In this video, you'll learn how you can make your design practice truly more inclusive because even with the best intentions, when you're designing for everyone, you're often excluding some and even harming others in the process. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Jaren and this is the service design show episode 176. Hi, my name is Marc Fontaine and welcome back to the service design show. On this show, we explore what's beneath the surface of service design. What are those hidden and invisible things that make all the difference between success and failure, all to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business and our planet? Our guest in this episode is Jaren Miller. Jaren is the service design manager at Headspace, where he works to design a healthier, more equitable and enjoyable world. We've said it often, but it's so important that I'm going to say it again. The average user doesn't exist, but in most projects, you're still designing for the majority, the average user. And that's a problem because that way, you're not only excluding certain groups, you're potentially causing harm. Our guest in this episode, Jaren has seen up close and personal what this approach does to something like the healthcare system in the United States, and it doesn't look pretty. So he's working actively to change it, to make the system more equitable and decrease disparities. In our conversation today, we're going to explore the challenges with our current design practice and which barriers we need to overcome if we want to make it more inclusive. So at the end of this episode, you'll know how you can recognize situations in your own design process where you're potentially excluding people or even causing harm. Next to this, you'll have learned about some practical tips that you can apply in your day to day practice to include the voices of the people who usually are left out and finally get some tips on how you can convince clients to make accessibility and inclusivity a best practice. It's really up to us to drive this forward in our community and advocate for it. That about wraps it up for my introduction. Now it's time to jump into the conversation with Jaren Miller. Welcome to the show, Jaren. Hello, I'm happy to be here. Nice to have you on. We're going to chat about a topic that is I think very dear to your heart. Before we dive in, I always love to do a short intro and get to know you a bit better. The first thing we start with is sort of the professional side. We'll get into the personal side in a second, but maybe it will be awesome if you could start with a short intro. What do you do these days? That is a question I get a lot. What do you do? Because most people don't even know what service design is. I'm sure that's a question you have to answer a lot as well. I am a service design manager at Headspace. We are a mental health and mindfulness company. We have mindfulness based content that people can go on and use whenever they want. Then we also merged with another big company called Ginger to create Headspace Health. They came with therapists and coaches and psychologists and all the kind of more standard true mental health services to help people when they're in need of those. What's wonderful about working at Headspace is we get to figure out what do these things look like together as a more merged company. It's awesome to see service design sort of, it's not emerging, but trickling down into virtually any organization these days. It's almost hard to find an organization that isn't interested in service design and also that Headspace is as well. I was surprised when I saw your profile on LinkedIn and I was like, I need to know more about that. I need to get this guy on the show. I was surprised when they reached out to me when they were hiring. I said, really? Service design there? But yeah, it's great. I think my own career kind of reflects the growth of service design in the US. I started in the government where it's a little bit bigger here. It's a little bit more well known in the government spaces and then also in healthcare and then now it's spreading more into the tech world and the startup world. So that's kind of how my path has been as well. Let's hope this conversation contributes to even more growth of service design in the tech space. We also have a lightning round, five questions that I didn't prepare you for to get to know you as a person, a bit more next to the professional. Just the first thing that comes to your mind, not hard questions. Well, we'll see if they are hard questions, but not complicated questions for sure. Ready? Yeah. All right. First question is if you could recommend one book for us to read, which book would you recommend? I am a bit of a nerd. So my book is going to be the cradle series. It's basically this kid grows from nothing to having superpowers and taking on people that are fighting intergalactic wars and it's a trip. It's a wild ride. Nice. Second question is if you could work from anywhere in the world, what would you like to work for? Great question. That's a more real question nowadays. I have a couple of friends that live in the Bahamas and Jamaica or are from there and so I would choose one of those. What is always in your fridge? What is always in my fridge? I have a kid who's obsessed with ketchup. So ketchup is always in there. Gotta keep it stock. Yeah. All right. What's your hidden talent, which won't be hidden anymore after you share it here? Oh, hidden talent. I'm a serviceable gymnastics coach. My kid is also obsessed with gymnastics and I think I do a pretty good job of coaching her through it. Fifth and final question is a tradition here on the show. Do you recall the first time you sort of learned about service design? Yes, I do. I was graduating from Savannah College of Art and Design, getting a degree in industrial design and I knew it wasn't quite the right fit and on my way out of the door, I saw this brand new thing called service design and I was very, I was elated and very disappointed because I wanted that thing. Awesome. Thank you for sharing this already. Gives us a bit more context. I think now is the right moment to dive into today's topic and one of the questions I have prior to our conversations here is like what is the design challenge? What is the main theme that we want to address and you shared an equitable healthcare system, correct? Yeah. That's the dream. That's the dream. Yeah. Now I'm from the Netherlands. I do this in the Netherlands. You're in the US. We have different cultural backgrounds. I don't know anything about the healthcare system in the US. Maybe we need to start there. What do I and somebody who's listening right now needs to know about this situation? I would say there's two big intersectional things that I tend to focus on in regards to healthcare inequality. My personal draw is on race and culture and ethnicity and how that plays a role in your healthcare and then also how income and class and all that plays a role in your healthcare outcomes as well. And I would say the short thing to know is they're very unequal.  That's the general trend and there's, I'm sure, fluctuations throughout. But black women are three to four times more likely to die from childbirth and that's kind of the running statistic of the headline statistic of showing those inequalities and interesting enough for that one, it goes across income. That one is regardless of your income. You still have those disparities. I'll be asking a lot of stupid questions and beginner questions again because I don't know the situation there so excuse me but I'll try to make them sound a bit smarter than they probably are. The first thing I'm very curious about is not everybody has a passion to create an equitable healthcare system. Could you describe your story? What made you tick around this topic? That is a great question. Actually, no one's asked me that in quite some time. For me, I grew up in the suburbs of Philly and so I grew up in a middle-class home surrounded by middle-class folks going to a middle-class school and got a great education. And at the same time, most of my friends and family were not middle-class. My family grew up in a lower economic standing and so I was able to see both sides of that. I was able to see what does it look like to have an education over here that's completely different than the education that I'm getting just because my parents were able to move across a different zip code. And I saw how that played out throughout people's lives and how that, you know, you get asthma because you're more exposed to traffic and how does that show up when you're trying to learn in school or when you're trying to excel in athletics. But now you've got asthma because of whatever's happening at home. And I think I've just always been exposed to... I've always known that fundamentally we're all born with advantages and disadvantages. But I saw how the environment really shaped how people were able to become their best selves. And I didn't enjoy it. And so now I worked really hard to try and change it. I did a project where I worked with a company called Tipping Point, which is a nonprofit in the Bay Area in the U.S. And they're focused on eliminating poverty. And the project that I worked on was around low-income, improving kindergarten readiness for low-income parents in East Oakland. And while I was on that project, I learned a whole lot about brain development. I learned a whole lot about trauma. I learned a whole lot about things that combat trauma. So mindfulness is something that combats trauma. Having healthy relationships in your life is something that combats trauma. And I learned about the disparities of healthcare as well. And that project was really transformative for me. I always knew I wanted to work in something that was meaningful to me. So whether it was healthcare or something else that would have stood out. But that project is what really focused me on healthcare specifically and on mental healthcare specifically as well. Because I just learned about it. You really can't one of the things that we look for in kindergarten readiness is just the academic side. But more important is the social-emotional side. And so the key phrase that I always took from that project was you can't learn your ABCs if you're in survival mode. So if you're going through trauma at home or in school or wherever the trauma is happening, it's really hard for you to focus and learn at school. And that happens throughout the rest of our lives. And that has an impact on the rest of our lives.  And so yeah, I've always had a passion for doing things that were meaningful to me. And that project I would say steered me in this particular direction. Now, as you said, there were always inequalities and depending on where you were born, like you sort of benefit or face the consequences of that. With regards to a healthcare system and then the US situation, how did you get to the point where you are today? And the question is coming from the fact that I'm making an assumption that the people who started out thinking about the healthcare system, hopefully didn't intentionally create these inequalities and these disparities, but that we are apparently they emerge like what what is your take on that? I'm less sure that they didn't intentionally create inequalities. I'm not a historian, so I won't speak to how we got here. But I would say a big factor in it is racism. It's something that is just kind of embedded in lots of the organizations and lots of the systems that founded our country. And I think something that I personally something that a lot of times the one I'm learning more about medical history, I'll find that the father of this thing, what someone calls the father of gynecology was extremely racist. So the father of gynecology did experiments on enslaved women. And that's how he learned about gynecology. And I don't, that's a lot to take in. That's that's a lot for me as someone who just happens to be having a passing interest in learning more about healthcare and about supporting birthing people. And what do we do right? And then, okay, let me look into the history of it. And then I find, oh, racism again. It can be tough, honestly, it can be really tough as a black person navigating the system to realize that the system was designed in many ways to keep you out and to keep you oppressed. What what helps in that is that there are more people now that are fighting to remove those biases and remove those those things that are that are designed to oppress you. And I'm happy to count myself as one of them. Can you just to for me to try to understand what people are going through? Like, how do these biases and disparities like manifest themselves? Yeah, so one example is there are myths that black people don't feel pain the same way that white people feel pain. And so there were some studies where they looked at actual results and and people were given lower pain medications than someone who had a similar issue but had different skin color. In particular, there's lots of stories of black women complaining about just extreme pain, you know, specifically around childbirth, and the doctors not really accounting for their needs. Or the more positive stories is that they have they have that same pain and they have a dual or they have a partner or they have someone who's advocating for them to really draw attention to that so that they get the the medication and the the care that they need. But unfortunately, I hear a lot more of the stories of those things being ignored. And so that's one myth that was rooted in again, rooted in enslavement but has now showed up in our in our context today that we you know, we need to work on getting rid of. Yeah, pretty loaded and pretty important, usually important topic.  