Welcome back to Hacking Career Village. It has been so great to listen to so many wonderful presentations. We have people who are in various different stages of their career trying to figure out what to do next if they wanna do anything next. So I'm really excited that Amalek Haran decided to present to us the idea of being a tech executive and then coming from an individual contributor and then maybe going back again. So Amalek, take us on your journey and give us your best insight. Great, so yes, you guessed it. This is the Lord of the Rings Hobbit themed talk. While I'm not a Tolkien nerd, I am a firm believer in the hero's journey of story and character development seen in many forms of pop culture. My first ever keynote had a slide where I sufficiently stole the story wheel from Dan Harmon and Jester Royland's Rick and Morty but I didn't really tell anybody. For me, I'm 45 and I've had every job, title and role I ever thought I wanted to have and work to do by this point in my life. I count my blessings and consider myself lucky. Along the way, I've had two marriages, several cats, a few cross country moves and even managed to transition genders.  But what does that mean to you, the lucky visitor to this digital corner of the world and audience member for my talk?  A brief background on me, my day job is essentially now that of a professional storyteller but in tech parlance, they call me a technology advocate and I work for Splunk as of December, 2019. Prior to that, I spent a little over a decade in public service for the federal government as a contractor, member of technical staff of NFRDC and over nine years as a federal employee starting at the U.S. Department of the Interior, treasuring finally at HHS with a rotation working cybersecurity and IT modernization policy at the White House. All before that I left college with a degree I was told that was useless in society as it stood decision science and started my career as a user interface designer at most of my classmates went directly into tech consulting. This was obvious during the dot-com boom and I decided to dot-com things just as it imploded. Do not count on me for reading economic trends friends. I moved up during that time to a systems engineer and managed to get my first job involving security in 2000 and my first official title as such in 2003 working for a power company as part of a two-person security engineering team for a Fortune 125 company. Ah, yes, the good old days of slammer, hurricanes and blackouts. During those three formative years, I transitioned from an individual contributor on a team to somebody who was leading teams of others. While the first team was small, about four people, when I left government last year, I led about 150 people of both federal employees and contractors. This is not always a growth curve and responsibility everybody here will desire but some will, to each their own on this journey and that's what I'm here to speak about today. Back in the day, I was all idealistic thinking back to when I first was introduced to BBS's in the late 1980s and wondering that I may have put my dreams of being an astronaut or veterinarian on hold for chasing down this computer stuff. I mean, I doubt anybody then was going to expect we go from modems to high-speed direct to the home fiber optics in less than 20 years and what was the domain of kids in their basements would end up being the most amazing invention of the 20th century or perhaps all of mankind. I had college with an idea that yes, this technology thing is something but what do I want to do? So I started as an electrical engineering and computer engineering major who sucked at coding and wanted to do something more applied. At the time, computer security topics were just covered undergraduate programs of which my work study job supported the information networking institute. I changed majors twice to basically survive but I still wanted to seek applied computing, basically how folks use what we now have. This is what I call the start of a career. Granted nowadays, this is what can be had in high school but then it's usually after an initial stint in a post-secondary education whether it be a four-year college or university or trade schools or community colleges. What most of this progress process really teaches you is how to gather and organize your knowledge and thoughts to manage output. Yes, learning particular point skills especially in security roles is now available in what is typically makes up these degrees and certification programs but as somebody who's hired quite a bit over the years I value how people are curious and put their thoughts together. So starting out unless you're literally starting your own company dropping into the family business or get literally recruited to be the manager or director out of college while commissioned military officers are a whole other story. You're gonna be joining an organization as an individual contributor. What that means is that you were hired for an initial skill set and organization needed. This also doesn't mean that this is all you will ever do. They expect you to learn and contribute but typically in their way of doing business aligned to their market or mission. This is not to say that this is not useful or non-transferable. No, just the peculiarity of the business. Oddly, these business processes and methods are often covered as trade secrets and they do likely protect them and many ways of doing that is keeping employees happy and content. Again, if you see a lawsuit proposed by a company because some high ranking or major category lead and left for another competitor, the lawsuit is not just there to be officious but they're protecting those trade secrets and data that that person may have.  Sadly, not all organizations see that worth and treat you as such. For me, early in my career I was trying to find that niche and I'm sure many of you or are still trying to find it. It may take a few places to figure that out and find especially in the security arena. You could start in a sock working crazy or shitty hours or make like the variety, this could be your jam. Maybe pivot to IRIH work, then to forensics and maybe RE. The amazing part, at least this career is it's got a lot to explore. And as I noted prior, if you're curious, it'll serve you well. For me, as I started to think about leadership roles whether it be a line manager or all the way to wondering if it ever be a C level tech exec I figured a broad background would serve me well. However, not everybody wants to move up in management but unfortunately the tech sector is still grappling with how to manage highly skilled and competent technical talent and not to recognize that some wish to remain individual specialists and contributors and not be a team or group lead or even an exec. Not every high performer has the skills to lead people on projects and it's another entirely different skill set from core competencies for some specialists. And this is where we approach a fork in the road. At the point at which the realization that you may or may not want to move into leadership or management will usually occur between the times you're considered junior and where you can be considered a seasoned professional with a number of projects and deliverables under your proverbial belt. I know the quandary that many folks in the security community have when trying to sell the value of an information security program to non-technical leaders and executives. It's selling the value of zero. I gave a talk on the concepts of zeros in organizations a few years ago for all day DevOps. Most security work is to work toward zero occurrence of an event or get close to zero. While many other roles seek to maximize your roles than to minimize. This is also seen in safety roles. And similarly, public perceived value is difficult to quantify and qualify because the lack of being in the news is beneficial. This can strangely be seen by a challenge that healthcare and other public safety officials have had toward to deal with during the pandemic. It's also hard to put a review that you've prevented a lot of stuff from happening. Since documenting it proves challenging and having to quantify what the impacts could have been in hypotheticals is a tough game to play and can lead folks to challenging your estimates and hyperbole is really kind of a new win situation. So what are you to do to advance your career? Well, first off, don't get dismayed. The folks who can see the value work rather than just tabulate numbers will be the places where you want to work. However, those are a bit harder to come by but things are getting better. Another tactic is finding a raft of good peers. This is your fellowship. This doesn't mean that you have to bounce on to a new role when they do but this is some informal parallel between mentorship and support. I've kept in touch with a lot of former coworkers and such both let them hear to vent and like to hear from them and share my problems in kind. Share the challenges and successes I've had as well as sharing those in kind as well. Sometimes when you need a hand sideways or a hand up, they may be able to help you as well. This is more of an informal form of networking but just as useful as more formalized online sites and professional networking groups. So back to skills development for a moment. Say you're at three to five years in your professional career and you're finally deciding that what you may want to specialize in. First off, I'm sure you'll like, wait, three to five years in, yeah. Your first one to two years will probably be figuring out how to work in an organization. Feeling out what like the culture is like, learning how to work within the processes and structure. I mean, I had non-pro jobs while in high school working at a convenience store and a pizza delivery which had their own rules and culture but I wasn't anywhere to the point of calling them a career anymore than they were pickup jobs during my pre-adulthood. But the two to five years is where you start to build up that launching pad of skills. The core knowledge you will expand upon. This doesn't need to be formalized either. In