Hi, everybody. Thank you for coming. Let's see. This is our second presentation on the invasive crazy snake worms. A couple of years ago, we had a, Joseph came and talked at the Unitarian Church. And I don't know, maybe I'll just give you a little background. Maybe everyone didn't attend that talk. But a few years ago, several of us were noticing that there were these crazy worms that we had in our gardens. There were earthworms that were really big and very active. And we thought, wow, this is just nice. You've got some nice worms. And then it turns out that these worms are very, very voracious. And we actually noticed that they were actually starting to damage our plants. And so somehow or other, we found out they were called crazy snake worms and googled them and found out that there was somebody right here in Vermont at the University of Vermont doing research on them. And so that's how we got connected with Joseph Glories. And so we invited him to come and talk to us a couple of years ago. And since then, he's been doing continued research. And so we thought it'd be good to get an update on that and also to bring other people into the conversation that missed that talk and also to just keep putting it out in our newsletter and try to spread the word because we think it's significant enough that if we can do anything about implementing the spread, it would be a wonderful thing. So we're really lucky today to have Orca Media from our previous public access channel, this video I missed. And the video will be available somehow, like it. We'll let you know how to connect with that. We'll put a link on our website, certainly, which is if you Google CardiPlanets.org or Vermont, you can find our site. Also, we'll put a notice in our newsletters. And if anybody's not a member, there's membership forms here if you want to join. And also the article, let's see, we've put some articles, we've done some articles on Joseph in our newsletters and there's at least one of those posted on our site. So if you want to check that out, it's also there. So I guess I'll just turn it over to Joseph now to let him tell you what he's been doing since we last read from him. Thank you, Joseph. Yeah, sure, thank you. Thanks for the introduction. So if you haven't seen these ones yet, I was able to roll these wonderful slides. So you probably know now where they're from, snake worms. And the craziness is not shown there yet. I'm not showing that craziness. There's actually a little bit of an inking of craziness. We've touched them, we're like, they're fresh about. And then the other crazy thing is that it was their tail when you abuse them. The tail was waxed about like crazy. And the worm wiggles away. So they're definitely crazy. And they are in other places they're called jumpy worms. Jersey regalus, all sorts of names. What else? There's a whole bunch of names for them, common names. So I would just give you a quick rundown on the history of things in a second. So before I do that, I'd like to thank a couple of people and a couple of organizations. So the Highway Fund Club has funded part of my research and then the Epi Foundation for Research has also funded part of this research. And you'll notice that both of those funders are private funders. They're not the government, they're not the states. And we'll talk about that later, while that might be. I have a couple of grad students that work in this scenario. It's my present grad student and she is working really hard understanding the genetics of these worms and where they might have come from and how many invasions might have occurred, how many introductions might have occurred over the years. And Erin Keller was a grad student with one of my cohorts at the university and she specifically looked at parasites of these worms. And then we have a couple of undergraduate technicians that have worked with us in there to do a fantastic job learning science but also helping science in this project. Okay, so five parts to this talk is a quick introduction of what these things are. We went here two years ago and I gave this first talk over in the church. Then I'll talk about the history and the current extent of the invasion. And I'll get a little bit into Mario's research with sources of genetic validation that we've seen in the month and control of snake worms towards the end. So it's day and til the end, right? People don't know everything about how to control them by the way. And then I can get involved. What are some of the things that you can do that you will be able to do in the near future? Really important that citizens and people get involved with some of this research. All right, so first of all, what do we want? Why do we worry about this world? And that's a really good question because all of us grew up, so I grew up over in Europe and of course, I've come so great about how worms have been around there for much longer than here. So in Europe, you talk about last glaciation was about the same time as here. glaciation was what killed the worms here. Did the same thing in Europe but people traveled around a lot more in Europe in 5,000, 6,000 years ago and I just treated it as a form of this. So these those ones, sometimes they're referred to as ferritima worms and the name comes from a different genus of these worms called ferritima. So there doesn't exist any more as a genus. It's really a messy taxonomy. Who is this worm? What makes this tick? What does it look like? And I don't know if it could be really similar but there seem to be a lot of crossing over and it's just really weird. So because of that, that ferritima genus has been split into like 15 different genus now and so what you're going to do with this, you have to have a name for all of them somehow I think going out of his or the genus is generally out there which is quite a ferritima. And so some of this, all the snake worms are ferritima but not all ferritima are snake worms. So there's actually 172 species in the US and quite a few of those are actually native but they don't exist up here in the North. Yes, I think there's two species of native earthworms here but how they got here is another question whether they've been always been here or whether it just happened after the negotiation. There's one tenth of these, so actually 16 species of ferritimoids are known in North America, that includes Mexico and Canada and all the ferritimoids are from one family or from the other side. So that's the boring part of this talk. What's out there? History of that kind of invasion is really quick. So this black line there is the extent of the last glaciation and so in North of that there's no native earthworms, South of that there is native earthworms. And so the theory is that the earthworms that were brought over by the European settlers are first invaded in the area above the glaciation line but you also find them down in areas where there's native earthworms. So there's also an invasion or a harmful invasion going on of European earthworms. And then there's a second wave of earthworms that's the Megasocidate and snakeworms and they came from Asia. So different directions and ever since they arrived they've been moving around with the horticulture, with bait, and also very composting facilities. So they have been used for bait? Yes, so they're not necessarily the best baits but I've been told by people that fish that they have used them for bait. So because they're freshened up a lot people think, oh, they're great for bait because they make their presence known in the water. But when you hook them apparently they kind of explode because they have a lot of pressure in them that makes them feel so different. So different from the European earthworms. I think of European earthworms like flaccid and limp and kind of drapes of young. These guys, they're stiff, they're really muscular feeling. It's not that they have more muscle instead of European earthworms, they're some more taller. But when they explore them, I think they should like me to pull that fish out. Okay, why would you do that? Okay, so there's anglers that fish with them, and that one has to be the best. It's actually a place that's invaded in Georgia. There's a mountain top that's invaded by them. It's really far out from everywhere.  