#TDP interview transcription

[raayllum]

Transcript of Aaron Ehasz Interview (Sept 2024)

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R: Alright so welcome back to the Wordswithdragons podcast, and today I’m joined by a very special guest, the co-creator of The Dragon Prince, Aaron Ehasz. 

A: Hello, thank you for having me today. Glad to be here.

R: Thank you so much for being here. Um, yeah, so, as we semi touched on, it is the 6 year anniversary of The Dragon Prince this September 14th.

A: Yeah.

R: Do you have any thoughts, reflections, feelings about the show having gone on for this long and being such a big part of people’s lives?

A: I mean for starters, it’s really hard to believe it’s been on for six years. Like that seems insane to me. Cause it seemed like we had — Justin and I had been working on it for so long before it finally came out because we had worked on the story and then gotten feedback, and help in improving that pitch and bringing it out and we had it set up at Netflix, and we had to — we wrote the pilot obviously, and we didn’t know where we were gonna produce it, and found Bardel. So there was so much time between even just starting to think about it and when it came out.

R: Yeah, cause that was like 2015, right?

A: Yeah, I guess we started the journey in 2015 and we got with Bardel by the end of 2016, and it got released evidently in 2018, so... Yeah, yeah, cause I remember even we were writing kind of the end of season 3 when we had that panel with Marco and named the character after Marco.

R: Oh yeah.

A: The character [chuckles] from the first episode, we only had an opportunity for him to say his name out loud in that last episode because we were writing the ending while we were showing the episodes for first time, so. Anyway, that’s my reflection, it’s great it’s been six years.

R: Yeah. I know The Dragon Prince has been a really like — both life changing and I think, like, life affirming experience for a lot of people, myself included. So we just really appreciate everybody’s hard work on the show and are very excited for season 7 and hopefully beyond as well. As well for any future projects that Wonderstorm comes out with, like Bonders sounds amazing.

A: I feel — well first of all, thank you for saying that it’s life affirming, that’s such a nice thing to hear about something you’ve worked on, but I also agree that Justin and I feel a ton of gratitude for the whole team and the work and heart that everyone put into making this. I think people wanted it to be meaningful and special and that takes a certain kind of energy and vulnerability to build something like that, that you share, and our whole team really did give that in building the show.

R: Yeah. I think for sure. I think that’s like, um, I was even — I was rewatching some of the show earlier for — for a parallel, and it was the scene between Avizandum and Zubeia when she goes to him in like her kind of corruption dream semi-nightmare, and obviously that’s such a heartfelt, touching scene, and it’s always so strange. Because on the one hand, you should hate Avizandum, he killed Sarai and Rex Igneous has rightful criticism of him, but then you watch that scene of him and he really did love his family, so I think the show being able to draw out those strong, conflicting emotions for so many of the characters is one of the reasons why it connects with people to the degree that it does.

A: And that’s one of the themes you probably see in the show — just gonna make a quick —

R: Yeah, yeah for sure. 

A: Avizandum, which is that being a good dad can make up for awful lot of [R laughs] monstrosities, as long as you’re doing it in the name of being a good dad. I’m joking, uh. Of course, yeah, Avizandum was always meant to be a complicated figure like many of our characters. 

R: You mentioned that you guys have been working on — I think season three during this panel with Marco, or Marcos, and I remember, I think you’ve said before that the seasons get worked on concurrently, that there’s a decent amount of overlap.

A: Yeah.

R: I’ve always wondered, because we know — obviously, I’m a big Rayllum fan — but I’ve always wondered, cause I know they weren’t originally planned, and then you guys were boarding season two when you were like, “Hey, maybe this should be a thing,” and then probably like shifted and tweaked things or changed things to write more towards that in the future... Um, I’ve always wondered, if there was time, like at that time, to go back and change anything in season one for them, or the season one that we see was just like that?

A: I don’t recall there was time to change season 1 — that does happen because we are working on things in parallel because we are working on something in the script and then some time later we are working on the later stage of production, like an animatic, and we’ll be able to kind of give notes or even make changes with the knowledge of what’s coming, so that has happened. But in the case of Rayllum, I don’t think so. I mean, I think — again, I remember...

R: It was a while ago, yeah.

A: We were rekindling, or when we were realizing that something was being kindled between them, it was watching an animatic so that shouldn’t have informed our writing of season one, but our later stage stuff. But we weren’t trying to force anything so it got in there naturally and I don’t think we went back and changed anything.

R: Yeah, that’s what I’ve always — they had those kind of vibes to me from like episode two and three, obviously season two brought a lot more people on board, but I was always curious. Cause in season one, like, I think, it feels so natural, it feels so organic, and like I’ve shown — one of the things I love about Dragon Prince is it’s a great way to connect with friends and family and you kind of catch up with each other like through the show, of “oh have you seen the new season yet?” and that sort of stuff. And so when I’ve shown the show to like my brother-in-law, who is not plugged in at all, he also kind of picked up on it in season one, so I’ve always been curious. 

A: You know, what else, I’ll even say, I think we initially, intentionally planned they weren’t going to be a couple. We were like “Oh yeah, no, they’re—”

R: Friends, yeah.

A: Friends, with different views of the world and they journey together, and we don’t want them to be a couple. We’re not — we’re definitely not targeting it. I think we were intentionally not targeting it, and then it was “too bad creators! [R laughs] We’re going to fall in love despite everything you’re planning.”

R: Well, that very much I think even fits what they represent to each other, of like you don’t have to do this path that you think you have to do...

A: Yeah.

R: You can be something new. I always kind of felt like Ezran and Zym were — felt very kind of like designed as foils, as like a pair, of like through Zym, Ezran learns more so like how to grow up, and they’re both like the princes who will be king, and then Callum and Rayla also kind of felt sort of like developed as a pair, in terms of like — he needs to gain more confidence, she’s pretty confident on the surface.

A: Yeah.

R: She needs to learn how to open up, he’s really good at being open especially in the beginning.

A: Right. 

R: So I was always like...

A: He needs to be murdered, she needs to learn how to murder someone.

R: Yeah! They complete each other, yeah. Uh... Some other questions that I had [rapid typing]. So I guess, maybe, I have some questions that are more season specific, in respect to time, but I also had like more general questions. 

A: Okay.

R: So, one of the things I’ve always love in general and really love about The Dragon Prince is its like use of philosophy and like its deeply interested in ethical and moral questions, and presenting some answers for some of them, but like are those the right answers? We don’t know. 

A: Right.

R: So I know King Harrow’s choosing of Lady Justice’s blindfold is a pretty apt comparison to John Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance—

A: Yes.

R: Of, you know, you strip away everything that you could have, like advantages, disadvantages, and think, would the system work for me? Which has been useful when I’ve like, had to tutor students in philosophy actually, but I was curious, were there any like philosophical concepts or ideas that people really, or you really, wanted to work into the series? ‘Cause we have a lot of trolley problems.

A: Right. Um, probably. I mean like, I should say, I was a philosophy concentrator in college so I absorbed a lot. Things like  Rawls, I had a class with John Rawls, and thought that was a really interesting concept and I liked including it, and I thought we can include it in a fun way, the idea of justice. So other philosophy probably makes its way in, it can makes its way in accidentally or subconsciously, so nothing specific right now comes to mind. I will say, as with kind of Avatar before this, I don’t like to have — I’m not trying to have a right answer, ever. I’m trying to have the characters have a deeper understanding of what they’re struggling with, and y’know, move in a direction of deeper understanding, so if anything, it’s more interesting to me to see conflicts between maybe philosophical approaches that are different and see how — Oh well, this has these kinds of results, and positives and negatives, and this has... so that the audience can have a chance to say, “Oh well okay, I have some thoughts on that,” or “here’s what I feel,” and that’s why sometimes I think we see the fandom actually kind of go back and forth—

R: Yeah.

A: On — around characters and people’s choices, and things like dark magic or Viren, which are controversial, are things where like, I do not have a strong point of view on... the kind of binary right or wrong of... Viren in the long term. He’s made a lot of wrong choices and he’s made a lot of choices for good. 

R: Yeah.

A: He is an arrogant and power hungry person and he’s also a caring and loving father and someone who wants to have a positive impact on the world, right, like?

R: Yeah.

A: So those conflicts play out in him. But similarly, I think with maybe most of the philosophical ideas I can think of, I’d rather get to like a place where everyone just has a chance to entertain those thoughts and ideas and struggle with them, or hold them in an authentic way, and then can come to their own conclusions and feelings. I mean, I have some deep feelings about like, the world, and how can people be optimistic or not pessimistic or—y’know, what it means to hold onto hope or what it means to try to move past conflict, and I have beliefs that there are conflicts that get so you know, kind of sewn in, that they feel they are impossible to untangle, and especially if the game you’re playing is who started it, or who did the worst thing, where you can’t just ever untangle it. You can’t ever find a right or wrong, so how do you get past that? That’s one of the questions I was hoping Rayla, Callum, and Ezran would try to—

R: Figure it out.

A: Struggle with. Anyway, I’m giving a very long winded answer—

R: No, no.

A: That’s the philosophy that comes to mind. If something comes to mind for you, you can bring it up and I can go, “Oh yeah, that was probably influenced by so-and-so.” [R laughs] Or maybe not.

R: Well, one of the things I loved about season six was kind of — you see, even... One of the things I thought was really interesting was we see, not quite like that return to trolley problems, but we see Aaravos at the end of season 5 is telling Viren you have to make the sacrifice so that you can live, and then we see Rayla tell Callum, “Hey, if the choice ever happens, you also have to sacrifice me,” for — so Callum can live, but also for like the greater good and that sort of stuff. And then you have Kpp’Ar, who — I love Kpp’Ar, I think he’s terrible and interesting and I love him.

A: Awesome. He is — we’ll learn a little more about him in the future, but yes.

R: And obviously when Viren’s like, “A child will die,” and this is a kid that Kpp’Ar would’ve known, and we see in The Puzzle House that he loved these kids, and whatever is up with the Staff is bad enough that Kpp’Ar’s like, “Okay. I’ll make that sacrifice.” Which feels very much in a way like he’s given up on dark magic, and to a certain degree he’s both given up on the mindset of dark magic, and maybe also hasn’t given it up in the same way. Like I love that — Claudia, you know, obviously, puts Viren above all else, is she always right to do so? Maybe not, but we get why she’s doing it, that’s a hard thing to say. And then we have Callum, who also seems inclined to put Rayla above all else, and because we like Rayla more, we’re like “Yeah, he can do that, it’s okay for him to do dark magic for her, that’s fine,” even if there’s also like, consequences. Cause most characters in the show, like you said, everybody kind of wants the same thing, they wanna have a positive impact on the world, they want to protect their loved ones, but what constitutes that world, what they think is a positive impact, or who they want — how they protect those people, that’s all very malleable and can fluctuate. Viren says “Claudia, you’re on the wrong path,” and we’re like yeah, he’s right, and Karim says the same thing about Janai, like the exact same thing, and we’re like, well he’s wrong.

A: Yeah. I mean a lot of things come to mind when you’re talking through that, but one is there’s often a conflict between rigidity and rules and some kind of compassion, or emotional decision, and those decisions are hard, right? Like I dunno, maybe Kpp’Ar should’ve said, “Okay just this once, it’s Soren,” or not, I don’t know. I mean obviously Kpp’Ar had taken himself to some deep horrible place and he really had, actually. And was like, “Okay, dark magic is just corruption when you start and keep going down this path, but this Viren’s kid so I don’t know.” One of the things here, I think there’s a relationship between — you know, sacrifice plays a role here. Sacrifice and thinking about generations and generational conflict and thinking you know maybe in a way I think is interesting. I think about the beginning of season 6 when Claudia has done all of this and sacrificed another life but also sacrifices some of her soul or whatever to save her dad and he’s like “No no! This is not the way! A parent is supposed to do this for a child but never the other way around,” right? And there’s something to that I find interesting which is — it’s almost the inverse of children having the opportunity to start anew and break cycles, parents potentially have the opportunity to make sacrifices that don’t pass by burdens onto their kids, but sort of like that’s the mirror I see a little bit, in terms of how do you have generational change and evolution? It’s somewhere in younger generations being able to not get stuck on conflicts and burdens, but also the older generations recognizing that they may have to be the one to take the — and this is I think a natural... I dunno, it’s something I think about a little bit and came to mind when you were talking. So we’ll see more about what is the meaning of sacrifice and when — when do you... trade? Yeah.

R: Yeah.

A: Side note on sacrifice. You’re familiar with Game of Thrones? You’ve watched all of Game of Thrones?

R: I’m decently familiar, yeah.

A: Okay.

R: And if not, I can have Kuno explain it to me later, so.

A: One of the things I love about the sacrifice Ned made, that we didn’t realize he’d made until I think the very end of the series, we realize — a sacrifice to his kind of reputation, right? And I’m talking about him representing Jon Snow as his bastard to protect him, right? Think about that, that’s a sacrifice, he had to go through the anger — he didn’t tell his wife the truth, he didn’t tell anyone, because it was the only way to protect the child, and as a result he lived with — even though the truth is that he was a really honest, good, or evidently he didn’t go cheat on his wife, he sacrificed that part of his reputation to protect Jon, at least how I see it. I think things like that are kind of interesting. I dunno.

R: Yeah. Yeah, I think it speaks to that idea of — one of the things I love about Dragon Prince is it’s so much about choices.

A: Yeah.

R: Like one of the things I really really liked about season 6 was that, you know, Callum is like, “Okay, I’m going to get myself purified, healed of dark magic,” and Rayla was his light, which was very validating, cause I had noticed in season two there was like some framing so I was like well “Maybe, maybe” you know? And then slowburn buildup but it was — I think that was a great moment that really paid off. And he’s told “if you ever do this again, it’ll corrupt you completely.” And whether he will or won’t — I personally think that he will, but spoilers, you know — but whether he will or won’t, I think it’s really nice because now whatever choice he makes, he’s making with the full context, of what this would do to him.

A: Yeah.

R: Whereas in season two, yes he was making his choice to do dark magic then, and I don’t necessarily think he would make a fundamentally different one if he had known what it would lead to, but there’s a different kind of awareness. Like I always of it would’ve been so easy to have Harrow not know that Viren was going to kill Zym, cause that’s such an easy way to kind of let Harrow off the hook of well Viren went off and did this on his own, and Harrow had no idea, and blah blah blah, right? Cause we like Harrow, he’s a — again, he’s a good dad, we’ll forgive a lot. And instead, it’s not his idea but he’s fully aware, he signs off on it. And I think constantly pushing characters to make hard choices — kind of like what Ezran says, “these aren’t dreams, these are choices.”

A: Yeah.

R: You can choose love, you can choose to make... It’s something that makes all the characters feel so fully developed and interesting, so I always appreciate that you guys push them to make the hard choice. 

A: Yeah. Cool. Thank you.

R: One question I did have is, uh, Karim is one of my favourite characters.

A: Okay. Unusual person. A lot of people hate — or love to hate...? I love him too. 

R: I also love Kasef, so I think I just kind of love everyone, because I’m like well, they’re really interesting. I feel like [Karim’s] arc was one of the things I loved most about season 4 because you can see him really wrestling with his choices and I love watching him fail, cause that’s kind of all he does, so that’s always fun. But I am really curious obviously now he’s been betrayed by Sol Regem, Katolis is in ashes and maybe they’ll blame Karim for that cause Sol Regem is like — dead, and now, presumably his only hope is going to be that his sister doesn’t execute him on the spot? 

