Hello, my name is Sterling Tilly, and I am your host. Thanks to everyone for joining our Black History Month program entitled From the Street to Mainstream, the Evolution of Rap Hip Hop Music. I would like to welcome our studio guests in Washington DC and also welcome our international audiences. We are joined by online audiences in Albania, Abuja, Jerusalem, Kingston, and Yemen, as well as many other posts throughout the world. In every corner of the world, there are hip hop festivals in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. But more than 40 years ago, hip hop was born out of the disaffected youth in poor neighborhoods in New York City. It has grown into a worldwide phenomenon, including adaptation by diverse cultures, people from various social economic backgrounds, and all the way to use by mainstream media. From the very beginning, there were artists such as DJ Cool Herk, Grandmaster Flash in the Furious Five, the Sugar Hill Gang in Africa, Bambada, that expressed themselves in ways which had not been known by many that did not live within these communities. Oh, and I cannot forget our ladies, Queen Latifah, Salt and Pepper, Yo-Yo, and MC Light. Their version of expression lives on through superstars like Will Smith, MIA, Jay-Z, Lil Mama, Eminem, Nicki Minaj, The Game, and others. Now it is my pleasure to introduce today's studio guest. First, we have Tony Blackman, an American rapper, actress, writer, a State Department musical ambassador, and the first hip hop cultural envoy who has traveled to Africa, Asia, Brazil, Canada, and Europe. She is best known for her Iran-like-a-girl foundation, and she is coming to us live via New York City. We also have Pras Michelle, a two-time Grammy-winning American rapper, best known as one of the founding members of the critically acclaimed hip hop group, The Fuji's. Thank you both for joining us today. Thank you for having us. For our listeners, please go ahead and submit your questions in our chat area. You can submit any questions you have for our panelists any time throughout the program. We'd like to start off with the questions we've collected for our panelists. Tony, can you kick us a few verses for a second? Ah, when I start out with a beautiful poem, an invisible woman. Not because people wouldn't be able to see me, but they know I am a beautiful woman. It's as if my woman asks for my identity. My president will often mistake me, perhaps, as I am a beautiful woman. Whose words don't go past enough? Whose beats just aren't enough? Whose contributions go on to speak to me? I am a beautiful, visible woman. They know I'm here because I was what he did. I boy, hip hop, and he did. We are true. I am a beautiful woman. Now, I may not be, but I'll be damned if I wasn't heard. Wow, now that's a lot of how you rhyme like a girl. All right, Tony, so some people don't know the difference between rap and hip hop. Please explain to the viewing audience the difference. Well, I think that, at one point, there was this big, and there was a lot of tension around what rap and hip hop verses, the false hip hop, the fake hip hop rap. So I look at it this way, because I work with a lot of young people who embrace popular commercial creation, hip hop. The word hip hop represents the culture. And the culture is rich with many forms of creativity. Question and elements. We're talking about hip hop culture. We're talking about dancing, visual art, the art of dancing, and the spoken word. We're talking about boxing and vocal protection. We're talking about knowledge and wisdom, and entrepreneurship. But when we talk about rap, we're talking about work. Now, I have some of your colleagues who will say that rap represents the commercialized, overly commodified, overly exploited, crass version of hip hop. But I do believe that, I think, in any art form, there is good art, and there's not stuff. And then there's just that. And so there's some hip hop, others like rap, and they say that it's not hip hop. I think it's all hip hop. I think there's some of it that doesn't deserve to go in the category of being hip hop. Oh, that's very interesting. But let me switch over here to Praz. And Praz, can you kick a few verses for us? Well, you know, it's early in the morning. But I wanted to touch upon what she said. Sure, please go ahead. Because you asked me to kick a verse, and it's like, I'm coming here to the State Department. And for the first time, we're talking about hip hop culture. And so I'm not really in that zone and kick a rap because you ask what is hip hop and what is rap. Hip hop is about the culture pivot. Meaning, like, when I grew up into hip hop, listening to Africa Bambado, Run DMC, Public Enemy, it was about your swag, it was about what you wore.  Hip hop was not played on mainstream radio. It was only played on Friday nights and Saturday nights in New York. So we had to tape it. We had to tape them late at night from midnight to 4 AM. And they would play it for the whole week. So like she said, you got people who rap. Rap is equivalent to singing, basically. It's like the action of what you're doing. You kick a verse. We call it spit now. We don't call it rap now. But for lack of better terms, you rap. But hip hop is about how you feel, how you embrace it. You'll swag like the way Jay-Z will wear his hat. Or the way life, for example, when Will Smith came out with Mama Don't Understand, that was his style of hip hop. So those are the difference between hip hop. And today, obviously, it's been more commercialized. But you still got people still trying to maintain the culture for what it is today. Like, for example, how you mentioned like, look at Ice Cube, for example. He represented more like the West Coast of hip hop. And then he made that transition from hip hop to being a movie star. But he still always maintained his essence of where he came from. Right, right. OK. Well, Tony, Pras, what is your first memory of hip hop? And how do you think that impacted you and brought you to where you are right now? My first memory of hip hop was I was young. I remember when I first went to a summer school, like 1983, I think, or a summer camp. And there was this record I heard. Because back in the day, they used to carry this big radio. It was called a boombox. Right. Yeah, I had one of those.  And the big clocks. Well, the clocks came afterwards. But that's favorite play. But so these guys was walking around with this big boombox. And it was playing this song. I'll never forget it. It was a song by this group called Run DMC. It's called Sucker MCs. Two years ago, a friend of mine asked me to say some MC rounds. So I'm going to say this round. I'm about to say the round went deaf. And it went like this. You know, it was like, boom, boom, bop, bop, boom, bop, doo-doo. And I was like, wow, that's fresh.  So that was my first memory of hip hop. And then later on that fall, what made me want to get into music was the 25th anniversary of Motown, where Michael Jackson first performed. I didn't even know who he was. And then he did the moonwalk, which he took from hip hop. Because that was break dancing. And he incorporated it with his style and made it mainstream. See how he took something from our hip hop, incorporated it. And that's why we embraced Michael Jackson, because he was like, he was borrowing something from us. Wow, that's awesome. Well, let's talk a little bit more about why it is important for people to celebrate Black History Month in your view. Well, I mean, if we look about where black people started from Africa coming here within the slavery times, I'm, personally, I'm Haitian-American. So I celebrate black history, because Haiti being the first black republic to win its independence in 1804. So that makes us proud. We were the second independent country behind America. It also makes us proud, because we helped America gain its 21 states through the Louisiana Purchase. You look at black history culture from Frederick Douglass to James Baldwin to Marcus to Garvey to Christopher's Addis, who started basically the Boston Tea Party Revolution. I think it's something we need to celebrate, because it's a very part of American culture. And I think people need to understand our impact. We had not just America, but globally. We had our first elected black president in 2008. I think that's something that's very rich, something we need to celebrate. But not just black culture. I mean, now we're talking about black history, because it's a black history month. But I think a lot of people who came to America, the impact they had, whether it be Irish, Italians, but black people definitely had a lot to do with what's going on in our culture. Now, you mentioned that you were a child of immigrants. And I want to go back to that. And I want to know whether or not how you view that experience as being a child of immigrants. And what type of perspective does that lend you when you are talking or expressing yourself in your music? Well, I mean, when I express myself in my music, or in general, it's coming from two perspectives. See, I was born here as an American, some first-generation American, but I also had my family culture that was instilling me, growing up. When I was growing up, it was interesting to go back to hip-hop. My parents didn't want me to do anything with hip-hop. She thought it was satanic music. So when I used to live at the house, I had to sneak in my sneakers and my book bag. So when I left the house, I put on my Adidas, put on my little gazelles, glasses on, try to look fresh and fly. But I had both culture. My thing was to maintain both culture. The American culture, obviously, because I'm American first and foremost, but also my parents' culture was relation. So everything has a dual perspective to it. OK. Tony, in your view, how has hip-hop evolved over time? I think over time, hip-hop