What is the role of design and service design and design nurse in all of this? For sure. Yeah, we've spent more time talking about historic racism than I intended to, but it's a it's a good topic. I think the way that design comes into play is that often, these things are encoded in in things that we interact with throughout the day and don't even really notice. So one example is color cameras. Color cameras were were developed to pick up kind of lighter skin tones. And so often, black skin tones don't show up very well. And so designers and technologists came in later to figure out how do we change the lighting, how do we change the design of this thing that we all interact with every day, so that it's more equal so that it can actually work for different types of people in different ways. And I think that's a lot of what I do in the day to day, but applied to services. So, for example, if you were looking for a therapist, some things that might be important to you are the training that they have the education, how long they've been providing care, what type of care is it, is it CBT or ACT or those are just different types of therapy. And but for someone like me, one of my main things is I would like someone who can relate to my identity experience. And so I would love a black therapist. There are very few black therapists.  And so those are some structural inequalities that show up in how do we actually get you to that person. But in my day to day, it's also how do I identify what's important to you? And how does that vary based on different things, different factors? It might vary based on your readiness for change. Are you really ready to get into therapy? Or are you just kind of thinking about it? It might vary based on your age. It might vary based on demographics. So for me, I look across all those different demographics and all those different factors and figure out what is important to different folks. So, okay, for this person over here, care matching to them means finding someone who has a shared identity. For this person over here, care matching means finding someone who's going to give them homework because they really, really want actionable takeaways from their care. Which you just described about empathy and trying to understand who you're designing for and catering for that. And that sounds like a best, a good practice every design professional should do. Is it because you maybe have a different perspective or different background or different experience that you see areas where white designers, male designers don't necessarily even aware of? And like, can you have a more diverse and holistic and different perspective on these things? Wrong question. I know, sorry. No, it's a yes. It's a good question.  And so I'm more aware of the ways that in which I am in the other. And so I think about, okay, it may be here, someone might be standing out because they're more athletic. And the rest of the crowd is very unathletic. Over here, it might be because they're tall and everyone else is short. There's so many different ways for all of us to be othered. Sometimes it's your immigration status. Sometimes it's your size. There's so many different factors. So it's something that everyone can relate to and everyone can identify with. But because I grew up with it, I'm very aware of it. And so I think I might just be more prone to thinking about those factors and thinking about them in different ways. But yeah, every design professional, the one thing that we all know is everyone has different needs. Every designer knows that. Yeah. And the thing you mentioned is maybe because you were in, maybe in multiple ways, part of a minority, you have a different antenna or a different sense for how people might be different. And I think that's a very interesting observation, which we touched upon in other episodes as well. But when you're part of the majority, it's really hard to step outside that. And it's maybe not even that you don't want to, but it's just very hard to understand that reality. Yeah, it also can be terrifying to be honest. It can be terrifying to talk about a topic that you're not familiar with. It can be terrifying to talk about a race is a very terrifying topic to talk about, especially publicly. And so I give myself grace for fears around it. I give other people grace for fears around it. So yeah, I think there's a lot of different things that come into it. You might just not be aware of it or you might be aware of it, but not feel like you're the person that should be talking about it. Or yeah, maybe you don't feel like you know enough. There's a lot of different reasons to try and avoid it. So if we take the current system and say, okay, it's an equal, I think you also mentioned that it actually does harm. There are disparities. What's the alternative or what does success look like? So what is the thing that we're striving that we're working towards? What's the North Star? Lots and lots of smart people disagree. And hopefully I have my answer. I think for me, one thing that's important is the more I learn about health disparities in outcomes, the more I try and look for different in health approaches. So if I can say Black women are three to five, three to four times more likely to have problems in childbirth or Black birthing people in general, then okay, what are we doing specifically for that group? What are we doing specifically to help with that group? Not with taking standard approaches? I think for me, what's important is what you mentioned, healthcare has done harm to many people. And I think a lot of times when we talk about improving inequalities, it's only talked about as an access issue. But I don't need more access to something that's harming me. I need you to fix the thing so that it's not harmful to me and then work on access. And I hear more focus on the access and less focus on changing the system to make sure that it is safe first and welcoming to people. And then let's invite them in. And again, just for me to understand in which ways do you feel or have you probably seen that the system is doing harm to people and communities? There's a lot of examples, unfortunately. One that comes to mind is trans health care. If your provider doesn't believe being trans exists or going into that care environment is harmful to that person, that can be scary, that can lead to direct harm to them.  And that's awful. So I think making sure that we have communities that feel supported in the care that they're getting and feel accepted and welcomed in the environment is really important. Again, I'm just going to reiterate, it's such an important but also feels loaded topic and I'm happy that we're having this conversation and exploring and learning from you. How do you feel that this influences your craft and your practice? What are you trying to do on a day to day to remove that harm and to create more equality within the system? And I can imagine that it might be big things, but it's maybe also very small things. I'm really curious. Yeah, my favorite thing is actually the small things. So because it's just easier to digest. So anytime we're kind of talking about a user story, I try and use a name that is kind of not European centric. So I used one that was David, another one, it's Yacenia or whatever. I try and choose a name that is different than what the standard would be, which is called this person Bob. And I think that's important. I think that's important because we all know who Bob is. Bob is a straight white male who's kind of middle to upper income. Like we know who Bob is. And Bob needs to be designed for two. I love Bob. I know many Bob's. They're great. But I want David to be designed for as well. I want David to feel included. And I think one of the things for design is we talk about kind of one size fits all. And a lot of people grow up knowing that they're not included in that all. If you're too fat, then you're not included when they say one size fits all. If you're a different religion than the group is talking about, then you're not included. There's so many different ways for if you have a disability. And so one of the small ways that I counteract that is by just introducing that small thing of a name change. Yeah. And it's so, you said one size fits all. I'm not sure if I'm seeing that in the design practice as in we're advocating for something like completely different. We're advocating for empathy and trying to understand the needs, desires, fears, behaviors of people and advocating to design for the person. But apparently it's not working well enough. Or is it that designers just haven't trickled into the right areas of the system? Yeah, I don't know. I think we had this industrial kind of revolution where we started to crank out manufacturing lines where it was really trying how do we make the most of these things that look exactly the same that can serve the largest amount of people. And it made sense. It saved money and it got more things out to more people. And I think now we're in a different revolution where we are trying to account for different people's needs and interests. What's the biggest objection you hear when you share this story and this vision and your approach? I would say the biggest objection is avoiding it. Yeah, for the most part, no one wants to be harmful. I'm not going to say in a room, hey, let's do this thing that's less harmful and someone say no to it. I would say in my career in the past, I would say the biggest hurdle is just being the first person to bring it up. And for me, often, I was the youngest in the room. I was the darkest skin in the room. And so for me to have to come from a place of discomfort to say, hey, maybe we can do things a little different, that was really challenging. So for me now as I progress in my career and in my own skill set and in my company, I'm less hesitant to be the one to voice the concern. And I also, I think the industry as a whole is stepping up more. So I'm not the only one in the room saying that. But it's an awkward topic to talk about. And it's hard to know what the right thing to do is. And so I think in general, people try to avoid it and not think about it. It makes things more complicated. It reflects reality in a better sense, but people in general try to avoid things that make things more complicated. Another thing is it can be slower as well. I would say that's another big hurdle is that it's more difficult. You have to go outside of the normal practices that you're already using. So you're having to learn a new thing, you're having to focus. If you're just trying to do research recruiting, it's really easy to, for example, speak to folks that are elderly because they're retired and they have more time. They can talk to you during working hours. They're a really easy group to recruit to interview. Try to talk to a single mom that that's going to be a lot more difficult. Who's working and like, it's just harder to find time for them. And it's harder to do it in a more equitable way. So there's some practical differences where it's just more difficult and more, more slow that come into play as well. But and it's, I think what I mentioned, it's learning a new skill. So as we learn more about accessibility design, that's a different discipline than I learned in school. I didn't learn how to design for accessibility. And so it's a whole new skill set to build as well. Yeah. And I guess as an organization, as a company, you have to be in it for the long game and sort of realize that although it might be slower today, in the long run, you're doing not only the people who are serving as servers, that's going to reflect on you as well. But that takes like courage, that takes perseverance. Yeah, yeah, leadership, that's, that's probably the things a lot of organizations, unfortunately lack. Yeah, that's and that's what's been great for me at Headspaces that I found all of those things. It's been one of these standout places in my career where I have all of that behind me. The leadership wants more of it, they bring it up. They, you know, when I bring it up, they don't feel awkward and try to avoid it. They're, yes, let's, yes, let's do that. Or, you know, they're bringing it to the table themselves. I think the company as a whole, where it's a wellness company, where we're all in it to try and make a better world. And so it's really a supportive environment where it's, it's pretty fantastic that we're all intentional in what we do, and we all bring it in our own different ways and in our own different roles. And I haven't, I haven't had that in most of my, my past companies. I think Headspace is going to get a lot of applications after this episode from the Serbs design community. So if you're hiring, I think, I think you were hiring quite recently. I was, I was hiring an intern. We, we selected one. They're fantastic. Please don't DM me for an internship. I got, I got plenty of those. But yeah, that's actually been a really pleasant surprise is seeing through our application, seeing how service design has grown. Because, like I said, when I graduated, I barely even knew what it was. And now, yeah, we get 200 or 300 applications of people wanting to be an intern. It's really, it's really exciting to see the talent that's out there.  