A: Yeah.

R: So is there anything you can tease about Karim’s arc in season 7?

A: Yeah, so — so it’s not just Karim, there’s an army of people who betrayed Janai, and — and...

R: What do we do?

A: Yeah, what do we do? That will be something we’ll have to see them grapple with pretty much right away in the season. Especially cause [Karim’s army] showed up for this battle where they were never even — they were just planning to sweep up the ashes afterwards, so when they didn’t get the dragon support they needed, I suspect they lost really quickly. 

R: Yes, yeah.

A: So uh... Yeah, but basically as of the start of season 7 — all of them are prisoners of Queen Janai and the question is — what do you do with that? What do you do when you have an entire army and your own brother who betrayed you? And so that’s — we’ll find out.

R: Yeah. [Laughs] 

A: But yeah.

R: Yeah. Another question I had going forward was Terry and Claudia obviously I thought had a really beautiful relationship arc, particularly in season 6, and we saw in season 4 the lengths he’s willing to go to for her, and how Terry, I think, is a great example of how there’s a lot of character traits where we think “oh, if you’re a selfless, helpful, accepting person, you’re a good person,” and I feel like Dragon Prince does a really good job of how, Rayla’s selflessness can be great but it can also be kinda bad, or, um, Terry can be super accepting, maybe a little too—

A: Yeah.

R: —accepting sometimes, right? So I feel like at the end of season 6, it will presumably be him, Claudia, and Aaravos for a little bit now that he’s out of the prison. And it feels like maybe Terry might hit a breaking point?

A: Here’s what I will say — Terry is a really special character and if you watched him, he’s so good, and what we’ll find out is, he is — there is an episode called TRUE HEART and he is someone who has a true heart.

R: Oh that’s so sweet.

A: It’s very impossibly rare and special — but also we all understand what a true heart is in some way and we’ll learn a little more about that. But yeah, the question of what will Terry do, what can he do, is difficult because he has a very strong sense of right and wrong, but he has a very deep capacity for love and he loves Claudia with all of his heart. Where does that present an impossible conflict, it may... we’ll see a challenge.

R: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

A: I’ll also throw in like I sometimes see some parallels between Terry and Uncle Iroh—

R: Yes.

A: Though Uncle Iroh I think has a very different journey. Iroh is kind of a recovered problematic person who now has some wisdom and enlightenment, so in terms of the difference between the purity of a true heart versus where Iroh is more of a later stage enlightenment, the love that they have for the kind of complicated person that they are with is similar to me. And the way that they both sometimes have to, or don’t have to but...

R: Choose to?

A: You have to give that person the space — you can’t force them to choose right or wrong, you can be there with them, you can try to guide them, you can — but ultimately you have to give them the space to fail, and eventually, you may have to turn your back on them. 

R: Yeah.

A: At some point. I don’t know. But um yeah — I still see them as connected characters in my mind. 

R: I think I can even see some of that with even the way Callum is with Rayla, like season five onwards, of like “I’ve hit my turning point, I’m not mad at you anymore, and you can steal my key, you can lie to me, and I’m not going to have you open up to me out of guilt or obligation, I want you to tell me what’s going on when you want to tell me what’s going on, and I’m going to give you the space for that.” So I think it speaks to that unconditional love that I think—

A: Yeah.

R: —a lot of the characters are blessed to have. But I do see the Terry Iroh connection. So another thing that I thought was really interesting was — obviously next season is dark magic, and I’m very hopeful that maybe we’ll learn more about the origins of dark magic or Elarion, even. 

A: Great.

R: Because I know when I was watching Sol Regem burn down Katolis, it made me think of what might’ve either happened or almost happened to Elarion in the past, you know? 

A: Yeah.

R: Even down to Ziard and Viren both die, kind of deflecting and trying to save people, with the same staff, you know, and how the cycle continues to just always repeat itself over and over again. And if there was like — yeah, cause burning down Katolis was a massive shakeup, you know?

A: Yup.

R: And what maybe the process was there, with the — Aaravos seems like he’s trying to repeat the cycle of like “Oh I’m going to take down the dragon monarchy or I’m gonna use that vacancy to my advantage, and mess with the Sunfire elves.”

A: He has a specific vendetta against Sol Regem, obviously, but it’s one where he has played it out in... What’s certainly meant to be implied, even though we’ll find out more later, is that one of the great mysteries of Sol Regem’s life is that his mate disappeared and he never found her. He’s the freaking Dragon King, and she disappeared. And though we don’t know how or what happened, while she was buried alive. He killed her. He didn’t even realize it, somehow. Somehow, Aaravos manipulated him into killing her, and he doesn’t — I dunno, I assume Sol Regem does understand when it must have happened, but that moment, it’s like an impossible — it’s meant to be just...

R: Awful.

A: He’s tortured him for 1000 years or whatever, without him knowing he was being tortured by Aaravos, and now he’s given him the mercy/cruelty of knowing the resolution to the mystery was that he killed her. And one of the things that worked well with that was that, we had sort of said Sol Regem can smell the truth from a lie, so he has the horrible curse of being able to know this is the deep dark truth. So I dunno, I think um, are we going to find out more about that? So, if we can eventually get the Book Three novel out [R laughs], we will find out more about that.

R: I did wonder, I was like “Maybe this is something that was gonna be in the book three novelization.”

A: Yes, we will find out more in the book three novel, it may be a year or so before unfortunately. And then I don’t think we’re gonna get too deep into that in season seven, that’s part of — it is involved in what we’re thinking about as the third arc, understanding and resolving the third arc, is gonna go a little deeper into...

R: Some of the history, yeah.

A: Some of the stuff that happened with Sol Regem. But yeah, no, I — it’s enjoyable to have these figures like Aaravos and Sol Regem who are ancient and operate over the course of centuries and are incredibly powerful, yet they can’t — or at least Aaravos,  they can’t conflict directly as easily, and so Aaravos has played this really complicated game. Anyway, but yes Sol Regem is part of that, but there’s — there’s more, there’s more people who — beings that took from him. He feels that Leola was unfairly punished and that that was — you know, he sees a future and he has something... All this time, a burning — it’s the twisted form of his love, in which he’s full of hate right now to the beings who brought this about. Obviously, Sol Regem played a role because he’s a rules dragon.

R: Yeah, yeah.

A: He is the one who betrayed her to the Cosmic Council ultimately — but how do you punish the Cosmic Council? That’s a bit more complicated.

R: Yeah. No, I remember finishing season six and just being so impressed with the story. Like, taking that direction, and almost doing a lot of recontextualization, because it’s one thing to have like your worldbuilding where “magic in the story works like this” and it’s just very kind of like hand of God, you know? Like oh — cause the magic system has always been unfair, that’s why we have Callum, you know? It’s another thing to say we’re going to have characters in the story who are responsible for it being unfair. And now we’re just going to have that in terms of conflict and themes of destiny. We have about seven, ten-ish minutes left I think.

A: Probably seven, if that’s okay?

R: Yeah. Of course. 

A: I’ll throw one other thing in there, which is that — cause characters experience things that change them: has Aaravos experienced — I’ll phrase it as a question, even though probably the answer is here, has Aaravos experienced much that has changed him in the last — since the death of Leola? I mean certainly some things, and is what’s happening now changing him in any way? Is it satisfaction, is it the relationship with Claudia, and what does that mean to someone? That’s a question that I think we’ll have to watch play out a little bit.

R: [Intrigued] Okay. Yeah. One thing that I really liked about Leola’s character was I felt like she had pieces of each of the main trio in her? Of this very helpful innocent well meaning child, kind of like Ezran — and I have also always seen Ezran as autistic as well cause I know that Leola canonically is — and then you also kind of have the whole oh she gave  / helped humans have primal magic, which obviously Callum has. And even just being this young elven girl punished for her compassion and mercy, that felt a lot like Rayla. And when making the choice for Leola to be Leola, was that something intentional or like the choice for it to be a child rather than another loved one?

A: It was very intentional that it was a child... And we talked through other versions of Leola that could’ve been, in other ages, genders, relationships with Aaravos that an important person was lost. Some of the things I liked about the way, Leola both as a child, children are the cycle breakers.

R: Yes, yeah. I think it was the strongest choice.

A: And in particular also, the idea of coding her autistic was a little bit like not as cued to kind of accept the social order and the order of things, but actually more open in a way to in what some people see as like — something that’s broken which is not taking those cues, something else about that — not being bound by it that allowed her to have compassion that crossed the line in terms of the perceptions of what the Cosmic Order needed to be in it — but it made her more, both as a child and an autistic person, to make that choice and do what she did that changed everything.

R: Makes a lot of sense.

A: [Her being a child] also frames it with some innocence obviously right? It’s not calculated, it’s kind. 

R: Yeah.

A: So I dunno.

R: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been curious about how Ezran might be challenged now that Runaan is back in the picture.

A: That’s a great question. That’s a great question. I mean, it’s so weird, it’s like no one even asks that, it’s like “Cool,” Rayla’s like “I’m gonna go get him. Awesome! Runaan’s back.”

R: Yeah I’m like either — either Callum is like “Ezran will be totally fine with it,” and Ezran  is probably not going to be fine with it, or maybe Callum knew that maybe it wouldn’t be great, and kept it under wraps. Yeah, I’m so excited for that like trio, potential broyals conflict, so...

A: Well, I mean, Ezran is a very special kid and he’s very positive and kind and forgiving and all of this. But we’re talking about, Runaan is back.

R: Castle’s destroyed.

A: Katolis is rubble. Where does that leave him?

R: Yeah.

A: You know? I mean — so I’m excited about that part of Ezran.

R: I know the fandom is really, really excited for Ezran to get to be — not that he hasn’t always been complex, but to get to be like messier, of letting his emotions maybe get the better of him and that sort of thing. So people are definitely hype for that, for — cause I feel like season six really brought home a lot of things for Soren, and it seems like season seven is going to do a similar thing for Ezran, so that’s — that’s really exciting. Um, with our final couple minutes, I wanted to see — do you have any questions that you want fans to ponder or to be thinking about?

A: Um... Gosh. I don’t think I have anything specific that we haven’t talked about, but you know. On some level, like, you know how do you take the tragedies and conflicts that we all inevitably face repetitively and relentlessly and kind of learn to move forward in hope and optimism? I think that’s more of a question of like how do you personally learn to process — all the kind of bullshit in the world, and process it, and still move forward as a kind, connected—

R: Measured person.

A: —hopeful person? That’s a challenge we all face in our lives, so that’s like...

R: Yeah. Well, I think the show does a good — really good job at asking and challenging that — that question. Uh, yeah, I think — I think that’s our time for today, uh. Thank you so much, this was... 

A: It was my pleasure. 

R: This was a lot of fun.

A: It’s always my pleasure reading your theories and your—

R: [Gasps] Oh my gosh.

A: Honestly, I came on today and to tell the truth [R laughs] a little bit intimidated.

R: Oh my God. 

A: You’re so—

R: I also felt intimidated [laughing] so don’t worry.

A: You’re so insightful and articulate, that I almost am like [R laughs] what if they catch me that there’s something not as smart in the show as I thought it was?

R: Oh my gosh, no, you’re fine.

A: [Overlapping] So anyway, I really enjoy what you write—

R: [Overlapping] I’m also a writer so I know what it’s like to be like “I did this subconsciously,” it’s — yeah.

A: I love what you instigate in the fandom and the kind of conversations you support and engage in. I’m a huge fan of yours, so.

R: Oh! Thank you so much, that’s so sweet. Um. And I am a huge fan of yours.

A: Yay. That’s a great way to end a podcast.

R: That is a great way. Okay. Alright, well thank you so much, hope you have a great day, great week, uh, and — yeah. Okay.

A: Alright, and I’ll see you soon, we’ll do this again sometime, I hope. 

R: Yes! Yeah. Okay.

A: Alright. Thanks again. Alright, bye.

[koalatydm]

Hot Brown Morning Potion Podcast Episode 5 - The Deluxe Elf Interview with Devon Giehl and Iain Hendry

Transcription Part 1 of 2 (includes Wonderstorm questions and Kuno's questions)

[Transcriber's Notes: This took me SO LONG to transcribe, like multiple hours and I'm only halfway done... But I will make it through at least this one episode because I want fellow Moonfam enthusiasts to have a text source, not to mention make it easier for deaf/HoH people to follow along. I guess I'll tag @kuno-chan since she said it was OK at the beginning of the podcast, sorry if I'm bothering you!]

KUNO: Hi guys, so I have a personal request for this particular podcast episode if you guys could tweet, post, both at least one piece of information that you learned from this particular episode, that you love, that inspired you, that you thought was cute, whatever. Like, I really—one thing that really tends to happen is that people listen to the podcast and they kinda just go about their day. We don’t actually see the information circulate through the community, which we really try to have creative questions—questions that are fun and explore the characters in different situations. And it would just be really, really cool—it would mean a lot to me to see this actually circulate through the community, actually circulate through the fandom, and see, you know, it would be awesome to see it be inspired—to inspire fan works, fan fiction, fan art, especially fan art. I just—we talked like a solid hour at least—really like a solid hour about Runaan, Rayla, Ethari, that family, um, and Moonshadow elves a lot. We talked a lot about that. And I think this is information that a lot of people really wanted, even if it’s in largely headcanon form. But Devon and Iain were so gracious and we talked so much about that family, and including Ruthari, and of course some Rayllum in there. So if you guys could live tweet, or even just one tweet, at least one tweet. Tag us, tag me, tag Hailey, tag @HotPotion, even if you send it directly to me on Tumblr, that’d be awesome and we’d retweet, reblog all your stuff. It would be good for the podcast and I just really want to see this information circulate through the fandom, so at least one tweet. Alright, um, let’s get to the episode though. Thanks! Hope to see you guys on social media about this.

—————

KUNO: Alright, hey everyone, this is the Hot Brown Morning Potion Podcasts with your hosts Tamika and Hailey, and we are here with Devon Giehl and Iain Hendry, two writers on The Dragon Prince at Wonderstorm, and Devon being actually the recently announced lead writer at Wonderstorm, so say hi everyone!

DEVON: Hi!

IAIN: Hi, this is Iain…

DEVON: Hi, I’m Devon… (laughs)

KUNO: And so we have a ton of stuff to get through today, um, a lot of questions, so—but we’re going to ask Iain and Devon a little bit about themselves first, since I think—I’m not sure if this is the first interview they’ve really had, personally, so uh, Hailey do you want to start—head that?

HAILEY: Um, yeah, sure. Uh, could you tell us about your roles at Wonderstorm?

IAIN: Uh, sure, uh—I’m also a writer at—official title “Senior Writer” at Wonderstorm. I was one of the writing team on the show, not quite as early as Devon, who was basically employee 1 after the founders but um, I joined sort of, end of 2016 when season 1 writing was really starting to get rolling, and was you know part of the process all the way through all the seasons. Uh, and since this—it’s such a small start up company, all the writers take a bunch of other, like, production roles on the show. Like, throughout all three seasons we’ve done, like, continuity notes work, we’ve given feedback on like every step of the production process. And then the other kind of side things we have, like you know, very top secret game that we’re making in here. And like, kind of straddle the line between the show writing and the game so that that’s all kind of on point and feels like it’s in the same universe with the same characters as The Dragon Prince, but ah, can’t say too much about that just yet.

