90% of diagnoses for high blood pressure are called essential hypertension. We basically have no idea what's going on. The modern media tells us salt is to blame, and there is some truth to that, but sugar is likely the main culprit. When you consume salt, that salt holds onto water. Blood volume expands, contributing to a rise in blood pressure, unless you can remove said sodium. The way to remove the sodium is to get enough corresponding potassium, and most people on a stands in American diet are getting adequate sodium and potassium. There is just dysfunction resulting in improper metabolism. The raw primal dieters of John Svanderplanets, aka the raw tards, are usually not getting enough salt, whereas the cornivores grind food, are using too much salt. You have to find the happy medium. I'll link some videos on potassium at the end here. So the real problem is a high sugar, high inflammatory diet. Keep in mind, sugar is always pinned as the bad guy, glucose fructose, not necessarily that bad. But when you combine it with high omega-6, processed foods, refined foods, and a lack of animal vitamins, you have the big bad skull. Bad stuff happens. When omega-6 is high, particularly linoleic acid, sugar can damage many organ systems in the body, including the adrenals, the pancreas, kidneys, arterial lining, resulting in degenerative diseases. There's a reason Italians have been eating tons and tons of pasta for thousands of years without issues until now. Many of these organs, which are now inflamed, play a role in the renin angiotension and aldosterone system, a hormone system that regulates blood pressure, fluid and electrolyte balance, as well as vascular health. Dietary and lifestyle stress result in the dysfunction of this system. So you have renin, which is an enzyme that activates angiotension. Angiotension is a hormone that promotes vasoconstriction, so the constricting of the blood vessels, and that means less room for blood to flow, which can increase blood pressure if it's not regulated properly, as well as aldosterone production, aldosterone being the main mineral corticoid that regulates sodium, mineral corticoids being hormones produced by the adrenals. The sugar plays in by causing high insulin. So you have a poor diet that's inflammatory, omega-6 seed oils, processed foods. You end up with high insulin. High insulin causes high renin. High renin results in high angiotension, results in increased vasoconstriction, the blood vessels tighten up, the body is signaled to release aldosterone. And the main function of aldosterone is to work on the kidney to increase sodium and water absorption, which can obviously increase blood pressure in too high of an amount, because if you're absorbing all of this sodium and water, your blood volume increases substantially, and your body is only meant to handle so much blood. High aldosterone also signals the kidneys to excrete too much potassium, possibly why the standard American diet recommends so much potassium it's trying to make up for the high insulin levels. One other thing that activates the overproduction of these adrenal hormones is extra uric acid. This relates back to sugar as one component of sugar is fructose, and part of fructose metabolism is producing uric acid. So fructose in high amounts equals high uric acid, equals high adrenal hormones, resulting in high blood pressure, high pretension. The genetic ability to handle uric acid makes a significant difference here, and by no means doesn't mean, oh, if I consume too much sugar, well I have high uric acid. Potassium and vitamin C play huge preventative roles in uric acid metabolism going ory. And this is where salt can actually be a problem. The inflammation in your kidneys as a result of insulin resistance makes it so you cannot handle salt as well. This is why we see people getting high blood pressure from consuming too much salt, fix the insulin resistance, then you can handle salt. I've seen quite a few carnivores recommending upwards of 10 grams of salt per day, that is way too much for most people, and dangerous to certain individuals, especially those with impaired liver, kidney, any type of organ problems whatsoever. Overproduction of other adrenal hormones causes high blood pressure as well. Cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine, each of these have different mechanisms that can cause high blood pressure individually, sometimes referred to as Cushing's syndrome, specifically when you have too much cortisol. One really interesting thing is that heart disease is likely not possible unless you have high blood pressure, because that blood flowing rapidly causes small tears in the arterial wall, those tears can accumulate substances such as oxidized cholesterol from a high omega 6 diet, that forms an enlargement or a burst resulting in a full on cardiac event. So to prevent this, you can improve the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio in your diet, omega 3 has blood flow promoting activities, the blood flow smoother, the platelets are more flexible, whereas omega 6 does the opposite, it causes damage, it makes things rigid. Vitamin D and vitamin K certainly play a role, and there's many studies, you know, affiliating vitamin D or vitamin K supplementation with lowering blood pressure, and the mechanism here could be due to the metabolism of calcium being dependent on these vitamins, and if one was deficient in vitamin D or vitamin K, calcium is deposited in various soft tissues, including organs, arteries, contributing to inflammation and chronic disease. So definitely some links to calcium metabolism that would explain lowered organ function resulting in high blood pressure. For those of you that haven't really looked into vitamin D metabolism, heavily involves the kidneys as that is where calcium is either signaled to be excreted or absorbed. So to just briefly go over how to fix high blood pressure, obviously you want to exercise, you want to improve your lean body mass to remove the potential for insulin resistance, you want to avoid calcification as we just said, get plenty of sun, high vitamin K2 fermented animal foods, we said avoid omega 6, a little like acid seed oils, and of course you want to consume mostly saturated fats as well as some omega 3 fats. If exercise, diet, nutrition do not fix this issue, you need to address EMF, electromagnetic frequencies causing cellular stress, as well as possible medications you're taking and who knows you could have passed heavy metal toxicity or organ dysfunction that is resulting in some type of organ not working properly in this process.  So hopefully this helps some of you guys out. I put a lot of work and effort into my videos, unfortunately I'm still filming these in my apartment. You know, if you guys could share the video, subscribe, like, you know, support me further. Hopefully I can, you know, really increase the production value, you know, invest some more money into a studio into things like that so that, you know, not only are you guys getting this good information, it's a more approachable setup and it's more enjoyable for both of us. So if you guys would like to support me further outside of promoting the YouTube channel, you can check out my book, The Uncessual Indigenous Diet, where I go over, you know, basic principles that would help you improve, you know, your hypertension, your high blood pressure, Frankie's Syringe Meat for quality animal foods, Frankie's Naturals for Minimal Ingredients Minimally Processed, Hygiene and Cosmetic Products. And if you'd like to work with me one-on-one, you can go to frank-de-fano.com. Thanks again for joining me. Enjoy the rest of your day, guys.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com. It's new release day and we've got 2019, 2020, upper deck ultimate collection hockey coming at you. Eight box, pick your team at number seven. Coming out of a fresh master case, there you go. So Wednesday the 19th, two won 2020. Big thanks to all of these folks for getting into it. Mike Tower, last spot, Mojo, Bluejack. There's everybody else right there. Thanks everyone for getting into the action. We did a lot of these. So we'll roll the die. I like that one right there. One, two, three for the left side, four, five, six for the right side. And it's gonna be four, one, two, three, four, five, six. This we will save for pick your team eight, which is already sold out coming up in a separate video right after this. Let's see what's in this guy. That's what's going on there. Good luck. All right, all right. Yes, as always Ryan, I'm no good at this. Actually, we're just gonna have Patrick Lyny help us out. We have Ultimate Rookies, Ilya Makayev, 65 out of 125. That tripped me up a little bit. It happens. Frank with the maple leaves. There you go Frank. We've got Kale Klogg, Klogg Klegay, 96 out of 99. Three color patch and autograph. That'll be for the Kings. Sean Maddock with that one. There you go, yeah. We'll go with Chris and Frank's analysis here. We've got Phillip Zadina, 203 out of 399. And there's Lyny right here. Yeah, right riffer? All right, next one. Not sure Chris Murphy. Check the webby website, jaskyscasebreaks.com. They'll have a spots left number underneath the product that should let you know how much is left. Henrik Zadine's gonna help us out and show off a Carl Grunstrom to 299. Kings, that'll be for Sean. Eight out of 35, Brock Besser. I've heard of him. Canucks, Ryan H. There you go Ryan. And then we've got Martin Feverevery, that guy. Martin, 27 out of 399. Caps, that's gonna be for Ryan H. And here's another conduct for you Ryan. All fin cards here. We've got Haas helping us out here. There's Rasmus Aslund, 299 for the Buffalo Sabres. That's Stephen K. Buffalo, Buffalo Gold. There's Henrik Lundquist, jersey nodder for the Rangers. 17 out of 25, I've heard of him. Ryan La Plaga with that one. There you go Ryan. So who, there was no Quinn Hughes in this one. Ryan H. not that I remember, no. I don't think, not in this one. There's Oliver Wallstrom, 137 out of 399. And we've got Gaetan Aas. That's Josh with the Oilers. We've got John Marino, Dan's brother on top helping us out. And there is Carl Gunstrom again. 