What is going on everybody? It is JR Fisher and it is Tuesday, the 18th of May, 2021. My gosh, we're approaching halfway through the year. I wanna welcome everybody here. I do these lives each day in case you're new to help you start running, grow your online business. That's all I talk about. We don't sell anything. I'm not trying to market anything. I'm just trying to help you out. I've had some successes in selling online over the past decade and I just wanna share them with you. If you're new here, do me a favor, subscribe, hit that subscribe button down there. Don't forget, ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications to your notice. I each and every time I go live or if I upload a video. Let's see here. Get some comments coming in. Good morning JR, 78 Fahrenheit in low country. Man, I gotta get back to Savannah. I'm telling you every time I see you in there, James, I'm thinking about that buffet. I think it's Mrs. Wilts. Man, it's so good. I gotta think about going back there. We got, I just checked James, checked with my Google here. Matter of fact, let's let Google tell you what the weather is like today. Hey Google, what's the weather in Scripps Ranch today? Today in Scripps Ranch, it'll be partly cloudy with a forecasted high of 73 and a low of 56. How's that for technology? It's 59 degrees in cloudy. How's that for technology, huh? It lets me know. Hey, today we're gonna talk about some really inspiring things you can do post-world illness. However, if you have areas that you wanna talk about that have to do with starting running and growing online businesses, please put that in the chat section. Please let me know. I'll be happy to comment on that. Also, if you're watching this and it is no longer live, let's say you're watching it a day later, a week later, a month later, whatever, you can put your comments in the comment section, which will be below in the description. Sinharth, where you been? Man, long time no see. Good to see you, buddy. People are popping in here from a while back, which is good. I've been doing these live since, gosh, I wanna say January, February. I gotta look back and see when I started doing these. And I've been doing them six days a week. So that's a lot. It's a lot of content to come up with. But guys, I really enjoy it. I really enjoy the fact that you guys participate, that you put stuff in that chat section. That makes it all worthwhile to me. So please do that. Please, please, please put that in there. Don't forget. James, you didn't say it. Smash the like button. Make sure you smash the like button so that that algorithm can do its thing. My saying for the day, there it is, of course. Give me a little sip. Our house is destroyed right now. I mean, it's destroyed. We're moving and we've got boxes everywhere. We're selling stuff, trying to get rid of stuff so we can move to Texas. So I've been working on that. You guys don't know about that. I got a video that I'm gonna put up, I think, kinda showing you guys the progress of stuff and what we're getting done. It's pretty exciting. It's exciting to me anyhow. If you're interested, you know, put the chat section. You wanna see that. If you don't wanna do that, then that's fine too. Let me pull up my notes here. I got some notes on some of this stuff. So, you know, some of the thing, if you think about it, what's gonna happen in the world? You know, Broadway theaters in New York are supposed to resume. I think it's in September of this year, which is 18 months after they closed in the early days of the illness. You know, it's, I think as of May, there's 110 million Americans that have been vaccinated since May, or since the beginnings of May of 2021. And a lot of the restrictions are getting lifted. We're seeing this go on now. The government has said, well, the government, the CDC has said that we don't have to wear these mask outdoors. And we don't really have to wear them indoors either. You know, I think the whole thing about social distancing is kind of funny. I read a paper by a MIT professor, and she said that you're no safer at six feet than at 60 feet if you're indoors, because you're all breathing the same air.  And it made sense to me. So I know the social distancing thing's a joke. I know in Vegas they went from six feet to three feet. I don't really think that makes any difference whatsoever.  Some of the rules are just bizarre to me. But anyhow, we're gonna be getting back to this. And since we're gonna be getting back to it, there's things you can do. Now, the first thing you can do is you can get back to out-of-home advertising and live events, okay? Live events, they're gonna start up again. We're already seeing that. I'm starting to get notices from people that I used to go meet with. They're starting to have meetings, boot camps and masterminds and all these things. We're all gonna get back to it, guys. We are. This illness that we have is gonna be a bad memory. However, there's gonna be those people who are gonna be affected for the rest of their lives. And it's the same people who get affected by something that happened when they were eight years old. And I'm not saying that people shouldn't. I'm just saying some things stick with people forever. I'm gonna look back on it and go, ah, that was interesting and I'm gonna move on. You have a decision to do what you're gonna do. But having events, guys, is so big. I know when I get to Austin, I wanna have some masterminds there where we all get together, we all share ideas, we all do stuff. So I'd like to do that. If you guys are interested in attending some of those, by all means, put that in the chat section there. Let's see. Cameron's here too. I haven't seen you in a while, Cameron. He says, hi, sir. Hi, sir. I know, you got a little typo there. Good to see you, buddy. Let me know your business is doing type in the chat section. We all like to check in on you there. And you want to get your brand back, guys. Reclaim your presence. We've lost a lot of followers, supporters, stuff because we weren't doing things, right? Now, I went to Ornline. I've been online pretty heavily. So we're doing okay here. I think as of this morning, I need like 40 subscribers to hit 5,000. So guys, if you haven't subscribed, please do so. Tell your friends and family to get their interest in this subject matter. Don't have been subscribed if they're not gonna watch any videos. That doesn't do me any good. Just people who are interested in making money online. Number two. Number two is I want you to start understanding your audience better than you did in the past. After this challenging year, our brand messaging is gonna probably shift a little bit. And customers are kind of cautiously gonna come back, but we need to have a good brand message, okay? We want to celebrate the move forward and don't forget the past. Not forgetting the past doesn't mean living in the past. We shouldn't live in the past.  How about that? Is that insane or what? I know they're gonna do it. You know they're gonna do it.  Why? I mean, so what if we get sick? And I don't want anybody to die or anything like that. That's not what I'm saying, but I mean, there's gonna be illness. Illness cannot be eradicated. You can't wear a mask forever because you're weakening your immune system. You have to be exposed to some of these things that actually do make you sick. You know, you can do a little nostalgia marketing if you want.  Consumers are more likely to develop brand loyalty for a company they feel emotionally connected with. What are you doing to get that emotional connection? Tell me that. Matter of fact, put that in the chat section if you want. Scarcity tactics, I would kind of lay off on because we've had so much scarcity lately, you know. Now our survival food, we do have scarcity still. We have some shortages, but you know, that's a tactic that you gotta be really cautious with because people are really tired of hearing that. Let me get another sip here and remind you. That's where I remind you. Number three, number three, what is number three? I would say start to get really clear about what your business is about, okay? Doing this will really attract the audience you want. Now my brand for this channel is starting, running, growing and online business. That's it. So whether you've never sold anything online or you're trying to, you've already got a business, we can help you out. You wanna align with the new consumer ethics. You know, citing figures, consulting, president of an app called ISBX, he noted that after this illness has been promoted a shift in consumer consciousness, as 45% of these people have more sustainable habits, they plan to embrace these choices. Brands have to align with a new consumer sentiment and consider how they can promote more ethical model of consumerism. We need to change what we've been doing, okay? You gotta focus more on diversity and inclusion. I think we've always done that. I just look at people as people. I don't really care what your background is, what you look like, what your sex is. It doesn't matter to me really. But I think businesses who didn't focus on that need to do so. You know, we sell survival food and people would say, well, that's probably some older guy in the woods when in fact it's actually women, the majority of our clientele is women for our survival food. The majority of my channel on YouTube is 18 to 34 year olds and the majority of that is 18 to 25. So you gotta kinda know what your audience is. Are you looking at your audience? Do you know who they are? I think that's super important to figure that out. Next thing up guys, number four, do videos live and regular. Just start doing videos live and regular. Videos are so very important. This channel actually makes me money, which is nice, not a lot of money, not a lot. And I don't do it to make the money. I do it to get our brand out. I do it to help people. But live video really has really helped brands connect with the consumer. And it's a lockdown. I mean, you could do videos and you could still connect with people, which is exactly what I did. And a lot of people I know did. It's really, really important to do that. Going forward, we are investing about 90% of our efforts in live video in my company. So I'm gonna be doing a lot of live video. I think it's really, really important. I think a lot of real estate companies have done that. They couldn't show houses so they did 360 videos of houses. Really, really important thing to do. And clients have seen an average of 68% increase in video content consumption on YouTube since March of 2020, 68%. So I know in the beginning, my channel started getting a ton more views than it ever had. And I think it's because people were like, I got nothing else to do. I think I'll watch YouTube. I think I'll do that. It really gives you an opportunity to explain your brand, your product, your services, whatever, without having to write stuff out, without people having to read. People don't like to read. As funny as that is, they just don't want to. They would much rather watch a video. I enjoy watching videos for entertainment, for education, just learning new things. I just love them. I love them and I think you guys do too. You know, there's TikTok now. People watch these little short videos. I'm not into TikTok, but it's there to be another set. Now, this does not mean you wanna quit your other channels. So number five is do social on a regular basis.  