I worked on a project. I'm, I'm not struggling to find the project. I'm struggling to figure out how I can talk about it publicly. I worked on a project where we were specifically focused on how do we create mental health care that's targeted at Black men? And how do we learn more specifically what their interests are, what their needs are, what their hurdles are? And it was, it was really fantastic. And excuse me, it, I thought it would be really interesting to have that be focused on, on my actual demographic. And that was fun, honestly. I can't lie. That was really cool. But what was more cool than that was really just making someone feel seen. So we created a thing and we tested it. And at the end of the test, the person said, you know, this is, this is really amazing. This is, it feels like it's for me. I mean, it's for everybody. But when people say it's made for everybody, usually that doesn't include us. And you know what I mean. And I did know what he mean, what he meant. I've, I've experienced that personally over and over and over again. And it felt so amazing to be able to create something with a team of other folks that helped someone feel seen in that way that I, that I'm, I want to feel seen by the products that I use. I want to feel seen by the services that I use. And it was amazing to be able to create that for someone. It's, thank you for sharing publicly. That's, and we need those inspirations. And in some ways, I don't know how to express this, but sometimes it's, it's a disadvantage for me because I, I don't recall actively seeing services or products where I feel, okay, this isn't designed for me. Like, sure, I don't know if we look at gender, like I, that I can probably name a few services that aren't for me, but I, I don't recall moments where I've been actively on the other side and probably experience the thing that a lot of minorities in general experience. So yeah, that's one thing that might help. Sometimes it can help to think of the inverse, think of, of times when you have feel seen because I think those are the times when it stands out to me. So there was one time I was listening to a podcast and I was just kind of in the car just cruising. I'm old. So I listened to NPR while I'm driving. It's whatever. It's fine. I accept it. It's fine. So I'm used to the normal NPR intro and there was a different one.  And my ears were popped off. That's how I talk. They didn't say it all began when this thing, you know, they were just talking to me how I talk and how I speak to my friends. And that's when I noticed, oh, these other ones aren't made for me because I noticed that this one is. That's a really good point. Yeah. That's a really good, that's a good exercise. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. Pay attention to it in your day to day. And I think there's another important lesson in there, which is I love listening to podcasts. I love NPR, even if it's not designed for me. It doesn't, everything doesn't have to be designed for me for to, for me to enjoy it. I can love lots of things that are targeted at a different person. But it's important to have some things that are.  But the ones that do that strongly resonate, you can pretty easily identify those. And the opposite is true as well. The ones where you sort of definitely feel excluded after hearing the first few words or seeing the symbols or yeah. Yeah. You know what actually is another good example is there every once in a while, there'll be a new movie coming out and they'll they'll cast someone as black who in a book was white or whatever. And the moment people who are used to feeling included feel excluded, they're they notice it so quick. You made a black mermaid? What? What? Because they're so used to everything having them at the center that they can't imagine. You know, I didn't see lots of black mermaids growing up and I was still able to see myself in these characters. And lots of people will be able to see themselves in a black mermaid. And it'll be beautiful and wonderful and it'll it'll challenge their their assumptions. And yeah, it's gonna be great. So you've been on a very interesting journey that hopefully will continue for a long time. What has this learned you about yourself? I would say my my professional journey has been finding comfort in myself. It's been yeah, it's been a really wonderful journey of feeling comfortable being the one challenging the norms feeling comfortable being the only in the room feeling comfortable venturing into this new world of service design where I didn't really know what it was or what it meant. But I know I kind of want to know more about it. And and yeah, I think it's been a journey to figure out what my own voice is and what I like and what I want to focus on and what I want to bring into the world and finding other people that have similar interests and finding community with it. It's it's been a journey and I'm excited to see where it goes. And when you mentioned like finding your voice, what have you learned about your voice? Like, where have you landed upon today? This is gonna be a good therapy session. Can we go for another hour? I've learned. Yeah, I can say I'm gonna say this publicly too. I've learned that I'm exceptional. And I grew up in an environment where standing out even for good ways did not feel good to me. And so now I'm at a point in my career where I'm I'm standing out in different ways on doing things like this. I'm getting promoted at work. And it feels very strange, honestly, standing out and being exceptional and being being invited into rooms that I didn't even know existed. It's it's been difficult. And so standing in that and kind of owning my own skill, my own talent, my own unique perspective, and owning that I have a voice and that it is important and that it should be shared and that people want it to be shared has has been it's been hard. It's been great. But it's been hard. And so I think the more that I perfect my craft of service design, and the more that I am seen in spaces like this, and the more that I'm talking about these things publicly, the more I have to check myself and say, yes, you should be the one doing that podcast. Yes, you should be the one hiring these folks. And yes, you should be doing this. It's and this this comes back almost in every conversation. But it's the imposter syndrome is right around the corner always and owning your role owning who you are living up to your full potential, like all these things are super scary. But like there is no alternative. Yeah. And for me, it came in embracing that I am an imposter. I'm not supposed to be here. This system is not designed for me to be here. And I'm here anyway, because I'm great. And that feels that feels cool. That feels nice to step into and to recognize. I feel like an imposter because I am and that's okay. And but I'm here. So I will have so many good titles for this episode that will be hard to choose. If we if we sort of extend the trajectory that you're on and this topic of creating an equitable healthcare system in the ideal scenario, where are we in five years? What has happened that isn't here today yet? Well, I would say some very practical things. There are more black, brown, queer, disabled. The list goes on doctors, therapists, nurses. There's just more of us in the industry and in my roles to in service design in the tech field. Everywhere. There's just more of us. So creating a pipeline for more of us to be in the industry. And there's meaningful change in outcomes and meaningful change in approaches to make sure that they I see companies like folks health care that's health care specifically targeted at trans and queer folks. And I want more of that. I want health care to be designed for the people that it's meant to serve and specifically tailoring to those needs. And I want more of that. So that's that's what I would say there's more often five years. More people more groups feel represented and feel hurt, feel seen and less people feel scared, harmed. Yeah. Yeah. And companies are less afraid to talk about it too. Maybe that's the other side.  That is that is great. Fantastic. That doesn't that thing doesn't need to benefit me for it to be a wonderful thing to bring into the world. Yes, please do more. And that's I think the sort of the underlying thing theme that I'm getting out of here is there needs to be a needs to be more diversity in sort of the offers presented to the world that different people have options, right? If you just have one option that is going to be designed for the majority by default, like if you if you are a commercial company that's going to be designed for the people with the most money, where there's the biggest group and you want options, you want diversity and give people the ability to choose what fits them. Yep. That's it. Personalization. That's the that's the ultimate promise of technology. That's what all of the companies like mine talk about is personalization, personalization, personalization. And so, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it all the way. Let's actually tailor it to the needs of the people. If somebody listens to this episode in three or five years, who knows? What do you hope is the one thing that they will take out of this? I hope that they say, wow, I didn't know it was that bad for specifically for the maternal health of people like my wife. I hope they say I hope that's a memory. I hope that statistic is a memory. One other question I have, and we're sort of heading towards the wrap up of our conversation, but I'm assuming that you also have questions. Probably many. What are the questions on your mind right now that maybe the community, the people who are listening to this episode could pitch in, think about, reflect upon? How do we do it better, I guess, is a question. How do we come together in smarter ways? Like I mentioned earlier, for me, finding community amongst designers has been something that's really helped me personally. How do we facilitate that in useful ways? We all have the Slack groups, we have the conferences, there's lots of things going on. For me as an introvert, they don't work that well. It's not something that I don't really want to go to a conference if I'm being honest with myself. How do we build that community in a more natural way? That accounts for the introverts of the world. I want to hang out too, just not as often. Well, not go into that topic, but I have some ideas about community building for introverts, for sure. People who have been following the channel know what I mean. Is there anything that you feel we should have addressed that we haven't touched upon so far? This is not the conversation I intended to have in the most wonderful way. Yeah, it was fantastic. No, I think we went where we went, and it's beautiful. That's how the time process sometimes goes. Thank you for being open. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for being vulnerable. I think these are the stories that we need, that we need to hear rather than the polished, I don't know, perfect examples. Thanks again for being open and coming on and addressing this topic. Thanks for inviting me, and thanks for you being open and vulnerable and asking the questions. I can tell you it takes as much vulnerability to ask the questions as they answer them, so thanks for creating space for it. Do you have a tip for us how to make our design practice more inclusive? Leave a comment down below and let's learn from each other. It was a real privilege to have Jaren here on the show today. If we want to further mature our practice, we need to address its inherent flaws, and intentionally causing harm in excluding people is certainly one of them. Finally, if you enjoyed the conversation, please click the like button if you haven't done so already. This lets me know that we're on the right track by addressing topics like this. My name is Marc Fontaine and I want to thank you for spending a small part of your day with me. It was an absolute honor. Please keep making a positive impact, and I look forward to seeing you very soon in the next video.


