Hello, everybody, on this Tuesday afternoon. Today, I always enjoy my interviews, but today is extra special because not only do I have a professional with neurofeedback, marriage and family counseling, and just taking our psychological health to a new level with functional and integrative medicine, but I have today my cousin, my first cousin, Ashley Wiegand. So we go way back in so many different ways, and it's been really fun to reconnect on a professional level and just to see what Ashley's up to. And it's so neat because we have these kind of parallel worlds where we're both working and trying to get people optimally healthy. And we just had a conversation a few months ago. And we've stayed in a little bit of connection, but you know how it is when life happens and we grew up in a family with loads of cousins. And so it's been really, really fun to hear what Ashley is doing with poem health and to talk to her today. So it's extra special because we grew up playing out on the farm and those kinds of things in Illinois. And here we are both in our professional spheres and able to talk on that level. So I am absolutely excited to meet my cousin, Ashley Wiegand. She is a PhD, a licensed marriage and family therapist and board certified in neurofeedback, which we're going to talk about today. So I especially want to really introduce you today to the concepts of neurofeedback, family constellations, and just the work around families and how they interplay with our health and healing. And also just the psychological readiness to change some of these pieces that really, really, I have found way more sometimes than supplements or diet or lifestyle, maybe not more, but at least as important, really, really impact your ability to find optimal health and healing. Before I introduce Ashley, I wanted to just remind you you can find all of my free blogs and resources out on my website, jillcarnahan.com. And then the YouTube channel now has 70 plus hours of interviews, all free. So please go there, subscribe. It's just under my name, Jill Carnahan MD. And you can find all of the recordings there. And this will be there as well in a few days. And I hope you enjoy all of those resources. So first, I want to introduce Ashley. Dr. Ashley Wiegand works from an integrated perspective based on her understanding of neurobiology, physiology, psychotherapy, and family systems. Like I said, this stuff is so critical to healing. Just a tiny little brief personal jaunt before I finish her bio. I just have really worked all my life on my own healing with cancer and Crohn's and all of that. And I love the functional medicine, the biology, the physiology, the supplements, the diet, the lifestyle. That's critical to healing. But I have seen a level of acuity, a level of severity and complexity and a chronicity of patients that has just really escalated in the last several years. I think partially due to our environmental toxic load, but in another part due to the psychological stressors and especially in the last year. So this is so relevant because what I've seen in my own life, my healing and my patient's lives, if we don't address the psychological aspects and the nervous system up regulation and the spider flight and a lot of the stuff we'll talk about today, no amount of diet, supplements, nutrition will really overcome. You have to do all of it. So stay tuned because this is gonna be breakthrough. I'm gonna finish Ashley's bio here. She utilizes QEEG technology to provide brain map evaluations and detect underlying brain wave biomarkers related to concerns of her clients. Neurofeedback, also known as EEG, biofeedback and neuro therapy is used to balance dysregulation in areas of the brain. So again, I'm really excited to talk about this. Dr. Ashley provides psychological and family therapy and psychotherapy. She specializes in working with individuals with anxiety, past traumatic experiences, academic or professional stress, negative religious experiences, life transitions, college related difficulties and family conflict. She is licensed in marriage and family therapy, board certified in neurofeedback through the biofeedback certification and she completed her doctoral degree in St. Louis University. Ashley, welcome. Thanks for having me, Jill. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, me too. So I always love to start with story and I would love to kind of your journey into this area. Did you always know you wanted to do something in this area? Tell me a little about how you got to where you're at now. Yeah, I didn't always know just because I had not even heard of neurofeedback probably till I, well, after I got my master's degree. So I think if I had known what it was, I would have picked it because it's this integration that I really love of connecting with people on the personal level with therapy and then looking at the science and neurobiology that has neurofeedback. So I really like that connection. It's like the brain and the mind, right? But my journey was, I actually started out pre-med. I don't know if you know that. No. Yes, and then it came to organic chemistry and I'm good at science but I didn't know that I wanted to do that. I knew I wanted to help people and be in a helping profession but it was so rigorous. That's what kind of got me to the point where I veered to explore being a physical therapist and then when I did my internship at a hospital that didn't quite resonate and I'd always in the background wanted to be a therapist but had been kind of discouraged from that path for a variety of reasons. So after I tried these other healthy professions I kind of came back to that. So I finished my degree in exercise science which worked well later on for neurofeedback because it was very heavy on anatomy and physiology. Then I got my masters in marriage and family therapy and then it's when I moved to St. Louis and I was just going to a conference, a local conference in one of the local professionals specialized in neurofeedback and that's the first time I'd heard of QEG is the technical name of the assessment but then brain mapping is a little easier phrase to throw around and neurofeedback and it just everything clicked for me because it was kind of looking at two sides that made sense of our health and helping people and so you have the interpersonal piece which of course is so important in the psychology but then you have brain patterns and how our brain might get stuck because I know I'm sure you have a patient where they know that they're anxious and they wanna not be anxious but they just can't seem to shift and so we can talk about that more but neurofeedback can really unlock some of that potential by changing the brain from the bottom up instead of trying to be have insight about your anxiety and then change it because you have insight so after I learned about it I kind of got to do a apprenticeship under someone else which is a really great way to learn for about five years then I went out on my own and then Palm Health I believe has been in existence for five years now and I got on board about three and a half, four years ago and what drew me to there was probably just like your practice so working on a team had multiple things under one roof and this multifaceted approach that seems to have a synchronistic effect where people can get better outcomes as opposed to when you just try one thing. Oh, I love that Ashley because what I've seen in my own in Boulder here, right I have neuropsychologists that I know well and refer to and it's so critical like so many times I call my friend and colleague and say, oh my gosh, I have this patient they're doing this, can you see them? And we find together it's such a great team because she can do stuff I don't know how to do and can't do and I can do the other piece with the physical, the diving deep and the detective work on the chemicals and the environment and the diet lifestyle. So what you bring to the table is so critical to getting people well. I love that you talked about and again, forgive my ignorance if I say terms wrong because you're the expert here, not me but I find like so like cognitive behavioral therapy I'll just tell you my experience that for someone like me used to be analytical makes it worse. I just get stuck in the same thought patterns, right? When I tried the more somatic based therapies that was profound because all of a sudden I went below my neck, I was joke I lived above my neck in my head for 40 years and then when I started dealing with the somatic and actually heart based and intuitive based healing it was profound but I've also done some of that work with EG and seen the patterns and it sounds like from your perspective this really gets at helping them understand the patterns that are keeping them blocked. How would you describe neurofeedback to someone who has no idea what it is? Yeah, so neurofeedback kind of works in partnership with how I use it with the brain mapping and the QEG so if you'll indulge me to explain both. Okay, so when someone comes in the initial assessment besides some family psychological intake it involves putting an EEG cap on the head it kind of fits snug like a swim cap and has sensors in it, put gel in the sensors and then I record brain wave activity. So that's the electrical activity of the brain relates to brain state, neuro pathways, right? We have different frequencies that need to have different ratios and they relate to our arousal or activation our tension level, right? If we're groggy, if we're alert so I'm measuring resting state EEG so there's the medical EEG which might have been what people have heard, right?  