You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 92, Stones of Fire. I'm your layman, Trace Triplen, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how are you? Very good. How are you? I'm doing good. I'm excited about this one. Yeah, yeah. This is something I get asked about online periodically, what are the Stones of Fire? Years ago, I did something about it on the Paleo Babel blog, but I really only presented one option there because of the context of the question. I'll allude to that toward the end of our time here. I actually think that an alternative interpretation is probably better, but I answered it in a certain way on Paleo Babel again because of the nature of the question. When we get to that point, I'll bring that up again, but the phrase, Stones of Fire, for those who are wondering what in the world is this about, really comes from Ezekiel 28, specifically Ezekiel 28, 14, and Ezekiel 28, 16. I'm just going to read 14 through 16 so that we get the flavor of what the passage says.  Now, this is a familiar passage to people who have read Unseen Realm, Ezekiel 28, just generally speaking, is not about, again, specifically the episode in Eden, but there's a lot of that Edenic flavoring in it, specifically what it's about. It's a lament directed toward the Prince of Tyre, and the issue is with scholars, and again, just a correct, accurate reading of it is that the prophet Ezekiel is using some sort of backstory about a primeval rebellion as material to cast the Prince of Tyre in a certain way to talk about the Prince of Tyre's hubris and his pride and his arrogance in a certain way. Now, I take the minority view here, readers of Unseen Realm know this, I take the minority view that the backstory is about a divine rebel. The majority position, both in terms of evangelical scholars and secular scholars, if we can use that term, is that the backstory is the primeval rebellion of a human, namely Adam. So I don't take the Adam view, I take the divine rebel view. So now in the normal, again, in the normative majority view, again evangelical and otherwise, the idea goes like this, the cherub that's mentioned in Ezekiel 28 there is with Adam or in some cases, that language will be attributed to Adam. The place that the backstory occurs in is Eden. We get that from Ezekiel 28-13, again, which actually references the Garden of God, Eden, the Garden of God in verse 13. Also this cosmic mountain language that we read in those verses, verses 14 through 16, that takes us back to Eden because, again, as readers of Unseen Realm know the cosmic mountain idea refers to the abode of God, the place from which God runs his affairs, the place where the divine council meets, his throne room, so to speak. And all of that, again, fits very nicely in biblical theology with Eden. Thirdly, the majority of you would say there's no divine rebel figure in view in Ezekiel 28 at all. That's just a phantom character, again, he's not there at all. It's just about Adam. And fourthly, Ezekiel 28, since it is a lament over the king of Tyre for his unrighteous pride, they believe, again, the majority believes that the analogy being struck is comparing the king of Tyre's pride with the pride, the hubris of Adam. Now, right away, again, I'm sure there's listeners thinking out there, well, the Genesis 3 story never really casts Adam that way. And frankly, no other passage casts Adam that way, and that's true. But I think that's only one of the disconnects that leads me to take, again, the minority view, the view I do hope, and that is, again, that we're talking about a backstory that involves a divine rebel, not a human rebel, not Adam. So in my view, the picture is different. Of course, the passage is a lament over the king of Tyre. I acknowledge that. I have no problem with that. The backstory, the analogy in play is not what happened with Adam. It's not about Adam, but rather, the backstory is a tale of divine rebellion, a specific divine being who, through his hubris, his arrogance, his pride, rebels against the authority of God. Therefore, when I look at the passage, the cherub here is not with Adam. Adam is not with the cherub. The cherub is this divine being, and Adam is not present. OK, so the first view, the majority of you says, hey, this divine rebel is divine being, a divine being in the garden here. That's just a vapor. That's just a phantom. I say the opposite. I say that Adam is not in view in the passage at all. And then lastly, again, the backstory would be about the hubris of a divine being in Eden, the place of the divine council, the cosmic mountain. And again, I think that we do get the figure, the Nakash in Genesis 3. But that figure, as that figure is talked about later, specifically when you get in between the testaments and when you get on to the New Testament, that figure is talked about in terms of pride and arrogance and whatnot. There's more of a rebellious figure, a rebellious feeling to it. Then you have, if it's just the Adam story. I'm not saying that Adam didn't rebel. I mean, he did. There's a transgression there. There's sin. But the feeling I don't get from it is this hubris, this act of I'm just, you know, I'm just so much of this or that that I'm going to go off on my own way. I don't I don't think the passage reads that way. Now, to get more technical, and if people want the details on this, you're not going to find them specifically in Unseen Realm, but you can find them on the companion website, more unseen realm dot com. And if you go up to the chapters, I think it's like 11 or 12 that deal with this subject on the website, you're going to get more detail. Now, the majority of you follows the Septuagint. The Septuagint, instead of in verse 14, us reading, you were an anointed guardian cherub, the Septuagint actually reads, I placed you with the cherub in the holy mountain of God. So that creates, again, the the flavor, the feeling that, OK, there's this cherub here, there's this divine being here, but there's there's somebody with him, and then that somebody becomes Adam. Now, I don't follow the Septuagint in this regard. I follow the Maseridic text. And you say, well, why don't people follow the traditional Hebrew text here? It's because there are some really odd, grammatical, and morphological forms in the Maseridic text in this chapter that people, many scholars have said, well, they just don't make sense. We don't know what to do with them. We either need to change them or go with the Septuagint. And frankly, they they they opt for both of those, you know, that the Septuagint is the better texture. So that's what we're going to read. There are a lot of scholars, a substantial number of scholars that think that's just a big mistake. The Maseridic text does not need to be changed here. Does not need to be amended. The Hebrew forms are rare, but they are understandable. Now, again, if you go to themoreunseenrealm.com site, I'm going to reference a specific article in this regard by James Barr, who is a very famous Old Testament scholar. Barr mounts a really serious defense and a coherent defense of the Maseridic text. Reading in this passage, and I think he's right. And if you go with the Maseridic text, you've only really got one option. Adam is not there, OK, which means you have to go with the Divine Rebel. And again, that that's that's the view I take.  Well, the Stones of Fire either describes the place of the Divine Council that it has something to do with the description of the cosmic mountain or it describes the members of the Divine Council. Again, the Stones of Fire would be divine beings. So it's either has to do with the place or the members of the Council. Now, again, I think that it makes a lot more sense in what the direction I'm going to go. I'm going to give you, you know, material for both here. But the direction I'm going to go is that the Stones of Fire are the members of the Divine Council. And I think it actually makes more sense in the broader scope of things. Now, if you think about what I what I wrote an unseen realm about the Nakash, about Eden and all that stuff, one of my major arguments, and again, another one of the major reasons I take the minority view here, I go with the Maseridic text and I see a Divine Rebel is because everybody, every Old Testament scholar, regardless of what they do with Ezekiel 28, every one of them will say there is a very close relationship between Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. And if you look at Isaiah 14, look at the language you get. You get a reference to this rebel figure, the rebel figure of Isaiah 14, wanting to be above the Stars of El, the Stars of God, getting exposed, quote, unquote, before kings and getting sent down to Sheol and all this sort of stuff. Now, I would suggest to you that none of that language applies to Adam as we get the story in Genesis three, but it does apply to a divine rebel. And so my big question for my opponents here is, why is it that if you recognize a close relationship between Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, why don't you be consistent with that relationship and let Isaiah 14 influence or help you read Ezekiel 28? In other words, what you say about Ezekiel 28, who the rebel is there, who the major character of the backstory is there, whatever you say about Ezekiel 28, you ought to be consistent and say, well, I need to be able to say that about Isaiah 14. And that's what scholars, many scholars refuse to do. They refuse to be consistent on the way they read both passages, keeping them together in this tight relationship that they all say is there. But then somehow they just split them apart when it comes to this issue. And it's very inconsistent. So again, I'm going to I'm going to hold my ground here and say, this is a divine rebel in Ezekiel 28. And now let's go back to the verses and think about the stones of fire. I've already prepped you by saying you can go one or two directions here. You can either say it's the place or the members. And I think the members makes more sense. And if we read it as though there's a divine rebel story here, the Nakash idea, I think that's actually going to make the second option as far as what the stones of fire are a little clear. So let's go back to Ezekiel 28. I'm just going to read it again. You were an anointed guardian cherub. OK, you're divine.  