textbooks right and Students for example say I don't I simply do not buy those commercial textbooks They're too expensive and I just use the reader or the college notes to study And I pass my course is just fine, right? So these are the sounds that we hear and Using this we have actually started designing a way of Answering these questions or to deal with these issues because of course teachers also see that their students are buying textbooks, right? I mean if you're a teacher yourself You must have seen this is happening and I think this is an important issue that we have with a differentiation within a classroom, right? So if you ask your students to buy a hundred twenty year textbook and Only a third of them does and the other two thirds do not have access to it You you enter your classroom you expect your students to be up to speed and suddenly only one third of them Know what you're talking about the other two thirds of just looking around or trying to share books And this all makes your teaching a lot more problematic, right? This is a first step and also streamlining the teaching we do How's that first step going so far because we see a picture of accessibility So this is what you've just been talking about. This is that the problem we have some students are in front some are taking back Yeah, so so I think I think this is the initial first step We did it so so what we start with what we started with a year and a half ago was Finding teachers who had this these things like right? So so they're there there's your college notes for some or that readers and they want to publish and then we Approach them. We said, you know what we're going we're we want to increase the quality of this work, right? So you so you're now just spraying this out or printing this Within your own budget and doing stuff like that that the library take that process over and let us publish it as an open access work Just offer it to students for free. Give them an option to to buy a book just on demand for for just the printing costs and Let's see what happens and there were not there's a there's a number of teachers There's a lot of a lot of people are interested in what we're doing and we have now already published nine textbooks There's six more in the making and there's a whole lot of a whole lot more teachers who are Interested in working with us and have to have that have an exploratory Conversations with us. There's something growing. It's getting bigger. You get more feedback people using it. Yeah. Yeah I would definitely say so so It might be it might be nice down later to to also show The website that has the these books just to have people in the people leave what it is but so Yeah, so so what this is here is is actually an answer to the question was next so what have we been chasing so far is accessibility and Critic of what we do might say well accessibility is nice, but that doesn't Improve the usability of this resource for me, right? So we have for example an excellent Physics we have excellent physics teachers who have written a textbook on Classical mechanics published it, but this is a PDF So how would you want to use a PDF or exactly the way it's intended right we're actually telling people well This is for free. You can use it, but you have to use it in the way that we wrote the content. Yeah, that's right So that's and that's the thing we've been chasing so far accessibility making this accessible to everyone But making it useful or making it more useful requires a different a different step And that's do we have more slides? Or we want to show the website Because you Want to show the website is that possible are we online here? So we can just give us a peek for you on the side. We try to look it up What was the biggest barrier the biggest problem biggest hurdle so far? that people Within our university field that the library is not a place where you go to for education So we have teachers who work on improving our education when we talk with with with these teachers who also work with instructional designers and with Educational experts from our education students affairs department. This department feels has as There's a bit of tension with what's whose job so to say, right? So we have adopted this way of working purely to make sure that We take a role in information management, which is classically not something that libraries do a lot with education Or at least with educational resources and how big is that the support you got from your own University from your own organization. Are they cheering for you? Yeah, so so right now. They are yeah This is this is something that the university is quite proud of as a as also here. We see the website. Yes, that's right So this is the basic website that we see so the website is currently undergoing some Some transformation, but we can we can take a look at the book. So we have nine books now Yeah, so these are nine different books seven out of our eight faculties of representing in this initiative So maybe you can just click one down so this is This is a book written by an author from the architecture and the