What's going on guys, it's your boy DPJ here today with another ARC video and today I bring you another episode of five amazing mutations but before we get into the video if you guys do enjoy these ARC videos, hitting that like button is much much appreciated. Also if you guys play on Xbox and you have your very own amazing looking mutated dino and want to be featured in a video, hit me up on Twitter, my Twitter is linked in the video description or it's at DPJSC08 and you might be featured you just never know. Today I bring you five amazing mutations I currently own and in at number five you may have seen on a video, a previous video because I made a video about these bad boys where I made a video about the one bad boy.  Now the mutations obviously do the green colour and this is my bad boy right here, this is the original one I got.   Now currently I ain't really looking to trade these but if you do play our next box and you have something amazing to offer for these the ones I'm trading or the ones I will trade will be on levels so you can put your own levels into them. If you've got something amazing I'm looking for quite honestly I'm looking for giga eggs, third giga eggs, don't have to be amazing stats I just want mutations colour wise and you'll see one of our very own mutated gigas in this video as well but yeah hit me up on twitter and probably we'll be able to work out a trade who knows but yes at number five it is amazing green mutated apes.


What's the word, y'all? I think we can all agree that being a fan of a sports organization is extremely stressful. I low key envy the people that follow the game of basketball that love the game of the NBA and don't have a favorite team. Because I just know their quality of life is so much better. Like my favorite team, the Chicago Bulls, have been in a rebuild for like five years now. And you would think that since I knew going into these seasons after we traded Jimmy Butler that was the start of the rebuild, you would think that I wouldn't be stressed at all. Because at the end of the day, losing games is good, right? Nah, I was still extremely stressed. So stressed that there was a period of time, I think two seasons ago, when my profile picture on Twitter was a picture of me with a paper bag over my head because I was ashamed to be a Bulls fan. I ain't walked back on my fandom though. Don't think that was the case. And now that we are better, now that we should be a playoff team, I can just imagine that this is about to be the most stressful season of my adult life. You know what I'm saying? Like when the Bulls were good, when the dare-grows era, I was like in high school. Like of course I wanted to see them win, but I wasn't like crazy. Now at 24 going on 25, if them boys right now, Zach Levine, DeMonde Rose, and Lonzo Balm, Nikola Vucevich, and Patrick Williams don't succeed. Yeah, I'm gonna be highly, highly stressed. But the reason I'm talking about that today is because I was browsed through Reddit late tonight and I solved this post. The creator of this post has so much karma. So much karma, shout out to him. I mean, hey, you got me to talk about something today, so shout out to him. In the NBA, the 76ers was listed as a team with the most stressed fans. Oh yeah, they conducted an entire study about the stress levels of each fan base. In order to conduct the research, Bet US pulled 100,000 tweets and forums for each team and ran them through a tool called 10 strength to determine the level of stress and relaxation. Tensions are high for sports fans when it comes to the biggest games in the league and Reddit and Twitter are safe spaces for them to let off some steam the website reads. Loki, you could have contributed to this study and not even known it. Legitimately, I've made some Reddit posts, comments. I made a lot of Twitter posts and comments as a Bulls fan about my dismay. So Loki, you could have been a part of this study, all right? I just thought this was just extremely, extremely interesting to see the ranking of the stress levels. And I wanna try to look at some of the top teams in the tournament.  And if this was conducted between the end of the playoffs and today, it makes a lot of sense that the 76ers are number one considering everything that's going on. I made an entire video about the 76ers stress and stuff. You know what I'm saying? If you wanna take that out, then you got the boss of Celtics, which is interesting. I think just in general, Celtics fans are just on edge no matter what. I feel like in some videos, I've said something negative about a Celtics player or somebody in the front office, then he ain't negatively and Celtics fans becoming on my throat. They just always on edge. It seems like the Cavs is one that's interesting because they've been, maybe they're stressed because if LeBron's not on their team, they don't, nevermind. Heat fans make sense. You went from the NBA finals to the first round elimination. Clippers, yeah. I mean, the Clippers put a huge target on their back a few years ago when they teamed up and haven't fulfilled those big shoes. The Atlanta Hawks being here is kind of weird because I wouldn't expect them to be extremely stressed, especially after what they just went through as being a team and nobody expected to make a run and then they made a run. The Pistons, the Suns are tied at 24% okay? I mean, I can, again, it doesn't tell you exactly when they started to compile these tweets. So I can see Suns fan being stressed during the NBA finals. If that's when things were going on, I don't really know. At the bottom though, I will link everything in the description if you want to take and deeper dive into this. At the bottom though, do you want to guess what organization fans are the least stressed in the moment? It's the Bulls. What? I think we low key stressed.  But I mean, again, this could partially be because the Bulls have been so bad for so long. I think a lot of Bulls fans are just like, whatever happens happens at this point. So we're not extremely stressed and we're like on a tier of our own at 16%. And then the Spurs at 18%, Trailblazers, Pacers, Jazz, just a very overall interesting study. I wish that they did something deeper than that where they picked what they deemed to be the most stressed tweet. Just the one, the one person that was the most stressed. But they also did the same thing for football and I don't know football. So I can tell you why the Rams would be stressed or the Saints would be stressed or why the Texans wouldn't be stressed. I couldn't tell you that. So my apologies in the world of baseball, Mets fans, this man, white socks. Well, I guess we have some expectations this year. Mets fans make sense right now because the Mets can't hit. But that's for another video or another channel, link is in the description. This magic fans say you can't be stressed when you only feel numb. Magic fans are zen, all 12 of them. It's funny. Not saying that I agree that it's only 12.  One dude left. He ain't down. He went to the Windy city, baby. He's seeing red because he's abusive at state. I love to see it. 76er fans said I want to know who are the 70% that aren't stressed. Very valid point. And then a nicer bottle. Sometimes Reddit can be fun and it can be okay. A lot of times it's not. But that's 30% of tweets. We finished first in the East last year and 30% of our tweets were still stressed. That's incredible. He said, I can't imagine what the number was during the folks year. Oh, yeah, that's kinda, that's true.  An entire list of why 76er fans are stressed. Marquel folks forgot how to shoe. Kailangelo's bird, I low key forgot about that. The shot, they're referring to Kawhi Leonard's shot. Tobias Harris, sixth largest in history and Al Horford's contract. Sixth largest in history, still crazy. Brett Brown's coaching. Jimmy Butler for Josh Richardson. Yeah, that happened. Injuries in general. Brett Brown's coaching for the second town. Doc Rivers coaching and Ben Simmons refusing to shoe. Lot of stressors and Philly fandom. And to think this is just basketball, they still have to worry about the Eagles too. I don't know anything about the Eagles. And somebody added number 11. Every time Embiid falls, our heart skips a beat. As you can see, the Trailblazers are 28th on the list and that was surprising to some people. I think most of them are okay with the fact that Dane might be gone. So they're just going to enjoy Dane, why they still got him.  But he's a good career, that's a very good point. Why be stressed over something like that when he just feels like it's inevitable? Anyway, I just thought this was interesting as a little one-off video where we do more stuff like this in the future. I don't really know. I'm just having a ball talking about hoops and things related to hoops. If you enjoyed it, leave it a like and I'll put everything in the description for you to go check out these graphs and stuff too.