DEVON: Iain does a lot of—a lot of secret work (laughs). Um, yeah as for me, I’m also a writer on The Dragon Prince and my—I was a Senior Writer until very recently, and now I’ve been made into a Lead Writer, which means I just get to flex a lot. Um, but I started in, I think the very, very end of 2015 when Wonderstorm was first getting off the ground as like a tiny, tiny startup. And we were basically four people in a room about, I don’t know, like 20 ft by 10 ft. It was really, really awful—

IAIN: Really smelly.

DEVON: Really smelly, really tiny, like only a skylight for a window, it was great. And I—so I was involved in like the earliest of brainstorming for the show. I helped sort of like put together a lot of the pitch deck when we you know took it around to studios and like, I named like most of the characters—is like my most self-indulgent claim on the show cause I got to do a lot of really silly stuff. Um, but yeah, and then I like help out on a million other fronts at Wonderstorm too because we’re a small company and—yeah, the funny thing about the—the small tasks we have, like you mentioned continuity checks. Um, we often had to make sure that Callum’s backpack and book and Rayla’s bindings were always correct, and that was kind of, the funniest and most intense, like, stage of production ever. Cause you would, you know, watch one shot and then the next shot would come up and Callum’s backpack would have disappeared. So we had to be like, “OK, let’s give Callum backpack back on.”

IAIN: Yeah, and it’s not just for accuracy, but like, the way fandoms operate, like, we just knew if Rayla’s binding reappeared sometime, it wouldn’t be viewed as an error. People would be like “WHAT DID THE KING GET UNKILLED WHAT HAPPENED OVER HERE”.

DEVON: No it was just the—

KUNO: Oh, yeah.

IAIN: Woo!

DEVON: —continuity’s way harder than anyone thinks it is (laughs). It’s a lot.

KUNO: Oh bless you guys for knowing that though cause we—we totally would. Like, think, there was a point I remember saying that they changed Viren’s eye color because they didn’t want too much continuity with Rayla’s eye color and I feel like we were really that close to having a ‘Viren is Rayla’s real father’ issue. We really were. Somebody had to have thought about that issue (laughs).

DEVON: I actually think there is—there’s still at least one shot in the show where Viren has the wrong eye color and if you can find it, congratulations (laughter in background). That’s where we missed—missed it. So it’s in there somewhere.

KUNO: Xadia CSI (IAIN laughs). So you two are married, um, can you tell us what it’s like being married writing partners?

IAIN: You wanna go?

DEVON: Um, yeah, I mean it’s—we actually knew each other professionally before we dated, so it wasn’t like we—it’s sort of like, it was easy for us to—to remain work partners because that was how we existed in the first place. Like I met Iain when I interviewed him for a job and I—he was great (IAIN laughs), he was fun, he was all right.

IAIN: Apparently I passed.

DEVON: But um, so yeah we had a professional relationship before we had a dating—‘dating’ relationship. Um, so it’s strange because a lot of people will say like, “Oh, that’s probably terrible. You probably, like, become absolutely sick of each other” but somehow we’ve managed to—to have like, two relationship patterns where when we’re at work and we’re working on writing stuff we have this very professional thing going on and then at home, we’re just married idiots and we have a lot of fun. So like, I don’t know, I’m never tired of you, personally.

IAIN: No, (DEVON laughs) yeah I mean when we’re writing it’s generally like, Devon’s the one on the keys uh, you know, putting the words in and so on, and it will kind of bounce back and forth between like, I’ll have the idea for the—how the scene should flow and I’ll kinda narrate bits and then we’ll go back and smooth things over. But I mean, I could imagine that with some people it would get tense, but I think Devon and I, we’re just absolutely the most comfortable with each other and neither of us takes it personally when it’s like, “that line that you pitched isn’t working” or “this joke could be funnier”, anything like that.

DEVON: It’s usually Iain who’s—cause I usually type cause I type really too fast.

IAIN: She’s really too proud of her typing (laughs).

DEVON: I type super fast, it’s my only real talent, but—like I’ll just sort of go off on some sort of like incredibly unnecessary, long description of something and Iain will sort of let me get about like four or five lines into this unnecessary nonsense and he’ll just sort start going like, “OK so like, do we really—do we need that? I mean, you know, could we sort of parse this down a little, a little less, a little less”. And then I, just like, “Ugh, fine” (laughs).

IAIN: But um, every word she writes is great.

DEVON: Mmm (skeptically)

IAIN: It’s perfect.

DEVON: Completely not true. Also in our scripts I think like—

KUNO: Aw.

DEVON: —in terms of the way that we work professionally, I think like a lot of my strengths are in—in really almost self indulgent levels of drama and he can kind of pull me back from being too indulgent on those fronts. And then I think that Iain is objectively absurdly funny and so when you kind of look at our episodes usually everything that’s pretty funny and lighthearted and like the sense of levity often comes from you and then if there’s anything that just feels really painfully sad it’s probably me?

IAIN: I’m the funny one.

DEVON: (laughs) It’s true.

KUNO: Aw, I feel such a connection to you Devon, because I’m actually, episode 3 was actually one of my favorite ones because I love all that like domestic stuff. I love just kind of like—oh, I don’t know what you call the trope, like a safe house trope where you go somewhere, you’re still kind of in the adventure but we’re in a space right now, a narrative space where people are safe, if that makes any sense. Like you—if you’ve ever seen How To Train Your Dragon, like (T/N I don’t know what was said here, sorry!), the base is the safe place, that kind of thing. So, I totally get that, I actually see—episode 3 was one of my favorites outside of pretty much every episode where Rayllum was a thing. (laughter from multiple people)

HAILEY: The whole season basically (laughs).

KUNO: Pretty much the whole season, um. I think there was one more question about two.

HAILEY: Yeah sooo.

KUNO: Before we get to the elves.

HAILEY: Yeah, definitely. Uh so it was mentioned that you’re now lead writer, Devon, and can you tell a little bit more about what that entails if you can, and how that’s been going?

DEVON: Yeah, I mean… I actually don’t know what I can say about it, um… I think it—it means that uh, for future Dragon Prince stuff I’ll sort of like take a bit more of an active role in leading the—the development and the storylines and things like that. It also means that from a company perspective um I’ve been kind of involved in some other side stuff that Wonderstorm is quietly looking into developing and um I help a lot with other IPs that we would love to make a real thing someday and that’s kind of all I can say about it I think or I’ll get in trouble.

HAILEY: All right, that’s great, that’s good to know, thank you.

KUNO: The Dragon Prince 2 (laughter from multiple people). I’m totally joking everyone that’s not a thing so don’t take that for—

HAILEY: Wow.

KUNO: I’m joking.

IAIN: Two dragons.

DEVON: The Dragon 2 Prince.

KUNO: Yeah. OK also if there’s anything that you guys say that you want redacted this is probably not going up for another week because I have to get our reaction episode out. So anything you guys think about that you’re like, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that” just message us and we’ll redact that. Yeah, cause we know that—

HAILEY: Or just say it. Just tell us, like, what’s—

DEVON: Hopefully we have some self-control but—

KUNO: Okay, so we are going to get really indulgent here and I think this is going to be really in Devon’s wheelhouse. We have a lot of questions and a bunch of the scenarios so try to get through as much of it as possible. Um so the first question is can you tell us more about the Silvergrove? What is the government system like in Silvergrove? Who runs it? If you could tell us that is that the only—at least like the leadership role? Um, is that the only Moonshadow elf village? And also do they actually get any real daylight because I noticed when the illusion thing happened it just got shady and I’m like, “They might be taking this Moonshadow thing too far”. Like the elves—do they really like that much? So like tell us about the Silvergrove and where Rayla grew up.

IAIN: So I guess it’s probably worth just starting off with a kind of blanket like, ‘if it hasn’t been in the show, we can’t say it’s 100% fact. A lot of this is just gonna be what kind of we thought, rough shape of things happen in our heads—‘

KUNO: Yeah, absolutely.

IAIN: —going into the writing and so on. So you know, don’t come after me with any, uh, fandom lawyers, anyone. But um yeah, I guess like it’s sort of—it’s most useful for us to think about it in comparison to how the Sunfire elves, like clearly they have very structured society. They have a queen, obviously, and they have large cities and so on whereas we think Moonshadow elves live in, as you saw, much smaller communities. And I think the Silvergrove is not the only one of those, it might be one of the better known ones where clearly the best assassins come from. But uh, I think are other ones out there, um, and maybe even Moonshadow elf people do not know where all the other ones are. Obviously the Silvergrove is hidden and maybe they don’t even have access to all the other ones. So I think there’s a sort of community run vibe to things. I think you know when they decided to—to ghost Rayla, and before that Rayla’s parents, I think that was probably a ‘let’s all come to a consensus before we make a decision about something like this’. I think, Devon, if you want to talk about the kind of like sunlight vibes things, because that was a big part of your driving force behind how this episode looked and felt.

DEVON: Um… well… first, I will say that it was potentially from the top down a complicated visual decision to have episode 3 take place in a Moonshadow elf shady forest grove and also the kingdom of sunlight.

IAIN: Yup.

DEVON: It created a couple production problems in terms of like the way we wanted the Silvergrove to look was very like evening themed and cool colors and you know shaded. And I had this really sort of self indulgent thing where I really wanted it to be as close to night time as possible and yet the story line in Lux Aurea was clearly taking place in the middle of the day. So we came to this sort of compromise that you know it is technically daytime through the whole day and there is enough tree cover that it’s already pretty shadowy but also I think there is some magic at play that’s sort of like generally um shrouds the whole thing in more of like a night time vibe. And my inspiration for that was I’m a big World of Warcraft player, or was I don’t super play a ton anymore but I really loved Ashenvale and some of the night elf regions and they had that similar thing that no matter what time of day it was it always felt like at least dusk or like this sort of like ever—ever shaded feeling. And I indulgently kind of wanted that to be where Rayla came from. So that’s what that’s about.

IAIN: Yeah and I think they’re magical beings. They don’t need vitamin D from the sunlight or anything like that. They’re totally fine if they just get moonlight every so often.

DEVON: But yeah, don’t write a script that has, you know, moon themed place and sun themed place at the same time. It was a… questionable choice (laughs). But I think it turned out—

KUNO: Yeah, ‘cause I was wondering—I was wondering—I was like “Okay” because a lot of the stuff you run through—you run the okay, if I were to write a fanfiction how do I use this. So it’s like, do they just never like—if they like—if Callum were to say live in the Silvergrove would he just have to get used to the fact that like it’s just never totally bright daylight or unless you leave the Silvergrove in the forest, uh, and like—that type of—is that what’s kind of like going on, they just like their shade?

DEVON: I think they like their shade. It’s like Scotland in the winter.

IAIN: Oh yeah, except we all get miserable by around about February when we haven’t seen sunlight in several months. But um yeah, I think it’s kind of like yeah, a combination of ‘oooh, magic’ and also just extremely, like, thick tree cover in the deepest parts of the forest. But I don’t think you have to travel too far. But uh, I think there’s a reason why everyone in that town was a Moonshadow elf and there were no Sunfire elves or random humans just like, chilling and living there. I think only the most goth of kids would be able to live in the Silvergrove without going a little bit mad.

DEVON: I mean you only have to go as far as the adoraburr field which clearly still gets a significant amount of daylight.

IAIN: Yeah.

KUNO: And you said there’s not really like a leader. They do as a community, but is there anyone that like makes decisions, like is there anybody that like if they were to go to somebody, like if they have like village leadership decisions. And obviously, um, blanket statement that all this we assume is kind a little bit of headcanon so it doesn’t have to be like for gospel, but you know for purposes of writing stuff.

DEVON: Um the way I thought about it—well, to back up a tiny bit, there was actually a version of the story where there might have—this was super, super early on, we were thinking about how the story might play out and we talked about there being potentially another Moonshadow elf leader type character that they would meet who, you know, was the one who ultimately called for the Ghosting decision. But that didn’t really fit the sort of, like, very personal nature of the story we wanted to play out with Rayla specifically. Um but thinking about that and the way that we were, you know, trying to shape it—I would imagine that like the assassins are sort of like a specific group that live in the Silvergrove which is otherwise—it’s not all assassins, like, not everybody there is an assassin. And I think that means that like you know Runaan was the leader of the assassins so he might consult with the leader of the blacksmiths who may be someone over Ethari but maybe it’s him now who might consult with the other general leaders—I don’t know. Like I think it’s more of a counsel of different groups than one single authority. It just seems like that would be a better fit for Moonshadow elves than the sort of like very, very strong-army, structured, high-and-mighty feeling that the Sunfire elves have, so, does that make sense?

KUNO: That totally makes sense, a little bit like an oligarchy, I think I had the idea that like they sound like they like a counsel. Like it sounds like a elven conciliatory.

DEVON: Yeah I think like someone might say, like obviously something horrible has happened and Rayla is exactly the person we thought she was. I’m calling for a—a ghost vote. And then you know—

IAIN: With a cooler name than that.

DEVON: No I think it’s canonically, I’m sorry—

IAIN: Ghost vote?

DEVON: The canon is “ghost vote” now.

IAIN: Okay.

DEVON: But yeah, they would all sort of like weight in kind of like a town hall scenario about of like why this is obviously the correct call and they would all sort of like have to come to some sort of agreement about what to do versus the Sunfire queen just being like “mph, time for the light, light decides!”

IAIN: Yeah.

KUNO: Okay um the next question being almost a little on that, does Ethari regret, um, what does he—does Ethari regret doing the banishing spell now that he knows the truth about Rayla?

DEVON: Oh absolutely 100%. But I don’t think he would have the power to—to reverse it. Like I think he could do a quick charm to help reverse it in the moment just to speak with her but ultimately it would take a lot for him to undo it and I’m not—we haven’t talked about what he’ll get up to in the meantime, but I don’t know he would be able to pursue it so directly—I’d have to talk about it, I think it would be an interesting side thought to think about how he might pursue redeeming her in the eyes of her people knowing what he knows, but—

IAIN: Yeah I think given that we said it would take everyone to do it collectively and make an agreed decision it would similarly everyone would have to understand the truth and go back on it and ‘oh I saw her one time and she said she didn’t do anything wrong probably isn’t enough to overturn that. But yeah I think he probably felt some regret even at the moment, but you know he’s in some of the worst grief of his entire life and he’s not going to make perfect rational decisions. And I’ve seen you know some people were slightly upset that he got so angry with Rayla in the moment of seeing her but I think like when you first see the person that you’ve tried to convince yourself sort of took the most important person in your life away from you, you’re gonna feel a big mess of feelings and it will bring up some grief that maybe you thought you were just—just starting to get over, so ah. Yeah I think hopefully he can turn that around in the years to come but they’ve all had a rough time. They’re at war. It sucks (DEVON laughs). Don’t go to war, kids.

KUNO: Hailey did you want to ask the next one or did you want me to?

HAILEY: Sure I can ask it. Could you—so I mean—you mentioned a stuff—a couple things about their government system and whatnot, but is there anything else you could tell us about Moonshadow culture, like what their day to day is like, and what it means to be a Moonshadow elf?

