What's up guys we're back with another epic opening in today's video we're going to be opening a majestic red dragon 10 this is going to be pretty awesome a 2010 10 yeah pretty redundant there but we've got some really cool packs in there like start us overdrive the shining darkness we got a secret rare promo majestic red we're also going to open up two of these x saber power ups we got two more of those hopefully we can get something awesome and the giveaway for this video i'll be giving away these three cards all you have to do is like this video be subscribed and let me know your favorite card from the opening or package set whatever you want to do let's start off with the x saber power up by the way i'm going to be announcing the next box break soon so if you want to become a youtube member you will get first access to that box break so if you want to become a tier 2 member check out the join button down below if you're on your phone you're going to need to go in the description click become a member on that link and you'll be able to do it there here we go it's something pretty cool we also are going to be releasing a few things on the site ruxon34.com so keep an eye out for that as well let's see we have x saber full night we got three packs none of them are first edition but that's okay let's see what we can pull here let's start with now let's start with ancient prophecy not sanctuary trying to say ancient sanctuary that would be pretty nice so it's ancient sanctuary but we'll take this here we go can we pull a ghost rare let's do this shark cruiser sword of sparkles hydro pressure cannon this is the one we pulled the error of this sauropod brachian i didn't know what it was called last time because it didn't have a name scary moth very scary here we go starter server drive by the way i'm going to be announcing the 60 subscriber special soon so make sure you guys subscribe for that so we can do it even sooner it's going to be something pretty awesome i'm really excited about inferring necromancer so hopefully you guys can't subscribe we're getting pretty close to about three thousand uh three thousand subs away this gen release of rituals i don't know what i was trying to say there there we go okay ancient prophecy let's see what we can do here we go hope you guys have been enjoying the lives recently they've been pretty fun if you've been on twitch thank you guys for showing up it's been a good time we've had a good time playing dual links ancient leaf and a grab the divine soldier i did get my new desk i got my new monitor but i'm just waiting on my new pc before we can do that so that's gonna be pretty fun next x saber power up we have another x saber full of night then we have these packs we're not opening hidden arsenal we'll save those for later all right let's open these three packs ancient prophecy here we go took out the hidden arsenal because we don't really care about it it's not that good not that interesting there was actually a seven dollar card okay maybe we'll open them we pulled a seven dollar card last time i didn't realize it arm c hunter water hazard pseudo space okay we got a sun pixie sunny pixie i actually was using that in my exodia deck on dual links that's sunny pixie all right yeah let's open up the the hidden arsenal just because we can pull that thunderbird the thunderbird is like six or seven dollars the weird thing about tzg player they have uh hidden arsenal is first edition and unlimited when they're limited edition so it's kind of weird those do look really cool though i'll give them that they look really good and check out that secret in that name it looks really good all right we'll do the next one here we go five and by the way we're gonna be opening oh cool ally of justice catastore this is an ultimate rare one of the astral packs we are gonna be opening a full case of the newest set tomorrow live on youtube so if you guys want to be there it's gonna be in sometime in the middle of the day probably like maybe like one or two o'clock central i haven't decided yet but i'll decide later um did i say tomorrow i mean uh wait when are you guys seeing this yeah yeah tomorrow this will be friday future visions nice we got another one of those we love we love that card sunlight unicorn okay super rare there we go our first pull of the video finally yeah so if you guys want to see that just make sure you guys show up for the youtube live the lives have been pretty fun this will be me searching for a tritula so hopefully we can pull the tritula prismatic starlight whatever it's called starlight rear i guess we should say all right majestic red dragon ten let's see if we can get a nice promo guys you guys know how our promos usually go not too good but we're gonna we're gonna attempt to get something good okay we got the little uh the duelist revolution just came out cool what's new in 2010 it's not 2010 anymore guys it's 2021 it's kind of funny to see all right majestic red dragon check out that warp oh my goodness okay we got to open it up naturally talk about warp though absolutely crazy we have majestic red dragon stratos is in here okay stratos is in here that's got to be decent i mean if we can flatten it out the condition looks okay it's just so it's crazily bent man majestic red has 4k attack that's pretty good all right we're gonna slip up the stratos even though it is bent like a boomerang oh i never i never opened up this stardust overdrive pack or did i wait is this from the time out no that wasn't from the the tin so we never opened up this pack so we're gonna do that let's get this tin out of the way we now have two stardust two absolute outforce and two shining darkness let's see we can pull the black wing dragon i don't think i've ever pulled it in any rarity so ultra rare ultimate rare ghost rare never pulled any of those here we go um and those cards backwards back there um guys guys right out of the pack uh we got a weird something going on they're turned the other way so let's see what what that even means what does this even mean this is crazy power break a ronin totem that's a good one worth like a dollar or two at least um okay leeching light yeah that's weird try gone black twin strafe infinity launcher so did have a super rare in it that's pretty cool and also very strange we will take that we will also take this ronin totem which is going to add some value to our opening nice all right let's go to an absolute power force i've not opened much of the set vent one of vintage ugo's favorite sets yeah very weird very weird okay are these backwards no okay but not unicycler here we go temple of the sun magical golem the dragon dwelling in the deep super rare that's a pretty cool card that is a pretty cool card right there super rare get a grave keepers descendant rose fairy and vipers rebirth all right four more packs here we go let's see what we can do here let's see if we can pull some fire infinity force a spider spider oh lost my voice there ground spider another spider zero godna and or link with spider a lot man there's a ton of spiders in there okay let's go back to the shining darkness are they gonna be weird backwards packs again or what's the deal here um no not backwards okay hunter of the black feathers crevice into the dark dimension kawakimiru sand man oh and ultra rare cards for black feathers okay ultra rare that's pretty good nice black winged card okay another ally of justice the core destroyer card breaker and interceptor two more packs let's go with stardust overdrive this is the one i think from the actual tin let's see how the tin can do for us quick draw sync run herculean power solitary magician regulus mother spider so then gorgon and gemini counter all right nothing in that one but that's okay we got one more pack we got one more chance so far we've pulled okay we haven't pulled anything crazy we've pulled some decent stuff let's end it with something crazy ghost rare right here ghost rare sword master i believe gun dar hit the like button if you believe or if you don't believe it the like button anyway subye battle fader okay that's cool that came up quick battle fader is excellent really nice card that used to be super good though that's awesome we got a battle fader ritual cage oil man and rock builder that's pretty awesome so overall we did pretty good i'd say for we open we got two x saber full of knights we got battle fader cards from black feather two ultras not bad the dragon dwelling in the deep ron and toad in front of the launcher straddles of course they fit the boomerangs and just a great dragon and future vision so we got like two ultras three supers and then the promos and a decent common not bad overall pretty good hope you guys enjoyed it if you did make sure you guys subscribe because we have some awesome videos coming up i'm gonna be announcing next box break as well as the next 60k special which would be me opening up some old stuff that's gonna be really awesome so hope you guys enjoyed the video i'll see you guys later peace


Welcome once again to the Breakfast on PLOS TV Africa. Our first major conversation this morning is on Nigeria's readiness for a global energy transition by 2025, by 2015 or any year in the near future. Let's begin this morning with an investment manager at All Partnerships for Energy Access, Mr. Afolabi Akinrogundi. Good morning, thanks for joining us. Good morning, pleasure to be here.   So we'll get into talking about whether we truly are ready. We will be, we're going to be ready in the next 10 years even. Will the world leave Nigeria behind with regards to energy? But before that, help us understand what exactly a global energy transition is. Okay, thank you. I think that's the starting point. The energy transition essentially refers to the global energy sector shift from a fossil fuel-based system of energy production and consumption, i.e., you are producing gas, you are producing oil, you are producing coal, things of that sort too, a renewable energy-based system which is more things like hydro, wind, solar and what have you. So what I've just said is clear that countries like Nigeria, which are, for example, in terms of energy generation, depend a lot on oil and gas, in terms also of power consumption, also consume a lot of oil and natural oil-based products, and also natural gas used primarily as a source of power generation. It's clear that this transition is going to have implications for Nigeria. Okay, so let's also begin to look at whether or not as a country we should be talking about being part of the global energy transition. Now, first of all, you would want to agree with me that in terms of consumption, electricity consumption, we're still a developing nation. And talking about the fact that countries of the world are now saying, yes, we are moving away and we're looking at very clean energy come 2050. But if you want to juxtapose countries, I mean if you want to begin to compare the emissions that countries like the United Nations, I mean the United States with about 15.5% if I'm not mistaken, gas emission into the environment and comparing with what Nigeria is actually emitting. Do you think that it's fair enough that we should be having this argument? Because I mean entire continent, the Sub-Saharan Africa, we're looking at 