Alright, so I just finished reading Children of Blood and Bone.  So I was thinking that there must be something about it that's like different or unique, or that makes it so terrible or so good that I just have to check it out, and it's not. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. It's very rare for me to come across something that I read that has absolutely nothing original in it, but Children of Blood and Bone is like that. Now, let's not say it's the worst thing I've ever read, because it's not, and, you know, obviously I'll get into a little more detail on that, but it's just... I've seen everything here before. Like, if you have read any young adult fantasy ever, you have read Children of Blood and Bone. There is a main character who's a teenage girl, who has some sort of special magical powers, and she incites a rebellion against an oppressive regime. Or, rather, I shouldn't say she incites a rebellion so much as she is fighting against it herself. Like, this one doesn't really have an organized revolution the way a lot of others did. And the main character girl, her name is Xaeli, also runs into a couple of other people who are POV characters in the book and who are part of the oppressive regime. And they make Xaeli realize that, oh, maybe I shouldn't judge these people so harshly, because, you know, I know they benefit from the suffering of me and my people, but they're kind of nice. Their dad was mean to them, and it... I mean, there's just not anything here that I haven't seen before. Now, again, it's really not the worst book ever. I think there's a solid 10-15% that I think is genuinely pretty good. Like, uh, mostly at the beginning when we're getting introduced to the world and everything, which I thought was neat, and then there's one or two action scenes sprinkled out that I also thought was pretty good.   And honestly, it's only boring because I couldn't get into it. Like, I've seen this before so many times and I just didn't really connect with the characters. They didn't click with me. If you are someone who did like the characters or you haven't read this sort of thing before, I think you would find it less boring because the plot is structured fairly well, I think. I think there's usually something interesting happening, and it suffers a lot from being split into three POVs because, look, I've said it before, I'll say it again. They don't feel different from one another. They all feel kind of the same. It's annoying, and it's even worse in my case because I listen to it as an audiobook, and they had the same narrator narrating all three. Like, at the very least, they should have had a man to do Enan's parts because it was weird having a woman's voice describe him. It was just odd, okay? But I really don't think that this book is too long or too short for the story it's trying to tell. Like, it is a decent length for what it's trying to do. I think, I'm not gonna say it's the perfect length, but because it's hard for me to judge. Again, I wasn't into it, but if I was into it, I might say, yeah, this was the perfect length. I also liked that this takes place in a world that's inspired by West Africa and West African mythology rather than medieval Europe, so, I mean, it's something at least a little bit different.  The main area where this book really falls apart, though, are the characters. Now, I think Xaeli, the one who is like, not exactly the chosen one, but kind of the chosen one who, again, doesn't exactly lead the rebellion, but kind of leads the rebellion. I think she's okay. Like, I do feel some sympathy for her because she's had to suffer for years and she's lost members of her family and she really wants vengeance and all that. Again, nothing new here, absolutely nothing you haven't seen before, but I think that she is the most sympathetic of the three. And then we have Amari and Inan. Now, Amari and Inan are siblings, their brother and sister, and they're the children of the king. But Inan is actually supposed to, he's the heir. He's going to become king after his father dies and look, both of them kind of sort of work with Xaeli for a while. And actually, you know what, from this point forward, I think I'm just gonna have to do spoilers because it's very difficult to talk about this without spoiling things. So overall verdict, it's kind of mediocre. I think that it really fails to deliver at some of the themes it's trying to deliver, but it's not the absolute worst thing I've ever read. So I think if you're looking for something exactly like this in this genre, then you might enjoy it. Everyone else, just stay far away. It's boring. Now, spoiler stuff, Amari and Inan basically get wrapped up in this whole thing with Xaeli and long story short, they find a way to bring magic back because the people that Xaeli is a member of, their ethnic group I guess you'd call it, are called the Diviners, and they're the only ones who can use magic. And somehow years ago the king was able to destroy magic and make it so people couldn't use it anymore, and Xaeli and Amari find a way to bring it back. And Inan also finds out, oh hey, I can use magic somehow because I don't know the rules are never made as clear as they could be. Like there's some that are a little more solid, but they're just not that great. And anyways, Amari, I'll just say right now does wind up working with Xaeli the whole way through. She's kind of whiny about it for a while, but she does stick with her once the chips are down. Okay, I'm not going to side with my dad here. I'm siding with you. Let's do this. Inan is much more annoying because, again, he grew up in a privileged position. He grew up in immense wealth and with immense power, and the current system is going to make him king. It's going to benefit him immensely, and throughout most of the book it seems like he's struggling with his desire to please his father, his desire to keep things as they are, and his desire to be a good person. Because as he's chasing after Xaeli and them to try and stop them from bringing magic back, he's realizing, man, maybe we are kind of doing terrible things here, I don't know. And so it seems like he's switching sides. And he kind of does at one point, but then he immediately switches back because he's like, okay, you know what? Magic is evil. My father is right. We can't let these people have power. Only I'm allowed to have power. Only we're allowed to have power. And the book goes so far out of its way to try and make him sympathetic, but I just wanted to kick his goddamn teeth in. Dude, stop whining about how mean your dad was being to you. Open your eyes. Realize that this is benefiting you. Like, if he had just acknowledged that, you know what? If I get rid of this, then I'm probably not going to be a prince anymore. I'm not going to be able to be a king. And I don't want that, so whatever. I'm just going to kill people. Like, he wouldn't be a hero in that case. He'd be a villain. He certainly would be. But at least he would be a more sympathetic, a more interesting character and he wouldn't be likable, but he would be very hateable. You know, and that's just as good when it's coming from villains.  Like Dolores Umbridge is one of the best examples of that. Like, she doesn't have complex reasons for doing what she's doing or anything.  I'm having trouble talking today, but she's one of the most memorable villains that has come out in decades, I think. Because she's just so evil that you hate her a lot and I think Inan had potential to be that, but he just never lived up to that. And him and his father having this like weird hatred of magic kind of misses the point of what oppression is like. Like, it's usually not done out of hatred, it's done out of apathy. And it kind of seemed like that's what they were doing at first because they mentioned how like the taxes on diviners are super high and if they can't pay them then they get essentially sold off as slaves and so you understand like okay the conquerors are greatly benefiting from this arrangement. So it makes sense why they would do this. They don't hate them necessarily, they just don't care about them. And it really misses the mark when it tries to make it seem like no we must wipe out magic because grrr.  It's just, it just doesn't work on any level. And it's, again, they're trying to make Inan sympathetic when it's just impossible for me to feel sympathetic towards him. Now Amari is better, but she's just a little too similar of a character for either of them to really stand out that much. Like the thing is Amari is basically the same as Inan. Like, again, grew up privileged, is upset that their dad was mean to them. Like, you know, that's totally the same as having your entire family murdered, right? But yeah, their dad was mean to them, so she's kind of sad about that and then she winds up having to run off because she found a way to restore magic and she decides she wants to help because she decides, she basically went in the opposite direction as Inan. Like, she decides, you know what, I'm not going to work for my dad anymore I'm going to help the Diviners. Which is, like the thing is, both of those could be interesting directions to take that character because they have essentially the same setup. But the fact that we have to spend two thirds of the book with them and it's split up, it just, neither of them really has the opportunity to do so. So I think had they been combined into one character and they just chose one direction to go in, then I think that could have been really neat. But as it stands, it's just some missed potential. The actual writing here is fine, I think. Like I said, there's one or two action scenes which I did really like. There's a scene in an arena where they're having to fight a bunch of people and Xaeli can raise the souls of the dead so she raises the souls of everyone who's died in the arena and then the souls go nuts and start killing people. That scene I actually thought was really cool. I really enjoyed that. But I mean, the other action scenes were mostly like, oh, that's kind of good. So I'll give a credit for that. Sometimes I read books where the action scenes are genuinely just really bad and it's hard to tell what's going on. But in this case, the only real problem is that magic is not super well-defined. Sometimes it just pops up and characters just sort of know how to use it. It's like I threw fireballs. And I threw lightning and stuff like that. And sure, that's neat in combat, but like how exactly do you use it? And it's mostly just, oh, I set an incantation and that's about it. So it's a little too simple and too easy for them to use it, which kind of makes them all seem like experts the instant they get their magic, which is, you know, disappointing. And it robs us of the ability to learn anything about the way it works, which, you know me, I'm a sucker for hard magic systems. I just think they're really neat. And even without that, we just... magic can really only be used for combat in this world, you know? Or combat and healing, I should say, but like there's never really an attempt to try and integrate it into society or show how it used to be integrated into society because remember it's been gone for a while. And yeah, I don't think I have much else to say. Like you all know this type of story. If you're interested in the premise, then check it out. Again, I'll give a credit that is at least taking place in a different setting than it usually does, which is neat.  But other than that, I just don't think there's really anything here for you if you're looking for anything different. And that's about it, bye. You guys, you are seriously the best. And thanks again for watching. If you want to get your name on here, then consider donating to my page. We also have other perks that you can have access to. And if you don't want to do that, then simply rating the video, commenting on it, subscribing to my channel, all that stuff I'm supposed to say at the end here. That is a huge help. Anyways, bye.