214 out of 225 Kings, Sean Maddock. The Los Angeles Kings. There's Andrei Vasilevsky for the Lightning. Ultimate Collection Autograph for Adam, then Tampa Bay. And then back here is Joe Thornton, he's happy. Did he get both of these things? Whatever those cool awards are. This one looks like a P in a little pod right here. And that's huge right here. I don't know what, I'd fill that with like punch. That's what I would do. And there's John Marino, it's 299. You know if any relation to the other Marino. I mean maybe back in history but in direct relationship. Alright, 001 out of 125, we've got Barrett Hayton for the Coyotes. That goes to Arthur, AP and the Yotes. We've got debut threads, Dante Fabro, 14 out of 99. Three color patch and autograph. That's for the Nashville Predators. That's William Smith for the Preds. Chris saying this is a good poll right here. Preds, William Smith. Is this Ketcher Will Smith from the Dodgers? Aren't you playing right now? You shouldn't be joining Brakes. Alright and behind Philippe Myers is Kale McCarr. I've heard of him too, Ultimate Access Relic. It's a great, some great photography there. Really like that. Avs, that's for Shawn Matic and the Avalanche. And there's Philippe Myers for the Flyers, Brian Zeke. Marc Messier up on top and there's Jimmy Schult right here to 299, Vegas Golden Knights. Aaron Salinas, there you go. Trendsetter with an auto. We've got more Vegas, there's William Carlson. 56 out of 99. Signature Laureates material for Trendsetter and the Vegas Golden Knights. And the Relic on the back is Nathan Bastian. 42 out of 399. Rookie Jersey for Jersey. Shawn Matic with the Devils. And there's Marc Messier right here for the Rangers. Ryan, Mitch Marner up there revealing a Blackhawk. One, two, three out of 225. That's Dominic Kubelig for Shytown. The shy city Blackhawks going to Jason Wainer. Then we've got Teddy Bluger, 97 out of 99. Three color patch and auto for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Edward, there you go, Ed. He's just saying this case better heat up fast. Is this hot enough or is it not? I don't know, don't know. Just rolling with you guys. There's Jimmy Shultz to 399. It's okay, it's just different. All right, well, better than nothing. We've got Aaron with another Golden Knight card. Jimmy Shultz to 399. There's Mitch Marner to 149 for Frank in Toronto. And the last box. All right, last box. Good luck, everybody. It's picker team seven, picker team eight coming up right after this in a separate video. There's Carter, Vergate, Carter V to 299. Tampa Bay, Adam. With the Lightning. Zap. We've got Nick Suzuki, 26 out of 49. Nice three color patch and autograph for the Montreal Canadiens. How about this one? Ed? Yeah? Suzuki's really good. Nice, that works. He said, all right, there you go. Edward with the Montreal Canadiens ripper in the chat. And the last one here is Adam Fox, Fox in the box to 399. Rangers, that's gonna be for Ryan L. Oh, Nick Suzuki had two goals tonight, says Chris Murphy. So there you go. And there's Trevor Moore right here for Toronto. That's gonna go to Frank. And there you have it, boys and girls. That was Ultimate Collection number seven, number eight coming up in a separate video right after this. Jaspy'scasewrakes.com. I'm Joe, I'll see you for that one. Bye-bye.


I'm just going to move on to more talks of Raya, Roja. Roja, okay. Yeah, okay, thank you. Can you see my screen? Yeah. Yeah, okay. First of all, thanks for the organizers for giving me this opportunity to present my work. I'm Roja Raman, presently working at Satya Bhama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India. Yeah, about my talk, you can see in the background something is burning out. Yeah, my talk is about that the assessment of the intense forest fire for a popular hill station in the southern India. The analysis using ground based and space based ladders. This has been the historic fire event that has happened over this location and this was also reported by the NASA newsletter as well. About this particular site, there are two important things. Why this is so popular and why the people attention is over this site and during this event. So the first thing is that this is the world's most popular pilgrimage and the settlement means the permanent residents over this location are only less than 100 but every day about 150,000 people visit this place. This is elevated at one kilometer about 1000 meters elevated. And the second important thing is the dense forest around this hill station consists of plenty of red sandalwood that is the most expensive red sandalwood. So that is the reason why people are very much interested to study over this location and they were very much concentrated on this study when some fire fire happens. And the second thing is why this event is so historic because every year during March, April, May, the fire happens. But this particular event is so historic in the recent decades, why because the frequent, the every year fire happens once or once in a while or one or two days, it will be stopped but this particular event happened almost like two weeks and this was very much intense. And this has burnt out about 1500 hectares of forest land and many habitants were destroyed. So this is about this particular location and our later site was just about 2.5 kilometer aerial distance downhill. Our university campus was located downhill and the fire happened at the uphill one kilometer. Okay. Yeah, this is the ladder we have operated. Actually, this has been the routine operation daily operation we have been operating and fortunately we were able to capture this particular event. And this is the microphone slider and I'm not going to the technical details of this because of lack of time. So, yeah, during this particular fire event. Here the nice pictures we were able to observe the first picture the first one this one is the you can see at about three kilometers. There was a plume of five smoke. And below two kilometers that was usual long range transport aerosol as well as the urban aerosol. And it was the intense flight. Somebody is interrupting. Should I proceed. Keep going. Sorry everybody asked me. Can everybody please mute the speaker. Many people are talking. Sorry. Okay, thank you. Yeah, the second one is the dense five small spread up to 3.5 kilometers when the event was very intense. So, yeah, this was the tailored image of a total events from March 14 to 28. As you can see the fire event just started here and it was very intense about 2223 and, in fact, this was the first event where Indian Air Force was deployed to stop this fire using the aircrafts. Sorry choppers. So that much intense fire was this one and to come. Yeah, here we can see there were multiple layers of aerosol and smoke as well. So to confirm how far it has been spread. We ever happened to have only one calypso overpass during this event that is on 25th March. So from this image, this green light green line is the exact location of the fire event. And as you can see from the aerosol subtype, the smoke was started from here and it has spread for several hundred kilometers. So, and from this dispersion, high speed dispersion also, we confirmed that these smoke particular smoke has spread for about more than 100 kilometer radius. And from the Institute observations there were there is a national atmosphere research laboratory, maybe most of the people know Indian MST radar that location we have Institute observations that location is about 50 kilometer away from this five spot. And from there and other university location also, we were able to observe enhancement of black carbon and total aerosol extension and a ODI during this event. That means that the effect of this fire has widespread effects. Coming to the summary, so the multiple layers of backscatter observed in our LiDAR might be the major reason is from the fire smoke and that might be mixed up with the long range transport, because the season is popular for long range transport biomass burning aerosols. And so the LiDAR signals are mixed up of both fire smoke as well as the long range transport smoke. And because of this, the atmospheric boundary layer has increased up to 3.5 kilometer. This has been identified using the nearby radius under observations at NRL and the Institute observations as I already mentioned the Institute observations were also showing drastic enhancement during this event. Yeah, this was about my talk and thank you very much. Okay. Thanks. Thanks very much, Roja. Any questions? Nicoleta, you can unmute. Nicoleta, you can unmute. Okay, no. Can you hear me? Yep. Yep. Okay, I want to ask is about slide. I think one, two, three, four. The fifth slide, if you can go there. Yeah. Can you make some assumption on the composition of, you said they are aerosols here? Yeah. Because they are arranged on a vertical disposition. Yeah. Did you make the assignment of the composition of these layers? No, because we have only single channel later. So from this, I think, yeah, we cannot differentiate the type. And this one in the right part, can you assign this type of item to know spots, the reddish spots, what they mean? Do you know what they mean? It's spectacular. The image is spectacular. But can you do some assignments inside? Yeah, you mean the about 15 kilometer? I don't know. It's written calipso. Yeah, in the calipso, the tau player you are talking about the red spots. Yes. Yeah, that is the serous cloud. Okay. Nice. Okay, thank you. Joe. Okay, I assume your micro pulse slider is transmitting both 532 and 1064. Is that correct? Which one? You mean our lighter? Yeah, your MPL. No, MPL is only 513. Okay, so when you have a plot of the back scattering ratio, that's not the wavelength ratio then that's the ratio of what to what? Yeah, we assume the lighter ratio 40. So we just assume the fixed lighter ratio, not the direct lighter ratio. Yeah. Understood. Thanks. Yeah. Okay, no more questions. Thanks again, Roja. Have a nice day.