0.6%. So do you think that you know it's fair for us to you know to be part of this kind of conversation? Yes, I think the key thing is that this is a global energy transition. So it's actually the whole world that is moving along the this route. And the key thing is going to be that these are the countries also which are consuming our oil. These are the countries which are consuming our natural gas. These are the countries which are generating a lot of industrial products, which we also consume at Nigeria. So the global environment is interconnected. So we cannot more or less as Nigeria or as Africa say that we are not going to be part of this. We sell our products, we sell our oil and natural gas for USD. We bring in cars into Nigeria. So whether we like it or not, we are part of the global environment. Of course, we can continue to see how we can channel that discussion, how we can manoeuvre as a country to ensure that our own national interests are as protected as much as possible, or that we are as nimble as a country as it's possible to see where the rest of the world is going. And then of course, do what needs to be done as a country to ensure that we are not left behind. But just say that, oh, we are not going to be part of this, we are not. It's not possible. Okay, I'm coming from the premise that if you look at, you want to talk about equity now and fairness. Of course, you also want to talk about inclusiveness. I'm saying if you look at these countries, I mean developed countries, they emit most of, you know, these gases that are polluting the environment. I mean, comparing to, I mean, if you want to compare that to Africa or sub-Saharan Africa or even Nigeria, we're not even emitting as much as they are emitting. And so in terms of the percentage, because we also have a situation where there would be compulsory 40% and then, you know, 25% without any conditions. So I'm asking, is that fair enough or should we be looking at negotiating for lesser reduction? Yeah, I think the declared thing is going to be that this is where the whole world is going. And Nigeria has an entity, even where we are, we have very, very little we go as a country where we do not have the negotiation power as much as possible to say, okay, we're not going to do this. Excuse me, we are not in China and we cannot go back and say, in the real politic, in the global stage, this is not fair, it's not an argument. You have to sit down and say, what is my own interest? Where is the put going? Where is the ball going? How do I make sure that by the time the ball gets to that point, I as a country am ready. Of course, I can sit down and fight for one or two things for myself to ensure that this works. But at the end of the day, you know, as I said, the global energy transition is also not coming up as a result of those people don't say, okay, this is going to be better. There are things which are happening in our environment. Global climate change, which is affecting everywhere. If you look at the coastlines in Nigeria, if you look at the Sahara, if you look at the various parts of the world, the seasons are changing, the environment is changing, global temperature is rising up. So it's affecting everybody, whether you are in Nigeria or you are inside there. So the key thing really at the end of the day is for us to actually sit down and say, this is where the world is going, this is where the people who are buying my oil, this is where the people who are buying my gas, this is where they're going to be getting their energy from in the next 20, 25, 30 years. So what do I need to do as a country to sit down now, have a plan and work that plan, but to sit down and say, oh, it's not fair, it's not fair, that's not how the world works. The world doesn't work like that. The world basically works in terms of what is urgent and what is in people's interest. And I do have to have to sit or sit up and start doing that. Yeah, Mr. Akinrogun, what should be the biggest motivation for Nigeria, the giant of Africa? Should it be the economic concerns, seeing that we've not been able to diversify our economy enough so that, of course, when we lose out on oil sales in the near future, we can still survive? Should that be the biggest concern or should it be climate change? Because we aren't having a very, very broad conversation with regards to the effect of climate change in Africa. Just pretty much the same thing we're doing with COVID-19. Everyone's acting like it's not really affecting us, it's not really our business. What would you say that in the next, let's give it 20 years, should be Nigeria's biggest concern or motivation to join in with the global energy transition, the economic concerns or the climate concerns? I think the key thing to do right now is to more or less do two things. Number one, decide to pivot to gas, which is something which Nigeria is already looking at, because gas is going to have a longer shelf life, so to speak, compared to where oil is gas is still going to be around, it's a bit longer than oil is going to be. So I think that pivot to gas is critical, which is what you see, for example, for more than 15 years, we'll be looking at how to get NLNG 27 gone. That is one thing that the government has realized. They've allowed the FID final investment decision on that project to get along. So we can see some evidence that the government is realizing that, yes, we need to pivot to gas because lots of the energy that has been generated in the world today is based on gas because gas is the cleanest of the dirty world. So you can see that gas is something that we can still use. Then the second thing is to then sit down and look at our power sector. What can we do to number one, optimize on the gas we have, because Nigeria has decided that even though we have a target of 2060 as a country to achieve our own zero target, which is just 140 years from now, what can we do as a country to at least sit down and say, okay, our gas let's optimize this gas now while we can. And then let's also redesign our power delivery and energy utilization systems to enable us to maximize on our own resources within the window that we have as a country. So this redesigning means that we have to sit down for making a centralized grid. How can we put renewable energy into our system? How can we make it a lot more robust so that if something happens in part of the grid, the old grid doesn't shut down so that we don't have only one source of supply. Many of the countries that have energy security today in the world have different sources of supply, different sources of energy, of energy production. So those are the kind of things that we have to look at as a country. You have to look at number one, transiting as much as possible into a gas-based economy for the short-term, medium-term and of course number two also in terms of how we generate our own power, optimize on that gas quickly because very much you know, 20, 25, 30 years from now, what the world is doing in terms of what it's doing to coal can start becoming the same thing that's going to happen to gas. So we don't have all day, we don't have the old world otherwise we will find out that we have all this gas, we have all this oil and nobody wants it. So I think we have like a 20-25 year window in which we need to get things going and I think we need to see it in terms of urgency from the people in governance because if we think we have problems today, at the same time this change of course will be a lot more difficult. What I'm asking is what should be our biggest motivation for this process and to take these steps. Is it you know, economical? Are we going to be looking mostly at how Nigeria as a country will suffer if the world moves away from fossil fuels? Are we going to be looking more at the climate aspect of it and how of course we will be affected? You have to do anything in one way. You have to look at it too. You have to combine both your climate concerns with your economic concerns. So that is the way countries are going. You have to look at it.  So it's not looking at you have to live on and live the other. They are both important but of course the key, the biggest challenge we have in Africa is that the African or the Nigerian is poor. So I have to see before I think of the economy or the climate in two years or three years or five years time. But you are the leader of the country. You are the one who knows that yes in 10 years, 20 years, even though the African Nigerian may not have that thinking of how do I get to $1,000, $2,000, $5,000 to reach today or this week.  So it's basically an issue of balancing. So what do we now do because I mean it's very scary as much as we'll be thinking that 2050 is far from us this is 2022 already and before we could know it we're already in 2050. So the point now is if you look at us already we agree that we're totally dependent on the oil sector, the crude for all of our earnings and that also is responsible for funding of our budget and what have you. So if the usefulness of fossil fuel would diminish at the time what becomes of the Nigerian economy and what drastic steps can we start taking now to ensure that we move away from the dependency of one sector of the economy. That's the oil economy. So the key things again with me, number one to realize that you have an emergency and not create the political games of kicking the can down the road. Let me shift this problem for another four, five, eight years. Let the next government think about it. Believe that we have as a country a natural emergency and then start changing our behaviour in the way that shows that we are actually responding, actively responding to that emergency. How do we then decide to say okay, how do we then activate all the other elements of our ecosystem in Nigeria to actually encourage, for example, the youth, for example, we will find out that not only what we're having in FinTech, all of the things that have generated FGI into Nigeria in the last two, three years have got very little to do with the federal government. So these are the things that we have to encourage. How do we, for example, make an economy, a service based economy, all of the things which are happening in various other parts of the world, where for example, India is used more or less as a great centre for the service economy, i.e., both centre and whatever. What we have, we have a host of graduates, of unemployed graduates, of rich people in Nigeria, of rich labour in Nigeria that can be channeled. So it's not going to be to tell everybody to start carrying on going into agriculture. But how can you then diversify your economy? And it's not necessarily diversified by spending money. It's actually diversification also by ensuring that you show people that you are serious, that you show people that the rule of law counts in Nigeria, that you show people that things matter in this country. And you enable the changes that need to be real. People that want to make changes, let them make those changes. Don't say that this is going to be against the start of school.  