From New America and Slate, I'm Bridget Schulte, and this is Better Life Lab. During the first two seasons of our show, we've looked at a lot of issues affecting people in the American workplace. But if there's any country in the world that can rival the USA and the overwork Olympics, it's Japan. For decades, Japanese business was defined by the image of the salaryman, someone who worked all hours, rarely saw his family, and never left the office before the boss. That work-tell-you-drop ethos in Japan became an integral part of Japanese work life. And in the 1960s, there was a doctor who even began describing people who actually worked to the point of death. He called it Karoshi, literally, death from overwork. So today in Japan, the cultural pressures that gave rise to Karoshi remain, even as the realities of the Japanese workplace and workforce have changed significantly. Some Japanese workers are starting to try to push back against the Karoshi culture, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. That's a scene I recorded a few months ago when I was in Japan reporting about overwork and the overwork culture. As a reporter, I have to admit this was one of the more polite labor protests I've ever witnessed. People were bowing and very respectfully handing out flyers. But the grievances are very real, and in the land of Karoshi, the stakes are high. And it seems to me that the struggles of Japanese workers have a lot to say to those who labor in other overwork cultures, like the United States. To help us gain some insight, I wanted to talk to Hiroshi Ono. Hi Bridget, how are you? Hi, Hiroshi. Yeah, I'm great. Thank you so much for joining us. So, Hiroshi is a professor at Hitotsubashi University Business School in Tokyo. He studies the long work hours culture in Japan, what causes it, and why it's so difficult to change. I met Hiroshi when I was in Japan and read some of his work, which was, I said to him, both fascinating and sobering. I think one of the things that always shocked me is I always used to think that you had to work long hours to be really productive. And yet it's like the inverse is true, and that you've, I've seen international comparisons where the longer the hours are, actually the lower the productivity in Japan and South Korea have among the lowest productivity rates of all advanced economies. So people are working really long hours and they're not getting that productivity outcome. So what's going on? Why are people working so much? Well, people say, like, if you're not producing enough, then you're just simply not trying hard enough. So if you try harder, you can achieve results, right? So that kind of mentality still kind of pushes you. It's almost like a little bit of a ritualistic practice. You know, sometimes you have this in athletics, right? That's practice and hard work, but there are limits to what you can do. Right, because actually all the research shows that if you're going to really perform at an elite level as an athlete, you need rest and recovery, that that's actually an integral part of high performance. So Hurochi, can you talk a little bit about how Japanese culture has traditionally viewed the role of workers? So there is still a culture of long-term commitment, sometimes you call it lifetime employment, so that workers sometimes we make the analogy to marriage that when you get employed in a Japanese company, you have this bond and a mutual understanding that the company will take care of you and you will be very loyal. So if loyalty is so valued and employment is almost seen as like this family relationship, it must be a pretty big deal to get workers out to then protest against their own company. It is a big deal and from what I heard from that clip, the employees, the workers reached their breaking point. So Hurochi, I'd like us to listen together to a story of a former spa worker and I met her at this labor protest when I was in Japan. You know, and you might think of a spa as an easygoing carefree work environment. You know, in Japan has some really big spa chains, but the workload there I came to find can be really overwhelming. My name is Miki Tanaka and I'm here because I'm one of the members from the labor union and I used to work in the spa massage, the spa company. I worked there for two years and I had to work like almost 12 hours a day of overwork with no lunch breaks. We barely got to go to a toilet. So when you said that you worked 12 hour days, how much time did you get paid for? The company's rule broke. They say the overtime pay is approximately for like 54 hours, but we work for more than that when we calculate it. We're working for almost like 80 hours. So what time would you start working and when would you usually finish? We used to start working from 10 in the morning, but reach the salon around 9.30, 9.45, start the work at 10, finish the work with the clients at 9. Then we do after work meeting and clean the salon. So that would be like 9.30, 9.40, then we leave to work around 10. So you're working about a 12 hour day. When we first joined the company, yes, almost for six to seven months. But we did have some supervisors who let us practice within the working hour so we could have our own time, like a good work-life balance, but that was very rare. So you were just protesting in front of the company just now and you went in, one of the managers came out as a result of the protest and invited you in. What did they say? What did you talk about? He reported about everything that happened today. He did listen to what kind of work-life work environment that we had. So he said he was going to inform to the CEO of our company and get an explanation letter from the company soon. So that's a good progress for us. It's going to say how confident do you feel that things will change? I've actually taken this case to the court now, so I think I'm 54 now. So that was Mickey Tanaka. So Hiroshi, Mickey's story is not that unusual. You know, there was a government survey a couple of years ago that found about a quarter of the companies they surveyed required workers to work 80 hours or more of overtime, required it. So what do you think the chances are of Mickey and other workers like her seeing some kind of change? You know, is it 50-50 or is she being optimistic? I think that the, I think she has a pretty good chance. Lately, the ministry has been really cracking down on labor abuses and so I believe that sanctions have become much more harsh and she would have a reasonable shot. And do you think that will lead to larger change in Japan? Well, we are starting to see more cases of those abuses appearing in newspapers and I think that is a big change. This was kind of rather taken for granted in the 70s and 80s, but lately people are starting to speak out. So that before you were saying in the 80s this is something that people wouldn't even notice that was just sort of what was expected and now young people that sounds in particular are starting to say we don't want to live this way anymore. So next, Hiroshi, one of those young people who doesn't want to live that way anymore, I met him in Japan. His name is Makoto Iwahashi and he's still a student, but he volunteers for a labor organization that's focusing on the problems of overwork and trying to organize workers. It's called Pase and a lot of the people that I met who are just really fired up about trying to make these changes are young workers. We have a worker hotline that people can call and we receive about 5,000 calls and emails in one year, mainly during the 20s and 30s. We frequently get cases where they're working 80 to 100 hours of overtime in one month. Young people are working in daycares, beauty salons, working for black companies, which is a Japanese term which hire a bunch of newly graduate college students and they kind of dispose of these people after making them work 100 hours of overtime. Most of them get depressed and quit in one or two years. And we have a case of Karoshi, a 51 year old man passed away after continuously working 80 to 100 hours of overtime for 10, 15 years. So the case that you're working on now, you talked about he's kind of a middle-aged man who worked long, long hours of overtime and then died. That's sort of the traditional view of dying at your desk and sort of being this devoted worker. But it sounds like you're getting a lot of workers who don't necessarily fit that traditional model of somebody who works themselves to death. It used to be in the 70s and 80s, all Karoshi incidents, they involved middle-aged workers in their 40s and 50s passing away from heart strokes. But nowadays there was one incident of Karoshi where a 26 year old woman, she was working 141 hours of overtime and she got depressed and she committed suicide. This sounds astounding. You know, we know in the West, we know that Japan works really long hours, but what's going on? You know, some of the companies will say, well, people chose to work these long hours, so if they died or committed suicide, it's their own fault. Is this all personal choice or is there something bigger going on? The labor market has changed. Nowadays, college graduates, I think 40% of them, I cannot find permanent jobs. Of course you have a choice. You have a choice of either working as a temporary worker, earning about $10 an hour, or you have a choice of finding a permanent work which is going to demand 80 to 100 hours of overtime. And I mean, if you want to get married or if you want to have kids, I mean $10 an hour, it's impossible. And most of the permanent workers are actually treated by companies as disposable temporary workers that they're only going to be there because they're going to get tired and depressed. Man, so I guess I'm just, I'm wondering it's, you know, again, when you look at productivity, the Japanese economy is not very productive and yet you've got all of these people basically working to the point where the fertility rate has fallen. What is all this work for if it's really not getting the economy where it needs to go? Actually, I mean, young people don't even have time to think about what the Japanese economy is going to do or the bigger picture.  You know, these young people, we just want to work for 40 hours and we're not demanding a huge salary. We just want a decent life. That's, I mean, that's all we hope for. So Hiroshi, you know, Makoto mentioned the rise of these so-called black companies. That's a little bit more. It sounds like the part of the business strategy is to take advantage of this social contract, this marriage that you mentioned between Japanese workers and organizations. Yes, so the black companies, every year the Ministry of Labor publishes the list of black companies and if you go through that list you'll realize that you don't recognize most of these companies and the reason is they're typically smaller companies that are actually like suppliers to the larger companies. So the larger companies themselves are actually not on that list. And so you have a hierarchy of levels of corporations. If you're low on the hierarchy then you can be taken advantage of. Yes, I mean, I would not say that the U.S. and Japan are perfect parallels but the United States also had a social contract in the 70s and 80s. Lawyers like Guy BM and GE certainly had a social contract. That kind of been wrote in the 1980s with the corporate merger of booms and the rise of corporate finance. In Japan it's not that extreme but we do see that the companies are honoring lifetime employment less. I mean, lifetime employment still exists but the chances of getting those kinds of jobs have deteriorated. So as Makoto was saying in the interview companies are hiring more non-standard workers and their situation is very, very unstable. That certainly adds to the anxiety and anxiety. So I'm curious, you said that you you've lived in the United States lived and worked and studied in the United States and Japan and also Sweden. I'm wondering what that experience was like in Sweden and what are work hours like in Sweden? It's bizarre but, you know, so I went to college in Japan I worked in Japan and then I did my graduate study in the United States and then I moved my first job was a postdoc position in Sweden and so when I got to Sweden really what kind of how long did you work? Well, I was working like an American so the Swedes they seriously wanted me to take vacations and they thought I was working too hard and they did not appreciate that I was working too hard. So the way they think about working leisure is that they value their leisure time extremely. So in the summertime they take at least a one month in the summertime because I can't go to the library I can't get paid. All the