fact, my work as a hobby got me the practical skills that formed the basis for my security career. All unpaid, all essentially unsponsored but that extracurricular skills development is useful. About the third year in, your company, if you are on that first or fifth, will have programs, hopefully, for training in other skills building. Take them up on those offers. Those are usually the first to go when the budget belt tightening occurs unless it is literally built into an audible benefit that they offer. When it's not formalized, and I can tell you as a manager for many years, a good boss will fight the carve out training expenses for their teams and see the value of professional development. I've gone to the carpet many, many times to ensure my team has had at least one to two training experiences, even if some may be non-technical. They can still network with peers. Fostering continuous education will be the greatest asset to your career, regardless of which path you choose to take. Realizing that skills are not evergreen and require refreshing as another. Knowing that you will need to adapt to the changing phase of business and environments you will operate will ensure that you will continue to be able to call a career as you inevitably age. But this isn't saying that you can't carve out a corner and specialize, but you have to ensure that you're also innovating in the right way and being useful as a resource. As much as some cockles that get raised when somebody raises a spectra of a rock star or a luminary, either they will be a momentary flash in the pan or they'll be required to constantly reinvent themselves. Continuous learning ensures that you can always build on what you have and not be that one hit wonder or rock star. So let's broach the rock star discussion for a moment. Like most rock stars, it seems, and I've met a few, the actual musician rock stars, they may lack a little bit in the soft skills department because they've often hyper-focused on the skills development of their core work, but haven't worked on the soft skills that make them interact with people as a human. There's plenty of examples of those infosec rock stars being, to put it lightly, assholes, particularly to the new people in the career space. There are exceptions and those are the good ones. They often forget that they were not all born with what they have and remembering that helps you get a career progression. Ego is not something that people will suffer well and it's easy to break. As I've said in other talks, when hiring people, I much prefer the reliable and skilled roadies and sidemen than the star or front men of a band because they show up every day, do their job, and because their employment is based on how well they do their job, usually have a vested interest in the outcomes. It's hard to think that some jobs are so at will as such, but the best combatant against that is being an exceptional contributor. It's also a case of balancing and not getting abused by a boss or a peer and that's the next piece in the career to plan for. Again, I've been in the show for over 20 years and I've had the opportunity to walk away and to be honest, the idea has crossed my mind more than a few times. Just like a match, burn it all down. The flip side of worrying about what's next is also something that hangs over as a cloud. Often those thinking of making a radical change or a leap to something different burn a candle at both ends, a day gig and then the buildup of the next thing whether it be independent, be your own boss or a new venture. It's trying, it's stressful and it's not for everybody. But this is another route to use your experience to be a leader. Even if the goal is to flesh out and build out an idea with a goal of being later acquired, the opportunity exists to stretch your legs and see if you can cut it. At best, you can go back to being an individual contributor, go further into management or cash out and live other dreams. You're writing your own story. So that's all well and good for those who are less risk averse. You mentioned that you were all over the map. Yeah, I was. And it seemed like working for a lot of well-established organizations, especially the government. What about that? Well, I'm glad you asked. And to say that this wasn't a route I valued for my own needs would be disingenuous. I had and still have a lot of going on in my life where I value the rough sense of some bankable security. Technically, public service is one of the few places that rarely sees layoffs. And if they do a reduction in force, known in the private and public sector as a rift, there's a lot more justification for seeing the door than on a whim, especially if you're a high performer. Safety or the perception of it is a good thing. If you're trying to do a lot. The fact that there's something tangible and reliable there is good. This is why folks may call it the daily grind, but it's what others will base an entire career doing. And it often affords them a lot of intangibles. This is not to say a smaller company, a startup or even deciding to pull up roots and become an ex-pat or go on a sabbatical isn't going to offer benefits either. They will, but it's up to you to evaluate what your needs are. Well, how do I evaluate my needs? This is essentially where the rubber hits the road. This is where you need to do a little planning. This isn't locked in, carved in stone, but an idea, given your experiences and desires and dreams about where you want to be or see yourself being in a few years. It can have a timeline or can just be an endpoint with no planned speed. For me, I had hoped to possibly become a C-level techie and at some point in my career, I just wasn't expecting that opportunity, even if it was for a smaller work, by the time I turned 45. Your timeline or desires may be different, possibly even fueled by your experience with working for and with individuals, you may have a role that you desire. This is where we get to the one ring part of the story. Sometimes this overall exposure to what some can term the brass ring can be toxic, much like smeagle and golem and the exposure to the doggy dog boiling crab pot of the corporate and even public sector, world of ladder climbing can cause significant change in who you may be. The desire for more, greater and perceived better can change a person if they drive themselves too hard thinking that the next rung is gonna make them happy along with perceived success. They will step and crush on whoever seems an impediment to that path, break relationships and go through the world with a single-minded purpose at the expense of nearly everything that doesn't generate forward movement. All I have to say is, you can't take it with you. For a lot of us, and as I noted earlier, is that our curiosity fuels our passions for this job or career that we chose to have. Nobody forced us into it. Well, maybe a parent wondering if this is better than being a doctor. So we're here by our own free will and so why not enjoy the journey? I mean, typically if you're working from the age of 18 to 20 to 65 to 67 years old, perhaps longer, that's 45 or so years of hopefully gainful employment in doing something that you love to do. It's really not a dash and more hopefully a leisurely stroller hike, a marathon if you're really trying to torture the metaphor for the runners. Smell the flowers, enjoy the scenery. Granted, there's some externalities here which I may gloss over, which is the bias, even though illegal in many forms towards race, gender, sexuality, disability and other characteristics which really shouldn't have any bearing on how good you are for a given role or opportunity. This particularly comes in play for minorities within a given field, whether it be gender, race, socioeconomic background or LGBTQ status. And when you stack them, it becomes even a bit more complex. And while I won't go into the discussion about how much about diversity here, I wanna make a point of the fact that this seriously changes the calculus for many in their careers. And this is something serious to consider both as one in the career and those who are in charge of hiring and leading those teams and efforts. There are plenty of other better talks on this than I can give at this moment. So I wanted to at least bring this up to your attention and note that this is still very much a going concern. Once you've walked the path for a while here looking at your preferred end roller state, you're considered a senior level material. And this is what can be construed with a few more worry lines and occasional less than natural colored hair of gray. Then you may get plucked to be asked the question would you like to be a manager? And this may give some folks pause. One, they didn't ask to see the manager unless you're the person asking was a Chad or Karen. So double check. But what they asked is you have the possibility demonstrated enough leadership qualities in order to be considered a good candidate, not just to be an individual contributor to a team or project, but to actually lead it. Granted, you could be asked this sooner if you displayed an early aptitude for it, but usually after you found your way with what you wanna do, got the ropes of an organization or two and I've had some history to point on for some successes and yes, failures. For some, this comes with an exclamation of cool or awesome or even maybe a dance in your cube. Others, it may be an oh shit moment because this potentially ends the comfort of isolation or just being part of a team or better yet, not being responsible for anything other than your own work. However, for those that are in the crux of this decision point, there's hope if you play it right. Some come to this point worrying if they will be able to maintain their technical focus and chops that they decide to become a leader or manager. The short answer is yes, but it comes with some caveats. The further you move up the leadership chain, the more divorced by design you will become from the day to day minutia. If you think you can go back and pull every ore and steer every rudder of your fleet of ships, disabuse yourself of that idea entirely. The same