Reorganise it and show that what you get the best you can get from the gas while the going is still good. Get the best you can get from your oil. Get the best you can get from your gas. Use that money to diversify into the rest of the economy. I believe Nigeria has another 20-30 years max of doing which we need to do what needs to be done. Already as we've seen in many parts of the world, banks in Europe, some banks in America are finding it very difficult to actually on oil and gas projects. So it's something that is already happening to us as a country. So we need to get with that enable, unleash the potential of the Nigerian of the dead capital that is left in Nigeria. For example, using your land as loan is difficult. Getting a lot of other things that we need to do. It's not just sitting down and say, whoa, I can with diversify. There are things that government needs to do by way of policy but by way of the way things are done I can unleash a lot of economic activity in Nigeria. So I think that that is way outside of the mandates of this discussion. But it's something which we need to see as a country until we have an emergency coming at us. In the other 30, 40, 50, 60 years, we will have all this oil and gas and nobody is going to come for it.  So what are we going to do? But if we don't have that sense of urgency, if we don't sit down and say, what do we need to do? Where are the other areas? Which parts of the economy are going? You know, we have Bonnaboy, we have people, we have the entertainment sector, we have music sector in Nigeria, we have billion dollar companies in Nigeria started by under 30, 140 youths. How do we encourage all of that to ensure that Nigeria continues to become an attractive center for both investment and also for the unleashing of the potential of Nigeria? And I think that is what we need to do. The way we have been doing it for the last six years is not working. We need to change our ways and we need to look at how to get things done better. What would it take for us to become more serious about conversations like this, about supporting some of the things that you've mentioned, the information technology sector, the entertainment sector, the tourism sector and some of all of that? What will it take? Will it take a government that understands these things or will it take a situation where, of course we always have knee-jerk reactions from the Nigerian government. They never actually take action and plan ahead. We hear every now and then of a five-year developmental plan, ten-year developmental plan, but all of that never really comes into play. So will it take a different set of leaders entirely to put Nigeria on that path or something else? I think the key thing we need right now is creativity. We need to have, we just need creativity. We need to sit down and find the people who can actually make, who can actually facilitate the growth of this country in the manner that needs, that it needs to go through. It's not going to be something, I cannot sit down here and tell you that yes, of course there will be one or two things. The PIB which has been more or less in working for the last 20 or so years has been possible. What are not, despite all the challenges we've been with it, that has been passed into law. We've seen any NLNG 27, we've seen a few people. In terms of the overall overhauling of this country, I think the government needs to sit down and have a sense of urgency. If you don't have that sense of urgency and you just sit down and say, okay, nothing looks like it's changing. It's like a fork in boiling water. If you put that fork in boiling water, the temperature is slowly changing around here and that fork is boiling, but because the temperature doesn't change immediately, you think everything is okay. By the time you notice that the temperature has changed, it's too late for you. So I think we need to sit down as a country, at leadership level and decide. It doesn't have to be when you are now making a tent of what you are making in 2045, you are making a tent of what you are making in 2021. You're now finding out that yes, you have a problem. You have to see to the future and decide this is not where, this is not going to all go well for this country. What do I need to do? Across both my education sector, my power sector, my electricity sector, my oil and gas sector, what do I need to do to prepare this country for what is going to hit it in the next 20, 30, 40 years? Okay, so what are your thoughts quickly? Because we know that Nigeria so far has been making plans to shift from the use of petrol to natural, I mean clean gas or clean cooking gas as it is. What are your thoughts? Do you think that this is a step in the right direction and that we are moving towards 2050 where some countries of the world have agreed to keeping the environment and protecting the climate? Yeah, maybe the short and medium term, that can make sense. By short and medium term I am talking about the next 10, 15 years, maybe that can make sense. That can make a tent in terms of how much we are spending on petrol, for example, as a country. I've gotten some of that into gas. I spend pretty much 10 years of my career as a gasman myself so I understand how the gas space works. But the key thing is going to be for you first to sit down and think exactly as I said, no, begin to think, stop thinking like we were doing in Nigeria in terms of 5 years or 10 years or 15 years. Start thinking like the Chinese, like the Japanese. 50 years, 30 years, 40 years, what's going to happen? You are saying this, my dear sister, because you still have gas. Europe is going to stop producing petrol or gas-based gas in another 20 years' time. So the gas coming into Nigeria in 20, 30, 40 years' time are not even going to have propulsion engines. Look at me. So the key thing is going, as I said, this is a global thing. It is not making petrol, diesel gas cars in Europe, in the Americas, in China in 20 years' time, in the 25 years' time. By 30 years' time, the cars in Nigeria, because let's assume that they will start dumping all their petrol cars in Nigeria or the developing world. By 30 years' time, they have dumped all those cars. The only cars we'll have in Nigeria will have to be EV cars, electronic cars. So that is the way we are going, whether we like it or not. The best we can do is to manage and wiggle as one of our football coaches, say, rumble and fumble and find a way to the answer. But at the end of the day, we have to sit down and find a solution. Know that this is where the world is going and find a way to actually make ourselves competitive in the new world that is shaping up. But as much as I would agree that it's important that we also grapple and find a way as a country and also as a continent. But I'm also thinking that for the countries that are championing this course of global energy transition, we would also want to agree that Africa and energy consumption is not at the same level. And even with the level of emission, we already know the countries that are actually contributing to polluting the entire world or the entire space. But however, we will talk about the fact that globalization is what it is and it would get to every part of the world wherever it is that we're faced with. But I'm also thinking that there should be some form of inclusiveness. These third world countries cannot be abandoned. They can't be left all by themselves. They need to be carried along with this particular agenda. You also see how some countries who have also not been able to ratify, I mean, some of these oil producing countries, about four of them Iran, to that Paris agreement. And so you begin to ask yourself whether or not it's just or not just. I mean, the fact that you have some people agreeing and some people not really agreeing to this protocol, is there some level of fairness and equity despite the implication that it holds for the entire world? Again, as I've said, yes, I agree with you. Let me start by agreeing. I agree with you that the global system as it is right now is the environmental problem we have to cause primarily by the Western countries, which basically used 200 years more or less of industrialization to actually pump all of these gases into the air and change the makeup of our ecosystem. But the challenge still remains that whether you like it or not, the world to today is led by these countries. And so you can sit down and fight, which is what I've said, and use that same game. At the end of the day, fairness is not when you get to the price tax, when you get to where the decision that affects tens of millions, billions of people's is concerned. Fairness is not an argument. I've been on those tables in the past. Fairness is not this is fair. This is godly. This is unfair. It's not, it's not, you can, of course, they can show you one or two crumbs and say, okay, just pick this, but give you an extra three years or four years or five years or whatever. But that three, four, five years will finish. And you'll be back to where you started from. So we have to sit down and say, this is where the world is good. This is where the people who are pumping billions of dollars into our oil and gas sector. This is where they are moving their money. All the, all the major oil and gas companies are more or less, if you look at their plans for 20, 22, none of them had major plans for a year. So we have to sit down and say the world is shifting as we are right now and saying that our is not right. Our is not good. God is not an answer. You have to sit down and say, yes, you can say that. I use that to get one or two advantages. Minor advantages for ourselves. But the key thing for us is going to say, what can we do as a country? Because whether you like it or not, you are going to get to that place. Whether it's 10 years after, 20 years after, 15 years after, you are going to get to that point. So saying that, oh, you are not going to argue because the other key thing is that there are also a lot of other factors, which many of these countries also have. Because Nigeria is a lot more keyed into the global system. It's a lot more dependent upon the global system than many of these other countries are. That are saying they are not part of it. We go to them for loans. They invest in our economy. So you cannot wake up and say you are not signing onto a certain agreement. It is in your own interest also.  Put your own house in order. Telling somebody that what is done is not fair. It doesn't make sense. But sit down and say, what do you need to do as a country to put your own house in order? That is the most important. If you are using any of our energy today, 95% of our energy should be focused on putting our own house in order. You use 5% to be asking for them to give us freebies or to give us analysis. Alright. He is an investment manager. All partnerships for energy access. Afalabi, Akin, Rougunde. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your thoughts with us this morning. We wish you a great day. Thank you very much. Alright. Stay with us. The Auditor General of the Federation has of course declared that 178,000 plus weapons, AK-47s and the likes have been declared missing and unaccounted for in the last two, three years by the Nigerian police. And also 3.2 billion Naira worth of ghost contracts were also given out that have no paperwork or confirmation of being done. These are some of the things that we are talking about next here on The Breakfast. Good morning.