restaurants around the university closed down so I can't get lunch. It's quite a scene but the way they think about leisure it is a very strong sense of entitlement that they have. This is a right and no one can take that away from me so I'm going to take my one month vacation go to my summer home and hang out in the archipelago and what do I need to do to sustain this lifestyle. They work just enough to sustain the standard living that they desire. The Japanese unfortunately think the other way. David is going to ask you what kind of entitlement to leisure is there in Japan? Absolutely none. There is still this mentality that leisure is not valued that work comes first so I admit that the mentality but people in their 50s and 60s definitely grew up with this mentality. Hard work pays off leisure is bad and work comes first. And yet you've actually now got the government tracking statistics because so many people have this philosophy that they don't have a right to leisure and that work comes first to the point of coming even before your own health, and say they would not understand why the government needs to step in to tell the workers to work less like chill out. But in Japan there's no limit. There really is no limit and that's why the government right now there's a work reform that's been introduced by the Japanese government and they're very serious about tackling work issues in Japan. One of them is reducing work hours and work life balance. The other one is increasing diversity participation of women and foreign workers and the other one is equal work equal pay for non-standard workers. So these are all the things that we've been talking about today are all related and they're very high priority agenda by the Japanese government. But you had mentioned that when you were in Sweden they viewed you as a workaholic and I actually met someone when I was in Tokyo who describes herself as a recovering workaholic. As a younger tech worker she was completely driven and work obsessed just like you said maybe you could have called her a salary woman and the people around her did worry about her and they worried that she was at risk for Karoshi and she did ultimately hit a wall but she survived and then she did something from seven o'clock in the morning to midnight and after that I would go out drinking almost every day and on weekends I worked too. I would sleep on average three to four hours a day and then of course with this schedule I couldn't do anything else but work. And one morning out of the blue all of a sudden I could not get myself out of bed for an hour. I was barely making it to the bathroom and after that for about a month I was in a state of depression. Personally I have never had a suicidal thought but my doctor is concerned about my state of mind and he often tells me you need to survive you need to stay alive. You know you said that you started workaholic synonymous in Japan and here is a country that works some of the longest hours of any country in the world and you have only one or two people coming to the meetings. Can you talk a little bit about why you started workaholic synonymous here and what you're hoping to change? Japanese people are aware that they're overworked or overworking but more than that there's actually a pressure to work hard and they feel like I felt they feel like there's no allies to help with the work and so people are left alone in a dangerous work environment and so that's why I felt that we need to create psychological safety so that people can work in a safe environment. If you go to a workaholic synonymous homepage there is a literature called people like us who are workaholics we can create adrenaline by bench working and it's as effective as narcotics sometimes and we can stay high performance constantly. Man just from the adrenaline rush. So what are your days like now? A long time ago before I actually burned out I was actually suffering more I was having a harder time because I couldn't act and this is something I like to do but now I don't work like I used to I can spend some time practicing for my play and acting and I try to go home at 5.30 and I try not to work long hours and overtime and so I can stay a lot healthier at the company I work for now there are non-Japanese workers and Japanese workers who are working long hours working long hours doesn't necessarily guarantee high productivity and with this company I put in shorter hours but I have extremely high productivity and so I get evaluated very highly this is something that you can see clearly when you have psychological safety you can produce a lot so your productivity gets higher. That's Yuki who is an anonymous in Tokyo after she wound up in the hospital and almost died herself from overwork so Hiroshi we talked a little bit about long work hours but Yuki makes a pretty compelling case the business case for saner work hours you'll actually be more productive but how does that fly in today's Japanese work culture I mean the easy fix is to stop paying overtime there are still companies where workers can make a fortune just for staying at work where younger workers resist becoming managers because once become a manager they stop paying overtime pay and they actually make less money and what Yuki is describing is also I think something that's becoming more common in some Japanese companies where it's not how much time you spend at the job but the results so the rewarding system I think is a rather easy fix I think the more difficult problem is the things that are rather hard to see and this is a rather embarrassing part of the Japanese division of labor is that typically it's the males are devoted to market work and the females are devoted to household work that's the traditional gender of labor so when you ask men suppose they're finished with their work at five o'clock they can go home at six so a lot of men actually admit that they can't go home that early I could not figure out why and it's because they say I have no place at home my wife doesn't expect me home that early because she's been expecting me home nine o'clock every night if I come home at six o'clock it's rather awkward creates more work for her why would that create more work for her because she has to take care of him does she have to wait on him or something that is the assumption that she's going home you know kind of thinking about Japanese culture the long work hours and this work devotion and the feeling that you're not entitled to leisure time one of the things that I'm wondering is you know Japan when you think about its history it's had some of the most amazing transformations in such a short period of time you think of the Meiji Restoration when it went from a feudal country to a modern nation or even after the Second World War when the country was decimated and how quickly it became this economic powerhouse and so I guess what I'm wondering is this a transformation that Japan could also undertake that it could become more like Sweden do you think that that's ever a possibility or what would it take for Japan to be more like Sweden well honestly I don't think Japan would ever become like Sweden the way the country shapes itself is an outcome of historical trajectories and I don't think it would ever get there but in terms of providing social welfare Japan is trying to become more like Sweden so I guess what it comes to the long work hours culture do you have hope do you think things will change in Japan I have hope because there's a huge differences across different generations the younger people are more focused on themselves less on the company they want their own leisure they want their own private time they don't understand the older people and why they're so gun-ho about working and I think that the work style reform this time around is very serious I mean they're going to be sanctioned they'll also be rewards we talk about black companies but they also reward good companies for example work life balance smart work or telework we're trying to create model companies to be more productive and happy what do you hope for your own children what do you hope for your kids I'm a very fortunate person because I'm a professor and professors have autonomy and control and autonomy and control is a big source of happiness at work the problem is that most people don't have that at work sure people in the United States they work just as long hours as Japan but the difference to me is that a lot of people in Japan are doing it involuntarily they control over their work so I'm hoping for my kids' generation that they'll be able to have a job where they do the kind of things that they want whenever and wherever they like you want them to have leisure time absolutely maybe not as much as Swedes not the entire month of July off I think by Japanese and American standards I don't consider myself a workaholic but Swedes try to force me to take medication and I was fine for the first week but after the second week I started getting stressed out because I was being unproductive so I don't know what do you think Brigitte maybe you need leisure reeducation maybe we all do in the United States in Japan well Hiroshi thank you so much for talking with me today it's been a pleasure thank you Hiroshi Ono he's a professor of management he heard from Miki Tanaka a former spa worker fighting to end unpaid overtime work and Makoto Iwahashi a student journalist and labor organizer and from the actual founder of the workaholic synonymous chapter in Tokyo who asked me to refer to her simply as Yuki thanks for joining me for our podcast about the art and science of living a full and healthy life Better Life Lab is produced by New America in partnership with Slate our project is a collaboration with ideas 42 supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation review us on Apple Podcasts if you like the show tell your friends in Japan and Sweden too with this episode on Karoshi we're wrapping up our second season of Better Life Lab on Slate while we're planning for our next season we'd love for you to browse our back catalog for episodes you might have missed maybe this season's Beyond Inbox Zero with Amy Westervelt and Merlin Mann or last season's Why You're Addicted to Being Busy so many of you have right now rotting fruits and vegetables in your refrigerator almost everybody admits that they have it I just took mine out to the compost this morning there you go and it's a sad funeral right you take all this stuff that you paid lots of money on and you had good plans for and then all of a sudden you check on them and it's too late and the reason of course is that it's a bad design where do we put the fruits and vegetables in a low drawer that is opaque so I think that what we need to do is to design better environments it's true for the kitchen but it's also true for the work environment we make decisions as a function of the environment that we're in David Shulman is producer of Better Life Lab Haley Swinson provides research assistance for more resources on working healthier go to newamerica.org click the link for Better Life Lab from New America's Better Life Lab I'm Bridget Chilte


Give a brief demonstration and introduction to the RE524X or universal wireless to wireless translator. Start off by adding the 12 volt power supply. And with the battery already connected, I will have both LEDs at the top come on solid. Next I want to choose the appropriate sensor type that I want the translator to listen for by changing the dial. And then I can also change the panel selector switch to the panel I'm using on this install. Then I want to engage the enroll button. And by tripping a sensor, I'll now see the LED at the top flicker indicating the translator is hearing that sensor. And the second LED will flicker once it's transmitting that sensor signal back to the panel. Once I've completed the enrollment, I'll want to take the translator out of enrollment mode. On the left hand side, there is a sticker indicating the identification to enroll the translator into each panel. And a great new feature of the translator line here, if I choose the sensor type and the panel type to be the same, this will now function as a repeater and this is supported on every panel type that we support. Lastly, I'll go over the lock function of the translator. This will keep the translator in the current settings that it has. Be sure to go over the manual for additional features of this because this cannot be undone. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page and click the Show More tab underneath the video where you can view valuable links pertaining to this product, similar how-to videos, and our low-cost, no-contract alarm monitoring services.