And the owner actually put those worms there because he thought they were the greatest worms of fish. And so now that's spread in the middle of nowhere at high elevation, essentially. So the first thing that happens when you hook these worms is that they're altered in the forest soil. So they produce this layer of castings that can be five to 10 centimeters deep, which changes the way plants interact with that soil. So they're turning that nice spongy layer in a typical harpoon forest into this layer of castings that's no longer spongy. It doesn't hold water well. Some plants you can just pull out because the roots are not really well anchored in them. And European earthworms also change the soil quite a bit. So it's, but they produce a denser soil. They also get rid of that top spongy layer and they turn it into a much denser layer as well, which also has an effect on forest plants. So don't just think all those Asian earthworms are bad, European earthworms are also messy. Okay, so forest ecology, this is sort of the actual, but also there's no earthworms here. So picture near Kelmsham. So you see what that last understory looks like. And then where you have these snake worms, you have hardly any understory. You can almost tell when they arrive by looking at the age of the trees and the saplings that are there. Do they actually harm those roots of the trees though? That's a good question. We don't know. They probably harm any kind of mycorrhizal, so fungal infections, which are important for many plants to create nutrients. So it's a possibility. And then there's a big question here in Vermont as you know, do they harm sugar bush? So people have found that wherever they go to sugar bush, they look at the regeneration rate of sugar people. Now there tends to be a lot fewer saplings in the sugar bush then when the earthworms are not there. And so this is some of the data that we've collected in Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and I think State of New York. So number of saplings on the X-axis is the snake worms. Here's your other really big one is the mind crawler. And then the last data bar is no earthworms at all. So you look at the number of saplings, you have about half a sapling per square meter where there's snake worms and then you have three for the number of stressors, the mind crawler, and there's no earthworms there and now six or seven. So there is an effect on even economically important species. I'll skip that slide. So in water culture, there's a few places where you find them. So you find them in actually find them in raised beds, you find them in mashed beds, and then you find them just in flower beds that have leaf much rather than woody much. So that's really interesting.  They are very flexible in their food sources. Anyway, so this one is an old picture of a deceased Shomi-e-supra, and the water culture that was there said, thinks the owner of this nursery says, I think that's the worms that did that. This is the worms. We don't really collect information about plant damage in nurseries and that's probably one of the problems why maybe people are not willing to find this because there's no reason. You have to have any real data on damage on plant and production. So this is the UVM tree farm.  There's a question that CSA says, there's friends and families that exchange plants and so the most important thing is trying to exchange plants with bare roots. It's a real pain in the neck because washing roots of soil is really, really hard. If you've got wear ground with no mulch or no cover, are the shepherds there? Yes, they could still be there. Yeah. But basically you put mulch on your feet with them and so you're gonna get more. So what culture trade is, is what seems to be moving around globally. So the U.S. current regulations say that you have to have bare root exchanges. Seeds and bare root comes from outside. So there's probably not new introductions into the U.S. anymore but within the U.S. there's already this huge pool of these worms that are moving around within the U.S. And then a friend of mine said, well, you know, I brought him sometimes with yes, oh, I just smothered him. So that stopped happening as well. I'm not sure how big a contribution that is. Then it is, there was about 15 years ago there was a Hostel producer in Pennsylvania who had 30,000 Hostel varieties and people thought that the demise of half of them or whatever it was, two thirds of them, was due to these worms changing the soil and not allowing the roots to have a hole in the soil. Another way that they move around is compost which is a welcome. We are in my neighborhood in St. Albans and people know in the fall they rip their leaves and put them in these leaf bags. They throw some of the epistemotics into the transfer station or people take them to the transfer station themselves and those who most likely have, whose army always have these worms, will most likely have these worms in them. And you can go to the transfer station and you can get free mulch, people do that. And there's certain places where I think that the Upper Valley is one of the places where the municipalities give away leaf mulch and so if you want to have a leaf mulch you can pick it up. Nurseries get leaf mulch that way that they take out the soil. You can keep taking this one block, might even spread these ones over a large area, many gardens.  I'll get to that later. That's a great question. So actually, I'll get to this right now. So, I'll get to this back to this later on as well. So, Ms. Whye has a lot of vegetables. This is something I've got from the UVM plant link that brought me up. I sent an email today about a piece of problem. Ms. Whye has a lot of vegetables that are in this color. That's what she purchased. About 30 bags of some compost, where I will have to watch that, and spread them on the garden. She didn't notice worms at the time. This year, the garden is full of large, aggressive worms that should be inside and, in the case of pesters, when she's read online. And so, she knows that they are very aggressive, about a fake-of-the-tail feature, most is concerning Ms. Whye open an intact bag of X, X, X, X, X, X compost left over last year and found a large worm in it. So, I don't know. So, most commercial composters would say they don't have a problem. In Wisconsin, I work with people in Wisconsin, and the Department of Forestry actually reaches out to composters and says, here's what you can do to keep them down. But even what they're saying is, I'm hoping not going to be very helpful in the end, because worms are around. Yes. What do they say? What's their control? What's their control is to keep things up really well, so that. Oh, the heat. Yeah. Heat, so you have to get up to 140 or something like that. Very, more or less. The worms will die. It's actually regulators. I mean, by regulation, farming, agricultural regulation, you have to have- Right. The giants that make municipal compost and product compost, that's the process. It's not just throwing garbage in a pile. I understand that. So, it's an organic certification that you have to have, and you have to reach 100 degrees for seven eggs. It kills the eggs. It kills the eggs, and it also kills the worms if the worms get put where it's really hot. On the outside of the compost pile, it's actually just atmospheric temperatures, so they move to a comfort zone. So, in most compost piles, if they're there, you can reach in about five centimeters, 10 centimeters, four inches, and you can put out water. So, they don't have much of a brain, but they're not down the way. So, there's the problem with composters, and so, taking care of the cocoons is probably virtually easy, because they don't move.  But the worms might move, and so, as long as you have the compost, they'll produce more and more. But they screen it, commercial compost. I mean, for my compost, you buy it. Right. Buy it at a port, and it's screened. I understand, totally understand. And the screen would catch the eggs. Let's not get stuck on this. I can ask those questions later. Okay. So, I was just going to comment. If the compost is on bare ground, they can move in and out from the surrounding area. Right, so this is also... As opposed to a slab or something. So, you have to time when the compost is hot, and you have to time when the compost is cooling down. It's maturing, they call it. And that's also a time when that compost becomes vulnerable for re-evasion by these worms. So, there's a lot of problems with that. And I know that in Vermont, the composters don't believe that this is a problem. So, I don't know. History and current extent of the invasion. So, part two, there's cherry blossoms there. Do you know where I'm going with that? No. So, there's an anecdote that the cherry blossom or the trees, circular trees, that went to Washington DC and New York, from Japan, were the ones that brought the particular snakeworms that we have here to New York. And so, the first introduction was, I think, 1908, and the Japanese had not furigated that fruit. And so, they were all destroyed because they were afraid of, because a few years later, it destroyed them. And guess what? There's probably some worms that came over the background. And then a second batch was actually probably furigated. So, this is one of the anecdotes as to how did they might have gotten here. Vermicomposting is another way of doing this. And so, vermicomposting, you can buy these worms, Alabama jumpers, which is the same as snakeworms. You can buy those on the internet. So, this is, you can't do this in Wisconsin. You can't do it in New York anymore because there, these things are not actually legislated and regulated as invasive species.  