So this is kind of a weird video, but I've been doing some thinking and I figured hey Why not get on here and talk a little bit about it and maybe you guys can learn something or just laugh at me whatever you prefer I'm 22 and I want to learn to be confident now when we talk about confidence right in the context of being a Christian like should Christians be confident is that boastful is that is that not humble thing to do well? You know generally when I think about confidence I think about look Yeah, we're not supposed to be prideful so or boastful so like you know we do something and we're like it's all about me You know pumping our chest that kind of thing But confidence I think is a is more of a security in the talents and abilities and gifts that God has given us It's just a security in like somebody's gonna say something to us.  We are secure. Oh dog barking nice We are secure in God's in what God says of us, right? That's like the confidence in him It's not this like going out to shout to everybody. How awesome am I it's like I'm secure and Confident to be able to get done what I need to get done because God's power and his presence is in me and with me and all that stuff and Yeah, so anyway to get to I don't know though the whole point of this video out for the last For as long as I can remember. I've not been a confident person, right? I may purport to be I'll maybe on social media You watch me like well He's really confident being able to like, you know talk on social media and stuff and say a bunch of stuff But if you meet me in person and maybe I might even like be in a mood where I'm like really uppity and really I don't know extraverted but generally that's not the case generally I feel pretty insecure honestly, and it's just like now that I'm trying to figure out why that is why I feel I don't know just this like lingering like I Don't know it just I feel like I don't know if I'm the only one that experiences I feel like I should be over this at my age like at my age of 22 But seriously it's like no like I don't know people like yeah We love confident people confident people that know that what they're doing There's some people that just have like an air of confidence around them And I just feel like I'm not one of those people and I think that has to do with a lot of things I think it has to do with my own perception of myself like as much as I preach on here about look see yourself as how God sees you And you know when God says you are you know He delights in you and you're fearfully and wonderfully made and all that stuff and like that take that to heart and use that as Like fuel for confidence and for security and him. I feel like I catch myself Saying terrible stuff to myself like there are times when I'm in this like productive space where I'm getting things done And I feel good about myself and I'm and I'm making something of my life and that kind of thing And then there are other times where I'm not and I can't figure out what the best thing is to do Or I can't figure out what I even should do and I just feel like garbage and I just feel like man What I'm such a loser and and all that stuff and and So what I'm trying to do is figure out, okay, what's the root of all this like guilt and shame and and self condemnation self-hate and and all that stuff and Because I want to get to the the source of it because right now It's like I kind of have a toxic relationship with social media and I don't like to admit that but it's kind of true in in some ways because like man, like the numbers they do Impact how I feel like it's really like I would like that not to be the case, but it's just true It's like okay. I get you know I post a video and it gets like a thousand views or two thousand views and I'm like, oh man This is awesome. This is great for me And then I post another videos got like 300 views and I'm like, what did I do wrong? Like what you know and and obviously you're like, but I just use that as motivation to get better in the next one And just you know find out what you did wrong and and do it and I'm like, yeah, but it's not as simple I don't know sometimes and it can be frustrating and also it's like I tie so much of my identity to what I do Because that's just what nature is we just do that even though we're not supposed to do that because that's not good Because that's not even where we should be finding our identity. That's not where we find our self-worth in what we do But it's inevitable that I find myself this war going on where I'm like I Am defined by what I do online and when that's not going as well as I as I wanted to Then it kind of backs how I feel about myself and to go full circle and in fact affects my confidence Especially in person like if I'm meeting new people and stuff like that like They're like, what do you do? I'm like, well, I do a bunch of different things I have a bunch of different jobs But my main passion is like daily disciple and my ministry and they're like, you know, they they're interested in it And I'm just kind of like yeah, but don't don't pay too much attention to the numbers It's like, oh, they're like only a thousand views or on YouTube video. I'm like, I mean, that's a good video for me But to them it's like, oh, well, you know, I follow people that have millions of followers and stuff like that and And so it's tough. It's like one of those things where And obviously it hasn't been so bad to where I've quit like I'm never quitting. You guys know that But I'm just telling you the thoughts and feelings behind What I'm trying to work on and heal from and it's like I gotta stop treating social media as like a I don't know it can tear me down so easily when I tie my identity into it But it can build me up so fast if something goes well like To the extent where look if I post a tiktok right now and it does really well like it got 10 000 views And I'm just being honest with you guys I would feel really good about that. I feel like oh man, this is good and I have a good evening But if I were to post a tiktok right now and it were to get 300 views I'd feel like garbage be like, okay I'd be processing throughout the the rest of the night trying to make something that's gonna Get me that hit that I need in order to feel good And obviously that's not the full motivation of what I'm doing Like I'm passionate about making content and videos and stuff because I want you guys to follow Jesus daily Like I truly believe that's the heart of what I'm doing But what crowds in on that and what gets in the way of that is like My self-worth and wanting to feel like I'm making a difference and making an impact in in your lives and in people's lives And sometimes that's hard to know and when you don't feel like that's the case you you Man it tears me up And like I have to say like it's been great over the last Months like God has been really kind to me and bringing more people to check out daily disciples content and all that stuff But even still I find myself like I don't know cowering away from even people like older than me Like I don't know like, you know people my dad's age or something like that where I'll just be like I don't know. I just feel embarrassed for myself. Like I'm not measuring up to where I should be or like I'm not in university or You know like who am I am I just to screw up like that's how And I know that's dark. I know like whatever this is a therapy session. That's fine But that's how I feel sometimes And so and maybe you feel that way too Um, I guess is what I want to go all the way around to try to relate Maybe you're you're going through this to you You're in a spot where you feel like you're not where you should be You're not like in the career that you feel like people would respect or you're not Like whatever it is and and that's taken a big hit on on how you feel about yourself and how you frame your day to day And and all that stuff And something I've been exploring is is kind of this idea two ideas First thing is reframing so looking at a situation looking at your day to day and and trying to look at it from a You know a different perspective trying to take on other people's perspective Maybe if you were like a friend looking in on this How would you see the situation and how would you feel about it? And what would you say being able to take that outside situation outside perspective and uh and reframe a situation Or look at it from a different angle. That's one thing Also, it's understanding that look What we do the numbers the the the accolades the the productivity the Like all that stuff we built that stuff up so much in our hearts and our minds that we we we it's so personal to us Right like that defines us And when when that doesn't go exactly as we want it man, we're crushed and And I guess I just want to say is that Like when you're when you become aware of that It is not just a thing that you can just like snap out of like because obviously you know that because I've Said on this channel multiple times that it's like that I've kind of struggled with this and this like feeling of not being enough Not enough Not working hard enough all that stuff and you're like Isaac you knew that so why don't you just fix it? Well, you can't just fix it. It's a battle.  I'm not Feeling well right now. I feel like I'm failing. I feel like I'm not measuring up I feel like what I'm doing doesn't matter Can you help me in this? Can you be with me? Can you clothe me with your presence and your peace to know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing right now And sometimes that's all you can do. I like as much as we want to fix things right now You you can't just fix this but But what we need to be continually turning our eyes to is the security we have in christ like right now and I mean This is kind of response like I I was I was struggling with as I was thinking about this today and just before I shot this video and that's kind of wanted I Why I wanted to shoot this video Because I I felt like look at least At least I can share this with somebody else like all this thinking and And struggle won't just go into nothing It'll at least be there for you to relate to and learn from maybe but I don't really have much more to say than that um Yeah, anyway, um if you're struggling with this, you know You're not alone, um


Good evening, welcome to the Brooklyn Museum. I'm Cora Michael, Associate Curator for Exhibitions, and I'm pleased to present the second and a four-part conversation series pairing artists from the exhibition This Place with Notable Writers. Tonight, we are very fortunate to have photographer Stephen Shore and historian Ian Buruma with us to speak about Shore's iconic pictures of the American West and his more recent work from Galilee to the Negev, which explores the complexity of Israel and Palestine through landscape, portraits, and street photography. Some of the themes they will touch upon include the eternal resonance of the promised land, the unique energies that seem to emerge from the landscape, as well as how the present-day conflict leaves its mark on the place and its people. As a teenager, Stephen Shore was the resident photographer at Andy Warhol's factory. And in 1971, at the age of 23, he was the second living artist to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art after Alfred Stieglitz. In the 1970s and 1980s, Shore pioneered the use of color photography as an art form. On road trips across the country, he captured the banality and beauty of everyday America chronicled in his collections, American surfaces, and uncommon places. As Lynn Tillman wrote, these works are about the importance, the fascination, and the beauty of ordinariness. Shore teaches photography at Bard College, where he is program director and Susan Weber professor in the arts at the photography program. He is one of 12 international artists whose photographs of Israel and the West Bank are featured in the exhibition, This Place, on view here until June 5th. Ian Baruma is a renowned journalist and historian who writes on a broad range of cultural and political subjects. Educated in Holland and Japan, he studied Japanese film and Chinese literature, and the art and culture of Asia remains one of his primary areas of scholarly expertise. Among his many publications are Murder in Amsterdam, the Death of Theo Van Gogh, and the Limits of Tolerance from 