has gone from this folk art, street art, young people just hanging out to now being this multi-billion-dollar music industry. Hip-hop has influenced industries in every field. When we look at technology, we can look at what the DJs did and how they utilized the record player in ways that it had never been used before. There, the beat makers and the producers, they created the foundation for a lot of the instrumentation that was then created. A lot of the equipment that producers now use today happened because of the early hip-hop heads who were creating artwork and music. And it shaped the future. I think hip-hop created a lot of entrepreneurs. A lot of people who wouldn't have otherwise identified ways for them to sustain themselves and to build wealth for their family, this came about because of hip-hop. And so hip-hop has evolved into opportunity for people. Hip-hop has evolved in the academy. We can look at the universities and the institutions and how many of the elite institutions have departments for hip-hop that they've dedicated fellowship. Harvard has the Nazir Jones fellowship at Harvard University and in his name, in celebration and honor of what he has contributed to the music and to the culture and so hip-hop is receiving all sorts of acknowledgment now. And I know there's loads of hip-hop educators all over the world, I have friends in South Africa and the South of France and in South Central LA. Their life and their life purpose is dedicated to teaching. They are teachers and they are educated, but the foundation from which they teach is rooted in the principles of hip-hop music and culture.  Anyway, what do you think hip-hop culture has done for black Americans in the U.S. and how do you see it around the world, being that you've traveled around the world and actually talked about hip-hop culture? Well, I've been talking about this a lot recently with some fellow creatives and lovers of hip-hop about how hip-hop has impacted the lives of black Americans. And I think one of the things that we must note is that hip-hop is the most significant form of cultural expression, the most significant arts movement, I guess since the Harlem Renaissance. And we can tie it into, hip-hop came out of the black arts movement of the 60s and the civil rights movement, but in terms of its impact and its ability to penetrate throughout black American culture, it has, it's incomparable. And I think hip-hop provided a microphone for the oral tradition. African people for centuries, the African oral tradition has played a functional and integral role in our development and our community as a people. It's one of the reasons why the church is so important in the black community in America because of the minister and the preacher. It's one of the reasons why when we gather together as families, there's the storytelling, there's the tradition known as signifying where we tell jokes about one another and out of love, though, and we love one another in a way through a sense of humor. And I know one of the things that I discovered during my travels was how common this was in the continent of Africa and that things that I thought were very specific to my experience growing up weren't that specific at all because they were quite universal amongst people of African descent. And I think what it, black Americans, what it does, it reinforces a lot of ideals that I think that a lot of black Americans aren't even aware of. That it is not understanding like the cultural depth that's occurring, that this person is not just doing a rap song. This person is storytelling. This person is signifying. Yes. Wow, thank you both for that background. Now let's go now to some questions from our viewers overseas. This question is for both Pras and Tony. What is the best advice anyone ever gave you? Tony, we'll go to you first. The best advice anyone ever gave me, I guess the best advice was honoring what I know I'm supposed to do and serving and remembering that what I do is not about me. And as I live my life from that principle, I feel like I've been able to live a very fortunate life, to travel the whole world in service. And who would have imagined 15, just 15 years ago, 20 years ago, that I would have been able to travel the entire world because of hip hop? Like that's not something that was in my head and that I would have been able to do my two things I love the most, teach and perform because of hip hop. So I think it's really important to have the best advice I've gotten is to honor what was in my heart and to do what I knew inside of me I was meant to do and to stay true to that passion. Right. So Pras, best advice someone ever gave you? Best advice, I would say my dad once told me he said every man wants to go to heaven but no man wants to die. And when I think of hip hop, like Tony said, there's a lot of black folks that would be out of a job right now if it wasn't for hip hop. A lot of other folks too besides that's capitalizing on hip hop that aren't black, you know. But because of hip hop, I've been able to sell over 25 million records, been able to travel the world, been able to sit here on this forum and express my opinion. And so what I've learned from that saying was you gotta have a cause and that's what hip hop was. It was the voice of the youth. During the late 70s, 80s, you know, the police brutality, the birth of crack, the gang wars, the way that they weren't paying attention to us. You know, non-corporation has to pay attention to us because we have a voice, you know, people follow what we say. And so for me, my cause, you know, always been especially when I started the Fugees was we're going to do what we love, you know. But we want to have a cause behind it. You know, so everything I do is about a cause. Still, you know, just being able to support my family, being able to do my art, but also want to have something to be said behind that. That's why when you invited me, I thought it would be a great place to come and kind of like be a part of this. And because I remember a hip hop when it first started. When I tell you I remember, it was the most incredible feeling. It was like, this is what I must and have to do. Right.  You know, Tony can understand what I'm saying. We're in our own, you know, we have our own culture, our own language. We can see, you know, what's going on. We can hear it, we can feel it. You know, our intuitive vibe is a little bit more heightened.  And there would be little things he would do that caught the attention of us who were into hip hop, like when he went like this. You know, that's something that Jay did. You know, Jay Z. And so we automatically identified with that. You know, so it's things like that. You know, that I think that when I think about the best advice, that's what comes to my head. Yeah. Proz, this next live question is for you. Your music has influenced from many different cultures. Why do you think diversity is important in music? Well, you know, diversity is very important because when you look at the Fuji, for example, it was very diverse. You know, Lauryn Hill was African-American. White Clef Jean and myself were, well, White Clef was born in Haiti. Right. And I was kind of like the guy in between Haitian and American. And Lauryn brought in the soul. All she listened to were Motown because she grew up, her family grew up on that. And that's what she picked up from her family. Well, White Clef was straight from Haiti, had the Haitian culture. I grew up in a household where my parents only listened to like Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Bee Gees. Nothing really black. Only two black artists my mom ever loved was Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, nothing else. So when we got together, I brought in kind of like the rock-pop element where Lauryn brought in the soul and White Clef brought in that Caribbean Haitian. And when you blend that together, it gave a sound that resonated throughout the world. And that's why diversity is important because and even when you travel the world, you pick up something.   You go to Asia, you got that vibe going. And so you get influenced by that. So when you go to make your music, it automatically becomes diverse. If you're not diverse, then you kind of like stuck in like in a little box. And there's nothing wrong with that.  Right, right. Well, from Perth, Australia, what do Tony and Prost think the most influential moment in the history of hip-hop? Or who do either of you think is the most influential artist historically? And I'll leave that to you first, Tony. The most influential moment in hip-hop? Yeah, there are too many to name, right? There's so many. I guess we have to go back to the beginning. I would think in the very beginning, when Cool Herk's sister, Cindy, suggested that they go to the park and they plug in the speakers into the light post and they have a jam, a hip-hop jam. And that's where it all started. I think it's critical to remember, you know, you know, the roots, the roots of the music and the roots of the culture. And I think that has to be, in my mind, just on the spot, the most influential moment. I think the most influential artist is a very difficult question. Because one of the things that we do too often with hip-hop is we put everybody in the hip-hop box. Not really realizing that hip-hop is a genre, you know, hip-hop is a culture. And it's a kind of, and rap is a genre of music. But underneath that is all sorts of kinds of rap. And it's not just one vibe. It's not just one style. And you can hear, like, probably because of these influences, there are a lot, and a lot of artists, they have those same influences. And sometimes that makes their music sound different from someone who has a different set of influences. And so, yeah, that's a tough question for me. Now, if I'm talking as an artist, then you're talking, I think, the most influential. It's kind of based on the era and the point at which you were introduced to hip-hop. And so, for me, I would say K.R.S.1 and Rockingham are influential. But my mentee is gonna say something different. Yeah, completely different. Right, what about you, Pras? So it's the most... You know, there's been a lot of pivical moments, like she mentioned, Kool-Hert going to the park. It's working, you know. Right. But, you know, that's the pivical moment because if he was three minutes late, made that happen, if it rained that day, hip-hop, I wouldn't be what it is today. But okay, it happened. I would say the next pivical moment probably would have been the first time MTV played rap on MTV, which is Run DMC. Right, yeah. To let the world see, like, wow, what is this? Who are these guys with gold chains? Black suits. Yeah, leather suits. And the D&C. Right. So, there's been a lot of pivical moments. And like she said, hip-hop is not a monolithic thing. It's very diverse.  