DEVON: Um I do think that a lot of the fandom I’ve been pleased to see has picked up on this sort of idea of a fairly rigid culture and you know there’s a lot of importance placed on things like honor, loyalty, and the ability to commit to things. And um I think that could come off as pretty strict but I actually think it comes from the place of valuing a close knit community. And I think, like, to the idea that we said like they probably have some kind of counsel instead of some single authority kind of ruler. It’s—I think their day to day would be very much going about their business in ways that support each other you know? Like does that make sense? It’s—you go to the blacksmith and he does work for you and it’s friendly and conversational but it’s productive—it’s all very for the good of the community.

IAIN: Yeah I think early on in season 1 even Rayla says that you know they’re not really meant to show their feelings. So I think everyone kind of commits to doing their task for the good of the village and doesn’t gripe about their day to day until something bad happens as the entire series to this point has been driven by. But um yeah I think they uh—they’re just committed to having a good, small, close knit village life and all supporting each other the best they can. And then occasionally the dragon queen tells you to go kill someone and that’s your job so you better go do that without complaining about it.

DEVON: I think we use the words “reclusive yet intimate” in the article we put up about the two moon creatures, the moonstrider and the shadowpaw. And I liked that a lot because I think they’re reclusive in the sense that they’re a little bit shut off from the wider world and they’re um isolationist in their preservation of their own culture but they are very close to each other and that is something that they hold at such an—like a preciousness level but it’s also a bit extreme, like if you betray that in any capacity like obviously they take that very seriously. And so it’s a double edged sword if you will, to have a community that supportive and that close but also your ability to perform all of yourself for the good of that community can be your undoing so—

KUNO: No I actually kinda get that um ‘cause I’m Pacific Islander so I think we’d call that what you’d call a collectivist society where it’s like the needs of the group supercede needs of the individual so I kinda like I—it’s not the extreme I think that they are because they’re very like reclusive but um I kinda live like that in a little bit of way. It’s what I grew up with. So I actually totally get that which might be why I like that so much (multiple people laugh). Um so the next question would be how does the banishing spell work that, um, that was used on Rayla politically and magically? I think we’ve talked a little bit about politically already but magically is—I’m assuming it’s a collective decision or does each person, like, opt in? Like could Ethari have opted out of doing it or did we—did they all have to agree?

DEVON: I think everybody have to agree?

KUNO: And how is it broken?

DEVON: I don’t think you can opt out?

IAIN: Um I think ‘how is it broken’ is something we definitely want to save for—for the future uh we really hope that Rayla manages to undo that. In terms of I think that it’s just culturally ingrained that you wouldn’t opt out. Um I think they would probably just argue forever until they manage to come to an agreement. So I—yeah I don’t think there’s you know half the elves in that village who are seeing Rayla and were like “Oh hey Rayla how’s it going?” I think uh they all came to the collective decision. That’s kind of the political angle. Um sorry, what was the other part? Magically how it works?

KUNO: Yeah? How would you do it?

IAIN: I—again, you know if it’s not in the show it’s not canon, but I sort of inspired by how the entrance spell works where they do a dance and there’s a ritual and I imagine it’s kind of similar. Like I think there’s a lot of that kind of like ritualistic style of magic and it’s kind of like what you see when they put the flowers out onto the water as well. There’s you know a collective dance probably involving a lot more people, a lot more cool intricate runes that happen only with a much more somber mood than the fun, happy times of Callum and Rayla dancing around in the forest. Um so yeah it’s probably—I would imagine it’s probably tied to some whatever the saddest phase of the moon is and that’s when they all get together and really somberly and really sadly uh commit to never seeing this person again. At least that’s the part of the plan. An interesting question that I think could be something that fanfiction writers such as yourself could get into is has any one of these ever been broken before or have they all been pretty sure that they would never need to go back on it? Is that going to be something that Rayla is going to figure out for the first time ever or is there a precedent for this happening. And we don’t have an answer right now but I think that would be a cool story to think about and write.

DEVON: Oh man I love the saddest phase of the moon idea. Imagine if they do it at the new moon because it’s like the moon’s face is hidden forever. Whoo.

IAIN: Whoo.

DEVON: Sad.

KUNO: Maybe we’re birthing things while we’re doing this interview. I actually think it would be like Callum does the Historia Viventum thing and it would be so—cause now I’m just imagining this whole village doing this sad dance which is the Banish Rayla dance essentially. And like that would be so sad for Rayla to witness that just for the drama of seeing her entire village decide to just not see her ever again. And that’s like wow, I’m so sad now.

DEVON: I love sadness.

IAIN: Yeah Callum just crushing a series of Moon Opals to show such a clip show of all of Rayla’s saddest history moments (laughs).

DEVON: Oh god.

IAIN: That’d be great.

DEVON: Thanks Callum.

KUNO: Thanks Callum. Um, she’d love him anyway. But um okay so some of my favorite stuff, what was it like for Rayla when her parents had to leave her to live with Runaan and Ethari and what was that transition like for them all? How old was like Rayla too?

DEVON: This was one that we’ve had a couple different ideas about so this is another one that’s like heavy not quite canon bubble. Like if we actually end up doing a story that involves some of these details it’s likely to change and be slightly different but the versions that I’ve liked have involved her being pretty young. And because honor is such a you know key part of Moonshadow culture I think like overall it was something that she felt you know sad about because she knew that she wasn’t going to be directly seeing her parents very often anymore. And—but it was uh such a huge honor that she felt you know pride in what her parents were being selected to go do. You know, act as Dragonguard and serve as these sort of like honorific, um, warriors that left the collective of the Silvergrove to go represent Moonshadow elves in the service of the Dragon Queen. And I think she had—she grew up being told what an honor that was and how much pride she should have in her parents because that is such a special thing. And then I think like it speaks a lot to how proud she was when she believed that they ran away and abandoned that duty because you know, how could they? If that was their reason for leaving her when she was a child and then they ran away from that job, like, how important could it have really been? And then you know, I’m sure that makes her feel very, very small. It made her feel so hurt that she told Callum at first that they were dead so she took it pretty hard.

KUNO: Yeah.

DEVON: But I think the other thing about it that we’ve sort of kicked around is that like, Runaan and Ethari were Rayla’s parents’ close friends and I think she was familiar with them enough that she didn’t feel like she was being you know left with two strangers. It’s sort of just like, you’re going to be under the care of people who are already very, very close to you and care about you quite a bit.

IAIN: Yeah I think with like Moonshadow elves in general the thing I think about a lot is like the good and evil that comes from suppressing your true emotions to show a different face to the world and I think we see a lot of that in Rayla. Like I think she probably committed pretty hard to Ghosting her parents because she had this like big mess of like sadness that she’d left but at least the soft landing of Runaan and Ethari to live with and so on. But believing like this sadness is worth it because they’re doing something so noble and then the betrayal of that—it just came out in kind of a messy like toxic way, right, where now she’s committed to becoming an assassin at a really young age in a way Ethari doesn’t agree with and so on. But I mean on the other side I think having a strong handle on your emotions is often one of Rayla’s strengths right? Like we saw in episode 5 of this season after she’s going through a whole lot of stuff, both her family situation and this new development with Callum, she’s just able to like operate as a cool badass extremely cool assassin without letting any of that affect her. But you know I think there’s balance in how you handle your feelings and how you externalize them in a good way that people can learn from, but sometimes you gotta—you gotta work (laughs).

KUNO: That makes sense. Oh well yeah I always had this personal headcanon which I kind of like incorporated into my fanfictions where she felt abandoned by her parents so in a way it’s kinda like slightly—kinda like that except it was all those feelings that have been repressed from years and years basically came out when she felt like—like the abandonment came to like the head when she felt like they had left because they had ran away—they kind of like ran away like from her.

DEVON: Oh yeah, absolutely.

KUNO: In a way—their duty to—

DEVON: I think that validates the suppressed feeling, you know.

KUNO: Yeah, since their duty to the Dragonguard was in it’s own way more important and that’s something that was like okay because it was an honor but since they ran away it’s like obviously it was more important in a terrible way, if that makes any sense?

IAIN: Yeah I mean I think it’s like she did her best and she’s trying to be a grown up but it’s hard at a young age to accept that you know there are meant to be higher callings than a bond between parents and children, right? Like that’s hard for her to grasp and she probably didn’t express that openly ever really. But I think it really did help that she had two genuine loving father figures ready to accept her with open arms even if one of them did train her to become the best assassin of her generation, which again I wouldn’t advise to—to most parents out there.

DEVON: I do think like even that was considered, you know, honorable. It was you know, you’re going to—not only are you going to get to live with Runaan and Ethari, like Runaan is the leader of the assassins, or at least maybe at that point in time he wasn’t the leader but he was very up and coming. I don’t know, it could be either or, but that I think was probably something that she fully embraced and fully wanted, like you know, ‘this is my purpose in life, this is my calling, my parents have gone off to do their calling and it’s a great honor for them, and this is my path and what I’m going to do with myself’. And that didn’t end up being true but it was probably a comfort to her at the time.

IAIN: Yeah.

KUNO: That makes a lot of sense. Moving on, okay, this, we’re getting real indulgent now—do you know what Ethari and Runaan’s wedding was like and what are Moonshadow elf weddings are like in general?

DEVON: Um, I have a, so a lot of the dancing stuff is because I have an enormous soft spot for tropes involving cute dances, like, just a huge, huge soft spot. And the thing that comes to mind is, if you’ve seen the movie Prince of Egypt, which is such a weird reference—

KUNO: Yeah, I love that.

DEVON: —the scene where he and the girl, I forget her name, they do the thing—

KUNO: Tzipporah.

DEVON: —with the ribbon and they do the cute little dance with the ribbon. For some reason that’s what I think of when I imagine what a moment in their wedding would look like would be a dance with a ribbon that they sort of use to—you know, Moonshadow elves love ribbons, I guess, but this is a good ribbon! It’s a love ribbon. But anyway, that’s just my idea. I love that specific—that song that, “Through Heaven’s Eyes”, it’s during that sequence but that—

KUNO: Yeah.

DEVON: —would be my go-to inspiration for like, it’s like that and then you know, everybody dances with them because Moonshadow elves like to dance.

IAIN: Yeah, I kind of like the idea of the—there’s a lot of these symbols that are sometimes extremely sinister. I mean I think Ethari even kinda calls this out when he shoots the—the Shadowhawk arrow to inform the queen that her son is in fact alive. But like, Moonshadow elves believe that death and life are not good and evil, they’re mirrors of each other and an important part of the cycle. And you know, the moon has cycles and that’s an important part. So I think thinking about all the rituals and stuff that they have, which initially you’re introduced to as ‘let’s go murder someone party’, like if that was—there was a kind of inverse to that that was a big part of their wedding ceremony I think that would make a lot of sense to Moonshadow elves because this is two people binding their lives together forever. Binding for a shared purpose in a good way and not the grim ‘let’s go kill Prince Ezran’ kind of way.

KUNO: Yeah. Cause naturally this is involving like several ships so I’m like, I had to ask that. And on the piggyback of that, as detailed as possible, can you describe courtship customs for Moonshadow elves?

DEVON: Oh man.

KUNO: I mean like dating—dating customs, like a headcanon even if it’s just headcanons.

IAIN: Devon is deep in thought (laughs).

DEVON: I’ve never—like for some reason the—the headcanons that I’ve thought about are more specific to like, Runaan and Ethari than I’ve really sort of like branched out into thinking about how Moonshadow elves do this in general. So I imagine there’s intended—there’s some formality to it, I would imagine, in that like, because they’re so, you know, purposeful and thoughtful with how they express their feelings if at all, I think it would be, you know, exchange of gifts like small favors and making your purpose known in a way that starts small but has purpose. So I think like, there’s versions where Ethari would put extra detail into the work he was doing for Runaan which you know, could be perceived as a sign of affection or Runaan was coming to Ethari asking him to work on his weapons or metalcraft stuff a little bit more than was necessary and—stuff like that, where it’s a bit stiff and difficult but I think like once—once there is clear reciprocation I think there can be more of an open discussion about it, does that make sense? But I think Runaan probably struggled with this a whole lot, like, ‘cause he’s—did I, it might have been you who I responded to on Twitter but someone asked me something along these lines and I think Runaan had a really hard time even with this first sort of like simple offerings of affection because that’s just him. Like he sort of takes that aspect to an extreme. Like he has a hard time being like “here is the way I wish to express myself in a soft way and not with a—a sharp object. So I think Ethari had an easier time because he’s just more naturally soft (laughs).

IAIN: Yeah I sometimes think that Runaan is the most Moonshadow elf of all Moonshadow elves, but like, you know, it’s—

KUNO: I was gonna say that.

IAIN: Yeah, um, you know when they have such a hard time showing their feelings and they sometimes feel like they’re not supposed to and so on, and so Runaan is trying to pick up on the tiniest possible hints through professional exchanges and so on. And I think when it’s actually time to confess that there’s a feeling there you would, I think especially Runaan would have to be 100% sure and then do it entirely in private, the most private situation possible where there could be no possible spies who could see this if it was going to go wrong because that would just be the end of his entire life, obviously.

DEVON: Yeah he would bind himself to his own death (laughs).

IAIN: Yeah, that’s it. Gonna assassinate myself because I confessed love and it didn’t get reciprocated. That’s that.

DEVON: It’s over.

IAIN: So yeah, lot of—lots of awkward advances where they’re trying—trying to have the escape hatch of “Oh I didn’t really try to suggest that I liked you, this was just me asking you for a professional favor by let’s never speak again”.

DEVON: And then he comes back the next day (DEVON and IAIN laugh).

KUNO: Oh my goodness. Uh I felt—I—I kinda like headcanoning now that Ethari tells Rayla all this “how I met, you know, your surrogate dad” kind of stuff. Like, and that’s how she—she’s like, this is how you do love apparently.

DEVON: I do think that like, yeah, he had a much easier time and probably picked up on stuff. And to me there’s a side of Ethari that you don’t really get to see in the episode because he’s very sad. I think he’s a—he does have a playful side and I like to imagine that while Runaan was doing his, like, really just not-the-best attempts to display affection early on, like Ethari would pick up on them but not necessarily give the full signal back. And he played a little bit oblivious but he absolutely was—he’s just more emotionally in tune. So I think, “Oh hey, you’re back again, wow. I thought I did fantastic work on your blades last time. I cannot believe they’re already dull!” Like and he just sort of like, he knows—he knows there’s something there.

IAIN: I think like this kind of gets echoed in Rayla, like where Callum in an effort to pick her up and be honest about how he feels that she’s just an incredible person. Like to her that’s like, ‘person being entirely open with their feelings in a positive way? That’s a love connection!’ And then it goes wrong for one entire episode and then it turns out that Callum was also not fully aware of how he was feeling and so on. But I think like, yeah, I think that’s why she was like immediately “Wow, this is clearly meant to be romantic and this is—this is going exactly the way I want!” and then it didn’t. But then it did! So we’re all happy.

DEVON: Aww.

KUNO: I am! I’m certainly happy. Um��uh let’s see—the next one is—okay. What was Rayla like as a child growing up in a household she did—household? Um, she mentioned going to school and we’d love to know how baby Rayla fared as a student and just a child growing up in the Silvergrove and what that experience is like for a Moonshadow elf child?

DEVON: You want—you want me to do this one?