The Jamaica Thorbid Horsemen's Foundation will be hosting a fundraising event from the 1st to the 5th of February. This initiative is to support the needs of horsemen and backstretch workers at K-Manus Park. The official function will be held on the 5th at the Jamaica Officers Club at Uppar Camp with special guest speaker Sean Bridge-Mohan, Sean Jockey in the American Thorbid Racing scene boasting an impressive record of 3,339 wins from 22,332 rides. Now Sean joins us in studio to discuss his impressive career and the Jamaica Thorbid Horsemen's Foundation fundraising event. Welcome to the Sportsmax, Sean. It's great to have you. Great to meet you in person for the first time, having covered a lot of your successes. We're going to talk about your career and what's happening with you overall, but let me start by this assignment that has you here in Jamaica and a need to try to help some of the struggling people in the racing industry, which I'm sure you have seen in North America as well, but K-Manus Park needs some help. Yes, absolutely. And the Jamaica Thorbid, which is started by Ms. Charmaine, is doing a wonderful job, but nobody can do it, but everybody needs some help, you know. And being one of the most, you know, first of all, I want to thank her for having me here, you know, to try to assist the less fortunate.  So it was a big organization to come here, nobody can do it. Like I said, I've seen the less people, the people that do the hard work to make me look good in two minutes, you know, and they're the one that deserves it more because I get a lot of glory and stuff, but I'm one of the fortunate ones that have gone abroad and done well, you know, I'm happy to give back to the foundation and help these people that's, they're with the horses more than I am, and they put out a lot of effort and a lot of work, you know, and, you know, I've just been, I've been fortunate that I can come back and do this for them. You're talking about people like Grooms and so on, who are often unheralded. Grooms, hot walkers, yes, and exercise riders, you know. You know, everybody that takes part and do a lot for the horses, like the horse can't speak for themselves. So they're there with them as much as they can and they do all and I'm just one of the fortunate ones to get the two minute ride and get the glory. And, you know, they're the one that works hard. Yeah. Well, the function at which you will be the guest speaker on Monday has, I think, a $15,000 cost to attend, that's $15,000 to make, and that's 90 odd U.S. for the public, but for horse racing people with IDs, I hear that it's $10,000. It's a dinner function, which is approximately 65 U.S. U.S. U.S. dollars. We hope that it will be beneficial and it will make a lot of money to help with this project. Can you tell me some of the things that, if successful, the racing people will benefit from? You know, they need things like water boots and just regular things to get their jobs done. Exactly. And a regular basis, you know, like when it's cold out to have a jacket or something nice to wear, when it's raining out to have a little raincoat or, you know, even boots when it's muddy. It's just like to give back to the unfortunate people that works this hard.  You know, and these are the guys behind the scene that do all the hard work and they're the unsung heroes of our game. Yeah. When you were rated from Jamaica when you were 13 years old, Sean, I know your dad was a big horse racing fan. I understand he's not doing that well right now. He really wanted to be on this trip and I'm told that he was crying when you told him you were coming to Jamaica and he wouldn't be able to make it.  I graduated high school, didn't know what direction I was going to go in and he basically pointed me and he said, what about this? He never forced me to do it, but he made a suggestion and because of him, I'm sitting here right now and even my brother who rides, you know, he pointed us in that direction and I've had a wonderful career and all the, you know, all the things go, credit goes to him because if it wasn't him pointing me in that and, you know, I never knew I had the ability to ride horses until I was 17 years old. That's the first time I've ever been on a horse and, you know, he pointed me in the right, I wish he could be here, but unfortunately, you know, he's still with us, but he's not very mobile to get around. But he was emotional about you coming. Yes, absolutely, because he's the one that, you know, had a lot to do with me being. Your career has been studied, Sean, with multiple stakes wins, graded stakes wins as well. And you've ridden all over the USA, New York, Florida, California, and you had a stint at Woodbine as well. You've ridden against some really outstanding riders. If I look at the list of Eclipse award-winning riders in the past, you know, 20-odd years or so on that you've been riding, you know, names like Jerry Bailey and, well, now Erad Ortiz, Javier Castellano, among the top riders that you have competed with, can you tell me which of those riders or any other that I didn't name has been most challenging or have been most challenging for you? Well, it's kind of not fair to say which is challenging because every day you go out there, you compete against each other. But one I can tell that was very influential and did a lot of good for me is Richard McLeer, that nobody, you know, he's New York, he absolutely took me under his wings and he showed me a lot after, you know, I had the apprenticeship and we were in the same corner and he discussed and showed me, you know, him between him, Velasquez and those guys, you know, like, showed me a lot of things and I, you know, but I've ridden with a lot, a lot of good riders, like you said, from Jerry Bailey, Pat Day, all those, like Shane Sellers, you know, but there was a couple guys that was in front and like, it took me under their wings and showed me a lot about race riding.  So there was a lot of people that helped me, you know, but there's also a lot of these guys when they go out there, it's not a team sport, so you're on your own. Believe me, you got to compete and put your best foot forward every single time. Yeah. Clearly, Sean, you're a natural for this thing because if you didn't ride a horse until you were 17 years old, which is significantly later than most successful riders, it tells me that you are natural for riding. In 1998, you won the Eclipse Award as the most outstanding apprentice rider in U.S. horse racing. How much did that mean to you and how satisfying was that for you so early in your career? He was very good. I mean, you know, never in my wildest dream I thought I would make it that far. Not being on a horse until I was 17 years old just learned to ride. I just thought, you know, being around Calder, Florida, if I can make it around there because I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, that would be more gratifying to me. Well, the sport took me to a different level. And, you know, fortunately, I was able to win the Eclipse Award. I was nominated the year before, but I started so late. You know, I was just on the ballot. And then, you know, the next year I was able to win it. Yeah. You became the first Jamaican rider to ride in the Kentucky Derby in 2006. And in that same year, Patrick Husbands, the Barbadian rider, also had a ride in the Kentucky Derby. How much do you remember from that? Both were on-place because it was a tough race, though. Right. And the Derby is always the most toughest race you'll ever ridden in, you know, throughout your career. And it was good. You know, obviously it's competitive. I didn't have a good place finishing there, but it's just the experience that you get from riding. It's a race that's unlike any other.   You try to make the least mistake as you can and give your horse the best trip you can get. Yeah. You rode at Woodbine in Canada for probably about a season or so. A lot of Caribbean riders, trainers and horsemen, are in Canada. What was that experience like?  Yeah, I get along good with Patrick. Patrick's a good competitive rider and he's done well, obviously. And it was a good experience for him because they happen to have one of the best turf course I've ever ridden on. You know, it's a very, very nice turf course, big, wide. Takes a lot of patience and stuff like that to, you know, and turf racing is a lot different from dirt racing. Dirt racing is a lot faster speed and turf racing is more patience and, you know, and position. And I got along good with Patrick. Patrick is a good, tough competitor, you know, and he's good to ride with and obviously the success that he's had. He's, you know, I interact and get along very good with him. Yeah, talk to us about this trip here to Jamaica because since you migrated at 13 years old, I gather you haven't really had opportunities to come back home. No, this is probably my second time coming back since I left, since I was 13. I had come back one time for a funeral and then this is going to be my second time. Yeah, riders have a very treacherous job. You know, history is replete with riders who, through spills, have become paraplegic. Some have died on the racetrack. So race riding is a dangerous sport. Obviously, you don't think about that too much when you're riding because there would be fear and you don't ride with fear. But how lucky do you think you have been that you haven't been seriously hurt as a rider at 44 years old? Well, I've had my shares, to be honest with you. It's not that I've had my shares of injuries, but nothing that kept me out that I wouldn't come back and be competing. That just says it's time for me to walk away.  So you've got to put that away and never ever think about it. The data you do is time to say, you know what, I've had enough and if that's gonna prevent me from getting the best out of my horse, well, time is time and it's time to just back it up and leave it to the younger. Having said that, at 44 years old now, Sean, do you set a timeline on how much longer you plan to race ride? No, I think I'll keep doing it as long as I enjoy doing it. Like, last week I won a couple of races and the adrenaline and the stuff that you get from winning race and it's just like very, very powerful. And being competitive and I think when the competitiveness has come out and get out of me and I say, well, it's time then I just don't ever set a timeframe. Yeah, you've recently been riding at Gulfstream Race Track. We are the Barbadian Safi Joseph Junior as the champion trainer and leading trainer from a Caribbean perspective. We are all thrilled at the success that Safi Joseph is having at Gulfstream Park. Can you talk to us about the kind of strength that he has at that race track at the moment because he has won the last eight consecutive race meets there and is heading for his ninth. Yes, he's built quite an empire for himself. You know, he's got tremendous amount of horses. He probably has 150 horses he controlled in his train if not more and that's what it takes. You know, he has the horses to back him up and obviously his results are proven and he's built quite a stable for himself. Yeah, Sean, great having you here on the Sportsmax zone. We look forward to seeing you as guest speaker at the Horsemen's Foundation event on Monday night. You might get to see me for it. I ride one on Saturday. Oh, that's right. I should have asked you about that because you'll be riding fearless soul for Filipiani. Yes, one rider came out of Spark on Saturday. So the fans will be looking out to see you there. Yeah, great having you in Jamaica, Sean. So we look forward to see you riding on Saturday and then being guest speaker for this fundraising event at Uppark Camp. We go to break. When we come back, we're at the track.