aspects of managers you hated who may have been dictatorial or micromanaging in their roles, you just adopt it, just don't. Your job is to find and raise up trusted lieutenants and by that I don't mean sycophants but find the right talent to raise up and effectively fill the gap you and others may leave when they progress to the professional development lifecycle. Essentially, you also inherit the role of talent scout and when I mentioned before about taking advantage of training opportunities you had early on to keep you sharp, you are now directing that role so I hope you learn something then. This doesn't sound like maintaining my technical job, she say, but you're just leveling up. I know folks like to code, work hands-on with hardware and so forth. I get it, I miss the ChesoIRIH work and building up a network defense systems. However, I feel that the benefit from being a senior level individual is the experience and lessons learned that you can impart to others. My own jump from engineer to architect worked that way as it gave me a broader view of the mission and business we were doing. I got to work with a lot of other people with other skills and help bridge the gaps and understanding and communication across various teams and business units. The key point is not to be cynical about the fact that you're possibly now in charge and that as much as all the crap that may roll up to you, the accolades may also be the first to hit you. How you balance it is where you start to succeed as a leader. This is about the time where I started to broaden out my own background. As I noted, I did the system in engineering and started into architecture but I also started into compliance policy work. I figured that the compliance people were gonna grade me on my engineering and architecture skills. It may be about time for me to walk a mile or so in their shoes and get you to re-examine your approaches and how and why you do your work. And because it's a different layer and working with different types of people it delivers some skills you wouldn't normally get if you hyper-specialized. As much as folks will push the red, blue and purple team and any other color that's in vogue right now as a way to run multiple angles of learning about offensive and defensive sides of operational security. The policy arena is also a way to take the tabletop or live fire aspects to another level. I know many will think that policy is merely just coming up with ways to be more officious. However, a good policy people will examine things from every angle they can, thinking about scenarios the same way a defensive or offensive team would to ensure it's the best way to apply it and govern a policy. In other cases, you, if you end up doing policy work maybe on the front lines of a new technology proposal or action or other event and need to quickly react and develop a working framework for how to handle everything. It requires a nimble mind with a deep background and experience in the topics of policy is to cover. And then some. You'd be surprised, but some of those policy wonks are pretty awesome people and really interesting way to expand their applied skills when you may feel a little bit of the techie burnout. Given all of this, you'd think you'd be nearing an end and yeah, it's kind of near there. By this point, you probably have touched about every little aspect of this career space and even getting to speak at conferences like this and others, potentially volunteering and giving a little back, but you're now about to decide, do I stay or do I go? And by that, I mean being a leader is a lot of work. A lot of paperwork, emotional labor and a lot of time. You need to essentially still find those balance points in order to not burn or flame out. Say you've been a senior leader for a time, it's okay to go back to an individual contributor role like from when you started. The answer is a resounding yes. In fact, it should almost be standard practice. For me, I'd been a manager again for about five years before I realized I needed a break from the stress and the politics.  I know a lot of folks will say to try to separate work from the people, but when you're doing things that has a good mission and a potential, it's a very hard thing to do even when you think you can easily do it. As a leader, the relationships you developed are useful in order to get things done, but as part of building trust, people will open up to you and get invested. In a way, you can say that this is the I care too much issue, but it happens. Then again, besides all that, you may want to take a break, try something new. That continuous learning stuff and build a skill set that you don't have or feel you may need to advance even further if you are a senior leader or executive. For me, when I started as a deputy CIO for a federal agency component, I was thrown into areas I had no formal training in, including budgeting, human resources and more formalized project management. I had people who had PMP certifications working for me. I ended up hiring a budget officer to help with our budget management and procurements and contracts. Well, this may sound like a cop out as to, why don't you do it yourself? Well, the answer is I try. I worked with these folks, but also knew that they knew way more than me and did a better job of it. This is the sign of a good leader, which is to know where your expertise and quality ends and somebody else's begins. It's not ego, in fact, it's humbling. Know when to ask for help, know when to delegate, know when to hold them, know when to fold them. It's an important skill that many CTOs, CIOs and CISOs, I know definitely do not do, but could also ease your lies if they admit it that they can't do it all. This is a bit of the type A control freak personality type that draws some people to leadership, but they will also fizzle out over time or move on and create a potential other disaster. As I moved on, I realized I needed to learn better communication skills. The last few positions I had for the federal government had yearly reviews that constantly harped on this. I was also always eager to go and speak, work on those skills in a more public forum. You obviously hear me here and see me now so part of this is working out. However, one of these experiences I didn't have in my career and especially in a particular sector was working for a vendor. And as such, in a role that is now strangely considered part of marketing is that of an advocate. Now, many will look at such roles and think, well, that's just a pitchman or pitch woman and it's no better than sales, but it's really not. In fact, many of the senior folks here, goons, speakers and such, actually have roles similar to mine. It's an educational role as much as the customer facing an interaction role that not only requires being able to speak intelligently about a topic, but also listening. Listening is a very underutilized skill among techies at times. Obviously you're here and listening to me, but actively listening in order to synthesize a useful interaction with a customer or teammate or executive is a very useful skill to develop. Much like critical thinking, this is much in an innate skill for people and an important navigating to career development. The refinement of communication and listening skills are the ones that will mature over time as well. As an advocate, I get to touch many parts of our organization. I get to develop strategies for all sorts of things for a very broad viewpoint, but also get to dig into some passionaries. It's outward and inward facing. If it wasn't for the pandemic, I'd have been on the road for a significant part of the time, which is something new and interesting for me. I can freely admit that some of the, was possibly to build up some frequent flyer and hotel points for eventual time off, but those are some things, the fringe items you consider when making changes like that. I'm about eight months into slipping back into a visual contributor role. It's drastically different from my prior C level role, but also somewhat similar, because I'm looking at interactions with people at my former level from a different perspective.  There's a lot of these considerations for changes. My boss says, be comfortable being uncomfortable, which is actually a really good bit of guidance. We are typically kind of risk adverse in our roles and lives and we value the basic needs of housing, food and sleep, maybe a good hot shower on occasion. So we tend to sit there until we have to move. This is a skill while you have your day to day, is encouraging to walk the knife edge and explore new things and new ways of looking at it. To be honest, it's one of the best moves I've made. However, my desire is still to go back in the leadership. I figure that the skills I develop here will support what it needed to be to be a more effective executive when I hopefully return to those ranks or with the time and experience afforded to me to do something different from my day to day, possibly strike out on my own and start something new. I already did my own hobby like startup for a decade and a half and it ended up in the black barely and was sold when I lost the time to actively participate in a way that I wanted. If I start my own thing, it will be from skills acquired through doing everything. I think it's the best kind of skill sets to do this. So it will help me with those I plan to hire as well as learn what I need to take to make it in the marketplace. I'd have the budget, purchasing, management, sales and marketing, development, engineering, policy and even some legal background in order to make a good go at it. The path is mine and yours to choose. This is the journey. This is your quest. Good luck and best wishes. Again, thanks to DEF CON, the new career hacking village and the staff and volunteers who helped with all of this. Such an amazing story, really great inspiration. Thank you so much Amelie for sharing your story and your tips on how people can get from individual contributor to leader to individual career contributor, but also making sure that they're getting a fulfilled life and a life that they can give back. Thank you so much.