You're anointed guardian cherub. I placed you. I set you there. I set you were on the holy mountain of God. This is where I put you in the midst of the stones of fire. You walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you in the abundance of your trade.  So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God. I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Now let's add a verse for 17. Your heart was proud because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground.  Again, none of that is true of Adam. It just doesn't make, you know, again, much sense. So what about the stones of fire? A lot of people are influenced in their reading of this by one passage in first Enoch that I'm going to I'm going to read here. And I think you'll see that there is certainly some relationship here. But when I read this from Enoch, what you're also going to hear is that both options for the stones of fire, either the place or the beings who are present. They're actually both in this passage, too. So on the one hand, it's not going to give us complete clarity, but I want to read this to you because this influences how people think about Ezekiel 28. Here's the passage. So first Enoch 17, Enoch says, they lifted me up into one place where there were the ones like flaming fire. And when they so desire, they appear like men. So let's just stop there here. In first Enoch 17, the first verse, you have a reference to beings who are like flaming fire. And that's going to be language drawn from the Old Testament. There are passages, and I'll give you the verse references here in a moment where divine beings, members of the Divine Council are described as fiery. OK, flames of fire, but they can also appear like men. Again, this fits the quote unquote angelic idea as well. So it fits the stones of fire actually being a reference to divine beings view pretty well, but that's not all there is to the passage. When we get into the next chapter, Chapter 18, again, you you kind of get a little bit of a different angle. So Enoch continues in Chapter 18, verse three here. I saw how the winds ride the heights of heaven and stand between heaven and earth. These are the very pillars of heaven. I saw the winds which turned the heaven and caused the star to set. The sun as well as the stars. I saw the souls carried by the clouds. I saw the path of the angels in the ultimate end of the earth and the firmament of the heaven above. And I kept moving in the direction of the West, and it was flaming day and night toward the seven mountains of precious stones, three toward the east and three toward the south, first, first 10. And I saw what was inside those mountains, a place beyond the great earth where the heavens come together. And I saw a deep pit with heavenly fire on its pillars. I saw inside them descending pillars of fire that were immeasurable in respect to both altitude and depth. And on top of that pit, I saw a place without the heavenly firmament above it or earthly foundations under it or water. There was nothing on it, not even birds. It was a desolate and terrible place. And I saw there the seven stars, which were like great burning mountains. Then the angel said to me, this place is the ultimate end of heaven and earth. It is the prison house for the stars and the powers of heaven. So we'll stop there. Now, you see what you get there? You get references to mountains. Again, mountains are made of stone, mountains that were burning. OK, they are described again as this, you know, sort of how, you know, flaming language, the flaming is the word that is used there in verse six of First Enoch 18. So the mountains are described as flaming. They're described as precious stones, which, of course, in Ezekiel 28 are these shining, luminous stones.  But then when you get down to verse 13, we get the star language. I saw seven, seven, the seven stars there. And you think, well, the stars, isn't that like the language that's used of divine beings, the sons of God and Job 38? It is. But look what Enoch does with it. I saw there the seven stars, which were like great burning mountains. Oh, wait a minute. Again, well, if the stars here, you know, what's going on here? The stars, mountains, flaming fire, mountains and all this kind of stuff, what's going on? And then he actually turns it around in the very next verse and says that this place is the prison house for the stars and the powers of heaven, a very clear reference again to divine beings. So what Enoch does here is he actually kind of merges both options. That this flaming, these flaming stones, flaming mountains, flaming stars, brilliant, luminous stars, it's both a place and it's it's also, again, entities. So now people have looked at this, this passage and thought, well, sure, you know, the book of Enoch is going to be at least a couple centuries later, you know, two or three centuries later than Ezekiel. So we can't, you know, really, you know, it's poor method to assume that this was Ezekiel was thinking, but this is Second Temple Jewish Literature, it's apocalyptic, you know, it's it's not a direct connection back to Ezekiel 28, but it uses the language here that sort of sounds like Ezekiel 28. So maybe we should sort of read one into the other. Again, I'm a bit more cautious there. I think what we need to do is instead of this passage, even though it's very interesting. And again, you could you could use part of it to argue either view. But even despite that fact, I think what we need to do is we need to actually go back and ask ourselves this question. OK, Enoch Slater, but what is Enoch drawing on? What is what is what is the Enoch passage drawing on? And the answer, of course, is Old Testament material. And so we need to ask ourselves, well, what let's go back and look at the Old Testament. You never get a specific description of of mountains plural being described as fiery in the Old Testament. You do get one mountain, again, associated with fire, a fiery presence in that Sinai. Again, some of these these episodic events we get in the Old Testament from Mount Sinai, Deuteronomy 33, the Sinai account itself in Exodus, that there's fire on the mountain. OK, we get that, but it's never plural. So again, is is that really helped much? Because OK, Sinai is the dwelling place of God. We know that the Divine Council is there, again, because of the again, that in Unseen Realm, I talk about the the the verses about the the angels, you know, being present for the giving of the law and all that kind of stuff. There are passages like that, OK, but it's never pluralized. And I think that that needs to be taken into consideration. The other thing you have is you do have brightness language associated with stars in the Old Testament. And you also have star language applied to divine beings. And I think this is just me talking now. I think that is a more secure trajectory than trying to take the Old Testament language about Sinai and then making that the point of the Stones of Fire plural in Ezekiel 28. I think you're better to take the plural language of stars being bright and the plural language of divine beings, you know, being stars and also, of course, being luminous. I think that is the better backdrop, the more consistent backdrop to Ezekiel 28. Let me give you a few examples. A brightness is associated with the stars in Daniel 12.3, for instance. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above. Those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. We have a reference in Fourth Maccabees. Again, this is a non biblical text, obviously. We have here a reference to, oh, let's see here, toward the end of the verse, we have this. The moon in heaven with the stars does not stand so aghast as you, who after lighting the way of your star like seven suns to piety, stand in honor before God and are firmly set in heaven with them. Fourth Ezra, again, a pseudographical reference here, refers to, again, the light of the stars. And applies that language to being like the angels in heaven. OK, so we get references like this. And again, the stars are the ones being punished in First Enoch 18. So that it's consistent there, even though we get the mountain imagery as well. Star language is applied to divine beings, the sons of God in the Old Testament. And it's not just Job 38. There's one reference in here that I think is going to be really important for this. But it's also Isaiah 14. Remember, I said Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Everybody in Old Testament scholarship knows that these passages have a strong relationship to one another. And if that's the case, then I'm going to suggest to you that the stones of fire that this divine rebel is cast out from are also the stars of God in Isaiah 14, 13, the ones that that the divine rebel wanted to be above. I will I will ascend above the stars of God, Isaiah 14, 13. Let me just read it. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the Mount of Assembly in the far reaches of the north. Again, the stars of God, he wants to be above the stars of God. He wants to be the chief authority. And so if we take Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, again, letting them inform each other consistently, not only do we not have Adam in view, not only do we not have a human rebel in view, but a divine rebel. We also have other members of the Divine Council that enter into the picture and the discussion and the backstory. And whereas this divine rebel wanted to be above them, God casts him out from among them. He used to walk among the stones of fire, but I'm going to quote to destroy you from walking among them. I'm going to get rid of you. I'm going to cast you down. To me, it's just a more consistent reading. Jude 13, in the New Testament, compares again the false teachers to quote wandering stars. Again, I've commented in other podcasts a little bit on how the language of the watchers, again, the villainy of the watchers, is used to false teachers. Well, if that's the case, then this language in Jude, by the way, that happens in Peter and Jude, where the watchers are the angels that send are conceptually linked in some way, it might be peripheral, but in some way, again, with false teachers, if that's the case, well, then referring to the false teachers as wandering stars should not be a surprise. Another text here, non biblical, but Baruch 3, versus 34 and 35, again, refers to stars, again, as being divine beings. The stars, again, do not come out. The stars he calls by number, that sort of thing. And that language actually comes from Isaiah, comes from Isaiah 40, verse 26, where there's a reference to God calling out the stars by number, calling out the members of his host by number. You say, well, that's just God numbering stars up in the heavens. Like, only God can do that. He's just counting. He's just like an accountant. Well, there's a little more to it than that, because if we go, if we take that verse, this idea of numbering the stars, numbering that the host, the members of his host, kind of like they're arrayed as an army, again, this host language. If you take that and go to Psalm 148, let me just read the first five verses, it takes a different flavor. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights. Again, the heights of heaven where the divine counsel is. Praise him all his angels, praise him all his hosts, praise him, sun and moon, praise him all you shining stars. So there we have the reference to the heights, to the angels, to the hosts, again, and to the stars and, of course, other celestial objects, sun and moon, they're all lumped together. So this passage, again, verse four, praise him, you highest heavens, you waters above the heavens, let them praise the name of the Lord for he commanded they were created. That takes this language and, again, clearly applies it to angels. Clearly, it has something to do with personification there. So it's not just celestial objects, it links the two ideas. And so you get this reference to Isaiah 40, 26, that the heavenly host is, again, ordered and arranged and numbered by God. And then Baruch, again, picks up on this language to describe a heavenly army. Again, I don't want to belabor the point. Again, a lot of these things are fairly familiar, but I just think it's better to see if we're going to keep Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 in relationship and allow one to inform the other than these references to the stars of God ought to inform our understanding of the stones of fire, and that equation is consistent because divine beings are described as fiery in appearance, and the stones element would have to do with, again, the whole notion of celestial objects, objects that they might they might hurl through the sky, they might hit the ground, meteors or whatever. But this language, again, stone and star language, again, is fairly common in the ancient world.  But they do know that there are objects in space, again, that hurl themselves to the ground and their stones, their meteorites. Look at the Wormwood language of revelation. Again, just this sort of thing where you're you're taking celestial objects to have some relationship to divine beings, that's very common. And so what I'm suggesting is I think it's just more consistent to look at them as entities, stones of fire or entities that the rebel, the divine rebel was once part of, once among them, and he gets cast out. He gets cast down from among their membership, among their company, as opposed to this just being language that refers to the place, the place, the cosmic mountain. Now, one note here that I think is important to address is this language about going back to Ezekiel 28 to wrap up here. When in verse 17, the verse I added, your heart was proud because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground in the word. There is Eretz. I exposed you before kings and prior to that in verse 16, I destroyed you from the midst of the stones of fire. This destroying language, this casting down language, this exposing language. We need to take a little closer look at the Hebrew lemmas there, because it's kind of interesting. The destroyed language there is the Hebrew lemma of odd. It's alif, bet, dalit. And yeah, it can mean destroyed, you know, which makes it sound a little incongruent. Well, the kosh wasn't destroyed.  But the term can also mean go astray. So we could read that reference to something like instead of I destroyed you a guardian chair from the midst of the stones of fire, it could be a reference to I removed you. I took you away. I put you away. I steered you away. You know, basically that that God took this one, this rebel and put him in a different destination, changed his course. If you want to use that language against more star language there. But it actually is used again to becoming lost, to going astray or being led astray or again being again put off course, that sort of thing. You have references to this in the Old Testament, for instance, just a sort of a generic one in the in the first in the story of Saul losing his, you know, his father's donkeys and all that. He goes out to look for them. Now, the donkeys of Kish Saul's father were lost. That's actually the the lemma of odd. They weren't destroyed because they're still around. You know, Saul was going to look for them and, you know, they they wind there, they wound up being directed by God back to Kish his father. So they were still around. They weren't destroyed, but they were lost. They had gone off course. So again, I think the language there, even that lemma, you know, again evokes this imagery of taking kind of image, the language that you would use of stars being in course, you know, being in a group, that sort of thing. And what God does is God changes that course. He removes that particular entity from among the rest of the stones of fire and casts them down. Frankly, I think that this this language is actually what is behind the wormwood references, you know, you look at the wormwood reference and it's really about it's not just, you know, a cosmic celestial tragedy, but it can actually speak of a it's not just associated with the beast. It can actually speak of not necessarily an astronomical event, even though that's that that's the metaphor there, but it can be something more sinister. You know, some sort of I hate to use the word in invasion or visitation, but you actually could use the language that way because you do get this wandering star language where the whole point of it is not a literal celestial object, but actually, again, a rebellious divine entity or entities. When you there is that feeling to the whole to the whole context, the the bit about being cast down to the ground, cast down to erits and quote, exposed before kings. Well, the casting down we get again from the Isaiah 14 past Ezekiel 28 here, the casting down. I spent a lot of time in unseen realm talking about the Nakash, again, what this means to be to be wanting to be like the most time being put down to the lowest place to the earth, the erits. But the erits is also the underworld. He becomes Lord of the dead and all that stuff that you have a reference to here as well, it'd be very consistent with Isaiah 14. But what about the the verb for exposed? Well, that's a simple verb and he roots in the ton. It's it's used hundreds of times. And the interesting thing about it is that Ezekiel uses the same word in Ezekiel 32 for being present in or put down to Sheol. Again, believe