But, you know. So, those are different from the red worms? Different red worms. These are the jumper worms. These are the snake worms. And so, there, so about five years ago, all these people were saying, oh, these are great worms. The ones that are wonderfully regard in the area, they add pixie dust in your flowers. And pumpkin is going to be five times bigger. Now, they kind of say, update environmental concerns of Alabama jumpers. It should be noted that Alabama jumpers is surrounded by sudden controversy. The National Parts of the Fields that jumpers released into the wild caused a serious threat to the ecosystem, blah, blah, blah. The allegations, the last sentence, allegations continues to imply that Alabama jumpers seriously interrupts the national chain at its most critical level. And we're not taking sides in this debate. However, it's worth looking into. We recommend having a look at some of the research and discussion taking place. And once informed, decide for yourself. So, it's not our fault, it's your fault. We've warned you, we've warned you this might be a problem. So, now they've mentioned more savvy about selling them on the internet. And I don't think they actually have warned us that this is illegal. It's illegal species in some states. Just about our Alabama jumpers, are they same worms? Yes, they are. Because it's used for a few different species. Is it not? Yes, I'll get to that answer in a minute. So, they come from Japan, Korea, the ones that we have here, but there's also some that in Taiwan and China. There's other places in the U.S. that have different chopper worms. And they might be from China and Taiwan as well. So, in Canada, there's one single report. 38 states here in the U.S., or 37 states in the U.S. have chopper worms. And there's a total of 16 species at this point. The earliest reports of chopper worms were from California in 1860. There's one, two species found there. And then, you know, you look at the other ones. I think the next closest one was 1914, I don't know, in the month 2011, 2012. And you go, where? We've seen those 20 years ago, or 30 years ago. And that's very true. So, these are first reports by people who have identified them. It doesn't mean that only because somebody identified them, that's the time when they were first introduced. So, it's not first introductions, but first reported in the states. But so, it goes back about 150 years now. Of course, 160 years that they were introduced or at least seen in the U.S. So, in the northeast, the invasion, treatment, it has these three species together. So, if you look at a forest that's invaded, most likely you will find three species of chopper worms. In a way, corals, the crazy snake worms. They live in the Stokeanses, and live in the Syngrestes, and it's metafied at the bottom. And you notice there's two genera there. There's four genera in the states. And a metafied at the Gondolfi used to be an Amethyst Gondolfi in that Amethyst Tokianses used to be a metafied at Tokianses, just to survive about 450 years ago. So, they kind of flew around in their taxons. It's kind of weird. How can you tell them apart? So, it's in his 12 of the worms that exist here in the U.S. And the three that we're concerned with here in Vermont are Amethyst Grestes, which is the one at the top, Amethyst Tokianses, which is that one, and then the Gondolfi, which is the largest one, which is a really big worm, is probably the Amethyst Gondolfi. And so, you can't really tell them apart by just staring at them or even looking at their size, because there's a big size variation in each population. And so, what you have to look at is, you have to look at the segments. And so, this is an Amethyst Grestes. It's got these three pores between segments, eight, seven, and five and four, six and five. So, if you see these three pores between those segments coming from the nose, like it is dark or really difficult to see, it's a pain in the neck.  Tokianses only has two holes, and then the Gondolfi is the easiest one to identify. It's got these little patches just about in eight and nine. So, just about maybe three or four segments ahead of the ring around the collar. So, you cannot identify them if they have these features, not all of the worms have these features, even though there might be these worms. It's really weird. It's extended north in the U.S. and Canada. So, these are long sites where they've been confirmed by some scientists that looked at them. So, you notice there's nothing in North Carolina and South Carolina, there's plenty of them there. It was just that for some reason that it didn't make the best map. And the dark area here, the darker shaded grave is where they can be by temperature and precipitation. So, the light area at the top there, Quebec, Ontario and so on, is where the temperatures are too cold or the growing season is too short for them to mature. And you should know that these are annual worms that they need to mature within the season. If they don't have 90 days of frost-free period, then they will not propagate and comport them. So, they can go even if you're really high up between once week and I think we extend that map but further even in the future we could probably find them. They have not been found much in Canada on one site. Hamilton, Ontario. All right, so part three, the source of genetic variation. And so what you see there is a typical gel and Maria Marie Ein has produced this gel and it shows you one way of identifying these worms by genetic means. And it's pretty simple. If the position of this band is right around here, so if it's a crest is the next higher band that you see there, the cement is the Stoke-I-Ensis and the next higher band after that is the cementifier of the window and then sometimes we find that two bands. That's really exciting because it doesn't match it. It's really neat. So it's either somebody contaminated that sample or there's something weird and wonderful happening that will make Maria a version of this. So we don't know yet. It's very exciting. So it shows something about genotypes and genotypes. So genotypes are basically half the genotype. I said exactly the same DNAs or the sequences are pretty much the same. It's the same, the same one I could have sent the DNA. So if you look at these three lines, these are three different genotypes. And then if you look at this last graph, three genotypes, but they can change, not their DNA, but they can adapt to the environment. So if you have like a handful of worlds that have been five or six genotypes in them, you throw them into something, a place that's slightly water than where you are, then maybe only two of them survive because these two genotypes have the ability to adjust to the temperature variation. So we're seeing a lot of this, we call that plasticity, and we see a lot of plasticity in these worms and what they eat. So there's some species that eat, they really specialize in one thing. But these worms can calculate almost all on a soil, soil organisms because they can feed different things. So if you have something like a millipede feeding on something and these worms might actually switch over to feeding on what the millipedes have and outcompete them so that the millipede is caught. So they really lower the amount of atropods or creepy corollies in the soil when they're present. So there are two more snake worms out of pathogenetic, that means they don't have any differential in the babies. And so there's some facts that you should know about pathogenetic worms. No sex means no recombination of the DNA and they should all be exact the same clones. So it's like stars, it's like clones flying around. DNA should be the same. But what you ought to think about is that these worms were everywhere in Japan and Korea and other species elsewhere in the East and in each location at some point in the past there were hermaphrodites of the species. So they're any different. And so there's recombination, there was recombination going on a while back that we know of, right? So that means basically that in each location in Japan you might have a different kind of clone with a different lineage or that lineage. And so when you, I get to that in a second, so essentially if you take towards from Japan intruded positions to locations then there might actually be very different genetic. Even though they're now pathogenetic worms they may just be clones in different locations. We look at the genotypic variation at three different sites in Vermont. So we have a place called Centennial Woods which is nearly the University of Vermont. HSC which is the Horticultural Research Center and then the Audubon Society in... Hidington. Hidington, thank you. Hidington, so we have the three sites and we've got the worms from there and we ran different genetic tests of them. This is the result of that, right? So if you look at this table you have two species, we have that and the rest is limited to here. And here's the three sites. CW Centennial Woods, Quad-Pharma, the HSC, Horticultural Research Center and the Instance for Audubon Society. We've got 49 worms from CW, 14 worms from the HSC, 43 worms from the AU. And this is the number of genotypes. 