Some people are aware of sulfites, some of the things we use to keep wine from going bad. What's the difference and why is sulfur different than sulfites and should we be worried about all these different forms of sulfur? Very good question. So you'll hear two words commonly now and they're demonized. It's sulfites and sulfates. Switch the eye for an A. Sulfates, the only difference between a sulfate and a sulfite molecule is that a sulfate has four oxygen atoms attached to a sulfur and a sulfite has three oxygen atoms and like you said we use them as preservatives frequently in foods, personal care products, many of the surfactants you know soap a long time ago used to not foam. It foams now because we use sulfates and sulfites. The the problem though those two ingredients actually are not bad for you. They're not carcinogenic they but there are individuals who are sensitive and some individuals who are actually allergic to them and so it's it's sulfite and sulfate are actual molecules containing sulfur. Sulfur is a completely separate thing. You need sulfur to live your body's made of it so they're too completely and along that line as well you know there are people who have you know allergies to sulfide drugs. Right. Trimethoprim, sulfamethoxazole is one of them and you know that once again that has nothing to do with the sulfur atom. It's the actual drug. Gotcha. And guess what he was talking about? Insulin resistance. And he said you know when you have insulin resistance and you have high blood pressure. Donald fact that's a condition of a group of conditions we call that metabolic syndrome. It always is pre-diabetes. Well we looked at all of this literature and we made the hypothesis which is not a big leap of faith that pre-diabetes is diabetes it just hasn't gotten the diagnosis yet and guess what diabetes is pre-heart disease 80% of diabetics die of heart disease. So when we looked at the literature that Raven had done which was basically the same thing he spent his career identifying this insulin resistance as a causal central cause for diabetes and the entire cardiovascular metabolic stuff towards the end of his life and his end of his research he said I wonder what else is insulin resistance is related to and he basically did what crafted he took everybody and he put them in categories and once again cancer lung disease kidney disease there was not a disease that it wasn't linked to. And Dr. Gundry we put our book out the great cholesterol myth late last year and we basically say insulin resistance is the cause of heart disease now let me put the caveat in the asterisk there obviously it doesn't it doesn't explain every case of heart disease in the world there are three year olds who were born with heart disease it but it tracks with heart disease as well as cigarettes tracked with lung cancer. I mean a lot of cigarettes don't account for every lung cancer case in the world there are people who get lung cancer who don't smoke and there are people who smoke a lot and don't get lung cancer but it sure is a good tracker it counts for like 800% increased likelihood and it's the same thing with insulin resistance. So we wrote our book we said insulin resistance we think it's the cause of heart disease with that caveat. A couple months later a great doctor that great admiration for Dr. Jason Fong he's the father of intermittent fasting comes out with a book called the cancer code and it says guess what insulin resistance is the cause of cancer and two months later a PhD I never heard of who's brilliant named Dr. Benjamin Brickman writes a book called why we get sick and guess what he thinks insulin resistance is the cause of everything else. So we've got these three independent I don't even know work man I met Fong once we've got these people who are kind of coming to the same conclusion which is insulin resistance is at the core of everything we know it's at the core of obesity and diabetes and heart disease and then the take home for this is that high blood pressure pre diabetes diabetes obesity heart disease shall I go on there all the same related conditions and when I realized that and I said holy moly if we could do something about insulin resistance we'd be wiping out the basis of half of these pre-existing conditions but I was puzzled I thought I don't really know if there's and what about lung disease kidney disease and liver disease because those are big pre-existing ones conditions also and I spent them no more than a morning on PubMed on the National Institute of Health Medicine thing trying to find a relationship between insulin resistance and lung can't a lung disease and kidney disease. It's right there there's a literature this long it's underlies all of them. So we really feel this is such an important thing I I have actually talked to others in the low-carb clinicians network about a political action committee to literally lobby the medical authorities to pay attention to insulin resistance and to teach people that you can turn around insulin resistance you can prevent it you can treat it you can you can reverse it with diet alone. I'm so excited to have you on today to talk about one of my favorite gut buddies. Let's let's start by telling my listeners what is acrimansia mucinophilia and why is it so important for not only your gut health but overall health. Well thank you so much for having me on and I would be happy to share all of the new and exciting science that's coming out of the microbiome one of which is this strain acrimansia mucinophila this strain is really emerging as a keystone strain that people who are healthy have been vast abundance but people who are sick appear to be lower entirely missing this strain and it turns out that it plays a really functional key role in our gut layer or gut lining our mucin lining and you may have heard the phrase leaky gut and the idea behind leaky gut is that you you could think of your your intestinal wall like a fence. So you know you have a I have a wooden fence in my backyard and when you look out in your backyard you first buy your house you got this beautiful wooden fence with all these planks everything strong but over time with sun and rain and seasons those planks can start to deteriorate and some of them can start to fall down and now you have all of these holes in your fence and now all the outside elements that are supposed to be on the other side of that fence are now coming into your yard and this is what the gut lining is like and you have these certain strains which are important for making sure that those planks say polished and strong and keep that lining and that fence barrier up the way it's supposed to be an acrimansia is one of these strains so when you have less acrimansia you have a less strong fence and now all kinds of things can make their way in and out of your gut that become really problematic and show up in things like obesity type two diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease and other GI issues. Yeah, not only GI issues but if you believe apocrates like I do that all disease begins in the gut and all disease begins in a leaky gut so you and I think the same thoughts. So can you tell me a little bit about what started you down this path to researching gut health? I think it started with your daughter right? Well that was definitely an important part of what got me interested but really I was working at a DNA sequencing instrument company called Pacific Biosciences and we developed an instrument that allowed you to do DNA sequencing in a different kind of way than the other technologies out there and at the heart of the microbiome and at the heart of microbiome science is DNA sequencing technologies. So probiotics and yogurts and things like that have been on the shelves for decades but only recently with the advent of DNA sequencing technologies can we actually sequence and begin to understand the different components of the microbiome and that's how you start to identify novel targets and functions and link it together in a systems biology kind of an approach. And so I started this coming with two co-founders. The three of us have very deep sequencing, understanding and knowledge from working at Pacific Biosciences together. I'm a biochemist, Jim is a biostatistician, John is a physicist and really between the three of us we understood the science opportunity of the microbiome and we believed that you could apply pharmaceutical drug development tools to microbiome science to create an entirely new kind of product that had the efficacy of a drug but the safety of a probiotic. When you look at the range of contaminants that are in water and they, it's over a hundred. Not that they're in every municipal supply but among these hundred and fifty contaminants you've got some of them, okay? And it really takes a lot of expertise and they change and etc. But for your audience who is very, who may spend a thousand dollars a month or more on supplements, okay? And exotic new things, NAD and AMPK and things to improve their activator mitochondria, your audience needs to know like, hey, you shouldn't have any contaminants, they're more serious than you understand.  And then there's point of use, that is to make your drinking water, the water for beverages, the water for cooking. You need both for your audience. And almost, almost every point of use system out there that's, that's well accepted, is capable of removing trihalomethanes. But not necessarily all the other ones, like not many can remove fluoride from the water. And most of your audience probably wants fluoride out of the water. That's a very tough one. So of these hundred and plus contaminants, I tell them, there are only two technology categories capable. There's only two technologies capable of removing every category of contaminant. And those contaminants, everything from arsenic to heavy metals to synthetic organic chemicals like glyphosate to volatile organic chemicals like benzene to pharmaceuticals that find their way into the water supply to disinfection by products like trihalomethane. And I can go on, but it's enough. There's a lot of contaminants. A lot of stuff in there. What can you do to know you're going to get them all out? Only two, distillation plus activated carbon and reverse osmosis plus activated carbon. That's it. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. Because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.