Back with white in the morning, and my name is by Moses or it's by money of social media platform It's time for strength of a woman and a strength woman of the day if I was to introduce her will take the whole day the credentials Amazing, but in a few words grace Farajah is a mother of three and she holds a bachelor's degree in accounting a master's degree in global Organization management and currently PhD student at the global in global human and social services She was born and raised in Congo lived in East Africa in countries Burundi Kenya and Rwanda But today she's in studio with me for strength of a woman All right, I hope I didn't miss anything. No, no, no, I know you sit in a number of boards, which we'll be talking about But yes, you are in Kenya for two weeks. Yeah, I've been here since March 17th March 17. Yes.  All right, so you live in North Carolina. I Don't know what to start if we should start with What's you doing North Carolina? What you're doing in Kenya currently? The actress is yours. What are you doing in Kenya since we help? I came here for two purpose for my research work and also I came here for To start a chapter for the African guys were foundation in Kenya. Yes. All right. What do you do in North Carolina for a living? I work with the Samaritan post international relief. It's a Christian organization working Over 130 countries You're a staunch Christian. I am you are born and raised born and raised Christian Yes, I hear you one of your parents was or is a missionary. Yeah, he's still a missionary My pastor he actually even have 11 churches here in Kenya in different places in different places in Kenya Yes, including true kind of the health including true kind of yes. Have you got to visit any one of these churches? Yes, I've been in give the right and Kasarani get right in Kasarani. Yes. All right. Which one was the most lively? They're all I went live anyway, you answer the question So what people don't know about you is before you're this degree older? master's degree holder and PhD holder a Lot has happened in your life. Mm-hmm born and raising come How long did you live in Congo after after after you were born? Till 11 years old if that's when they were brought down in Congo During the Mabutu when Mabutu died then things change and we had to live Because of the fight that was going on Then we lived in from one refugee comes to another at least Yeah, Congo Brazzaville Rwanda and Burundi and then here in Nairobi. So we Seen 1996 we Experience refugee life together with my family together with your family. How big is the family? I'm the first one. You're the first one. So we are five you're five something to look up to right here Amazing yes, and three girls and two boys three girls and two boys. Yes, all right So which is the first country you moved to after the war broke out in Congo Brazzaville Congo Brazzaville It's our neighbor Seem to get the difference You know I can excuse an American for not knowing Congo Brazzaville and that one But maybe you can break it down for the people we are we there's a river in between us and We are really neighbors. So it's very hard for people to really remember there to Congo It's to Congo. So one is the Republic of Congo, which is Congo Brazzaville and ours is Democratic Republic of Congo That's the difference which one borders Rwanda Congo the DFC All right, so you moved to Congo Brazzaville first. Yes, and then right after then Rwanda and Congo is very big even though There's a side where Congo DFC is There's a border between Congo and it's another side of Congo But where we were in Kinshasa, it's closer to Congo Brazzaville. So before we before we lived in the refugee camp in Rwanda It's like from coming from the west to going to the east. Yes. All right So I'd like to know life is really tough in the refugee camps. I've hosted some people who came from Kakuma Right here. We're musicians now cut a sea of project by Oktopiso. Shout out to Oktopiso, by the way. And They told me life in the refugee camp is tough, but it's even worse for women and children. Absolutely It's worse because I tested life as a young girl Living and wearing one clothes from Monday to Sunday not changing and also Our hair girls we love Yeah, no hygiene and water was very difficult not clean water and sometimes we shared a bottle of water Together with the family or maybe food. There was no food, but and you as you know for girls, it's worse We all know this so much that girls Needs the needs of girls and they're always endangered species. Yes. So there was no support for that So our mother struggled so much to protect you guys protect us. All right Living in the in the refugee camp. Did you understand what was going on at that particular point? I do not understand much because we used to cry. Why are we running away from our own country and until later when we We we arrived in Burundi and Rwanda and then our parents said it explaining to us what was going on the fight because I was just 11 years old So but still it was hard for us to understand what was going on. We were just there with the suffering and praying and Hoping for the best hoping that we will get to a certain place where we will sleep with no Shooting and all that way with where your life is not All right after Rwanda you move to which country we went to Burundi you went to Burundi Yes, all right at what point did you get to carry on with your education because I'm guessing you're a young girl Yes, and right here right now. Yeah, I think you are the most educated in the room But how did you get to carry on with your education at the schools in this comes No, there was no schools. How did you get to go to school? What happened is that we used to continue just I have Sunday school And then the Sunday school will continue to help us in reading and all that. All right Yes, the power of the church. Yes, the church has contributed so much And I always gave thanks to God to to the leadership of the church because they they take they feel the burden of Refugees or any person who is going through difficulties and they take and I feel like The same way Jesus when he came on earth He did good and the same way the church also has taken over to do good to to people who are suffering All right, I'm quoting an author from From This country that borders Israel this one Egypt not easy We are almost there, but you know this country they have a problem with Israel at the moment. Oh, so this author was like post-traumatic stress Is the West is not is a is a Western thing Then I was like But just before before before I was I was thinking the same before I read the article So when I read the article she she was like We need to set standards for mental health or mental disorders Yes, because when you go to her country, you can't say these guys are going through post-traumatic stress post-traumatic stress is for a Soldier who leaves his country who lives in New York goes to an Arab country To fight and then he goes through all these things and then he goes back to his home Which is peaceful that is post-traumatic stress, but for somebody whose life is always in danger always Always fighting for his life or find trying to find something to eat You can't consider this post-traumatic stress now. So what do you think about this? Do we need to help these guys mentally and do we need to set different standards? I'll tell for fact that I think that's one big portion that our community need to make sure that we have we have people can take care of the PSD Communities for example in Rwanda with the genocide that happened We they have so much so many people that have been going through the PSD and and Rwanda's created offices or Department that counseling department and who will be who takes care of those people and but again I was saving the local community. We don't have to wait for The government to build this big office But even on local come because we has communities we understand one another and we understand What my neighbor is going through and we are the one who can help our neighbors to do something So we can always get into simple groups support groups and help each other and talk about our problems like in churches They have what they call Bible studies and the weekly Bible studies during those weekly Bible studies they can choose one of the day and Just a counseling day or discussion day about just normal life Because there's so many so many people who goes through the PSD Situation all right So the reason I brought this up is as much as we try to feed the refugees We try to help them with the maze. We try to help them with something they can eat We also need to care about the mental state as well. Yes This is something we need to give a priority for me as a former refugee and I know what I went through I lived here as a refugee in Kenya and And that's why we did not have many of them From my from my from my area, but now we have I believe more than even 4,000 refugee from East Africa including Congo Jersey, so Refugee people got the they they have gone through So many things like during the war losing their children losing their family members and when they come here first of all, they don't have this language barrier some of them don't even speak Swahili and English is another level and many of them have never gone to school and When it comes to women from my area my country, it's worse because I'm not going to They're considered second class it is elevate myself But I've done my research enough to know that I think I'll be either the first or the second Girl in my community in my tribe with a PhD level, which means these like We have the percentage is very low Which is sad and because They believe in Ali marriages number one from 14 years old and it's still happening until now and Ali marriages to a man who the girl did not even choose or make a choice, but parents here Make decision for them. Some of them are even second to or third wives or fourth. Yes, and and there's a gap But in a edge gap between And the and the husband. Yes. All right, which is something that is very backward Retrogressive. Yeah, I feel bad. I feel so much better. You feel so much pain when you see this This is why you have a project and this is the reason for this project that you have and this is the reason you're here Actually, absolutely. So tell me about this. Thank you for inviting me now. You're welcome You always welcome if you're doing something great to the community. We don't have a choice. Thank you what is this project about and How is it going so far? Yeah, African Girls Hope Foundation It's a project that is mainly to empower education of girls Especially the girls when the village is because I believe the girls when the villages are the most forgotten girls Girls were here in Nairobi in big cities or any other places. They have opportunity to meet other NGOs or maybe even a private donor to support them but and rich places or Villages it's very hard for the girls who are there. It's hard for everybody, but it's harder for the girl It's more worse for the girls. But and because Sometimes the reasons why is like in my village where I come from Transportation is a big issue. So for an organization to go there It's difficult and especially with also the insecurity. They're still there. It's helpful and just to go there so So they a GHF or African Girls Hope Foundation is to empower the question of girls by supporting them with a free Christian or Christian Education By we sub we pay the tuition and and all school materials so that we can have As many as possible girls in school instead of this girl sitting home and waiting for For the traditional practice it to to go on So we have some of your work These are your girls you call them your girls. Yes, and they're doing quite well so far So we have a hundred girls up 200 girls. We have a hundred girls in DRC in five villages And here we have four girls in Kenya and our visit at last week I visited Sassimu Children's Center down there and I believe because I'm not give the right of which they are going to be part of The program. Yes these I love the story about Sassimu children. That's why I selected it. It's a very It's a very impactful Institution that I selected Yes, how does this work? So I see the profile of this girl. I see something like 200 and Something that's that's on my birthday. I said of people giving me a gift for my birthday. My brother's February 15th So I did a go for me go for me. It's a way of raising funds For any cause So for my birthday this year I had to Share with my friends. I don't need any gift Send your gift to So don't need something. This is something really creative To do because people are willing to give you gifts, but they forget that there's somebody that needs it Yes, so you just try to To enlighten them through this right now through this so you can donate on the website You can donate on the website and this go for me. It's a specific Specific website to just raise funds But other people donated directly to a website. Yes, so and it's amazing You know when you share a story that I think there's a there's an impact. There's a power in in a story So I believe that Soon enough God will bring more and more and more than us. I have no fear because this cause I Know where I come from because I went through the same difficulties of dropout Actually here in Nairobi. That's when I started I Realized that there are so many children not only suffering from the traditional practices But also suffering from financial crisis like I was when I