And I'm there, but not very much. I can tell you that. One of the people that I follow on Facebook, she did a post yesterday and she posted and there's anybody seeing my post. And she didn't say that form, but basically she was doing a test to see how many people would reply. And she normally had hundreds, if not thousands of people reply. And I think she had about three or four. Because Facebook is not showing her post. Facebook's not showing your post, my post, anybody's post, unless you run ads. They've gone to all ads. So you can post now to let your friends see what you're doing and nobody's gonna see it. It's crazy. James Brain, finally live and clear in Savannah. Oh yeah, I already hit the like button. Thank you so much, James. I appreciate that, buddy. In your marketing strategy, your goals should be meeting your buyers where they are and going to be at any given time. So if they're on Facebook, you find they're there, go there, if they're on Twitter, go there. You know, if they're on Instagram, go there. You know, there's also TikTok, there's Clubhouse. I think Clubhouse overall, I thought it was cool when I first saw it. And the more I looked at it, the more I thought it was just a waste of time. I think the funny thing with Clubhouse is you wanna get a lot of people, but when you get a lot of people, nobody can talk because there's a lot of people. And then if you only have a few people, you're gonna waste your time because there's only a few people. Well, what are you gonna do, right? It's a tough one to figure out. The next thing I would tell you guys, and I've got a meeting after this, so I may cut a little bit short today if you guys don't mind. But if you have questions, and if you fill up that chat section and you ask me questions, then I have to stick around. Okay, so if you want me to stick around, put some questions in there. And if you don't, that's cool too. Number six is take advantage of lower CPCs. What are CPCs? Cost per click. Digital platforms right now are at a really all-time low at cost per click. They've lowered it because they're trying to attract more business. This said, it presents an opportunity to reach customers online at even lower costs, even if brands themselves have faced budget cuts. Now, understand the CPC is really determined by the advertiser. So if people aren't bidding real high for those clicks, it drives it down. I mean, really, it's a bidding situation. So people aren't bidding as much as they are lower right now. Neil Tapari, and I wrote this down, he's co-founder of Business Incubator, SOTA partners, agreed noting that PPC advertising is a great way of maintaining additional presence online as well as reminding your customers that your brand and business is still going strong. That's another thing. A lot of them are kind of wondering, what's up with your business right now? What are you doing? What's going on? And this is, you know, doing these ads is a great way of letting them know what's going on. Let them know you're still around, right? A lot of businesses are gone. A lot of restaurants are gone. A lot of stores are gone. And I'm not talking just small stores. A lot of big businesses are gone. But understand when they go away, those dollars that were spent there will be spent someplace else. Somebody else will snatch up those dollars. So it's really up to you to get that. If you used these post-marketing ideas that I'm giving you right now, guys, you can really take advantage of what's happened over the past year and a half. Let's see, Paul says, what's most you've paid for advertising?  You know, I was running one for a webinar and I was getting some sign-ups for $40 or $50 a person, which was pretty darn high. But if you mean how much budget I've spent, I kind of keep that quiet, but it's, oh gosh, it can be in the thousands in a day. But I keep that quiet. I don't really say what I do and that. Just it's kind of private on that. So I don't really do that. But, you know, advertising's important, guys. And the funny thing about advertising online is, you know, you can advertise for two months and not get a sale and go, wow, I've wasted a lot of money. I've wasted a lot of time. I advertised for two months. I spent $5,000. It was a waste. And then a year later, somebody from that group buys and then another one buys and another one buys, because you built up your brand and they learned who you were and they listened to some more of your videos. It's really kind of hard to figure if those people are gonna spend money with you later on. It really, really is. So you gotta check that out and figure that out. So that's what I've got for you today. Again, I went a little bit quick. Maybe I talked fast today. I will entertain any questions that you have now. You can put those in that chat box there. I've gotta go meet somebody. I've got a call to Memphis, Tennessee to a good buddy of mine. I got to do after this, known him since I was, I guess 14, 15 years old, something like that. We've been friends every since. So I've got a little, I guess phone conversation with him. He's a builder. So I'm kind of interested in what his building is doing right now because I know, man, the lumber prices are crazy. You know, we're building a house and we got in just before all those increases. But man, it's a skyrocket. It got crazy for stuff.  So guys, if you have questions, you need to put them in that chat box right now. I'm getting ready to leave you. And I wanna thank you guys. I wanna take a second just to thank you for all the support.  I really do appreciate it. And if you're still here and you have not subscribed, you need to do so and you need to ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications here. Notify each and every time I go live or I upload a video. Well, you're welcome, buddy. I appreciate all that you've shared. And a lot of you guys make this channel by sharing stuff. Paul's a big share. Cameron has shared a whole lot in here. Sidharth has shared a whole lot in here. James Breen has shared a whole lot in here. A lot of you guys have. And I really do appreciate it. I can't call out everybody because I get comments all over different videos and everybody shows up on the live but they watch afterwards, which is fine. But guys, when you're doing your marketing, I want you to, I want to leave you with one thing. Think of the consumer. Think of the person that is consuming your content. Think of the person who's buying your product. Think about how you can improve their life. What can you do? What can you do to improve their life? What can you do to make them feel entertained? What can you do to make them feel happy? What can you do to make them feel confident? What can you do to make them feel safe? All these things, all these feelings. If you can get across these feelings through your brand, you in turn will get more business. Don't think about getting their business. Think about helping them out. That's what it's all about, helping them out. James Breen says peace and blessings always. Everyone see you tomorrow, he's out of here. But think about those things guys. If you think about it that way, if you build your brand based on helping people, if you build your brand based on really, really serving your audience, and that's what you need to do, is you need to serve people. That's what it's all about, having a business. It's not about you getting what you want. It's about helping everybody else get what they want. If you help everybody else get what they want, you will eventually get what you want. I think, I didn't say it exactly the same way, but that's a Zig Ziglar saying, he said that over and over again. Just help people get what they want. That's all you really need to do. I've given you these six things that you can put into practice today. If you missed any of them, this is obviously recorded. You can go back on YouTube, you can start at the beginning, you can watch the beginning and go through all of them again. But man, guys, think about this. Think about a company that was always serving you, that always helped you, that always did things for you, that made you feel good, that made you feel secure, that made you feel confident, that gave you answers to your questions. You'd probably do business with them, wouldn't you? You would probably go back to that company over and over again. That's what I want to leave you with today. Please, please, please do that. I want to switch my screen here real quick. And like I say, guys, if you have questions, put them in that chat box. If it's no longer live and you're watching this, you can put it in the comment section below the video. That's what I've got for you today. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I really do appreciate you watching. I really do. Don't forget to subscribe, ring the bell.  There we go. That was it. That was the bell. Okay, guys, appreciate you being here so much.  I'll see you tomorrow.


Welcome back everyone. Today we have a very special video. Today we are going to be interviewing Xanthe Huynh. She's a voice actress. She's voiced characters in many different TV shows, animes, video games, including Persona 5. And she was the voice actress for Nira in the Dragon Quest movie Dragon Quest Your Story. I have gotten the opportunity to interview her and I hope you guys enjoy this interview. So thank you for joining me today Xanthe. Yeah thanks for having me. So let's just get started. I just want to ask you some questions about your career and how everything started. How did you get into voice acting in the first place? How did this all happen? So before I was in voice acting I had studied a bit in theater. I was doing it in middle school and high school and I also got my degree in it in college. And while I was still in college I was just watching anime and somehow it just kind of clicked in my mind that you know this could be it would be cool to you know to act in like something like anime because you know like I don't know I never really thought of it as a career that I could actually do but I was talking to some of my castmates in rehearsal about it and one of them mentioned that there is there was a competition at Anime Expo for voice acting and so I looked it up and I entered and I made it as a finalist and from there I the studio bang zoom invited me to come and audition and I've been working since so I've just been really lucky it's not a path that a lot of people you know are able to follow. Yeah so you start off as a fan and then you ended up just getting into it then so you were an anime fan first that's interesting yeah yeah because usually most people I've talked to voice actors it's usually just a job to them it's not really a hobby first it's more of a just just working not really interested in the things that they they were taken so you're a big anime it depends on the type of genre that you go into right right from what I've seen at video game voice actors a lot of them just it's just a job to them so you're an anime and a game fan I watch a lot more anime than I play games but I do like to sometimes like watch like play throughs and things like that. I see what are your favorite animes um off the top of my head I really like KonoSuba and One Punch Man and I religiously rewatch monthly girls Nozaki Koon and initial day yeah I guess mostly just like the comedic comedic actiony type stuff yeah those are good I've seen those two KonoSuba is one of my favorites I I've been waiting for the 30s did you watch the movie that came out last year there's a movie in theaters yeah I did go to see it in theaters it was fun we're a lot of people like laughing in the audience while you're sitting there yeah it was it's so it's so interesting like to watch something like that in theaters because then you kind of get this communal experience like you know you get the inside jokes and you you know you kind of like you know just kind of getting to see everybody else's reactions compared to your own instead of just watching alone at home exactly yeah it's a lot of fun going to theaters to watch anime moves I wish they would do more of those but it's you know with everything going on it's a little bit harder to have something like that done yeah but even then like when anime movies came out that they'd be like you know certain days only and if you didn't get to see them then you missed out yeah it's like a limited release is just one weekend things like that mm-hmm so what were your