49 is 24 different genotypes. So they're not all the same, they're not all clones. And the Quad-Pharma, it was 10 out of 14, 10 different genotypes out of 14, for example. I have all about 37 different genotypes out of 43 subjects. Looks like huge, that's really, really diverse. And then our formula is to case we have a similar kind of variation in the genotypes. So how does that come about? And so our first hypothesis that is island hypothesis, so you have all these people coming from many places and they all go to one place and from there they're spread out in other places, right? So you're Americans, you understand that kind of concept, right? So all the lineage is combined in, so for us at this island, for these worms, at this island is some kind of nursery that brought capital to this farm in Japan. And so all the lineage is combined in nurseries. So here's all the different places in Japan where they have been found. And so the planning force comes from all these places that go into the nursery and then nursery combined in like two or three that you're simply trapped. And then with all the parts, you get them to various places in Vermont or New Hampshire or Georgia or whatever. And you have diversity right away. So that's one hypothesis. The other one is that there is actually sex born. And that's kind of controversial because it's sex but because it's more the fact that most people don't believe that these worms have sex. And so if they have sex, then, so in order to understand what might be going on, you have to understand the way these creatures reproduce and it's complicated. So you have, so in order to have sex, you have to have two worms. And there's a couple of pores that are important. There's these pores that are labeled SP they're called spermatheca. There's a pre-made pore right here that you can tell me. And then there's a male pore which is usually right behind it. The order for this to work for them is they have to line up the male pores with the spermathecae right there. And then the male pore deposits sperm into the spermathecae first step. Then they kind of put them separate ways and eventually one, both worms will produce, the both worms do this at the same time, so the mutual exchange of sperm. And then at some point, these worms will produce cocoons. And the way that works is like this. So here's a ketone that's down to form a cocoon around. So it's a gelatinous sheath and you notice that it kind of becomes denser and moves forward towards the nose of this worm. So while this forms around the ketone, an egg or several eggs are deposited into this ketone, starting to this cocoon. And then the cocoon moves forward and eventually it moves over the spermathecae. And so the spermathecae will then deposit sperm into the cocoon and here you go. And then the dep cocoon just pinches off the nose and here's your cocoon that is now has a fertilized egg in it. And you're going to get likely one or two worms that develop. So our second type of level is they have sex, impossible happens. Longer production. So we have this thing with these worms are really different. If you look at five of them, you will find all sorts of different variations on the possession of sexual organs. And so that's what we call the clover productive spectrum. So they're on the spectrum and this is what it looks like. So two to five percent depending on the way you look in the world to the five percent of the worms in a population will have a full set of productive organs. So technically they are home aphrodites. Then there's also two to 10% that miss male pores. They don't have any male pores but they do have spermathecae. So theoretically something with a male pore could combine with something that doesn't have any at all but it does have spermathecae. So there's about between four to 50% of the worms that could actually have sex and that could actually produce some of your genetic diversity. So most of these things are actually pathogenic but 80% of them are pathogenic. You really have to look hard to find the ones that have a full set of productive organs. It's pretty crazy. So what's wrong with that picture? What's wrong with that picture is that most of the real experts in the field would say, they don't have sex. Crazy. I've never seen any kind of sex. But how many of you have sat down and watched worms walk up a few days to see whether they have sex? It's very nice. Normal, right? No, not at all. I don't. I don't. I don't. In terms of what? In terms of what? That's in terms of what? In terms of not what they used to be. They had soft ones. So these guys had sex, they were kind of texting their friend and then they missed it. Anyway, so it could also be I've asked if three or four of the others on it happened, so all the deniers come together in nursery and then they have sex and then you have more validation. Okay, we get into the control of our forms. Our stakeholders. So that would be very hard to do this because there's a lot of snake ones in your garden or in the streets. And so cruel as well. Less or more cruel than other ways of doing that. But it's more direct.  So there's some hopeful new developments. One is a half a meal. And it took me about 10 minutes to get alfalfa started with alfalfa. People should get it. Anyway, so alfalfa meal is one. And alfalfa is in Pocifist. She works for a number of outfits. And one is a public garden kind of like this. And kind of, but she has a lot of these ones and she wants to get it all because it's free to people out in the garden. And so she looked at the Osho Organics early birds, fertilizer that has these suponents and then they kill these worms. And she said, well, why have these worms, why have they been killed by this strange 100 fertilizer?  So the hammer might actually be warped through them. But she said, you know what? I remember from my horticultural days at school that many plants have suponents in there. So it's not just the tea tree that the suponents are derived from in the early bird fertilizer, but there's other things. And she found that our fertilizer is also particularly high in these suponents. So she bought herself a few bags of horse feed, something like that, she forces right now. And they're kind of pellets and she put the pellets and she said that she had killed quite a few worms in that process. Not spreading them, but she kind of waters in it, the pellets started to disintegrate and then there's death and destruction. Does it kill the other worms? Well, the other worms are just as bad. It's just they don't, there's a free time.   