Welcome to the August edition of Cornerstone Connect. We have a very special program planned just for you. Pastor Gary Mitrick shares with us how prayer is not only a powerful tool in our lives, but a weapon of our warfare as well. And then missionaries Doug and Deb Tunney share how Cornerstone Network and you aid in the impact they have in the city of brotherly love. And Crystal Tillman joins me to invite you to be a part of CTVN's 21 day prayer journey. All that and more coming up next. Amanda Brocker, your host for Cornerstone Connect. And we're so glad you've joined us for this month's edition. And I just have a quick question for you. I need to know, have you received your newsletter in the mail? We love to stay connected. So please give us a call at<PHONE_NUMBER> or go to ctvn.org and make sure you sign up to receive our newsletter. Well, it's an exciting time. And we just thank you during the summer that there are some of you who are writing in to let us know your thoughts and we greatly appreciate it. This letter comes from, let me see, Tom and Marge. We truly enjoy your show origins. The episodes are so clearly presented by your experts. They make a convincing case for the universe in all of life being created by God and not through the big bang theory or evolution. This particular episode is fascinating from the standpoint of other civilizations using the Bible stories in their communications. Wow, I can't wait to share this DVD. Just goes to show how God's word will be known to all for his glory. Thanks so much and keep the episodes coming. Well, we bless you, Tom and Marge. Thank you so much for writing in. It is so important that we know that our making was not just evolved or appeared or anyhow, big bang, what? It takes more faith to believe that than to believe in a design, divine designer who made us and molded us for purpose. And this is from another friend. She said, hello, just recently, I saw your station with at home with Arlene who reminded me of my mom. I watched her every day along with many others. God bless you all for your time. Thank you so much for writing in. We're all loving what Joe Ligo's done with at home with Arlene. And she really just does make us feel all at home. This comes from Carol. She said, thank you for your programs. I loved the movie Pilgrims Progress. My favorite shows are Origins, Hard Questions, The 700 Club and Superbook. Please pray for good health for my family and God bless you. Well, Carol, we do pray for your family and for your health.   And this comes from Myring, who's an Elizabeth PA. She said, dear Pastor Gary Mitrick, I just had to write and share the wonderful blessing I received during your Pentecost broadcast. I watched you on channel five, Cornerstone. I am an 80-year-old widow. When I was watching one of your programs on Pentecost, I am on a limited income, but I still was led by God to give a sacrificial gift of $50. A week later, I received a letter in the mail about a payout of $800 from a settlement with my husband's workplace by August 1st. Praise God. He is so loving and kind. I just kept praising God for the gift. God provides and watches over us widows. I love him so much. He also provided a way for my sins to be forgiven through his beloved son, Jesus Christ. I have been a Christian for many years now since childhood. Thank you for your wonderful programs. They're bringing peace and happiness to my soul. Myring, thank you so much for writing into us. And that's why we exist, to be present for you. And we could not do this apart from our faithful donors, just like yourself. So just know how grateful we are to be present and in people's life, always giving them hope. Well, coming up next, we have Pastor Gary as he shares with us how prayer, it's not only a powerful tool in our lives, but it is a weapon of warfare as well. Stay tuned. Well, I'm so honored to be sitting with Pastor Gary Mitrick, the chairman of the board here for many years at Cornerstone Television. And Pastor Gary, today we get to talk all about the power of prayer because Cornerstone Television is starting a 21 day prayer challenge on August 29th. And we're just so excited to have you share from your personal experience about the power of prayer. Why should we pray? That is one of my favorite, favorite subjects, Anna. I believe everything God does in the earth, he does in answer to somebody's prayer. Prayer is such a powerful, powerful gift and tool that the Lord has given to us. First of all, it gives us the ability to communicate. Think about that. We get to talk to the Father in Jesus Christ's name. When we use the name of Jesus, it's like the doors are open, we have access and it gets us into His presence. You know, a while ago this past year, I started to get up, the Lord started to get me up at two o'clock every morning. I get up two o'clock, I don't need an alarm clock.  Yeah, I believe that. And so you talk about when you're there, when you're in the presence of the Lord and you're able to communicate with Him how our prayers are powerful and effective. Like the word talks about the prayers of the righteous being powerful. That's right. Well, there's a lot of different kinds of prayer. You know, there's warfare prayers. I mean, we're in a battle against the enemy. We have an adversary, the devil, who goes about as a roaring lion. And we need to resist him. We need to battle against him. Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against principalities, powers, the rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in high and heavenly places. And then, you know, for a lot of people, maybe they're not even familiar with spiritual warfare kinds of prayers, but you know, we have authority. We have power in our prayers to shatter strongholds. Jesus said, whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven. So I love the translation that says, whatever you permit shall be permitted. Whatever you forbid shall be forbidden. And I always tell people, don't complain about what you permit. It's truly incredible to think about the authority that Christ has given us to come boldly to the throne of God in prayer. Can you just speak to that person who maybe just they desire a richer prayer life. They're not sure they're ready to get up at 2 a.m. and pray for hours, but how does someone begin to enter into the presence of God and talk to him? Well, I love the word because the Bible is filled with a lot of great prayers. Like go, go to Ephesians chapter three versus 14 down through 21. It's a prayer. Just, you know, start by maybe just quoting the word, praying the word. The Bible says that the word when it's prayed will not return void, but it's going to accomplish what you send it to perform. And I always tell people, God's will is in his word. You know, I don't have to pray, Lord heal me if it be your will. I know the Bible says at the same time, he took my sins, he took my sicknesses and diseases. So I believe the key, if you want to be a better prayer, Jesus was, he spent hours, he spent nights in prayer. You know, the disciples would go get something to eat. Jesus would go up on the mountain to spend the night with his father in prayer.  And you know, sometimes prayer is that you doing all the talking. It's just getting quiet before the Lord and letting him speak to your spirit as well. I love that. And that starts another question then. How do we hear from God? How do we discern his voice? It takes practice, it takes practice like anything. But I believe that the more you got to be still, sometimes it's not that God isn't speaking, it's you got to quiet all the other voices that sometimes are overshadowing God's voice because his voice, the Bible says is a still small voice. And so sometimes you just got to quiet yourself and you know, you could get silent, but your mind is still going, going, going, going, going, going, going. And sometimes it just takes discipline. It takes just, you know, practice to get before the Lord, get quiet in his presence. Sometimes I just begin with some praise and worship because that's where he lives. He lives in the praises of his people, get in his presence, get quiet before him. And sometimes it'll be an impression. It'll be a thought you'll feel or hear. You may not hear this audible voice. I've never heard God's audible voice, but I get an impression in my spirit and then you kind of just got to heed your hunches, go with what you feel those impressions are. Yeah, so in the final 45 seconds, can you encourage the person about the faithfulness of God to his word and his promises? Well, I would encourage you as Cornerstone Television is putting a 21 day prayer challenge out there. Why don't you get involved in it? That's a great way, I believe, to just enhance your prayer life. And you'll be praying for Cornerstone Television, but then many, many others will be praying for you. And again, get into his presence, get into his word, and just get a hold of the promises of God and pray the word because the word works. Amen. Well, Pastor Gary, thank you so much for sharing your heart about prayer. And we're just so excited to have you join along with us. You are our Cornerstone Television family. We want to pray with you and walk through this 21 day journey along with you. So check us out online, call us, we'll get you all the information you need to join along and get into God's presence. We're so thankful to have Crystal Tillman today on Cornerstone Connect. So Crystal, tell us about this event that we are planning for our Cornerstone family and it has to do with prayer. Absolutely, we're so excited for our 21 day prayer journey, 21 days of walking in God's power, God's presence and God's purpose. So we're looking at starting August 29th, going 21 days through September 18th and really getting our viewership family into the presence of God and doing that corporately together. One of the first things I want to encourage our viewers to do, if you could go right now to ctvn.org slash journey, that's where you can find the free download and discover more about this exciting progression. Okay, so what is our purpose? You know, why are we doing this 21 days of prayer? Well, I don't know if you've been watching the news lately, but there's a lot to be anxious and panicked and fearful about. And as I talk to Monica, who works faithfully in our prayer center, I'm finding or she's finding that more people are calling in, saying that they're dealing with anxiety, they're dealing with panic, they're dealing with oppression even, demonic oppression in their households. So we're responding to that and refocusing and resetting on the things of God. So we want our people to understand what the scripture promises us, which is that we can walk in God's power, there's victory in prayer. We can walk in God's presence if we stay in God's word and we commit to time with Him and we can find and discover our purpose in Him as well. So that's part of the purpose. And as they go through this prayer journey and they go to ctvn.org slash journey, they'll find all of the prayer prompts, they'll find action steps, ways to personalize this 21 days to where they are individually. So excited about that. We'll be praying through seven different prayer categories. Okay, and as a person participates, what might it look like personally for them? Well, they may wanna add a different element. So as they go through the download, they'll find a verse, they'll find an action step and they'll find the category for the day. But we also want you to, of course, pray before the Lord and ask, okay, should I be prayer walking with this? Or should I add a journaling element? Or do I wanna drive through my neighborhoods in prayer, bring in a family member or a friend? So those are some of the ways that you can personalize this, customize it, and really make this 21 day prayer journey your