first roles like in the industry with voice acting like how did you start you did say that you start off with the anime expo competition what was that what was that role for that you got so I didn't get any particular role just for from like that competition per say because I think at the time the the winner got the chance to go and like get the studio tour and like a chance to audition and I didn't win but they still liked me enough to bring me in anyway and the first thing that the first show that I worked on was the familiar of zero it was like 2007 2008 era and yeah it was she's a really sweet character very fun has a lot of like magical elements to it and yeah I was super nervous going into my first session for sure because I had zero experience in voiceover and I was very lucky to have gotten the chance to kind of like learn in the job but I did have my acting experience before that so I think that really helps me to transition into doing voiceover I see and you're acting at your previous acting experience was a play it was mostly plays and things like that right mm-hmm okay so you were in like the high school play or yeah any memorable roles that you had when you're doing that oh my goodness um now I had to like think back away way back um so one of the most memorable shows that I had ever ever worked on was actually in college and we did a play called dogs Hamlet cahoots Macbeth and they're they have like kind of condensed versions of Hamlet and Macbeth in them but they're with it's like a play within a play and the characters themselves that are putting on these plays speak this other nonsensical language and the language is made of English words but the words have different meanings so it was kind of like a kind of like rax or brain a bit because you're having to memorize these lines that are like all sorts of like jumbled words and it was kind of crazy because after a couple of weeks my castmates and I were like you know what I think I understand what you're saying now oh no I have been in this play for too long because now I you know but it was a lot of fun and like kind of zany doing like the 15 minute Hamlet and then like doing a one minute Hamlet trying to rush through it's it was a lot of fun I loved it yeah I can imagine that sounds really crazy like a lot of wild stuff going on there so how did you train to become a voice actor said you didn't have a lot of experience but obviously you've gotten a lot better over time what do you typically do to train your voice so I still actively take a lot of classes depending on like what it is that I want to sharpen so if I feel like I need some input on like trying out different characters and I'll sign up for like an animation or a video game class to get some feedback and like some tips on how to improve or just to see what different casting directors kind of prefer and also taking classes in commercial voiceover because that's a completely different style so yeah I I just actively take classes and keep training and practice a lot and now it is I can just call my auditions my practice cuz I constantly do those so you do a lot of auditions yeah okay you said you do voice over voiceovers as well do you have any commercials or anything like that or not too many I've only signed with my agent last year so I've gotten the audition for a lot and I've only booked some like smaller or minor stuff but not not too much yet it is like a field I'd like to break into a bit more yeah what kind of commercials you could you picture yourself voice-overing what do you think I commercial wise I guess I'm the type that's probably like more like home type stuff either like motherly type stuff or like food type commercials or like back to school type things just because my voice kind of leans a little bit younger sounding but yeah that would be fun I guess so which role do you think yeah is your favorite that you've done like like ever hmm that's always a hard question I feel like every time it's asked I always give a different answer yeah cuz like I like them all for different reasons um let me think well my brain is like what okay um so one of the first roles coming to mind right now is menma from Anohana just cuz that was I got to play a really really cute kind of rambunctious kind of character full of heart and yeah I'd had a lot of really great emotional moments too that the director Patrick Seitz was really good great at like helping me and the other actors kind of work through cuz there is a lot of like emotional crying in these in that show and you know sometimes like even if like a scene is like like three to five minutes long maybe it's taking us like anywhere from like 10 to 15 minutes to go through because we have to like start and stop so much and the engineer has to like tries and try to match it to the picture to make sure that's all fitting and their levels and everything else sounds great or like the director needs to you know adjust something and the actor has to do it again and so like you know like you're working up to this emotional state and then you kind of have to like stay in that moment while everything else is like being taken care of and then continue on with the next line and then get interrupted again and then do the next line and so I don't know seems like that they're kind of they can be a bit tiring but I kind of love them and I kind of thrive in yeah it sounds it sounds like an emotional rollercoaster having to cry and then stop all of a sudden is it like that or yeah it can because you're like depending on if you do like how the lines are spaced out like if like you say something and then the character like responds with something then you have to like skip and then go into your next line it can be kind of difficult because you have to like stop and stay in this emotion while the engineer is doing all the other stuff and then continue when we start on the next line again yeah that was I have a friend who talks about it a lot yeah I should probably check it out yeah it's a lovely show it's on Netflix now I think it is okay so I was looking you have a youtube channel don't you I do I don't post as much in there but yeah I said you said on your youtube channel though that you do a sound design as well as voice acting um what about that is there anything else about that um so that's um that is a very recent video actually um I I used to sound design for some small productions um in college um and a friend of mine from college recently reached out and asked me to do the sound design for um a musical that he was planning to do but because of COVID we haven't been able to um go forward with that yet and so we did like a little um online concert as a way to get the word out and to kind of fundraise a bit so that uh we have something to hit the ground running with when things are okay to um you know to get rolling again next year when it's safe to go into theaters again and um so I would say for me it's more of like a hobby and something that I'd like to play with and learn to get better at um but yeah I mean I do enjoy sound design and I think it's really fascinating what um a lot of engineers like you know do to create sounds um you know in a very like illusionary kind of way right it is pretty cool like it like in movies and how they use you know random objects around the house to create different kinds of sounds and stuff like that right mm-hmm yeah it's pretty cool um so I was wondering compared to video games and anime how is a different voicing a video game compared to an anime series um so for anime there's a lot more technicalities mainly because you have to um match the lip flaps so like a lot um generally um the scripts are written to match the time but then sometimes when you um you know you're you're performing the line and then the the director will look at it and be like well actually um can you um slow down the first three words of the sentence and then I need you to speed up the rest of the sentence so you have to and then you perform again and then you have to like keep that in mind so that you're matching whenever the character opens and closes their mouth and sometimes um because of how it was animated in Japanese for the Japanese you know we have to kind of alter and add little weird um uh pauses in between to make sure it matches and for it to still flow in English without sounding really clunky um so there's that um I would say that's like the main um difference between the two um for for dubbing like like a jrpg um a lot of times you're not um you don't have the restraints that that anime does because you're not matching to picture unless it's like a cutscene then it's um almost exact same process um and I feel like video games they tend to go quicker because they're not having to match to picture um dubbing does uh is sometimes a really long process and the director will have to like uh rewrite lines just to make sure that it fits better depending on what they see and how an actor performs some you know some actors talk really fast some talk a little bit slower or um yeah I I say that's about it I see I didn't realize that that was part of the process like matching the mouth with the the lips to make it like to paste it like that I thought I thought that they did in like post processing to fix it like that but you actually have to paste yourself with the original Japanese version I wasn't aware of that yeah well the engineer will sometimes kind of like manipulate a little bit to make sure that it matches perfectly but then if they're um doing it too much then you can kind of sound uh you can hear the the audio like processing in it and it sounds a little like strange so then you have to do it again um just so it sounds natural um yeah okay um so I wanted to talk more about some of your roles in uh in a little bit more detail uh the first one just earlier this year you played Nira in the netflix movie dragon quest your story yeah yeah and I made a movie that so can you tell me more about that how did how did you get that role um so I I got the audition for Nira and Bianca and um when I was auditioning for Nira I saw in the instructions that they had said oh if um for anybody that saw auditioning for Nira we'd also like to hear you audition for the old lady um but you know at the moment we we haven't decided if we want to cast one actress to do both or if it's going to be two people yet but just try for both and so um I didn't get the audition for the old lady so I had to ask my agents I was like oh they say it's required do you guys have it and they're like oh yeah here here it is and so I auditioned for her as well um even though I wasn't sure if I would get it and I was like I wasn't really concerned because I was like oh they're probably just cast me as one and maybe not the other um and I was really surprised that they had me do both um yeah because like I up until then I had not played a character above the age of 30 and she is like ancient she is like an unknown age um but um it was a lot of fun I that at least that was like the the audition process itself um when I went into record um everybody was like oh you're really impressed with like your your old lady you couldn't we you know we had never heard you do that voice before and I was like yeah I never get to audition for them so I yeah I'm a little surprised too but um you know like since they were so excited I got a little bit uh panicked I was like oh no I hope I hope I can live up to their expectations now well it was a very convincing old lady that's uh I didn't see it coming that she was actually uh a younger a younger person at first ah thank you I'm so glad I was hoping that the illusion wouldn't be broken yeah because uh because in the story the old lady was actually near pretending to be the old lady right yeah right um so uh when did you record this like uh what how long did it take and what was like the timeframe do you remember that at all or um see so it was like it was oh