These questions for Jeff, when we're talking about self-saccession and the ability for the peoples in the United States and of course other parts of the world to live peaceful lives with their own values instead of having their values imposed on them, what do you think are the most practical ways in which we can get to that point so that if we cannot even get divorced at least we could live you know an amicable separation until the moment that the divorce is finalized. What do you think about that? Well I think it's happening organically in the U.S. it just requires people to be fed up enough. People in the U.S. move I think more easily and more frequently than most Europeans. I talked to Holtzman about this and he said you know if you have a family home in France you know in the United States it's very common to you know you'll be having dinner with someone to say oh we're moving I got a new job in Dallas you know this is just this is much more common I there's just sort of more of a wanderlust in America so maybe moving isn't as psychologically difficult. Also we have easier better we don't have as much rent control we don't have as much you know it's just it's I think it's a little easier to buy and sell houses or to rent not everywhere but most places so it's just a balance you know do you want to endure what you're enduring in your area do you want to move near more like-minded people it's really happening grassroots I mean we've had school board meetings that's about as local as it gets in the United States I mean most people do not want to spend Tuesday night at a school board meeting to talk about masks but man oh man people are doing it and it's a beautiful thing. Thank you. May I add a question just belonging to that one to Jeff. I did like very much this map you showed with these 11 nations of America 11 11 different populations or however then you understand it and I did like it very much and I think many here did like it very much because if it's true that there is a general tendency of this as you call it soft secession that would be good now is there really let's say a strong tendency to in that direction or is it that's not an objection or is it wishful thinking a bit that would be good if that is that would be the reality there is I think generally worldwide one could say there is a strong tendency toward a world state so just the opposite so more concentration and even global concentration which would be the total disaster so there are maybe two tendencies going on on this world one this general concentration and the opposite would be the one you were presenting now do you believe that it's reality and it's a strong reality I do I do think it's reality and I'm optimistic about it but not necessarily again because of ideology but just because elites have failed us and elites are political social business in the United States whatever whatever form of elite you want to talk about most of them are very globalist in political outlook and when elites fail and they they destroyed medicine they destroyed education they destroyed law they destroyed banking they destroyed money they destroyed war and peace in the 20th century they destroyed diplomacy they destroyed religion they destroyed the family when elites failed populism is entirely justified it's not a dirty word and I think I think that's what's happening and to be fair probably the the likelihood of it depends on how bad things get people will limp along just I'd like to add something on this in my opinion the two tendencies which you refer to towards centralization towards world state and the tendency towards secession are both very strong and they are working together it's like inflationist politics and deflation is reality and the result is very low inflation or not non inflation at all but what I can see is the aggressiveness they are using in pursuing the one-world government and new world order is maybe a sign that the the other movement Jeff was referring to is very strong as well so at least yeah maybe it's wishful thinking but maybe it's it's reality and it's happening at least I can see in Europe it's happening as well you have lots of secessionist movements Catalonia and in Italy we have lots of secessionists and maybe there's hope in this let me add something as well maybe a positive note this year I've taken over as president of the Free Private Cities Foundation so I'm looking at this industry quite closely and I'm surprised I think we're living in a historic phase of a new dynamics of city formation and so it's not in only in the sense of secession movements getting stronger but a lot of people looking into moving where they are treated best and looking into moving into new poll political arrangements and it's not only in the United States of course in Europe moving usually means a cultural change that's much starker change of language and even if you move from Germany to Switzerland or Austria such a cultural change mentality change that's really a lot for many people but still in Europe we see the same dynamics and there's a particular group of people it's the more entrepreneurial people that are looking to get out and we have of course a reaction and counter reaction so the tendency to control and centralize leads to other reactions and is a reaction itself against increasing mobility of even high-income earners that the increasing possibility to do your business from every place on the planet more or less once you have star link even the broadband connection is feasible almost everywhere so we have opportunities like Germany next year making it even harder for entrepreneurs living but that's a reaction against a very positive trend which has been going on for quite a while but there's a lot of pressure of capital of intelligent people putting their weight behind seeking other destinations other forms either as perpetual travelers or even creating cities and we now have entrepreneurs in the US creating new cities buying land and really trying to get a new legal status and we have the same happening in Latin America in Africa and pretty soon we'll have that in Europe as well so there are a lot of projects leading in that direction and I predict that the next decade will be a decade not so much of succeeding from someplace but moving someplace and creating something and you and have a new pioneering phase of history so I'm pretty optimistic that we won't end up with the one central state government if we look back at the history of Europe in the last 30 years we can see that there are two phases in which decision is movements grew the first one started after 89 1991 and the effect was the reason was that the outer threat that came in the Cold War vanished so that people don't at least in Western Europe they don't feel threatened by the Soviet Union of a Russia and they don't feel threatened still the less by China if they are right or not is another question it's different in in the Eastern European countries particularly in Poland and the Baltic Republics where let's say that the the memories on how it was inside the Empire inside the Soviet Empire is too strong that to forget it's what they have another approach to that but the session is movements we have now in particularly also in the Western part of Europe are an effect of the inner threats that came with migration also session is movements in Italy as well as in as in Spain for instance no they are they refer to this movement of people inside they come inside they don't share their culture they have other interests and they are much more prone to accept the central government because they have no links to the local population I don't know the United States but I imagine that similar problems occur in the United States as well no if it's true that they have on every month I think 200,000 new migrants coming from the south that is an explosive development I'd like to preface my question by reading a quote from his serene Highness Prince handsome the second the ruling Prince of Lichtenstein he says democracy and self-determination are closely linked and difficult to separate either one believes that the state is a divine entity to be served by the people and whose borders are never to be questioned or one believes in the principle of democracy and that the state is created by the people to serve the people if one says yes to the principle of democracy one cannot say no to the right of self-determination a number of states have tried to separate democracy and the right of self-determination but they never successfully put forward a credible argument so I'd like to ask if you could say a few words about the potential for popularizing the right of self-determination and such a session by appealing to the inconsistency of a definition of democracy that isn't based on it well I think that's a bit of a tactical question do you use the positive connotation of democracy or do you go against it and I'm not sure it's a tactical political question I'd say to go to the basis of Lichtenstein and the regime I think it's a model that they have this session right it will not be executed because it's already very homogeneous and society and it's considered by most of its inhabitants quite functional arrangement so and to add that's a bit of the problem of the cessation view it looks at an already homogeneous group that separates its way because it's forced to live with another group but usually I mean our modern situation of life leads to different groups of people with different interests living closely to next to each other so in even in Lichtenstein you have more or less the same nonsense among the political elite so they are not very different and Hans Adam of course is a relic and the family is a relic and the villages are very rural and they want to remain that way so because being so small and still I mean the city is tiny compared to other cities the discrepancies are not that large in Austria it's worse but not as bad as in Germany which is a highly urbanized society so you have a lot of urban centers and then you have the rural population around and very different mindsets realities of life and so on and if you look at the maps even in the US a lot of election results are just showing you the difference between urban area and rural areas so it's hard I mean and it of course made it difficult to solve the problems we had in Europe when modernity showed that there's more heterogeneity than the the common basis could bear we had a lot of ethnic cleansing that made it possible for nations to go their own way more or less and this pattern we had before if you look at it made it very difficult to see so almost every cessation movement in itself and that would be the danger will have some ethnic cleansing and in the best case it's a voluntary rearrangement resettling of if let's say one village in Liechtenstein decides that Liechtenstein in itself is becoming too modern and they start constructing high-rises in Waduz who knows whatever yeah then of course some of the people living in the village would most of them would have chops there or move to Waduz or elsewhere have people living there so you need another rearrangement of people to allow for that village really to express that intent and that's a bit the problem of democracy here that assumes a kind of collective interest which sometimes if you have very homogeneous society is working out great and then democracy seems to be something great but it just expresses that homogeneity and of course that's the democracy we see and in some Swiss valleys where everyone stands up and raises hand and the great thing is they almost always raise the hands the same way as everyone else because they are very homogeneous and so they go along and they believe that they have common interests and that's why democracy seems to work that well but once it becomes like a stage behind which interest groups try to get their interest it really becomes complicated and then I think that the nice sounding word of democracy doesn't solve much of that problem yeah my question is for Jeff when I see this map I I have to think of the enemy who was also also making maps and I think they call it gerrymandering is that right that they that they think like oh we have to arrange this a little bit different the election district so maybe the people move and the the rulers just start to redraw the map and throw some sane people in with some insane people and then you're back where you started is that a threat yes but by concentrating people together somewhat there's more resistance to the federal edicts you know soft secession sometimes means just ignoring the federal government and it appears that at least a few governors are prepared to do that on currently with respect to this vaccine mandate so I think getting people together is is a good idea because you the goal here is to and I would suppose that there's more than two sides but let's just say there's two sides I think both sides would would argue that you need to remove the cancer and and this this is how you do it I mean imperfect certainly but better than what we've got I see a parallel between Italy and Poland in the 19th