So, MIA, you know, she's not from here, but we embrace her as being part of hip-hop. You know, in the mid to late 80s, you started to have like, the French started to have, try to make an impact with MC's solo. He was really big then, you know. So, you know, hip-hop, influential hip-hop, man, that's very hard because it really, the gamut is so enormous. You can't really pinpoint, you know, you can go from Run DMC to like she said, Public Enemy, Rock Kim, to Biggie Smalls, to Tupac, to Eminem, I mean, Queen Latifah, you know. If you really want to get down to it, you can go back to Roxanne Chante, you know. I mean, Dougie Fresh and Slick Rick, there's too many, there's so many hip-hop, and like she said, depends on whatever. Like, I'm from the 90s, but for me, the best ever is the 80s. You know, because that's the birth, that's when it was really free. It wasn't about, you know, I gotta make a record for the radio, okay, I'm gonna make a record for the streets, I'm gonna make a record for ladies, it was just about who you were. Like she said, Kara's won. Right.  He was the battle MC, no matter what, you know, so it was too many to go down the list. Okay, Tony, I have a shout out to you, and it's coming from Jetta South Africa. Is radio play as important as before? There's a radio host, Big Haas, who's asking that question. Is radio play as important as before? I said, you know what, that's interesting question.  And so there's a handful of artists who have access to the financial resources that are necessary to get played on the radio, and those are the artists that get played, and those same 10 artists get played. Radio, at least in America, and I think in many, European countries, has been corporatized, and the corporatization of radio, I think has impacted hip hop culture in a way that stifled its growth and created stagnation for a time. But now that we have access to the internet, and hopefully can maintain some sort of net neutrality, that it levels out the playing field just enough for hip hop to continue to grow, and to evolve, and to develop, and for the next phase of hip hop to occur. And I think what's most beautiful about the flatlining of hip hop in terms of what's popular right now is that it's creating a subculture, and an underground culture, and I think that happened in the 90s a couple of times, and we had great groups come out like the Fugees. And so the artists just go within, and it's like hip hopers begin to just create what they create, and then they come out, and there's another birth of something else. And I think that's what's happening right now, is that there are artists all over the world. Like there are artists collaborating, artists in France can work with artists in Haiti, and artists in Hawaii at the same time, because of the internet. They think it's very beautiful. We do have to learn how to use it, and to maximize it, and to not take for granted, because the internet is so rich with information it's sometimes hard to sift through. But I don't know, maybe I'm being an optimist and idealist, but I see good things unfolding in the future. Right. So Prows, we have another question for you coming from Yerevan Armenia. And they ask, how does rap in the 1990s like Tupac and Biggie, compare to rap today like Jay-Z and Kanye? Well, first of all, Jay-Z is from the era too, the 90s. Right, right. But how you compare Tupac, it's just two different era. Biggie, God bless his soul, who I knew personally, and Pop both. I thought they were, to me, they're my two favorite rappers of all time. Lyrically, they were the one and two of the best. Look, I have to be honest with you, it'd be hard pressed to argue, you know, Biggie and Pop and Jay-Z and I'm being probably three of the greatest lyricists of all time. Now, you know, obviously it's all subjective, right? So, but I think that you go back and you listen to the vibe, you know, you know.  You know, they continue letting it expand. You know, like you said, hip hop, kind of like flat line a little, which is good, because what it does, every time it flat lines, it brings something else. If you look in the late 80s, when it started to flat line, you know, when P.E. and The Rock Kims, all those guys, Big Daddy Kane over there came out, it flat line, and then when it came back, for a hot minute, it came back with the MC Hammer, the Young MCs, you know, the vanilla ice, then it flat line a little again, then it came back with the Naughty by Nature, the Red Mans, the Laws of the Underground. It was a surge, nozz, you know, it became, you know, so I think right now, that's what you're starting to experience now.  I'm always go back to the 80s. You ask me, what's my favorite rappers? I'm gonna go back to Biggie and Tupac. It's just like music, you know, when you think about rock and roll, people would tell you the 60s and the 70s, was the best era of music, especially for black music. You know, when Motown started, because people don't know this, like in the 60s and 70s, black artists weren't allowed to put their photos on the albums. You could hear their voices, but they put white faces on it. So that's, and out of that frustration came the generation in the late 70s and 80s, that's how the birth of hip hop basically came about. You know, like talking about, like, you know, our frustration being the CNN, if you will, of the hood, of the ghetto, of these neighborhoods. But yeah, like I said, there's this, there's this bunch of different networks. Right. So Tony, how do you see hip hop being utilized as an educational tool? You mentioned that a little bit earlier for us. Well, I mean, as an educational tool, like it's, like the surface is just being scratched in terms of hip hop being used in the classroom. And I'm actually going to, well, for a few hip hop education conferences where we're working with teachers in later this month and in March and traveling with Urban Word and YC and working with Michigan State. And it's interesting because you can use hip hop to teach virtually anything. Dr. Chris Emden is known and becoming very acclaimed because of his work using hip hop to teach science. And he's got all these kids in the Bronx excited about science, but he's using hip hop to do it. And then there's a guy went to college with DJ Paul Howard, Saeed Howard, who, I remember him using hip hop to teach math, mathematics, and you can use hip hop to teach social studies. And you can use hip hop to teach history. Dr. Dia in Atlanta is a psychologist who uses hip hop as a tool for healing. She uses two pop lyrics to get young people to process what it is they're going through and what it is they're suffering from. And I think we're just at the space where you have people who grew up on hip hop who are now in their 30s and early 40s who are just digging deep. And they are, they've studied education, they're working with teachers, they understand the training of how to reach students, but they also understand hip hop music and culture and they're researching. Once Dia produces the hip hop think tank via a project she started, the Hip Hop Education Center. And there was a huge conference in November and at the Schomburg here in New York City and it brought hip hop educators from all over the world, as far as from the Czech Republic, from South Africa, from Japan. And I think it's really exciting. I know for me, as I started out teaching hip hop when I was still in college because of Deborah Minkart teaching for Change, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that is this focus on providing support resources for teachers. And it's gonna be interesting to see what happens as the hip hoppers get older because now there are kids in college who can start out studying hip hop education and there's material and there's research and there are resources and there are conferences and so they don't have to figure everything out. I think hip hop is a wonderful teaching tool. We saw a video that went viral recently of a school teacher who was in the cafeteria with his students and he got on the floor, they were playing beats and he started break dancing. And you could see the ice break and the ice melting and the student's reaction to him being able to break dance. It's the same thing when I go to a school to speak, the kids have never heard of me, but if I freestyle, it's on. They're eating out of the palm of my hand and I can tell them, do most anything. Okay, Prost, from South Africa, they have a question for you. Do you think hip hop was used as a weapon against racism? Wow.  