IAIN: Go for it.

DEVON: Yeah, um, I think Rayla was feisty (laughs) in a word. I think she—for some reason there’s a scene in the beginning of Korra where she’s already mastered like, three elements and she like comes out punching. I kind of think about that when I think about baby Rayla. She knows she’s—there’s that end credit scene where she’s got the two sticks and she’s posing with them and Runaan’s sort of lifting one of them up and I’m thinking like, okay so sheg’s like, from a tiny, tiny age thinking like, “I’m gonna be the coolest assassin the Moonshadow elves have ever seen!” and she’s like rambunctious about that almost, because you know, as a child you don’t really understand what the ramifications of that are but it’s considered like a highly, highly valued, honored position and so she’s obviously like, “Yeah I’m gonna do that and I’m going to be the best at it and there will never be any complications whatsoever!” In terms of Moonshadow elf childhood, I think with the way that I would think about it is—we talked about the sort of community aspect. I imagine Moonshadow elves have pretty, like, what’s the word, like, a lot of general education, sort of, like, “this is what weaponsmithing is like and this is gardening and raising crops and things to provide for the community” and so I think they would have a lot of ‘school’ that covers a lot of just like, life basics because you are expect to find a place that contributes to the collective whole. Does that like—?

IAIN: Yeah, I think like it’s also lucky for Rayla that a big part of Moonshadow elf culture is what we would call PE. Like I think she excelled at striving to be an assassin warrior and so on. Especially like, she’s trying to live up to her parents who at first were honored Dragonguard and you know, Runaan as well. I think in terms of like, more academic stuff like if there was Moonshadow elf history lessons and “let’s go out and understand the, you know, ecology of the Moonshadow forest” and stuff I think she was probably a bit kinda like, rambunctious and not super paying attention and running off and not really giving it her all and so on. Um, you kind of get that impression from early on where she knows what Primal sources are and she’ll explain that to Callum but like, when she’s talking about ‘how do you do that Moonshadow form thing’ she’s like “I don’t know, it just feels right”. Like I think that’s—she did everything very intuitively and focused on the things she cared about and understood and kinda did what she—did what she could on the other subjects, I guess, but didn’t care as much.

DEVON: Yeah I feel like if you imagine the kid that is going to grow up to be an artist is doing doodles on their math homework and just sort of like doing the math homework but—but you know, clearly the effort is being placed elsewhere. I think it’s that but she was excelling at PE and assassin training and therefore fell very, very easily into her supposed path.

KUNO: The—this isn’t on the thing, but did—did she ever—did she ever really have any friends? ‘Cause she doesn’t really mention—ever mention friends. I—maybe that has to do with the whole assassin thing where if she wasn’t learning being at school she would probably doing assassin stuff with Runaan or assassin training stuff—I guess not really assassinating. But um did she have really friends growing up?

IAIN: I think if she had friends they were not super close. And I think she valued her alone time. There’s a sweet moment early in—well end of season 1 where she like tries to cheer up Ezran by saying that fitting in is overated and I think she felt that a little bit. Um and you know I think there’s some amount of when you’re being trained in the art of an assassin like you’re probably somewhat taught to—to keep people at arm’s length a little bit, right? And I think she—she took that to heart. So I think that’s a big part of why when she was first traveling with Callum and Ezran there wasn’t that much trust between then and it was kinda like, it was Ezran honestly that bridged the gap being most empathetic number 1 child. And yeah, I think having a close friend is relatively new to her.

KUNO: Makes sense. Like just few, not the many. Um okay then next question before we get to Hailey’s batch of them are um, what are Runaan’s feelings toward Rayla as of right now and everything that’s happened since season 1? I understand he’s in a coin, he’s in a finacial crisis, he’s probably not thinking about it too hard—

DEVON: Oh my god (laughs).

KUNO: But you know, like he’s gotta be—you know he’s not doing anything right now, I’m assuming, so like what would be his feelings about her at the moment?

DEVON: I mean he’s got a lot of time to think, wherever he is. I think like—I got into this a little bit on Twitter in a self-indulgent rant at one point where I think he went through a lot very quietly during the first few episodes of the show where he very, very much wanted Rayla to succeed, even if he wasn’t necessarily like being the dad on the sideline of the soccer game, like, cheering for her. But he thought this was her moment, this was her time to prove that she really was more dedicated to you know, her cause and her people than her parents were because they had, you know, been the subject of such shame. And then ah, everything goes the way it does, I think he has a brief crisis of, “Is this my fault? Did I fail to train her well enough? Like, was Ethari right?” Because he always thought she had, you know, a softer heart. And I think like those are the types of things that he’s still stewing on, um like did—”did he overstep? Was it something—was he so eager to give her the opportunity to prove herself that he, you know, ultimately put her in a position where she could not succeed?” I think like, the other thing that I mentioned on Twitter was I think he took her off the mission both because he very, very much wanted to give himself and the others a chance to complete the mission even if it meant their deaths. But it also meant that Rayla had the chance to survive even if it was potentially going to be misinterpreted and she’d get slapped with the Ghosting, I think he believed that her alive was better than everybody being dead. So I think like, he’s got a lot—a lot to work through and I think like—I think he feels guilty. I think there’s the smallest part of him that he has the—again, a lot of time to potentially stew on and reflect on is he does feel like he put her in a position that was, you know, not fully taking into account the type of person she was and more projecting onto her the type of person he wanted her to be and gift he wanted to give her of redeeming herself in the eyes of her people for her parents. And I think he’s gonna have to work through that. Poor dude.

KUNO: That’s so sadly heartfelt. That’s so sadly heartfelt. Here I am thinking that he’d be, like, maybe a little angry with her, ‘cause obvious reason, but now it’s like, oh he feels guilty. Like, “Oh, okay, let’s just slap the angst on, okay”.

DEVON: I mean, I think like—

KUNO: Yeah, mm-hm.

DEVON: Sure he’d have some anger, like, “Awgh, I gave her everything. I gave her the exact opportunity she needed”. But I think like the guilt and the reflection leads to the “Maybe I—maybe it was me who stepped too far here”.

IAIN: Yeah, I mean another part of it is like, we don’t know what it’s like being trapped in the hell coin dimension, right?

DEVON: Oh I do. I—I mean—

IAIN: Oh you do?

DEVON: It sucks.

IAIN: Oh it sucks?

DEVON: When it happens to me on the reg (IAIN laughs).

IAIN: But you know, does it feel like an eternity is passing? Does it feel like no time has passed? Is he in eternal pain? Because if it’s like real bad—

KUNO: Oh my god.

IAIN: —in there I can imagine that like yeah there’s definitely some of those kind of anger feelings that you don’t want to feel in but you do sometimes, right? Like it’s like, if he has a snap moment of “I wouldn’t be in here if she hadn’t gone off and disobeyed our orders and, like, lied to me and so on”. So if he ever comes out uh don’t know what side of the emotional coin he’s gonna land on.

DEVON: Ohhh, please leave.

KUNO: Oh my god.

DEVON: Get out, oof, ouch.

IAIN: Finger guns.

DEVON: I do think like that sort of complex—

KUNO: It sounds—

DEVON: —emotion is just, I don’t want to give any time to that pun, we’re moving on. Like that sort of complexity of emotion and relationships is something that I really like in the show overall. Like you said earlier, you saw some people that were a little bit upset that Ethari was so willing to lash out at Rayla at first and I think like to me that was always part of the big, big thematic of the show, which is this sort of endless cycle of people being willing to hurt each other and not forgive each other and not, you know, accept that you can choose peace. It’s, you know, it’s—Runaan having that impulse to anger is a very natural thing and it doesn’t—I don’t think it necessarily makes him a bad person for feeling that. And I don’t necessarily think that Ethari having his moments of grief lead him to actions that are ultimately like, regretful, like I don’t think he would want that to define him in the long run. Like those are very human things but those are the things as we acknowledge them and as are—so long as we are capable of recognizing how flawed we are and how violent and…

KUNO: Messy.

DEVON: Messy! Thank you, that’s like, I was going to say like churning, messy is good. Like messy emotions can be and how they can like, dictate the way we treat each other, um, but forgiveness and patience and acceptance are ultimately just so much more powerful than those negative perpetuating lashing outs. That was an inelegant way of ending that screed, but yes.

KUNO: I actually really love that um ‘cause I from the beginning I’ve loved their father-daughter relationship so I love how complicated it is, ‘cause the truth is you know every parent-child relationship is a little complicated, except theirs is a little more complicated with assassination going on in the works, the family trade. So I love that it is this complicated ‘cause I know I remember in the beginning where people were like you know—you know she does have a dad. And it’s like I know she has a biological dad but until I am told otherwise that’s her father. I don’t care and I love their relationship so I love that that really reflects that. Another—the next question out of me before we get to, um, Hailey’s, which are all about different elves, is um, course I have to ask, my policy is one Rayllum question per interview. Um what are Runaan’s feelings—whah, no, whoop, how would Ruthari and Runaan react to Rayla’s relationship with Callum considering he’s not only a human but a human prince? ‘Cause as far as we know Runaan really hates, um, humans and I’d love to see that story later, both individually and as a couple. Because as far as I know, Ethari probably doesn’t know that their in a relationship unless he sensed it?

DEVON: Oh man, I—I think you should take this one, but I do want to say that I saw one comment on Tumblr at one point where someone said that they wished that Ethari had said something to Callum along the lines of like, “Take care of her”. And I want to travel back in time and pretend that was in the script ‘cause I think that would have been really, really nice. And I do think like, he picked up on the fact that Callum was important to her even if it—he didn’t necessarily read it as romantic right off the bat. I think he mostly was like, “Oh this guy is kind of like a cute—he’s a human but he’s, you know, a friend to someone I care about and that in and of itself is valuable and there’s something there”. So I think—pretend that was in the script. I wish I had thought about something like that but—

KUNO: I will (DEVON laughs).

IAIN: Yeah.

KUNO: That’s canon as far—as far as I’m concerned that’s canon.

IAIN: I think uh it would be best for everyone involved if they found out together, uh, because I think Runaan’s impulse would not be good immediately. I think like, when you spend so much time as an assassin and you drill into your head that the people that you’re meant to kill are not people, they’re the enemy right? Like I think that’s—sometimes that’s a thing he turns on to do the job and so on, but I do think that’s gonna bleed into his personality and it’s—you know, especially given his extremely recent history he’s not got the best feelings about humans. So I think it would inspire an immediate negative reaction in him that would not be pleasant for Callum and Rayla, but I think Ethari just has a much softer heart and that is where Rayla kind of got that side from. So I mean I’m not going to say that he would immediately—you know, they’ve been at war for hundreds and hundreds of years with humans and they’ve been told all through their history that humans committed the original sin of dark magic, et cetera et cetera, but like, I think it would take not that much time of seeing Rayla and Callum together for Ethari to see that there’s something there and then I think Ethari would have the ability to ah, to talk Runaan down pretty quick. But I also think that like, Runaan might not even show any of this, there might just be a kind of seething resentment that he’s not really talking about inside. Um unless it was like on the battlefield or something and he was like, “That’s a prince that I’m meant to kill” or something like that. But overall I think Ethari would sense that Runaan was not like—was not taking this well and they would be able to talk it through. At least that’s my gut.

DEVON: No, that sounds right (DEVON and IAIN laugh).

KUNO: I feel like poor Callum is just always on the edge of “Am I going to die tonight?” while he’s there, “Is this gonna be it?” Just gonna be like, “Oops sorry I had an accident—hey I had an accident in the middle of the night, you know, just a knife to the throat, that’s all”.

IAIN: I mean, he’s doing pretty well, like he said as they were about to meet Ethari and Rayla was like, “Remember Runaan?” He was like “Oh yeah, that guy who tried to kill me as soon as he met me? Cool guy”. Callum’s doing pretty well on the acceptance front these days.

DEVON: I do—

KUNO: Yeah.

DEVON: I do want to say that I think Ethari and Callum would get along really well because I think they both have sort of like a soft hearted friendliness to them that they would have a fun rapport. And that’s the sort of like “Trees to meet you” line is definitely supposed to be like—they’d you know, crack some goofy back and forths and I think that would soften Runaan too because he couldn’t ever hate someone that Ethari liked.

IAIN: Yeah, I think it’s a weird—

KUNO: Aww.

IAIN: —reversal where like Callum’s the one doing the dad jokes and Ethari’s like humoring them and Runaan’s like, “I don’t understand. Trees do not meet.”

DEVON: “Please stop saying ‘trees to meet you’.”

KUNO: Aw it never gets old. I love that. Um alright, Hailey, take it away. Your turn.

[kuno-chan]

Is there anywhere where the hot brown morning potion interviews are just typed out? I've got hearing problems and it would be so nice to get those extra bits of tdp

We are working on that! My friend @spiritypowers is doing the transcriptions now! It takes a bit of time, but she is ON IT and we will be doing those regularly, free, no extra cost or anything. I really want those our for HOH people.

[connectingals]

Welcome to Connecting ALS. In this episode we talk to Manish Raisinghani, president and CEO of Target ALS, about conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent kick off of a collaboration with The ALS Association to look for biomarkers, and the important role of collaboration in ALS research. For more information on Target ALS visit: http://www.targetals.org/ To learn more about The ALS Association partnering with Target ALS to discover #ALS biomarkers check out the blog here: https://alsadotorg.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/target-als-and-als-association-announce-new-tdp-43-focused-biomarker-initiative/ This episode was produced by Garrett Tiedemann and is brought to you by The ALS Association’s national office and the Association’s Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota Chapter.

Transcript:

Manish Raisinghani: This is impacting all aspects of our lives and all entities and it certainly holds true for us as well, but we also recognize that the community that we serve has no effective treatments for the disease that they are facing. And so to us it is even more of an imperative that our work must go on.

Mike Stephenson (In-Studio): Hey there everyone and welcome to Connecting ALS. I am one of your hosts, Mike Stephenson in Saint Paul, Minnesota and as usual I'm joined by my cohost Jeremy Holden in North Carolina where I believe it is quite sunny and warm at this point.

Jeremy Holden (In-Studio): It is Mike and I don't want to rub it in or anything, but today is maybe the best day here from a weather standpoint, which is going to create some problems for the kids in the neighborhood who I think just want to get out of the yard, and sadly they are still socially social distanced inside.

Mike Stephenson: Everybody's a little tired of being stuck in doors, but I think getting out when you can for a walk or a socially distant move of some kind is welcome for everyone, and as the temperatures start to warm up across the country I'll be we'll see a lot more of that.

Jeremy Holden: Yeah, I think so. And again, I think we talked about this event last week, but you know, seeing people just kind of who's crossing the street to go on the other sidewalk or are you going up into the grass so that I can pass. I think, you know, people are figuring out some of those, unspoken at this point, social cues though. Let's make sure there's that six feet is there and we can both still enjoy a little bit of the outdoors.

Mike Stephenson: New social cues for everybody. Well, this past week we were lucky enough to land an interview with Dr. Manish Raisinghani, the CEO of the research collaborative Target ALS, which is based in New York City. And Jeremy, while we did spend a bit of time addressing how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting global research, the bulk of our discussion was about the work of Target ALS and some of their more interesting current collaborations.