century Poland didn't exist in the 19th century it was partitioned between Russia Austria and and and Prussia and the most famous Polish romantic poet Adam Mitskevic who actually died in in Istanbul in 1855 is known for propagating the and all out a universal war and he's famous from for saying let me just quote you Lord we beg you for a universal war for the freedom of peoples and I believe him and definitely he meant nation nation states actually he was in Istanbul to organize an army to liberate to liberate Poland so Polish elites kept praying for this all out war till 1914 and Poland was born out of World War one and is I remember my schooling World War one is praised for raising for as an event thanks to this even Poland was on the map on the map again so on the other hand I also vividly remember my grandmother born in the 19th at the end of the 19th century in southern part of Poland now southern part of Poland then it was Austria and she told me many many years ago I definitely preferred life under Austria then under the Polish Second Republic before World War two so that's basically the same situation as you described thank you for the question which is very interesting and which bring us back to some comments Jeff made before in fact Poland as well as Italy as Hungary and other countries and Germany there was this nationalistic idea that nations could be forged only in violence and blood and fire and that you needed coming back to Rahim an education system that was apt to form perfect soldiers who would love their country who would be willing to die for their country who would be willing to be obedient to any order coming from above and interestingly Italians weren't really along these lines one of the most common features of the history of Italy during the 19th and 20th century where the complaints of the officers and generals of the army about their soldiers being cowards because the Italians didn't really seem see the the rationale behind all this why should they shoot Austrian soldiers in fact there were many stories during the war about Italian and Austrian soldiers exchanging cigarettes or organizing football games or or even trying to avoid killing each other which was a wonderful thing in my opinion of course as especially as an Italian you would risk the firing squad for something like that if you didn't aim for your Austrian you could be killed by your officer or your general but yes you have this idea of the of war as the great cradle of peoples which is an idea of the 18th century but on the other side you have the liberal universalistic idea that rules which are human which belong to human nature are good for all humans and we have in Italy we have the same attitude about about the Austrian Empire there are there still are people who are nostalgic of the Austrian Empire I would like to see the Austrian Empire in northeastern Italy nowadays it would be much better than the Italian Republic and there for example every year there's a gathering of Italians, Austrians and Slovenians and they on a spot where the the borders are very close and they celebrate their old country which was the the Austrian Empire many Italians kept singing the Austrian hymn which was Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser in German in but it had it's different versions in in different languages and so in Italian it was Servidio l'Austriaco Imperador which means may God keep the health of our Austrian Emperor and it was called la Servidiola because it began Servidio l'Austriaco and in some regions of Italy after unification it was a criminal offense to sing the Austrian hymn and so I'm nostalgic of this idea not so much of war but of fraternity between between the peoples and another thing about secession maybe it's an idea comes from history the late Roman Empire and the first barbarian kingdoms they saw communities where different people here people said different laws we are used to see territory state and laws as a unity so we speak about secession and usually it's physical secession maybe we could also start thinking as a way of soft secession a secession which is different set of rules for different peoples maybe with these new cities which are starting to be built in Italy we have also initiatives along these lines and maybe this could be another way of separating communities which don't agree on on the same laws I think we can all agree that centralized governments fine if it means the return of the Austro-Hungarian Empire across Europe will accept that it has to extend to Bodrum well I not sure I totally agree and let me explain some of the difficulties and it tells you a bit about why Mises may have his issues with this kind of national the territorial self-determination because really the Polish case is a very complicated one I think a part of the process of becoming a Polish nation was pushed on by the Prussians trying to terminize Eastern Prussia and that was really one of the impacts to have for Polish intelligentsia emerge and I think that was very important for Europe I mean the contributions that are intellectual and scientific contributions by Poles are immense so I think there is some good in that process of nation-building it's just that we didn't have a political regime that was fitting and it's hard to tell if the old structure of the Ottoman Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Empire would have worked out with increased nationalism because the situation really is really complicated let me give you give you the example of Mises hometown Lemberg or leave which is settled almost entirely by Poles and German speaking to us but everyone on the countryside is rotating and still it all belongs to historically Polish Galicia which is part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire so it's such a super imposition of different political structures coming from a very different history and very different ordering structures of policies it makes it almost impossible to find a constructive answer and I think only in the way that that Alessandro has like a kind of polycentric how do you call it polycentric or the maybe super positive different regimes for the more urban area the rules depending on on different interest groups and so on but just to tell you a bit about the complications just looking at the territorial cessation problem we have in Austrian history a very interesting example attempted a soft cessation and it was the case of Moravia actually part of the Czech Republic in 1905 there was this movement the conflicts between the German population the Czech population were growing and there were a lot of conflicts at the universities and wherever so every group tried to make their own associations their own schools their own thing everything has been had to be organized in a national way now there was Karl Renner who happened to be an Austrian social democratic politician he was then after 45 he was installed by Stalin as the president of the Austrian Republic after 45 but before he was also favorable to the unification of Austria with Germany which was not very popular after 45 but he said well this was the best idea and unfortunately Hitler took it and he destroyed everything but it would have been perfect if it would have worked it did not work in any case what what happened in Moravia was that Renner thought out a highly complicated I don't remember the details but a highly complicated system of organizing Czechs and and Germans on the same territory with different institutions no so they had their own schools and they could decide on this but they voted also in different chambers so the idea was to have a Czech chamber and a German chamber well okay shortly it did not work and it could not work because you need a consensus building for such things the people must be behind these ideas you cannot plan it from from above and then think that the people will fall you that will never work well Alessandro please explain again we have a Roman Empire and then we have Italy and I never succeeded in bringing these two phenomenons together and you kind of hint made some hints about it but how could it be that such an organized and you know military and Empire thinking and building then ended up in in what we have today so where is the connection of let's say these two thousand years ago and today of course that's a big question it's a huge bridge but I I never happened to understand it really and and you have the talent to do it Alessandro per favore thank you it's a big big question but maybe we should concentrate on one particular century of our history which is the third century after Christ it is the century of of the they call it the anarchical century because there are lots of emperors there are lots of civil wars and what is most interesting is the monetary history of the third century if you look at the curve of the loss of value of the dollar and the curve of the loss of silver content of the Roman denarius during the third century they are exactly the same so you have two events when the emperor Septimius Severus died he said to his sons Jetta and Carcalla the important thing is you make the soldiers happy so just pay them and during the third century after Christ the Roman army developed into a huge bureaucracy and machine which was eating money continuously further there weren't any peoples more to conquer and so the usual solution of the Romans I go to some some country like Gaul which was conquered by Caesar and I get all their money wasn't working anymore because it was too far away the line of supply wouldn't work and so they couldn't do anything else then start taxing their own citizens in 212 Carcalla passed a law which is called the Constituzio Antoniniana that made everyone a citizen of the Roman Empire so the Empire became a nation more or less starting from that time Rome stopped to be what I could call a giant and enterprise of collective predators so first it was a collection of families then it was a huge organization but it never stopped being sort of a company like you could compare it with the West India Company or something like that there were some families controlling this huge enterprise which had in military conquest its main issue that's why I talked about Roman militarism and imperialism starting from this point Rome had to transform into what we would call a modern state or something more similar to a modern state and they had the huge problem of taxes because the bureaucracy wasn't affordable anymore with deoclation you had two huge problems inflation runaway inflation because of the printing of coins without any silver content anymore he tried he was one of the first rulers who tried to stop inflation by making price controls he failed miserably although there were even death penalty for for selling goods above the officially accepted price he was forced at the end to relieve his throne and to abdicate but during the third century and especially the end of the third century this is where Rome collapses and it collapses on fiscal reasons because it established a cleft between the people and the state what was called the state or the republic there the rest publica during the same period the same things happened as are happening today which is very interesting the third century is very close to what we are living today for example people abandoned the cities and they established rural communities which were the beginning of medieval feudalism at least in my opinion and once the emperor Constantine tried again to unify the Roman Empire not surprisingly together with a monetary reform he introduced the solidus which is a pure gold coin it's it's impressive if you if you get to see a solidus it's it's a small coin but quite heavy because it's thick it has the the profile of Constantine with