own. Yeah, so what would you say for someone who they have a very busy schedule? Is this still doable, like the app? Like what time consumption, what would you say? Absolutely, it's gonna take just five minutes of your day. And one of the ways to make it easy is to follow us on social media. So if you go to our Facebook page at CornerstoneTV, you'll find reminders there. You'll see us praying along with you and it will help you on your journey. You can do it in the car, so it's really easy. And I know oftentimes we get frustrated in prayer because we feel, we see the setbacks. We've tried before, we've tried these challenges before, but we failed or we stopped five days through and it's like, oh no, it was day 21 and I haven't got caught up. But now's a good time to just jump up on that bandwagon and try again. Even before the 21 days, I ask for our Cornerstone family to be in prayer for those who will be joining in that God will give them the time and the motivation to be a part of this. This is so important and I feel like it's another way that we're responding to the needs of the people that God's called Cornerstone to minister to. And all this is made possible because we have donors that are so faithful to support our network and just I love to give that opportunity for you to speak to those people who they're 100% behind us, they're giving on a regular basis and now they're even equipping us for this prayer movement. Absolutely, so we say thank you to you for your ongoing support for all we do at Cornerstone Television, for bringing the Gottlie programs and then for bringing opportunities for campaigns like this to help people find practical ways to get closer to the Lord. One of the things I'm excited about too is our upcoming Hope Today programs. So you wanna stay tuned to Hope Today all the way from that August 29th and September 18th, we're gonna be starting with a special program and ending with a live program on September 18th at 8 p.m. So a special opportunity to join in through prayer, through praise and worship with us, so don't miss it. That's right, well, you've heard the dates, so make sure that you save that date, tell us again what it is. August 29th through September 18th, September 18th is that special closing program. Okay, and again, on their smartphone, tell us one more time, what was that? So we want you to go to ctvn.org slash journey, sign up, get the free download, let us know that you're committed to this, that you wanna be a part, begin to grab your family members to be involved, follow us on social media at Cornerstone TV. We'll probably even post some of them on our YouTube page which is slash cornerstone television, and so there's many ways, we'll send you reminders, so sign up now. Amen, well, I guess just to prepare for our prayer event, why don't you say a prayer? Absolutely, so dear God, we just thank you for this opportunity to come together as your people. God, we pray that you would give us a heart of commitment to be solid in this 21 days, God. We thank you for helping us to consecrate our hearts ahead of time with repentance and forgiveness, God, so that you would hear our prayers. But God, we pray that we just thank you that we'd recognize your faithfulness in this season to help us walk in power, to help us walk in your presence, and to help us walk in purpose in Jesus name. One of the great things about being involved with Cornerstone television is Cornerstone Cares where we get to partner with so many great ministries and one of the greatest is Youth of the Mission of Philadelphia and Deb and Doug Tunney are with us today to talk about that ministry. Hey guys, welcome and I want to ask you, Doug, right off the bat, tell me about the prayer station ministry because I know that Cornerstone has been able to give money towards prayer stations. Tell me what that is. So 1991, 1992, a friend of mine in New York City, his name is Nick Savoka, came up with the idea of Lord, how do I get to reach people for you? And Lord said, pray for them. He said, I do that all the time, what do you mean? He said, no, let it be the first thing you say is pray for them. So the words are, can I pray for you? That's the first five words. And so then this table was created with a big banner that says prayer station. And we'll show you a picture of that. So that's what it looks like. And so bring the table out to the people, give some Christian books on the table, free hot chocolate or free iced tea, stuff like this and just go for it. And so we did that. And then when the buildings collapsed in 9-11, we had 40 of these set up throughout the city. We ministered to hundreds of thousands of people and we had 3,000 received Christ during that time period. So when I moved to Philadelphia in September of 2019, I said, Philadelphia doesn't know about prayer stations. They don't have any in the city. And so about a year ago, I began to introduce it to the city of Philadelphia and churches can buy them from us from youth of the Mission Philadelphia. We have prayer stations, they can get them from us. And we've trained 37 churches that bought prayer stations. And so we have 47 zip codes. So I want two in each zip code because I want to get the church from the seats to the streets and it's such a, and it's a magnet.  They come because they go, wow, free Christian books, free iced tea. And then you say, can I pray for you? And then after you say that, also I want to share the gospel with you. And they're always wide open to that. It's amazing.  And I'm like, yeah, I just started praying for, it's awesome. It's so good. So Deb, what have you seen in the churches that you've trained like the change that it brings about? Yeah, we belong to a really awesome intercity church. In the first times we visited there, I thought these people are amazing. They're on fire for God. They love God. You can tell some of them have been serving the Lord for 40 years and yet there's a disconnect. They have a burden for the city. They want to make a difference. They don't know how to do it. They don't know what to do. So this was the perfect tool for them. We trained, what did you think? 220 just for that one church. Just one church. And so they began to come, these some older women, sometimes older men, young women, young men. And they experienced the thrill of their salvation from the beginning, right?  And now they're getting to experience that. It changed the whole culture of the church. People stop me all the time and they say, what you're doing? Bring in prayer stations, giving us a way to bring the gospel, change me, change my family. And it gave us an expectation in our church. We're gonna make a difference. We can be an answer to the need of the city. And I think it's essential. It is a tool that ignites and empowers and makes a real difference. And just last week I found a man in the city. He says, Doug, I want to offer you something. I said, what, 50,000 free bibles. Yeah, we have a picture of the fella here. Yeah. He's getting one of the bibles. You see the smile on his face.  He said, you give me a free Bible? I said, well, where are you going? He said, I'm going to see my dad for Father's Day. I said, take one for dad too. He said, nobody in our family has a Bible. And there's stickers when you open it up, there's stickers that if you want comfort, there's a verse for this. If you want ministry of some kind, so all these guides through these bibles, it's just beautiful. And so they're free to us. And so we're gonna give them out all throughout the city. We have 1.4 million. And the idea is that YWAM is gonna come together. The Youth of the Mission, all the YWAM bases in the Northeast is gonna come together in a few months to Philadelphia. And we're gonna distribute those throughout the whole city. That's the idea. That's fantastic. Let me ask you about if a church was seeing this, they say, hey, that's a great ministry. YWAM Pittsburgh can also train them. Of course. YWAM Philadelphia, wherever they happen to be, they can get ahold of your website. They'll probably contact you that way, right? Get through YWAMphilladelphia.org. They can just come to us and they can buy prayer stations. They can get the training through us. It's such a powerful program. I know. And again, there's that thing of, so many of us say, I know that my city needs something. I know my neighborhood needs something, but I just don't know what to do. And I think a lot of people, a lot of churches are in that frame of mind, but here's a perfect way that you can see something transform by a very simple process of just, can I, what's the five words? Can I pray for you? There you go. Simple. So, Dev and Doug, thank you so much for being with us today and take the time to make a difference in your neighborhood. I sure hope you enjoyed our time together. I know I always do. I love learning about what's happening and being on the forefront of everything here at Cornerstone Television. But talking about prayer and it's essential to our everyday life, there were some situations, my family's gone through and I can tell you that those moments that we had to just sit in the presence of God in order to be still and have peace in our mind, in our body, even in our spirit, because things in our household were not going perfect with our kids and it just seemed like, Lord, this is overwhelming. But I can tell you that those moments in our life have helped me to, I look at it like, well as being Doug within my own life of love for my child that was wayward and I can tell you today, those prayers have been answered. We're watching the fruit of those prayers. It didn't happen overnight. It happened over a course of time but I tell you that if you stand on God's word and you go to Him in prayer, God goes into action and He does what only He can do and I had to not be the Holy Spirit in those moments and trying to get my son, persuade him to change but I really had to go to God and let God do that work within His heart and it's been a blessing to our entire household to just see Him flourish with the Lord and growing and wanting more of God and being set free from addiction. But we just thank Jesus for that power in prayer. It truly is a weapon that we can use as a believer and just another instance we had recently happened with our ministry, we needed a new box truck. We had a gas leak. It was like one issue after another. We pick up thousands of pounds of food every month through the dream center to deliver to areas in need and the food bank was like, you can't bring that truck back here anymore because it was just, the problem was too great for their garage to handle and God blessed us with a brand new box truck that we didn't have to go out and buy. That was a miracle but that happened because we went to God in prayer. God knew our need. We didn't know how it was gonna come about but God provided and I can tell you if He does things like this for people like us we're ordinary or for Russ and Norma to open a television station and the 10 years of prayer that went in before this station ever went on air. God will surely move on your behalf and I wanna encourage you, those of you who support us we have a book available by Dr. David Jeremiah this month. It's called Forward and it's discovering God's presence and purpose in your tomorrow for your best gift of continuing to support our station. We would love to put this book in your hands just to help grow your faith and maybe even give you prayer points. You know, as you read and you sit with the Lord every day it is so important and we just want you to know the great love that God has for you individually. It is that love that we've received that we desire to give to those around us that they might come to know Jesus as their Lord and savior and all of this is only made possible by your love and support to our network. Thank you.