I'm looking at the resting state which is the background and there's been a lot of research correlating that with certain dysregulation patterns. So after I get those recordings to recordings eyes open and eyes close I analyze all of that data in these various data bases. So I'm basically looking at it's almost like an objective measure of the interface between the mind and the brain. So like anxiety is a good one, right? Cause there's a lot of anxiety for a lot of reasons that would be a separate talk but someone knows that they're anxious they know that they're worrying but they can't stop worrying. Well, there's going to be certain brain wave shifts in a brain that's locked in worry, right? And so it kind of quantifies this thing that feels invisible, right? Like we might know we're depressed or anxious and not want to be but so often we get stuck because it's stored in our biology or neurobiology or emotional brain and it's not under a conscious control like you were talking with CBT it's an over emphasis in our culture of things in conscious control as if we could just hit buttons and turn them on and off and they just exist in us in an individual. And so what's so neat about this is it quantifies that. So I see where the brain wave frequencies they could be elevated which means it has too much power and a frequency in a certain location, right? Or you have too little. So then I go over the results with the patient and typically even if I didn't do neurofeedback that often is so therapeutic because people feel validated. Yes, I love that you're going there because I find even on a food allergy test when they see the data in front of them I mean, I'm sure you have people in tears at times too because they're like oh my gosh, I've been struggling with this for so long and you actually have finally put a name to what's going on, right? If there's such a power in that because I think it starts to give them the hope that oh gosh, I'm not crazy, right? And we know they're not. We know we're not, we know but what happens is so many people have been in a doctor's office and they say your labs look normal, you're fine. Go home and come back in a year and patients start to doubt themselves they doubt their intuition that something's not right. That's exactly right. Yeah, I've also had that experience where people will cry just from being believed. Yes, yeah, right? And so that validates but then it also gives us and me a roadmap. So then I base the neurofeedback protocols on their green map. And so the neurofeedback then is the intervention. So QE choose the evaluation, the neurofeedback. So at its core, it's a learning therapy. As I start to explain it, it can seem abstract and sometimes experiencing it is worth a thousand words of showing and doing a demo but essentially how it goes the typical neurofeedback session or the processes. So I've localized an area again, let's use anxiety. Someone has elevated fast waves. That's a common pattern with anxiety. So I put a sensor on that location and then there's a patient screen and then my like clinical dashboard. So I will kind of coach them on how to approach the screen. That's where my therapy hat comes into play. But the technical term for the psychologist in the room is operant conditioning and there's also some classical conditioning at play. So it's reward-based learning. So essentially shifts in our brain waves are something we can not consciously notice, right? Like we might notice the after effects just like our heart rate. Like you and I, we're smart, we're analytical, right? But we'll never know what our resting heart rate is for instance, because our nervous system doesn't set up to give us that information. Now, if we have an Apple watch, we can find out, right? But we would never know. We might know if someone scares us that it bumps to 110 or about to faint but we can't notice the subtle graded shifts in our central nervous system in that way. So brain waves is the same thing part of our central nervous system, very real but managed subconsciously. We can't consciously shift it. So what happens is the sensors and the digital analysis of their brain waves makes that tangible, makes that invisible process tangible so then you can learn to regulate it. So that's where the magic is, right? So again, someone knows if they're worrying or not but we, especially in our modern American culture we're not very in tune, right? Like you said, to trust our intuition or knowing the subtle shift so we become very desensitized to these things which I'm sure you notice a lot too on the physical side, right? So I will set a threshold, again, we're training beta or fast waves. I'll set a threshold, let's say it's at 10 microvolts. So when they drop it below 10, kind of like the limbo then they're meeting the criteria, right? So what they would know subjectively is I'm gonna approach the screen usually if you're trying to train anxiety just from a mindfulness approach meaning don't try to or don't get in your own way as much as you can, right? Take it in and try to quiet your mind. Now, obviously someone's not gonna be probably very good at it, right? Cause that's why they're there with me, right? But that's the subjective, that's the instruction I give them. Well, then when their beta drops down to nine or eight they'll meet the criteria. And so on their screen they'll get some sort of positive feedback or reward. So they might be a little runner for my non-competitive folks who can handle it and when they quiet their mind their runner goes faster. And if they start to worry or activate it slows down or they might be watching a nature scene on a video and as they quiet their mind 10% as measured by the technology it might expand or go from black and white to full color. So because of the advances in technology what's so neat it's essentially real time feedback because all of that can be digital analyzed and fed back in less than 200 milliseconds and to our brain that's real time. Yeah, exactly. Cause if there's a flicker less than that we can't even consciously notice it, right? So what it harnesses the power of self-regulation and facilitates self-awareness. So these subtle things like clenching your jaw a negative thought about yourself this activation you've learned to ignore suddenly to get the positive feedback you have to become attuned to those things. And then the subtleties of down regulating in this case gets rewarded. And so then that activates our reward system, right? People earn little points. They win the race car race. And so there's that intrinsic motivation when you get those little rewards. So that's one session. I can, generally people will train because at the best analogy it's like going to the gym for your brain is what I say. So you don't do it once and say this didn't work which is obviously not a functional medicine premise anyway but a lot of times my work is explaining to people what nerve feedback is for them to even know that they want it because it's not something that people know about. So typically people come to 20, 40 sessions total one to two times a week and then depending on how they progress usually they do multiple protocols but that's kind of the nuts and bolts of nerve feedback. Fantastic. And again, people more and more are looking for things like this because they want to go to that next level. A couple of thoughts. Interestingly, I feel like the first half of my life I spent dissociating and I got really good at it which means like we talked about the head up, right?  Not either. Right? Yeah, so I find it so fascinating because even now the skill there is that is a coping skill, right? And I learned it and learned it really well. And I joke because as I've done therapy work and neurofeedback all of these things I started to feel again and I started to be in touch with my psychology in a way like you're teaching with neurofeedback and what happened was all of a sudden I feel like when you are learning dissociation as a coping technique, I feel like in a way it made me more superhuman. And I'm gonna talk about this in a minute because it's not a good thing because I could deny pain dissociate from feeling and just push, push, push, push. But what happened was my body knew the difference and my body was like, wait, we don't like this. This is not healthy or good for us. And I got cancer and Crohn's and I got a lot of illnesses I think partially due to the fact I was so good at suppressing and dissociating but my body knew my body was like, hey Jill, we don't like this let's, you know, learn. And then as I've done the work around this and learned and grown, I actually feel like I sometimes have to go slower, work a little less hard and be more kind to myself. A lot of times I teach patients to be kind to themselves but what happens in the whole in the end of this is that you are a healthier human being you can show up more fully authentically you can actually, if you don't really know how to experience those emotions you can never really connect with parents, siblings romantic relationships on a deeper level. So these things are so critical to life and life skills in every way. And I like I said, I learned in some ways the hard way about that when I really had to go in and go deep but it's so invaluable because I feel like really anyone who wants to ultimately heal from chronic illness, auto immunity, Lyme disease, inflammatory issues any of these kinds of things that we see what would you say are some of the biggest types of conditions that obviously anyone can benefit but are there particular types of people that you guys see at Palm Clinic that really benefit from neurofeedback? Yeah, yeah, there are and there's yeah, probably a certain some subsets that I tend to specialize in and respond better. So I would say the broad umbrella of anxiety, right? So over arousal, nervous system over activation again, there's a lot in our culture and there's a lot of pressure and rewards and perpetuation of anxiety. So under that traumatic experiences, insomnia, chronic stress not being able to rest and slow down, right? We put those all under there. ADD and ADHD, which again is a whole nother talk because I do believe it is over diagnosed of course, a lot of times it might be PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or anxiety but that one has a medication that people really like so it gets over diagnosed. I do think from my perspective of the neurobiopsychology perspective, there is a conglomerate