his big jaw and his warrior profile on it and it gives you the idea that gold is something valuable it always have been and it still will be but it was too late the empire didn't exist anymore you had Constantine you had Emperor Julian who tried to reinstate the official religion against Christianity which was getting its way it was too late and the Western Empire was lost at that point it survived as as the Eastern Empire which was mainly a Greek Empire in my opinion but as I told Italy was born during these years and during these centuries it is a country which is based on at least this is my opinion of course on distrust for government and this is the good part of Italians we never trusted governments because we have a tradition of being cheated by our governors by starting from Diocletian who destroyed the currency so this is the good part of Italy that they would like to to preserve because we are backwards but at the same time very very much in advance of other peoples because we don't believe in governments we don't believe in regulations we don't believe in government money for example during these years we had a stealth bank run and lots of Italians took their money away from the banks this is one of the reasons why they printed so many euros because otherwise the Italian banking system would have collapsed so this is the the future the hope for the future that the Italian spirit and the natural energy of the Italians could be an example for the others have a question for Alessandro no just kidding for you Rahim do you think that one of the reasons why a state education could disappear little by little is because of the nature of public institutions and organizations that they cannot cope with the with the how would I say with the rhythm of innovation that is needed in education yes yes totally I because I mean we see that with the Asian example where parents are hyper competitive usually and the state has a higher capacity than Western states it means they are more like the Prussians of course at their time and in their context willing and able to concentrate more intelligence which is most important and then resources for state purposes so if education really was in the sense if it's possible to have an apparatus to roll out schooling then the Asians would advance there and and could replace us if it was possible to build up human capital and capacity this and we already see the science that when you have for example Chinese exchange students coming to German and Austrian universities you see that they tend to be more hardworking more trained and analytical stuff but much less creative and innovative and thus performing not as well as you would expect because if you look at the testing results that a trend is obvious I mean Europe is going down tremendously in all the natural sciences mathematics the Olympics natural sciences that's a tremendous decline where as Asian countries are going up so but on reality it's not as bad as it looks because mostly what you get with testing like the schooling results and what really counts is the application for real life problems and there is a kind of mismatch so I still believe in the case for for innovation and I don't think that innovation can be schooled or trained I don't think that you can school people in entrepreneurship and stuff like that even though there are now degrees in entrepreneurship so and that makes me hopeful in the sense that we are already seeing with the change of the productive structure and so on that this kind of schooling becomes less and less relevant and even those who are maybe having good test results but are losing out in the real game of schooling which is the status games I mentioned who are the nerds are doing pretty well and that's actually a good sign because who's a nerd someone who just doesn't care about the status game this way he's not good at the status game Paul Graham has written about that and I think he captured this this argument quite well that fortunately I mean it's technology that enables the skill of the nerd who doesn't care for the status games and who's and a little capacity is not really linked to schooling there's no way empirically to really show that there's any real world success correlated with with the testing results that you have so I think those are positive signs and showing that even in Asia there will be a tendency either I mean either this trend stops somewhere or there'll be a tendency in more variety in education and I think in most case it means less education and more trial and error yeah and more the way innovation really happens but there's a crackdown now in China all private education happening and I'm not sure what to make of that it's really hard to tell I think there's some reasons so the communist party is quite competent I have to say it's all that the structure the apparatus still I think what they are seeing is that in the private sector a lot of it is also status games and they think it's prestigious consumption is the term is like parents because they can't show wealth and so on they invest in a hyper competitive way in tutoring and so on and I think it's true that a lot of that is a social loss but of course what the Chinese government doesn't see and can't understand is that it's a tiny small differences that are most important and that's how I think the crackdown on private schooling and the cracking down on peer to peer finance and and so on will not turn out as good as they hope for even though I think I agree with the Chinese government that now it is most of this private education expansion and most of the private investing and peer to peer lending is a social loss still the important small part where innovation happens of course you turn that off as well with trying to track down on what's a social loss because you can't know in advance so I I'm pretty optimistic there as well just a note on that it is one of the countries where homeschooling is allowed in in Europe and it's pretty easy and it is gaining lots of momentum right now not only individual parents who homeschool their children but there are lots of parents who are beginning to organize themselves I I'm trying to help them I on my website I have a an internet tool to get people together to homeschool their children and in fact usually homeschool children in Italy have better results than than non-home than public or privately school children and I see a big hope also in homeschooling in fact technology as you mentioned makes schools not so important anymore you can organize yourself you can hire teachers you can use online tutorials there are lots of tools that you can use as as a parent to school your children and which work perfectly well the the model of the of the frontal school with the teacher and the classroom is in my opinion is not modern anymore we have technological tools which can can help us do something different just a little thing because I'm organizing as well parents and there's a lot of pressure from Germany coming a lot of Germans with but in particular the past two years and the same happening in Austria that the amount of people homeschooling is increasing fast so only in Austria thousands of thousands of people each year and in Germany we have lots of Germans wanting to leave Germany for the reason and in the past they wanted to come to Austria because in Austria it's it's allowed to do homeschooling but you need to do the annual exam and right now I'm I'm helping organize a group who will get the permanent traveler status by leaving Germany and then move from location to location and thus escape the the German totalitarian schooling apparatus by still remaining close to the German speaking area and Europe and that that's quite feasible and there's a lot of interest in traction going in that direction I would just add homeschooling is exploding in the United States the beautiful thing about COVID was that what had been previously viewed as sort of a religious right-wing movement is now being understood by more people on the left and maybe a lot of them wanted to keep their kids home just because they were concerned about COVID but once they had them home and saw the online options they start to question and while he mentions sort of the low mental capabilities of a lot of school teachers this is egregiously true in the United States with a very powerful public school teachers union in most places so when you begin to take courses online from anywhere and it turns out if you're doing something like first course in algebra you can have the best algebra teacher in the world you don't have to online you don't have to have the crappy algebra teacher who happens to be at your kid's public school so so the number one fastest growing segment of homeschoolers in the United States is black folks because they have the worst urban school scenarios and they're starting to realize it so I think this bothers the left a lot


So, you want to start with what? The biggest challenge to trying to initiate a program like this is time. You have to try to build in time.  Sometimes you have to maybe hire a day of substitutes to cover for these teachers so they can do some planning and some work together. Support would have to come from staff and it would be staff buy-in. I need their support when I change up a program a bit. I don't think I'm going to have too much trouble with that because they've seen this very successful program modeled by some of the very best teachers in the building. So they want to do the same thing. They want to have equal success. Then I just need to figure out times to give them for planning. We're all really interested in giving it to everybody. We're trying to figure out how we can kind of do it in a teacher driven PLC type of model rather than a top down do this or else type of model. We're probably going to form some PLCs and buy content area is what we were thinking so far. We already have built in time to meet with that group anyway. So I do science for example and we meet twice a month to discuss science things but sometimes you don't have much to talk about. I think if we have that as our PLC for form of assessment as well then we can do that work at that time. The biggest setbacks we encounter are not being able to meet with each other enough. The structure that we used with our pilot team for the past two years was basically when assignments were posted I would take them and organize them so it was just an easier read so that it was a quick go to document and they knew clearly what needed to be done and then we made hard copies and then there was a system of deadlines so we were very structured so they knew internally when a time to post was so that we could work and provide feedback and then they knew when a time was to post to the community. We also met monthly and we would usually it was timed around an assignment so we could sit and watch a module together and digest it. I also think from a logistical standpoint giving them time as a team to be together to talk I think they've gleaned so much from each other and what they've tried and what's worked and maybe what hasn't worked that needs to be tweaked so I think that support that built in support for teachers is important.