was in death's University So I had dropped out many times and not completing my exams But by that my God grace through a Friso was a member of a Friso and I'm still I'm still a Friso alumni So Helen Tawali is my she was my teacher and she's still my best friend and she's Amazing so yes Through singing I was able to to get a full scholarship to complete my education at death's University Power to all the wonderful women out there shout to you Helen Tawali and everything you're doing Out there at least are in secret things that will might never know about you Just know about one particular story right here. And yes, so a hundred girls so far That have managed to get to get to get to go to school and improve their lives Do you think there's hope for Africa one day? We are going to have a fully educated Africa I'm going to challenge all the women Professional or let me know it's called professional because it's the heart that work If you're a woman of God or a woman with compassion God has given us power to change the world Nassau Mandela say Education is the most weapon that we can use to change the world And I believe if we come together as women and even men who need your support. Yes. Yes Yes, and I believe that one hand can do Cannot do What five hands can do so if we come together as women or men behind us and Support what we are doing. I think we are going to have a better generation That is coming a better generation Education for a better generation. Yes, that is coming white for for underscore channel on Instagram and white five phone Facebook white five for Underscore channel on Instagram Hashtag is why in the morning hashtag is points Wednesday. You've used your comments and your questions. I invited Please direct them to grace right here of a Roger. Oh, so undergraduate Deister yes Masters degree in global organizational management and the PhD in global human Undergraduate you did it in Deister in this area Master's Master's degree. What did you do in the US in the US? Yes, and then your PhD in the US as well All right, so being somebody who has lived in Africa gone through all these things in Africa And then you've been to the US doing your PhD People blame All these African problems on the West. Yeah Including myself. Mm-hmm. I'm guilty as charged. You'll find me Complaining so much about the West and how they imposing debts on us and how they colonized us And then they left some leaders to still colonize us and the rest of things What is your take on this first? Ah, you know, sometimes we'll complain too much and ourselves we don't we don't make any step to make a change Obama said that don't wait for another person to bring change. You are the change that the world has been waiting for so we I always before I complain I ask myself, okay, what what have I contributed? What is my contribution to this world or to my community or to my friend or to my family? And then I take a step. Okay. What can I do to advocate for this issue or for this cause, you know and the same way with African Girls Hope Foundation, I know There's so there's so many people are like, okay, you are doing this because you want to fight Gender stuff or traditional What we believe in no I my heart is to bring change to our community to elevate Education so that we can have a better family. There's a saying that say when you educate a man You're the kid and an individual when you take a woman you educate a family a community and a nation Yes, and the same I agree with so much because I've seen the impact of educating Young girls even in my village and the kind of things the kind of impact Back in the village after they make it big Another thing I'd like to know. What are some of the misconceptions that people have over there? About Africa that you deal with every single day of your life.  They think we live with animals Do you have seen a TV? So they have especially an educated people who are there because we have also some people who are not educated there Who have never gone to school? Yes, we have them too. So they don't even Understand if Africa is a country or is a continent when you tell them from Congo some of them be all Congo What is Congo? So there's so much to educate them to there's so much to educate them about yes So we need some Africa studies in the school absolutely and we need to represent Africa also in a very positive way Display the good things about Africa talking about Africa being a continent or a country We working towards you in writing Africa. I've seen Swahili has been introduced in South Africa in the curriculum So there's progress in one language. It's going to be better Do you think this is going to help us deal with all these dictators all these warlords and all? I think I believe it's going to help us because there's power in knowing languages The first job that I had when I resettled there was I was at a contract of translating in the court in the federal courts from one from all my six languages English and vice versa, and it's paid six Languages my brother and from that I saw the importance of knowing different languages and when you know language you are able to reach out to To all the nations Yes, I feel when I'm Kenya. I'm Kenyan. I can speak Kenyan, I understand some kikuyu or some combo There's so many similarities there, and I feel home when I go to Congo It's I speak Lingala and I sing Lingala. I can sing in all those languages As we proceed to its progress. Yes, let's unite Africa through Swahili. Yeah, I think it's the most common It has a format at least you can learn it in school and everything You're a musician as well as we come to the end of this music is your passion Tell me more about your musician or your musical side I started singing when I was a very young girl. I'm very shy at that time. I'm no longer shy for God for the gospel Yeah, so and being a missionary daughter moving from one place to another and planting churches like from scratch I Learned how to worship and that's how I came to know That I have a gift. I will sing and people will be surprised and Yes, I got my scholarship through music and and in in the US or so I do have African I'm also a fund of African gospel artists So I bring wash African worship leaders together and I do also invite other worship leaders from different countries and they join us every year for a weekend of wash workshop and Worship experience wonderful Wise a lot of wise words from you. You've quoted Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama Those are your favorite authors and your favorite leaders. These are the people you look up to alright So as we wind this up your camera is number four. I like you to share with the people How they can get to support your projects and how they can find it on social media And if you have a website, I prefer the website goes from the website We can get other social media handles your coverage number four your time to share is this one, okay? First of all, thank you so much and I do really appreciate at this time and I would like to invite you to be part of our African Gaza Foundation and You can reach out to us through our website. We have our email address there and also We have our platform donation online, but again our website is African WW African gas from this one dot com when you go there You have all our information and if you have any question, please send us an email and we have a team that will be Respond to any question that you have and also we have a Facebook And an Instagram so when you go the website, you have all the information and details But again, please reach out to us and we'll be able to share more and details and also here in Kenya We have a chapter that we are starting. Please call us or send us an email and we'll give you details for that Thank you very much. Grace for coming through. Thank you so much. Say hi to the family when you get back to North Carolina So we've come to the end of strength of woman today We had Grace for Azure who's doing amazing amazing stuff for the girl child and girl children in the refugee comes in particular if you know somebody who has a story that is impactful to the community at large Contact us through why to fight for channel on Twitter What if I for underscore channel on Instagram and what if I found Facebook and don't forget the hashtag why in the morning? So we can highlight the story on strength of a woman. That is if she's a woman I go with a little very Moses or it's very money social media platform Call me Val is coming up next with girl stalker a hot topic. You don't want to miss this


What better way of hitting one million than pranking Mariah? I'm going to literally tell her after we film that I deleted all of the footage of us hitting it. I'm literally proud. You did it. Please don't lie to me. Mariah wasn't filming and I deleted that. You gotta be kidding me. Baby, you gotta be kidding me. You deleted it? Are you crying? Yeah! Mom's got something insane is about to go down in the next hour. We gotta hurry up, we need to go to the store and get some supplies. Right now, like there's no time to do anything else. We have no time, we've been slacking today. Oh my gosh, guys, even filming this is setting us back. We have something huge coming up and we might actually miss it if we don't get back in time. Guys, Mariah already has her shoes on. Look at her, she's ready to go. I've already been in my Marvel Squad where you guys have not gotten this yet. Make sure you guys go down and cop it. It's in the description, link in the description. But that is not the big thing, by the way. The big thing that's going down, should we show them? Oh my gosh, I think I'm kind of embarrassed because we literally are so close. Hold on, before we show them, make sure if you guys are not subscribed, make sure to go down and hit the subscribe button and join the Marvel Family. Turn on your post notifications so you get notified every time we do make a banger post. Because we come out with them every single day up until Christmas, guys. And if you want to win $50, make sure you guys are coming down below. Make sure you subscribe and make sure you're also coming down below your Cash App. All you have to do is watch the video all the way through, come down to your Cash App. Like she said, and you have a chance to win $50. We're doing a $50 giveaway every video up until Christmas. So you got multiple chances to win. What we've been postponing all day, you want to show them? Yeah, I'm gonna win! Seriously, what? Guys, we literally got 1,000,000 subscribers we're about to hit. Look at this, I'm just doing it right now. I got 197,000 Marvel Squad. Can I just want to say something? What? This is insane that we are about to hit 1,000,000. I- And we're not even prepared. We're gonna actually do a little rewind of a bunch of old clips of me and Bill when we first started. I want you guys to kind of see like the old us and how we used to be and just like how we started. How we grew ever since then from zero to a mill. This is something that's like so special to us. And I can't even believe this is the day. Like I'm probably gonna cry. It's happening literally within a few hours. I mean for you guys it's gonna happen within like 10 minutes of this video. So make sure to watch this video all the way through. We're gonna go to the store. We have to get a cake. We have to get a few things before we can even like be ready to hit a million. The numbers are not stopping. We woke up today. It was at 90 and now it's at 97. I'm not even kidding what an hour ago it was at 95. It's a little delayed. It doesn't go up one by one anymore. They took that off so it only goes up by thousands. We are currently I just checked at 997,743. Oh my God wait. We're about to hit 998. It's just going faster and faster. We gotta go guys. Let's go before we get too late. I just want to say thank you guys to everybody who's already buying the merch.   We also have been picking some people that win $100. So if you do buy our merch you do have a chance to win $100. Literally it's insane. It's right here. I'm wearing the bottoms. They're so comfy. We gotta go. We need to stop talking like let's go. Alright guys we just made into Mariano's and literally this is the place that we met. Not here but like the same store but look at we have all these out here but these aren't big enough right. We got to go big and we're not really into like into cake. So it's either going to have to be like an ice cream cake or cookie cake. So what should we do? The ice cream cakes are going to be in the freezer right there but I know there's like cookie cake right here. Our final decision guys. We couldn't really find anything great but we're on a time crunch because we're 2,000 away from hitting it. So I think we're going to get this one. And then we're going to go to like the bakery aisle and actually like buy icing right? Is that what we're doing? I could put like one million around this whole thing. What should we do? Oh wait you can. Yeah I have the never have those candles. I think we should still go to the aisle and get some like stuff so we can like frost it ourselves. That'd be sick. Alright let's go. This is it guys. Look at everything we got to work with. We're going to get sparkler candles. Yeah Mariah picked these out. They're candles that actually sparkle. So I feel like that's going to be dope. And then we have to pick out an icing. What color should we do? White? Where's the white? Oh right here. Alright I'm going to get two just in case. Alright so we're going to get this one because I think that's going to be more than enough to ice up our little cake. We got sparklers. And we have the numbers too so don't forget that. Oh yeah we have these at our place already. So I feel like it. Let's go baby come on. Hurry up.  