build environment the faculty of the two doves and As you can see here, there's some basic information also the ability to download a PDF Order it on demand with a printer and also download an EPUB in this sense These books are published with an ISPN. So this makes it trackable online So we can really see what the in we could really track with the impact of it Do it because Ronald also gave some numbers of downloads that he got. Do you know some numbers or it's the private info Oh, we got it here. What we do in life So I've written a few things down. So like I said, we have night textbook The first Dutch textbook has just been published, which is interesting as well seven out of eight faculties represented One of the textbooks has already been revised. It's a very important to us that this process is Keeps keeps renewing itself, right? You can't just throw something out there and then expect it to be up to date for eternity So we ask our authors to consider yearly revisions one of them has already been revised to our undergoing revisions Like I said, there are six books in development and the number one Downloaded book has been downloaded 12777 times since its publication in August of last year. So we are quite happy with that Yeah, go on this as well. Yeah, and I'm also curious. Well, what do you think of this? Did you know about this initiative? How do you feel about it? No, I didn't know of that and I think it's a great initiative I mean if we write text Then and it has a sort of a book form why not do it like this? I mean, so there's yeah, great Thanks for that Sorry about that. Does anyone now have to change? So the interesting thing here is how do we make sure the overhead for you as a teacher is as low as possible, right? So I was very proud to see that one of our teachers that we supported has already published three open text We've got to mention that we have one teacher who has published three open textbooks. He's retiring soon within a year or two and He wanted to share all of his life's work Open access so and he was really really happy He was interviewed and he mentioned that there's essentially zero overhead in this process. He can just give us his his work and then we will be put an editor on it to professionalize it further and then publish it and he has to Essentially very little work once the content has been deliverance. So I think that's one of the main selling points Thanks for that. Any other questions remarks things you want to know When do we have this until birth? Yeah, yeah, and who's in charge of that dog Is it already there? Are we going to use this? Yes, we're doing this already In the making now for text books And can we also have this like maybe I Yeah, yeah, one of the full textbook that also part of movie. Yeah, one of them. Yeah, that's going to be part of it Yeah, thanks for that and our question over here Yeah, thanks. This is very interesting. I maybe have a maybe mentioned it as well in that case. I apologize It's maybe a bit of a pragmatic Question and since that like I don't have time to write my own textbook I guess that the people who do write textbooks get paid for that specifically and I guess that that money comes from Selling those textbooks. So who writes these textbooks? Are they all like retired professors or who has time to write them? Yeah, who is time to write them and where does the money come from? I hear that as well. I think right. Yeah, so Who writes them so we we have been looking for the low-hanging fruits so far So that that is people who have already written their own readers a lot of our teachers do and These are just things that they bring to a printer. They just pay a printer a couple of hundred euros to print all of these low-budget readers and then pass them out around class and ask for 10 15 euros for from their students to get one of those readers and But this isn't so we can't track the influence of these readers what these readers are doing, right? So that's what we're saying that that's the sort of professionalization that we put into put into that So far this doesn't sound like a structural solution. You use what you have to use what you can use So that's very interesting. That's a very good point. So where to move on from here is essentially Adopting a different way of thinking about how to design a course right how to design educational resources because like Neema was saying at the start There's a lot of material out there already So how can we find these resources that are already useful? How can we adopt this easily into our own teaching? Ideally within our digital learning environments These are the these are the real challenges that we're facing to make this process I would say sustainable because we can until 2050 or 2100 keep Publishing new resources, right? This this models stops somewhere at some point all of the is this also something that like for example The board of to you delt can do they can say well you can use now five percent of your time to do this to make your textbooks Yeah, so that's that that's what we're seeing. So if you're talking about the finances or