2006, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for the best current interest book, and Year Zero, a History of 1945, published in 2013. In 2008, Baruma was awarded the Erasmus Prize, which is awarded to an individual who has made an especially important contribution to culture, society, or social science in Europe. He has also written numerous articles and essays about Israel and Palestine for the New York Review of Books and Other Publications. His most recent book, My Promised Land, My Grandparents in Love and War, was published just last month by Penguin Books. He and Shore are colleagues at Bard, though I hear they don't know each other terribly well, where Baruma also teaches as Henry R. Loos Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism. Please join me in welcoming Stephen Shore and Ian Baruma. Well, I'll kick off with a question. It seems a long way from Andy Warhol's factory to the Desert of Hebron. And you've often spoken about the different phases of your photographic career in terms of finding new problems to solve. What were the artistic and perhaps non-artistic problems that you felt you were facing photographing Israel and Palestine? There were a series of them. One of them was a technical one, that sometimes if I need to revitalize my thinking, a new camera will do it. And the work that's in the show here is all taken with an 8x10 view camera, which is a camera I've been using regularly since the early 1970s. But I'm gonna show some pictures. Can we get the slideshow going? And some of the work you'll see, like this, is done with an 8x10, but some are done with a very high-end digital camera. And it offered an opportunity that I'd actually been looking for for probably 40 years, which is a small handheld camera that can take a picture with the same resolution as a 4x5 view camera. So I can have the detail and the tonality that I would expect from a large format camera, but have the spontaneity and mobility of a small camera. So that opened doors and allowed me to take pictures that I simply couldn't have taken before. But I think the more serious questions, I've tended up to them now to photograph with a few exceptions in North America, not in politically charged areas. And this presented a situation where there was clearly a political charge. I had to deal with, to what extent do I show it? And what is the scope that I wanna cover? So the challenge, the real, the aesthetic problem was one of content. And how do I make sense of this large, complex place? I think being part of this project was in a way a godsend because there were 11 other photographers, I didn't feel like I had to make a summation that I knew other people were doing other work and that would all be in a show and fit into a complex whole. And that took a certain kind of pressure off. But I wanted to show, when I read about Israel on the West Bank in the paper, it's always about the conflict. But for people who live there, their life is a lot more than that. And their life involves the conflict, but it's also life. And I wanted to show that. I wanted to show the land and I wanted to show what average life is like. And that sort of became my aim and that was the problem for me. Yes, did that force you into a kind of departure from something that's characterized your work, I think, in that you once said about Robert Frank, who did the famous book, The Americans, that perhaps in contrast to somebody who I think influenced you a lot, Ansel Adams, that Frank had a kind of biting, almost satirical look at America, which you called, I think, in an interview, a sort of critical stance. It was, you might describe it as a sort of horrified fascination, even. Whereas I think Ansel Adams and a lot of your own work tends to be much cooler and takes things as they are. I'm sorry? You may be thinking of Warholesque. Warholesque. I mean, it's not a horrified fascination. It's simply sort of photographing what's there. Did a politically charged place like Israel change that attitude to photography? I found not, and I think maybe that's why I wanted to put the pictures of places where the political situation was more evident into a larger context. Because I didn't want it to be just about. I mean, I could have, as I'm talking, I'm thinking about, and you'll see a series of pictures that I'll be showing in a little while, of Hebron. You can describe a political situation in words and make it clear, maybe not deal with whole complexity in a few sentences, but make it clear in a few sentences. But you can't photograph that. And so you can only photograph where things become visibly manifest. And for me, that place was Hebron, where the conflict really became visible to an observer, and you could see the tension was there in physical form. But it seemed important to me not to just concentrate on that, that it's a small part of a larger whole, which is that it's a small part of a larger life. Yes, I can see that. On the other hand, in a place like Israel, almost everything is politically charged. For example, you've taken pictures that you were just telling me, as we were chatting on the way in, that your first trip to Israel, you went there because you were interested in archeology. And you took photographs of archeological sites and shards and pots and that kind of thing, which seemed to be completely unpolitical. I mean, there's nothing political about it. It seems. On the other hand, it's also true that Moshe Dayan and the other general, Iqdal, I've written it down. Sorry? Yes. Yes, that they were both very keen archeologists party because they were interested in archeology. But there was a political agenda, which was to sort of stake a claim on the Jewish or the Jewish claim on the soil. And so even that isn't really completely unpolitical. No, there were a number of levels of politicization of the archeological digs. For example, in the book, I have edited out one picture, which is of human remains. Because I know that if I published it, it would get the dig in trouble because there are groups who would close them down. The ultra-orthodox. Yes. Also, I know that in one of the digs I was on, there was really a subtext of wanting to find archeological proof of the Torah. And the other books of the Old Testament. And that this was on the minds of the archeologists. So how can one, on the one hand, photograph scenes that are charged and without sort of necessarily commenting politically on it, but how do you visualize it? For example, the landscape itself, a lot of your photographs, I'm thinking, for example, the pictures you took, the very beautiful pictures you took in Scotland. And it seems like a landscape that is almost primeval, that's not touched by man. Of course, almost all landscape in the world has been touched by man in one way or another. But it seems that you don't see the footprint of man. And yet... But you see the footprint of lamb. Of lamb, certainly. And of history. And I wonder how one visualizes that. For example, and I don't want to draw any comparisons historically at all between what I'm about to say and the pictures of the West Bank. But I remember traveling in a train through the forests in Poland on the way to Lublin, where there was a very horrible death camp. And you know that all kinds of terrible things happened in that landscape or in Lithuania for the same thing. And you sort of have to resist the notion that the landscape itself is guilty. Now does that come into your attitude when you photograph a landscape, and the presence of history? As you're saying that, I think not so much in this project as the next project I did was in Ukraine. And I felt that completely. And I made a couple of trips there. And the second trip I wondered before I left, am I gonna feel this again? And it felt like there was this emotion hanging over the land. And I can't separate it from my knowledge that my paternal grandfather emigrated from there. That before I ever went there, I had read Thomas Snyder and knew the history of the, I mean the extraordinarily tragic history of that country. I can't separate all that from it, but I'm convinced that it was just like something in the air in Ukraine. And do you think it comes out in, it's something that somehow comes out in photographs or in the way one visualizes these? How would you describe it? Photography is I think surprisingly adept at communicating psychological and emotional states of the photographer. If someone is put in years of practice and as some degree of mastery of the medium, it seems to be able to communicate it. And that's, as we were talking about the problems of content in Israel, I had to face it even more so when I was working in Ukraine because the work was centered around photographing Holocaust survivors and their homes and the villages they lived in. And I went in knowing that I'm doing something that contains a red flag, that there's this cultural charge.  And I don't wanna take pictures that are manipulative. And that play on that, I don't wanna be a Holocaust tourist. So I just trust that to take clean, direct pictures and that I'm just trusting that somehow that cloud of emotion that I felt every single day that I was in Ukraine, somehow is gonna find its way into the pictures. Yes, and I can imagine it being the same in Poland, that there's something about maybe that part of Eastern Europe. And it is, of course, in our minds, isn't it? Because famously, nature is indifferent to the terrible things that people do.  So it is in the mind. And so it's very interesting what you say. So that what's in the mind of the photographer somehow translates even in a photograph, which is a kind of reproduction of reality. Yeah, and it's not hard to see why that's the case. That the decisions I make as a photographer are based on what I'm paying attention to. And so something very simple, that if I'm in a state of mind where I'm seeing, my mind is quiet and I'm seeing things with greater vividness, I will choose intuitively to photograph from a slightly different angle, because I'm aware of the light. And that I would gravitate to an angle where the light will communicate a greater sense of vividness. And that's not even talking about an emotional level, just what I would gravitate to to photograph is gonna communicate it. What else I include in the picture? How close I am? Little things like slight variation in distance changes the emotional tenor, the saver of a picture. And again, I don't think one has to set out with that as a name, but that, again, with years of practice, when the medium becomes second nature, I feel a photographer can trust that that will come through. Do you think, in a sense, also perhaps your approach, your sort of distant and dispassionate almost approach, can actually make the political sense even more dramatic or even sharper? I'm thinking, for example, of one of the pictures in the exhibition, which is a sort of panoramic view or view from above of Hebron. And if you don't look carefully, it just looks like a very rather nice picture of Middle Eastern city. And actually this is another view of a street level view of that same place. That's right, but if you look carefully, you see a wall, you see barbed wire and you see a place where the military would be there with guns. But it's almost as though it's a banal scene. It almost makes that seem as normal as all the houses around it, where of course it's not at all normal. It's a scene that's utterly abnormal. And yet the fact that it's shown in the same way that perhaps you show in other pictures of the United States, of a freeway somewhere in Texas with a Texaco sign or something, makes it even chillier in a way. Is that something that you feel yourself? Yes, and I think another side of that is that I find that if I feel that someone is trying to manipulate me, I back off of me, like I close down inside. Kind of protect myself from it. And so it's the work that seems striving less that may be the more powerful, at least for me as a viewer. And where the pictures that you took of Hebron are almost all done from the Arab side? They were done from the Israeli settlement side. So you see the Arab parts, but across the wall, as it were. Yes. And was that deliberate? Or? The first time I went to Hebron, I spent most of the time in the Arab part and had one small group of pictures in the book from that. But when you're in it, it's not that different from other Arab cities, other West Bank cities. What seemed particularly striking was that, as I mentioned, this was the place where I could take a picture like the one you're describing. And you can begin to read the picture and see, literally see the tension of the conflict. It made visible. And so it was from that side where it seemed clearest. Can you also perhaps speak a little bit about something you mentioned already, but elaborate a bit on the very peculiar light that I myself also saw on the West Bank, and especially in the landscape around Hebron. Yeah. And compare it to the light that you get in, say, the Southwest of the United States, which has somewhat similar landscape, although obviously not the same. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure you can even separate the light from the landscape. I found the landscape, particularly in the West Bank and the Galilee, extraordinarily powerful. I found myself deeply attracted to the land, that there was something that felt special about it. In lots of different places there. But I'll tell you a story about the light. So I worked over about a, maybe a four or five year period. I made six trips. And the other photographers did the same and we would share assistance. And the assistant I used also worked with Thomas Strudt. And on my second or third trip, he said, something funny I noticed that if you, speaking to me, I'm photographing in the desert, and there's one little stray cloud that's covering the sun, he said, I've noticed you'll just stand there and wait for the cloud to pass. And he said, Strudt was the exact opposite, that he would set up, and then of course, this is a desert country, and he would wait for however long it takes for a cloud to come and cover the sun. And I said, well, it's simple. He grew up in Northern Europe and I grew up in the States. I figured out how to photograph in bright sunlight and he learned how to photograph in overcast. Yes, you could turn that round though, that it's also possible to think that to a European bright sunlight, a Northern European would be more exotic and therefore more appealing. We were talking earlier about the American landscape and I remember the only time, and I've lived in Japan and I've traveled all over Asia and so on, and the only time I've ever felt culture shock in my life was when I saw, for the first time when I was 19, I saw Los Angeles. And I'd seen it in the movies, but it was a city like no other I'd ever seen in my life. It was so peculiar and strange. I liked it, but it was really odd. And you were telling me that as a New Yorker, it was almost as exotic to you, the world of America. Yeah, we were talking before while we were waiting to come up here about that we had similar experiences reading Nabokov's description of Humbert Humbert's trip across America and the song Root 66. The almost incantational quality of the names of the cities and how they were magical. And they were magical for Ian growing up in the Netherlands and magical for me growing up in New York and probably equally exotic. Yes, and very utterly misleading because to us the name Memphis was almost as sort of exotic as the real Memphis. Whereas it's in fact probably a rather dreary city, but and if you look at your photographs, you do I think maybe because you are that's the difference between being an American photographer and the European one to come back to Robert Frank. The European tendency is to play up the satirical side of the American landscape to make it look weirder than it actually even is and more absurd and surreal and so. Whereas it seems to me you did the opposite. You de-exalticized it in some ways. How aware were you when you did that of this? I find them basically fascinated by the way things are. My current project, my project for the past almost two years is posting every day on Instagram. I mean it's devolved from high art to that. And occasionally I take pictures of skies and today I posted a very dramatic sky, but I'm also looking through and I have pictures that are just very ordinary clouds and which I'll occasionally post and I think what I'm doing and I'm thinking why is there a prohibition against ordinary skies? Why do clouds have to be dramatic? And I think it's symbolic of an approach I have about a lot of things and we were talking earlier also and you mentioned the work I had done in the Northern Italian village of Luzara. And when I was there it was exactly to the month, 40 years after Paul Strand had photographed the same village for his book Un Paese. Not that I was meant to do a re-photographic survey of his book, but it was really a coincidence that it was exactly 40 years. And an Italian photo historian named Paolo Constantini sent me a copy of a letter that Strand had written while he was in Luzara and he said, it's so difficult to photograph here because there are no buildings of architectural interest. And it really struck me how different the words architectural interests were for him than they are for me and for him it meant a building designed by a noted architect or that communicated the humanity of a peasant and for me architectural interest refers back in a way to what I was saying about the conflict that as a photographer I'm limited to how cultural forces show themselves visibly that are accessible to a camera and one of the ways cultural forces show themselves is in architecture. And so I find the most average architecture fascinating because I see in it this bubbling up of these cultural forces. And this is where I can deal with it as a photographer and it doesn't have to be the work of a great architect and it's not that I'm being ironic about it because it's simply this is where it's made manifest. No, in fact it's unironic and I was thinking also when I was looking at some pictures that you did on trips through America of things like the breakfast you'd had and you see a table with leftovers of a scrambled egg. And it's very, very different from say the pictures taken by somebody like Martin Parr who's done a whole book I think on fast food and people eating fast food and so on.  And that which is clearly intentional. Yes. But I could see how in the 60s and 70s and so when you began to photograph in this way this was real. I'm smiling because I'm thinking of something that I'm trying to think should I say it? Yes, say it. Or shouldn't I say it? No, no you should say it. There's a photographer in the show in the show that's up here now named Fuzzle Shake who's a friend of mine and a wonderful photographer. And we were both in a show at the Tate Modern called Cruel and Tender. It was the first photography show that the Tate had. And the joke among the photographers was that Fuzzle wasn't cruel and Martin wasn't tender. Which is essentially what you're saying. Yes. No, that is what I'm saying. But the warholesque sort of almost celebration of the ordinary was a real artistic statement at one point. I mean nobody had quite done that before. How does this change and how does the whole, I know this is a very big question but how does the role of the sort of art photographer change or how has it already changed in the world of Instagram when everybody is a photographer and most people are not good enough not to take pictures that are banal. So where does it affect the kind of work that you've done? So a fascinating question. I mean I've been thinking a lot about Instagram and do you remember Essex 70s? No. It was a Polaroid camera about 40 years ago and it produced prints that are about this big and there were certain, Walker Evans spent some time toward the end of his life using Essex 70 and there was something about the process that allowed for kind of quick notations like I'm looking at the way the air bubbles are in this glass and that's good enough for a little Essex 70 and I wouldn't take out my eight by 10 and do it it's not complex enough for it but it's a little notation and Instagram does much of the same thing and for me that's part of the joy of Instagram. You know, everyone is a photographer now but for years everyone was a writer. Not quite everyone. Well, everyone wrote. Yes, that's true. But not everyone was a good writer. It was a good writer. No, but. And so now photography is in the same boat that writing is in. It's a skill that has become universal where 30 years ago or 40 years ago it wasn't universal but writing has been universal at least in Western culture for a very long time. No, that is absolutely true but it's clearly the case that not every Instagram photographer is going to come up with pictures like Cartier-Bresson. I mean it's impossible. And in some ways it seems maybe I'm completely wrong about this and please tell me if I am but looking at your work it seems to me your work is less about catching the fleeting moment which was Cartier-Bresson. It's the fleeting scene almost. And you say somewhere that you knew how to be a really good photographer. You had the technique, you knew you were good in the way that most people are not. And then you almost deliberately took pictures like that wonderful series of postcards of very banal things like banks in Texas and so on. And it's very deceptive because they almost look like real postcards like that which also exists. You used to, hotels used to hand them out. They are real postcards. Yeah, they are real postcards. So what is fascinating there is that very subtle borderline because between an artistic expression of something and something that is, let's call it naive. You did it because you knew you had the skill but you did something very strange, peculiar at the time with it. Now that must change, well one's perception of that approach to photography must change when everybody can do something that looks like that even if it isn't quite the same. You're right, I hadn't thought of that but you're absolutely right. And so for myself there are certain Instagram cliches that have developed and I will either avoid them or take pictures that intentionally play on them. Could it mean a return? But it's something else I wanna add that's even sillier than Instagram and it's a camera called a cat cam. And I suggest anyone go home and Google who phrase cat cam and it's a very lightweight German camera that goes on to a pet's collar and can be set to take pictures at intervals like every minute or every two minutes. And some of the pictures are wonderful, absolutely wonderful. And when I first saw it, it was really depressing actually because I've devoted 30 years of my life to teaching and I think, okay, after four years if these students that I've been teaching can't take a better picture than essentially a random photograph, what does it all mean? Well, it's a good question.   Yes, I agree, yes. But nonetheless, I mean, do you think- But it gave me pause for a little while but I realized exactly what you were saying. But do you think it could mean for people who practice photography as an art form that it could move back to doing things that are technically too difficult for most amateurs so that they can distinguish? It raises, what you're saying raises something which is partially behind the cat cam which is that to, I mentioned writing before but to be able to write, as I'm saying it I understand there are some people who are illiterate not that many in our culture but it is a skill that has to be learned simply how to write and read.  