it or not, we have another reference to Sheol here. Let me just get this. I'll find this specific reference here in Ezekiel 32 where this element is used because it just, you know, it's a real nice conceptual connection here. So in Ezekiel 32, we have here kind of an underworld picture, just like we have an Isaiah 14. Remember when Isaiah 14, that the fallen one, the one that's cast down is among the slain there, among the dead, the dead kings and all that stuff. Well, the Ezekiel language about being exposed before kings. You actually get this Natan in the reference to again, being in Sheol. And the example here is in verse 29. But let's just go back to verse 27. We'll pick up a little more of the context here. So he's talking about the Meshach and Tubal. Again, there we go again with more Ezekiel language later on. He says Meshach and Meshach Tubal is there in all her multitude, her graves all around it, all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword. So there we get the dead. For they spread their terror in the land of the living and they do not lie with the mighty, the fallen from among the uncircumcised who went down to Sheol with their weapons of war, whose swords were laid Natan. There's the Hebrew word under their heads and whose iniquities are upon their bones for the terror of the mighty men was in the land of the living. OK, the terror of the mighty men was in the land of the living. But as for you, you shall be broken and lie among the uncircumcised with those who are slain by the sword. You will go to the grave. Edom is there, her kings and all her princess. There's a reference to kings who for all their might are laid. They are Natan. You could say they are exposed with those who are killed by the sword. They lie with the uncircumcised and those who go down to the pit. So it's a very clear reference again to Sheol, just like you have an Isaiah 14. So my view, again, to wrap all this up is that the stones of fire are not the place. OK, even though, again, I was asked this on the internet years ago, are the stones of fire other planets? OK, again, I realize you could take, you know, the language about the stars and about divine beings and talk about planets there. So I'm not going to entirely exclude that. Again, I did argue it that way in that post back in Paleo Babel to talk about somebody basically that the question wanted to know is this a reference to extraterrestrials and the answer to that is no. But, you know, you can have some sort of this celestial object language in there, but that doesn't mean those objects are populated with ETs in spaceships and all that stuff. So that that was what I was going after in that post. But for those of you who are familiar with that post, I think if we're going to actually just stick with Ezekiel 28, I think the better reading is that the stones of fire are actually, again, collectively, a group of divine beings and that the anointed cherub had been in their midst, had been part of this entourage and is cast down because of hubris. He's cast down to the Eretz and you see that in Isaiah 14. If the stones of fire are entities, you get the stars of God in Isaiah 14. So that's another connection. The idea of being exposed before kings, you get references to kings in Sheol being put in Sheol with slain kings who in Isaiah and other passages are the Rafaim, the Giborim as well. Again, the bad place that is occupied by these particular entities, that you get that language in Isaiah 14 and you also get it in Ezekiel 32. OK, and I would suggest also a little bit of it here in Ezekiel 28. So I think I think the pictures are actually consistent. And the best way to look at stones of fire is that they are divine beings and the divine rebel is cast out of their midst. He is dispensed with. He has put on again to use the astral language a different course. He is removed from their presence and he is removed from again the abode of God, from the divine council to rule his own realm to carve out his own living space in Sheol where he does become the Lord of the dead. But again, he no longer has this place. No longer has this access with the other loyal members of the divine council. Good deal, Mike. And that article was back from 2009 and I'll put a link of that on the show so people can can go back and read that post and some of the comments there. So that's a long time ago. January 25. I just can't believe that. Wow, boy, that is you're getting old, Mike. We're all getting old. We're all getting old. So one thing is for certain, death and taxes, right? Yep, there you go. All right, Mike. Well, next week, what is our topic? Next week, we're going to talk about something else I get asked about frequently that I thought would make a good topical episode. And that is the reception of the Book of Enoch. Again, what we call the Book of Enoch, really first Enoch, the reception of first Enoch in the early church. How did how did Christian thinkers, Christian, you know, theologians, church fathers, whatnot, people who were, you know, had status in the early church? How did they look at the Book of Enoch? Did it have its advocates? Did it have its enemies? And the answer to both of those is, yep, but we'll spend some time again talking about the specifics of how the church viewed the Book of Enoch next time. All right, that sounds good. All right, Mike, is there anything else you'd like to add? No. OK, well, short and sweet. Yeah, thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com.


Hi everybody Joe for jazby's case breaks calm coming at you with the Inception baseball brand you released today pick your team to random number block randomizer For this big group of teams right here Non-numbered base cards are randomized at one lot at the end of the break to one person in this number block It only applies to these teams obviously if there's any non numbered hits We'll separate those out. I don't think there will be but if in case there are that's how the number blocks work And big thanks to this group for making it happen appreciate it And there are the numbers right there. Let's go. Let's roll it randomized names and numbers six and a four ten times one two three and four more seven eight Nine and tenth and final time after ten we got Zach down to Chris six and a four ten times for the numbers one two three four five six seven eight nine and 10th and final time You got one down to five All right, Zach with one Steve with nine Diana with four James with two Corey with three Patrick with eight Pat with zero so Pat Per the most of you know this already. I think Pat knows already Zero gets any and all redemptions for that group of teams right there including one of one redemptions. Just keep that in mind Zach you'll still get live one of ones Chris with seven six and five five six and seven. Let's order these numerically There you go. Let's actually just copy the team names here to all we're at it So coming up in a separate video in the next video will be the break itself. I'm Joe I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye


First thing I'm going to do is say hello to Bangalore. I've been to India this is my eighth time. Most of my time spent in the north. It was really exciting to come here to the south. I think this is considered south India. All right, yeah, I'm sure if anyone from Chennai or Tamil Nadu, Kerala, I don't want to step on your toes because I know that's really south. But anyway, and I love the train system here. So I just want to start with that real quick. So I want to ask everyone a question and do you work with co-located teams? Like how many works with teams that are either in your same country, same state, or around the world? And how many of you have worked where your design team is spread out around the world? All right, so hopefully you'll have a better kind of experience than I have because what I want to talk about today is not necessarily a love story. It's more like some of the problems and things that can go wrong than some of the things that can go right. So a little bit background on me. Use a researcher, a product strategist. I live in Seattle, Washington. Spent time in these places significantly. I'm currently, I have this title of T-Mobile, which is a telecom company, but I'm actually a researcher. And they don't have this title yet. So anyway, not really a designer. And I love these things. This is the greatest invention in the world, Globe Jaman. So yeah, if anyone has Globe Jaman, please. I'll do a dance for you. So I got into my other background before technology. I was a chef. And I worked in a couple of restaurants in New York. And one of them was near a restaurant that Anthony Bourdain worked at. So we didn't have the same friends, nor the same cocaine habit. But at least I was a chef. But anyway, I wanted to technology because a friend turned me on to the show. Did we know the show where these guys are from? They're called Cybermen. Anyway, it was the idea of AI, machine learning, and just technology in general. And that scares some Jesus out of me. I don't like technology. I'm sorry for all you guys. It probably do. But I want to learn how to master it. And so one of the things I got into was if I gotten to be a designer or a researcher, maybe I can help control the machines. And