my gosh anything that's early this year feels like 10 years ago because of quarantine but um it was early this year um I I would say almost like maybe four or five days after I auditioned like they had a really short time to um get this um out I don't know why like they had such a short production time um but yeah I I literally got a text in the morning um and so asking if I could come in like well when I it was like a text at 8 a.m and I didn't like see it until like nine and they were asking if I could come in at 10 and I was like that is impossible I I can't make it by then but I am free after like in like you know like this time and she was like okay we need you to come in like um in the afternoon then just so we can get the trailer because it it like the trailer comes out in like two days I was like what so so I came in I did like the trailer and we um started recording for the the movie itself as well um so it went pretty quick I would say I finished in like a few sessions and it was very last minute so like you finished like a month before the movie came out right something like that yeah we were working on it like a month before it came out because like I think when I was recording the trailer I was like wait they're saying it comes out on this date what um so what was how was the recording session like like how is it much different than recording an anime is it is it uh similar or um I think it's I would say it's exactly the same um I think they were a little bit more lenient when it came to the um matching the flaps just because they were super duper short on time um so we tried to match timing as best as we could um yeah but yeah I I really liked working on it um the director Mike Schneider is like really fun and energetic and positive he's a really great guy to work with yeah uh was there anyone else on the cast who you worked with previously uh who you recognized or um well I was uh I thought it was really cool that um you were alone though wasn't it um but yeah I mean I while I was working on it I had no idea who was in it or anything like that until it came out oh so it was like separate it was you were like in separate rooms recording the lines yeah most uh dub projects are are recorded solo you've never recorded with anyone else right uh so you you just didn't know who was in it until the movie came out I see mm-hmm okay uh did you watch the movie when it came out yeah uh what do you think uh did you like it I I did like it I I'd have to admit that um I hadn't like played any of the game so I wasn't really familiar with the franchise so I watched it from the point of some view of someone that didn't know anything about Dragon Quest and um I found it to be very um I feel like the pacing was kind of quick like kind of episodic um like maybe it makes more sense for fans because it's like oh yeah that's when that happened in the game and that's when that happened but um from my perspective I was like oh like everything like time goes so quick I know that that's a common complaint about the movie that a lot of people have had mm-hmm but it's still like it was still very beautiful and I wish I wish Narra had a bigger part in it yeah in the uh in the video game that it's based on you could actually choose to marry Nira or Bianca so you could spend like the rest of the game with either one of them but I guess they uh they chose Bianca to be the the main girlness and you you auditioned for Bianca you said right mm-hmm oh really uh and uh so you were interested in that role so they made they made you audition for both of them or how did that happen uh yeah so I got the chance to audition for both of them they were just both sent to me by my agent okay and uh you got Nira mm-hmm that's cool so um let's see I'm gonna okay let's see so uh anything else interesting happened with the the Dragon Quest your story recording sessions at all uh anything people don't know about mm-hmm I guess that's about it I'm I'm not sure if most people realize that I voiced the old lady but uh it's just that I think people might not might not know that but it's a it's a very convincing old lady I I'll tell you yeah and I I don't mention it just because I I want it to be a surprise because you know I don't want to ruin that part of the story um because it's revealed later but uh but yeah it was very fun she's very like over the top and I imagined Nira having like a lot of fun being kind of bossy towards Luca and making him drink that like crazy potion the potion that made him like fall asleep and have like a weird dream and hallucination yeah yeah that's funny anyway yeah that that's a great great role you did um as Nira we all liked it a lot the fans thank you mm-hmm I'd like to talk about another role you did um my viewers might not realize but I'm actually a big fan of the persona franchise and oh yay yeah you played Haru Okamura in that game and that's uh that's one of your bigger roles would you agree or yeah I would say that's um one of my most known roles so um I just want to know the story how did you get that role I so this is one of the rare occasions where I was just cast and I didn't audition for for this uh for persona or for Haru for anything they just found you and said hey you're Haru so that's what happened yeah I mean they I just got an email saying like hey we have a project we'd like you to work on uh can you come in and like I so it was super vague I didn't know anything until I signed all my NDAs and they were like okay so we're working on persona five and this is the character you're going to be playing and then they described her to me they showed me a picture of her and yeah and then you basically just like jump into it they just kind of tell me like you know scene by scene what's happening who I'm talking to and my relationship with that character just so I can deliver lines like in a way that um makes sense I guess yeah I see and uh that's an rpg a really long game so how long was the recording session for that like how long did that take it was really long I would I don't I I would say it was like about a spread out over a year um I mean I that's at least that's how it felt for me and you know my character comes in like pretty late in the game so I can't imagine what it was like uh for some of the earlier characters all their recording sessions but it was spaced out um over many many months I see so yeah I can imagine that so it's it's a lot longer than most anime projects you'd say or I see uh and there was a there was a persona anime series you voiced Haru in that as well or yeah yeah we did um it was really cool because like we we did really want to do the anime and um it just kind of took a while for them to um get around to doing it and I'm glad we got to do it though I see yeah I haven't watched that yet but I do know there's an English tub for that um so I would hope that they would cast the uh the game the game cast as the characters as well in the anime version um did you play the game after it came out or yeah I did I'm uh I played through Persona 5 and I'm like at Futaba's palace right now in royal all right so um so how's it like uh when you're playing the game and you like talk to a character and just your voice talking to yourself how does that feel um well um you know at first um it's kind of weird because like I recognize not only you know it's my voice and it's like ah it's my voice um and you know I recognize all the other characters voices um as their actors and so like it it takes um you know a couple hours for me to like get over that connection and just like hear that voice as that character's voice and so just to have that kind of disconnect um same when it comes to playing um and hearing my own voice come out of Haru's face yeah so um who did you date in Persona because you can date people in Persona who did you choose of course I chose Haru she chose herself mainly because I wanted to hear how the lines that I recorded for her turned out so I was pretty aggressive um with trying to uh get her maxed out that's funny uh so um has this role like changed your career a lot like uh has has it made a big difference at all you think I I would say so um well it's I guess it's kind of hard because like I feel like my career in general has been just very steady when it comes to like um like a steady rise um but I would definitely say um being a part of like a massive franchise such as Persona 5 has um I don't know maybe given me a little bit more um uh how do you say uh kind of a most prestigious light I suppose that and also like Persona 5 has um you know we've like crossed over into a bunch of like different other little games like we were in like Smash Brothers and we're in Catherine and um oh yeah you voice a character in Smash Brothers technically right that's that's true technically yeah we're in there did you sit down and like record new lines for that or what happened yeah I did I think we all did um even though it's prominently just a Joker but um yeah I was like really excited we went in and uh we did the announcement trailer for um the game awards uh I think and um we did that literally two weeks before and like I asked them I was like oh when do you guys think this'll like come out just so that I can kind of have a gauge for it and they were like oh probably next spring and I was like okay so a couple months from now which is pretty common for games and they showed the trailer two weeks later I was like what so it was kind of a surprise for all of us oh so you thought very pleasant one you thought it was gonna come it was gonna release next year like the trailer yeah we didn't we didn't know all right so you were probably really surprised did you did you were watching the game awards and all of a sudden it just showed up and you're like oh that's me yeah I was like oh it was it was just very exciting just to see like the the animation and the infiltration infiltration and all that right um have you voiced in the other video games as well because um I was like trying to look at your Wikipedia page and see what else and I've noticed a few other roles um you voiced uh the Legend of Heroes series and the Fire Emblem you voiced the character Fire Emblem Three Houses as well um can you tell me a little bit about that one um so in Fire Emblem Three Houses I voiced a character called Marianne and she's one of the students that you can uh recruit to your house um depending on which house that you you joined so if you're already a part of the Golden Deer then she's already in your house um but she is um uh very unconfident she has a lot of familial issues and uh she generally tends to avoid conversation whenever possible uh very religious she loves animals and she um has a really great great arc I think she's uh very relatable at least I found her to be very relatable to myself um yeah she's very strong a great uh magic caster uh because I joined the other one um the uh I forgot what the guy's name the the blonde guy the the prince uh blue lion yeah I joined his when I was playing and I haven't done the other playthroughs yet so I haven't met your character or talked to your character much yet so I didn't know you did voice a character um is she in that that mobile spinoff also did you voice her on that one or um she's uh she's not in Fire Emblem Heroes I do voice a character in Fire Emblem Heroes uh called Air um she had a really big um story arc last year um but yeah she is the uh um princess of the realm of the dead that's cool so um did you voice any anything else uh recently anything major or um so I think you mentioned um Legend of Heroes the Trails of Cold Steel 4 that just uh came out was that last week last week or two weeks ago very recently um yeah so I I voice Altina um and uh yeah I've been playing her for a couple of games now and I really love her she's had a very gradual change over time because she started off very um very robotic almost like uh well I think she was um an antagonist in