They felt like they were being oppressed. Now, they weren't being physically oppressed at that time, but they felt like they were being oppressed. And so they used that to talk about what was going on and how they were being treated from NWA, with the police situation, from people like rock him dropping knowledge, from people like public enemy, stopped the violence. Karis One was very conscious. So you had these conscious rappers who were talking about, yes, racism, they were talking about socialism, they were talking about the economic differences in these classes, the way that the police would take hours to come to their needs, the way that they would just get stopped and frisked in the 80s and the 90s. So yes, hip hop was definitely like I said, hip hop is about people at that time that weren't being heard. So when you're not being heard, that means someone's not paying attention to you. They're not paying attention to you. That means they think of you a certain way. So one can say that is racism, especially because it started out in the black community. But that goes back all the way when the slaves were brought here in America. See, people don't stand like, back then when they used to sing in the cotton fields, that's hip hop too. That's how they went through their days. It's the same. They had fun amongst each other. Yeah, we're picking this cotton, it's hot out here. But it's all good. Because we're enjoying something. We're seeing some poachers with each other.  We're having fun.  So it started from there, the beat of the drums, that's the rhythm. It started, then it naturally evolved. And now, myself, Tony, we can capitalize on it. She came by teaching something that she loves. The best thing in the world is to do something that you love and get compensated by it. It could be financially, it could be her rewards, could be just seeing these faces of these different people and different cultures. That's embracing something that we created. At the end of the day, we created this. Black people created this. When you look at someone like Molly Cyrus, twerking, right? That's something that came from our experiences, that came from our culture, that she took and embraced it. And thank God for her, she made it a worldwide phenomenal. But it all came from us. Like when Michael Jackson did the moonwalk, it came from us. Like when Rodney Jameson fell, people don't know what I'm talking about, but you know, God bested soul. Sorry to remember. When he was rapping, that came from us, part of our culture, hip-hop. Hip-hop is being embraced in so many different ways, even from the Super Bowl. And I think that hip-hop is this phenomenal, that it's basically a way of life. You can sit back and think about it. I mean, think about it. We at the State Department, talking about hip-hop, that's when you know the world has changed. What's coming to a change. Right. But that's very interesting observations, Praz, very interesting. And we've got another question for both of you. What advice do you have for young people who want to have their voice heard? We'll start with you, Tony. I guess for young people who want to have their voice heard, I think it's really important to listen to those who you admire, who are being heard right now. That's the first thing, to listen. And to not just listen to what's contemporary and popular at the moment, but to listen back. And to listen to things from the past, to listen to stuff from the 90s and the 80s, even the 70s, to listen back. It's also important to read. And that's one of the beauties, I think, of being really coming into hip-hop in the 90s is that I knew a lot of artists and including a lot of the popular mainstream artists. They're all red. And you could hear the distinction in what it is they rapped about and how they rapped and the way they told stories. And reading is a very important part of writing poetry, of storytelling, of being able to put words together. I think that's really important. And to take care of yourself in order to be true to your own voice, you gotta love it. And if you dislike yourself, if you hate yourself, if you are not able to approve of yourself, it's gonna be very challenging for you to honor your own voice. That is so true. And Tony, I have another question for you. What role does music play in bringing different people and cultures together? With that in mind, I forgot. I was supposed to shout out D. Jack Munoz from the Congo. He's live in Abidjan right now. So what up, D. Jack? He sent me an email on Facebook.  So whether we're talking about the dance, element of the culture where dancers gather at international festivals and conferences, or we're talking about the DJing battles, like the DMC battles that have been going on recently where the top DJs in the world are now gonna compete, or whether we're talking about MCing, that I don't know if I can clearly articulate how the communication tool hip hop is. If you drop a beat, okay, I tell teachers in my hip hop 101 workshops I've done for teachers just breaking down a coach for them, but I've always said, I said, you can take me anywhere in the world. You can drop me out of an airplane. And if you can show me where the hip hop heads are, I know I have a place to sleep tonight and something to eat. That's how powerful hip hop is as a tool to bring people together across cultures. Wow, that is something. And Pras, how have you seen hip hop and rap inspire social change? Oh, man, once again, I go back to public enemy, Kara's one. Chuck D, he had a big impact. NWA, when they were tired, they brought police brutality to the front stand of stage, I.S.T., you know. When I look at rappers who also made that transition from being hip hop artists going into movies, being entrepreneurs, like Puffy, doing his clothing line, his beverages. That's change. That's telling kids, you know what? I can use this as a platform to do what I love and then go make some change and go do other things. Hip hop, I'm part of hip hop. I was born into it. I know what we've done.  And when I look and, because they tell us every place in the world that's played the song, right? When I look, some of these places I never even heard of before. Right. That are playing my music. Like I remember when I went to Somalia a couple of years ago, you know, the last place I would think anyone would have an idea who I am. And these people came up to me, Bryce, what are you doing in Somalia? I'm like, you know what? You know, but what you stand for, what you do influences the world, you know? And that's the power of music in general.  Just tell me where the hood is at.  True, true. And Tony, we've got a question from our viewers in Abuja. We have a strong interest in hip hop here and formed hip hop on wheels. Last year after a visit by hip hop dancers, the dancers noted that hip hop has roots in Africa traditional dance. Do you agree with that? Oh, yes, yes, yes, indeed. You can look at the movement. Even as Pradha just mentioned twerking, twerking is not actually twerking. Twerking is actually a traditional movement that people of African descent have been doing for centuries. It's actually most done by women who are well endowed. And to twerk, even just using the word twerking is I find it a bit disturbing because it's a dance movement and it does to people who are outside of the culture or who approach life from a certain shame when it comes to the physical body and the beauty of the body, they would say that it is shameful and that it is sexual. It's not necessarily a sexual dance. It just happens to be that the human body radiates a certain sensuality when a woman makes certain movements which is why they're there. They're places where, you know, sometimes women are dressed modestly because it's just, it's in a woman's essence to radiate a certain energy. But indeed, the dance moves, you can look at certain break dance moves and there's an organization called Step Africa based in DC. They look at the connection between traditional stepping and South African gumbu dancing. And there's no difference. It's the same move. So how did that happen? And how did that connection occur? There are a lot of the popular dances that young people do here that are popular right now. I can't remember the names of them, but you can go to West Africa or East Africa and you can see the same exact dances. And so indeed, I agree with the dance dancers that visited the country, yeah. And as far as the history of rap and hip hop goes, do either of you have a personal connection to jazz music? If so, how has jazz influenced your music? And I'll start with you, Pras. Well, I mean, I know about jazz and obviously when I was coming up, jazz wasn't something that I listened to. But I know like the cold trains and all those guys and the Miles Davis. Look, when you look at someone like Nas, for example, his father was a jazz musician. So jazz has influenced our gangsta. People don't probably don't know what gangsta is, but God bless his soul too. Gangsta was influenced by jazz. Me personally, my influence was more like rock, Caribbean. So that's just happened to be me. So that's the flavor that I brought. Just like Dr. Dre, Snoop, they funk. That's where their music has a certain sound to it, is that West Coast funk. Where East Coast is more like B-Boy style. It's more like, you know, I think it's more, our style is more about being slick. You know, it's about like, you know, the swag, where the South, it's like, it's that, I don't even know what you call that kind of music, but it's just kind of like- It gets you jumping though. Yeah, it's like, and like what Tony was saying about twerk, she's right. I mean, these dances been going on for centuries, but that's the term that they use now, you know, twerk. I don't know what it was called before that, but today they call it twerk, you know. And you know, it's funny, I went online the other day and I see these rushing girls twerking. It's the most, like I can't even, words can't even express, like wow. Well, we have another question from Yuravine Arminia.  