how to make sure people invest time in this There is a national National plan for acceleration of education Designed by surf which you might know from surf space where you can store all your data for example But service is also it's an innovation It's a place for innovation for educational resources. So there and I'm also involved in that we are working on on writing or Allowing for people to write in funding requests to start up these kinds of initiatives The most important thing here is is that these are focused on community building, right? So how can you not just as a teacher by yourself publish something, but how can you start a community of teachers? Preferably be within multiple institutions who work together on designing a curriculum or Resources for the informed entire division but now back to her. How can she participate in this? She doesn't have the time So from the current situation if you say I'm I love this project. It should be done more But I don't have the time what would your advice that be talk to your boss So at this point there's two things you can do you can write a funding proposal to serve for example I'm currently doing that with a one of our nanobiology teacher for 250,000 euros to start a community around So see she's not writing 10 funding so yeah, so that's that's quite quite large, right? So the the easier thing would be then to Yeah, to ask your so everyone every Every sign or every every researcher has their teaching responsibilities, right? One someone's teaching responsibility might be to teach a class You could see if you can use this time to instead write educational literature Yeah, that might be a solution Is this practice? I mean we're just thinking about the future and I think what you made up is a very practical point And I think very common for everyone. I think it will be really great If I could dedicate my teaching time to developing material But the numbers of students are like increasing rapidly so my number of students went from 400 to 1200 in four years I think yeah, so yeah, I think it'll be a while until they give me this time We need to talk to your boss and we need to talk to the board of Tobuque University to achieve I guess so we do thanks for that Do we have another low battery? Yep Yeah, so so we do get to a point where we can say maybe it's not up to you at this point to write a book That's so that's the thing, right? If you can hand off that teaching responsibility to others that will free you up to start working on these resources That's that's how pragmatic you would have to be then Thanks for that, any other questions? Then you get a big round of applause Thank you very much for coming You feel beyond


In our How Older Stars segment, we've covered how the Circumsteller disk feeds the central object, leading to the formation of protostars, t-tarry stars, and eventually fully formed helium fusion-burning stars. The process from the beginning of the protostar phase to a fully-fledged star is estimated to take from one to two hundred million years. During this period, the debris in the disk is forming planets. In the Nucleosynthesis segment of the Lambda-Cold-Ark-Matter Big Bang Theory chapter, we covered the content of clouds like these for the first generation of stars. At that time it was limited to hydrogen, some helium, and just traces of beryllium and lithium. Planetary nebula form when normal stars run out of hydrogen. The violent process created pressures and temperatures large enough to fuse hydrogen and helium into heavier elements and eject them into the interstellar medium from which giant molecular clouds like this are formed. These include carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen along with even smaller amounts of heavier elements like silicon, sulfur, and iron. But this kind of star transition does not have energy to fuse enough protons to create atoms larger than iron. Supernova explosions occur when supermassive stars run out of hydrogen. These seed even heavier elements into the interstellar medium like lead, zirconium, silver, tungsten, and gold. But even at these extreme energies it is unlikely that a supernova could produce elements larger than lead. This is because of the repulsive force of like charges is so strong. The Coulomb force creates the Coulomb barrier. You may recall from our last chapter on how older stars that a proton in our sun can collide a trillion times a second with other protons and still not fuse for a billion years. But neutrons have no charge and their fusing has no such barrier. It has long been theorized that the heaviest elements like thorium, protactinium, and uranium were created by neutron star mergers. In 2017, using large laser interferometers that we covered in the gravitational waves segment of the How Fast Is It? video book, just such a merger was detected. Now known as a kilonova, it's understood that neutron star mergers are the origin of the majority of all the heaviest elements found throughout the universe. For our collapsing cloud we know that it contained all 94 natural elements because we find them here on earth.