Does it have a character's worm? Well, the reason why I show that is because that is being killed by something called ovarian vasiana. And that's an entomopathogenic fungus, which means it kills insects and the larvae. And so micro-trollers, one of them, there's quite a few formulations that took a while. And so we tried that, we tried this out in the lab, we tried this out in the lab. And this is how the cell creatures that were just, the fungus takes over and they're kind of all in the back and back. So we had a biopsy designed around ovarian vasiana. And so we had treatment, so when you do this experience you have different treatments, and one, at least one of them is a control treatment. So the first control treatment was that nothing is out to that treatment except for replacing water that's been lost through evaporation. Then we had another treatment that had no ovarian vasiana, but it had middits. And so the reason why the middits enter into this picture is because in order, this is one of the theories, in order for that ovarian to stick around for longer, you have to give it something from the globe. And so middits happens to be one of the things that has been tried, and that's been shown true to labs, that need of that ovarian, that it can help the ovarian to stick around for longer. So no ovarian, but we added the middits. And then we also had two treatments of the ovarian vasiana grown on the middits grains. So you actually have to cook the middits, you have to make sure the middits stay out afterwards, you have to water pave it, and then you grow the ovarian vasiana on it. And so there's two treatments, one amount and then double the amount of the middits being added. And then we also just did ovarian vasiana, and I'm gonna say we did, I mean, Mariana did, and one of her helpers, Yihui Wen, who was a Chinese student back in China now, who helped her with that. But she also, they also had this ovarian vasiana that was suspended in horticultural liquid, and it was sprayed off. So solid formulations and liquid formulations, there was 15, we replicated each one of these 15 times, so there's a ton of buckets there that you see in the container section. And 3.6 juvenile amethyst was a prereplicate into the treatments. And then we put it in a greenhouse, and the greenhouse was cut at between 15 and 23 degrees, went up and down. So in order for this to work, we actually had to use pots, so the worms couldn't squirm out. And there really could be leased again out of anything. So one thing that worked for another, my last students was to actually put a hookup wire around the inside of the pots, and so they couldn't crawl out, but the tension and the suction between the worm and the side of this worm was broke. You have two of them, then they can't just go over, they have to go over twice, and they don't seem to be able to do that. And in addition to that, we put some window mesh on top of that. And gringo mesh, actually, this is an iron mesh that we put in the needle so that they couldn't crawl out in the bottom as well. So it goes a lot better with this.  And so the results were really, really cool. We found that, so the white access has mortality on it, so what's the percentage of them that die? And then here's the treatments, control with water, control with little but no passiana, and then different passiana treatments now. And you notice that the control with water, there was some mortality, so it's a mortality that happens because worms die. So what you have to do is you have to check this mortality of the control against the mortality of the other ones. Is this mortality actually higher than that? And so in more cases, the passiana treatment, that the treatment was greater than the control. That means that it hasn't been hit. Then for the control with the millers, there was a lot less death and destruction less mortality. And so one of the reasons why this might have happened is because the miller is actually good food for these worms. So anything you add to your soil, that is organic, they will feed on. And so it will help them come back. So we then looked at also that how many of those trivenants have become adults. And so this particular treatment with the control with the millers pretty much everything that was alive in there have become adults. So feeding them, this country shows you, if you feed them with mulch, or by increasing your organic matter, it's basically increasing the number of creatures. What is the time frame? The time frame was two weeks. And then check, this is the final outcome, and she did check every three days, I think, how many have survived the final outcome. Did you compare it against the alfalfa treatment? We didn't, so I've come to an often event. That was a different experiment. So we killed the worms, but then there's these really hard cocoons. And cocoons dry mulch, so on the right-hand side is the moist ones, on the left-hand side is the dry mulch. And so this is why they're hardy. They can lose water. So neither drought nor frost can do them harm. They will not develop when they're in the stage, so embryos that are in these cocoons are not developing during the time that the cocoons are dehydrated. But as soon as they're rehydrated, that embryonic development continues, and eventually they will hatch. And it takes about 600 degrees days, place five, that's 70s. So we're out of the math. So it's about 1,000 degrees days, hard knives at base 40. Yeah, they're just as hardy as we thought. So another question that we had was, is there a cocoon that's like a seed bag, right? So could there survive longer than just one season? And so we counted the cocoons in the forest over an entire season, and you notice that regardless of season, there was always a fair number of 500 pounds per square meter. Of course they say, well, you know, they're not all viable, right, so there's a lot of technical things there. They can't possibly be all viable. So let's have a look at the next. So Marianne, being who she is, she likes to have meticulous things going on. So she said, I'm going to dissect 300, 400 cocoons and see what stage they're at through the seasons. And so she defined some stages, so this is the stage where there's just the argument, the fluid that feeds the embryo from there, and there's another stage. The embryo is slightly elongated. You can see some segmentation already in stage three. It's longer, stage four is even longer, it's becoming more pigmented. And then at stage five it's very pigmented and it's the size of a hatch. And so if you now do this for many different months of the year, you should get an idea of what is happening during those months. Are there any cocoons in the wintertime, for example, that can hatch? Are there any cocoons in the summer that can hatch? And look at this. She defined ready to hatch as these two stages and this color here is ready to hatch. From January all the way through December. There's always some that are ready to hatch. March, April, unfortunately we don't have any data. March is very few to hatch, but they tend to hatch a lot. March and April and May. Then in June there's ought to hatch just every month. You find that they're ready to hatch, which is a sign that there might be a cocoon back. There's always something that hatches. So if they're in that stage where they're ready to hatch, they would be vulnerable to death, right? They're willing to death all the time. But I mean, if they're in a cocoon state, they're less likely to die than if they're already. So environmental circumstances, if they get to that point where they're ready to hatch and then the circumstances aren't right, they're fair. Right, if they actually hatch into a bad time of the year, so in the wintertime, they do hatch in the wintertime. You've seen it, I've measured that. But the temperature has to be something like 50 degrees sort of to hatch. So you're looking at January thaw or something like that where the temperatures rise in the wintertime and then they come out and then what they don't know is that the next day or the day after that, the month hits back with minus 20 or something, you know, and they die. So they're safe in the cocoon once they stick their nose out. They're in trouble. So one reason why that is important is because the growing season is lengthening as climate change goes on. And so most of that lengthening is happening in the springtime. It's to that point where, you know, some people that are in the middle syrup production side of things, they're saying eventually, you know, there's going to be one maple syrup season and it's going to be around Christmas because, you know, the growing season has extended so much. And so these words can take advantage of these shorter winters and say, OK, short winter, I'm good. And then they get more time to develop. And that means that they have longer time as adults to produce cocoons, which means that the following year there's one and then the next four. So cocoons are much harder to build. So Maria and E.E. also put cocoons into little tea bags and then the berry goes in the same pots. And then they looked at how these cocoons, how much of the cocoons were there in the end of the experiment. So there is a difference between the Baciana treatment and the control treatments in terms of mortality. But you talk about 30 cents mortality. The cocoons are much harder than the ones are. It's really hard for something to go through those cocoon shells. So at some point, we also looked at the naturally occurring pathogens for that. Maria opened up cocoons, which she collected dead worms. It's really difficult to find dead worms, so she went really hard at that. Worms decompose really quickly.  