Mariah we forgot something at the car.  Mariah we forgot something at the car. You think I was almost at you? Yeah. I can't believe we literally went to Mariah's for only four things. But it was worth it guys. This is a big deal. We've sacrificed anything. Any amount of money for this moment. We did. We're literally making history. Like we're going to remember this forever and so are all of you. It is crazy that we get to experience in our new apartment together. That's what I'm saying guys. I don't even know how close we are. I haven't checked since we left Marianos but we're probably around like 1500 away. It's closing in quick. Go ready? Watch. See? Everybody. We have to make a compilation. Someone if you make like edits for us on Instagram or anything. Make a compilation of Mariah sneezing. Because every video. This goes sneezing away for some reason. I don't sneeze really off camera either. I really don't understand it guys. Every video and I don't know. I'm telling you you're allergic to me. I am. Alright guys Mariah is actually in the bathroom way in the other room. So today I'm actually going to be doing a mini prank. I just thought of this right now. We're hitting our biggest milestone on YouTube yet. One million subscribers and I'm going to literally tell her after we hit it, after we film at the end of this video. I'm going to tell her that I deleted all of the footage of us hitting it though.  Everything. I'm going to tell her that I deleted everything. She's literally probably going to cry. Like I know this is going to be an amazing reaction. We didn't title this video for a prank. I know that but I wanted to do a mini prank just something to like you know just entertain you guys while we're doing this while we're going through this experience and what better way of hitting one million than pranking Mariah. So I just thought of that. I think this is going to be a great idea. Stay tuned. And I'm also going to replace the SSD on this camera. So if she does check it. It's going to be literally swipe clean of any footage and all the footage is going to be on a different SSD card. A little like memory card. Let's get it. Stay tuned for the end of this video. Now let's go hit a million guys. All right. It's been about a half hour guys. We are currently 950 subscribers away. We are less than a thousand away. This is it. This is make or break time. We're going to hit it within the hour and I'm going crazy guys. We have everything set up. We actually just made dinner. We pull off a quick dinner. We made some flat bread. Look how good that looks. All right. Ready? Mariah did it all herself. She set it up. That's the icing. We got the candles. The million candles. Those are also candles too.  These are supposed to spark up. So it's supposed to look really cool. But everyone I'm not even kidding. The TV didn't update yet. It's usually updates after we get like 500 over. So once we get to 99,500. It'll update right now. It says 998 but really we are at 999 and 54. We are literally 950 away. It's going to come so quick. So get ready. This is it. This is it guys. We have to finish eating. Guys, please.  We are currently about to hit 1 million. We got to get the screen back up. We're at 999,000 subscribers. It's about to go up any second. We got our poppers. We're on TikTok live filming right now. So there's 5000 people watching live on TikTok. Yes. So literally thank you guys so much for watching. Stay tuned because this is the moment of truth. This is the moment we've been waiting for. Everything has worked up to this moment. It's so crazy. So get ready. Guys, we're filming a YouTube video as well. Get ready for our YouTube guys. Everyone, we literally just hit 1 million subscribers. You can see that on the screen right there. Everyone on TikTok comment down high. There's 5000 people watching right now. Look at how crazy that is. Everyone. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'm just so happy. Okay, if you didn't see that, Mariah actually shot me with the confetti thing, but this is crazy. I'm shaking. I don't even know what to say right now. This is absolutely crazy. Everyone that's saying congratulations. Thank you so much. Mama Squad, I can't even believe that we just hit it. I'm already sort of crying. I can't believe it. I know. It's crazy. Look at this number. Look at that. That's us. This is me and you. From the start, guys, 100K, 50K, 10K. When we had zero. I remember being at Mariano's, working, posting our first video. We got 30 views in like a couple hours.  I can't. The first day that we started YouTube, we got like 20 subscribers. Oh my God. I am so thankful for each and every one of you that support us every single day. And the fact that we could bring everyone along, including everyone on TikTok, everyone. The fact that we could bring all of you guys along throughout it all is just insane. Look at the mess that we made. Look at this. We didn't even care. We're making millions. Mariah, this is actually like no joke. This is insane. This is next level stuff right now. I didn't know what to say. I'm flustered. Wait, wait, we have our cake. We have to do our cake. Oh, it's your cake. All right, we're lighting up the cake right now. I'm shaking. I know. It's insane. Like this actually just happened. All right, we bought these cool candles. So let's see if it's actually. Let's do that first. Let's see if this actually turned out good. This is it. Everyone, thank you so much for the luxe candle in the live. By the way, I see you guys. This is it. This is wraps up our one million special. Oh my God, guys. We're going to go into depth after this and just look at this. That cake is fire. No pun intended. Oh my God. This is insane. Absolutely crazy. Look at all this mess. Like, I don't know. I'm going to delete that. Please don't lie to me. Right, I wasn't telling you I'd delete that. You got it kidding me. Baby, you got it kidding me. You deleted it. You're pranking me. Yeah. Just kidding, babe. I need to delete the footage. Look at her. I'm almost going to start freaking bawling my eyes out. Babe, are you actually going to cry? Look, I'm going to fool with the chair. I brought the chair down. Guys, she was barricading herself. She was probably about to attack me. Literally, I didn't want this prank to go on for long, but I told them earlier that just for the fun of it, because I know how big of a deal this is to me and you, I was just going to say that I accidentally deleted the clip. And the whole time, guys, I was trying to think like after like we did like the celebration, I was trying to think of how to set it up because I didn't even know how to do it. And I just filmed like a fake clip and acted like I deleted it. Just a prank. T-Mil, but guys, hold on. We want to talk to you really quick. This is insane. Look at this number. Mariah is switching the blocks because we forgot to do that this video. It's actually 16 days till Christmas, guys. This is Vlogmas Day 9 already. This looks crazy. We dropped merch today. We hit a million freaking subscribers. We dropped confetti today, guys. We literally, like, this is insane. I just want to pull it up on the screen for the end of this like video. I am just so speechless. Like, we just wanted to like say thank you guys so much for just making this possible for the both of us. I honestly could not imagine where I would be if I didn't have you guys. I didn't have this job. I didn't have you next to me like... And I didn't have you. Like, imagine if we never like worked at Mario's. We never found each other. Mariah and Bill would have never been a thing.  Everything's meant to be. God knew this was our plan. Literally, everything's meant to be. Everything's meant to be. And the fact that we just hit this huge milestone, we're going to get a big plaque, a golden plaque. I cannot wait to show you guys that. We have a silver one right now, which is 100K, but the golden one is going to be way bigger and it's for a million. Oh my gosh. It's just crazy to think about where we started because I remember like all people that made fun of us, people would say all this stuff about us. Don't think it was easy too by the way guys. Like you guys made it so amazing along the whole journey. Really? You did. But off camera, like people like non-stop when we started this, we were making fun of us, doubting us, literally telling us we couldn't do it or just saying like just stuff like close friends. You know that we used to have not close, but friends that we used to have. And I just think it's crazy that like no matter what me and Mariah, we just overcame everyone, pushed through it. We proved that we can have fun. We can make an amazing family. And you guys supported us along the whole way. Guys, you guys are supporting us up to 2 mil, 5 mil, 10 mil. I don't know what the future has in store for us, but... I already had my tears and I wish I could just cry with you guys because this is just like insane. I'm just in shock. I'm in shock. Our adrenaline is so high right now. Like the fact that we just hit a million. We're literally just jumping around, blowing up confetti. If you didn't see, she freaking hit me with the confetti, but it was totally worth it. I thought that it added to like the experience. We're going to be looking back on this. Guys, we literally hit 10 mil on TikTok and in literally the same month, we hit 1 mil on YouTube. Absolutely crazy. You have no idea how much it means to us. Like I hope you know how much you guys mean to us. You guys are our family and we cannot wait to like grow with you guys even more. Start a family, get our house. Just like you guys, I love you guys. And we're so grateful. Just wait the future like, oh my gosh. You guys are going to be looking back on this like we're babies because when we grow up and when we get married, when we have kids, like you're going to be there throughout it all. Like once again, before we end out this video, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel with post notifications out so you don't miss out on a post. We prank each other all the time. We do challenges, so much fun content coming up and I actually really like that we've been vlogging our day to day life. Me too. This is like the most fun we've ever had. We've been filming videos every day and we thought it was going to be hard at first, which it was, but you know, going from three to seven videos is going to be hard. I think we're going to start posting Monday through Friday after Vlogmas, but we are going to have one week after Vlogmas. We probably won't. It'll be scrambled because we're going to Texas and we need a little break. Yeah. So, but we will be, I'm telling you this is our goal right now to post five times a week for you guys Monday through Friday. Comment down below what you guys think of that question of the day. Comment down below. What do you guys think? You guys want us to post Monday through Friday? I think we should. I think we should. I think it'll be fun. I think more content. You guys love it. You guys are loving our videos now and it's only going to get better. Literally think about this. This is only the start. We hit a mill and this is only the start. Oh my God. Two years. Two and a half years. Two and a half. Almost three years. Almost three years. And we hit a mill. And we hit a million subscribers and it took us seven months to gain a thousand. Wow. You can do anything to put your mind to it. Moral of the story. You guys are awesome. Obviously we'll do. We're like what about we hit a mill in like four years? Oh my God guys, we love you guys. Before we leave last thing, I know, I know. We have to do a $50 giveaway guys to someone that was watching our last video. If you watch our videos all the way till the end and comment down below a reason why you should win the $50 and your cash app. Guys, you got it. You're going to win. The $50 giveaway goes to Mackenzie. Mackenzie, you got the $50. She said, I'm obsessed with the candy cane merch. Oh my gosh. I can't wait to order. But finally you guys were so long.  Not in our merch. Go get it now. It's out now. Link is always in the description for our merch. Thank you so much Mackenzie. You got the $50. Yeah, I love you. Thank you for watching all of our videos. Please subscribe. We are doing a huge giveaway for a million. We're going to talk it over so we're going to do for sure. We want to get back. We want to get back. We're going to do a huge giveaway. We got to support our model squad. We're supporting you guys all throughout this month and we love it. It makes us feel so much better to be able to get back. Like all of your comments. So comment down below. We read almost every single one of them and respond to some of them as well. Thank you guys so much again for making this possible. We love you. This is only for the beginning and we are so grateful. This is it. We're going to go spend time with each other. You know, just appreciate it. Just enjoy the confetti guys. Look, this is what we got to deal with. I was going to say, I don't even want to clean it up. It's just memories. It's so sad. Let's just leave it. We're cleaning up our celebration. We can't do that guys. We're leaving it. We're leaving it. All right. Well, we will see you in tomorrow's video. But until then, peace out guys.