I mean, a monkey or in this case a cat can take a picture that in any formal sense is complete. It has edges, it has a plane of focus, it has content, it's well exposed, it's in focus. It's the easiest medium to create something. So there's never been that high technical barrier and even before the automatic camera it really is so easy to learn compared to a skill like reading. So it's always been something else. It's always been the mind and how you see. And I think what attracted me or struck me about the cat cam is that it's a picture made without any presence of visual convention and that's what as artists one of the things we have to struggle with is how do we polish ourselves and scour those conventions out of ourselves to see the world more clearly and immediately and immediately meaning without mediation. Yes, and I think that well there's one other way in which you can compare it to writing which is that not every great writer was a really good writer as it were. I mean you can be a very average stylist but have something to say about yourself and life and so on that is so interesting that it doesn't really matter and you have great stylists who can write beautiful sentences and so on who don't have all that much to say. And I suppose the same is true of photography that there are a lot of photographers especially now who, some of whom I don't particularly like but who are popular not because of the technical quality of their pictures which are often deliberately badly photographed. Wolfgang Tilmann said seems to me as an example but who people like because he has something to say about his life, it's a chronicle of an attitude of a life and so on. And for that I suppose, I mean that can be an art form in itself, would you put yourself or at least part of your work in that camp and that you were at certain phases of your career interested primarily in photography as a sort of a chronicle of the life you were living at the time? Yes, especially the series American Surfaces. It was essentially a visual diary. It was very much that. And there have been times during my Instagram work that it becomes somewhat more autobiographical and then I'll kind of move away and make it less so. But there are periods where I'll take lots of pictures that are very personal. Do you think that's a matter of age? That young artists, I mean famously the first novel tends to be autobiographical but that young artists are more interested in chronicling their life than when you get older and then you just go on to other things or do you think that's entirely a personal individual thing and I think it was age? I think it was individual. Where are you now in that sense? I kind of waver in between. And so again, really all I've been doing recently is Instagram. And so as I look at it I see that I'm taking some pictures that are the notational pictures. I'm taking some that are I think as complex as my eight by 10 work. I take some that are very personal and are just kind of diaristic. Three days ago I took a picture of my wife having a nap with our cat. And it's very unironic, very personal, very sweet image. Today I've posted a kind of slightly dramatic sky picture but it's nothing I would have ever photographed with a larger camera. Sky pictures are kind of cliche and you can get away with it on Instagram but I wouldn't have. How is that related to the way photographs are displayed? For example, if you take a picture with a large format camera of an Israeli landscape that obviously looks very good on a museum wall. It's wonderful here. Do you think that photographs will be displayed and distributed in a completely different way with digital media and Instagram and so on? Or do you think those Instagram pictures could be made to look good on a museum wall as well? I think some could but I think the people who tend to use Instagram the best visually are thinking about what a picture looks like about two by two or three by three inches. And so are photographing in a way that looks good on a phone or on a largest on an iPad. And that's very different from what, in the show here there's a Jeff Wall that the size of that, almost the size of that image. You know the question. And so there are different things that you would, different approaches you would take knowing that this is the size it's gonna be. Also it's a rear projection screen and different things look work on that than would work on a print. So it's, you're seeing it by transmitted light rather than reflected light. And so the physical quality of the image on a phone is part of what, at least I'm taking into account and I think a lot of the people who are using Instagram as a medium are taking into account. How can photographers in our age make a living and in the sense that it used to be that photographers can make a living by taking pictures for magazines, annual reports, books. Then it moved into the art world and some photographers made huge amounts of money creating works of art for museums and collectors and so on. The photography of the Instagram. I have not that dear. This is gonna be very difficult. I did a small book but I didn't get anything for the book and I don't know why anyone would buy it. They wanted to see my Instagram pictures. They just, the feed is public. It's not just a question of a photography of course, but let me get back to Israel a little bit and the role that your own life plays in your work and so on. Did Israel ever mean anything special to you where you as a boy made to pay your pocket money for trees to be planted in the Holy Land or was it something that left you fairly indifferent? What role did it play? It played a very little role. I had an uncle for whom it was important as I heard things from him about it. But not much role. And when I first went there on the archeological digs, I was just struck by the tension and the anger and I don't mean between Palestinians and Israelis. I mean between ultra-Orthodox and reform. And I mean, I was staying outside of Zfat for the hot-sword dig and at a guest house that all the people in the dig were in and an ultra-Orthodox man came up to me and was almost hitting me. That I would live under the same roof as a Gentile. I saw fights break out in the church of the Holy Sepulcher between religious people of two different Christian denominations. The first day I was there, I arrived on a Friday morning and the next day cars were being stoned who were breaking the Sabbath driving through Meir Shireem, which is an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. It was just, I mean, I don't know what I was expecting. I mean, I'd read about other tensions going on but that there was this undercurrent of anger. I was unprepared for it but also at that same time it was before the Intifada and there was no fence and there was no even demarcation between Israel and the West Bank and I would drive around and I wouldn't, I'd have to reach signs to figure out whether I was in a Palestinian village or an Israeli village and so the access to the Haram al-Sharif and the Dome of the Rock was completely open and so at that point there was in fact less tension. Between the Palestinians and the Israelis. What kind of family did you grow up in? And Israel played no part in your childhood, you say, but to what extent, so there is no real connection between coming from a Jewish family and photographing in Israel? I would say that I was probably in a family where not unlike many others in New York at the time where Judaism was more of a cultural thing than a religious thing where we would go to synagogue on the High Holy Days. Almost all of my parents' friends were Jewish, we would. But occasional Yiddish words were used in the house but it was more cultural. But I think often when in Jewish families where Judaism has become more cultural than religious, especially in the United States, perhaps Israel takes a larger role because in some ways it replaces religious feeling as a focus of loyalty. Yeah, it wasn't the case. That didn't happen in my part of the family. I mean, as I've spent time there, the country has meant more and more to me. And I've looked back on trying to figure out what was going on in my family at the time. But I was young and it's hard, I'm not sure I have that many memories but I think about what it's like for a Western Jew in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and what effect does this have? Does it make you want to proclaim your faith more or do you want to keep your head down? And I think people have gone different ways. And in your family environment, there wasn't a question of keeping any heads down, presumably. No, but there was also not, there was not a strong claiming to the faith. Although I went to a religious school every week and what I found later in my life was that as I re-experience different traditions that the seeds of all these memories are all implanted and that even the melodies used for certain prayers and were kind of deeply burned in. So somehow, even though, I wouldn't say my family was particularly religious, I was exposed enough so that there was this trace, more than a trace, a foundation that I think was there to be reawakened. I suppose what I'm getting at is whether there is names like Jerusalem, Hebron, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and so on, in some ways have the same almost mystical exoticism that Amarillo and Memphis and Nashville and so on had for us growing up with pop songs about it. I mean, was there a resonance there that made you feel that it was compelling to photograph? Amarillo always had more of a resonance. Then Hebron. Yes. But the first time I drove around and I wasn't looking for those resonances, but I'd come to Jericho and I think, oh my God, here I am in Jericho, or Megidda. But in the country so small that this, you would come across many of these in the day of driving. And so I wasn't, as I said, looking for that resonance, I wasn't seeking it out because it meant, but the names are just in our culture, carmel. It's just, it's all over our culture. Well, it's all over America too, as is carmel. Yes, yes. And probably Jericho, there's probably a Jericho, Texas, somewhere. And so you wouldn't have probably photographed Israel in this manner if the project hadn't come to you. I wouldn't have, and I'm just very glad. How did that happen? Frederick Brenner approached me and asked if I would be interested. And it's not every point in artist development when a project coming to them is coming at the right time. And I just felt immediately that I needed to have some input from the outside, rather than follow my own instincts. Sometimes it's very useful, again, coming back to your first question about problem solving, to have someone else propose the problem. Can kind of shake some of the mold off. And I just immediately felt that this was right. Are there other places that you feel that you'd love to go and photograph other countries or would you like to go back to the kind of landscapes that you photographed in the 70s and 80s in the United States to sort of change? I actually tried it last year, did a cross-country trip, which was, I did a very short one, it was about a week and a half, but it was just tremendous fun. And I was struck by just how endlessly beautiful the American landscape is and how varied it is. But where would I wanna go? The place that somehow is, sometimes I pick places that I've never been and don't know really much about and don't know why I wanna pick them, like Scotland. And the place that is sort of in my mind is Uzbekistan. Why Uzbekistan? I think the main thing is whenever I see pictures of old Islamic architecture there, it's just amazing. But as I've looked into it more, the, well, also spending time in Ukraine and seeing the Soviet architecture, that the contrast is striking. And I don't know why, I would go to find out. Have you ever been there? I've never been to Uzbekistan, the name is wonderful. I'm a great believer in names. Tristan Dakhunha, an island, it must be a great place. I mean, how can it fail with a name like that? Uzbekistan, I feel. Are there places you wanna go? Yeah, Iran, I'd love to go. But it's silly to say that and not go. I mean, one should just go. I think on that note where unless there's something more you'd like to, well, there's one more question. You talk about the beauty of the American landscape when you went back, your photographs of the landscape are very compelling, but the ones that really stick in my mind are of the urban landscape in America and not the great cities, but the sort of the sprawl around the provincial urban America. To what extent has that changed since you first started traveling? You know, on this trip that I did a year and a half ago, one of the things that struck me is how little things have changed. Strips have changed to some extent. When I was first photographing in the 70s, just when commercial strips started being developed, but they had already happened. The one thing that didn't happen was the big box store, and that's new. The other change is the quality of food. You cannot imagine how terrible the food was in the 70s outside of a few cities. I mean, it was just unbelievably bad, and now you can get good meals just about everywhere. Yes, I think that's true. The same is true in Britain, perhaps even more so. But on that note, I think we can conclude.