Welcome to The Creative Life, a collaborative production of Think Tech Hawaii and the American Creativity Association. I'm your host, Darlene Boyd, and our guest for today's show is Dan Tepfer, a pianist, composer of wide-ranging ambition, individuality, and drive. Dan has performed around the world with some of the leading lights in jazz and classical music and released 10 albums of his own, perhaps more at this point. As Dan discusses the intersection between science and art, between coding and improvisation, between digital algorithms and the rhythms of the heart, you can expect to be wowed. Dan, welcome to The Creative Life. I've had a chance to read your bio as I was visiting your website. And I've learned that you grew up in France studying classical piano and obsessively improvising jazz at home. And you say that your deepest roots lie in jazz and improvisation. Seems to me that jazz and improvisation is such a unique art form and unique to the performer doing it. What would you say? Yeah, the beauty of jazz and improvisation is that what you're looking for is to speak in your own voice. So for example, in classical music, there's a long tradition of improvisation. But the emphasis is usually put on, for example, being able to play in the style of Mozart or being able to improvise in the style of Beethoven. Whereas in jazz, what we really work on, what we value the most is a musician that's able to improvise in their own voice. And that's something that's very important to me because if you can get familiar enough with the language of music to really improvise in it and you can speak as yourself, then that's what making art is all about. So in jazz, we're really being artists within improvisation. We talk about the creative process here on the creative life. And I think many of us that study creativity and those that are practicing creativity in their lives and leave creative lives, we agree that the heart of creativity comes down to the content, the process, and the product. They all three need to be addressed.  Would you share a little bit about your creative process? Yeah, I feel like it's different every time. But for me, the creative process starts with ideas. I like to say that ideas are digital and feelings are analog. And what I mean by that is that feelings are hard to pin down and that's the beauty of feelings, is that they morph in these very subtle ways. But ideas have this power, which is that you can define them exactly. Like I am passionate about the specific thing and I want to carry this very specific thing out. And I think what's beautiful about an idea is that it can be this germ that just takes root in you and then over a very long time, it can grow to something that is like nothing you'd imagined before. So for example, my project, Goldberg Variations Variations, started with me getting really passionate about Bach's Goldberg Variations, which is one of the iconic pieces of classical music. And I just started playing it and learning the pieces, learning the variations in it, learning the music as it was written by Bach. And of course, this idea came to me, which is, wait a minute, what would happen if I used Bach's ideas in this piece as the basis for improvisation? What if I improvised using the same ideas he's using in each variation? And that over the course of about 10 years became my project, Goldberg Variations Variations. And it's been hugely important to me, but I would never have known when I started getting interested in this music and started improvising on it, that it would lead to something that's had this kind of resonance for me. So it's really about that germ of an idea, letting it grow, I think often over a very long period of time. So thank you for sharing your personal process. And I think those of us who attempt to work with creative individuals or even are trying to solve a problem, realize that there's a tenacity and a stick-tuitiveness that has to be there. And as I learned more about you, to me, you exemplify that. You just referenced the 10-year process, but you went through a five-year process. Is that correct with a special project? Yeah, I think you might be talking about natural machines, which is my latest kind of super special project in the sense that it's something I'm really excited about and that is pretty unique to me. This is a project where I've written computer algorithms that improvise with me in real time. So what that means is I'll literally be doing free improvisation at the piano and the computer is able to have the information regarding every note that I play because I'm using a special piano called the Disclavier by Yamaha. And the computer responds in real time with music of its own. So, you know, for example. And as you can see, I've also written other programs that generate a visual representation of the music as it's happening. So that's just one of the many algorithms I've written that form this album, Natural Machines, and I keep writing more. And as you mentioned, Natural Machines is a project that I've been working on since I think about 2015, something like that. So it's been, maybe it was 2014, so it's been five or six years or seven years. And at first it was just, what really started off was discovering this instrument, the Yamaha Disclavier, which is a player piano. As you can see, it's able to play all by itself. You can see the keys moving all by themselves there. Yeah, so this instrument is purely