Welcome to the show, it's me, John Park, and it is time for JP's product pick of the week. And I am excited because this week we have a, what do we call this? A combo discount extravaganza. Those were Lady Eight's words. That's right, we have two product picks this week which go well together. They play very nicely together and I'll show them in some demos in a second. So thank you for stopping by. Thanks for hanging out. We have the chat over in the YouTube, hello Devo Dessa, and Fish Up Bishop. Welcome, thanks for stopping by. Hope you're having a wonderful day too, Fish Up Bishop. Thank you. Also if you're somewhere where there doesn't seem to be a chat going on such as Twitch or Facebook, you might wanna head over to our Discord. So that is right here, it looks like this. That is at ateafru.it slash discount, not slash discount, slash discord. I have a fuzz on my glasses that was just distracting me. It's never gonna go away, it went away. What did I say? It's at ateafru.it slash discord. That's the discord that you see right there. And if you are coming over there for the first time, check out the live broadcast chat channel. That's the one that I have highlighted there and that's where people are hanging out during the show. People such as Sam J. Ohio, Super Daddy, DJ Devon3, Jim Hendrickson, Gary Z. Hello, thank you for popping on in onto the chat here. Hope I didn't miss anyone. And what's going on? What do we have here? So like I said, there are two product picks this week, which means you've got some choices to make. You can head to both of those QR codes there or to these URLs. It's products 5882 and 5888. Jump on in there. This show is, this actual live stream is taking place right inside of those pages. I'm double checking there, but the product team, Jelly, Travis and others have been hard at work. I know it's harder when we have two products like this. So thank you so much. We appreciate the extra effort and they have stashed away some of these so that there are a bunch of them ready for sale and they are half price. So head on over to those two URLs there. And before I say much more about it, what we'll do is jump back to the new, new, new product segment from the Ask an Engineer shows where these first appeared and Lady Aida is gonna tell us about these two products. Oh, my volume is a bit low, A. Let's see. Let me put that up a little bit. I don't want it to peek out. So let me know if that's good there, Jack Frost. Hey guy, volume is a bit low. Aida Fruit, right there. Thank you. Thanks for the note. All right, so here comes Lady Aida with the new, new, newness. It's the Power BFF. It's coming soon. We didn't quite get all the demos in, but I thought we would at least highlight if people could sign up to just chat about this on IonPI. But this is a board that lets you have five to 12 volts DC input and it will let you plug in your shower QT PI board on top. You also have a terminal block which you can use to get that power out or you can have power come in from the terminal block if you have a battery pack. And it features the MPM 3610. So it's a DC-DC buck converter. So it's very efficient and it'll give you a nice clean five volt 1.2 amps out. I'll be honest, I actually got 1.5 amps out when I did my load testing, but it's weighted for 1.2.   And they'll show just the prototype real fast. And next week we'll have like a bigger, better demo. But this is my prototype before I added the legs. You can just plug into the DC power here. Maybe I can plug in here, see if this will work. And then boom, now it's running circuit Python, it's blinking, focus. Yeah, and you can do, like this is I think a nine volt, but we wanna do some projects where we wanted to power the QDPI from like a car or from a DC or battery pack where you wouldn't necessarily get five volts clean. So this will convert it down to five volts for you. So it's coming soon, but you can sign up and we'll have in the shop maybe later in this week. Yay, it's the Neo RGB Stemma board. This is the board I designed for myself because I was so tired of wiring up analog RGB LED strips with transistors and resistors and power connectors and like whatever, whatever. I wanna make it really easy to control analog LED strips. That's LED strips that don't have Neo pixels in them. A lot of them use five, sorry, these 12 volts or even higher, but 12 volts is the most popular. And so now I have a board where you have Neo pixel signal in like your standard Neo pixel that comes from any microcontroller or even a Raspberry Pi these days. And on the output, you have three common anode RGB channels plus power and ground to connect to the terminal block. And it acts like a single very, very bright, very large Neo pixel. You can also use this with anytime you have like an LED array that has PWMable inputs. This will basically do the PWMable control eight bits per channel, 24 bits total.  So, again, wonderful if you have analog neon or LED strip or something you're, for some reason you want to, so definitely for long extensions, they're cheaper than using Neo pixels. And you don't have individual LED control within the strip, but maybe you don't need that. Maybe you want to like do a single collar for the entire thing. So I have a demo on overhead. So this is my standard at Mega 328 Metro Arduino compatible. And I'm powering it from a nine volt here. So this is nine volt power. I connect the red wire to the STEMA board from VIN, so that's nine volts, ground to ground. And then the Neo pixel signal, it thinks it's connected to a single Neo pixel pin six.  You can barely see it because it's only one LED, but there is a little bit of blinking going on on the signal, red LED over here. And then you just use the terminal screw block to connect red, green, blue. And then this black wire is VIN, so it's the 12 volt power.  So it's great because this can handle three amps per channel up to 16 volts.  If you have white, like, you know, cool, warm or natural white, or sometimes there's LED strips that are analog that have color mixing. So you can have, you can change from cool to warm to neutral white. You could basically have this act as if it was a Neo pixel. And again, make it a lot easier to control. If you're using more than two amps total, we recommend not going through the JSTPH, just go through the terminal block. So you just power directly from the terminal block here. And you can control, again, you have nine amps total between all three channels. One thing I will mention is that if you're using RGBW LED strip, this only supports three channels. I haven't quite found a chip that supports four channels yet. That is Neo pixel compatible. So you have a choice of either just controlling three of the channels, or there is, you know, an output pin here. If you want to chain, you could connect the fourth channel on a second one of these and then just control it as it was the second Neo pixel afterwards. You have to do the logic for it. You can, you treat it as two Neo pixels. The first one is RGB and the second one is just W. But I'll let, you know, or sometimes again, some strips have five channels. Again, you'd use two of these one for each set of three. So I think this will make wiring a lot easier for people, definitely make my demos a lot faster. So hopefully folks enjoy it. I know Erin who does a lot of Neo pixel projects has already been excited. She's like, yeah, I can't wait to use this to already simplify some wiring on a project I did for a Tiki bar. She had me at Tiki bar. So these are my product picks of the week this week. It is a dual combo discount extravaganza. We have the Power BFF and we have the Neo RGB Stemma. So the Power BFF is made for your cutie pie to stick onto the top with some header pins. And in fact, it comes with the sockets that you need. So you'll solder those onto there and then you'll solder some male header pins on the bottom of your cutie pie. Slot it right into there. I'll show you a demo in a second. And what that allows you to do is plug in five to 20 volt DC either into the barrel plug here. This is a 2.1 millimeter barrel plug. Pretty typical for a DC power supply or to the terminal block. These are joined. So only plug into one of them as far as an input goes but you can use the other for output or kind of a pass through. So you'll plug in power up to 20 volts. It will use the buck converter to give you a nice clean five volts to drive the cutie pie. But this means that you still have that same 20 volt, 12 volt, nine volt, whatever it is that you gave it available to run another gizmo which is really the sweet spot of using this. Another really nice feature of this is it has some mounting holes on it so you can screw that down onto your project. I'll show you that in my demo. And the reason that we combined these is the other one here, this is the Neo RGB Stemma. So this is a really cool board, really clever. Normally when you have analog strips particularly analog LED strips that have the three LEDs mounted in them, red, green, blue, they're not Neo pixels. You can't control them that way. So you have to set up three FETs in order to control them, these transistors. And then the code can get a little complicated. This is really neat. What this does is it allows you to take your Neo pixel code, send it to this as if you think you're using one Neo pixel and it will then split out those as PWM signals onto the three common anode. So red, green, blue outputs that we have here and then you'll have the voltage pin also connected. Usually you'll have four wires on these types of strips. And then you just talk to it like it's one Neo pixel. The whole strip will change colors, fade, blink, anything you wanna do just like you're used to using your Neo pixel code. And you can do that with the Arduino, with the circuit Python, even WLED makes it really easy to use. So let me show you a few things here related to these. First of all, let's take a look at the product pages on these. Let me jump over to this right here. Okay, so here we have, if we refresh this, just wanna make sure they're in stock. So we have 78 of these in stock still. Half