so why does that matter? Well, for me, machine learning, and some of the case that I'm going to talk about today, has to do with the fact that we have a lot of opportunities and a lot of designers to create experiences with a lot of what would be considered science. And some of that can be in environmental science, and some can be in machine learning, and algorithms, and data scientists. So what we sent out to do in this project, this thing is kind of weird, was to create a predictive analysis application using BigDead and AI to help petroleum engineers better understand how to manage field health. So one of the things that we worked with, along with the predictive analysis patterns that they would use, was we started working with predictive UX. Let me know what the predictive UX is. OK, so that's basically the definition, but it's kind of this. I mean, this is a perfect example of Google, predictive UX. And so one of the things we were looking at with our product was to help the user through, obviously, machine learning algorithms and data science, but then also surface UI that would allow them to make better choices. So because a lot of our end users were not technical at all. So everybody knows this guy. So the other second part of my talk a bit will be Agile Lean. And Agile, this is the first thing I think of when I hear Agiles, well, I know I'm messy. Or Serena Williams, a famous tennis player. And this Agile UX is kind of a new thing, probably not so much anymore, but the idea of how to design in an Agile environment or team. And a couple of people I've talked to so far, since I've been at this conference, has talked a bit about Agile UX, but then also Lean UX. And so how many people feel that they effectively do this in their practice, particularly this last one? So this is a quote about the plan. And that's what we're going to talk about today in the case study is, come in with a plan, eventually, Mike Tyson, right? So with that being said, this is Agile versus Lean. So a lot of people probably, at least for me, my bosses, my product managers, PMs, they're always talking about Agile. And then we come along as designers in your research and say, well, no, Lean. We want to focus on people. We want to focus on measuring experiences and our methods and creating an MVP versus a lot of this other stuff that Scrum is either rugby or it's Agile. There's no, to most people, it doesn't matter, right? So onto the problem. So I like to call this or what we call this was a 17,000 feet problem. Gain at proven reserves of oil is really expensive. Gain at unproven reserves and new reserves is even more expensive. And all the oil fields in the world are dwindling. Now, when they'll run out, I know, but I'm not going to start any rumors, just work in the oil and gas field. Don't worry. We'll all be driving lots of cars for a while. And the biggest problem with oil and gas and maintaining wells is when they become shuttered or they stop working. And that can be a really expensive problem as well. And so what we started working with a few Gulf oil companies was to work with petroleum engineers and hardware creating all these sensors. And of course, we're all heard of internet things by now. And any given well, they can be almost several hundred sensors. And they're constantly sending data about everything through the upstream oil process. And so what we wanted to do was we wanted to create visual tools to help the well engineers in business make the best decisions for both profit and then worker safety. Unfortunately, we set about with our client to make a one-size-fits-all application because they wanted to build it. They were using one Gulf company as an example. And then they were going to sell it to all the rest. So how do we fit Lean UX into our process? We started out with a really cool co-located team around the world. And I'm totally frozen. That dude rocks. And I was like, Iceman on speed. But we had three problems we were trying to solve. We needed to get the requirements. And we needed to understand what the customer needed or wanted while they were still trying to figure that out. We had geographical issues giving our SMEs that were spread all over the place. And we had a very short deadline, like six weeks to come up with the design idea. We estimated, based on our previous experiences of just being designers, it's probably going to take about three times that. So what we ended up doing was we split our design team. So we split it regionally between Chennai, Houston, and Dubai to hit different SMEs and get the users faster and develop faster. Because we need to rapidly design. We need a rapid prototype. We need to iterate fast. And we wanted to do around the clock, which sounds great for business. That was one of our selling points. But for designers and humanists and people of empathy, we realized that our designers in these different locations had different experiences, different life goals. They could bring different diversity to the table. And we figured that would make it stronger. And so we had the team make up. Just there were about three designers in each location. Our biggest thing was to figure out who was going to do what and how we were going to do this point. And we had also concerns around cost and logistics, traveling, visas, things like that. And so we figured out who was the fastest person that could get into a particular theater the fastest and then work through the iterations. Sounded pretty good, right? I mean, it's like we got a rapid, cool team. Like Incredibles, we're doing all this stuff. We got this process and all that great stuff. Well, the problem was, is that in this whole idea, we actually forgot to tell people what they're supposed to do. And so we handled the research part OK. But when we got to the actual design part, we started wasting. People just kind of went crazy. So everybody was working on the same thing. And we didn't really coordinate that. And so we were kind of wasting a lot of time. And part of our also problem was that the features with the MVPs were being added and subtracted daily. So we're trying to work on that. So what we ended up doing was we had this problem. Like if everyone's seen this movie, Jeff Goldblum has the perfect plan. Save the kids. Plan goes too well. And well, he's running and screaming, as he says. So that's what we need to do. We need to get under control. So we just called the time out. Designers went on strike. And we said, we're not going to do any more work until we work the SMEs and the product owners and figure out what exactly you want. That didn't go over so well, as you can imagine. But our first problem to worry about was they wanted to design this application for all multi-platform, omnichannel experience. And that just doesn't work, especially in six weeks. So we ended up choosing the web. And how we solved the problem of this design of randomness is we put some people into a room. And we started to think about this. So is everybody familiar with the release train map? Like eviteration of design? Obviously, that's where you're trying to get to, but it doesn't always work that way. So the one thing that was going really well for us was user research. So we decided that, OK, we can actually go out and find the things that people need or want, maybe faster than the business can. And so we took that risk and that gamble.  We understood what the heuristics and what people were doing. And the one thing that we got to really quickly was all these oil platforms around the world in disparate conditions. So some are in the North Sea. Some are in the Gulf, obviously hot, cold. There's day and night shifts. So there are a lot of things to think about in terms of our application that way. We had rig workers with gloves on. And we ended up coming with technology that we'd sewn to the gloves. So they wouldn't have to take their gloves off to use the application. That's just some of the research stuff. So we adopted this model of participatory design from Leo Fishberg.  This worked out in a way where we set a core team to make the framework of the application. And then we got our other people to iterate on these internal points, the graphs, the data visualization elements, things like that. So we did a lot of prototyping. We did paper prototyping. We did Oxford prototyping, a little bit of envision, pretty much every tool out there. But the one thing that we did that worked out really, really well was this idea of just quickly white boring ideas in front of business owners, SMEs. And so those are some of our sketches of just quickly doing this. Now, the downside of this was we had the upside of rapid prototyping again to the point. The downside was if you have a diverse team spread across the country, not everybody in the world, not everybody can see us at the same time. So now we solved that just by using envision. We just copied those out, photographed them, put them in envision, and just kind of caught everybody up. And then once we had built the framework, then we were able to sort of seamlessly divide up some of the well diagrams, mapping, things like the internal stuff. So we got into a cadence and about four weeks in, out of six weeks. And, you know, we started to get into the features and we started designing.