Jeremy Holden: Yeah, that's right. Uh, one that Target ALS announced relatively recently, just in the last a month or so, a collaboration with The ALS Association looking into a potential biomarkers. And I know that if I go to the doctor and he tells me that my blood pressure's up, it's a signal that something's wrong, it's also probably a sign that I won't be having a cheeseburger anytime soon, but still so elusive in the field of ALS. And was was really fascinating to hear Dr. Raisinghani talk about where we are in the search for biomarkers and how some of these initiatives are gonna kind of move the ball forward a little bit.

Mike Stephenson: That's true. And, and what I think makes Target ALS unique in the research space is their desire and, and real effort to bring together not only scientists but clinicians and educators across all of academia and industry. It's an uncommon approach and it was good to hear from Dr. Raisinghani on that. So let's take a listen to the interview, which we recorded on Thursday, April 2nd.

Mike Stephenson: We're joined on the phone today by the CEO of Target ALS, Dr. Manish Raisinghani. Good morning Manish, and thank you for joining us on Connecting ALS.

Manish Raisinghani: Mike, thank you.

Mike Stephenson: So to start with, doctor, for our listeners who may not be super familiar with your organization, can you tell us a little bit about Target ALS and your mission and general philosophy?

Manish Raisinghani: Target ALS is a 501(C)3 medical research foundation and that is committed to the search for effective treatments for ALS. And so we envision a world in which no one loses their life to this disease. And from the very beginning we have made it our mission to harness the power of collaboration to achieve breakthroughs for treatments of ALS. So just a brief history, we were founded in 2013 but Dan Doctoroff, who some may know, so as the deputy mayor of economic development for New York City, he is currently CEO of Sidewalk Labs. So Dan form Targeted ALS actually after he lost both his father and uncle to the disease. And he has a extensive record in the public and private sectors. And so when he came to the conclusion that he needed to do something, he actually really early on realized that there had been great advances in the understanding of the biology of the disease and discovery of new genes that caused the disease, but there really were some key barriers that were in the way of progress towards effective treatments. 

And so his goal in founding Target ALS was to address and overcome these barriers. And so that's where, so this concept of our, what we call our approach as an innovation ecosystem came about and it has these components like we exclusively fund collaborative research. We have created a panoply of critical research tools for the worldwide ALS research community. And we have also focused on engaging pharma biotech industry really if you want to get drugs into the clinics and then eventually to the patients then we need there participation as well. So that's really been important. And so we have, one of the gratifying experiences for us has been the cultural shift we have been able to bring in the ALS research community, which has become a lot more collaborative and connected since we have been founded. And that I think speaks to sort of what Dan had innovation from the very beginning. Right.

Mike Stephenson: Right. And can you tell us a little about how you got involved, when you came into the picture with Dan and company?

Manish Raisinghani: Sure. So I also happened to have been in academia and then I was in the biotech side of the industry. And then as I was going through that journey, there was something that was always missing. And that was a sense of purpose, which was bigger than oneself, which I think most of us look for. And this opportunity came along and it really appealed to me. And it's, it's been a blessing to have this opportunity actually to be a part of Target ALS, and be part of this community and try to make a difference for ALS patients and their families.

Jeremy Holden: Manish, you talked about collaboration and bringing that into the world of ALS research. We're obviously having this conversation at a time where, you know, the COVID pandemic is forcing us to distance ourselves from each other. Uh, what impact is that having on the world of ALS research? What's the state of affairs today?

Manish Raisinghani: So again, it's obvious that this is impacting all aspects of our lives and all entities, and it certainly holds true for us as well. But we also recognize that the community that we serve has no effective treatments for the disease that they're facing. And so to us it is even more of an imperative that our work must go on. And in terms of collaboration, the spirit of collaboration is not only in person but also can be achieved in a virtual setting. 

And so the research world, the labs, their work is going to slow down temporarily, but at the same time we can continue at our end to push forward with the initiatives that we have already announced. For example, the collaboration we have with The ALS Association or we have started some consortium projects in collaboration with the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration to look for targets and biomarkers for ALS and FTD and these two diseases overlap clinically and in our biological mechanisms, but at the same time we are affected. 

So for example, we had to cancel our annual meeting, which happens in the first week of May every year and is really a corner store for the ALS research community because the really cutting edge work on ALS drug discovery and development is presented at this meeting. And a big part of this meeting is that it enables and facilitates networking between different constituencies that are invested in ALS research. So we bring together academics, pharma-biotech companies, other nonprofit foundations and venture capital firms. And they are all able to come to one place and meet with each other. And we have been able to successfully forge several new collaborations this way. And so that has been a loss. But of course we will again reconvene next year. And of course throughout the year we continue this work by connecting these different constituencies within overlapping interests with each other. So that work will go out.

Mike Stephenson: That's good to hear. And as you mentioned, everyone is kind of making these adjustments during the pandemic and figuring out ways we can all still work together and try to achieve our goals and, and it's good to know that the research world is adapting as well and and doing everything you can to continue your very, very important work in ALS research. I don't want to stay on the theme of collaboration too long, but I know that's so important to Target ALS and that traditional silos of research are more or less what you're trying to avoid, but that's not always the case in disease research. Was that kind of just built into Dan Doctoroff's philosophy from the beginning like listen, we're, we're going to work together, we're going to be sharing findings and exploring research together because it seems like that's become so critical in ALS research specifically.

Manish Raisinghani: That's a great point. And as one can imagine, being able to collaborate is critical in any research field, it just becomes more of an imperative in a research field that is relatively smaller and so the resources available are fewer. And so in some ways all of us have a responsibility towards the patients, their caregivers, and our supporters to maximize the impact of the support that we get. And so, yes, to the point you made, Dan's philosophy from the early on was he basically, he has this line that collaboration is in our DNA and he has actually in his career really had a very collaborative approach to achieve transformative changes. Like, you know in New York city transforming the Highline or the Brooklyn Bridge park for the community. And that requires really bringing together different constituencies. And that's the same philosophy we have brought to the ALS research field.

Manish Raisinghani: And you're right, initially it takes time for cultural shift to happen and for silos to break. So when we started, there were minimal collaborations within academia and even less so between academia and pharma-biotech companies. The nonprofits were talking to each other, but not as much as one can do together. And today if we see that there's a very different landscape. So we actually did an analysis and there were about about a dozen or so collaborations between academics, academia, pharma-biotech, and today at least from our innovation ecosystem, we can see we have been able to forge over 160 of these research collaborations, which is really gratifying and people are looking for collaborations now. And I think one of the reasons we are speaking today is because Target ALS and ALS Association have launched this new collaboration. And I should mention that we have Target ALS and ALS Association have worked together before as well. And so we of course will continue to do so for the patients and their caregivers.

Jeremy Holden: Talk us through that collaboration that you mentioned. How does the collaboration between Target ALS and the Association, how's it moving the ball forward? What's going on there?

Manish Raisinghani: So this collaboration I should mention as a reflection of the forward looking leadership of ALS Association. And I want to especially thank our colleague and good friend Dr. Kuldip Dave, who is VP of research at the ALS Association. And so this collaboration really was born out of a pre-competitive biomarker initiative that we had launched in 2018, and the idea and this initiative involves exports from 11 pharma biotech companies, six nonprofit groups and a panel of academic experts. And the goal was really to identify biomarkers that everyone thinks are critical to work on and would -- if they had the resources -- would work on individually. So we said we should work on it together so we can pull our resources. And we were lucky that from early on ALS Association was part of these discussions and Kuldip actually immediately recognized the importance of these TDP 43 focus projects which led to this collaboration. And the importance is that becuase it's a precompetitive initiative all the information that comes out, any tools we create will be shared with the research community of worldwide immediately. And that'll -- if the work comes out as something which is helpful, it'll impact ongoing clinical trials and the to be launched clinical trials immediately. And this is very similar to what we have done with significant success by broadly sharing critical research tools and information with the wider ALS research community through our innovation ecosystem.

Mike Stephenson: That's so refreshing to hear that your research was, it could have an immediate impact for other researchers and clinicians in the field that are working on their own studies to have access to that so quickly that it may have a positive impact on their work. That's, that's great. That's refreshing. It really is. I want to take a quick step back because you mentioned biomarkers and some of us are still very much learning about ALS research and research in general. Can you explain the concept of a biomarker and how it's used in the fight against ALS?

Manish Raisinghani: So if you look very simply put a biomarker is a measurement and I think any of us, anyone can relate to the value of a measurement which allows us to establish a baseline to work against, to identify changes. And so in medical terms, in biomarker serves as a characteristic that can be objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of a normal biological process, a disease process, or in response to a treatment. And so if I give an example, so let's say if we measure levels of iron in the blood, that's a reliable biomarker for presence of anemia. But once we give treatment for an anemia, the levels of iron can then serve as a reliable indicator of the effectiveness of the treatment being given. And so if you look at ALS, despite all these advances we have made, unfortunately the reality is that we still do not have a robust and reliable biomarker for this disease. And so the reality on the ground is that the disease is actually at a fairly advanced stage before the visible symptoms manifest themselves. And so the diagnosis then becomes a process of elimination. And we also do not have the ability to efficiently track progression of a disease, which makes the clinical trials inefficient. And so if you have reliable and robust biomarkers for ALS, that'll enable us to overcome these challenges and can greatly accelerate the drug discovery and development process.

Jeremy Holden: I'm struck by the connection that you make between biomarkers and therapies, right? So this doesn't help us just identify the, the the cause, the disease itself but it helps us measure progress in a therapeutic setting. You have a handful of drug therapies that are currently in various stages of, of clinical trials. What can you tell us about those?

Manish Raisinghani: So yes, there are actually several promising clinical trials that are ongoing and actually some of which came out of our innovation ecosystem. And this is a very hopeful time in ALS research, especially because several novel modalities like gene therapy, biologics as well as a traditional small molecule approaches. They are being leveraged to pursue these therapeutic strategies in the clinic. So we remain very hopeful for ALS patients. But of course we, as you know, in the history of drug development for any disease, one has to continue the work to continue to improve the kind of treatments that one can have for the patients. And sometimes it takes a while to get to a point where one can effectively change the disease course or stop that disease for everyone. So that that's why it's important that you continue to move forward on all fronts.

Mike Stephenson: Doctor, some of the, the first platform trials for ALS research are about to get underway and many believe that that's going to be a turning point for ALS research. Is that something that you all are looking into a, are you following along with some of those uh, platform trials that are just getting started?

Manish Raisinghani: Of course, any treatment that starts, we are always very hopeful that it'll have a positive outcome. And the platform clinical trials are a really positive step in that direction. Not only in terms of the individual trials that are part of that study, but also the concept of platform drug trials, which will significantly enhance the efficiency of how we run clinical trials in the future. So that's a really big step for the ALS research field.

Mike Stephenson: Thank you again, Dr. Raisinghani, for joining us this morning and giving us this fantastic look into the research that Target ALS is doing. It was wonderful to have you on. Hopefully we can talk to you again sometime soon.

Manish Raisinghani: Likewise.

Jeremy Holden (In-Studio): Thank you again, Dr. Manish Raisinghani president and CEO of Target ALS for that insightful conversation and look into some of the research that Target ALS is doing and really kind of a state of the fairs and in ALS research today.

Mike Stephenson (In-Studio): We want to do more of that on future episodes of Connecting ALS, introduce you to researchers, hopefully around the world that are doing so much in global ALS research and working together to help us build a world without ALS. So hopefully we can hear from a few more of Dr. Raisinghani's colleagues and counterparts in the near future. That is going to do it though for this week's episode of Connecting ALS. We have noticed that more of you have been listening at connectingals.org and all of your favorite podcast listening services. Thank you so much for that and for subscribing as well. We really appreciate the support and if you have questions or feedback on the show, you can find Connecting ALS on Facebook and Twitter. This episode was produced by Garrett Tiedemann of the Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Chapter of the ALS association. Thank you for listening and we look forward to connecting with all of you again sometime soon.

[deadskepticfiles]

THE DREAMING PROPHET, EP 8, THE LANGUAGE OF BODIES

[PODOMATIC LINK]

As terrifying as Speak-as-One can be, we can't beat them unless we understand them - and their creepy doom harp. A special research project episode.

Talking points: The Song, The Instrument, Audio design, Musical science, Architecture, Anatomy and Language of the Maze. Featuring cohost, Xaviul. Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:09. Content warnings: None.

Links:

nathan moody on bandcamp: https://nathanmoody.bandcamp.com/music

interactive sound and fury: https://www.interactivesoundandfury.com

bloody disgusting interview: https://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3580174/interview-system-shock-2-follows-helped-create-co-op-horror-blackout-club/

harry bertoia's sound sculptures: https://youtu.be/YfQ3624z36Q?t=121

using resonant frequencies to break glass: https://youtu.be/Oc27GxSD_bI

effect of sound on the human body: https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/acoustic-weapons-book-excerpt/

harmful sound levels on healthlink bc: https://www.healthlinkbc.ca/health-topics/tf4173

orfield labs anechoic chamber: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/orfield-labs-quiet-chamber

lore masterdoc: https://tinyurl.com/tbcloreguidev2

lore comics: part 1: https://twitter.com/JustJellyJammin/status/1172704758337101827?s=20 // part 2: https://twitter.com/JustJellyJammin/status/1176862814675361794?s=20

TDP twitter: http://twitter.com/TheDreamingPC

transcript masterdoc: https://tinyurl.com/tbctranscripts

The Blackout Club Lexicon, for player/game lingo & terminology [on Google Docs]: bit.ly/TBCLexicon

Credits: - lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

be11amy: advertising - xaviul: host, moral support

special thanks: olive & coolguy

intro & outro music, "ringing bells": a weirdly handsome individual

transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games

vibraphone clip: krol111 on wikimedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vibraphone_music.ogg)

the blackout club: question games (https://www.blackoutclubgame.com)

LAVANYA: Good evening, dear listeners, and welcome to the Dreaming Prophet. Tonight, we have a very special topic - that great unknown instrument whose winsome sound fills up our whole town and lifts up our spirits! 

LAVANYA: And tonight, even better, we have our very own conductor to lead us through this magnificent journey into our vast Song. So, dear listeners, I have a question for you tonight. What's the difference between a conductor and a god? 

LAVANYA: The answer, of course, is that Speak-as-One doesn't think they're a conductor. 

LAVANYA: My name's Lavanya -. 

ASTRO: And I'm Astro -. 

LAVANYA: And welcome to the Dreaming Prophet. 

ASTRO: This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players with minimal speculation all law and a focus on the known facts. 

ASTRO: Our topic of the day is the instrument. 

LAVANYA: As for a spoiler warning: for today, you can consider yourself a rich kid at Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, or whatever seasonally appropriate holiday you want to cram on in there, because tonight, you are going to be spoiled~. 

LAVANYA: Our discussion tonight covers the map and various details of it. It covers, partially, the history of Speak-as-One. It covers what the Song is in itself, and how it is treated and translated.

We will be discussing the game. We will be discussing the sound effects. We'll be discussing some of the people who have worked on the sound effects behind the scenes, in so far as they are credited.

We are basically just dipping our fingers in every single pot! So if you are allergic to spoilers, just tap on out on this episode.

in terms of content warnings, there is surprisingly little. As long as you don't hate sounds, music, joy or human nature, you should be fine. 