that I think is quote real in the sense that there's a certain frequency that is associated with distractibility and that wouldn't make it hard to focus it's just over diagnosed and over prescribed but ADHD and those are probably on the ADHD front if it's in otherwise healthy family system motivated like child or adolescent I get some of my best responses for with neurofeedback for ADHD which a lot of times parents are looking for a long-term healing as opposed to putting their child in a stimulant and then the other one and this is where I get to work in this arena more because I work under our CMO who is a neurologist and so post concussion syndrome. Yes, huge. So and that really slips through the cracks a lot in the medical fields, right? It's just like if you have these severe things, right? A structural bleed, something like that like structural damage and if you don't have it they're kind of like well, go on your merry way. Well, neurofeedback again it quantifies the electrical functioning and dynamics so sometimes when you whack your head that gets thrown off almost like a subtle bruise, right? It doesn't get caught, it's not structural. So assuming you can see inequalities in the hemispheres especially based on trauma, right? Versus like there might be global changes if someone has just anxiety or insomnia versus if someone's in the head trauma you might see more left-sided or right-sided changes. That's exactly right. Yeah, it'll be more acute and localized and usually there's the coup contra coup. It's not an MRI, right? It no evaluation captures everything but a lot of times you can see that localized if it's a head hit, right? And it's usually these areas frontal temporal areas whereas like you said other markers are going to be more global. So those are the three broad clientele like they're presenting goals and again post concussion a lot of times folks are very sensory sensitive, might have mood dysregulation, headaches and so they're sensitive to neurofeedback because again it's a little bit of a brain workout. So that's where my expertise comes in of titrating it, the protocols and the amount of time but then they're also again they're some of my best responses because they are so sensitive. They respond faster, right? And then the anxiety camp what I love about it with neurofeedback is this is where I would probably say my practice is roughly 60, 40 neurofeedback to therapy and then I have some that are separate and some that are a blend and what I love about the blend and this is again when someone myself like myself collaborating with someone like you is someone might need work for cortisol, right? Then running off of adrenaline their whole life, right? Not eating healthy and then they come to get neurofeedback which sometimes is an easier injury point for people than therapy because I need to know some goals but we don't have to talk about every hard thing they've been through in their life and sometimes people like that or they've already talked to someone and they feel like they've got as far as they can. So let's say they're a great responder to neurofeedback and they're having many panic attacks a week let's say one a day. So they respond well, they're down to maybe one a week but let's say they've had panic attacks for 20 years so they've worked around that by working remotely in IT for 20 years. So now their anxiety is 80% gone, you know? But that's where the therapy side and this like the other things you were talking about patterns, perception, identity, emotional awareness because they might have less anxiety but they're not going to have an identity or they're not gonna have a perspective of the world that I could go to a party or get together I would know what to say, I would feel confident they're not gonna know how to read their emotions when they're challenged. There's been all of these things in the psychology therapy realm that they're just out of practice at the bare minimum and don't have the skills strengthened because they've just avoided it which is kind of a different version of what you were talking about with the dissociation if you're on emotions, right? It's kind of overwhelming to feel emotions again and I can relate of course here's our cousin card being played, right?  Yeah, we go with the thought that German Swiss stuff is like German, yeah, be very self, be super productive, right? No, it's over, exactly. Yes, no crying. And so when you, it sounds so obvious, right? But it's so novel when you go through it when you start to feel your feelings well they got suppressed for a reason, right? They were hard and then if you weren't taught or it wasn't normalized or modeled like it's okay to cry or sometimes feeling depressed obviously there's a clinical diagnosis that's very serious but feelings of depression are also a part of the human experience, right?  Yeah, actually I remember when I first started really letting these up and dealing with it and that I remember it was like a two week period when I first opened up on some of these emotions and I was like, oh, completely overwhelmed I didn't know if I could function that week because I thought, gosh, this must be what some people feel like to be depressed because I hadn't really experienced that and what it was was 40 years of sadness like the floodgates were opened and again, it was normal physiology it wasn't anything abnormal it wasn't a clinical diagnosis of depression but what I realized was like, wow, this is normal and I actually had a lot of compassion for myself during that time because I was like it's okay to slow down right now this week or to know that you feel overwhelmed but it really took some psychological thinking like really being kind and compassionate to myself during that time because it was so foreign because I had really suppressed that for so many years it was different. Other thing that as you mentioned, I thought about is like I always thought it was an introvert now some people laugh at that because they see me out and about in that but that was part of my highly sensitive nature and the overstimulation and all those things with the brain where I needed to retreat from too much stimulation, too much people and I could handle little bits at a time well now that I'm healthier in all these ways neurobiology, psychology, physical health I can handle a lot more interaction and the truth is I think I'm kind of an extrovert I just was highly sensitive in the senses of the brain and all those things so that I had to retreat so often I thought that identity thing is so critical because I think a lot of patients are walking around thinking, oh my gosh, I'm or they even identify with I'm sick or I'm an introvert or I'm too much for people and all those messages be around this overstimulation of the brain, right? And then as you get them in a healthier spot all of a sudden, like me, I'm like, wait maybe I'm not an introvert maybe I'm actually an ambivert or an extrovert that just needs quiet time and I bet you see that a lot with patients, don't you? I do, yeah, you can really see that unfold or shift and kind of like what you were describing if we're suppressing our emotions or again I always tell my clients emotions are neither good nor bad, they're just information, right? And then if you're allowed to feel them they can flow through, they inform you sometimes it means that the situation is bad you need to leave it, right? Or sometimes it means I'm being challenged I'm gonna stick it through but that's a part of the normal experience but if you were, and I did this myself as well you spend so much time suppressing the emotions that I think it's training, right? And so, and then you think you need to perform a certain way I need to be the certain kind of way because that's the feedback I got from my family system and the microculture that you grow up in and so I also conceptualize it what you were saying is that like it takes so much energy to not be yourself, perform and be cut off it's exhausting, right?  Right, it is. But yeah, and it's not there's still the human experience but it's kind of like you feel it in your bones, right? When you're feeling authentic and congruent with yourself and letting yourself be a person is also a phrase I like. Oh, I love that. And our body knows, like again, I look back at and auto-immunity, I'm sure you see a lot in the Palm Clinic too. Auto-immunity, if we look metaphorically it's a tack of self, right? Like how more metaphorically can that get is I always, there's some piece of either self-unacceptance, self-loathing, self-support there's pieces of that that are always at work in someone with auto-immunity that we always want to deal with if possible including my own, you know because as we embrace and love ourselves for who we really are and how we're supposed to show up in the world the body like, I mean, will heal. It's amazing. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it literally is the attack of self. And so on my side where what I educate people on with the, because I see a lot of folks locked into like being self-critical, right? Very negative towards self is, so our brain's limbic system, right? That's our danger system. It doesn't differentiate between physical and psychological threats. So when you are self-critical you're basically becoming your own tiger and shooting off the sympathetic response. So literally like, oh, I didn't, I haven't changed as much as I want to change or I failed them this way, right?  