a robot. It'll do what you tell it to do. And it'll also tell you what notes are being played. So when I discovered this instrument, it doesn't really do anything on its own, except it's able to play back recordings of what you've played or other people have played. But when I discovered this instrument, I realized that I could program it in real time to respond to what I'm actually playing. And so that was the germ of this idea, but it actually goes way further back because when I was a kid, my dad brought back a computer from his lab, because he's a biologist, and I started programming when I was about nine years old, very, very simple things. And even though I never formally studied programming, I kept coding my entire life, it's all something that I've really, really loved to do. And so when I discovered this instrument, the Amaha Disquivir, then it was like, ding, I can use these programming chops that I've been honing my whole life, and I can bring that together with my work becoming proficient at improvisation, which I've also been working on my whole life. And that's gonna, I think, do something special when it comes together. But I didn't even know it was gonna be special. I just loved the idea, and I dove in, and six years later, I put out this album, Natural Machines. So getting back to your best friend, how did you come upon this? Did you just go to a catalog, or were there other musicians that you were involved with that you had recognized had used this? So this piano is actually on loan to me from Yamaha, and the reason I got involved with Yamaha was that this earlier project I mentioned, Goldberg Variations Variations, I made it at a time when I had won a few piano competitions, but I wasn't super well established as an artist, and I needed a ton of time in the studio to work this out. In fact, I ended up recording the whole album three different times in three different ways. So I was looking for a place where I'd be able to play in silence with a beautiful instrument, using my own gear, and I signed as a Yamaha artist, and they let me use their space in Midtown Manhattan. So I've recorded all my albums since 2010 in that space, and so it was a few years later, I went into that space and sat down on one of these discloviers and started playing around with it and realized, oh yeah, this is not just an instrument that can play back pre-recorded things, it's an instrument that can do things in real time. So obviously far more sophisticated and advanced as to the old, or maybe there are new versions of a player piano, it's certainly not that, it has- Well, it is in a way, it's like the modern version of a player piano. You know, this definitely goes way back to like the late 19th century, early 20th century when those player pianos were playing what was written on a scroll, or a piano roll. The only difference being that instead of a piano roll, the information relative to what the piano's supposed to play is in digital form. And since it's in digital form, I can tell it what to play in real time. So I saw you lean over when we first started the interview and you pulled, I'm sorry to be so low key in my question here, but you pulled at something, what were you doing? You leaned over and- Yeah, I connected a cable that goes into this computer, it's a MIDI cable. MIDI is a language that computers use to talk about music with each other. And I connected the MIDI cable to my computer so that the piano and my computer could talk, because all the programs are programs I've written that are living in my computer. So, you know, for example, here's one that turns everything I play upside down. This is called, this is what we call inversion in music. Begin to imagine what it must be like to be in a concert with you in one of your concerts. Am I correct? Yeah, this is a fun project because it's different every time because it's all about free improvisation. This is a project where instead of writing a piece, instead of composing a piece, I'm writing the way that a piece works. And this is I think an interesting part of creativity is when you start to separate the idea of a finished product in its details from the idea of process. And what we can do is instead of creating finished products, we can create processes. And the beauty of creating a process is that every time you engage with that process, you can do it differently. Now, not every pianist can choose to do this. And so do you have a background? Did you, I know you must have studied something in computer and clearly in reading about you, you have quite a unique background, but... Well, I actually never studied computer science at all. I never studied programming. It's something that was completely self-taught for me. But as I said earlier, I got into it when I was about nine or 10 years old. So I was born in 1982. So when I was getting into it, we didn't even have the internet. So it was all just like reading the user manual and going to the library and borrowing books. But I did study physics in my undergrad. My undergrad is an astrophysics. So I've always loved science. I've always loved math and physics. And that's an important part of my life, but the computer science is all self-taught. Do you think your background in physics influences some of, do we see some of that in the graphics that emerge? Or am I, what would I call that? Your visuals that we see. Yeah, you could call them visuals.  