What's good y'all? It's your boy Ross back again with another video So we're gonna check out standout wrestling sales volume one But we're gonna do a try not to laugh and every time I do end up laughing. I Gotta take a shot of this tequila, man. I know this is gonna be something different first time on the channel Try not to laugh Challenge and if I feel every time I laugh I gotta take a shot and you guys know me. I love me some funny Wrestling sales Disclaimer if you're under the age of 21, please do not join in on this challenge Everyone else is over the age of 21 and more than welcome to join in on this challenge as well wrestling sales Like they're just funny. They're just funny sometimes like when boys start flopping and flipping and all this other stuff It really gets to me. It's one of my weaknesses when it comes to wrestling and try not to laugh So let's get right into this one I'm praying I do well because I am not trying to get super late Too easily and if you want me to do more of these type of try not to laugh challenges where there's a punishment Particularly in property taking a shot or whatever. I definitely will for you guys Here we go They travel together at some point and that was that was a nice one For a superplex here that's your That's gonna look like it hurt for real the aesthetic of his soul the progression I may not end up laughing This is an agenda match I Should have time and space that is Young Brian Daniels He's Oh Heavy berserker boots right to the ball now, but what? That's Keith right there Oh Drupal at noggin knocker All right, that one almost got me she blew out of the make-up That was like Some about the dead body flop Script there by Oh, Deanna had that shout it turned into a Modified Power Bomb. And gearing up for something big. OK. Oh, yeah. Oh, a clothesline from Heaven. A clothesline from Heaven. Is that Booker T on commentary? Yeah, you're right. It's tough to blame the white-out campers. Oh, let's get out of it. I mean, that would be for sure next one. That's not like Booker T on commentary. Oh. The head of steam from Deppin, Ishimori. But why is he in that position? Oh, no. Uh-oh. He's out of step. There's a board. I'm saying she has a real freaking chance. Here we go. Oh, my god. Casey Navarro is a budding star. We've decided to MLW. Oh, god. Damn, that was a step. And you saw Buddy sneak in. Oh. But caught with a kick. Desperation moved from Jimmy Yang. Connects with a face. It looked like that one was actually connected for real. Uh-oh. Oh. OK. He was dead. Woo. He's building up a super meter. But are you special being kept? That's wrestling. That's wrestling for you. He did the special being. All right. What? And they are far. I just want to make sure I didn't trip. And I saw that I saw it. Play drop combination from that side out. And up a super meter. Why they are far? Special being here. Going after the wall of ACH. And he has an attack that rips up until this point. Well, the drop kick shot everything. And normally you see a drop kick when your opponent is. Bro, look at that looks. But ACH had his knees up. Go for the inflection.  DPWRE knows only a few days away here, so. Oh. Uh-oh. Looked like he was going for a sharpshooter, inverts it. Oh. Oh, my god. Jesus Christ. He's sold that. Oh. Oh. OK. Batane hurt his cock. Just a tad. Oh. Torus in the back. Someone's going on in the ring at the top. Spying on the fly. Spying on the pine. That's what we're calling it. I'm going to take a shot, man.  Doing good. Oh, shot's up. Getting much harder now. And a corner again. Before this match is over, Mark's chest is going to be flat. He's getting much difficult now. Third time to charm. Oh. He's getting much more difficult. He jumped off the ring. Oh, look at him. Oh. Oh, my god. Oh, man. Oh, it falls again to a shoulder block. Oh. That's in the air right there. He's sold that. Oh. No, he goes baseball slide. Kick, concussion, causing kick. Swan is down. Down, bro, like a dead body. Oh, my god. Oh. I'm trying not to take no more shots, y'all. I can't do that. Oh, oh, my god. Oh, it's Ricochet. You know he's going to sell it like a champion. Oh. Absolutely. Oh, my god. Could be over right now. Could be an amateur style takeover there by you. Oh, no. Oh. Oh. Ash got derailed by a Matt Jackson super kick. Kyle is selling that. I'm trying, y'all. With this championship on the day you have your coming out party. Wait, what was... Here at PCW Ultra. She didn't even hit that. Bro, she hit her arm, bro. What was that? We going to run that back. Oh, she didn't even come close to her head. Look at this. That was an arm, bro. If you're coming out party. Here at PCW Ultra. One moment I'm laughing, the next being I'm cringing. Champion on the ring side. Oh, no, no. I mean, really, she just... She really just got on chances. She's hitting him. It didn't really affect. Oh, damn. Oh. Oh, no. It's Brooks who's taking the front of the response. Oh. I think even Jonathan Gresham felt that one. No, there's no need for this. What is... Yeah, Brooks has had enough. It's Gresham who finally takes the chop. What is this, man? He's starfished out on the canvas here. Yeah, the octopus. Maybe a non-factor in this tag title match. This is wrestling. But I failed once. There's a few times I was almost about to lose. I'm trying to... I'm not trying to get drunk tonight, man. But I failed once. Let me know how many times you guys failed. These are for the people that are over the age of 21 that's able to drink. How many of you... How many times do you guys fail? I definitely failed once. Something about wrestling sales, they get to me, man. So definitely you can find some more conflations. I'll definitely look as well of some wrestling sales. I'll have, with the punishment, being drinking. Taking some sides. But I appreciate all the love and support, man. Road to 90K. Appreciate y'all kicking in. See y'all next one. Peace.


Also, President Emmanuel Macron says France respects Britain's sovereignty, but it is time to end rouse over sausages and focus on more serious issues. Tensions between Britain and the European Union over the Brexit deal exploded into an open war of words on Sunday, with both sides accusing the other of sowing dish harmony at the Group of Seven summit. Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked Macron during a meeting how he would feel if he told a sausage maker could not sell their products on Paris markets, drawing a comparison with Northern Ireland sausage makers.