So he's in the tub and he gets up and he'll reach to the toilet and go crack crack crack on the toilet seat But the first time he did that he about flipped out of the tub. I caught him and he Put him back in the tub. What does he do? Think about anything else you've done in your life. Oh I'm bleeding. I'm gonna do it again and learn from it. I Dislocated my my middle my ring finger here when I was 15 years old playing basketball It dislocated the ball came down like this and these two digits ended up on the third digit It looked like a lightning bolt So I go into the hospital and I'm walking around and this nurse is making fun of me like what's going on here?  They splinted me and said don't play basketball What do I do? I split I tied it to the pink. You know when play basketball Ladies and gentlemen, I'm a man. That's of course what I will do and if you look at the And if you look at the longitudinal statistics of men, here's the best part and then I'll move on the next slide, which is if you look at the death rates and The pen air that the amount of death split between men and women for certain diseases Trauma related is trauma related death the men are like way up here and there's tiny tiny little bit for women And then you get to like dementia And and Alzheimer's and other Alzheimer's over for the dementia and it's all women and there's almost no man I go well, this is easy to explain because all the all of their husbands where the guys said hey Hold my beer watch this and killed themselves in this first graph and then they just kept living and then could I have a devil age? dementia later So you do have to watch out for that, but you don't want to stunt that right you want your kid to explore you want your kid to To be in a safe enough environment to know just how serious some of these things are that he's dealing with are There's a great TED talk recently about this how like they intentionally this guy came up with a Camp for boys and like they're sick and they're like using power tools and using saws and driving cars and people's laps Because you have to learn the gravity of the situation you only do that by by doing it So, you know You're supportive and you keep a long leash on them. You don't want to be a helicopter parent But it's not a dichotomy. It's not either you're overbearing or you're totally absent and detached There's a middle ground of knowing that we all wanted to explore I mean you can't help but explore I was in the desert behind my house as a kid coming back with cactus needles in me and a Bad sunburn and you know running away from animals and you know all this kind of stuff And and he's gonna want to do that too and your kids are gonna want to do that too And you don't want to stifle that girls want to do it too That's actually I mean if you watch them at the playground girls play just as hard as boys just as hard And on top of that when they're young they're pretty damn strong too. So my playground There's this like it's a track you hang on it and go like a zipline like you're some sort of a secret agent or Black ops guy and the girls are doing it more than the boys. They grab on they kick their legs I'm like yeah, they go flying on the thing and at some point culturally we go that's that's not allowed That's not lady like and you don't want to stifle either of those because that's gonna set them up for a variety of things later in life So so definitely don't want to stifle that and then you end up with this. So this was a few weeks ago There's my wife. That's me Of course and my son you get through the first year and you're sort of like okay I think I've got a handle on this But every year is different because now now he's a toddler. He's almost walking and that gets in all sorts of other trouble He's opening up cabinets.  He's not had he's not giving you a hard time he's having a hard time and It's just wonderful. It's this very bizarre thing all of a sudden I can remember what it was like before I had a kid, but I wouldn't want to go back to that That's me personally. I'm not making a judgment on anybody else. Everybody's got their own life to live But I you know I wanted I did want to have a kid, but I didn't obsess about what it would be like like my wife did They're obsessed by comparison.  Where's this little guy? It was yesterday. He was just born right and it's true. It's so cliche, but it's true and and so You know then the next adventure begins I could come back next year and be like fatherhood the first 24 months And it would be a whole different set of lessons And you have to understand that your thoughts can't be static in what you're attempting to do and parent and and being Caring and willing to change and be fluid is the best advice I can give you I hope some of that stuff was helpful some of the stuff I've talked about was helpful as far as thinking about a little bit more sort of high definition poop smell What what active birth actually looks like like breathing they can't talk to you They don't want to talk to you because it's agonizing pain My experience and Steve can corroborate some of the experience we had with having natural childbirth And if you don't want to do that you want to plan a c-section that's cool, too you know, but is to kind of be informative to tell you all about it and You have any questions Anybody got any questions for Skyler Tanner as as gross as you want guys. I'll ask Skyler do you believe it's possible to focus too much on trying to be a good father Yeah.  Well early on it was the under 21 convention It was how do you approach and pick up women and now it's become we live in a society that lets you it's a melting pot It lets you have any cultural Micro-cultural norm you want totally supportive the problem with that is we have no cultural norm to shepherd us into adulthood To shepherd us into manhood unless you come from a traditional background of your Jewish Or maybe you have some other your first generation and they're still hanging on to some of those cultural components We don't have that Simultaneously those cultural components serve not only to prepare the child for adulthood But also to prepare the adult for the child leaving the bar mitzvah is not just hey you're 13 you're an adult.  Get ready. It serves both purposes So that I tell my clients ago the 21 convention is now what does it take to be a full complete good man in America in the world and Part of that is sometimes putting as others and others needs before your own But understanding this case that those are your genes you were a rented vehicle You're now passing those things on you want those things to thrive That's the if I'm gonna be very biological the real meaning of life is that get your genes on the next generation anything else Is romantic get your genes on the next generation So there's a self-interest in that But on its face it doesn't look like a self-interest and eventually it is the the piety or ants itself And you're going back to your hobbies at a fuller clip So yes, you can Have too much of a focus on your children But there are periods of time where it's gonna look like that and the grand scheme of things It was the exact right amount of attention for the needs of the time. That's the being fluid part I talked about my second question Some people believe in when babies like really young babies they cried that they let them cry it out and They ignore them until they stop What do you think about that? So so there's a there's a couple components with that typically the cry it out sleep method is The idea that you just let your kid just wail in the crib is What some people take it to but if you actually read the sort of original proponent of kind of cry it out You can be present The idea is that you will give you give the kid comfort and kind of give them what they want if you pick them up And then they'll start become attached to only falling asleep on you or in your bed because like my kid slept in my bed My kills still has sleeping in my bed. I'll sleep six or seven hours. I'll get up in the middle of night I'll go grab and I'll come back and I'll fall right back asleep and he falls back asleep too So it's great, but he's sleeping more and more than night without us But early on he'd be crying you go You're supportive you're not ignoring him But he's going to cry until he stops crying in a supported way Some people take it like we're going to the store audios, bro, you know But it's not that that's not what it is. It's just you don't pick the kid up You don't you don't kind of coddle them when they're crying you but you're supporting them Thanks for the talk scarler. I Wanted to ask you more about how your relationship has changed with your wife and how that has affected your happiness in your relationship with her That's great because that's actually something I forgot to touch on and I wanted to and That wasn't a planted question either, so You you feel extra vigor. Thanks snake oil salesman, but So first of all watching my my wife give birth to my son man tough like my wife is so hardcore and It's you you gain a new