And then you can't do the thing you might be attacking yourself for. Yeah, yeah. I love that analogy because again, this is so important for that overall healing. We didn't talk about like specific brain waves. Do you want to give us a little brief tutorial on out versus beta versus delta? Because I know you're the expert there too. Yeah, I would love to. So there's kind of five main frequencies that we look at in the field. So the slow waves are delta and theta. And then alpha is the mid-range frequency and beta high beta are the fast waves and there's also gamma which you might have heard of. So I feel like the two that I talked about the most are probably alpha and beta. Alpha was the one that was kind of first discovered and trained for neurofeedback kind of on accident back in the 60s. And that has a lot to do with sensory integration and mood regulation. They think it correlates with the thalamus going to the cortex, right? So the thalamus is the gateway of our sensory information. So it's these large oscillations in the background. So what I see are, I'm trying to give you a summary but not get too technical because it gets technical really quick and I don't want to bore people. But for instance, if you have a deficit of alpha they have, there were a couple of studies that found children with alcoholics had a deficit in alpha. And so that when you have a deficit alpha that means your resting state in your nervous system is anxious, right? And so what's interesting is when we drink alcohol it increases our alpha. So you have the self-medication piece. So that's why if you're not a child of alcoholics and you drink alcohol it might be fun and nice, right? But it's not this huge act of empowerment to not become an alcoholic. But if you have a delta and excuse me I'm switching my words, an alpha deficit suddenly you drink some alcohol it increases your alpha, it's self-medicating suddenly it's not as hard to be in your own body and be in your own nervous system, right? And so that's someone who would be more vulnerable to abusing that, but it's really because it's regulating their nervous system not in a sustainable long-term way, right? But with a short-term relief. So that's something I love so much about this approach is it's so humanistic, it's looking at the whole picture and not saying like, well, people are just bad and they always do bad things, right? There's usually a reason someone gets stuck in a certain way. So it looks at from this more contextual respectful way that I think actually gives understanding and the answers. So that's alpha, alpha is also really correlated with flow state or being in the zone which is a really big buzz phrases, right? And it was really good to be in a flow state. So if you play an instrument or you've done theater or sports, right? It's you're immersed in the moment there's no self-talk or self-criticism but you're also not lethargic or sedated, right? You're in that like kind of sweet spot of arousal and immersion. So it doesn't feel so good. And they've again, there's some research on like the secret to it's not really the secret, it's pretty obvious, right? But when people access the flow state more their quality of life is higher, right? Their life is more, they have more fulfillment and joy. So alpha is really correlated with flow state and being in the zone. A lot of times it's this prime alpha state where your alphas elevated but not too high and your other frequencies are lower. So I can train alpha state or train meditation, beta those are what we kind of think of as our thinking wave. So those are the ones we could consciously quantify the easiest, right? Like if you're learning a foreign language or if you're doing a calculus problem your beta needs to ramp up. It's problem solving, bold directed activity moral judgments, decision-making. So that's brain activation. So it needs, we need to be able to activate your brains for these tasks, right? Where we get into trouble and this is where I see another pattern is your beta stays elevated. So, and again that correlates a lot with people too much in their head trying to think through their feelings, think through life. So even if they're trying to quiet their thoughts they can't. So training down beta would be another pretty common protocol that I do. If your beta is too low a lot of times I see that more with ADHD or in concussion post concussion your brain can't ramp up like you need it to. So you feel kind of overwhelmed or you forget things, drop tasks, that sort of thing. So then the slower waves these correlate with unconscious processes. So they're a little bit trickier for people to train in session with me. Now, if someone's pretty good at being intuitive and letting go then they can train these but when people want to be able this is probably the number one question I get from new clients is I don't know what I'm doing to get the feedback. Yeah, yeah. Which I have a lot of empathy for. Yeah. Because we really want to understand it and again in our culture and society we really overvalue conscious processes and ignore and neglect subconscious processes right in the emotional and the messy. And so what I coach my clients with saying is that well that's normal.  You might know if we're more focused or for again we're more tired but we can't actively sense the in real time shifts. So that's why you can't feel it which is why you need the neurofeedback it's giving you information you don't already have. But so Delta and Theta correlates with I think limbic system function. So more midbrain deeper brain function. So it's also not really also beta is more our external focus and beta is more internal regulation. So a natural time when our Theta might go up and we go more in a Theta state would be really deep forms of meditation when you lose track of self. Which is kind of a fun state if you've ever been in it if your people are hypnotized they're going more towards Theta or if you're in that real daydreamy state like say it's sunny and you're swinging in a hammock and you're kind of awake but you're kind of not and you're kind of in this like kind of fun woozy state. So to speak, that's more Theta. And again, I see that that's a common pattern if people are fatigued or have brain fog but then also a certain kind of ADHD people have above average levels of Theta which is interesting and not surprising is that used to be a differential marker to diagnose ADHD that could be used to differentiate it from something else an elevated Theta-Theta ratio but in the last 15 years they've done that again and it's no longer a differential marker and they think it's because kids on average are getting like two less hours of sleep than they do because of smartphones and tablets and everything. So we have kind of this epidemic of not enough sleep. And so that marker now may just mean someone is not sleeping enough and getting low levels of sleep. And then last Delta, that's probably the one that's trained directly the least. It's kind of the foundation of all the other frequencies. So it's, I think they correlate they think it correlates with, you know brain stem and deeper brain function kind of those regulatory processes, right? In the background that are really important but they're subconscious. Also correlate with deep sleep, like the Delta. Yes, that's right. Yep, it correlates with deep stages of sleep. And then when I see it elevated in my office it might be again, brain injury or learning disability or sometimes by folks that have these autoimmune clusters of symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, Lyme, that sort of thing. So those are, that's your quick run through. No, they're super helpful. And it's interesting because again, the neurofeedback side and then like I've been playing with PMF maths and pulse to light lights on the brain. And my specific, I have a V light which is this device that does a mitochondrial brain light stimulation. And there's some data on that. It's still kind of controversial but my particular frequency is more alpha wave frequency. And it's interesting to me because my experience when I had the worst of the mold about five years ago I had a lot of trouble with focus and concentration and that alpha, whatever it was it really helped me get into that state. And then the nutrient theanine I love to use I don't know again how much data there is on that but those are just like my little simple hacks of kind of feeling that focus and clearness without any anxiety. Again, Lehmann's term is what you just described and I feel like that alpha is so critical to that state which is again what you were saying. And you're saying many people are stuck with too much beta related to alpha or maybe too much theta related alpha and they're more like unable to focus, is that? Yeah, so it's yeah, too much beta related to alpha or that marker that used to be for ADD, ADH it was too much theta related to beta. Got it, got it. Because beta you need to have beta. Interesting. So fascinating and so fascinating that these hurts like there's mimicking of our EEGs, the PMFs like they're all around our world. There's other mimics of these frequencies that I obviously have an effect on us. And I always wonder like the stress of the environment the electromagnetic frequencies. I don't know how much data we have some data but it's not super sound yet but I have no doubt that a lot of these other things are affecting our bodies and brains more than we even think, right? Right, I agree. Yeah, I think the data is still coming along but I think it would make sense. I believe again, I'm not an electrical engineer so I'm reporting this from someone else but that the fluorescent lights I think emit a high beta. And so when people are really sensitive it would make sense that we're absorbing that in our physiology, right? And there's that law of physics that if you have a tuning fork, right? If it's bringing a scene out and you bring it by another one and it absorbs well, obviously we absorb as well waves. So it would be a reasonable hypothesis to think that well, if we're absorbing beta especially if you already have too much that that could be activating over activating in your body. And then another line of thought on the reverse is that a fire has a slow flicker rate. Like if you're sitting by a fire probably in the Delta range. And then that might be why it's so calming to be by a fire because it's that slow flicker rate. So again, I don't have data to back that up. So think of that as anecdotal from talks with colleagues and working. Yeah, and again, same with me, I'm not the expert but I do know like the Schumann frequency is the Earth's natural resonant. And that I think correlates more with some of the Delta that like some of the calming, I don't know I think seven or eight hertz. I think it's that, yeah, or is it 7.8 maybe Yeah, so that would be right at the bridge of theta and alpha which is interesting. It's interesting to think about that because there's a common training and neurofeedback as well. It's called alpha theta training and they use it a lot. People have anxiety or we use it when someone has past trauma. But a lot of times it's someone cut off from their emotions, right? Until you train alpha and then once you get better at training your alpha then they train someone in a theta state which can be this kind of, again, interesting almost hypnagogic state. And so it's interesting that the Schumann residence is right at the cuff. Right in there. Well, and I'm guessing too, again, this is just off the cuff so I may not be accurate but I'm guessing that when you access theta a little bit what you're talking there's almost a subconscious state where you're open enough to and I find seeing the somatic therapies in patients and even in my own life when you're open to the subconscious and the intuition that's where a lot of the powerful healing shifts come from because our body knows what to do, right?  