the first um game that she came out in in the second game and um yeah over time she's kind of slowly warmed up and starting to show more emotions in her speech and yeah it's it's really sweet and I like how sassy she is right and yet they kind of change your voice up a little bit as the the games go on and the characters develop right yeah it is kind of hard um I do have to rely a lot on the director and the team them there to make sure that I'm um fine staying within a good balance because she does kind of talk kind of monotone and kind of emotionless but um you know gradually over time she does have like hints of more warmth and just um you know just showing other emotions um other than just being kind of blasé like a little I like to call her like a little soldier you know and um also this is not on your wikipedia page but I saw it on your twitter feed you said that you voiced the character in 13 sentinels aegis rim which just came out recently uh yeah I actually played that that's a really good game you you voiced miwako uh sawatari in that game yeah yeah oh yeah I know that um story wise she um well I remember the one of the very first recording sessions uh the director was kind of explaining to me the general story because I was like oh can you tell me about it before we get started and he was like so yeah there's a lot of like timey wimey stuff and like you know all these characters are fighting like these kaijus and trying to save the world but none of that has anything to do with you so I was like oh which is amazing so she's just kind of kind of there to talk about food and boys and have a good time yeah she's like very much a side character I thought when I when I when I heard that you were gonna be in the game I thought oh wow can't wait to see what uh was auntie's character is gonna be and I was playing playing 13 sentinels and it's like she's she's really like unimportant and very much a side character yeah and the story is like do you want do you like still understand a story at all or can not really like for 13 sentinels so I only um I only really know everything from miwako's point of view I haven't I have it but I haven't played the game yet so I only have a general understanding of what the game is about but yeah yeah it's pretty hard to grasp it's it's it's all over the place that game but it's fun it's a good game though I you should definitely play play when you get a chance um so these roles like legend heroes and 13 sentinels these came out during the pandemic did you have to go to a voice a recording studio during the pandemic to to voice these characters or was it earlier so for trails um we recorded that um before the pandemic so um that was in studio and um for 13 sentinels that was actually the very first project I worked on during the pandemic so there was a lot of like a whole lot of nothing for the first few weeks um while all the studios were trying to figure out how to get set up and record remotely and um yeah it was it was kind of uh I was really nervous leading up to it I was like I hope that my setup is good enough um and everything but uh luckily you know I had I had to send them sent um sample recording samples and I had to send them like a list of all my gear and make sure that you know that everything would be compatible and like up to speed to be able to connect and record with them um but yeah luckily luckily it worked out and I've been recording a lot from home I see and uh you have like really high quality gear and like a little sound studio in your house or is it like I'm just wondering how how you do it well I'm sure a lot of voice actors do but for me um so I record out of uh my walk-in closet and um actually uh it's it's I am kind of a hoarder when it comes to clothes so I have a lot of insulation already because it's just jam packed full of clothes and um but it's like the perfect like quiet space um in my apartment and um um and like a lot of the equipment I already had because I was already just doing auditions from home and I um was already recording like indie projects from home so I kind of had like a basic setup and um after getting you know feedback from some of my engineer friends like they said that my sound was pretty good and so I just kept with what I have um and luckily like a lot of studios have approved of it I haven't had any complaints yet um from anybody like saying like oh you know that you know they would like to hire me but my quality wasn't good enough I haven't had that remark yet we'll see but um but yeah I think um there are some some studios that um give the option to coming into studio if I'm not if I was unable to record from home so that's kind of nice for people that may not have like a setup that's um considered broadcast quality right that's interesting I never thought about going to a closet full of clothes to record I should try that in the future that's a good idea yeah because like um you know uh um a sound proof booth can cost like thousands of dollars and not everybody has the money or the space for that um and you know you kind of get to work with what you got and um luckily for me it's just a closet full of clothes um so are there any um roles in the future that we should know about that you want to talk about at all um uh so um I'm trying to think of what what can I talk about because I'm recording a couple of really cool things that may be announced soon maybe even like next week soon but I can't say anything yet because it's not out yet um well um early next year uh I have a game called Fallen Legion Revenants coming out um I did a lot of production work on that um and I actually directed it and um it's a really great uh little indie game and I also uh return as a small character in it um yeah so there's that coming out next year your most recent project is uh what's your most recent project to say or um so besides uh Trials of Coast 204 I guess right now I have uh Operer Aman which is like an anime on Funimation uh it's about like uh it's kind of like wacky racers um they're racing across the country and uh my character is there to support one of the racers and it's also the first time I get to um dub with an accent um this one is specifically French uh so yeah that's uh that's it's like an ongoing uh anime right now so be sure to check that one out yep everyone check out her french accent let's hear how that sounds well um I think that that's uh uh I think that's a pretty good interview we had uh I wanted to thank you for uh agreeing to talk to me for this time I really appreciate it thanks for reaching out yeah uh so yeah uh thank you and everyone uh check out Xanthe on her social media you want to plug your social medias you can go ahead right now yeah um you can find me on facebook instagram and twitter at it's xanthor at it's xanthor so it's all the same thing mm-hmm all right well thank you and uh everyone we'll see you next time thank you


very good evening aspirants welcome to the hindi news analysis by shankar eyes academy for the date 8th of july 2021 these are the list of news articles taken for today's discussion they have been provided along with the page numbers of these articles in different editions of hindi newspaper now let us start our analysis with this news article so our first discussion is based on this oped article which is written by the united nations population fund representative and this article is about the reproductive choices and the rights of women and their implication in demographic control so let us see these aspects today the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference see we all know about India's demographic story right now our total fertility rate has approached 2.2 see here a total fertility rate in short tfr in a specific year is nothing but the total number of children that would be born to each woman if she lives to the end of her child wearing years that is until menopause and you note that an ideal tfr is 2.1 that is two children per couple which means the father and mother are replaced by the two children in the next generation so when a tfr is lower than this it can indicate that population is declining and the value greater than 2.1 indicates that population is growing so India is soon expected to reach the ideal tfr that is population would stabilize soon however population momentum would still be there so it would make it longer for Indian population to stabilize see here to understand population momentum imagine a vehicle that is accelerating and it is being brought to halt so here the vehicle would take some time to halt so similarly our population was growing exponentially so the growth would take time to slow down this is what is termed as the population momentum let us understand it better see we have a population where more than 50 percent of the population is under the age of 29 that is our population is youthful and is in the reproductive age now in this situation a relatively youthful age structure in the population also promotes a more rapid growth this is because of the birds being produced by the relatively large number of people belonging to reproductive age and this happens even if the fertility of the average woman stands at the replacement level but on the contrary if you take China the population momentum won't exist now because the majority of its population is aging and they are past the reproductive age so initially we saw that India is near 2.2 tfr and in order to achieve this India has a lot of merits in its hand to flaunt one of such merits is the progressive policies for maternal health these policies have resulted in improved rates of institutional delivery this in turn has caused the maternal mortality ratio that is MMR to decline see as per the data from sample registration system the MMR has declined from 327 in the period 1999 to 2001 to 113 in the year 2015 to 2018 and this value is per 1 lakh life births and next important data is from the national family health survey 5 for the year 2019 to 20 that is NFHS 5 it shows how contraceptive prevalence has improved in most states this has also translated into better population control because contraceptive prevalence means population control now apart from that initiatives such as beti vachow beti padau has also made some efforts to challenge the existing social norms and the schemes like this have also underlined that improvements in social causes is important but on top of all that India still faces lot of challenges in combating the population problem and thereby we are also facing problems in achieving the SDG target so in this regard author has listed certain problems or challenges the first challenge listed by author is regarding the knowledge about contraception and early age pregnancy see a study by a US organization called gutmacker institute says that 2 million adolescent girls each year in the age bracket of 15 to 19 years had a pregnancy and out of this 2 million nearly 63 percentage were unwanted or unintended pregnancy apart from this the national family health survey 4 has also said that in the girls who are aged between 15 to 19 years 22.2 percentage had an unmet need for contraception so this is pointed towards either lack of access to contraception or lack of knowledge about contraception now both of these can prove detrimental to population control as well as they're detrimental to the sexual and reproductive rights of women now another challenge is that girls are married off too young so according to the available data 26.8 percentage of women who are aged 20 to 24 years married before they turn 18 and worryingly most often these women have their first child within the first year of their marriage this also adds to India's population problem now besides this too many girls and women's face gender-based violence and harmful practices and what is worse is that most of these harmful practices are socially permitted now all of these practices are rooted in our social norms beliefs