And then you can extract. You can grind it up. You extract, isolate pathogens from that, or isolate bacteria and fungi from that sample. She also did this from cocoons. So this is mouthwort embryo that is diseased by something, probably fungus. And she extracted or isolated things from that as well. So we have now a special EGAR that selects for particular bacteria and fungi. And so she found free that were actually pretty good. There's a four-treatment, you can see a control treatment, with nothing, and mycelium, stuffy pocus, and the cells strains, and we don't know which strain they are, but they came from either a worm or a cocoon. The different colors are actually the time frame. So the blue is 96 hours after application of the pathogen. 144 hours is the orange, and then 240 hours is the gray. And you notice, in the beginning, nothing is happening. It's not 96 hours, it's really not much mortality. But after 94 hours or 240 hours, you actually have a pretty big mortality problem. So the problem with these naturally occurring pathogens is that no one ever tested it before, whether humans are affected by it.  So we are really not happy with taking those out into the field. But Poverebaciana is regarded as an agent that is a little concerned, and EPA actually has given them permission to use it without much oversight. So are there promising agents, or are there some that are based on components? TC, the extractor, I think, already worked. I'll follow the most feet that Jim Campbell has tried out.  And then there's some solid disruptors, like really sharp sands. Some construction sands might work, and then biochar might also work. What are the natural predators in the Asiatic habitat? Good question. We don't know. So this is. So generally, there's salamanders and sparrows that feed on them. And we went to Japan, and what some people let in in the wild. So yeah. How does the biochar work? Say a good piece. How does it work? Do they ingest it like sand, or do they act crawl over it? No, they ingest the sand, and that kind of disrupts the guts. It cuts the guts open. The same with biochar? The same with biochar. It has to be a particular biochar that's the right size, and perfectly fine. And people recommend to use hardwood biochar. To use what with biochar? Hardwood biochar. Hardwood biochar. What about diatomaceous earth? That's been shown to work. Oh, really? It does not work. I don't know why it shouldn't, right? I mean, same idea. So I tried some of the things from the lab. There's four treatments, the control, there's biochar. There's furry friends, which is half of basic products. And then there's half of me, which is ground up stuff. And we had six replicas for treatment, and six was for replicates. And we looked at it the same day that we applied it. Nothing happened. We were about seven days later, and 16 days later. And so these are the results. Each one of these segments that's dilated by one of these blue lines is a time that we found out. So zero days is one, seven days, and 16 days. So it takes a while for any of these things to really have an effect. Again, it's mortality on the scale. So zero to 100%. And the best was actually the biochar. The next one was the furry friends. And the alfalfa meal didn't have an effect. All right, so the last part of this talk is how can we get involved, right? So one of the ways you can do this is by, if you have seen a snake worm, take a picture of it, and upload it to a database with coordinates. There's different ways you can put all these coordinates if you have a cell phone. It usually gives you, if you have the location thing on, these coordinates. Or the other way to do it is to figure out where you are. And look at Google Earth, for example, and you get coordinates from that as well. And there's two. Next, there's probably quite a few more, but these two have been used frequently to do emitters and forms. I now have been invasives. There is a Vermont version of this, so every state has a different version. And at the moment, the Vermont version is not really working well because it takes a person to give you permission to have an account. You have to have an account to collaborate on this. And for some reason, that's not happening. So I tried to sign up so I could show you this and that, and I didn't get any email like that from anybody that I'm running. I don't have an account yet, but I was assured by somebody else who was working with these databases that in April this year, they would make that account, signing up for accounts automatically. So you just sign up for it and you will sign up. All of the accounts. Who is administering this site? It's the Department of National Conservation for Vermont, but it's a nationwide site. There's no Vermont support, is there? I mean, there's not quite of any government, but it's a separate stuff. It's just a person who has to press a button. Why do you press a button when you have a computer to press a button? It's there, I mean, that's what they're trying to do this April. So once that has happened, I will create a specific project and report to that project on imattentbasement.org. But I will send you instructions. Are you getting involved? Send instructions to the entire district. So the other thing that the way you can be involved is through collaborations. Many of the state and federal agencies that you look at pass the distinction between two kinds of collaborators. There's collaborators that actually do something and then there's stakeholders that will be affected by the situation. So if you were to sign up as a governor and you said, I can give you some space to spread the Boveri Baciana, then you were a collaborator. If you are a governor and you say, I'm interested in that, what am I going to collaborate with until there's some results? Then you're a stakeholder who's interested in results, seen for nurseries, seen for landscapers, and people that want to get involved. So one of the things that we're really interested in is some verifiable temperature reports.  There's always a question, is it the worm or something else? But that would be really important to say here's a risk of an answer happening, at least when you go from the damage link to these earthworms. So the other way is, there are four different tribes, you are willing to be part of the tribe. And for home gardeners, it's the same thing, nurseries, and home gardeners should report the same kind of information or get involved in trials. So we always look for some of the people who are willing to put their plants on the ground. That's not good for you, who? To me, or I'll give instructions for that, I'm not going to base this on you. So you bring cocoons in to some of the garden for the trials? No, no, no, no, no. Will you sacrifice your plant? No, you sacrifice your plants to the master solution or to the master. Or the Bouvier-Basiana, I mean. Or biochar, or something like that. But you don't have to sacrifice. I was trying to be funny. I was trying to be funny without sacrificing the plant. I mean, it's like being a. Well, how can you test something if you don't have the worms? You would have to have the worms to be able to. You would, you'd have to have the worms. But you wouldn't, for example. That's the way they are. If you have them, then that's bad for you, but that might be good for the project. I think that's good for you. So you can also get involved in collections and workshops. So participate whenever the workshop is offered. And we get some funding through the federal government. And there's funding in there for workshops where you can learn how to identify these worms. And how you can participate in the research. And that's all about the end of the course. And then there's other challenges you can work with in the product culture that's really difficult. Because on the one hand, most product specialists that have them in their nurseries, the nursery owners, they say, we don't want them really. Because there may be some kind of regulation on coming up. I don't even want this to happen any time soon. But Wisconsin and York have them. Even in California, they have listed these worms as invasive and in agriculture even. And then there's customers that are becoming more sensitive to these worms. You say, well, I'd rather not have these worms. I'll find them in the nursery or something. I don't know. But there's still a key interest in the green industry to get rid of them and, in some cases, to cooperate with. With researchers and analysts, the funding issue of those are good. Of course, what is your problem?  