hello and welcome back to the craft box my name is Brent and today we are looking at the best places to get either and know that is not the either that is found in the imperial that'll be another video this is the Ava that is the actually I should have some right it's the bottle of either this one here which is a rare harvest from kelp and also shells but we're just gonna be looking at the kelp today so kelp and either if you don't so either is a rare harvest from kelp if you don't get enough of it you can always transmute it with I assume I have this one as well transmute either no I don't but that is from the vendor in Celestia just outside these gates we are currently in the crustacean empire right near the entrance the entrance is just there so the best place to get this sort of stuff or kelp at least is to come down here down this side here towards the kind of the main area but don't go up towards the teleporters sometimes there'll be a kelp here basically you just run around here down this wee little path look on this side and there may or may not be something here over here there may or may not be something there is which is good we've got three that time which is good come over this side again there's some over here there we go we got an either right there nice and there can also be some in this bit here if there's none there don't worry there are still more places to go you can come up this way and just keep following up this I don't know of things if they can spawn up here I haven't really been doing this route much because kelp isn't really something that I need but one here if we keep coming this way sometimes there's some in this bit if not go down this side as well there's also wooden chests which is good you can also get either from them as well not this time though apparently one here so yeah basically just do that route and you should find a decent amount and then just switch realms so we're in Dworkin obviously we'll go to Felmer and then do that whole route again and get more so it's probably best to do this at kind of an offer time I mean it's not really popular when I'm recording this the game so it's not too difficult again wooden chests a great extra gold and also sometimes extra reagents as well just walk around here nothing there one down here again hello let me get back off down this way little path here back to this bit where the we little kelp gardens is is what I like to call them nothing down here this time and on this side nothing down here this time sometimes you won't have much luck but when you do generally there's a lot around so yeah sometimes you might only find one or two but other times there might be like five that's really good way to get it and then just come back up to the start and see if there's anything up here no there isn't so yeah that's basically how you get it I'll quickly go and show you where the transmute recipe is you need 15 kelp to transmute one either the other place you can get to this is a bizarre except that's either very expensive or not available so yeah it's kind of mixed to whether you can actually get it it also depends on what time you are so I think he's no he's not over here he's over the other side of this but a welcome to the leg of Celestia hello there gear wise I think it is no it's not gear wise just kidding just kidding it's the other guy the guy that sells the treasure cards get your brain the guy over this side every temple to him so he should hopefully if my research was right sell a transmute either which you know what we're just gonna buy I generally like buying all of these as well so yeah basically best ways to get this sort of stuff he sells this guy actually sells basically all of the transmutes available in the game so always best to try and like get as many of those you don't need to be any level I think it can be just any so you're really good idea to just get them all in my opinion but yeah that's basically how you get that you can also get it from shells but there'll be another video specifically for shells and it's rare drop coming up in the future so yeah if you have any questions about this let me know in the comments anything I should add yeah so that's how you get kelp which is I believe used in a lot of other things and also the either which isn't used too much but is definitely quite a useful reagent so yeah thank you for watching and remember craft outside the box


You need a financial advisor with the freedom to focus on your specific needs. Whatever your goals, Reid Potter can create a game plan tailored to you. Call Reid at 432-0777 at Pikeville, Kentucky to learn more. As the one-year anniversary of Kentucky's Deadliest Flood approaches, many are still feeling its impact. While over $281 million in federal funding has been distributed, 129 families still remain in temporary housing, with many more staying with family and friends as they work to rebuild. While many Kentuckians are still rebuilding, funds from the Eastern Kentucky Safe Fund and Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief are being put to work to aid in the recovery process. $440,000 in Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief funds have been distributed to cover funeral expenses and $4 million were distributed in emergency relief checks. An additional $1 million has been committed to building and repairing homes. According to the Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises, 311 muckouts, rehabs, and new homes have been completed. The remaining portion of the $13 million fund has been committed to building high-ground communities in Letcher, Knot, and Perry counties. In addition to the flood relief funds, $213 million was dedicated to EK Safe funds for cities, counties, school districts, state agencies, utility service providers, and road and bridge repairs. Since September 2022, over $31.2 million in funds have been distributed. The Appalachian Regional Commission has also distributed $5.3 million to Perry and Letcher counties to aid in building high-ground communities. Several other nonprofits, including Pike County Relief Services, Eastern Kentucky Rising, God's Pit Crew, and more have raised money for families and helped repair and build homes for those impacted by the flooding. While the recovery process will be ongoing for years to come, Eastern Kentucky is working hard to build back better and stronger than before. For updates on flood relief, stay tuned to Mountain Top News. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


Recently, Martin City Police Department received a generous donation in the form of three police cruiser vehicles. The cruisers were donated from Versailles Police Department and will be used as patrol cars in the Martin area. Each vehicle is fully equipped and more than capable of meeting the department's needs. We're a small department, it's kind of hard to afford new vehicles and we had an officer to wreck a rock, fill off the high wall here on 80 and hit the car and totaled it and we were short of vehicle and we reached out to like the chief's association. You know we called them and they wouldn't within one day we received a call from different agencies wanting to help us out and once we made spoke to them and sent officers down to look at the vehicles we decided to go ahead and receive the offer from them because it was so gracious. They even left the lights on them. Even two of the radials that we can probably actually use, they radials was in good shape. Appalachian Wireless is all in on Tag Madness right now. Select devices get up to $750 off on the Appalachian Advantage Unlimited or nationwide makes a mesh plans with renewed or new lines plus trade-in up to $750 off because we are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. Due to the small size of Martin City Police Department Chief Stidham is quite thankful to receive the cruisers. This will greatly help save on other expenses for the department. We want to thank for sales for donating these vehicles. They have no idea how much it helped the department because if you've got four officers and you've only got two vehicles running that car is running all the time. You know you're having to donate and you know the police department gives us take home cruisers which is a big help to us you know because we don't make much money but letting them let us drive our vehicles you know we get a lot of complaints that we drive back and forth so long but you know we go through a lot you know to just to receive that vehicle and we take care of them as much as we can and we just want to thank for sales mostly for helping us out. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Collum.


Thank you. I share my gratitude with the others here for being here tonight. It's a wonderful event and long-lived banned books forever Pablo Neruda was an odd combination of things in that he was both rejected and congratulated by the Chilean government depending upon who was in office Neruda was a communist But this did not keep him from being named to important diplomatic posts at various times during his life by the government during the presidency of Gabriel Gonzales Videl, although from 1946 to 1952 Neruda's work was banned in Chile Chile because of his communist sympathies and he went into self-exile for several years and some of the events in his life from this period are Dramatized in the memorable film the postman el postino, which I hope everyone has seen Although not specifically banned itself his love son at number 27 from the 100 Sonnets of Love, which is his most popular book in South America Is the poem that in the movie the postman's girlfriend's mother finds hidden in the bodice of the girl's dress It was given as a gift to the girl the postman lying that he had been its author the discovery of it in the girl's bosom Causes her mother to forbid the romance between her daughter and the hapless postman Neruda himself intervenes to set things right I love all of these sonnets To the degree that I've translated them all from Spanish into English They were written to Neruda's wife Matilde and each one of them for me is a flame of desire and affection I'm going to indulge my I'm going to read two and I'm going to indulge myself a little bit I'm actually going to read the English translation first in the Spanish second and that's only because I assume that many people in the audience don't speak Spanish and I want to give you an idea of what the poem is about so that you can then sit back and relax and just enjoy the Spanish Neruda's written Spanish is wonderful just to hear so I'll read the first one from your postino number 27 Nude you're as simple as one of your hands smooth earthy tiny round Transparent You have lines of the moon streets of apple You're as slim in the nude as the undressed wheat nude your blue as the Cuban night is blue There are vines and stars in your hair your yellow and enormous Nude like summer in a church of gold nude You're as small as one of your nails curved subtle and rose-colored till the dawn of day When you place yourself in the underworld As in a long tunnel of clothes and jobs Your clarity fades Drops its leaves Dresses itself to turn once more to being just a naked hand number 27 Desnuda is as simple as one of your hands Lisa Terrestrial Minima round transparent Tienes lineas de luna caminos de manzana desnuda Eris del gava como el trigo desnudo desnuda eres azul como la noche en cuba Tienes en verdaderas y estrellas en el pelo desnuda eres enorme y amarilla como el verano en una iglesia de oro Desnuda eres pequeña como una de tus uñas curva Sutil Rosara hasta que nace el día Y te metes In el subterráneo del mundo Como en un largo túnel de trajes y trabajos Tu claridad se apaga Se viste Se desoja Y otra vez vuelve a ser una mano desnuda the second one I'm going to read is number 11 and I'm going to read it because it's one of my favorite poems of all Of any of that I've ever read There's a reference here to Kitratue and Kitratue is a Southern Highland region near the town of Temuco Chile where Neruda spent his boyhood This is number 11.   I come and go Sniffing out the dusk Looking for you Looking for your hot heart like a puma in Kitratue's solitude And this is number 11. Tengo hambre de tu boca de tu voz de tu pelo Y por las calles voy sin nutrirme, callalo No me sostiene el pan El alba me disquicia Busco el sonido líquido de tus pies en el día Estoy hambriento de tu risa resbalada de tus manos color de furioso granero Tengo hambre de la palida pied de tus uñas. Quiero comer tu piel como una intacta almondra Quiero comer El rayo quemado en tu hermosura la nariz soberana del arrogante rostro Quiero comer la sombra fugaz de tus pestañas y hambriento Vengo y voy o fatiando el crepusculo buscando te Buscando tu corazón caliente como un puma en la soledad de Kitratue


Hello, students. It's Shayna, your teacher from espressoenglish.net, and our phrasal verb of the day is RULE OUT. We'll start the phrasal verb lesson in just a moment, but first I wanted to tell you that if you're interested in my online courses but you want to know exactly what the lessons are like, you can take some free sample lessons. So if you click on the link in this video or in the description for this video, you can see free samples from all of my courses and all of my ebooks. I hope you'll check them out. Let's learn about RULE OUT. I have three possible definitions on the board and only one is correct, so I'll describe a situation where we would use this phrasal verb, and I want you to guess whether RULE OUT means a delay until later, B dislike, or C eliminate from consideration. You can post a comment with your guess and then keep watching until the end of the video when I'll tell you the right answer. Let's imagine that my husband and I are looking to move into a new house, and we're looking at a list of 20 houses in the neighborhood where we want to move into, and as we're looking at these houses, my husband says, well, we can rule out these five because they're way too expensive, and I say, oh, I agree, and then I say, well, we can rule out these seven because they're too far away from where we want to be, and he agrees with that, too. So after we've ruled out the houses that are too expensive and we've ruled out the houses that are too far away, then there are how many eight houses left on our list, and so we decide to go visit all eight of those houses. Based on this situation, what do you think it means to rule out A, B, or C? I will tell you the correct answer in just one moment. I hope you got it right. The correct answer is C, eliminate from consideration. So in this example, my husband ruled out the houses on the list that were too expensive for us, so among those 20 possibilities, those 20 options of potential houses to move into, five of them were too expensive, so we ruled them out. We eliminated them from consideration, and then seven more of the houses were too far away, so we also ruled them out. We eliminated them. We're not considering those houses as possible options, so out of 20 houses, we ruled out 12, and that leaves eight houses for us to visit. I hope now you understand what it means to rule something out. Go ahead and try to use this phrasal verb in your own English, so post a comment under this video and talk about a time when you ruled something out, meaning to eliminate it from consideration. I hope you've enjoyed watching today's video, and I hope you'll also take a look at the free sample lessons available for you so that you can see exactly what's in my eBooks and online courses. See you next time.