What's going on guys welcome to another video if you guys are wondering I'm in the hotel gym if you guys are wondering why I'm in The hotel gym because there's really not too many areas of film. I'm sorry Yeah, I can turn this off hopefully hotel don't sue me on Yeah, that's perfect. I just don't want to sound to be crazy So if you guys are wondering why I'm actually in the hotel gym because there is nowhere to actually film That's a decent outside is so loud. We're like in the middle of the city It is just super bad. So for today's video guys, it is super late at night It's actually late when I'm filming this you guys are watching this literally an hour after I film this so I would like to Say thank you guys for clicking on this video, you know, right when I upload this thing and if you guys are watching it tomorrow This is just a little update video on what went down today on day number one of FLW College Fishing national championship on the Red River in Louisiana, so Today honestly went fairly well. I'm not gonna say it went good It did because it didn't go amazing But it wasn't bad, you know, it was a moderate day and it was a little less than I was expecting You know, I really wanted to eight to ten pound range I have not made a video on the Red River yet where we're actually fishing. It's a super tough fisher I'm gonna be honest with you guys. This is the toughest lake I've ever fished For many of reasons, I'm gonna make a video on the Red River like talking about it because there's a lot and then the reason Why the fish are so small the reason why they're so hard to catch Reason why there's just not as many bass and it's just hard to get in the bite in general I'm gonna make a video over that and explain myself because guys this place is rough. It's a really rough Fishery so pretty much I have some crazy stories for today that I can tell you guys So if you guys are wondering We had about seven pounds today And guess what that with four fish we could not complete. We did not get our fifth fish It's we worked our butts off for that. We had like a limit. We have a limit We had four fish by like ten o'clock or is like 945 we had four fish and just could not execute on one more fish The rest of the day didn't really miss any fish, you know, we fish fairly clean caught a lot of drum And they really tricked us, you know, I really thought we had a big bass on most of the time but We we executed on all the opportunities we had I believe Sean lost the fish, but I believe it was a drum. I don't think it was a bass I don't know if I lost any fish. I did catch a lot of drum No, Sean cut a lot of drum and I'm gonna be posting updates because I have another video coming out Friday It's probably gonna be over the day to update So I just want to talk about what went down today and obviously I'm not gonna spill all the information on what we're doing Just because this is the middle of the tournament. I am uploading this the day That this took place Because day two is tomorrow and we have to bust a big bag tomorrow. So how this works is day one was today Day two is tomorrow and day three is Friday. The only way you can fish day three is if you're in top ten So we are three and a half pounds out of top ten So it's not like it's a fall like we're far from that 14 pounds is leading and then I believe it drops at 13 and then there's like a 12 pound bag and We're just few pounds out of top 10 like it can happen, but we have to get those big bites That's that is literally the only thing we have to get those big bites and we can't you know miss any fish We can't miss any opportunities. We're not to grind it out We're gonna have to make it happen We're gonna put this fish in the boat and we have to have five more like we have to have five unless We just catch a mega bag and once we catch all five pounders We're gonna have to put them all in the boat like we can't play no games and we really need to shoot for I'd say a Minimal ten pounds. I don't even know if that will probably not get us in the top ten Who knows it might I'd say 11 11 and a half would probably get us in top ten if people choke But I can't judge that you know tomorrow's a whole new day You know, I don't know if these people are gonna be consistent I don't even know we're gonna be consistent. So it's one of those deals in this lake is just so rough So I believe you know ideally minimal. I would love to get 10 pounds, which is honestly a really good bag on this lake I know that sounds crazy, but that is a very good bag on this lake 12 pounds would be amazing and I would really like 14 pounds, which is what's leading today. So that's really shooting high But I totally believe it's possible. It's just about finding this big fish And we have yet to catch a fish over two and a half pounds or two and three quarters here So that's that's the only hard part. I have lost officials about three pounds in practice But our two is probably two and a half, but two and three quarters rather than that. I haven't really seen any big fish I haven't seen like any fours any like three and a half's any of that But we're gonna we're gonna grind out tomorrow guys this key story I do want to talk about today because it's pretty interesting. I'm just gonna say this We're locking in to another pool on the river, which I'm gonna explain to more videos about the Red River so we're locking Through the dam and to another side of the river If you guys don't know what that that means I know it's gonna probably be confusing for a lot of you guys We have the dam and then you lock through So what the lock is is you pull your boat in it has a door on each side that closes the water fills up And then you go into the other side or the water goes down to go vice versa Well, we were locking back to head back to the ramp today because we were going to win and We tied up to these guys from UGA really cool dudes. We're talking to them and So the water started to raise so is it gonna raise about rise raise raise rise about 15 foot So as the water is coming up the gates close the water is coming up they're tied to this hydraulic I Honestly don't even know if you call it guys. I've never locked before until I came here But what happens is you tie this little thing and it goes up with the water Well, there's a big old wall and when the wall there's these little cubby holes I don't know what they're for but there's these little cubby holes But I'd say it's about you know four foot wide and it's about three foot deep Well Those cubby holes don't move. It's just part of the wall. It's part of the lock Well, these guys they had their boat tied up to this thing and we were tied to them and With all the current in there it started to shift their boat So their boat kind of started pointing towards the wall as the water is coming up Well in that cubby hole the front of their boat actually pointed into the cubby hole But it actually went in it like they we were talking to them. They weren't paying attention. We weren't paying attention like We're just like doing our thing. Well one of them when they noticed it They're like hey push push the boat off. Well, what was happening was when this water goes up guys It goes up by the foot. I mean the gallons of water skin poured in so it's like coming up Well, it like came up in a heart I mean like a heartbeat you're talking two or three seconds It shot up when it shot up the guys boat because the point of it was in that cubby hole And we're the water's filling up that cubby hole don't move. It's just it's a rock wall and he's already tied to this thing When it shot up his boat got stuck in the cubby hole and it went And so it's already like this his motor is almost out of the water his whole front of his boats locked into this cubby hole and at that point in time I literally thought that these guys were I hate to say it. I really thought these guys were gonna sink the boat a hundred percent or you know even worse they could End up sinking their boat and they could fall into you know the lock and they could get sucked under walk Like this could have led to Some tragic things so like this is very serious like this is it happened so quick it happened in the matter of seconds What happened was the water came up Whole half the boat flooded right away Hold back the boat the prop was barely in the water like I would say halfway and the guy by the driver She was like not knowing what to do and like Instantly like I thought you know crank up the motor Throw that thing in reverse and forward as hard as you can cuz I mean you're going by seconds here Like this is like literally two seconds later like their boat probably would have been something I'm not kidding. I'm not over exaggerating this like I saw this if I had this on GoPro It would have been insane because I was like two foot away from them. I was actually tied up to their boat So he throws it in reverse ramps that thing It shoots out from under it and the boat just floats back up and all this water just pours inside rips the trolling motor like I mean cracks it like when the water went up and he got stuck in that and it shifted the boat like this All you hear just like you could hear the trolling motor literally cracking or it was the front of his bow I don't know what it was, but it all cracked. Well, when that happened when he shot out Like you're supposed to be tied when the lot when the water's filling up because all of this current and all this water moving So literally I told Sean to throw the ropes so Sean threw the rope back in their boat And I had to back up and I was just kind of like Moving around in the lock why all these guys are all tied up You know, I was moving around in the lock kind of freely while this current's pushing me around because because of that whole situation Which was scary like that was probably I'm not gonna lie This is probably one of the top five scariest things that I've ever seen happen with my own two eyes like in front of me Probably top three like I literally thought that I don't like to say it But I literally thought they could I mean they could have died like it was scary And I talked to a few of my buddies that were actually there in the block like when it happened they saw it from a distance and Like they they were saying like my hair is standing up on my back Like it was just crazy like yeah, I can't visually explain it unless you see it And then unless you really know what locking in and going into a lock actually is But geez guys, I'm telling you they were literally probably about two seconds away from sinking their boat And if they sank their boat, you know, they could have you know felt Obviously fell in the water and it could have sucked them underneath because you know The whole thing with it flooding up in the water and all the current I mean there it could have been a lot of bad things that could have happened I really wasn't even concerned about the boat. I was concerned about them I was really getting to the point where I was about telling them to hop on my boat because I was like screw the boat Like who cares about the boat at this point like you guys are about to drown like this boat is gonna go down And I really thought it was gonna happen But it was just a matter of milliseconds that saved it and somehow they got the boat out there yet destroyed a little bit But Jesus guys that that was the highlight of the day That was insane, and I totally wish I had that thing on GoPro If I don't go pro you guys would probably be biting like your teeth like I can't I trust me guys I can't explain it is just a weird crazy feeling, but that was pretty much day one guys So we're sitting pretty solid right now. We need a good bag tomorrow to make top 10 I mean we really need a good bag Overall, I would love to make a top 20, but I really want to make a top 10 Heck I really want to win this thing and for us to win it We're gonna have to bust two big old 15 pound bags So I don't know if that's gonna happen, but we're gonna go out there. We're gonna try our best I'm gonna keep you guys updated if you guys haven't followed me on Instagram Go follow me a kick in the best TV where I post updates update pictures I actually had the picture on there right now I post stories all day long and It's just pretty much YouTube or story of my life on the updates, you know all day long So be sure to go give me a follow Thank you guys so much for the support if you guys enjoyed this little update video Be sure to like the video be sure to comment below on what you guys want to see next Be sure to comment below if you guys want to see a do day to update video on some of the highlights of the day and Me talking about how the day went and also Be sure to subscribe and hit the little bell.


Hi, I'm Dr. Sushal Shantakumar. I'm a consultant shoulder surgeon practicing in Manipal Hospital's Bangalore. Throwing is a complex motion which involves, which puts a lot of stress to the muscles around the shoulder and the ligaments around the shoulder, which is why the athletes who are involved in throwing like baseball pitchers, batminton players, basketball players, volleyball players, cricket bowlers, they're prone to this shoulder injuries. Slap tears, we call it superior labral anterior posterior tears. The top portion of your ligament or what we call labrum in the shoulder will be torn, especially common in cricket bowlers and tennis players. You can have biceps pathology. You can be biceps tendonitis to biceps tears. What happens is due to repetitive throwing can put strain on the biceps tendon, which can lead to inflammation and further partial tear to full tears. You can have rotator cuff tendonitis. You can have rotator cuff tears. Then you can have, there is a condition known as glenohumeral internal rotation defect. So what happens in this? We commonly abbreviate it as GERD, G-I-R-D. Repetitive throwing can loosen the tissues in front. We call it the anterior capsule. On the contrary and tighten the posterior capsule. Loosen the tissues in front and tighten the capsules at the back. So this can cause uneven movement of the shoulder joint leading to pain and restriction of internal rotation. Patient will have typically problems in reaching behind his back. Then we can have instability or you can even have recurrent subluxations and dislocations. Repetitive throwing like I mentioned can cause stretching or even laxity of the tissues. Finally leading to frank tears which can cause dislocations and subluxations in the shoulder joint.