Is it really your problem? Can't be that bad. There's no major on plant damage, as I mentioned before. There's no stakeholders that come forward to see the stakeholders. And there's no money. Then there's, of course, what is the economic damage threshold, which you have to come into control. So an IPM setting, integrate pest management, the WSF4. This is the level of infestation. If it's too low to deal with, you're not really using much of your crop, then you're not intervening. But if it's really high, there's a point where you say, actually, it's worth your while intervening at this point because I'm going to lose 60%, 70% of my crop. At this level of infestation. And so we don't know that for this one. We know that for all sorts of insects, but not for these ones. So how do you convince the state and federal agencies that this isn't an important issue? So here's a typical review. We get applicants are well positioned in the industry, evaluate their problem, and send them findings and results. That's good, right? So basically reading that after you have, we're sorry, but we're not finding the real reason. Why not? We have left position in the industry. Proposers funded as focused on a single issue when this succinct. Create a problem given the damage done in states like Minnesota could have a huge impact on the medical industry. Maybe 100% match. That means the university will give up. Providing indicators for outcome in their job and interest demonstrates that they are prepared to do the work, collect the message data, blah, blah, blah. Applicants has not convinced and been convinced that this is a problem in the world. So after you write three paragraphs in there that are showing what the message has in mind. And I always refer to what he was saying. But anyway, so it's mainly for vegetable. So some of these grants are for speciality crops, for the culture's part of that. But it's usually the vegetable people that are involved in evaluating these grants. And anyway, so here's the other one, especially crops stakeholders described seem to be those already involved in the project. So we have a letter from Greenworks. And they said we have this many new members and we're willing to collaborate and find people that are willing to do the tests.  And he says, no stakeholders in this state. Ah. Anyway, so this is tough. So do you know any written chemistry? No. That's actually how we got this funding through the application through written chemistry. That's actually true. Yeah, I don't want to get any famous, but it's definitely rich. Yeah, I don't. But it was tough because the chemistry will then talk about it and then get more. I like it. All right, questions? One, two.  So you need to remind me of why the other words aren't good. Because they're not the same thing. So if they get into the woodlands and they're very first damaged to mine forests, biophones will start by European biophones. So you walk through the forests in the Champagne Valley. Most of the time you find four, five, or six species of European worms, and they have gender damage. They're just much slower. I don't know how slow they are. We don't know. They're pretty fast, three years, and they want to work through the duff layer. It's all the years of being taught. It's really difficult to get rid of that. If you were in the South, you could say that. You could say, well, there's worms here that are negative. And I don't even want to kill them. And then you have a point. So for these worms, if you're in the forest, sometimes they're the only worm that's left in the forest. Because they are complete the other ones. They're really good at competing with other creatures. Like two or three. The temperature, when did they die from freezing? They are on the polar vortex. Yeah, by the time the polar vortex comes by, they're already dead. Because the winter in general. They're not around them, but they're annual creatures. So they only live from April as well. So they're from April to maybe the beginning of December maximum. So every time you have a frost, so you can hear in late September early. But the cocoons. Early October, they were the worst died. But the cocoons don't. The cocoons were still here around the cocoons. We've seen, now, we have temperatures here in the solid cell, not in Australia. Minus 24, about four years ago, really, really cold winter. And minus 24 Celsius, that's like minus 30 Fahrenheit. And the cocoons survived. They desiccate. So the way the embryos would die is that they're froze. And there was crystals forming, water crystals forming inside the embryo. That disrupts the cells in the dye. But because they are desiccating in the wintertime, there's no crystals forming within the water to allow that crystal to form. One and two. OK, I have a question about the control with the alfalfa. And when I couldn't miss part of that slide, you found that there really wasn't a big difference in alfalfa. Between the alfalfa that was ground up and the control, yes, there was not really any difference. So my question is, we have to breathe hives. And that's where they're staying over winter. And it's just constantly feeding them. And my thought, when I read the bulletin, was, oh, maybe that's the possibility of putting the alfalfa around the outer edges of it. But you're saying it's not really going to matter. So I should try. OK, so it seems that the alfalfa, and we don't know why that is, but that the alfalfa works when it's not ground up. Pelvis. Pelvis. Pelvis. Pelvis. Pelvis. Pelvis seem to work. And the ground up, the meal doesn't seem to work at all. And it's this, no good reason why that should be. So what do they put on the pellets to make the pellets? I don't know. Mostly it's just compression of moisture. Most of the animal pellets in grade that you buy. Question about how that affects other on the pellets in this life, and other just careers? Good question, so it would have to be a critter that feeds on organic materials. And it's probably not the feeding that's the problem. It's more that they touch the pellets with their bodies and that irritates the skin and that might kill them. OK. So the other thing that she had mentioned, they're talking about the actual damage to the plant. What I find with our clients is the extent of actually having their gardens mulched. A two-inch layer of mulch doesn't last a whole season. And it's incredibly expensive. I mean, they're spending a couple of $1,000 every year. We used to do it every year. We now have to do it every year. And this is the part that I often see with the work of the rural world is it's sort of a nickel in dining. The fishing wildlife people don't understand the damage of deer and how we support the hunting community.  And if they deal, you collectively take what it costs to have a pest like a deer. All of these worms, you know, that's being huge. And I don't know how that's, if there's anyone working at the cost of them outside the actual plants. Yeah, so estimating that kind of cost, apparently cost one. And so you would have to have an economist, like a cultural economist, to look at that. How much does this cost, not just you as the landscape person, but also when the cost is passed on to the customer. And then there's another part of that cost. It's actually societal cost, right? So when that wood is being composed, you are generating nutrients, which is good for all the plants if the plants can pick it up. But if the plants don't pick it up, excess nutrients that is produced will run off in a big storm or it will reach into groundwater. And so there's another side to this, which is societal cost. Somebody has to agree about that, right? So if it's not us, then maybe it's the next generation that, I don't know, when it's actually more complicated. And that's why these things cost money. There would have to be a trial. You'd have to try out somewhere where you can have different plots with different amounts of earthworms on it to figure out what is an economic threshold at which you say there's too many earthworms here because that march is disappearing much quicker. So you have to have to set that up. So it costs money. And no one is going to be able to do that. That's far down the list. Yeah, okay. So many other problems, climate change. We have starving people, that's where. And that's really a good point, right? So how big is this problem? Can we tolerate it compared to all these other bigger problems that are out there? So. It's a first one. In my case, it's a first one. I do high-end landscape gardens and nobody really uses them. Two questions.  They are between 2 and 4 millimeters, which is a 12th and an 8th of an inch. That's male. It does, I think, actually. And the other one is, though, can we throw these into water while they drown? The cacodas? No. The worms? The worms themselves. They would drown eventually. You have to figure out how they don't crawl out of your container.  