I think it depends on what you mean by power. I think that women in hip hop have been disenfranchised so much that women in terms of art as artists, they don't have a whole lot of agency and a whole lot of power, but I think if we're talking about creatively, spiritually, I go through a list all the way from, I guess, from Lauryn Hill to Latsi for the MC Light, then I go to artists whom I adore and know personally like Bahamadiya and Medusa and Eternia and Invincible and Saurak. And I could go on and on and on because I think that there's, right now, there is a right underneath the surface, right underneath the radar. I could probably, if you give me an hour, I could write you a list of 100 women MCs, rap artists that are recording music right now. And I don't know what will occur. Like over the past few years, several female MCs were signed, but we didn't get to hear much from them except for those who are, I guess the reality show type of personalities who create beef on Twitter. But the real artists, we haven't heard from them yet. And I think that one of the reasons why I'm so excited about the internet is we'll get to at least see their videos and hear their music. And then what happens next will happen. But I think there's a lot of power and I could list, in terms of professional, creative, artistic power, there's a lot of it. Business-wise, I would have to, I don't know, I don't have answer for that. Wow, we have another one from Urivan. They are really engaged. They all are also curious to know if you think hip-hop creates its own culture and also what effect does it have on language?  Well, hip-hop, yeah, hip-hop does create its own culture. I mean, if you look at dance, if you look at clothing, the way people dress is hip-hop. The way people talk is hip-hop. You can look at major news outlets like CNN, or ESPN Sports, and you can hear the announcers utilizing slang and dialect words that come out of hip-hop music and culture. Hip-hop also popularizes certain concepts and ideas and ways of talking about life and the way we talk about ourselves. And for many of us in hip-hop music and culture, hip-hop is a part of our identity. We don't separate our hip-hop from what we love to eat or how we choose to pray. Hip-hop is a part of our identity, and it's like, hip-hop could show up in Somalia, and the hip-hop has, he's like, yo, I've been chill, I don't know why you guys know who I am, but they do. Hip-hop is important to them, and of course it influences language. And that's a whole discussion in itself on how hip-hop has influenced language. Right, and Pras, overall, how has music helped you to express yourself? Can you think of a particular time where music helped you to make it through a difficult time in your life?  You know, there's some people that switch.  For us, my switch is on 24-7, I'm like, Conn Edison, I'm on 24-7, you know?  I may wear a suit, but I got my scarf on, you know, and to let him know, like, this hip-hop is here, you know, or if I go to Cambodia, you know, I'm still gonna represent something that's gonna let you know he represent hip-hop, you know, and it's a culture thing from how I eat, how I think, what brands I wear, you know, how I express myself, it definitely helped me to express myself and become the man that I am today. Now, obviously, because of success, it helped me to really form myself to be the man that I am today. Hip-hop definitely helped me through a time, you know, I remember growing up, my family, well, my mom and my dad, but particularly my mom, she was very strict, you know, I came from a strict household.  And I remember, like, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, you know, I had the pressure of having to be a doctor or a lawyer, and, you know, when I started to listen to, like, hip-hop, hard hip-hop, like, going deep into, like, the Run DMC, the Rock Kim, the Big Daddy Kane at the time, along Bob Marley, you know? Right. It really helped to make me make that decision of what I want to do. And I was like, this is what I want to do, hip-hop. I'm hip-hop. I used to wash my laces and iron my laces, who does that? But that's what it was back then. And the creases in your hands. Oh, so you know about that, right? Oh, absolutely. I grew up wearing hip-hop, too. It was part of the culture. Now, it's obviously today to cut to 2014, it's different, it's a different movement. But like Tony said, it's still about the culture. I don't even have to know Tony, like, I mean, obviously she's speaking a very diplomatic style right now. But if I was to see her in person, having never met her before, and she saw me, we're automatically going to connect. Because there's gonna be something about her I'm gonna be like, oh, that's hip-hop. You know, subconsciously, in my mind, and she gonna know, oh yeah, that's hip-hop all the way. And that's the connection right there.  You work for the State Department, so you gotta be on your State Department role. But I knew you was hip-hop, because I saw your swag the way you was walking. I was like, oh, that's not a state, you slip a little. I was like, that was the hip-hop swag, you know? But that's what hip-hop is, being able to express yourself, you know? And that's what I love about it. I wouldn't change anything about it. And we have our last question. This has been a great discussion, and it looks like we've reached our final question that this last question is for both of you, a simple one. What is the future of hip-hop? Tony. Ooh, the future of hip-hop. I think that the future of hip-hop, you're gonna see a lot more spirituality injected into hip-hop. One of the things that I've noticed is that I started working on an inspirational audio project in the hip-hop meditation project. And as I started to kind of test market it and to do workshops, I do workshops on the sacredness of cipher, on the sacredness of the cipher, it was fascinating to me how many people were already there. And so we find a lot of people, as we're dealing with the crisis the world is, environmentally and politically and with the economy, people are seeking a sort of refuge. And music and art has always been where people go to first for peace of mind. And so I think hip-hop is going to play a different kind of role in providing a safe space and becoming a container for what people are experiencing emotionally. And in that it's gonna bring more people together. We're gonna see many more collaborations across cultures, people connecting in the world getting smaller because of hip-hop. Absolutely. And Pras, your thoughts on this? Well, I think there's a multifaceted to that question. Hip, like she said, you can go from the spirituality point of view of it. You can go from hip-hop, the commercialism of it. And obviously one of the reasons why hip-hop, in my opinion, is a global thing is because some parts of it has been commercialized. And I know a lot of people have issues with that. Well, some people have issues. They used to use this term called sell-out. I think that as long as you stay true to the essence of who you are, there's nothing wrong with expanding it because the thing is hip-hop has, I think hip-hop created a lot of jobs. How about that? And so coming from Tony's perspective, teaching and being able to do her poetry, traveling the world, that's one facet of it. Then you have the facet where people like me, where we're able to integrate what we've done with the U.S. government to help represent a side of it, to get kids to learn more about their country, to want to read, because a lot of people don't know it. A lot of hip-hop artists went to school, graduated. Like I went to Yale. I went to fuckers. A lot of people don't notice. And I think when kids start to learn more about us, that's gonna make them feel like, wow, if he or she did this, then maybe I should do this. Hip-hop obviously is gonna grow. You're starting to see the integration with corporations. You're seeing it also with the journalists on a news cycle. You're seeing it with our own president of the free world, the most powerful man on land. You're seeing how, if you go on his website, one of his favorite band are the Fugees. And he's friends with Jay-Z. You can go to any corner of the world. I don't care where you go. Someone somewhere in that place is listening to hip-hop. You can go to Cuba. You can go to Venezuela. You can go to, I know you can go to Russia, because I've been to Russia many times performing. You probably can go, I think you can go somewhere in North Korea. It's not really one person there listening to, I don't know, Rock Kim, whatever, Biggie Smalls. Hip-hop is a global phenomenon. You know why hip-hop is because to me is so true to what it is. And that's being a culture. And what's great about it is, you could be anyone and it embraces you as long as you bring something to the table. Real quick, I can't be a country singer. I'm not from Tennessee. I don't wear a cowboy hat. I don't wear my boots. You gotta be, I can't be really a jazz musician. I can't be a rock and roll guy because I just, I'm not that guy. But in hip-hop, it ranges, the gamut ranges to a plethora of different sources. And that's what's great about hip-hop. That's why I think it's one of the greatest genre out there right now. Well, thank you very, very much, Pras, for your time. And thank you, Tony, as well. And thanks again to everyone who joined us from here in Washington, D.C., and all around the world. This broadcast is now closed. However, we're going to keep the chat forum open for a while in order to allow the audience to continue to interact with Pras. So keep sending in your questions. A recording of this program will be available in a few business days and can be found in the media archive at connects.state.gov. I want to thank the IP Connects team for assisting us with making this program possible.  Thank you and take care out there. This program has been brought to you by Kinex.