and practices and they deny women their bodily autonomy that is a woman is denied the freedom over her own body or in other words she does not have a say in her pregnancy along with this the widespread negative social norms and gender inequality has hindered the universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights in short SRHR and on top of all this we have the health system barriers where the rural areas have very little access to reproductive health and knowledge as you can see this is not only a statistical problem or a gender-neutral population problem the problem is social as well it is deeply entrenched in gender bias this has been repeatedly reflected in the world economic forums global gender gap report even in the 2021 report if you have noted India has slipped 28 places to the rank of 140 among the 156 countries and by this India became the third worst performer in South Asia so we can see that the problem is social and cultural so the solution to this should also go beyond the numbers that is policy should take the social factors into consideration especially regarding the reproductive rights for women now in this regard author notes that what research and practical experience actually show is that when women can make informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health and when they can have access to services to support their choices then the resultant societies are healthier and they are more productive so this fact is crucial for India because India has entered a demographic sweet spot that is it has a young age population and this trend will continue for another two to three decades and these young people must not only be healthy knowledgeable and skilled but they must also be provided with the rights and choices to develop to their fullest potential and all this can be harvested as economic gains for the nations and to achieve this social change is the key so these are some of the important points noted by the author of this opiate article where we discussed about the sexual and reproductive rights of women and how it is important to achieve population control now let us move to the next discussion our next discussion is based on this news article it mentions that the state cabinet of Assam has decided that the traditional food items will be only served at government programs in Assam from Nawan and the cabinet has also decided to make use of hand woven gamosa at the government programs mandatory and this decision is said to have been taken in sync with a prime minister's initiative of vocal for local which promoted indigenous food products so in this context let's discuss the hand woven gamosa and the handloom reservation of articles for production act of 1985 see gamosa is a cloth it is a unique identity of Assamist society it is generally a white rectangular piece of cloth with primarily a red border on the three sides and a red woven motif on the fourth side and note that Assam has traditionally two types of gamosas one is okra or plain this kind is used to wipe the sweat or dry the body after a bath and the second is phulam gamosa this is decorated with floral motifs to be gifted as a momentum or during festivals such as Bihu and cultural historians say that gamosa came to symbolize Assamist nationalism in the 1916 when a students organization named Assam Chattrasamilan was formed see wearing the phulam gamosa around the neck became a standard for cultural identity also the gamosa rose as a symbol of protest during the anti-foreigners Assam agitation from the year 1979 to 1985 and later the gamosa also saw a comeback as a political statement when the protest against citizenship amendment act was happening in December 2019 see over the years cheaper machine made gamosas from Gujarat and Tamil Nadu have threatened to push Assam's weavers out of business so based on this according to an estimate by state government that was made in 2018 Assam has more than 13 lakh looms out of a total 28 lakh looms in the country hence in order to protect the hand loom weavers of Assam the sales of machine made gamosas was prohibited and this was done under the hand loom reservation of articles for production act of 1985 but it is said that this act had very little impact so in this context let us discuss some features of this act see this act provides for the reservation of certain articles for exclusive production by hand looms and this act also prohibits the production of articles which are exclusively reserved for hand looms by any other means so as a measure it gives the central government the power to summon information or to summon samples of the textile articles and it can also inspect and seize those articles if it is found to violate the law here note that an order from ministry of textiles has reserved a class of articles for exclusive production by hand looms and these include sari dhoti towel and gamosa or gamosa then angavasthram lungi bedsheets duris or durates and then funic so these are some of the points that you need to know with respect to preservation of hand loom products and the gamosas now let us move on to the next discussion this discussion is based on this editorial article which discusses the issue surrounding the unlawful activities prevention act and the judicial standards see the recent death of tribal activist father stan swami during his jail term has invited severe criticism of several government institutions and this news article is based on that issue only so in this regard let us know about the epa act for better understanding and then we'll also discuss the issues with it and in the course of discussion we'll also see about the vatali judgment the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference see the unlawful activities prevention act or in short ua pa was enacted in the year 1967 and the purpose of this act is to provide for more effective prevention of certain unlawful activities of individuals and associations in addition to this that also deals with prevention of terrorist activities and related matters so accordingly the section two subsection o of the act defines unlawful activity according to it any action taken by an individual or association that leads to session of a part of territory of india or the action which questions the sovereignty of india or which disrupts the integrity of india all of these shall be termed unlawful and the act gives power to the union government to impose all india bans on associations which are declared unlawful under this act and most importantly one of the recent amendments to the act gave power to the union government to even declare a person or an organization as a terrorist or terrorist organization and this will happen if she or he commits certain offenses such as if they participate in acts of terrorism or if they prepare for terrorism or if they promote terrorism or is otherwise involved in terrorism and you should note that under this act cases can be investigated by both the state police and also the national investigation agency so this was the purpose and objective and some of the important provisions of ua pa so now what are the issues in it see the main issue is that the act does not define what is terrorism and if you see even the definition of unlawful activity is such that it covers almost every kind of violent act be it political or non-political so this was the first issue and secondly there is no objective criteria for categorization of an individual as a terrorist so this gives the government enormous power to designate anyone as a terrorist if it deems fit additionally the act does not provide any opportunity to the individual who is termed as a terrorist to justify his or her case before the arrest and there is also provision in the act under which the information which declares a person a terrorist can be withheld from that person for six months so that means if someone is arrested under ua pa act you may not even know what is the reason for your arrest and then those who are arrested under the act can be imprisoned up to 180 days even without filing a charge sheet and these are some of the areas which the editorial article also mainly focuses on see we are already aware of the delays in the judicial system and in addition to it the data available with the union home ministry which was presented to the parliament in march highlighted the irrational use of ua pa act and according to this data only 2.2 percentage of the cases registered under this act between the years 2016 and 2019 actually resulted in conviction by courts along with these issues we also have the problematic vatali judgment which even added more harsh treatment to the accused person who is arrested under this act see by mentioning this vatali judgment author of this article observes that judiciary suffers from many flaws besides weakness so in this regard it is important to know about this judgment and why is it so important this vatali judgment we are talking about is nothing but the case law national investigation agency versus zahoor Ahmad Shah vatali in this case law supreme court's interpretation of ua pa has affected all later judgments involving this act we can say that this decision even created a new doctrine see in this case law supreme court held that an accused person must remain in custody throughout the period of trial even if the evidence produced against the accused person is invalid so by this what supreme court has done was it has essentially excluded the admissibility of evidence at the stage of bail also while considering the bail applications under the ua pa courts must presume that every allegation made in the first information report that is FIR to be correct that is they must presume that whatever the allegations mentioned in the FIR are correct and supreme court also held that bail can be obtained only if the accused person produces material to contradict the prosecution in other words we can say that the accused can be acquitted only if the accused person proves his or her innocence that is the burden of proof rests with the accused person they have to disprove the allegations so because of these important interpretations this judgment of supreme court in this case has set a precedent in cases related to the ua pa act and its bail applications and this has also led to a situation where the hands of the high courts are also tied and which in turn has led to the unavoidable refusal of bail by the high courts here remember that the provisions that we discussed in the ua pa act and the judicial interpretation in the vatali case all these led to the denial of bail for the activist father stands for me which eventually led to his death so based on these instances only author of this editorial mentions this incident as the result of a systemic abuse of majority and authority and disregard for the rule of law so as a conclusion author of this editorial who is a former chief justice of delhi high court has raised the issue regarding the judicial precedent see a precedent is nothing but a rule or a procedure that is established in previous cases so by talking about this issue author questions whether only the supreme court can provide statutory interpretations and whether such statutory interpretations can be termed as precedence because we saw that even the high courts are not granting bail based on this vatali judgment which was given by supreme court and this acts as a precedent to the decision of high courts so based on this author concludes that it is irrational to deny high courts to examine interpretate and validate the constitutional laws so these are some of the points that you can take note from this editorial article which was regarding the ua pa act and the issues with it and we also discussed about the vatali judgment precedent which is very much important from the mains perspective because this vatali judgment is an example of how draconian this ua pa act is now let us move on to the next