I was just going to say about how to get them not to crawl out of your containers, because what we do in my crew is we have 5-gallon buckets, and we just grab a bunch of mulch and put just a thin bit of mulch. And if they have that in the bottom of the 5-gallon bucket, they won't climb out. You don't have mulch. They're out before you put the next one in the end. So putting that layer of mulch keeps them in the ground. I'm not experienced. I did that. I started out collecting them for you. And I didn't remember all the details, but I had water in the bottom of the 5-gallon bucket, and I threw them in there, trying to figure out what I was going to do. And they did die, and they didn't crawl out. But as you say, it's a terrible smell. It wasn't pleasant. I was throwing them into the swamp of the pond. Yeah, that would happen. It would come out. Yeah, it didn't.  We do these tests on mortality by assays. It's just many of them.  But I can start counting them, so. Well, I think too, for Ms. Y. O'Callis, she stated that they're aggressive and seem intelligent, and they seem to come at you. Yes, they do. Can you talk more about biochar? Because I was just about to start using it, because I've read some really good reports. But can you just talk a little bit more about how biochar benefits our soul? Oh, that's a really good question. So biochar was really big, came into its own in the early 2000s. And maybe a little earlier than that, as a way of capturing carbon and burying that carbon in the soil as a way of sequestering carbon. So biochar is very resilient to breaking down further. So basically, biochar can produce any kind of organic material. And it's produced, say, as charcoal, it's going to smother it until it stops doing it, so it's stabilized, right? So that means you're burning it at really low temperatures, and low temperatures are 600 degrees Celsius or something like that, and no oxygen content. So you're not combusting it. It's really a smothering sort of thing. And how is it? So depending on, so that's how we have all this organic waste and what you're going to do with it, you can either give it to compost or the CO2 carbon dioxide comes out of it, because it's being composted further and further, and put back on the land, and it's great for that. But it will break down further. So if you have all this waste and you want to keep it in the soil, you have to stabilize that organic carbon, and you do that by this biochar process. So that's why it was becoming big in the 90s, maybe early 2000s. And then gardeners and organic vegetable growers got a hold of this idea. And the thought was, people found this area in Brazil where there was these dark soils, these charred soils, high carbon, high stable carbon, things called terra preta, several of these terra preta. And it's really, really fertile soil. And so I said, why don't we use that? Same thing, let's produce this biochar, and burn it in gas. So there's a couple of things that you need to know about biochar. So people talk about it very enthusiastically. Some people have really good experiences with them, with biochar, different kinds of biochar, and some people haven't seen any effect. And it really depends on how that biochar is produced and what it's produced from. So the oxygen content of the reactor has to be just right to produce the right kind of biochar. And then whatever you put in it, also has to be the right kind of structure. It has to be, I don't know. But what people find is that some of the things that are attributed to biochar will develop over time. So sometimes you first put it in and you don't see any increase in exchange capacity, which is one of the ways that you can store nutrients in the soil at all. But then after 10 years, people say, oh, yeah, I've got a greater kind of exchange capacity. So it might take some time to develop it and we'll have biochar that we're using. Then another thing that people worry about in biochar is that it may have an effect on things like worms. I don't know if that works. And that might be a positive or negative thing, depending on how you think it is. So the worms eat it or just slide it? They eat it. They eat it. The theory is that they eat it. Maybe it absorbs all of their toxins, because it's an absorbent, it's in the filters for filtration. Yeah, that's another good point. I don't know about that. So people haven't got enough real science on it. So this is not real science. This is just basically a trial and we see an effect. But why is that effect there, too? People think it's the disruption of the gut by sharp edges on hardware biochar. That's a theory. But it could also be that something is released from that biochar as the biochar goes through the gut of the earthworm. I wonder if it's not even on the external part of the body, because you were speaking earlier about how when it gets polluted, it just explodes. I don't know. I don't know. I haven't seen anything explode yet. But there's another thing about, so coming back to your initial question. So nowadays, people co-compose biochar with components. And that is supposed to load that biochar with nutrients. All the cations, calcium, potassium, and so on. So it's supposed to have a better effect than if you would just add biochar. So add your biochar, add it to your compost pile, turning it, and then put that on there. What theory would that be? That depends on how you compost. So if you are just composting the backyard in probably a year or something, then you would be fine. What if we fix it for you into already being compost? I want it fast. Maybe if I were you, if you have more questions, you could take them back over there. Otherwise, thank you so much for being up to date. Yes. We'll go through the right method, but we'll get from you. That's a way we can connect your work with us. Right. I want to put another suggestion. Well, I can post things on this stuff as well. Absolutely. I'll send it to you. Yes. Right. Well, you can do it. You can do that. Yeah, you have to. That's okay. I get it. It's true.


Motivation is fleeting. It's like any other emotion. There's some times where I feel highly motivated and there's other times where I don't. And I want to make sure that I'm showing up as my best self as consistently as possible. Now we're gonna start from fresh and have this great victory. It is, commitment is being through natural warmth. What do you think most people get wrong about motivation? They think it's a permanent fix. They think it's something that is a constant. They think that maybe once I get it, I'm gonna hold on to it. It's nothing that's permanent. Nothing that's permanent. And a lot of times you have to learn to perform without motivation. You have to learn to perform without purpose. You have to learn to perform a lot of different things. And that's what people think. They think I need to have this motivation to work out, to study, to be better. So if they don't have it, they just don't do it. And that's where you fail. You have to learn to train your mind well beyond motivation. If you have motivation, that's great. That's some kindling to the fire. All it takes is a little bit of spark.  But motivation, you have to learn to exist without it. You have to learn to be your best self and your least motivated. So if I'm only showing up as my best self or I'm only doing what I need to do when I feel like it or when it's convenient or when I'm feeling motivated, then my performance is going to be like a roller coaster. And I don't want that. I want to be a consistent performer regardless of how I feel in the moment. So I lean much more heavily on discipline. And the beauty of discipline is it's available to everyone. I hear a lot of people say things like, well, Alan, I'm just not that disciplined. And I let them know with love and grace and compassion, that's just a story that you've told yourself. And yes, historically, maybe you've chosen not to make very disciplined decisions, but you can change that in a moment. The very next decision you have to make today, maybe what you're going to eat for lunch, you can choose the more disciplined route. So it's fully available to you. And then the more consistently you make disciplined decisions and live a disciplined life, then you'll start to change that self narrative and you'll start to look at yourself as a more disciplined person. So that's why I don't rely on motivation. Motivation is a little, it's a little feeling and feelings are fickle. It's a little emotion and emotions are fickle. Don't count on motivation, you count on discipline. You don't, when I wake up in the morning, I don't think am I motivated to go do what I'm supposed to do. No, I just go do what I'm supposed to do. That's discipline. So you want to implement discipline in your life. That's what you want to do.