Developing new antibiotics is especially challenging. Firstly, the cost of developing a new antibiotics has been estimated to be at about $1.5 billion US. On the other hand, the revenue is only about $50 million annually. And that has really driven away very large pharmaceutical companies who have been traditionally discovering and marketing new antibiotics.  And lastly, the issue is that it takes maybe perhaps one or two decades for new antibiotics to be discovered and then proved through various phases of clinical trials and finally to clinical practice.


Telemedicine drug prescriptions limited by Feds. In response to the opioid crisis, the Biden administration required consumers to visit a doctor before acquiring ADHD or addictive opioids on Friday. After three years of telehealth doctors' appointments by phone or computer during the pandemic, the plan might change how millions of Americans acquire some drugs. The Drug Enforcement Agency announced late Friday that it will reintroduce federal standards for potent medications that were waived during COVID-19, allowing doctors to write millions of prescriptions for Oxycontin and Adderall without seeing patients. Vicodin, Oxycontin, Adderall, and Ritalin, the federal government's most misused drugs, must be prescribed in person. Telehealth can prescribe refills. The agency will also restrict doctors' ability to give less addictive medications to unmet patients. Coding, Xanax, Ambien, and Buprenorphine can be prescribed by Telehealth for a 30-day first dose. Refills require a doctor's visit. Telehealth visits can still prescribe antibiotics, birth control, skin treatments, and insulin. DEA administrator in Milgram called the new regulation extension of telemedicine with guardrails because it balances safety and access for rural patients. According to David Herzberg, a pharma historian at the University of Buffalo, certain corporations may be over-prescribing medications to those who don't need them because of the pandemic's ease of access. Herzberg stated both sides of this tension have good points. You don't want hurdles to give folks prescriptions they need. But, removing those restrictions allows profiteers to market drugs to those who don't need them. In 2021, opioid overdose deaths reached a record, with three quarters of them caused by drug producers, pharmacies, and doctors who marketed the medications to patients decades earlier. According to the CDC, synthetic opioids like fentanyl killed more people that year than prescription medications. Fentanyl is frequently found in counterfeit prescription medications and other illicit narcotics. Telehealth startups treating and prescribing mental health and ADHD drugs have boomed in recent years, but the proposed laws will cripple the industry. The pandemic's moratorium on in-person medicine visits has mostly benefited the sector, although several national shops ceased filling drug orders from some telehealth apps over the previous year. During the past two years, the DEA has grown increasingly worried that certain startup telehealth companies are unlawfully prescribing addictive medications like opioids or ADHD medicine, putting patients at risk, a DEA official told the Associated Press on Friday. The person said the agency aims to implement the new regulation before the COVID-19 public health emergency expires on May 11, ending the eased rules. Jeremy Scherer, a Boston-based attorney for telehealth providers, advised patients considering treatment from a doctor hundreds of miles away to start planning in-person appointments now. The legislation gives patients six months to see their doctor in person. Providers and their patients need to know what that therapy is going to look like moving forward and whether, once the public health emergency ends in May, they'll need to figure out a means to have a visit in person before continuing treatment, and that can be a big challenge, he added. Numerous states have reinstated cross-state telemedicine care restrictions. By October, roughly 40 states in Washington, D.C., had stopped emergency declarations that allowed doctors to see patients in other states. These restrictions, what do you think? Comment below.


Hi, I'm Pam. I'm one of the children's librarians here at the Billie Jean King Main Library and I'm here to tell you the story of the five little snowmen. But before we do that, I would like to show you the science for snowmen. So first you get your fingers fluttering like snow falling to the ground. Then you take your thumb, put it right in the middle of your forehead and just swipe it around. That's the sign for man. So we're going to do snowman. All right, you've got it. So let's get to our story. There were five little snowmen riding on a sled.  I called Frosty. And Frosty said, no more snowmen riding on the sled. Well there were four little snowmen riding on the sled and another fell off and bumped his head. I called Frosty and Frosty said, no more snowmen riding on the sled. But they didn't listen. There were three little snowmen riding on the sled.  I called Frosty again. Guess what he said? No more snowmen riding on the sled. But the two that were left didn't listen.  Frosty said again, no more snowmen riding on the sled. There was one little snowman left. He certainly didn't listen. He fell off and bumped his head. Frosty said, no more snowmen riding on the sled. But then Frosty whispered to me and I nodded my head. And the next time the five little snowmen went out on riding on that sled, they all wore helmets. And that is the story of the five little snowmen. Elizabeth from the Mark Twain Branch and today we're going to be reading Polar Bear's Underwear by Tupra Tupra. Our polar bear, he can't find his underwear. What's the matter, asses red mouse? I've lost my underwear. Well what kind of underwear were you wearing today polar bear? I can't remember. Don't worry polar bear, we'll look for it together. Thank you mouse. Look at this colorful striped underwear. Is this your pair polar bear? No, that's not my underwear. Well then whose underwear is it? It's Zebra's underwear and it's his favorite pair too. This pair has treats all over it. Look at these yummy treats. Is this your pair polar bear? No, it's not my mouse. Well whose underwear is it? Nom nom nom, it's Pig's underwear. Those treats look delicious. Here's an itty bitty pair.  I agree. But whose underwear is it? It's Butterfly's underwear. This underwear says I love mice. This must be your pair polar bear. No, it's not my underwear at all. Well whose underwear is it? Oh no, it's Cat's underwear. Run! Polka Dot underwear with ruffles. Is this your pair? Uh, this isn't it. Let's have a look. Wiggle wiggle, it's Squid's underwear. And he has ten legs. Let's count his legs. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten legs. This pair of underwear is upside down. Is this your pair polar bear? No way. But whose underwear is it? It's Bunny's underwear and it looks great on her head. See some white underwear. Could those pair be it? Let's have a closer look. Polar bear, you're wearing your underwear. Your pair was never lost at all. Oh, I forgot that I put on my new white underwear today. I had no idea that I was wearing my underwear all along, mouse. I'm glad that you helped me find my pair polar bear. Thank you. Bye everyone. Welcome back from the Long Beach Public Library. Today I'll be doing a penguin rhyme with you. But before we start, I'm going to have you do some movements. We're going to do this as well as you do the rhyme. So can everybody roll their arms? All right. And can you stretch out your arms really wide? Good job. And can you make your hand fly over and slap your other hand? Good job. That's going to be a splat. We're going to start and we're going to count our penguins first. We have one, two, three, four penguins. Okay. Let's start.  