Oh, I'll try to remember that. Because, you know, in many of these algorithms, I'm actually representing the music very exactly. Like here's one called constant motion. So in this one, time goes by radially, right? And when a note is low, it's closer to the center of the radius. And when it's high, it's further at the outside. So in addition, so what I'm playing here is in white. And you notice I play our white. And then the computer, this algorithm that I've written, either responds below what I've written or above. And if it's below or if it's above, like what just happened here, it's in green. And if it's below, like what happened there, it's in red. So these are decisions I've taken to represent the music in a certain way because what I'm trying to do is show the structure of the music. This is a different one called Canon at the octave, where everything I play is repeated an octave below. And so what I play was in the foreground there in blue. What the computer plays is in yellow. What I'm trying to do there is just really show the relationships between these two voices really clearly. But then in some of the other algorithms I've written, I've decided to not show every note that I'm playing, but rather show a deeper principle about the music. So for example, this is called triad sculpture. And this is all about creating three-dimensional representations of the harmonies that I play in my left hand. So if I play this, for example, that is a minor triad, and this is an exact representation of the ratios between the frequencies of this harmonic structure. So in this case, in the time that the lowest note vibrates 10 times, the middle one vibrates 12 times, the upper one vibrates 15 times, and that's what I'm showing in this figure. If I do a major triad, which is this, you see that's a completely different figure, and those are ratios 4 to 5 to 6. So much simpler ratios than you see that right away.  And I just love these figures because they're both profoundly true from a physical perspective, but also to me, profoundly beautiful and elegant. So really it's a completely creative project and since I'm writing all the programs, I can do whatever I want. So check this out, for example. Here's three octaves, which is just this stretched out figure 8. But what happens if I start to detune them? This is in exact relationships of 1 to 2 to 4. But if I start to put out a tune, this happens, and you get this stretching of the figure. And I've also, I wonder what it would be like to travel inside the figure? You see that little dot that's traveling around inside the figure? Here's what it looks like from inside. And I can keep playing during this time. So right now I'm showing these to you at the level of just ideas, right? I'm showing you some of the processes involved, but of course in performance and on the album, I'm making real pieces out of these. I'm improvising stories within these processes. Stories that have a beginning, development, and an end. They're still completely improvised. None of this is planted in advance. But I'm engaging in that more spiritual process inside myself of telling a musical story to my audience, which is not exactly what I'm doing right now. I'm just kind of showing you little bits and pieces of the processes involved. Well, since you mentioned telling the audience a story, a spiritual story in the sense of, I found that fractal trees on your album, I found, well, perhaps because in our work in creativity, there was an author many years ago that wrote a book called Grow or Die.  So that was in my mind as I kept looking at the tree growing. And then thank you for demonstrating how you get, how we as the viewer can get inside those graphics because I felt that with the tree. So I did feel a real connection. Not trying to give my opinion, but I would encourage our viewers to give a look since everything is available. You're so generous with what you offer on YouTube. Well, I just have this belief that we as artists are here to create art and that if we make art that has any kind of resonance in the world, the world will take care of us in some way or another. And I think that's a belief that's been validated for me many times in my life. So, yeah, I love to kind of give as much stuff as I can. For example, Natural Machines is an album I released both as a CD and it's also on the streaming services and all that. And as a video playlist on YouTube. So it's just completely freely accessible. You can see the 11 tracks by going to DanTepfer.com slash natural machines or just go to my website DanTepfer.com and you can find it there. You can also just go to YouTube and search for DanTepfer Natural Machines and it'll come right up there as well. Should I show a little bit of this fractal tree you mentioned? I would love if you did. I really would. Just a personal desire. This is a fun one. It's one of the only algorithms I've written where I don't even play the piano. Let me try this again. What a treat. Dan, you didn't invite me to sing with you. Oh, my God. If only I had known. Oh, that's right. That's right. I was going to... Oh, Mike, we're just down to a few minutes left. But I did want to comment and ask you about the duos that you have been with in your performance. And when Kristen watches this, they just have to say that your performance, the Australia combo when she was in Australia and you were improvising with her, it was just so enjoyable. She seems like a wonderful person. Yeah. So, you