discussion our next discussion is based on this news article which talks about the pegasus spyware see according to this news article an online database regarding the use of pegasus spyware was launched by a collaboration this collaboration is between the forensic architecture amnesty international and citizen lab and this database was launched to document attacks of spyware against human rights defenders see the recent times spyware is like pegasus is used to illegally gather information against lawyers, activists and other civil society figures for example it was even used on the nine human rights defenders who were accused in the beema koregano case we discussed about this case few days back so to document such attacks this collaboration has established a database so in this context let us discuss about pegasus spyware and to understand that first we need to understand what is a spyware see a spyware is a malware as you know a malware is short for malicious software and it is a programmer file that is designed to disrupt damage or gain unauthorized access to a computer system and since a spyware is a type of malware it is nothing but a software that is installed on a computing device without the knowledge or consent of the end user and after it is installed it gathers information from the infected system and it sends such information to another entity without the user's consent and this is one of the prevalent forms of cyber attack so in this regard the pegasus spyware has become famous see this pegasus is a spyware program that allows the controller that is the person who has injected the spyware to gain access to the infected smartphones microphone camera and they can even gain access to messages emails and they can collect location data also and this spyware can affect both android devices and ios devices and this spyware program was developed by nsso group technologies which is an israeli technology cyber security firm see basically this pegasus spyware is a powerful surveillance program as per a report by casper ski pegasus even allows you to listen to encrypted audio streams and it can allow the controller to read encrypted messages also as you know here casper ski is a multinational cyber security and anti-virus provider so that means once pegasus is installed the hacker or the attacker has access to the entire phone that is the target user's phone but here the issue is that as per the nsso group technologies pegasus is sold only to the government agencies who are concerned with fighting terrorism and crime but now this is not the case it is said that pegasus is now also used by various government agencies to spy on lawyers activists and other civil society figures so we can see that this pegasus spyware has become a huge menace in the cyber world so these are some of the points that you need to know about pegasus spyware notice more to the next discussion our next discussion is based on this news article and this discussion forms the judiciary part of our syllabus and it mainly focuses on the recusal of judges so first let us see what is the issue then we'll see about the recusal of judges see the background of the issue is that earlier the chief minister of west pengal had filed an election petition in june 2021 before the high court the petition was alleging irregularities in the counting process in the nandigram assembly poll this matter came for hearing before justice kaushik chanda but the chief minister of west pengal urged the judge to recuse himself from hearing the petition she alleged that the judge had links with the political party so the judge decided to recuse and while doing so he found the allegation inappropriate and he also charged a fine of rupees five lakh so now to understand why he recused we need to know about recusal of judges see recusal of judges is also known as judicial disqualification it is the practice of a judge to step down from being a judge of a case and this recusal of judges stems from one of the three principles of natural justice which says no man can be a judge of his own case so recusal happens generally when there is conflict of interest and when there is conflict of interest a judge can withdraw from hearing a case to prevent creating a perception that she carried a bias while deciding the case and this conflict of interest can arise in many ways for example there could be a conflict of interest if the judge is holding shares in a company that is a party to a case or it could be even a prior association or personal association with the party who is involved in the case for example if i am the judge and one of my family members is being accused of a crime then i cannot be the judge of that case because here we have personal association or personal relationship and there is another instance for recusal it is when an appeal is filed in the supreme court against a judgment of a high court and here this judgment may have been decided by the supreme court judge when she or he was in the high court so they cannot hear an appeal against their own judgment in the supreme court so these are some of the areas where there is conflict of interest now if you see this decision to recuse generally comes from the judge herself it rests on the conscience and the discretion of the judge to disclose any potential conflict of interest in some instances lawyers or parties in the case also bring it up before the judge like how the chief minister of a spring hall brought up the issue and when this is done it is not mandatory for a judge to recuse but if a judge recuses then the case is listed before the chief justice of that high court for the allotment of that case to a fresh bench here you should note that there are also some instances where judges have recused even if they do not see a conflict and there have also been several cases where judges have refused to recuse that is they have refused to withdraw from a case for example if you remember in 2019 justice Arun Mishra had controversially refused to recuse himself from a constitution bench this constitution bench was set up to re-examine a judgment which had been delivered by him previously but despite several requests from the parties justice Arun Mishra refused to recuse himself so now what is the process for recusal see there is no formal rule governing the recusal process and because there are no formal rules the judges need not record reasons for recusal it is the discretion of the judges so some judges disclose the reasons in open court and in some cases the reasons are apparent and in some cases the judges don't disclose the reasons see this judicial recusal has two implications one is the ethical aspect which is regarding the conflict of interest for a judge the personal and professional interest may come into direct conflict in a judicial institution where justice has to be accurately served so if that is conflict of interest ethically the judge has to recuse and the second aspect is that of the judicial independence and transparency see in order to uphold the judicial independence it has not been made mandatory for the judge to step down from a case when a party in interest demands so and as we saw already the reason for recusal also need not be disclosed for the same reason and one of the reasons stated for this is that if the judges ought to recuse on demand then parties may deliberately target judges or even ask judges to recuse just to merely make the judicial process more slower so in this regard there has been growing demands to democratize the institution and to infuse transparency and on those lines two landmark cases are worth recalling first landmark case is Ranjit Thakur versus unit of India 1987 case in this case law the supreme court has emphasized the importance of the interest of the parties who are involved in the case that is in this case law supreme court held that the tests of the likelihood of bias is the reasonableness of the apprehension in the mind of the party in simple words the proper approach for the judge is not to look at her own mind and ask herself that whether she is biased or not but the judge has to look at the mind of the party in interest that means if I am the judge I cannot just simply think whether I am biased or not and decide whether or not to recuse rather I should consider the person or the party in interest and I have to decide whether that party will consider me as a biased judge or not and that is why we say justice should not only be done but it should also appear to be done so this was pointed out by this 1987 case law and the second important case is the 2015 case which is the national judicial appointments commission case in this verdict supreme court batted for judges to disclose the reason for recusal and this verdict wanted to infuse more transparency in the judicial process so based on these considerations justice kaushik chanda recused himself from hearing the election petition filed by chief minister of his pangol so these are some of the points that we should know regarding recusal of judges and the implications of such a move now let us move on to the next discussion our next discussion is based on this news article which reports about the release of a mega shipping vessel which is named as mv ever given if you remember few months back this mega shipping vessel was in news for disrupting the global economy see this vessel blocked the su s canal for nearly a week in the month of march and as a result of this this vessel was held by the su s canal authorities and it was held at the canals great bitter lake so this vessel has been held for more than three months because there was a financial dispute the su s canal authorities were demanding compensation and now the news is that this vessel has been released and this was a result of the settlement reached between the ship owner and the canal authorities over a compensation amount so in this slide let us discuss in brief about the su s canal and also the canals important lakes and we will also see why it was a reason for the disruption of global economy see this su s canal is a human made artificial sea level waterway it runs north to south across the islamus of su s in egypt see an islamus is nothing but a narrow strip of land that connects two larger land masses and it separates two bodies of water and this islamus of su s is in the eastern egypt it connects the continents of africa and asia and it separates the mediterranean sea and the red sea and the su s canal is across this islamus of su s only and that is why it also connects the mediterranean sea and the red sea see this canal provides the shortest maritime route between europe and the lands lying around the indian and western pacific oceans so for this reason su s canal is one of the world's most heavily used shipping lanes and it is also the most important waterways in the world and once the mega shipping vessel of mv ever given blocked this canal the canal could not be used for shipping purposes and that is why it led to losses see here you should note that the su s canal is of a straight length but it has got eight major bends and the other two sides of the canal that is the west of the canal is surrounded by the low-lying delta of nile river and to its east the snipe peninsula is situated so as a result of its importance this canal is extensively used by modern ship as it is the fastest crossing from the atlantic ocean to the indian ocean and also note that the tolls paid by the shipping vessels represent an important source of income for the egyptian government now coming to the lakes in the canal you should note that the estimates of su s is not uniform it has got three shallow water filled depressions and these water filled depressions are termed as lake and these lakes are the lake manzala lake thimsa and the bitter lakes the bitter lakes are further distinguished as great bitter lake and little bitter lake and we saw that mv ever given was held in the great bitter lake