ASTRO: So, Lavanya, you know I've been wanting to cover this for a while, but I can't do it without help. Firstly, I'd like to extend a special thank you to Olive and to Cool Guy, who have helped me process the vast amount of information and research we've done for this episode. 

LAVANYA: And when Astro says Cool Guy, what they mean is "Cool Guy", because that's his name. If you open up the dictionary and you look next to the definition of Cool (comma) Guy, you will see his picture there. We have personally gone through every dictionary in the United States and stapled a picture there, just to ensure that this is true. 

XAVIUL: Man, you guys have a lot more free time than I thought. 

LAVANYA: Who let you in?

ASTRO: And as you've discovered, Lavanya, we have a guest today. Also, welcome back to the show, Xaviul. 

XAVIUL: They let me in once, I haven't left since.  Now they have to deal with me

XAVIUL: I will leave to get more snacks, though.

LAVANYA: So, we're going to start off with the Song!

This was loosely discussed in episode 7, which hopefully, you all listened to and internalized and adored - but just in case you didn't, because you're godless heathens - I will go ahead and explain what it is for you!

The Song is both a hive mind and an audible sound. When I say hive, mind what I mean is that it contains all of the memories and individuals from the past that make up components of Speak-as-One. The Song was once easily heard and understood by humans, but now, not so much. This is probably because of the Word, which we discussed in a great deal more detail in episode 7 and episode 5.

So you should go back and listen to those!

LAVANYA: While the Voice interprets the Song, not everyone has this ability. This is a special aptitude that is found in certain individuals that can allow them to be the Voice: for everyone else who doesn't have that special Song in their ear, the Song needs to be amplified, which led to the question.. well. What do you do when you have a mystical magical brainwashing Song that half the population can't hear?

Which, of course, leads us to build a giant fucking instrument. 

ASTRO: The instrument is a giant tunnel network under the town, equipped with massive scale parts of one huge instrument. It can be played by many people at once, and requires constant maintenance. It's constantly being expanded. We see this in rooms like new growth and 920 observation. 

Dax also calls it the maze, which is information from bells in the prologue, and it's kind of both: no part of the instrument is an exact one to one with in real life instruments. 

However, many parts contain elements of instruments that we know.

LAVANYA: Thee-I-Dare says that the instrument is old:  very old. However, we don't have any exact date or age,much like we don't have an exact date for humans being in Redacre.

He specifies that the tech inside of it is fairly new. You can see this on the screens, and in the labs, and a lot of the fiddly fiddly details. And as you can see as you're roaming around the maze l, a lot of the tech inside it looks pretty fucking old: straight from 1950s in the 1980s, whatever difference there may be between those two eras, in those giant LCD screens and everything else.

Which leads to the interesting question: does the instrument pre-date Redacre, or is the Redacre just really fucking old?

XAVIUL: Kind of the chicken and the egg question.

LAVANYA: Smash the egg, embrace the freedom of revolution!

XAVIUL: I thought that was the opposite of what your whole spiel was. 

LAVANYA: I'm flexible. 

ASTRO: Some parts of the maze contribute directly to the Song and some don't. It would probably be more accurate to refer to all the music making parts as the instrument, and everything else as the maze. However, we are going to use them interchangeably here, especially since even the non music making rooms often have music making parts in them. 

XAVIUL: The instrument is played by a mass of people. No one individual can play it. It's just too darn big. So everyone must work together. There are several parts of the instrument which have control panels on them, which explicitly connect to the sound making parts and plexus. There are panels surrounding the giant airbags at the base, and under the walkway at the far side, and between String relay, Signal Relay, and Host Conditioning. They all have two terminals in them. Old Growth’s basement has one terminal. 

ASTRO: There are many other parts of the instrument that contain controls such as this, but we're not getting into all of those right now. It would be honestly too many to count!

Information encoded into the Song is shared with all parts of the Song. This is why sometimes a choice is made to stop encoding. We can see this in the Madi-Shaw logs in the journals: encoding is an intentional action, not passive. Information won't be encoded purely by accident. Information you might not want encoded might be encoded, if you're sleep talking, but that's because consent is a lie and choice is a poison according to SAO.

LAVANYA: However, encoding information is treated as the default choice. Refusing to encode information scares the Watchers! And it is treated as taboo: the Song is supposed to be the truth. 

LAVANYA: If you're excluding things, that's lying by omission!

ASTRO: the watchers sometimes take it upon themselves to make this kind of judgment. They will at times choose to withhold information from the Song themselves.

ASTRO: Encoding is done by chordists. When you are referring to a chordist who is encoding at that time, they are considered the CHORUS to perform it. So, let's say that you're a kid in the Blackout Club - crazy, I know - you're on a mission and you commit a sin.

ASTRO: So what sin do you guys commit? Xaviul, you go first. (Xaviul is an expert on the types of sins that can be committed.)

XAVIUL: Wow this is a lot of perjury and I won't hear any of it. 

ASTRO: Okay I do need a legit answer to continue with this -

LAVANYA: Assault.

XAVIUL: Assault. I put the ass in assault!

ASTRO:Thank you, complimentary Laugh-Last follower. You attack an enemy. Let's say you attack a Lucid in-game. Here's what happens. Lucid reports sin to their Dispatchers.

We aren't sure exactly how this is done, but it's likely done using phones: Lucids have their phones with them. You can see them using it as a flashlight, and you can also see them typing on their phones when they pause in their tracks. 

XAVIUL: Makes you wonder who's the real parasite: SAO, or technology. 

LAVANYA: This isn't a game about friendship. This is a game about the dangers of social media. So turn off that computer and turn off that phone, kids.

XAVIUL: right. 

XAVIUL: Don’t they need the computer to listen to us?

LAVANYA: Stop asking questions.

ASTRO: You know too much.

ASTRO: Lucids report sins to the Dispatcher through their phones. Sleepers can also report sin, but we're not sure if they use the same mechanism or a different one. 

Sleepers do have their phones on them at all times, because when you prank call them, they respond. They ask: is this the Voice or is it music?

This is conjecture, but phones often absolutely record voices and things happening around us. We've seen this recently in our own real smartphones, and it's entirely possible that CHORUS phones do the same thing, which may be why Lucids say speak out loud for the Voice.

The Dispatcher dispatches.

DISPATCHER, QUOTE: More assault. Inform the voice.

ASTRO: The Dispatcher will send out information to the other agents in the field, which include the Lucid and also the stalker. When you are playing in stalker mode, you can hear the Dispatcher's voice in your ear, telling you about the things that the kids are doing. Chordist Lucid, or what I like to call D.J. Lucid, receive information from the Dispatcher and play strings at the terminal. This is a very rare interaction, but if you are very lucky and you happen to be in the right place, at the right time, a Lucid will go over to a terminal - in any of the rooms that have terminals - and will play the organ keys there.

It creates a very specific pattern of notes that is then sent off into the ether to become part of the Song. The Song tracks the player's sins over the night: by the time that information reaches the Chordist Lucids, and becomes part of the Song, everyone in the Song knows about the assault that you committed. They know that you've attacked a Lucid. They know where and they know that you're still out there.

And when that's amount of sin passes a certain threshold - say, that you tackle a few more people, you do some prank calling, you kick in a few doors -The Shape will come out, and he will use the Song to prioritize who he needs to hunt, while hunting players who are seen by anyone in the Song. Sleepers, Lucids, stalker-shaped Kids, they will have their exact location reported to the Shape.

LAVANYA: This leads us into our next section design of the Instrument, and design of the video game itself. Now in the spoiler Content Warning, I said that we'd be speaking of the gameplay systems. This is one instance we're going to be discussing the audio system that underlies the Blackout Club, and various aspects of it which means that we're going to be stepping away from the lore for a moment, and we're just going to be digging straight into the nitty gritty.

As far as we can tell! Because, unfortunately, we don't have access to the engine code. 

ASTRO: Let's talk about the audio design of the game. It's really good. Good audio design immerses you so much that you don't notice it. If you notice it, something has gone wrong. This is why audio designers rarely get noticed for their work, unless they are extremely exceptional in very obvious ways, like making a specific sound or an iconic piece of music - or really bad.

And this is true across all disciplines. It's not restricted just to game design: you can find this in the theater arts, you can find this in the music industry, pretty much everywhere.

LAVANYA: And when Astro says that the sound design in this game is really good, they are not fucking with you. The sound design in this game is fucking amazing! Most of the game can be played with eyes closed. And as someone who, personally, first thing that I do every single time I load up a game is I disable all sounds - if you actually do that in the Blackout Club, you are basically cutting your own hamstrings. You will be playing at half speed the entire time, because it's not only really great to listen to, but it's actually pretty vital to overall gameplay. 

ASTRO: The sound design of the Blackout Club gives you critical information, as Lavanya mentioned. Surround sound, when you're using headphones, means that you can hear exactly where enemies are on a two dimensional plane. In real life, our ears hear only on a two dimensional plane. Each ear receives information independently. If information reaches the left ear before the right ear, our brain registers that that sound is on the left - and all of this happens in an instant. 

XAVIUL: Each enemy makes specific sounds on all types of terrain. Recently, this has gotten a amplified effect in the game to.. we'll call it mixed reviews. But sleepers have heavier footfalls than the Lucids do. The sleepers elites have boots, while the regular sleepwalkers have bare feet.

Makes you wonder why they don't wake up, wondering why their feet are covered in cuts and mud.

But sleepers and Lucid also have different voices, and voice lines that they will say through the night. Camera drones buzz constantly as they move, thouhg mounted cameras are silent. 

ASTRO: You also subconsciously receive information about things further away from you. The way your own footsteps and other sound reflect off the environment and back to you tells you more about where you are.

Even player voices are affected by sound reflection. If one player is inside a cave - say, an exit cave, or even some parts of the Instrument - all of the players voices will echo and resonate, as if they were inside that cave. All entry or exit caves except the one behind 922 Hoadley will do this.

You can contrast this sound with times that you enter soundproof rooms, such as Subliminal Media. Inside Subliminal Media, all sound is more muted. There is no echo at all, to the point that it's kind of unnerving. This information can tell you roughly how big the room is, how close you are to the wall, and what the texture of the wall is. It's less reliable if you're playing blind, due to many different factors, but it still gives you more information which builds your mental profile of your surroundings. And this leads us to one critical fact in most cases. You can tell where you are in the map solely by sound.

So, we are going to play a little game. I have prepared sound clips of different areas of the map, and I would like you two, my lovely co-hosts, to tell me where you think they were taken. 

XAVIUL: A competition. I can't wait to grind Lavanya into the ground.

LAVANYA: There is nothing I love more than listening to loud versions of the sounds that usually I keep at 5 percent! I believe in myself utterly. 

ASTRO: All right. I've sent you an easy clip to start us off. Go ahead and listen to this, and tell me where you think it was taking. 

LAVANYA: Now some of us may think something as foolish as, “oh, this could be the Plexus!” But I want all of you to know I recognize the sound personally from the -

XAVIUL: It’s the Airway. 

LAVANYA: God damn it, Xaviul, don’t snipe me in the middle of my monologue. 

ASTRO: All right, let's listen to another one.

XAVIUL: This is the Plexus.

ASTRO:You are absolutely correct. 

XAVIUL: Can't miss those airbags. 

ASTRO: And one more for good measure.

XAVIUL: Is this strings?

ASTRO: Close.

LAVANYA: Is this Somniliquoy?

ASTRO: Not even close.

XAVIUL: Oh, this is Nerve!

ASTOR: Exactly.

XAVIUL: Three out of three!

LAVANYA: This is why Xaviul is the one at the top of the leadership board with a thousand plus hours. or is it two?

XAVIUL: Now I'm almost at twelve hundred.

ASTRO: The theme song of the Blackout Club was made by an artist named Nathan Moody. We'll attach a link to his bandcamp in the description, so that you can hear all of the incredible music he makes. He makes all of his songs with handmade instruments. The theme song isn't something you can replicate, not perfectly with any conventional instruments we know.

Meanwhile, the general sound design of the Blackout Club was made by an artist named Patrick Balthrop. He also has a website that you can find in our description. His studio is called Interactive Sound and Fury. His position as sound designer means that he is responsible for what we hear in game: the sounds that aren't the theme and the voice lines. But he does control how we hear those sounds too. He worked on Bioshock, among many other things.

Bloody Disgusting had an opportunity to interview Null. They asked a question about sound design, and Null got an answer from Mr. Balthrop. We are going to break down that answer here.

PATRICK BALTHROP, QUOTE: Early on in making The Blackout Club, Jordan pitched me the giant instrument and I got to work. I began to think of architecture that would emit sound by existing in the world. I immediately began to think of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures and sent a reference to the team. Bertoia’s work was an influence on how I began to approach the sound design of the instrument.

ASTRO: So, in the middle of that section, there's a link to a video of Harry Bertoia’s work. If you haven't watched the video, what you see is a large room filled with a lot of things that make  -and we'll call them instruments, but they don't look like conventional instruments.

In the Maze, we encounter these things called Danger Sticks, for lack of a better name. They are essentially steel rods that have been stuck into the ground that, when you walk through by or near them, produce a fuck ton of noise. However, even if you never interact with them, those rods are still making noise. Wind that passes through the maze will agitate them just a little bit and create a gentle musical sound. Harry Bertoia’s room makes music, and humans can act on it to make different sounds, but simply by existing, IT MAKES SOUND. 

PATRICK BALTHROP, QUOTE: Once I established the palette, I set about solving how these sounds would work together musically in the game. 

ASTRO: So this is like a color palette, but for sound instead of visual art. What kind of qualities, what kind of sounds does he want in this design?

PATRICK BALTHROP, QUOTE: All the sounds of the giant instrument are emitting musical notes in a pentatonic scale procedurally. I designed them this way so I could have them overlap one another, procedurally creating harmonies with each part of the instrument contributing to a larger piece of music. When the player is underground in The Blackout Club, they are playing through a procedural musical piece that is evolving harmonically and texturally. 

ASTRO: So, I mentioned sound quality. Sound quality is any attribute of music or sound, and you can use this in different contexts. I can say a sound quality is clear - clear sound quality- or I can say organic sound quality. Different materials make different sounds. This has to do with the makeup of the material on a molecular level. What is it made of, how dense is it, how light, how smooth, and how rough. 

LAVANYA: So, on a fun tangent! Yesterday, we were on the Airways, sipping our mild coffee shop lattes - available now from [BLAH] - remember, shop local!

XAVIUL: Do we get a choice?

LAVANYA: No, you don't have a choice. Choice is a lie, and one day, you will get used to that.

LAVANYA: Anyway, when I told Astro, “hey, listen to those trumpets go!”

- and then Astro knocked me into the ground, sat on me, and forced me to listen to them reading the definitions of woodwinds over and over and over again. So this means now I am properly prepared to explain what that means to you, my favorite listeners! So the sound thatyou get from metal is significantly different from wood, stone, etc.. So you can hear the difference when you're listening to them, in the way that the materials interact. Also create different sound qualities!

ASTRO: So, because I'm a percussionist by trade, I'm going to use my favorite instrument section to introduce this topic. Have you guys listen to an instrument called a vibraphone?

[VIBRAPHONE NOISES.]

XAVIUL: Sounds metally all right.

ASTRO: Now contrast this with this sound clip of a marimba. 

XAVIUL: It got awfully Toy Story here, because this sounds Woody.