know, during the pandemic, what's really become apparent to me is that we need to find other ways of connecting authentically through music when we can't actually be physically together in the same space. And so I worked very hard on low latency audio through the entire pandemic, and I'm still working very hard on it. And these are ways through software of reducing the lag between the moment when I make a sound and the moment when it's heard in the earphones of the person I'm playing with. And so during the pandemic, I was using an open source project from Stanford called Jack Trip that I ended up contributing to. But the problem with Jack Trip is it's incredibly hard to use. And so I've now released an app called Far Play that makes low latency audio accessible to absolutely everybody. And I really encourage everybody to check it out. Just go to farplay.io, farplay.io, and you can download it for free and check it out. And it enables you to make music with other people through the internet as long as they're not insanely far away from you to the point where it feels like they're in the same room with you. And we could use that for conversation also, obviously, as I watched. So I look forward to... It makes conversation feel so much more natural. It's really crazy. Because we're so used to interjecting when we talk, be like, oh, yeah, you know, or... Yes, yes. And on Zoom, there's so much latency between the time when we say something and the response comes that it feels kind of awkward. And so with Far Play, you don't get that. Dan, we are out of time on behalf of our viewers and some of the folks that I know that are watching. We're so glad you came into our life today. And hopefully to keep in touch with you and wish you well. And we'll be following you, Dan. Absolutely. It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And congrats on a great show. Thank you. I look forward to watching more episodes with other people. All right. Thank you for joining me. You're host for today's The Creative Life Show and our guest, Dan Tepfer. Join us again in two weeks for our next show as we continue to bring you individuals demonstrating their passion for living the creative life. Aloha.


So I've been hearing this clunk every time I take off in my 700 sportsman. Put it in a gear, it shifts fine. I would squeeze the throttle, it would seem to revel a little higher than normal, and then all of a sudden clunk it would engage. The tires would start spinning. And the first thing I thought was the belt, so I went ahead and replaced the belt. And that seemed to make things a little better. Centrifugal clutch squeezed on the belt better and shifted a little smoother, but it would still clunk every once in a while. So then I thought maybe it was the clutch. So I was kind of scratching my head trying to figure things out. Started poking around and found out that it was the U-joints in the drive shaft. I think my yoke shot, U-joints shot. So how you take that out, I already sort of taken this out. There is a pin here, and there's a pin that goes right here. I already pounded mine out, but let's see. It's not much left of it, broken half. You don't have to pull the rear differential out to do this. I put PB blaster on here, lubed everything up. I was able to slide everything back, and that came off the shaft. There we go. Bring this up to the bench. Let me show you what I did. Now in 2002, this slides in and out. So when you remove that pin, what I did was I made my own punch. Now you can buy a punch. You punch out that pin, punch it all the way through, and then this slides back away from the transmission, or differential I should say, and then you can pull this out from the transmission, and it comes out. So if you look at this, this is horrible. I guess they're known for that from the research I've done.  This is shot. Ironically enough, if you search up the part numbers, they're both the same part number. So you can go on eBay or wherever, and buy two of these. I bought two of these. They came with the U-joint for 35 bucks a piece, and then I already started taking the clips out. These little clips go in right behind here. So what you do is you take a screwdriver and a hammer and you pop them out, and then if you just wanted to replace the U-joints, if your yoke was still good, see my yoke is shot. If your yokes are still good, you can just punch that out and put a new U-joint in and slide that back together. You'd be good to go. Unfortunately, I'm not that lucky. Also, there was a lot of slop on the actual rear diff. So these splines get worn out. That's why I ordered new yokes. So hopefully they'll slide in there. They'll stay tight. I'll put the pin back in.  If it doesn't, I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to drill a couple holes on the side and put some bolts in there because on the pin it'd be tight, but it would rock back and forth like this on the shaft. So that's my plan. I guess once I get my parts in, I can drill back together. But if you guys are having this problem, you'll notice the little clunking noise or major vibration in the rear end. This is probably your issue. So I hope this helped you out. Please subscribe to my channel. I've got other players' fixes on there. I'm currently in the middle of replacing the wheel bearing. I'm posting a video on that pretty soon. Just got to finish it up. I hope you enjoyed it. Please subscribe and always. Till next time.