So I'm guessing that part of why it helps because you're actually able to access what your body already knows to do which is your subconscious programming. That's right, yep, you're exactly right. That's when it's kind of thought of that you're training into accessing the subconscious which is why it needs to be done by a professional. Yeah, if someone has traumatic memories you don't wanna do that right away. If someone doesn't then it's a little less risky and a little more just exploratory and fun.  We could talk for hours, we're gonna do it. Yeah, I could. Anything like, obviously you're having great success. I think what you're doing is so important and so powerful. A couple of things like, first of all where can people find you? If they're, especially if you're there in your area go ahead and give us your website or wherever we can find information about you and what you do. Sure, yeah, so I work at Palm Health I'm in St. Louis, Missouri. So you could just go to our website palmhealth.com and spell just like it sounds. And then if you wanna know more about me I would just be under the about tab under the staff bar. And then I'm trying to think what else. Yeah, the address and the number would all be on the website. So Palm Health and we're on all the social media. Yeah, and I will include that link for all of the anywhere you're listening here we'll have that link. You wanna find out more and more about neurofeedback. What if there, you know, Rhode Island or Washington State or somewhere where would they find someone that does what you do? Is there a professional organization or someone that you think that like say someone calls from out of state and they can't see you? Is there any like, how would they find a provider like you? Yeah, that's a good question. So there's a professional organization that manages a directory of that. So it's called bca.org.org. So that's the certification aligns for biofeedback and neurofeedback. So I really encourage exactly what you said when people tried to find me and I only can see people in Missouri. We go on that website and there's a tab right at the top it says find a provider and then you type in your zip code. So what's useful about that is it's a directory to find resources, you know, providers in your area but also that is the organization that certifies people. So you have some experience and quality control because neurofeedback is a specialty you add onto something else that's not a profession by itself. So you unfortunately get a wide array of experience and training of people in the field. The BCIA, if you go there, they're certified, they've had this universal training we all have to have passing the test, certain mentorship and continuing education. So that's where I always direct folks. Good, perfect.  Like what you talked about is so critical because you have this family marriage counseling degree you have your PhD, you've got a lot of background because that container creating a safe place for people to do this is really, really important. So just if you're listening out there, make sure you find someone like Ashley who's credentialed, who has the training and ideally who has some other background because what happens with some of the stuff is things come up, right? And if you don't create a safe space that's safe for that to happen with the proper, you know, titration of the therapies it can be really overwhelming or too much for people. So that's all right, awesome. Ashley, thank you for today. It is so fun to talk to you. And I know this was awesome information for everybody listening. Thank you so much for having me. This went so fast. I know it was so fun. Thanks for having me. You're welcome.


United Way of Bemidji and Community Resource Connections have a new home right on Paul Bunyan Drive. Our own Charelle Moore tells us how the new location is helping both the nonprofits work together. United Way of Bemidji and Community Resource Connections needed a new home after their last building was sold. The two groups decided it was a great chance to reach out to the community together. My board of directors really thought this was an opportunity to find a visible place. We often were in the back of a building not seen and this was a great opportunity to be seen by the community. The causes are different but similar enough to where they can help each other out. United Way funds agencies that impacts areas of basic needs for health, income and education. CRC's mission is to improve access to community services through collaboration, coordination and integration. I think both of us would agree that together we need to have everybody together in order to really make an impact. This brings two similar but different populations of people together in a way that I think will be productive. This new building will give Community Resource Connections and United Way of Bemidji a whole new way to collaborate. Now sharing ideas will be just as easy as walking down the hall. Just even in the short time that we've been here just a couple of months, I think we've found some really exciting things that we can do together that will be very impactful both for the nonprofit sector as well as for the community for the public as a whole. Both organizations believe that moving to this location will be a way to help them grow. Our hope is that we'll continue to grow so we can meet the needs of our partner agencies because as Bemidji grows so do our needs. Reporting of Bemidji, Sheryl Moore, Lakeland News. United Way and CRC will host an open house at their new location tomorrow afternoon beginning at 4pm. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


you know good super sub are coming on but if if not Marlon and Marlon here goes there's a looking to put the icing on the cake what apart from Nelson and Thomas will score it's a hot trick for Nicholas Nelson in terms of assists and a brace now for Ricardo Thomas the two players we've just spoken about they combine yet again intelligent play from the Dumbledore holding number 10 and Dumbledore then wow three goals in quick succession they all had a piece of Nicholas Nelson and the captain he finished two of them it for one to Dumbledore then really impact off the bench here and he shows the quality and that player shouldn't be sitting on the bench but we know it's not just your ability that takes you on to the part might have been other things in the background but certainly in that foreground just now it's him providing to Thomas a player that we felt both these two players right up there for a play of the game over the duration of the game I was saying Thomas because of his contribution defensively even when like all they had a little research


This is stock number 9894. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Your new and used SUV headquarters. Today we are checking out this extremely clean, good-looking 2008 Hummer H3. From this HD video, you will be able to tell that this Hummer H3 is extremely clean all the way around. No dense dings or cracks on the front bumper. Nice grill yard on there. Nice white color on here as well. It has the roof rack. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p. So if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device, turn them on right now because it's like you're right here looking at the vehicle with me. Some nice black painted step bars. Factory alloy rims look like, looks like it has brand new front brakes on it. And it has BF Goodrich all-terrain tires. These are LT28575R16 tires. And they have probably about 70 to 80% of the tread left on them, probably closer to 70%. What makes this Hummer so unique and sought after is that it is an alpha edition. So it has the 5.3 liter V8 motor in it. Front grill is an excellent condition as well. Pastner side rim. No scuffs or scrapes on that. And as you go down this side of the vehicle and the fender here, you can see just how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. We take these HD videos, so if you are far away, even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down, you can still see the vehicle, hear the vehicle, and have confidence in what you're looking at before you even get here. Especially these, uh, these Hummer alphas, they're pretty sought after, so we tend to sell a lot of these out of state. So we want to make sure our out-of-state customers get the most accurate representation of the vehicle as possible because it takes a lot to buy a plane ticket and fly somewhere and, you know, make sure that the vehicle is going to be all that. Back brakes are brand new as well. And you can see that the back tires have, I'd say, closer to 80 and 90% on the back tires here. Frame and underbody, very clean on this vehicle, and it's like that all the way underneath. Looks really good. As we come around to the back of the vehicle, you'll notice the rear bumper is in nice shape, has the chrome tipped H3 exhaust. The gate is in nice condition, has a factory alloy rim on the back here as well. It does have the towing package, which includes a seven-pin wiring and the receiver hitch. There is the alpha badge. Nice swing-open rear gate has the box for the aftermarket alpine INE W960 radio in it. Also back here, I believe it has the factory radio in it as well. We have an all-weather floor mat and the factory floor mat back here, too. So we get a little bonus there. Those seats do fold down and then got the hard plastic backrests on them so that when you put them down, you got a nice smooth surface. That gate shuts nice and solidly as well. It has a brand-new tire on the back. And on this side, the vehicle just as clean as that passenger side. No dents or dings. On the rear quarter has the chrome trimmed gas door. And for full disclosure, this back rim is absolutely perfect. And the brakes are brand-new back here as well. Didn't see any dents or dings anywhere on this vehicle. Very clean down this side.  