appreciation for not only amount that she can suffer, but just how strong women are That there's this notion of the the fairer sex of the weaker sex not at all my wife is incredibly tough and Part of being in a marriage means you've agreed to a process and so this is a kind of a time in the process where We're both having to move through the same space and we have we've had to remind ourselves a number of times It's not I can very easily get focused on like the finances and on doing this and on doing that I'm supporting the family and we have to remind each other kind of on a regular basis We are a partnership in this and it's easy to think about I have to take care of them When really it's we are working together to maintain this household with our mutual strengths What I've what I've kind of come away with more than anything like like I'm attracted to her more than I've ever been before I Am also sure of what of her capabilities even more than before in fact I she kind of is too she like I've gone through that nothing is too hard nothing is too hard and I kind of feel like It's a bit like that high-intensity such I talked about with my kid it feels like my relationship with my wife is strong, but That might not be the same for everybody else in my case I feel like I'm in a bit even better place now I feel like we could suffer a whole lot in a marriage and go through really really much harder times as a result of this experience because this is having been a hard time between us But it's definitely a stressful and you're not paying attention to each other nearly as much So your ability to come together and really focus on each other. You can you can drop the other stuff real quick. It's an interesting kind of Yeah, absolutely absolutely and sometimes, you know, you'll go a couple days and you sort of like forget to check in with one another You're just sort of almost a roommate and then you're like hey And and and you get back to and it's beautiful So yeah, I mean I'm gonna she and I always I I've got to live longer than she does But she wants to live longer than I do so, you know, it's I don't want to be married to anybody else Here's all more dating advice from an 83 year old client of mine. He said he's been married 60 some odd years He goes you feel the same after an orgasm whether you're with Marilyn Monroe, right? He's 80 something years old whether with Marilyn Monroe or some other girl. So why switch horses midstream?  So so yeah, there you go awesome Skyler Tanner guys amazing speech. Thank you so much


I know you work hard to make the best lifestyle choices, so you can improve your health, destiny, and longevity, and there's lots of information out there on how to do just that. So where do you start? Well, we start with the facts. Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. My job is to bring you the latest peer-reviewed nutrition and health research, and share it with you here. Today we're going to look at the research on the best diet for optimal athletic performance, starting with the effects of spinach and berries on oxidative stress, inflammation, and muscle soreness in athletes. Higher fruit and vegetable consumption was found to be positively associated with muscle power in adolescents, but that's not who really needs it. What about the consumption of fruit and vegetables and risk of frailty in the elderly? Higher fruit and vegetable consumption was associated with lower frailty as well, in a dose-response manner, meaning more fruit, less frailty, and more vegetables too, but these were all observational states which can't alone prove cause and effect. What happens when you put foods to the test? Well, no positive influence suggesting chia seed oil and human running performance, but there was an effect found for spinach supplementation on oxidized-induced oxidation stress, and by spinach supplementation, that meant they just gave some guys some fresh, raw spinach leaves, one gram per kilo, so like a quarter of a bunch a day for two weeks, then they had them run half-marathon, and they found that chronic daily oral supplementation of spinach, meaning like eating a salad, had alleviating effects on known markers of oxidative stress and muscle damage.  Blood melondyldehyde levels that staves up hours or even days later. In the spinach group, the before and after two weeks of spinach doesn't seem to make much of a difference, but put the body under pressure, and then you can really see the difference. Your body is better able to deal with the stress, and if you look at the resulting muscle damage, as measured by creating kinase leakage from your muscles, that's an enzyme that should be in your muscles, not leaking out into your blood, you start out at about 100 and go up to 200 after the half-marathon, right after and two hours later, but it's the next day where you really feel it, that delayed onset muscle soreness, with CK levels reaching 600 before coming back down. Okay, that's without spinach, though. On spinach, you get a similar immediate post-race bump, but it's that next day where spinach really shines. You don't get that same next-day spike, and so for a competitive athlete, that quicker recovery may get you back training harder sooner. They attribute this to the anti-inflammatory effects of spinach, same with black currant juice. After some hardcore weightlifting, muscle damage indicators go up and stay up, whereas the same lifting, drinking berries, and it goes up but comes right back down. But these were just measures of a biomarker of muscle soreness. What about actual soreness? If you look at the effects of tart cherry juice on recovery following prolonged intermittent sprints and soccer players, and you see the same kind of reduction in biomarkers of inflammation, the more importantly, less resulting muscle soreness. Then they measured maximum voluntary isometric contractions of the leg muscles, which understandably took a hit in the days after the intense workout, but not in the cherry group. They conclude that participants supplemented with a tart cherry concentrate were able to maintain greater functional performance. But that was testing like how high you can vertically jump. They didn't actually see if they played soccer any better. But this study on purple grape juice actually showed an ergogenic effect in recreational runners by promoting increased time to exhaustion, where you ramp people up on a treadmill and see how long they can go before collapsing. After a month of drinking a grape Kool-Aid type placebo control drink, no real change in performance, but a whopping 15% improvement in the real grape group hung on for another 12 minutes. They used juice so they could make a matched placebo control drink, but you can buy Concord grapes fresh, or tart cherries fresh, frozen, or water-packed in a can. I mix them with oatmeal, cocoa, and mint leaves for a chocolate-covered cherry-type sensation. You may want to try that for a few days before participating in your next big sporting event. Next up, we look at the pros and cons of fennel fruits, as a cheap, easy-to-find, non-perishable source of nitrates. Dozens of studies now suggest that the nitrates in vegetables, such as beets and green leafy vegetables, may help both sick people as a low-cost prevention and treatment intervention for patients suffering from blood flow disorders, such as high blood pressure and peripheral vascular disease, as well as healthy people, as an effect of natural performance-enhancing aid for athletes. Most of the studies were done on beet juice, which is why I was so delighted to see the study on whole beets, as I reported before, showing the same benefit. But what about studies on whole green leafy vegetables? There was this study a while ago suggesting that one of the reasons that at the age many Americans and Europeans are dying, the Okinawan Japanese are looking for many more years of good health, at least they were, is all the nitrate in their green leafy vegetables, which tended to bring down blood pressures when put to the test. And the reason I didn't report on it at the time is because I never heard of these vegetables. I know what chrysanthemum flowers are, but I didn't think most of my viewers would be able to find these at the local store. What about good old American red, white, and blue greens like frozen spinach hadn't been tested until now? They wanted to test the immediate effects on our arteries of a single meal, containing a cooked box of frozen spinach, for both arterial stiffness and blood pressure. First, they needed a meal to increase artery stiffness and pressure, so they gave people a chicken and cheese sandwich, which lowered the elasticity of their arteries within hours of eating, but add the spinach, and the opposite happens. After chicken and cheese, the force the heart has to pump goes up within minutes, but the spinach keeps things level. So, a meal with lots of spinach can lower blood pressure and improve measures of arterial stiffness. That's great for day-to-day cardiovascular health, but what if you want a whole food source