I hope you guys look back to another one. If you're new to this channel, I am the Gold Pony, and I do new Clark Truck STV reviews on YouTube. And today I am super excited because we are in the brand new 2024 Ford Mustang GT, courtesy of Bob Ruth Ford in Dillsburg PA for more information on their inventory. Please feel free to check out the link in the description box below. And so we are in this one obviously because it has been completely redesigned for 2024. Some of you guys may already know, I did own a 2019 Ford Mustang GT finished in Need for Green. I named it Stangosaurus and did plenty of modifications to it and had an absolute blast with that car. And best part of all, you got a stripe on the seat belts this year. So it can't get any better than that. But ultimately in this video, we will be testing out and going over everything about this one from acceleration to braking, steering feel, ride quality, sound system, exhaust clip, all that fun stuff. So having said all that, what do you guys say? Let's just go ahead and jump right into it. And as always, let's start with pricing. And so as you can imagine, there are a few different trim levels for the 2024 Mustang GT. First one being the Fastback starting at $42,495. You got the Premium Fastback, which is the one we are in today, starting at $47,015. And lastly, the Premium Convertible going for $52,515. But regardless of trim level, that you go with the power plant on the Mustang GT is going to be the same. Powering the Beast is a Gen 4 Coyote, five liter naturally aspirated V8, putting out 480 horsepower at 7,500 RPM. But 486 horsepower, if you go with that active valve exhaust system, then you got 415 pound-feet of torque coming in at 4,900 RPM. Power sent to the rear wheels, of course, through a six-speed manual with rev matching. Yes, that's still available. Or a 10-speed automatic with paddle shifters, which is optional. And that actually is the one that we have today. I think that option goes for like $15 or $1600 in case you're interested. Zero to 60 time is going to differ between the two transmission setups, of course. Zero to 60 time for the manual is coming in at 4.3 seconds for the automatic approximately 3.9 seconds. Having said that, those were the same numbers for my 2019 Mustang GT. And keep in mind, those are more drag strip numbers. You're probably not going to get those on the street unless it's just absolutely pristine conditions possibly. But anyways, MPG numbers then coming in at 15 in the city, 24 on the highway. Funny thing is though, when you open up the gas cap, it does say 87 octane or higher, but I don't think I ever put 87 octane into my Mustang GT. So let me know in the comments. I literally just filled this thing up with premium. Let me know if you put premium or regular gas in your Mustang. But anyways, before we do any kind of fun acceleration or paddle shifter test here in our Mustang GT, I did want to mention to you guys the drive modes. And so all of the drive modes this year, they're no longer a toggle switch located kind of around the climate control stuff. It's actually located on the steering wheel now. So on the left side of the steering wheel is where you're going to find your drive modes are going to include normal, sport, slippery, drag track and custom, justing things like the shift points, the throttle response, the steering sensitivity, the suspension settings and actually the gauge cluster a little bit as well if you wanted to do it that way. Then there is also some steering field drive modes on the right side of the steering wheel. And that obviously is going to be where you're able to adjust the heaviness of that steering field. I currently have it in that sport steering field. We'll get more into that later, but it is such a nice steering field. But anyways, now that I've got all of that out of the way, what do you guys say? Let's go ahead and find it straight away. Let's put the paddle shifters here to the test and let's see how quickly these paddle shifters are going to react for us here. All right, we got it in full manual shift mode wearing first gear. Keep in mind it is raining out. It's super wet, but here's the paddle shifter test in three, two, one, go. All right, I can't give it that much. That's not bad, yeah. Paddle shifters are perfectly fine. So it's not going to be like Porsche good, but they are dang good to absolutely no issues with that. Instantly shifts through the gear. So I'm a big fan of that, but I'm going to go ahead and get back full control to the Mustang here. I'm just going to slide the shifter up a little bit. Still in sport driving mode, but let's go ahead and find it straight away. I think this is just going to be nuts, this acceleration test, because it is just absolutely wet out. So I'm probably not going to be able to give it everything, but let's go ahead and put this thing to the test and let's see how quickly we can get our new 2024 Ford Mustang GT here up to speed. Let's do it here, actually, yeah. Three, two, one, go. That's not bad. Even in the rain, actually put power down to the ground pretty darn good. I remember at my old Mustang GT, I just sliding all over the place. These tires are good actually, so surprising. Anyways, that was a heck of a lot of fun, even in the rain, but to go along with that acceleration, my very favorite part of this car, braking is equally important. Why do I say that? Because up front, standard setup, 14 inch ventilated front discs in the back, 14 inch solid rear discs, but there are larger Brembo performance front brakes available with the performance package.  You gotta love that. Now let me tell you guys, I've driven Porsche, I've driven Supercars, I actually drove the Gran Turismo not too long ago. In terms of braking, this is my very favorite braking feel, my very favorite braking that I've ever experienced any of my past 700 or 800 drives, whatever it's been now at this point, I don't even know anymore, but I had to get used to this braking feel because it is 100% different than my 2019 Mustang GT that I had with the performance package, mind you. So back when I had that performance package, I remember the ventilated front discs were 15 inches, but now they have an available 19 inches is what we have today. And in terms of that 60 zero stopping distance goes, it comes in under 100 feet. I'm used to saying upper 120s, if not 130s but 99 feet, you have to get used to the braking feel in this thing because it is so touchy.  So it is of course something that you do get used to.  I love it. So Ford, you outdone yourself on this, but anyways, that touching on suspension and handling, first you're gonna get an independent front and rear suspension. Performance pack does add a good bit to those suspension components, including heavy duty front springs and unique chassis tuning as well. And then there is an available MagneRide damping suspension that goes for $1,750 if you were interested. And let me tell you guys, that is one you wanna be interested in. That is an optional setup, but it does kind of give you the best of both worlds and you can immediately tell the difference. I have driven a Mustang with that particular suspension before. Essentially what that is, is it's an adaptive damping suspension. So it monitors each shock absorber individually, not only adjusting to the rotor perfection, it's giving you a smoother ride and that's where the most noticeable difference is. But it also tightens up that suspension during heavy cornering, giving you better handling. So again, giving you the best of both worlds. So if you really want the very best possible Mustang, I would highly recommend that one because it is a 100% noticeable difference. In terms of ride quality, it actually isn't that bad today, but you can tell the difference with the MagneRide damping suspension. It is a much smoother ride. It's almost luxury-like and then you got the better handling as well. So speaking of handling, the handling and the steering feel, there's like no body roll in this thing. It's absolutely amazing. It instantly points you in the direction that you wanna go. I'm just gonna keep doing this for the rest of my drive because this is wonderful. Yep, it's where it's cabin noise goes. You should get a little bit of road noise, of course. That's to be expected in any sports car or muscle car, whatever you wanna call it, but it's fine. It's something that I personally wouldn't have any issues with and the exhaust sound is really what gets me in terms of cabin noise. I love the exhaust sound. And yes, there'll be an exhaust clip, so stay tuned for that. That's coming later in the video, but as far as visibility goes, I can see 100% perfectly fine out of my rear view mirror as I always have in my 2019 Mustang GT. Certainly 100% better than the Camaro without a doubt, but that pretty much your Azzalti performance segment of this review, guys. Let's now go ahead and take a look at the exterior of our brand spanking new 2024 Ford Mustang GT. All right, so here she is, you guys. The new 2024 Ford Mustang GT finished in rapid red metallic. In case you were curious of the exact exterior color name with the farm in the background, gotta love it. But again, completely redesigned for 2024 as always. Let's go ahead and start with where this one is made though. Taking a look at the van, first character is the number one indicating that the Ford Mustang is built and assembled here in the US, specifically, of course, Michigan. So let's go ahead and start up front on this one. LED projector headlights do come standard with LED signature lighting. Do also have the functional hood vents. Let me go ahead and touch on that real quick. Let me get up a little closer so I can actually show you guys. But yes, this isn't just for show. I don't know if you guys can tell with the camera angle, but they actually do allow some ventilation for that massive V8 under that hood to breathe a little bit. So I do like that. But here's one that I noticed was new for 2024 EcoBoost as well. What are these dinky little lights in the front grill? This is the question I posed on the EcoBoost video and nobody answered me yet. I guess they're just out of illumination. I don't know, but this interesting design cue, I'll just put it that way, but automatic feature coming with those headlights as well, meaning when it starts to get dark on a night, the headlights will turn on automatically for you there. You also get automatic high beams coming standard as well though. So if you have your high beams on at night and it senses a vehicle coming in the opposite direction, it's got automatically dimmed them back to low beams. Then when that vehicle is gone, it's gonna automatically bounce it back up to high beams for you there. So definitely a very nice convenient feature there. But overall, I love the design to the new headlights. So it's like a triple beam effect, kind of like Lexus does. So triple beam projector LED headlights. So that's gonna be the best possible setup as opposed to the LED reflector. So added illumination at night there, but definitely a very nice looking front end. But having said that, let's still go ahead and make our way to the side. All right, so now since we are around to the side of the GT here, 5.0 badging found on those front fenders, of course, for the five liter body color, power adjustable side mirrors do come standard. They will be heated with LED integrated curried signals only if you go with the premium that we have today. Also with the premium though, it does also give you those pony projection lights from those side mirrors that are gonna kind of project the pony logo onto the ground at night. Not gonna be able to see it in the daytime unfortunately, but didn't want to mention that to you guys as well. Then take a look down at the wheel setup. 