before its release so let us see a few facts about this see before the construction of su s canal the bitter lakes were relatively small and they were hyper saline inland lakes but once these lakes were connected with both the Mediterranean sea and the red sea by the su s canal they became a single marine body and this led to the increase in their size and it also led to decrease in their salinity and the toll charges go to the egyptian government because it constructed this canal between 1859 1869 in partnership with the french su s canal company so since then the egyptian government is exercising complete control over the canal through its su s canal authority and this authority manages operates uses maintains and also improves the su s canal so these are some of the points that we need to know about su s canal from example specter now let us move to the next discussion our next discussion is based on this news article which talks about nitrogen dioxide pollution see our country imposed a nationwide lockdown last year and this year also various state governments imposed lockdown restrictions to contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic so many experts believed that these lockdown restrictions will bring down the air pollution because there will be less movement of vehicles and there will be decreased functioning of industries but this was not the case in spite of these continuous lockdowns air pollution levels remained high in major cities in the country and this was based on a report which we will be discussing now see this report is released by Greenpeace India Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization it is working for the betterment of our environment and society now according to a new report from Greenpeace India nitrogen dioxide pollution has increased in all eight most populous state capitals of India so these state capitals are Mumbai Delhi Bengaluru Hyderabad Chennai Kolkata Jaipur and Lucknow now among these cities Delhi saw the most dramatic increase in nitrogen dioxide levels between the period April 2022 April 2021 according to this report in this period nitrogen dioxide was higher by 125 percentage similar was the case with other cities also for example the anodic pollution in Bengaluru has increased by 90 percentage in the same period and there was 52 percentage increase in Mumbai and in Hyderabad increased by 16 in percentage Chennai by 94 percentage Kolkata by 11 percentage and in Jaipur it increased by 47 percentage so this shows that the lockdowns did not lead to the reduction of air pollution so this was the major finding of the report in this context let us see certain facts about nitrogen dioxide see it is one of the group of highly reactive gases known as oxides of nitrogen or simply nitrogen oxides other nitrogen oxides include nitrous acid and nitric acid and this nitrogen dioxide is a dangerous air pollutant it is released during the fuel combustion in motor vehicles that is it is released during the burning of fuel so in two forms from emissions from cars trucks and buses also from off-road equipment such as construction vehicles and lawn and garden equipment apart from this it is also emitted during power generation and industrial processes now this pollution is discussed because exposure to nitrogen dioxide is dangerous it can severely impact people's health at all ages it can severely affect the respiratory and circulatory systems it can also cause brain damage it can also lead to an increase in hospital admissions and mortality so in this regard only greenpeace has pointed out that emission of these pollutants must be reduced the report also notes that there is growing evidence that the polluted cities have suffered disproportionately more coronavirus cases so what is the conclusion see now our economy is in the recovery mode so in this situation certain steps are suggested by greenpeace also it has stressed that the economic recovery from the pandemic must not come at the expense of air quality so it has recommended the government's local administration and city planners to initiate the transition from privately owned vehicles to an efficient clean and safe public transport system they should be using clean energy and the report believes that this will aid in the economic recovery as well as it will reduce the air pollution so these are some of the points that you need to know about the greenpeace report and also about the nitrogen dioxide pollution now let us move to the next discussion our next discussion is based on this news article and this news article talks about indemnity see if you remember last month USA announced a donation of 80 million doses of American made COVID-19 vaccine to many countries and India was one among them that is India was also in that list of 80 countries this was a great news as we were suffering from vaccine shortage now we had shortage of vaccines because our production of vaccines could not match up to the rising demand so this donation of vaccines was seen as a life saver but there was a problem India was not allowing the import of vaccines due to regulatory issues over indemnity and this was confirmed by the US officials recently and this article is a discussion on that only see the issue arise to when the US vaccine companies like Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson started demanding an indemnity for the supply of vaccines so what is this indemnity it is the security against hurt loss or damage it gives the companies exemption from incurred penalties or liabilities in simple words indemnity is nothing but a waiver of liability so if anything goes wrong with the vaccines the companies won't be held accountable but India is not ready to give this indemnity and because of this issue the US companies are not donating the vaccines to India here you should remember that so far USA has already distributed 40 million doses to about 12 countries and this includes Pakistan and Bangladesh also but India is yet to receive its vaccine lot and according to official sources India wants to review the legal provisions and consequences before giving indemnity to these companies so why is India reluctant to provide indemnity see India fears that an indemnity will make these companies unaccountable for the mishabs and it will make them unaccountable for the possible side effects of the vaccine in addition to this if the US companies are given indemnities then all other vaccine makers such as the serum institute then the Bharat biotech and also the russian manufacturers of sputnik vaccine they will all demand indemnity and this will create a huge problem why because here accountability will take a backseat that is it will become less important if indemnities are offered to all the companies but even then US companies want this and the reason stated by them is that they worry that a country like India will have a lot of infrastructural lapses for example they fear that India will have lapses in cold chain management and we could even face transportation problems so this will affect the working of the vaccines therefore the companies argue that they do not want to face legal issues because of the mishabs within India so this has created a logjam that is an irresolvable issue when it comes to vaccine imports from the US companies so one thing is clear here India is facing a severe vaccine shortage so we have to find a way to import vaccines without affecting the accountability the right balance between these two has to be found and this could be done only through persistent diplomatic talks between the countries so that is all you need to know from this news article discussion where we discussed about the indemnity issue with respect to the vaccines now let us move on to the next discussion so with this news article discussion we have come to the end of this part of our session now we are moving to the practice questions discussion now this first question is based on gamosa the question asks consider the following statements with reference to gamosa recently seen in news gamosa is a food stuff representing the unique identity of gujarati society now this statement is incorrect because during discussion itself we saw that gamosa is a unique identity of asami society and moreover the news was regarding the fact that state cabinet of asam has decided to make use of hand-woven gamosa at government programs so this statement is incorrect now the second statement is in 2020 it has been issued geographical indication tag by the geographical indications registry that is it states it has been issued gi tag this statement is incorrect because as of now gamosa has not received gi tag rather only an application has been filed and accepted under the geographical indications of goods registration and protection act of 1999 and this application is still in pre-examination stage and let us hope that in the near future it will receive the gi tag to preserve its unique identity so here the question asks for the correct statements but both these statements are incorrect so the correct answer is option d neither one nor two now this next question is a two statement question first statement is nitrogen dioxide is emitted during the fossil fuel combustion of motor vehicles this statement is correct second statement in order to inhalation can affect the respiratory and circulatory systems of humans this statement is also correct we discussed these two points during the discussion and here the question asks for the correct statements and both the statements are correct so the correct answer is option c both one and two as next question is a direct question it asks which one of the following is the best description of pegasus that was in the news recently nuclear powered warfare ship high-power supercomputer spyware malicious program interstellar starship and the correct answer is spyware malicious program this pegasus was in news throughout 2020 and now it is again in news in 2021 so you should know that it is a spyware now this next question is based on swiss canal first statement is it is the shortest maritime route from americas to oceania so as you know oceania is the geographic region that includes australia malinatia micronesia and polynesia and this is not the shortest distance between these two rather it is the shortest distance between asia and europe so this statement is incorrect second statement is the tolls paid by the passing vessels represent an important source of income for the egyptian government this statement is correct we saw this during discussion third statement the government of india framed a four-point plan to deal with the swiss canal blockade this statement is also correct see the blockage of swiss canal is always seriously hitting the global trade so in this regard the indian government chalked out a four-point plan to deal with the situation which is arising from the blockage of this swiss canal and this plan included the four points that is the prioritization of cargo freight rates advisory to ports and then rerouting of ships and this plan mainly focuses on the reduction of indian trade losses due to the blockage so this statement is correct and the correct answer to this question is option a one only because the question asks for the incorrect statements so be careful before marking the correct answer so we have seen four practice problems questions now let us take four practice main's questions based on today's discussion see practicing more main's question will help you in answering your gs papers and these questions have been framed based on today's discussion only so listen to the discussion carefully and try to answer these questions and don't forget to add your own viewpoints with this we have come to the end of today's in the news analysis if you like this video don't forget to like comment and share and do subscribe to shankar is academy youtube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation thank you