There are no rips or tears on the seats. It has the black alpha stitched into the headrest. Both of these seats are heated. You get a lumbar and power driver seat, factory floor mats throughout. Power windows, power locks, and power mirrors. And this one has the auto headlamps. As we hop inside the vehicle here, you can see this one only has 63,055 miles. Comes with the leather-wrapped steering wheel with the alpha logo on the middle there. Push button, four-wheel drive. There's that alpine radio and the climate control down there. The dash is in excellent shape. You get the compass temperature mirror and the on-star capabilities. And it has the very large sunroof. Side curtain airbags, passenger seat is just as clean as the drivers. No rips or tears on that. And you do get factory floor mats on that side. The automatic transmission. We'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we'll check out under the hood. Back seats are just as clean as the front seats. No rips or tears back here. Those have the latch child safety system for your car seats. And we do have factory floor mats back here as well. These seats do fold up and then these fold down. It's a little bit of a process to get these folded up right, to get the back seats down, but they do fold down. And maybe we'll do an extra video on that under the hood. Like I said, we have the 5.3-liter V8 motor. Engine bay is very clean, runs very smooth. This vehicle has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop. Has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off. The vehicle has been gone through mechanically 100% and is 100% ready to go. Runs really smooth. And just a very nice vehicle all the way around. Highly sought after. I know there's a lot of people interested in it. And to see more pictures of this one or one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, wranglers, you name it, we got to go to our website www.summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle on our lot. Videos of every single used vehicle that we have all at summitauto.com. If you want to make this Hummer Years today, give us a call<PHONE_NUMBER>. Ask for one of our sales associates to make this Hummer Years today. Once again, that number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. And if you want to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. In fact, in a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left. A link to more used inventory videos like this one on your right. If you haven't been to our website on the bottom, a link to this vehicle on our website, click those, check us out. We really look forward to helping you with this super clean 2008 Hummer H3 Alpha. Thanks again.


As humans, we're not very well suited for the constant onslaught of information and data. We're not based on data in such a way as a computer would be, the more the better. Because we already see a lot in our real data, with our real senses. So there's a real issue about us always being on, it really messes up our thinking and our contemplation, our being in the moment, relationships with people.  So what we need is sort of a right to disconnect, to reconnect to what we are by ourselves. I think in many ways technology has become a religion and connectivity is a drug. And you could say also as a parallel effect, human imperfection is kind of a new indulgence. So what you do online, you can make it perfect because it's just a simulation. But ourselves, we have to live with who we are as humans. Mystery, lies, mistakes, imperfections, all the things that make us not machines. This is becoming a key question because keeping things human has to do with trust. Humans are based on engagement, on relationships. Humans are not living off the data pipeline. And as I say in my book, Technology vs. Humanity, technology is great, but humanity is greater.


Live from Austin, Texas. It's theCUBE. Covering South by Southwest 2017. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier. Back for day two of live coverage of South by Southwest. This is theCUBE, our flagship program from SiliconANGLE where we go out to the events and extract the signal noise. We're at the Intel AI lounge. People are rolling in. It's an amazing vibe here. South by Southwest, the themes are AI, virtual reality, augmented reality, technology. They got great booths here, great free beers, free drinks, and of course, great sessions and great conversations here with theCUBE. My first guest of the day here is Ben Parr, friend of theCUBE. He's been an entrepreneur. He's been a social media maven. He's been a journalist all around great guy. Ben, thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me again. So, you're a veteran of South by Southwest. You know the social scene. You've seen the evolution from Web 2.0 all the way to today. Had Scoble on yesterday, Brian Fonzo. Really, the vibe is all about that next level of social to connecting. And you got a startup you're working on that you founded, co-founded, called AI. Octane AI. Octane AI. That's in the heart of this new social fabric that's developing. Where AI is starting to do stuff, deep learning, analytics. But ultimately, it's just a connection. Talk about your company. What is Octane AI? Tell us a little bit about the company. So, Octane AI is a platform that lets you build an audience on Facebook Messenger and then through a bot. And so, what we do is allow you to create a presence on Messenger because if I told you there was a social app that had a billion users every month, bigger than Snapchat plus Twitter plus Instagram combined, you'd want to figure out a strategy for how to engage with those people, right? And that social app is Facebook Messenger. And yet no one ever thinks, oh, could I build an audience on a messaging app? Could I build an audience on Messenger or WeChat or any of the others? But you can through a bot. And you cannot just build an audience when you create really engaging content through conversation. So what we've done is we made it really easy to make a bot on Messenger. But more importantly, a real reason for people to actually come to your bot and engage with it and make it really easy to create content for it. In the same way you create content for a blog or create content for YouTube channel. Moon 5, Aerosmith, Kiss, Lindsay Lohan, 30 Seconds to Mars, Jason Derulo, and a whole bunch more use us to build an audience and engage their fans on Messenger. So I want to get your thoughts on a couple trends around this. This is really kind of, to me, a key part, the chat bots kind of illustrate the big trends that are going on. Chat bots where the high people were talking about, oh, chat bots, it's a good mental model for people to see AI, but it's also has been kind of, I won't say kind of a pest if you will for users. It's been like a notification. Notification economy we're living in. Now you're taking it to the next level. This is kind of what we're seeing, kind of some of the deep learnings and the analytics around turning notifications, which can be noisy after a while, into real content and connections. Into something useful, absolutely. Like, look, the last year of bots, it's the Facebook platform is not even a year old. It is, we've been in that fart app stage of bots. Like, remember the first year of mobile apps and you had like the fart app and that made like $50,000 a day and that was annoying as hell. We're at that stage now, the experimentation stage. And we've seen different companies going in different really cool directions. Our direction is how do you create compelling content so you're not spamming people but you have content that you can share not just in your bot but like as a link on your social media to your followers, to your fans on Twitter, everywhere else and have a scalable conversation about whatever you want. Rune 5 has conversations with their audience about their upcoming tours or they even released an exclusive preview of their new song Colb through our bots. You can do almost anything with our bots or with any bot. We're just learning right now as an industry what are the best practices? So where do bots go for the next level? Because you and I have known each other for almost over 10 years. We've seen the whole movement and now we're living in a fake news era but social media is evolving. Where content now is super important that kind of glues people together, communities together. In a way, you're kind of taking AI or bots, if you will, which is kind of a first, I mean, .5 version of where AI is going. Where content now is being blended into notifications. I mean, how important is content in community? Content in community are essential to any product and I feel like when you hear that we're a bot you don't think community and that you could build a community with it because it's a bot, it's supposed to be automated but you actually can