Good morning and welcome to my show, Moments with Melinda. I am your host, Melinda Moulton, and today I am overwhelmed and so excited to have as my guest, Daniel Hecht. How are you, Dan? I'm pretty good. Yeah. So far, so good. Doing well. I want to thank you so much for being on my show. To my viewers, let me tell you a little bit about Daniel Hecht. Moulton is an author, environmentalist, musician, nonprofit, organizational development consultant, educator, project manager, grant writer, and administrator for educational, environmental, and arts initiatives. And I know there's a lot more that you do, but that's, is that pretty good, pretty good overview? Yeah. That's what I've been doing for the last 20 or 30 years anyway. Well, well, you know, let's start by going back in time to your, your early days and talk to me a little bit about your life growing up and maybe a little bit about somebody who inspired you in your life. You know, it's very interesting. I was fortunate to be born into an unusual community in New York state. This was back in 1946, my mother and father moved to Croton Falls, New York. Croton on Hudson, a little town near the Connecticut border. And they got an old house, a house from the 1730s and moved in there. And it was just after the war. And so they had moved to Washington, D.C. from Chicago, and they had a lot of wonderful friends from Chicago who rallied around a group centered at the Art Institute of Chicago. So they're all artists. They're Bohemians. They're people who look like anarchists, had beards, and they all painters and photographers and writers and musicians. And what happened was, for whatever reason, after the war, a number of them congregated around my parents in that community. There was nothing formal. It had no community name. It wasn't a cult or a commune. What happened was their friend Al and Keith, who had been in the army, got out and came up there to visit and love the area, so much very rural area, and found an old building, huge old brick building, way out in the woods. And it was the ideal artists loft. So Al and Keith moved in and they spent their army discharge pay buying this huge old abandoned factory building and seven acres in West Chester County, New York, for $2,000. So they moved in there and over many, many years fixed it up. An interesting site. So that's where I was born. And around them, oh, then my aunt moved there. And he and she and her husband were ceramic artists. And then Al married somebody and her father was a famous sculptor. And he bought some land and joining theirs. And so pretty soon there's this whole community of social outsiders, Bohemians, artists, liberal, political sentiments, communistic, and yet firstly independent also. Interestingly enough, to cut to one of the chases is my father's best friend was Keith and Al also. But interestingly, later on, Keith had two kids. I ended up marrying Keith's daughter and we've been married for 31 years. So my wife is my father's daughter, my father's best friend. We have two sons. So the tradition continues here in Vermont. So I grew up surrounded by people who are very capable. It was a tiny Florence in the in the woods of West Chester. My father was in international public relations. So he traveled all over the world to the Philippines, to Venezuela, to to Ceylon, to Hong Kong, to, oh, I don't know, everywhere, Ecuador, Ethiopia. And he mainly worked for governments, helping the government promote new programs. So that was what he did for a living. He's the only one who had any money, but even his money was hit and miss. We had a good contract, they had money. Everybody else was poor as church mice. But Keith, my father and eventual father-in-law was a master carpenter craftsman. He did museum quality restoration of things. And he, Al Goodspeed, who also bought into that great big building. Master carpenter and a fabulous oil painter. We have some of his colorist paintings and so on. My aunt and uncle got hugely famous for their ceramics. They were on the cover of Life Magazine. In the Brussels World's Fair. They have an on permit display in the Museum of Modern Art. So eventually they went on to this, you know, an incredibly prolific, capable group. When I was a kid, I grew up just learning by absorbing all this, all these skills. How extraordinary. Yeah, so that's the that's the origins. My father died when I was three, though. And then my mother and my three sips and I moved all over the country. Wherever it was, she could find a job or find cheap living. So I was raised by a single mom and had three older kids, older siblings, all of whom are artists. And what did your mom do?  But she she did whatever she had to for a living. She was a secretary in the 1950s. Women didn't make a lot of money then. They don't make enough now, but she did what she had to support four kids. So she was a secretary. She eventually became a head of various programs like she was head of the Volunteer Corps of Cook County Hospital in Chicago, World's largest hospital. I think they had 5000 volunteers to supervise. But yeah. So then later in life, she quit doing all that and just made a living off her art. Fabulous. Amazing. Well, I'm a Katie Gibbs girl, so I can sympathize with your mom. So now you lived in many, many places. Now, what brought her to Vermont and what keeps you here? Oh, well, I'll tell you. So remember, I was born in New York state, but then I moved to Wisconsin, a remote farmhouse there, no central heating or for a while, no running water. And I moved to rural Virginia to Washington, DC, then to rural Virginia, then to Chicago, then to north of Chicago. I believed in, oh, I forgot to mention that when I was young, lived in the Philippines where my father had a contract. So I grew up in the Philippines. I learned to walk and talk in the Philippines, in Manila. And I've lived in California, Vermont. But what brought me here was I just self-published an album of solo guitar music. I had fallen in love with the guitar when I was 15 and classical guitar. Andres Agovia playing masters of the guitar. And so I studied on my own. Then I went to a conservatory for a while. I was pretty good. Then I started writing my own music for steel string guitar using classical technique. I don't know if you ever heard of John Fahey, legendary guitarist. I actually have that in my in my interview. We was John Fahey. We followed. He was my 60s idol. Oh, yeah. So he was a cult figure in there. And so this is John Fahey. And then his really snazzy player named Leo Katke came along. Oh, my God. I synthesized classical music and their music and Indian classical music and English folk music a lot in my solo guitar music. So what happened was I put out this album self-published. Oh, I was encouraged by this guy named Moondog, Lewis Hardin, famous guy, six feet tall, big beard, wore red clothes and a viking cap. And he was blind and he was a composer. And so Moondog lived with me and my roommates in Madison, Wisconsin and a farm we had there. So Moondog had put out his own first album before he goes recording on Columbia Records, along with the Beatles and Janice Joplin. And so he encouraged me to cut my own record the way he did. And so I did. And then I was promoting this first horrible record, terrible music, horribly. I like to think it's carved by hand with a hatchet into the vinyl. But so I was traveling and I came to Vermont. I had an old girlfriend living going to Goddard College. I felt so in love with the landscape and the people and the funky houses. Remember, this is 1973 and it was you could live here for cheap. Or no, there's no work. But, you know, you could scrounge and I did logging.  Did everything went hungry sometimes. So where'd you settle in Vermont when you came to Vermont with your girlfriend? Where did you land? Well, I came to Plainfield. OK. My ex-girlfriend lived in there at Plainfield. But my current girlfriend, I settled in Plainfield where we were near Goddard and all the activities that Goddard brought to this rural area. So that's how I started. That's how you got here.  You are an incredibly celebrated author and your eight novels are published in 14 languages and over 100 editions throughout the world. You are an author of bestsellers. Can you talk to us a bit about your most recent novel, The Body Below from Blackstone Publishing, which has been coined a first rate mystery and beautifully written. Tell us a little bit about that book. Well, I appreciate the kind words. Yeah, so that that's the first book I've written. That's really based here in Central Vermont. My prior book, I guess I should to back up a bit. I got when my music career fell apart, I had to do something for a living. And I figured I'd always been doing some writing. And my musical things were mainly telling stories anyway. They're musical narratives, not riffs or grooves, you know. So when my hands fell apart, I couldn't play music. I couldn't record. I'd recorded three albums and I had traveled all over the world. I played throughout the United States, played at Carnegie Hall twice, played throughout Europe, because my records were released there. And then I did a solo tour of China in 1989. My hands had recovered enough and I wasn't going to miss that. And I came back from that and put my put my guitar in the case, never took it out again, 1989. What? And then I went to the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and got an MFA in writing. So let's back up. Yeah. So what? Tell me a little bit about your hands and tell me so you so you do not ever go and pick up your guitar and sit in strut. No. So it's in the it's in the it's in its case. And it's been there since 1989. Well, I sold it. I had two very, very priceless handmade guitars that I sold. I just a gifted musician. And so you're not you're not drawn to it.  