19 by 8.5 inch aluminum alloys do come standard. 90 by nine inches up front and 19 by 9.5 inches in the back for the performance pack. And of course, there are plenty of optional wheel configurations available to really make this one your own. If you wanted to, I do like the matte black side skirts. I remember that for mine as well. So overall, there's calipers and there's brakes behind the wheels look absolutely gigantic. And again, it's my very favorite part of the driving dynamics on this one. But now let's go ahead and make our way around to the back. All right, so now since you are around to the back of this one all the way to the top, you guys can see you got that body colored shark fin antenna. Just below that, you got that rear decklid spoiler that does come standard. Of course, with the performance pack though, it will be raised up more aggressive looking rear spoiler. I think you guys probably know what that looks like already but I love the look of that. That's actually what I originally had on my 2019 Mustang until I went with the Cervini rear spoiler. But anyways, LED sequential tail lights, of course, coming standard in typical Mustang fashion. So I'm going to give you guys some B roll shot here essentially when you turn the turret signals on. It's going to look like the LED lights are sliding from one side to the other. I like that. I like the GT led airy too. It's not just a solid color. It's got the silver perimeter this year. So that is pretty cool. And usually around this time, I tell you guys to go ahead and like the video and subscribe. I've been reviewing cars for nine years now. So go ahead and hit the subscribe button. If you are into new car reviews, I would greatly appreciate it. But of course, down below, you do have dual exhaust outlets with chrome tips, quad tips on the performance pack, of course, but did what I also mentioned though, that active valve performance exhaust that goes for $1,225. That is an option we do not unfortunately have today. But I will say when I originally started this car up, I did hear some pops. So this should be entertaining. As always here is that exhaust clip. And so now since we are around to the back of this one, when it comes to opening that rear trunk, there is a button on the key file. There is also a rubberized button just above the license plate essentially. But once opened up, the cargo capacity comes in at 13.5 cubic feet for the fastback, 11.4 cubic feet then for the convertible. If that was not enough space, of course, there is a 50-50 split, meaning the rear seats do fold down for a little bit of extra space then if you needed it. There are some cargo net hooks found in that cargo area. There is also a massive subwoofer for our optional Bang & Ulfson sound system that we have with us here today. So that's pretty cool. But tire and flater kit then found underneath of that cargo floor as opposed to the spare tire. But then make your way up to the rear legroom that comes in at 29 inches even. I'm not even good to try it. I've had a Mustang, I don't fit. So not a whole lot of space in that second area.  But anyways, making our way up to the front seats, manually adjustable claw seating coming standard. However, the premium trim that we have today does add a power driver seat with power lumbar, four-way power adjustable passenger seat, and then you also get heated and ventilated front seats then up front as well. Do want to add one more thing. There are optional recarrow leather seats available. They go for $1,650. You can get them in a nice white I saw online, which is pretty cool. But anyways, overall as far as seat comfort goes, they were plenty comfortable. I never had any issues of my Mustang either. But then take a look at the steering wheel. It is tilt and telescoping. It is going to be leather wrapped. You do now get a flat bottom as well. It didn't used to be the case than the one I had, but it's also gonna be heated then for the premium trim level only. But then make your way up to the startup and we start by showing you guys the key. Taking a look at the one side, did you got your Mustang logo when you flip it over? Lock, unlock, the button to pop the wheel chunk there. And of course, there is a remote start, which is gonna be optional actually on all trim levels, but it is all keyless entry with a push button start. So all I'm going to do here, simply put my foot on the brake and press that engine start button. And so once started up, this gauge cluster is absolutely amazing. 12.4 inch digital cage cluster does come standard on all trim levels across the board. Sometimes when manufacturers put digital gauges in, they just make it stagnant. They just make it one image. But with Ford, they did it beautifully because there are so many different load outs, including a Fox body digital gauge cluster. How stinking cool is that? Or you could also set it just to adjust based on the drive mode that you have it in at any given time. So that can adjust it that way as well. So overall gauges are amazing. It has all your basics as well, like trip A, trip B, outside temperature, how many miles you have left until you hit empty. But absolutely amazing gauge cluster in this thing. But now let's go ahead and touch on overall interior quality. I always like to mention this first. No, there is no moon roof for the Mustang. So somebody is always going to ask, but overhead sunglass holder actually does come standard. That's pretty cool. Homelink controls for the premium trim level, carbon fiber pattern found on the doors. I liked seeing that. There is that Mustang logo then found just above the passenger side glove box. That's pretty cool too. Wireless phone charger coming with the premium trim level that we have today. Dual cupholders of course coming standard. There is an electromechanical parking brake right around there as well. But at the center armrest, there's a decent amount of space. You do have some lighting in there too though. So I liked that and actually 12-volt power outlet too. So that's definitely pretty nice, but also aluminum foot pedals for the premium trim level. I don't want to forget to mention that. If you don't go with the premium, just go with the base fastback.  So, but perhaps my favorite part about the interior quality is probably the ambient lighting. And that's what it was in my Mustang as well. They did the ambient lighting dang good in this thing. It's illuminated everywhere. Around the foot pedals, it's also in the inside of the door handles on the side doors there. It's also illuminated door sills in this specific color that you choose to make it. And there's so many different colors you can pick. I actually just set this one up on red just because we have the red exterior, but plenty of different options there. So Ford once again did an amazing job with the interior lighting on this Mustang. But then make your way to the infotainment screen, a 13.2 inch color touchscreen display does come standard across the board. I love it. This is massive sync four system, by the way. Bluetooth and audio streaming does come standard. Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, of course. Factory navigation system is going to be optional. You do get your ambient lighting colors you can scroll through up there. That's how I adjusted it. And you also have your gauge cluster loadouts as well up there. So if you wanted to change the gauges, you do that through the infotainment screen. And of course you can check out your radio information up there as well. And so when it comes to the sound systems, there are three of them total. Six speakers is going to come standard on that bass fastback. However, nine speakers are going to come standard on the premium trim levels and that's the convertible as well, of course. And then there's an optional 12 speaker Bang & Ulfson sound system. And that's going to be a premium package, but that actually is the one that we have today. So having said that, I do believe you guys know what we have to do next. Let's go ahead and turn on the radio, see what we got playing today and let's test out the clarity of this one. Yeah, that's the Bang & Ulfson sound system. That is dang good. A ton of bass, plenty of clarity. That's just a really, really good sound system for the Mustang without a doubt. I love it. It's the last thing I wanted to mention to you guys on the infotainment screen is when you do put the Mustang in reverse. Of course you will find a rear view camera, but this one is an extremely high definition rear view camera. I'm not used to seeing it this high definition. So I love that, but as always that is going to lead us into safety. And so front side, side current airbags do come standard driver and passenger knee airbags as well. In the back you're going to have latch, AKA the where anchors and tethers for children for the rear car seats. Tire pressure monitoring system, but all the advanced safety comes with a package called Ford Co-Pilot 360 Assist Plus. That goes for $1,095. That is going to give you adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, lane departure warning, road departure warning, blind spot assist and speed limit recognition then as well. So overall with a custom my final thoughts, yes, I love this car. I still love this car. Absolutely amazing, incredible braking with a 19 inch braking package. That was absolutely insane. The brakes are so touchy and immediately tries to throw you through the windshield. It's absolutely amazing. Great acceleration of course as to be expected. Great tech as well. Did not have this when I had my 2019. I love these digital gauges for example and the massive entertainment screen now as well. Great ambient lighting. I just touched on that. The only constructive criticism I can think of is it's not an IHS top safety pick and I guess you wouldn't expect most sports cars to be but I still wouldn't have minded seeing that. And so that is about it for this one you guys. Thank you so much for watching. Feel free to follow me on social media at the bottom of the screen if you want to see what's coming next on the channel before it gets to YouTube. Be sure to hit the subscribe and the bell notification button if you're into new car reviews because that is what we do here on this channel after a roll. Do appreciate you guys watching more than you know and I will see you guys all in the next video. Stay Gold.


Dude, is it who I think it is? Oh my god. One of five, CJ Stroud. Lime Green Disco. Oh my goodness, man. Congrats, Jason L and the Texans, man. Holy cow.