if you do it in the right way and it can be a very, very powerful experience and we're building features that allow you to build more community in your bot and have people who are talking to your bot communicate with each other. There's a lot of that. What I feel like is we are at the 0.1 or 0.2 of the long scale of AI and what we need to do right now is showcase all the use cases that really work for AI, bots, machine learning. Over time we will be adding more of their great technologies from Intel and others that will make all these technologies and everything we do better, more social and most of all more personalized. I think that's one of the big benefits of AI. Do you see bot technology or what bots can turn into being kind of embedded into things like autonomous vehicles, AR, is there a stack developing if you will around bots? I mean, what you're talking about is kind of a progression of bots. What's your vision on kind of where this goes kind of down the road? Well, I see a bunch of companies now building kind of the technological stack for AI. I see a bunch of companies building like the consumer interface. Bots is one of those consumer interfaces. Not just chat bots but voice bots. And then I see this another layer that's more enterprise that's helping make more efficient things like recruiting or all sorts of automation or driving that are being built as well. But you need each of those stacks to work really well to make this all work. So are there bots here at South by Southwest? I mean, is there a bot explosion or is there bots that tell you where the best parties are? I mean, what's the scene here at South by? And we're the bots and if there were bots what would they be doing to help people figure out what to do? So there are a couple, like the South by bot is actually not a bad bot. They launched a bot just before South by Southwest and it has like good party recommendations and things but it's like the standard bot. I feel like what we're seeing is the best use, like there's a lot of good bot people. What I'm seeing right now is that people are still flushing out the best use cases for their bots. There's no bot yet that can predict all the parties you wanna go to. And we gotta like have our expectation set. That will happen but we're still a few years away from really deep AI bots. But there are clearly ones where you can communicate faster with your friends. There's clearly ones that help you connect with your favorite artists. There's clearly ones that help you build an audience and they have to communicate at scale. And I feel like the next step is the usefulness. Talk about the user interface. Robert Scoble and I were talking yesterday. We have some guests coming on today that have a user experience background. With AI, with virtual reality, with bots, with deep learning, all this collective intelligence going on, what's your vision of the user interface as it changes, as people's expectations? I mean, what are some of those things that you might see developing pretty quickly as deep learning, analytics, more data sets come online? What is the user interface? And cause bots will intersect with that as an assistant or value add for the user. What's the vision, what's your vision on? I'll tell you what I see in the near term and then I'll tell you a really crazy idea of how I see the long term in the near term. I think what you're gonna see is bots that become more predictive that are a little bit, that based on your conversations are more personalized and maybe doesn't necessarily need as much input from you to be really intelligent. And so voice, text, standard interfaces that we're used to. I think the bigger, longer run is neurological. Is the ability to interface without having to speak. Is AI as a companion to help us in everything we do. I feel like in 30 years we won't even, it's kind of like, do you remember the world when it had no internet? It's like, it's hard. It's like, it feels so much different. But there will be a point in about 20 years we will not understand what the world was before AI. Before AI assistants were assisting us mentally, automatically and through every interface. And so good AI's over the long run, don't just run on one bot or one thing. They follow you wherever you go. Right now it might be on your phone, when you get home it may be on your home, it may be in your car, but it should be the same sets of AI's that you use daily. Dr. Naveen Rao yesterday called the AI the bulldozer for data. What bulldozers were in the real world, AI's going to do that for data because you want to service more data and make things more usable for users. Yes, the data really helps AI become more personalized. And that's a really big benefit to the user to every individual, the more personalized the experience, the less you have to do. All right, so what's the most amazing thing you've seen so far this year at South by? What's going on out there that's pretty amazing, it's popping out of the woodwork in terms of either trend, content, product, demos, what are some of the cool things you're seeing? So as it is only Saturday, I feel like the coolest thing will still come to me. But outside of AI, there have been some really cool mixed reality, augmented reality kinds of demos. I can't remember the name, the product with like butterflies flying around me. Like all sorts of really breaking edge technologies that really create another new interface honestly where AI may interact with us through the augmented reality of our world. I mean, that's Robert Skobel's thing, exactly. But there's a lot of really cool things that are being built on that front. And so I think those are like, those are the obvious like coolest ones. I'm curious to see which ones are going to be the big winners. I forgot to ask you a personal question. So you were doing some investing, venture investing around AI and some other things. What caused you to put that pause button on that mission to start the chatbot on AI company? So I was an investor for a couple of years. I invested in U-Beam, the wireless electricity company and shots with Justin Bieber, which is always fun. And I love investing, I love working with companies. But I got into Silicon Valley and I got into startups because I wanted to build companies. I wanted to build ideas. And this happened in part because of my co-founders, my co-founder, Matt, who was the first had a product at Ustream and twice in the Forbes 13 to 30 and one of the king makers of the bot industry. And the opportunity to be a part of building the future of AI was irresistible to me. I needed to be a part of that. Okay, can you tell any stories about Justin Bieber for us while we're here inside the cube? I wonder how many of those I can actually tell. Okay, so look. So Justin Bieber is an investor in a company I'm an investor in called Shots, which is now a super studio that represents everyone from Lele Ponds to Mike Tyson on digital online and they're doing really, really well. And it's like Justin's, one of Justin's best friends is the founder, John Jahidi. And so it was just really random sitting with my friend with John who I invested in and just getting a random face times. They're like, oh, it's Justin Bieber. Say hi to Justin. It's like, as if it was nothing. And it's as if it was just a normal, it's a normal day in his life.  What's his follower count now? You don't want that. He's done that to me before. When Justin retweets you or even John retweets you thousands if not tens of thousands of Justin Bieber fans bots and not bots start messaging you asking you to follow them, talking to you all the time. I still get the tweets all the time from all the Justin fans. Okay, don't tweet me then. I got a nice happy with 21,000 followers. All right, so next level for you in terms of this venture, I'll see you guys rock stars in there. What's the next step for you guys right now?  What's the next step? So we launched the company publicly in November. We started in May. We raised 1.6 million from General Catalyst, from Sherpa Ventures, a couple of others. And we launched our new feature Convos, which allows you to create shareable bots, shareable conversations of the way you share a blog post. And that came out with all those launch partners I mentioned before like Maroon 5. We're working on perfecting the experience and mostly trying to make a really, really compelling experience for the user with bots because if we can't do that, then there's no use to doing anything. So you provide the octane for the explosive conversations. We provide, yes, there you go. Thank you, thank you. And we provide, we make it really easy. So we're just trying to make it easier to do this. This is a product that like your mom could use, that an artist could use, any social media team could use. Writing a Convo is like writing a blog post on media. Our mom's really getting the chat bot scene and obviously you get the Hollywood, I'm going to go back to Hollywood in a second, but general, middle America kind of tech genre, what are they like? I mean, are they rocking the whole bot thing? What's the feedback from middle America tech? But think of it this way, there are a billion people in Messenger and a lot of the, and it's a really part of the big question, they all use Facebook Messenger. And so they may be communicating with a bot without knowing it or they want to communicate with their fans. It's all about, it's not about the technology as much as this is like connecting with who you really care about. Like if I really care about a Maroon 5 or Rachel Ray, I can now have that option. And it doesn't really matter what the technology is as much as it is that personal connection and that experience. Is it one-on-one or a group? Cause it sounds like a town hall, perfect for a town hall situation. It's one-on-one at scale. So you could have a conversation with a bot while the audience is having a conversation, each of the audience members have a conversation one-on-one, but you could choose different options and it could be a different conversation for each person. All right, so I got to ask for the Hollywood scene. You mentioned Justin Bieber, I wanted to go down there. And cause Hollywood really has adopted social media pretty heavily because it can go direct to the audience. We're seeing that obviously with the election, Trump was on Twitter, he goes direct bypassing all the press, but you know, Hollywood has done very well with social. How are they using the bots? They are kind of a tell sign of kind of where it's going. So you share some anecdotal stories or data around how Maroon 5, Justin, these guys are leveraging this and what's some of the impact? Sure, so about a month and a half, two months before Maroon 5 launched their new song, Sing, New Single Cold, they came to us and wanted to build a distribution. They wanted to reach your audience in a more direct, personal way. And so we helped them make a bot. It didn't take long. And we helped them write convos.   