Rolling down the mountain came a big ball of snow. It flew through the air and manned with a splat. And all you could see was one. What is that? Purple hat. Okay. Let's count down our penguins. One, two, three. Okay.  Rolling down the mountain came a big ball of snow. It flew through the air. All you could see was yellow hat. Okay. Let's count our penguins. We have one. Okay.  Rolling down the mountain came a big ball of snow. It flew through the air and how many penguins do I have left? I see one. Okay. One little penguin standing by himself. Rolling down the mountain came a big ball of snow. It flew. I'll be seeing you guys. It's Caitlyn and I'm at the BJK main library in downtown Long Beach. And I will be reading Snowman at Night by Caroline Buehner. One wintry day I made a snowman very round and tall. The next day when I saw him, he was not the same at all. His hat had slipped. His arms drooped down. He really looked a fright. It made me start to wonder, what do snowmen do at night? I think that snowmen start to slide when it gets really dark. Off the lawn and down the street right into the park. They gather in a circle while they wait for all the others. Sipping cups of ice cold cocoa made by snowman mothers. Then the snowman games begin. They line up in their places. Each one anxious for his turn in the snowman races. After everyone has had a chance at racing once or twice. They go on over to the pond to do skating tricks on ice. Sometimes they start giggling and then they act like clowns. They bump into each other till they all fall down. They gather up their snowballs. The pitcher takes his aim. And underneath the moonlit sky they play a baseball game. No one knows just how it started, but soon it's quite a sight. With snowmen throwing snowballs in the world's best snowball fight. Then it's time for sledding. It's a wild ride down the hill. Wahoo! They yell. This is by far the snowman's biggest thrill. Finally they're tuckered out and getting sleepy. So they slowly gather up their things and one by one they go.  You'll know he's just been doing what snowmen do at night. And that's the end. Thanks for being with me this morning friends. My name is Coral, I'm from the Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library branch. Today I will be doing a snowflake rhyme. Feel free to follow along. It goes like this. One, two, three. Snowflakes, snowflakes on the trees. Snowflakes, snowflakes dancing with me. First on my head, then on my toes. Now on my nose where the cold breeze blows. Snowflakes, snowflakes falling down. Falling gently on the ground. Snowflakes, snowflakes make no sound. One by one they make a mount. Grab your skis and grab your sled. Climb up a pie and weave a said. Thank you for sticking around. Make sure to visit your local library to check out the next story times. Until next time. Hi boys and girls. My name is Mr. Eric and I am a librarian for Los Altos Neighborhood Branch for the Long Beach Library System. And since it's such a beautiful snowy day out here, look at all these snowflakes. So beautiful. I thought I'd read a book called The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Ketz. It's a bit comfortable. Get warm. Get your coats.  And enjoy the story, The Snowy Day, published by The Viking Press, New York. All right, there's our friend. Let's see what his name is. One winter morning, Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see. Look at all that beautiful snow outside. Makes you want to play out there. After breakfast, he put on a snow suit and ran outside. The snow was piled up very high along the street to make a path for walking. Can you guys imagine so much snow that it's hard to see paths. They have to scoop it out of the way so you can walk? Wow, that's a lot of snow. His feet sank into the snow. He walked with his toes pointing out like this. And he walked with his toes pointing in like that. Now if you look closely, you can see here that his toes are facing away from one another. On this page, he brings them in and now his toes are facing each other. See the difference? He's having some fun in the snow. Then he dreaded his feet slowly to make tracks. And he found something sticking out of the snow that made a new track. See all these stray lines here? I wonder what that could be that it's making these tracks. Let's find out. It was a stick. He must have been dragging the stick the whole way with him. Wow, and look at those trees covered in snow. A stick that was just rife or smacking the snow cover tree. Now let's pretend like we're shaking the tree. We're going to help Peter shake it so we can get some of that snow off. Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. There we go. Now let's find out where it goes. Down fell the snow on top of Peter's head. Can we touch her little heads like this? Oh my goodness. And there he goes. And you see his little tracks again in the snow. But where is he going now? He thought it would be fun to join the big boys in their snowball fight, but he knew he wasn't old enough. Not yet. There they go. They're throwing all kinds of snowballs. So he made a smiling snowman. There he is. And he made angels. One angel, two angels. There's Peter making his second angel. He pretended he was a mountain climber. He climbed up a great big tall heaping mountain of snow and slid all the way down. There he goes. Looks like fun. He picked up a handful of snow and another and still another. He packed it round and firm and put the snowball in his pocket for tomorrow. Then he went into his warm house. So snow and warm house. I don't know if those two could mix, but let's find out what happens. He told his mother all about his adventures. Well, she took off his wet socks. There they are. There's his mom. There's Peter. Looks like it's almost bedtime. And he thought and he thought and he thought about them. So now in the bathtub, see all the bubbles? There's a little rubber ducky. He's thinking about the snow. Before he got into bed, he looked in his pocket. His pocket was empty. The snowball wasn't there. He felt very sad. Where do you think the snowball went, boys and girls? Well, I see a little wet mark here. Again, remember, he's in his warm house now. Maybe the snowball melted. While he slept, he dreamed that the sun had melted all of the snow away. But when he woke up, his dream was gone. The snow was still everywhere. New snow was falling, just like you see here. After breakfast, he called to his friend from across the hall and they went out together into the deep, deep snow. And there they are, his little friend. And there's Peter in his red snow suit. The end. Awesome, boys and girls. Well, thank you so much for watching. I really, really hope that you have a winter, wonderful holiday. And we'll see you guys very, very soon. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye, guys.