What's up everybody, Jason here for JasperCaseBricks.com. 2022 Canadian National Treasures Baseball just sold out. This is a four box case break, picketing number 15. And here we go again guys. So there's everybody here that bought in straight up. Good luck everybody. Right there. And then here are the customers in the R&B with the five teams there. Another case in guys, another case. I did post up two more fresh cases for tomorrow. And believe it or not guys, we are starting to run out. After those two cases I might be able to post up maybe another two after that, if that. That depends on if we break any on Instagram or not too. So for sure we have on the website but anything after that potentially is kind of depending on what breaks on Instagram or what doesn't. So the quicker you guys sell it out, like tomorrow the quicker I can post more. And then we'll be done with NT and guess what? Ready for flawless next Wednesday. Which we also have like three, four cases sold out already. And then potentially look out for Nick to put a finest to it. All right Bobby Ray to 49 to start us off. That is for the Philadelphia Phillies going to add Edward Cabrera to 99 for the Marlins. 76 Marlins, that's part of the R&B. Six is Nick and then we got a Christian Yellish for the Brewers, David Chan. And guess what Brody, ask for a beer. You get a beer. Seth Beer, four out of 25. Three color patch. Beer sounds nice right now. A little Pacifico. Mad Brash, already three out of 99. That's Seattle, one of Sean Manor. And look at that patch behind Beantown that is Conor Siebel for Boston, seven out of 10. And Boston is part of the random number block so that's gonna go to spot seven and Mickey. You have Matt Manning, RPA for Detroit, 49 out of 99. Detroit Tigers is Cav. Julio, it's my first Julio at NT. Julio Rodriguez, 66 out of 99. That is going to Seattle and Sean Maddock. There we go. And we got a booklet here of Moose, Scrum. For New York, Metz, Moose. And that's going to the Yankees, Matt Smith. And we got Joshua Baez for the St. Louis Cardinals, seven out of 10. St. Louis is Justin. Ooh, that's a nice one there. Jackie Robinson Treasure Jersey numbers, 31 out of 42. That is for the Dodgers, spot one going to D Low. And I have a feeling these ones actually might sell well. I feel like these are kind of cool cards with the acetate finish on the top. I mean, they only made 42 of these. Which is kind of cool. All right, we got Daniel Lynch for Kansas City, going to D Low, Dylan Carlson at 25, going to Justin. And then we got Albert Pools for St. Louis, another one for Justin. We have a players' weekend for Cleveland, Jake Bowers. Cleveland, that is Mark. Another one for Seattle, that's Taylor Tremel to 99, 69 out of 99. And then we got a George Valera for Cleveland. 76 out of 99. Wow, look at that patch, good Lord. McCormick, that is an Astros patch. Jeremy with the Astros, Midnight Patch Autograph, six out of 25. And where's that even from? Shoulder maybe? Dude, this doesn't even fit on the top of there. It has to go in a slider box. Pretty sweet though, I'll say. Well, a little Freddie Freeman, I love these cards. Eight out of 25, eight is going to add. Then we got dual memorabilia signatures, to 99, Taylor McGill for the New York Mets, and Mets is Jeremy. Still halfway through though, guys, still have plenty, still have plenty of it, tiny. All right, for the White Sox, Lucas Geolito, Spottube going to add. We got Matt Manning for Detroit, to 99. That's going to Kev, and another one for Detroit going to McGill Cabrera, or McGill Cabrera going to Kev. All right, we got Tony Santelan, Cincinnati. Red's going to Mark, to 99. We have a three out of 25 resilient Camilo Duval, that is Sean, not sorry, that's not Sean Matt. Howard for the Giants. We have to now, 52 out of 99, Marcano, 52. A nice patch autograph, look at that, for the Cubbies, Dychesman. That's for the Chicago Cubs and Sammy, on the board there with the Cubbies. Edgar Martinez for Seattle, Hall of Fame class, 20 out of 25, Seattle Mariners, good break there for Sean Mattick. You got Romney Gonzalez, that's 83 out of 99. 83, Spottube 3 is D low, and last one here is 20 out of 25, the Big Heart booklet. Chicago White Sox, that is part of the R&B Zero, going to Nick. All right guys, last box right here. All right we got Austin Riley to 25, Fred Lannan, Louis Severino to 25. So Yankees is going to Matt Smith, and Austin Riley Brace is going to Justin Martin. All right we got Field Gear, Stan Musil, 24 to 25, that's awesome. St. Louis, with that one, Justin Martin. We have a nine out of 10, Willie Adams, that's for the Rays and Sean Mattick, or sorry that's not Rays, that's Milwaukee, Milwaukee's David John. We got Matt Manning there to 99 for Detroit, Detroit is Kev. We have a Jose Miranda from Minnesota, that's going to Josh Proust. We have an RPA here of Connor Wong, 66 out of 99, Spott 6 going to Nick for the R&B, and we have a Walker Bueller, 37 out of 99, Spott 7 to Mickey for the Dodgers R&B, Patch Auto. And last one here is a rookie signature material jumbo Spencer Strider, 16 out of 99. So there you go, ATL with that one, that's Justin Martin. And there you go folks, just like that. That was NT Baseball, Pikachu number 15, again, 16 and 17 are on the website, let's get those done for tomorrow guys, jazby'scasebreaks.com.


What's going on, y'all? Welcome to my channel. So today we're going to be talking about is we're going to be talking about what to do when a girl looks at you.  You're not sure if she's interested in you, you're not sure if she wants you to come talk to her. What should you do at that point? In my personal opinion, I think there's no wrong in saying hi to somebody but we'll break this down a little bit more to give you more clues to see if you should actually go talk to her, if you should try and get her phone number and continue the interaction later. I'm going to tell you exactly what to do in this video. Okay, cool.  Now what I've noticed with women and what I've noticed with people in general is if they want someone to come up and talk to them, usually they're going to be looking around a little bit more. Now they might be looking for somebody that's not you, it might not have anything to do with you and so how do you know if it's associated with you, okay? So there are three ways that I've noticed that women will indicate that they want somebody to come talk to them. The first way is they are looking and they look directly at you, okay? If they look directly at you and they maybe do a double take and they look back and they smile, that's probably a sign that they want you to come talk to them, all right? Not 100% but you should probably at least try, okay? And what's the hurt in saying hi to somebody? If they didn't want to talk to you, if they, you know, they turn away from you and they decided that it's not something that they want, okay? No, just wish them well, no harm, no foul, okay? But most of the time, what I've noticed is that when a girl looks at a guy or when she, you know, spends a little bit of time and has a little bit of eye contact with you, typically she'll look away very fast and then if she's brave, she'll do it again but she might not do it again after that, okay? So what I usually like to do is I usually like to walk over to her, see if she starts paying attention to me or see if she reacts to me. If she's kind of has her body language pointed away from me and turned in and she's focused in on her friends very intensely, then I just kind of let her do her own thing and then when there's a break, then I will go talk to her. If you see a group of people and they're very focused on each other and they're not looking around, their body language is not open, probably means that they are talking to each other and they don't want to be interrupted right now, okay? So if you see that, let them be for a little bit and then when their body language gets open, then maybe you can say hi, all right? The other way, and this is the way where I've noticed a lot of other girls do it, most of the time it's going to be something like this. I don't get a whole lot of girls that stare directly at me for a long period of time, but I do get women that will do a lot of this. Maybe they'll be looking around. Maybe they will be not so focused on what's going on with them right now, okay? But if they're reading a book, they're staring at their friend that they're talking to, then maybe they're not looking for someone to come talk to them. But if they're looking around, if they're kind of seeing what's out there, their body language is faced more towards the world, they have their head up, and then maybe they glance over at you, then that's a good indication that maybe she might want you to come talk to them. Not every single time, but it might be good to just say hi, see how she's doing, and see if she wants to actually talk to you, see if she wants to meet you. What do you do if you get one of these things? If you get one of these things where they're either looking around or they're looking right at you, what do you do? What do you go up and say to them, all right? Well, the easy way is just walk up and say, hi, my name is Lloyd. I just saw you over there. I thought I'd come say hi. It's a very easy way to start the conversation. Some guys like to do, hey, I just saw you over there, and I thought you were cute, and I thought I'd come say hi. The I thought you were cute part, it kind of sets a precedent that I don't want to put that pressure on her. So I usually just say, hey, I saw you over there, and I thought I'd come say hi and introduce myself. My name's Lloyd. You guys just seem cool. I thought I'd come say hi. Cool, where are you guys from? Oh, nice. I'm from California. I actually just moved to Texas recently. So you see how I just smoothly moved into a little bit of small talk just to kind of see where they're from and what they're about. That's what I would recommend that you do. Just be light, be relaxed, but when you go in, the number one thing that I see guys doing that really messes it up and kind of creeps the girls out is they hesitate. They feel like they shouldn't be there, and so they kind of do this motion and that freaks people out. Look, she's either gonna be with it or she's not gonna be with it. So if you walk up and say, hey, how's it going? My name's Lloyd. I just saw you over there and thought I'd come say hi. How are you guys doing? Okay, and there's usually gonna be a little bit of nerves at the beginning. They're not used to some guy coming up and talking to them, and that's okay. So if you just stick with it for a little bit longer, maybe ask them one more question, and if they're still not down with it, then go off on your own way, no harm, no foul. But usually what I've found is you give them a moment to relax a little bit and then they'll talk to you for a little bit longer. Now, once you've been talking to them, don't overstay your welcome. All right, if you've been there for a long time and their body language is tilted away from you and they're trying to not talk to you, then let them be.  And what I like to do is I like to tell them about stuff that I'm doing and see if they're interested in joining me doing that thing. If you're always inquiring about what they're doing and trying to do what they're doing, that's a little bit more creepy and it's not gonna get them to like you a lot. So that's what I would do. If you see a girl that's looking at you, it doesn't hurt to say hi or maybe just wave and see if she reacts.  And if they genuinely don't wanna talk to you, they'll usually show with their body language, okay? Maybe they'll be tilted more away from you. So if you pay attention to that, you're gonna be totally fine, you guys, okay? So next time you see a girl looking at you, go up and say hi, see how things go, and maybe then you guys can do something in the future together. I used to do this all the time. There's a very easy and respectful way to walk up to people even in today's day and age with all the rules and regulations we have in society. Remember to spread some positivity. Thanks a lot for watching you guys. If you wanna learn how to do this as a coaching form below where I teach guys exactly how to do this, sign up for my newsletter, and I do free trainings on this sort of stuff. And good luck out there, you guys.