that can improve your performance when you're out hiking or something? Beets and spinach aren't the most convenient of foods. Is there anything we can just add to our trail mix? Well, if you look at the list of high nitrate vegetables, you'll see there isn't much you can just stick in your pocket unless fennel seeds have a lot, which are actually not seeds at all, but the whole little fruits of the fennel plant. Let's find out. Fennel seeds are often used as mouth fresheners after a meal in both the Indian subcontinent and around the world. You'll typically see a bowl of candy-coated fennel seeds as you walk out of Indian restaurants. And when you chew fennel seeds, you can get a significant bump in nitric oxide production, which has the predictable vasodilatory effect of opening up blood vessels, making them a cheap, easy way to carry a lightweight, non-perishable source of nitrates. They single out mountaineers thinking chewing fennel seeds could help maintain oxygen levels at high altitudes and help prevent HAPE, high-altitude pulmonary edema, one of the leading killers of mountain climbers once you get more than a mile and a half above sea level. Not to be confused with HAFE caused by the expansion of gas at high altitudes, a condition known as high-altitude flattis expulsion, known to veteran backpackers as Rocky Mountain barking spiders. But fennel seeds may help with that too, as traditionally they've been used as a carminative, meaning a remedy for intestinal gas. Fennel has also been shown anti-hersitism activity, combating excessive hair growth in women, the so-called bearded woman syndrome, but applying a little fennel seed cream can significantly reduce it. But if fennel seeds have such a strong hormonal effect, should we be worried about chewing them? Well, there have been cases reported of premature breast development among young girls drinking fennel seed tea a couple times a day for several months. Their estrogen levels were elevated, but after stopping the tea, their chests and hormone levels went back to normal. Current guidelines recommend against prolonged use in vulnerable groups, children under 12 pregnant and breastfeeding women, and perhaps your pet rat, as rodents metabolize a compound in fennel called estergol into a carcinogen, but ourselves appear able to detoxify it. Finally today, what is the latest science on the performance-enhancing qualities of nitrate-rich vegetables? Let's find out. Nitrates, concentrated in green leafy vegetables and beets, underwent a great makeover a few years ago from inert substances to having profound effects on the power plants within all of our cells, reducing the oxygen costs during exercise, meaning we can bust out the same amount of work with less oxygen. So one little shot of beet juice allows free divers to hold their breath for over four minutes, think about a half minute longer. For others, this improved muscle efficiency allows athletes to exercise a higher power output or running speed for the same amount of breath. That was back in 2012. What's happened since? Well, this all led to many athletes, elite and amateur alike, consuming beetroot juice prior to competition. But what does the new science say? Well, most of the studies were done on men. Turns out it works on women too, even African American women, and even more neglected research demographic. Same workload power outputs using significantly less oxygen after drinking beet juice. But forget beet juice, what about whole beets? Cheaper, healthier, you can find them in any produce aisle, but there had never been any studies on actual beets until now. Whole beetroot consumption acutely improves running performance. They gave physically fit men and women a cup a half of baked beets, which is equivalent to about a can of beets. Seven to five minutes before running a 5K, they started out the same, but during the last mile, the 5K race, the beet group pulled ahead, compared to the placebo group who were given berries instead. Though they were running faster, their heart rate wasn't any higher. If anything, the beet group reported less exertion, faster time with less effort. They don't call them block rock and beets for nothing. But if nitrates are so good, why not just take them in a pill? Nitrate supplements with names like Hellfire. Although they can work, their long-term safety is questionable. Non-vegetable sources of nitrates may have detrimental health effects, so you want to improve our performance. We should really ideally obtain nitrates from whole vegetables. The industry knows this. Instead, the market's an array of nitric oxide stimulating supplements. However, there's little or no evidence of the performance improvement following supplementation with these so-called NO boosters. The evidence is with the vegetables. How much money can companies make selling beets, though? So, how about a novel beetroot-enriched bread product? We've tried to get people to eat their fruits and veggies, and where has that gotten us?  And indeed, it worked. Red beet bread bought down blood pressures. Improved the ability of arteries to relax and dilate naturally? Bread, therefore, may be an effective vehicle to increase vegetable consumption without significant dietary changes, because heavens forbid people should have to change their diet to improve their health. We would love it if you could share with us your stories about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition. Go to nutritionfacts.org slash testimonials. We may share it on our social media to help inspire others. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here, please go to the Nutrition Facts podcast landing page. There you'll find all the detailed information you need, plus links to all the sources we cite for each of these topics. For a vital, timely text on the pathogens that cause pandemics, you can order the e-book, audiobook, or the hard copy of my last book, How to Survive a Pandemic. For recipes, check out my new How Not to Diet Cookbook. It's beautifully designed with more than 100 recipes for delicious and nutritious meals. And all proceeds ever seen from the sales of all my books goes to charity. NutritionFacts.org itself is a non-profit, science-based public service where you can sign up for free daily updates on the latest in nutrition research via bite-sized videos and articles. Everything on the website is free. There's no ads, no corporate sponsorship. It's strictly non-commercial. I'm not selling anything. I just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love, as a tribute to my grandmother, whose own life was saved with evidence-based nutrition.


Hello, everyone. It's Thang Vien coming to you from Hanoi, Vietnam. Today, I'm excited to share with you an incredible work we are doing in In-Dri, Vietnam about protecting both wildlife and human health. As part of the project, protecting human health through a one-health approach funded by CZAR, we've been diving deep into the world of genetic diseases that can transmit from animals to humans. Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, is a hotspot of these challenges. We are investigating the genetic pathogens in the plant, wildlife, from bats to cybeck, and from bamboo rats to a wild boar. We are collaborating with the partners like National Institute of Veterinary Research, National Institute of Hygiene and Epilogy, and local authorities from Animal Health, Forestry, Protections, and Center for Music Control to get to the bottom of this. Together, we are not only studying the animals, but also the people who interact with them along the farming wildlife industry. By interviewing and discussing with key wildlife value change actors like manager, farmers, consumers, we are also collecting samples from humans and animals. We are assessing the wildlife value change and in the species transmission risk of zoonotic pathogens like coronavirus, antivirus, and hepatitis E virus. Our goal is to provide necessary information for government, policy makers, and communities to better management of wildlife farming and prevent for future outbreaks. Thanks for joining us on this wild journey. Don't forget to like, share, and spread the word. Together, we can make a difference.


What's going on everyone? Sam here with Layton Sports Cards and I am ripping two boxes of 2022 Topps Archive Signature Series Retired Player Edition Baseball for Brett V. So good luck Brett. See what we got in here.  Ooh, that's cool. I did not know he was on the Brewers. 59 of 99, Raleigh Fingers on the Brewers. That is on a 84 tops, I believe. Yes, 1984 tops. That's really cool. Guaranteed auto. There you go. Box two. Ooh, Tyson Barry. That's cool. Not much value in the long run on MVP hockey. Is that not licensed Samuel? Yeah, authentic. That's cool. That's awesome boots. Got nice. Vita Blue, 36 of 99. Is that Giants I want to say? That is on a 82 tops. Oh, Paul, all-time facial hair team Raleigh Fingers for sure. Nice Vita Blue. That will do it for your break there. Brett, congrats on the hits. Get those right out, man. Thanks again.