price, so you just throw that in your cart, you don't need a coupon code that's priced right now at $3.98. So there is, you can see on there we have the barrel connector, we have the terminal block there to screw your output if you're gonna be running something off of this besides just the QDPI. Here it is on the underside there. This also has a reset or enable type of pin, enable pin and a reset pin so you can wire up some switches to it if you want. And here's our second one. So this is the Neo RGB Stemma. You can see here this has a three pin Stemma connector. So you can use that to connect up to your power, ground and NeoPixel signal that comes onto this board and it's gonna output to that green terminal block there, the PWM signals you need to control the three colors of the RGB strip. Now you can power this in a smaller set right off of that voltage in from your microcontroller but more likely you're gonna have a bigger power source which is why I combined these two. So let's take a look real quick. Here is the learn guide for the Power BFF. So this will take you through, show you how to set it up. You can see there's a nice picture of a QDPI docked on top of it there. And here it's being powered off of a battery pack. You can use that on the terminal blocks or with a barrel connector or with a wall wart, regulated power supply, however you wanna control it or power it rather. And then here is the RGB, the Neo RGB Stemma in action. There you can see it's connected up to a Metro board and it's actually getting power from that but in my case I'm gonna be doing it a little differently using that Power BFF. And these are the types of strips that you'll typically run. So those look like a NeoPixel strip but they're not. These are single color or rather the whole strip is gonna be one color at a time but it can be, the whole strip can be changed multicolored. Typically you'll see these in room running LEDs around a room just to give it an overall color shift but it's not gonna be animating individual pixels. That's a NeoPixel and this is not that. This is an analog strip. Here's another nice example of one. So that's an RGB analog strip. You can control the whole strip, different colors. One thing I'll also mention is you can if you want to connect up multiple strips to the three different outputs on here so you could get yourself a fully red strip, a fully green strip and a fully blue strip and then combine those as if they are one big, huge NeoPixel or one big, huge analog RGB LED. So depending on your use you could drive all of those off of this still using NeoPixel code. So let's take a look at a couple of examples here. I'm gonna jump to the down shooter here. Actually let's go to the full down shooter view. So here you can see what I've got set up. I have the QT Pi plugged into the Power BFF. Power BFF is mounted to one of our little swirly grids. I have a 12 volt, I think five amp power supply plugged into the Power BFF. That is supplying power to the QT Pi, five volts that it needs and then you can see I'm running my power and ground from the Power BFF over the STEMA cable to the Neo RGB STEMA board and the white wire there is actually running to one of my GPIO pins. I just soldered it underneath there. So that is sending NeoPixel signals. It thinks there's a NeoPixel there. But we can see this happening here is my RGB strip is plugged into the red, green and blue and common anode lines. And so this is running through a nice little RGB type of demo or color fading demo. This one is an ESP32 Pico board. So it is on wifi and I'm actually using the WLED software to control it. So it's a really easy to configure, kind of no code solution. So here you can see I'll switch over to just a single color and now we can go through and just set it to individual colors. We can adjust that saturation and brightness. And then of course the fun part is when you go into some of these effects, like here's a little heartbeat effect and you can pick a color palette. So we can say I'm gonna use, here's the default color palette heartbeat effect, pick an individual color, pick color gradients. So that's all stuff that you can do here because even though this is not a NeoPixel, the little Neo RGB STEMA board makes your microcontroller think it's talking to one big long weird NeoPixel which is fantastic. Now what I'll do is I'm gonna switch out for a second setup here. And this one I actually, although I am, you'll see here, although I am still able to power this QDPi from the power BFF, I have a USB cable plugged into it so that we can code it in CircuitPython Live. So what you'll see here is I actually I'm just stealing one pin off of my STEMA QT connector there so that I didn't have to solder anything.  Is that what we call it? Yeah, big analog RGB strip. Not digital, not NeoPixels, but we're gonna talk to it as if it were. So what I'll do is I'll switch over to my code view here. And so you can see what it's running right now is a sort of simple color wheel. It's running through a color wheel code. But what I wanted to do was interrupt that. So in my REPL, I'm gonna interrupt that. And then I'll show you just line by line how simple it is to talk to this. So I'm gonna go ahead and import the board definition and NeoPixel. I'm gonna create a NeoPixel strip here named strip that has a single LED. So that's what this one is here and a pretty low brightness. Just because I plugged things in wrong and screwed them down and was lazy, I'm going to switch the GRB order to BRG. It's just which one is red, green and blue. And then I'm going to go ahead and set the one NeoPixel that's connected to this to black or off. And then I can go in here and pick individual colors if I want this to be green. I still have it plugged in wrong, don't I? Okay, that should have been green, RGB, right? Oh, that's funny, let's go here. Yeah, and that'll be green. Okay, I still have the order wrong. What the heck order is this thing supposed to be? Here's red, red I think is actually connected properly. There we go. So you can imagine now any of your NeoPixel code if we go ahead and run this code this up there at the top again, that's what's on the board. You can see we're running through one RGB NeoPixel that gets sent out over the stem of QT or rather over the stem of board to adjust this giant strip as if it were NeoPixel. So really fun to work with and a really great combo. So you can see there, these two playing really well together, particularly happy about having a way to mount I can light that with this strip actually, a way to light the, sorry, I'm really happy about having a way to mount the QT Pi to something like this swirly grid here because we have the little mounting points on the Power BFF, so that's kind of nice. And you can also see if I unplug this circuit Python example that I had there from USB, it's still running because it's all running off of that Power BFF. So there comes 12 volts incoming to the Power BFF sending that 12 volts along to my strip here and it's sending five volts to run the QT Pi up top. So, and now I've loosened a connection and it's flashing at me. So we'll move that off to the side there. So let's see, what questions do we have before we go any further? I'm gonna check in the chats here. None, okay, good, we're good and clear. Yeah, so Jeff Hunt had asked if the standoffs come. I think these were what you were referring to, hopefully. Maybe not, oh yeah. These are nylon 2.5, M2.5 standoffs that I'm using to connect it to this if that's the question. So this did not come with those just because you might have different mounting needs and want different lengths of standoffs and such. So that's using our little nylon M2.5 kit that we sell in the store, but any M2.5 fastener will work. You can see I'm using one on the Neo RGB Stemma as well there. So it does come with the header pins or sockets, header sockets to plug your QT Pi down into. So yeah, so these are some of the different types of strips that you can use here. If you go to the LED strips page, you'll see some you don't want. Digital RGB LED, you don't want those. In fact, I don't know how you talk to those. They're not NeoPixels, they're a different digital RGB type. That's not what we're using. This you could use is the analog RGBW, so it has a fourth color that you won't be able to address from the one Stemma, but you could say, hey, you know what, I've got some, I want maybe just red, green, and the white LED and I don't need blue for anything. You could pick those three to plug in or as Lady Aida said, you could have a second Neo RGB Stemma connect it as if it's a second NeoPixel and then you'll be able to just plug in that fourth LED that's on those. So no digitals, this one's probably an analog here. Any of them that say analog for sure, side light flexible, analog RGB, those are great. That's similar to the one I'm using here. It's nice, sort of neon style one. This would also be great for doing neon style signs. So if you do, you know, Joe eats, Joe eats pizza. If you have like blinking single color strips, you could have each of those strips plugged into one of the connections on that Neo RGB Stemma. So nice way to do that sort of thing without having to wire up all your own transistors, which is great. All right, I think that's gonna do it. Yes. Let me know if you have any other thoughts, questions, comments in the chat. Otherwise we will wrap that up. Let me put that right there. I'm gonna crank it up because under this lighting, you can't really see that. In fact, let's turn this, let's turn that down a little bit. Are these, yeah. All right, so let's see. In WLED here, crank up that brightness. Woo, yeah, that'll work. And how about for a blink rainbow? That's pretty good. We can adjust the speed. Yeah. Yes, that's gonna do it right there. Okay. So those are, let me go to a single view here. That's gonna do it for today. Those are my dual product picks this week. It is the Power BFF for QDPI and the Neo RGB Stemma. For Adafruit Industries, I'm John Park. This has been JP's product pick of the week and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.