Hey y'all, welcome to what Chelsea eats. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm going to talk to you today about the root causes of iodine deficiency. This is the last video I'm going to be doing on iodine. So if you have more questions, please put them down in the comment section so that we can get a dialogue going.  My name is Chelsea Knudsen and I coach women on how to heal naturally from female related issues using food as medicine. So be sure to hit the subscribe button and don't forget to click that notification bell so you never miss an episode. So in my last video, we talked about how much iodine you should take as a woman. If you missed that video, the link is in the description box below. Go ahead and watch it, but make sure you come back to this one. But today we're going to talk about the causes of iodine deficiency, but we're going to get to the root cause of why it even exists in the first place. First of all, I want you to know that it is possible to overcome deficiencies.  And some of you have been struggling with iodine deficiency and didn't even know it. But you can overcome. I am a living testament that you can overcome vitamin and mineral deficiencies because I was so deficient in so many areas that like I don't even know how my body was even able to function. And a lot of you are going through that same thing. So I want to encourage you, you can overcome these deficiencies. So if you go back on my channel, probably in around the 2015 timeframe, you can go back and look at some of the deficiencies that I was struggling with. I was an absolute mess, an absolute mess. Okay, like I think that if I hadn't turned that stuff around by, you know, making changes in my life, I don't know that you and I would be having this conversation right now. I'm so grateful that things have changed. I have lots of energy. I don't suffer from all of those deficiencies. And I want to teach you how to do the same thing. So what I have learned in this whole process is that toxicity is the root cause of deficiency. Let me say that again. Toxicity is the root cause of deficiency. And it doesn't matter what the deficiency is, it can be iron deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, iodine deficiency, it doesn't matter. Toxicity is at the root. So here's what I mean by that. If your organs and glands that are responsible for making sure your body is functioning properly are clogged up toxic with debris from foods that we have eaten that we had we had no business putting in our body because it's not even real food from skin products that we put on our skin from makeup that we put on from things we wash our clothes with, our body gets overloaded with toxicity. So when it's overloaded with toxicity, it can't function the way it's supposed to smoothly so that it can one extract the nutrients from foods that we are eating. And if we're not even eating foods that have nutrition in it, and most of most Americans don't that most of the time, there is not a piece of lettuce that runs past a person's mouth. Or if it is, it's doused in all kinds of chemical laden salad dressings that are from the store shelves that our body doesn't even know what to do with any of that stuff. So how is it that it's able to even dissect the nutrients from the food? It can't. So toxins build up and in our bodies clog up our organs, make them not work optimally, and we expect to have the vitamins and nutrients in our bodies to function normally. We can't. And also what ends up happening is when, so for example, if you're someone who is anemic, for example, if your body is toxic, when you have your monthly cycle, your body's trying to flush out all the toxins. That is one reason that women have heavy bleeding. So if they're trying to flush out all the toxins in the blood, you're losing your necessary iron that you need for your everyday living. And if you're all you're eating is junk food, you're not even doing what you need to replace it. And then if you take a supplement, the supplement isn't even being broken down because your body's too toxic to break it down. Does that make sense? So we need our organs and glands detoxified so that it can assimilate the nutrients in the food that we give it. And if we're going to take a supplement, our bodies need to be in a position to even break down the supplement. Also, the supplement needs to be a good quality supplement so that we can even use what the supplement is giving us. If we're taking supplements that are inferior or not good or made up of junk, the only option that we have is putting more junk in. We're not even getting what we think we're getting. So you have to be careful which supplements you're actually taking. And that's another thing. That's why I just don't throw supplements out there because I only believe in, if you're going to take supplements, I only believe in taking good quality ones. If they're not good quality, just don't even waste your money because they're not even going to help you. And good quality doesn't always mean the most expensive, but sometimes it does because it takes money to actually put these products together so that they can do what you want them to do. I didn't really mean to get off onto this tangent, but I just want to drive the point home. If you are living a lifestyle where you're eating like all kinds of garbage and you're not putting a lot of good nutrition in your body, then that's why you're deficient. If you think you're eating healthy, please reevaluate if you are suffering with these deficiencies because it is very possible that if you're doing everything you can to eat well, that your diet may not be as pristine as you think it is. Or whatever supplements you're taking might not be the very good supplements that is giving your body what it actually needs to come out of deficiency. The other thing that you have to look at is cleansing your body, like cleansing your organs, cleansing your colon and cleansing your your liver and your kidneys, and cleansing your cells at a cellular level, like your tissues of your body at a cellular level to get rid of all the years of toxicity that has built up in your body so that your body can actually work the way it's supposed to work.  Your car is probably going to be jerking doing all this, not even able to function properly. That's the same thing with our bodies. If we put food in our body and that food is not real food, food as close to the way God made it as possible, fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, especially if you're trying to heal naturally from a female reproductive issue, you really want to stay away from animal products and sugar and processed foods. If you feed your body with those healthy foods and there's plenty of recipes on my channel for you to take a look at, if you feed your body with those healthy foods your body will slowly come out of toxicity. There are things you can do to make the make the detox process go faster. I talk about the levels of detoxification in my group coaching programs and my one-on-one coaching programs so you can learn how to go deeper into detoxification versus doing a slower detox. So we got to get our bodies clean, get our organs clean so they can work efficiently. Now I did a video a while ago probably maybe like two or three months ago or something like that that said like it's called how do you know if your body is toxic and I will link that video above and I will also put it in the description box below but some ways that you can know that you are toxic is if you have vitamin mineral deficiency, if you have any type of female reproductive issue, if you're having heavy bleeding, if you have achy an achy body joint pain, if you have foggy thinking, if your skin is a mess, you have acne you know like the list goes on if you have dandruff, if your hair is falling out those are signs that you are toxic and if you have those things you need to address them because in order to heal you've got to get rid of the toxicity in your body and I am going to be doing more videos on how to detoxify your body what detoxification is and what it really means to detox because most people when they hear the word detox they think of oh i'm just going to go on a juice cleanse for three days or i'm going to go on the smoothie fence the smoothie cleanse for 15 days let me just tell you right now 15 days 10 days is not enough to to detox all of the myriad of toxins that have bombarded our life from birth it's not so detoxification is an ongoing process sometimes we detox deep sometimes we don't detox as deep it depends on where we are in our in our process but i'm going to drive this point home again if you want to overcome vitamin and mineral deficiencies you have to detoxify your body and 30 days isn't even enough to detox your body i'm telling you you have to live a detox lifestyle also i would love to hear from you if you are fighting symptoms of toxicity or of iodine deficiency and you have been doing the work to try to overcome and you still are not having any relief please contact comment below i would love to hear from you also i work with people all the time who are struggling with this and i show you step by step on how to detoxify your body so if you want to talk to me you can click the link below and schedule a free 10 minute strategy session to see if working together is going to be a fit for the both of us also in my next video i will be sharing with you one of my most favorite detoxification juice recipes if you want to start the detox process that video will be next and also if in general you just want to start juicing i do have a juice recipe book that is specifically for women's health and juicing is a perfect way to start detoxifying your body because it washes the nasties out of yourselves i mean that's how i look at juicing juicing is fabulous if this video has helped you in any way please comment below but if you liked this video please give it a thumbs up share it with a friend don't forget to subscribe and until next time y'all take care much love


My capacity here is really, really three things. One is, I'm a scientist myself. I'm involved with the science on the Mars Curiosity rover, was one of the founding fathers of the mission, so I still like to do science. It's kind of why you get into the game. But my job for NASA and for the Goddard Space Flight Center is to be a catalyst. And that involves promoting science ideas, listening to my science colleagues. There are a lot of them and they're way smart. Putting together the pieces so they can get the opportunities to do the new stuff they want to do. And so it's partly scientists, partly politician, partly humanitarian because they have ideas, some of which might take longer to fulfill than others. So it's even inspirational. We have so many young bright science stars who need that first break to get into something, a new mission, a new idea, a new competition. So because science itself is inherently competitive, I mean we talk about the Olympics and sports, well, to win some of the grants, the missions, the contracts that we use to allow us to do what we do, it's fiercely competitive. And so my job is to help make those competitions work out for our scientists so they can ask the big questions, make the measurements to address them. And that's, I mean really, it's a great job.


The newly nominated chief of Army staff, Major General Farouk Yahya says the cooperation of other rams of the armed forces and security agencies and the citizens it's all it takes to succeed in the fight against insecurity. Major General Yahya said this during the screening conducted by the Joint House on the Fence and the Army. The report is presented from our studios. The House of Representatives Joint Committee on the Fence and Army commenced screening of the newly nominated chief of Army staff, Major General Farouk Yahya. The exercise is aligned with the law chamber's decision to have a session with service chiefs before their final confirmation by the Senate. The Joint Committee went straight to business with the Chairman, House Committee on the Fence, challenging the chief of Army staff on the need for synergy between the armed forces. The worst is lingering in insurgency in the northeast. This war has caused the country a lot, both financially and in terms of human lives. This must stop. The armed forces of Nigeria need to adopt innovative measures to curb the killing and wanton destruction of property as a result of cases of insecurity. I therefore hope that it confounds the new chief of Army staff who do everything possible with other service chiefs to bring this to an end. A Major General Farouk Yahya pledged cooperation not only with the other two arms of armed forces but also other security services and from Nigerians. He says the experience he acquired through various trainings and postings in the Army has prepared him for the tasks ahead. The committee moved into an executive session for Ferdus Krenin that bothers on the security of the country. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.