So what what happened? How could that what was it your hand? No, really interesting for a while. I was I was playing and I was playing with some really good people, really top form people, Michael Hedges. I toured with him. Alex Degrassi, George Winston, the pianist was a good friend and played with him a lot. The my my I had a psoriasis on my hands. I also had I was beginning to get arthritis and it was very painful to play. So that explains it. So you moved into into being a writer now. So so I want to I do want to talk about your books. Now, you've got Brossard's Farm is a love story. It's set in Vermont and Turner is the main character. It's about accepting love and this was hailed as a wondrous, unique love story by publishers weekly. And then you did the Cree series, the Cree Black series. And then I want to talk a little bit about Bones of Barbary Coast, which has Cree identifying the remains of a victim of the Great Quake in San Francisco of 1906, which is named Wolfman. So talk to us a little bit about your books. And I just want to tell you then you did the the battle effect, which is that explores the subtle mysteries of the mind of human values or spirituality and personal loyalty and love. And your first novel Skull Session became an overnight sensation sent you into the top of the, you know, the bestseller's list. And you were the worldwide bestseller. It is based on true events and cutting edge neuroscience. So my question to you is your books are laced with science and mystery, psychological exploration and deep mind bending thrillers. Where do you draw your inspiration and mental that that allows you to dive so deeply into your subjects and talk about these books a little bit? Yeah, you know, a lot of it's accidental. And I do, I would advise all writers to expect a certain measure of accident in their careers and in what they write. You know what happened was I went to the University of Iowa, best writing school in the world. I got out thinking I was hot stuff and, you know, applied for jobs at universities. And, you know, I finally applied to Skunk Gulch Community College and somewhere, Iowa, Idaho. And I was told, yeah, thanks, Mr. Heck, we have three hundred and ninety seven applicants of which two hundred eighty are PhDs. I turned out my MFA wasn't worth much in the field. So I knew a lot of really wonderful writers who were getting published or making any money. I had a funny story. Remember, we talked about where I was born, right, in that community? Well, one member of the community outlying was very, very wealthy. She had inherited a lot of money and had bought a former Vanderbilt hunting lodge way up on a hill. And I used to play there as a kid and she and my mother were good friends. It was a very spooky place, this great big house. The living room was 50 feet square. The fireplace you could park your Volkswagen in sideways, you know. But we lost touch with her after many moves. And then when I was living here in Vermont, this is many years ago now, we got a call from her out of the blue. She said, oh, my house has been vandalized. I'm living in California now.  And so she said, I don't I hear all my stuff is getting ruined. And Danny, you know, she knew me as a little kid.  And so I said, yeah, so I went down and it was horribly vandalized. I mean, it was freakishly vandalized. The other thing with mysterious was she had left all her stuff there. I mean, talking about this 50 foot living room was three feet deep in mink coats and busted Louis Kahn's chairs and every other expensive thing. And why would people just trash it instead of stealing it? I, you know, anyway, the walls are ripped open as if somebody had been looking for something and it goes on and on. And it was so scary a story I would tell it at over dinner. People said, boy, that's the scariest thing I've ever heard. And so I finally said, well, you know, maybe I should just write a novel about that. So I did. And that was skull session. And I, you know, I thought I was writing a literary novel later on. I had never read a thriller. I didn't know what a thriller was. I just read literary stuff. I thought I wrote a literary thing in it. I was fascinated with neuroscience. So I had my main character was Tourette and there's a reason for that. And so I, you know, I finished this book, I sent it out, I get an agent. She puts it up and all of a sudden there's an auction with every major house bidding on it. And I basically ended up making about $2 million in my first two books. So that sounds like a lot of money, but you know, it takes a while to write those suckers in your agent. For an author, for a writer, for an author, that's a lot of money back then. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. You know, my, I had my first year of getting that advance. My income taxes were $387,000. I had never in my life in aggregate earned that much money, let alone paid it in taxes. So I had the easy come, easy go.  And you focused and you wrote eight, eight novels. And yeah, well, I tell you, it does, you get hooked on it. Plus, I found I really liked it when it's going well, writing is the funnest, bestest. And when it's going badly, it's hell, you know. But you're, but you're really accomplished. You're an accomplished, important writer. And so that's fascinating. Talk to me. I want to talk a little bit about the Brassard's Farm, the love story. It's set in Vermont and Ann Turner is the main character. And as I said, it's about accepting love. Talk to us a little bit, because that's not your only book set in Vermont, or is it? Let's see. Well, it's the first one fully set in Vermont. And the newest one, The Body Below, is also set totally in Vermont. Yeah. So when I first moved to Vermont, at some point, I bought some really remote acres, you know, for 30 bucks an acre, way up on a mountain in Peach and Pond, above Peach and Pond, way up on Hooker Mountain there. And I lived there summers, six months of the year, sometimes alone, because my girlfriend was finishing her degree, had a job in Madison, Wisconsin, still. And so I lived out in really remote woods for bears and moose and mysterious things. And so I've also worked at manual labor. I've been a carpenter and a logger. And then I got into, in my organizational development side, I spent a lot of time working on Vermont farm, dairy farm issues. So the story of that love affair or that study of love is a romantic love, for sure. But it's also coming to love a place and to love through learning to work hard. She works harder, she eventually, you know, buys this land, moves out, lives in a tent, and works on the dairy farm nearby. It's a small dairy farm, struggling as they all are, and learns to love hard work and the honesty and integrity that comes from hard work and the difficult parts of getting up when it's 20 below and going out to milk at 4.30 in the morning. It's tough stuff. And dealing with 120 pounds of manure a day from those cows is tough. So I really wanted to write a book that encapsulated some of the things I had learned from living in the deep woods and to celebrate the wisdom and durability of rural peoples and rural experiences. And women. And women, yeah. It's interesting and a good question would be, Daniel, you've written eight novels. The Cree Black series were focused on a, were written in the woman's voice and Turner's first person woman's voice. The body below is half a woman and half a man written there. I did buy. So what's that about? And the answer is I don't know. That was a question. That was where I was heading is. Yeah. And I, I don't know what it is. That's, I didn't, I didn't do that intentionally. You have a feminine side.  Could be part of it.  You know, nowadays we place such primacy on gender. Well, I'm gender fluid and I'm gender neutral. I'm non-binary. I'm, I'm they, I'm he, I'm she. And the horrible thing about that is it actually promotes a sense of there being hard barriers between genders. And I don't think anybody's that well-defined and simple in their makeup. How fascinating. I think you feel that, you know, I just, the person who wanted to tell those stories happened to be a woman. I have received a few people say, this guy doesn't know how women think. And my answer is what women think a single way. There's one way that women think that's so sexist. Makes me sick. Mainly I get is Daniels Hecht woman is a completely credible woman. How does he think that way? And I, I don't, I just think like me, but except that Ann Turner in, in On Brasses Farm is a lot like Cree Black, the protagonist of her three books. Right. They're both sensitive. They're introspective. They're compassionate. They're courageous. They're vulnerable. And so I, I love them very much. Oh, I, and, and you're, and your readers to do, I just, for my viewers out there, we're talking with Daniel Hecht to his, who is an author, environmentalist, musician, a renaissance man, but you can go to his website, which is Daniel Hecht, d-a-n-i-e-l-h-e-c-h-t dot com and learn more about Dan and his books and his music.  Talk to us about this work. What, what moved you into this environmental work? Well, just to be correct, I wasn't a director of the agency. I was a director of Vermont Environmental Consortium, which is a statewide nonprofit. Right. Read businesses and environmental stuff. We had all the colleges, we're members of that, all the renewable energy companies and many more engineering firms and so on. I have ran that outfit for a number of years and then got to know everybody in renewable energy and in, especially associated with bio-digestion, farm bio-digestion. But so when the agency of agriculture, I, oh, I know where it came from. I put on a conference, major conference up at the Sheraton up in Burlington. 400 people came, a lot of them farmers. It was called agriculture and the environment. And so one of the topics there was, of course, renewable energy for farms, you know, for what can farmers do? And it's not just bio-digestion, but that's one aspect of it. But that's where I started working with farmers a lot. So after that, the agency of agriculture approached me and commissioned me to put together this book. I called upon, oh, 20 or more experts in the field.  