They shared it up with their 39 million Facebook fans. They shared it with their Twitter followers. They shared it across their social media. And tens of thousands of people started talking with their bot each time they did this. About 24 hours before the bot, before their New Single released, they exclusively released a 10 second clip of cold through their bot. And when they did that within 24 hours, the size of their bot doubled because it went viral within the Maroon 5 community. There's a share function in our convos and people shared the convo with their friends and with their friends' friends. And it kept on spreading. We saw this like viral graph happen. And the next day when they released a single, thousands of people bought the song because of the bot alone. And now the bot is a core of their social strategy. They share a convo every single week. And it's not just them, but now Lohan and a whole bunch of others are doing the same thing. Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay Lohan is one of our most popular bots. Her fans are really dedicated. Awesome. And so you can see this almost connecting with CGI. I mean, looking at what CGI is doing in filmmaking, you can almost have kind of a CGI component built into. So it's all this stuff kind of coming together. Multimedia matters. All right. So what do you think about the Intel booth here, AI experience that got some, you know, kinetic photo experience, amazing nonprofit activities, using deep learning to find missing children. What do you think? This is some of the best use cases for AI, which is people think of AI just like the direct consumer interface, which is what we do. But AI is an underlying, kind of like an underlying layer to everything we do. And if it can help even 1% or 1,000%, you know, identify and find missing children or increase the efficiency of our technology stacks so that we save energy or we figure out new ways to save energy, this is where AI can really make an impact. It is just a fundamental layer of everything. In the same way the internet is just a fundamental layer of everything. So I've seen some very cool things here. All right, Ben Parr, great guest. Inventure Capitalists, now founder of a great company. Octane AI, high octane explosive conversations, looking forward to adopting, we're going to definitely take advantage of the chat bot. And maybe we can get some backstage passes to room five. There will be some fun times in the future, I know it. All right, Ben Parr. Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber inside the cube right here and Ben Parr. Thanks for watching. It's the Intel AI Lounge. A lot of great stuff, a lot of great people here. Thanks for joining us. Our next guest will be up after this short break.


We are the other wasm project in CNCF sandbox. So it's really nice to have wasm cloud precedes. So our project is called Wasm Edge. We also started in 2019. And we started as a WebAssembly runtime outside of the browser. At the time, a lot of people ask questions, how is that different from Java? That's because you have another byte code virtual machine where it's cross-platform, provide security, and all that. We heard this before. This is called Java. So we keep finding this perception. Because in the cloud native space, wasm is very different from Java. But I wouldn't go into that. Because last year, the progress I want to report is that we finally find a use case that's very similar to Java. And that's where Java had tremendous success but failed in the new use case, which is right once, wrong anywhere, but for GPUs, not just for CPUs using wasm. So first, let me take a step back to say, if you are writing AI application, or especially LIM application, what do you do today? So when it started, the LIM application is mostly people just use some kind of API server that's either provided by a SAS provider or OpenAI. Or you can run your own large-language model using things like olama and things like that, lama.cpp to start an application, so API server. And then use an orchestration framework like LIM chain, some Python framework to tie them together and then build an entire application, a whole chain of different models and different pumps and different applications. That is all fine. However, this whole process is very much geared towards research. So in order for to really have the tied down and the highly secure and deployable application, we need to have applications that are much tighter integrated, move data and model together, move the execution code that handles the data together with the data. So that means to build our own application servers. That means to build things like prompt engineering and REG framework and things like that into an application server so that we compile the whole LIM application into one piece of deployable application and then have Kubernetes to orchestrate it. So that is very different from the current paradigm where you have multiple containers, multiple Python scripts and things like that. But in order to do that, we have the problem that we thought we have solved all those years ago with Java. It's the most, namely, there's two problems. The first is the heavy weight problem. So if you remember, when Java came along, there was also a heavy weight solution for web application that is called PRO. So now we have something called a Python. The Python Docker image itself, the PyTorch Docker image itself is 4 gigabytes. So in order to deploy that application onto, say, H devices in a car, a lot of our users using it in factory settings or automobile settings and things like that, it is just not feasible. And also, the PyTorch runtime depends on the underlying GPU framework like a CUDA and things like that so that you have to specify those at the Python level, which is make it not portable, very complex and not portable. And the second problem is really a very classic problem is that before Java came along, when we write a web application, we have to compile it on our own machine, test it. And when we deploy it in a cloud, we have to test it there as well, compile it all over again. Because it's likely that my development machine and my deployment machine are different operating systems or different architectures. With the new GPU frameworks or with the new large language models, this problem has been amplified by 100 times because now you not only have two different CPU types, you have tens of GPU types. So the application I developed on my MacBook is probably going to rely on things like the metal framework and things like that in order to run well on the Mac GPU. However, the same thing, not only cannot be directly deployed on a media machine that use CUDA, it cannot even be compiled on a media machine. So the whole cloud-native tool chain is not set up to distribute things like this. It is not to modify our application and then recompile our application on the deployment platform. It is the whole Kubernetes and Docker ecosystem is designed to distribute binary artifacts. How do we do that? So that is the new challenge that we see today, is that application developers develop those applications, develop the new type of API servers with all those multiple models and integrated stuff. And then they test it on their machine and then they find out what works on machine doesn't work on the remote machine. So by the way, things like lightweight containers like Docker and things like that doesn't solve this problem because even if you use Docker, you have to install the media driver inside Docker. You have to use the media shim that goes with the Docker host. So it doesn't solve this portability problem. So what Wasm Edge did is that we work with W3C to come up with a new level of abstraction called Wasi neural network. What it does is that we define the GPU access or the AI inference primitives at the bytecode level as API cost. So basically, a developer only needs to write towards Wasi API and compile that application into bytecode. And then whatever devices, whatever GPUs, could it be NVIDIA or Mac or AMD or TPU, NPU, that's the special inference tip. AWS have the special inference chip. Azure has, as long as it was supported by Wasm Edge, they would just deploy that runtime on there and then just to copy the binary application, like you used to do with your Java application. Copy it to a new machine and it will automatically run. So again, we separate out the role of the developers. The developer only need to make sure the application runs on his own or her on laptop. And then the ops people figures out which host requires which driver. Is it Q.11 or Q.12? Is it the AMD driver? Is that whatever? So then after those two roles are separated, the application is become portable again. So I'll close it because I'm not allowed to do any demo, but we have a one line demo where it's going to install Wasm Edge and download a large language model onto your own laptop before you leave this conference and you will be able to run it without internet connection by chatting with some large language model on your machine and really show you it runs on everybody's machine today. Thank you.