And it's all in that book was the first of its kind. And Ben and Jerry's donated the artwork and cover artwork and the printing. The agency paid for the printing. It's a good, full-colored book. I'm very proud of it. Where can folks get it? Where can folks get this? You can't get it anymore. They were only, oh, that's... 5,000 were printed and they were sent free to every farmer in Vermont. Magnificent. And all the legislators and all the agency heads. You also did the green makeover video, which you produced and scripted. And eventually your work led to the construction in 2013 of a $3.5 million food waste and manure biodigester. Montec campus. I mean, you were not just writing about environmentalism. You were making stuff happen. Well, I got to know everybody. You know, I had a syndicated column for a while for a couple of years called The Green Grapevine and came out every two weeks. And I interviewed people and learned about what they did. You know, they might be in renewable energy or they might do, put in a foam insulation or they might be engineers or they might be colleges. If I had to do the environment, I got to know everybody in the state. So it was pretty nice. And so out of that, it came pretty... I got to know Senator Leahy, Senator Sanders, agency secretaries, the governor. I worked closely with the governor, lieutenant governor. So I went on international trade missions with Governor Douglas and Lieutenant Governor Brian Duby. And so I had my fingers on the pulse of what was happening. Oh, developments in LEDs. I knew about that, you know, nanotech. I did an article about a company that was working to develop nanofiber water filtration things that you could, if you're in a drought area, you just have these straws and they're full of nanofibers. You can actually drink out of a mud puddle. You know, a lot of stuff like that. Some of these technologies worked. Some didn't work so well, but they... So I had my finger on the pulse. So I worked with the Waste District here and Vermont tech. And we applied for and got a $600,000 Department of Energy grant to study food waste to energy biodeigest. So I ran that program, that study for three years, and in which time, Vermont tech really wanted to build a biodeigester. So we looked for another bunch of money and they did build it on that campus. Never worked out, though. Neither the study nor the biodeigester unfortunately throws a complicated technical reason. It is, and, you know, I hear you, but we have to do better. So talk to me, Dan. I want to talk to you a little bit about COVID and how this pandemic affected you and your views about the future of our humanity. You got to keep it short. I mean, we're definitely going to go over, but I want to go over with you. I'm going over my time with you here. But I want your views about the future of our humanity on the planet, a planet which might prefer for us not to stay here. Yeah, COVID for us was kind of not so bad. We live in downtown Montpelier. We had a son who was finishing high school and starting college. He had a girlfriend and so he was part of, she was part of our pod of people who could come into our house. You know, so she was here a lot. So we had enough social flow through. We never felt isolated. And by nature, I was finishing up whatever book I was working on, probably finishing off on Brassard's farm and starting the buddy below. So I work at home anyway. So my consulting, I mostly am working from home. But about a pandemic. I mean, this fact that the whole world stopped, just stopped. Yeah. Now in the Babel Effect, the people there, I studied epidemiology to write the Babel Effect. And I can tell you that for 30 years, every epidemiologist in the world has saying the planet is going to blow because it has every kind of, all the mechanisms are in place for a global pandemic. As it turns out, COVID became it. But we have a lot of transportation between cities. We have people living densely together. We have constant exchange of goods and services all over the place. So everybody's been saying for years that we're ready. And it's so hard for the public to accept. But science stepped up and look where we are today. Now, I also want to take you into the world of our democracy and talk to you about how we can function in a society that's being fed lies by everyone. And what has happened to our country and where we are headed? And how are you feeling about this, about where we are? Because you were born in 1950, as was I. So we've been through a lot, right? We've been through a lot in our 73 years. But where do you see our country where we are right now? I'm not too optimistic. What I don't like is that, I don't like the... Look, we were creatures of the age of reason. There was this wonderful explosion of rationality in the 1700s. We had guys like Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Newton and all these lovely science types who were looking for... And on the basis of their understanding, we built secular democracies, which we found to be probably the best form of human society, social organization ever. Great. But now we have to doubt all science, in fact. And I have for years studied psychology and neuroscience. And I still cannot understand the mechanisms by which belief is created or uncreated. All I can learn from my studies now is that efforts to persuade people of something they don't want to believe backfire, it actually makes them believe it harder. And, in fact, a lot of anything that's forced on people... God, I just read a meta study of DEI trainings, diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings that big corporations do and universities do. Good thing, you know, let's accept people of all color shapes. You know what? They actually are county productive. Downstream studies of people who've received them find them to be more prejudicial than before they had them. Before they had them. I'm not real hopeful. I do not like the cultish thing that's going on right now, this personality cult, the denial of any fact, every fact. There seems to be an erosion of faith in democracy. We actually want an authoritarian leader to make everybody toe the line. A lot of the world is falling that way. Look at India, look at Pakistan, look at Hungary. So, Dan, thank you for that. I appreciate that. So, what words of wisdom would you give to our children and their children who will be living another 40, 70, 100 years from now on this planet? What's your words of wisdom for your own children? You're challenging me here. I am challenging you, my friend. I want to give you a... Yes, I am. I appreciate it. Let me think for a second on that. I think learn a lot of skills, put together a lot of skills. Try to master your physical and mechanical environment a bit. Learn to grow food because when systems break down, you'll get hungry and you wish you had it. I've been working with a group here in Montpelier. It's informal, but it's been six months now. We're really concerned about local food supply. Vermont really raises only about 10% of its edible food. We say 20%, but most of that is alcohol, is beer and spirits, which is our idle mind, those either, but they're not much protein in them. So, keep some basic skills. Stay physically fit. Keep all your parts alive. One thing that kids don't do anymore is read. Even my own sons don't do much reading. They listen to podcasts, but reading a book strings together ideas in a flow that's important to maintain. It contextualizes. Look at context. So what are you working on now? What's your next project? Since I completed the body below, a lot of what I had to do is marketing stuff. Unfortunately, the book came out at the very end of August, last day of August, but we were hit by the flood here in Montpelier on July 10th, including the building. I own a building in Montpelier. I live in one part of it. It's three houses stuck together. Well, one of the houses got flooded. It's below grade. So I had to go fix all that. I do all the carpentry, plumbing, and wiring myself. So I did it all myself. And then there's dealing with small business administration, FEMA, our car, wonderful wiring, our car, which was just fine, but it had some cosmetic work was at the body shop. If it hadn't been here, it would have been fine, but it got flooded at the body shop. And we liked that Subaru out back. Damn. And then with two months of fighting with the insurance company who didn't want to reimburse us for us. So I don't know. It was a long, hard summer. So do you have a book that you're working on now? Are you taking this book? I actually have one I've been working on for many years. And it's called My Father's Novel. And it's almost magical realist. It is based in the present, a guy kind of like me in the present, and flashing back to that period in the late 40s and early 50s and my parents and their artistic community. Fascinating people, amazing adventures and misadventures, constant poverty, constant reassurance in finding others of their same ilk. So I've got about 350 or 400 pages of it. And I just have to write another 100 or so pages of it. That'll be fine. Well, it's a good time to do that. It's winter and we're all sort of hustled in here. And well, Dan Hect, I want to tell you how privileged I am to have you on my show and to share your story with my viewers. And I'm just delighted to get to know you better. Please put me on your mailing list if you're going to do any readings or you're going to, you know, whatever anything you do, I would love to be become your new fan, your new groupie. And thank you for sharing your life and your work and your wisdom with me and my viewers today. Thank you so much, my friend, for being with me. Oh, this has been fun. I hope I've answered some of the questions. Magnificent. I'm so delighted. And to my viewers, I hope you're all doing well. After this last storm we had and that your power has been restored. And I want to wish you a happy new year. And thank you for tuning in and into my show. And I will see you all soon. Thank you very much.