LAVANYA: Oh, fuck.

ASTRO: So, as Xaviul alluded to, these instruments are made of different materials. The vibraphone is made of metal, where the marimba has almost the exact same setup, but its keys are made of wood. Critically, the marimba is not made entirely of wood. It also has metal tubes under it.

But what you're hearing is a difference in the material of the keys. Even if you aren't familiar enough with these instruments to recognize them as soon as you hear them, you can tell that there is a difference when you listen to them side by side. And so this concept has been used to create new instruments out of things that already exist. For instance, Adolph Sax created the saxophone, and his goal was to combine the power of the brass section, such as trumpets and tubas and trombones, with the versatility of the woodwinds, who can play very gentle and very quick cadences.

So, there's another word that we need to define, which is pentatonic. Literally, this means of five tones. This means five notes per octave. Now, octave as a word is kind of misleading -because it means 8 Oct, of course, but there are actually only seven true notes in an octave, because the eighth note is the same as the first note, but one octave higher.

Similarly, pentatonic has five notes, and then the sixth note is the same as the first, but one octave higher. Pentatonic scales were developed independently in music around the world. 

LAVANYA: I'm sorry, I tuned out for a second. Are we talking about Pentatonix? Because I love that band. 

ASTRO: [laughter]

ASTRO: So, pentatonic scales were developed in Celtic music, in German music, and Nordic music, Turkish music Afro Caribbean music and many others beyond that. Bottom line is a lot of music uses these scales and you have definitely heard pentatonic scales before because they sound good. For instance, the song ‘Amazing Grace’ uses pentatonic scales. You've also heard them, because you play the Blackout Club.

The point of the decision to use pentatonic scales was to make a pool of - a palette, so to speak - where you could pull any two notes out and they would sound good together. And this was a really smart decision. The last thing we want to convey here is that this was lazy.! It isn't lazy, so don't use this new knowledge to insult the games team. 

PATRICK BALTHROP, QUOTE: When the player is underground in the Blackout Club, they are playing through a procedural musical piece that is evolving harmonically and texturally.

LAVANYA: Now that we're wrapping up that quote, what that means is that the game is writing its own music as we play: the music generated by the game in the background is related to the action of the player. So like I told Astro, the first time they explained this all to me, it's like you're getting your own personal composition every single time. So that's pretty fucking nifty!

We have one more supplemental quote from Null, which is about the design of the maze. 

JORDAN THOMAS (NULL), QUOTE: So we wanted it to feel timeless, like the vision of a mine that is far from human. The hope is that it feels like it transcends technology from our particular time or relies more on the blood and the sweat of the humans who occupy it. 

LAVANYA: So, keep in mind, what this means is that the humans of Redacre are the powerhouse of the Instrument.

XAVIUL: Wasn’t this episode nerdy enough without making nerd jokes?

ASTRO: These two quotes have profound significance when you consider the Instrument and the Song that it creates. Instrument technology has not changed much in many years: as far back as we can find through history and archaeology, our drums are still material of whatever kind stretch over a hollow frame. Our stringed instruments still use tension and string length to create different sounds. And for literally thousands of years, we have made music in much the same ways, even though we've called those instruments different things and made different kinds of music with them.

And now, we need to talk about the language of bodies, after a word from our sponsors.

LAVANYA: So now that we're back from that stunning commercial break: the structure is what we are going to be covering next, because the thing to keep in mind is that the Instrument is not just an Instrument. 

The Instrument is not just a tool for playing the Song and allowing people to hear. The Instrument is a location. All of the rules of the Maze were hand built and planned by the developers, so huge shout out to the team. All of the little details, everything that you see - these are not generic cave designs or maze or anything else! Everything in these rooms has a purpose and is there for a specific reason. 

XAVIUL: They're meant to look and feel realistic, just a few degrees of separation from our reality. Like something you could really stumble into and lose all sense of individuality in! TBC is “low fantasy realistic”, as in air quotes, but deal with it. 

LAVANYA: Fantasy? I don't know about that. Because can we say that eldritch gods really don't exist in our world?

Probably. But have you seen a squid lately? Have you seen them dance, even after they have embraced death?

XAVIUL: I live in Virginia. I haven't seen the ocean in years. 

But part of the horror element is making you question that part of your known reality the Blackout Club straddles the line between real and imagined blurs it wherever they can out wherever it's more interesting. 

ASTRO: So, because of this there are real design principles that came into play when sculpting the Maze. So, let's start with something we know - one of the things we've been told about the Song infection is that it doesn't just need to be heard have an impact, in an older Thee-I-Dare talk. A player suggested: why not use headphones to stop the Song?

And Thee-I-Dare said, unfortunately, it resonates in the whole body.

So let's talk about resonance. This is vibration. The continuation of sound resonating sounds similar to echoing, but there's one key difference: echoing bounces. 

Resonating vibrates.

LAVANYA: Resonance is especially interesting, because eardrums are not the only way that we can hear. We can also hear through our bones, which sounds incredibly fake, but trust me, it turns out your bones can do a lot. To be super technical, even the way that we hear through our ear drums is really very tiny bones. They vibrate the sound vibrates through the rest of us and then we hear it. 

ASTRO: No, that's - not how that works. 

XAVIUL: Two hundred sixty five bones in the human body, and Lavanya is still tone deaf. 

LAVANYA: Hey!

ASTRO: Our ears have three very small bones in them that interconnect to each other. And when the eardrum vibrates, it vibrates those bones. So, technically, all hearing happens through our bones. You can notice bone resonance in your own life, when you're at the dentist's office, or grinding your teeth, or clicking them together.

XAVIUL: Oh, that's horrible for your teeth.

ASTRO: Tuning forks also work this way. They're not great at vibrating air, but they can vibrate other materials, like your jawbone. The sound that you hear from that is that sound traveling through your jaw, to a place where your brain can receive it. Sound travels best through solids, because the atoms are closer together.

All materials have what's called “resonant frequencies”. This is the frequency of sound that makes it wiggle or oscillate, if it's not being affected by any other external force. This is why Glass breaks if you sing at it, which is a real thing that happens - which you may be inclined to chalk it up to cartoon logic, but it is something that you can feasibly do.

XAVIUL: They did a myth busters episode on it!

ASTRO: Glass isn't flexible. So, instead of bending or wiggling, it just breaks. But other materials can bend, like metal, and wood, and parts of the human body, have a couple of fun links in this section - which I'll attach in the description.

But there's an article on Pop Sci, which is an excerpt from a book called ACOUSTIC WEAPONS. Here's a quote from it.

Vic Tandy wrote a paper for the Journal of the Society for Physical Research, not my usual farem called Ghosts In The Machine, in which they describe how they got to the root of stories of a haunted laboratory.

People in the lab had described seeing ghostly gray shapes that disappeared when they turned to face them. Upon examining the area, it turned out that a fan was resonating the room at eighteen point ninety eight hertz: almost exactly the resonant frequency of the human eyeball. When the fan was turned off, so did all the stories of ghostly apparitions.

So humans can hear between 20 and 20000 hertz. On average, age can be a factor in this, and so can many other things. For a frame of reference, the sound of my voice averages at about one hundred seventy eight to one eighty Hertz. At lowest, I can hit about one hundred seventy Hertz.

XAVIUL: Brag about it.

ASTRO: Frequency isn't the only factor. Volume is also key. Volume is measured in decibels or DB. According to Health Link B.C.. normal conversation is about 60 decibels. A lawnmower is about 90 decibels. And a loud rock concert is about 120 decibels.

So, the reason I'm giving you all this information is so that you understand three things. First, your body will not shatter like glass if you listen to the wrong music. You're pretty safe.

Which leads into the second point. The magnitude of what we're talking about is absurd. The volume and the frequency you would have to reach to harm a human with sound is wild. But that doesn't mean that things couldn't vibrate because of sound

Three, we wanted to provide real examples of similar things happening, to give you a better picture of what we're dealing with.

Here's the bottom line. If a sound like the Song is big enough and strong enough, theoretically, it really could vibrate the ground and vibrate bodies to be heard. A better word might be sensed.

ASTRO: So, I know you're all dying to hear more about resonance, so let's keep going. 

XAVIUL: Yay.

LAVANYA: [laughter]

ASTRO: Most of an instrument body is typically made up of what we refer to as a resonance chamber. For example, the wooden body of a string instrument like a violin or a cello residents chambers can come in other shapes and sizes. 

For instance the Mirra, the Shona thumb piano, is often placed inside of a gourd. This acts as a separated resonance chamber for the instrument, which doesn't make much sound on its own. Resonance chambers work by bouncing the sound around inside. As mentioned before, sound travels best through solids. So we need to give it a little bit of a boost to travel effectively through air.

Sound reflects just like light, and it will bounce off any smooth surface. When it bounces, it doubles back on itself, reinforcing the sound and making it stronger or louder. So, this vibrating air that bounces around inside the resonance chamber needs some way to escape and get to your ears to be heard. If it stays inside a sealed rock chamber like the Throat, no one will ever hear it. This is why if you look up, you can actually see a large opening that seems let in a little bit of moonlight to the caverns below. 

A real world analogy to this is the hole in the middle of the guitar, or the S shapes on top of stringed instruments. If these holes didn't exist, you wouldn't hear as well if at all, or the sounds that you make with your instruments.

XAVIUL: And on an added note, if you didn't have ear holesm we wouldn't be able to hear very well either. 

ASTRO: The Throat has connection points to a lot of parts of the Instrument. There are holes to String Relay and arguably to Ingestion, som because of those connection pointsm the sound from those parts of the maze can reach into the Throat, bounce around and then eventually make their way to the surface.

On the flip side, the sound can be caught in between ridges and rough surfaces. Most of the Maze is probably smooth for acoustics, especially parts that contribute to the creation of the Song. You can see crossing from Instrument Supply to Ingestion or Crypto Library. There's immediately a difference.

In the terrain rooms, like 920 Observation and New Growth, they have a lot of rough edges and uneven surfaces. This isn't ideal for acoustics, but they're also new. The sound is getting bounced around in those rooms in ways that don't amplify it as well and it's getting a little bit scattered, but the same concept comes into play much much more with rooms like Somniliquoy and Subliminal Media. Soundproofing is full of rough edges, because sound will literally get caught in the crevices and fizzle up.

So, now we get to talk about something truly terrifying: the echo chamber in Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota. The background noise in this room measures in the negative decibels negative nine point four decibels. Regular soundproofing isn't this extreme, but they really wanted to make the quietest room they could. And if you look at this room, you will see that they have spared no expense. 

XAVIUL: Oh, I hate this room. This is an especially cursed room.

ASTRO: It's a very cursed room. 

Every inch of the walls and even the floor has been layered with sharp spiky bits of wall, and in-between these panels, sound gets caught and tries its best to bounce back and forth, but ultimately can't. The floor has been covered with netting so that they can put even more soundproofing under it. 

XAVIUL: Is this the room where you can hear your own heartbeat?

ASTRO: Yes. You can. This room is so quiet that it's been theorized to make people go crazy. 

LAVANYA: Oh, I love it.

XAVIUL: I just added some damp cave gas in your set. 

ASTRO: So, whatever the cult is trying to hear in Somniluquoy, we either can't be allowed out into the rest of the instrument, or they don't want the sounds of the Song to be let in to allow them to hear more clearly. 

LAVANYA: And what little bit we do know about what they're testing is  mostly about that special special cave gas. Speak-as-One uses the gas as a means for listening to the first voice or whatever voice that they initially came from: essentially, the origin of the species of Daimons. 

They do this by dunking sleepers within the gas, where they enter the deepest form of sleep, and then they go beyond this same form of sleep - which is what allows them to try and decode the names of the other Daimons. Speak-as-One states that truth can be found in the deepest sleep, which comes with the gas.

XAVIUL: The-Measure-Cuts has said that Speak-as-One is listening for something, but they're keeping quiet about it - so maybe the soundproofing is for both directions. 

Who knows? It's a mystery.

ASTRO: So we've talked about volume. Now let's talk about pitch. In a stringed instrument, the length of strings changes their pitch. In the Maze, this happens in a room called String Relay.

In this room, strings move back and forth along tracks. The bottom track is completely horizontal. It's flat, but the top track is at a diagonal. This means that these sets of strings when they move are being not just moved, but stretched and relaxed. If you watch, you can see them thickening when they relax and thinning when they're stretched. 

You can try this on your own. If you have a rubber band stretched between your fingers, the more you stretch it, the higher that sound goes. So these shorter relaxed strings make longer wavelengths and deeper sound, and when they're looser, they vibrate less. Tighter strings, longer strings make shorter wavelengths and a higher sound. They're stretched tighter. They vibrate more in the space of any given time.

In the real world, if you are familiar with any kind of instruments, when you tune guitar strings, turning the little keys stretches and relaxes the string. Similarly, the size of metal tubing impacts pitch. We can see this in the Plexus. Large organ pipes have a much deeper sound than the smaller ones. If you go over to the far sides of the Plexus, when you first enter from the Nerve Center, those gigantic tubes have a deep deep sound. 

But if you stay closer to the center, where the smaller pipes are, you can hear the difference. Think about blowing across the lip of a bottle. If the bottle has more liquid and thus less air, the sound of the air inside it has a higher pitch. If you empty out some of that liquid the bottle will create a lower pitch.

LAVANYA: All right. So now we’re going to move down to architecture, as you were warned about in that ever distant spoiler warning. The Arches create a wind tunnel down from Dream Therapy. Basically, the way that it's setup, you can see from Dream Therapy to Subliminal Message, how the air and what that the sound waves would be push.

Traditionally and in a lot of houses, if you want a natural air conditioning, they'll have two large rooms with a window and each connected by a single hallway. This makes it where, if you open up one window and you open up a window on the other side, the cold air from one side will be pushed and drawn all the way through to the other one: cooling the entire house in the process. It carries the sound in the same way that, say, Georgian architecture carries air from one window to another. 

It carries the sound down to it when you enter the Arches. You can hear a wind sound activate when you enter. This happens once per game. It happens every single time. Keep an ear out, you will notice that.

ASTRO: And now finally we can explain the weird ass title of this episode. 

XAVIUL: Rooms in the bays are based on body parts. It might not be all rooms, but a lot of them are.

LAVANYA: SAO actually spoke to Astro and I about this to get clarification. They stated that the language of bodies is symbolic. The maze is structured like a body, not because it's a one on one match to everything in the Maze, but more because it comforts humans. It comforts them to know that, when they're stomping around downstairs, they're actually deep nestled comfortably into the organs of a strange, eldritch thing, because that's how we are, I guess.

XAVIUL: We aren't ready for the full truth, which is nothing but Lavanya just said, so. The language of bodies communicates to us on a more accessible level, according to SAO. 

LAVANYA: One of the many themes of the game is communication, which Xaviul is not very good at, but we all have to learn. Another theme of the game is the many ways that information passes, travels, morphs and translates through out the process. 

ASTRO: So what is language? Dictionary definitions follow language: they don't predicate it so we're not using those as a source in this discussion, but it is a very wide and far reaching discussion among scholars. You'll find people defining it different ways, but for our purposes, we can think about language as patterns that communicate ideas. 

There are different kinds of these patterns: audible patterns like speech, and singing, and music, but there's also other things like physical patterns, like sign language, quipu, writing, dance, and Old Tongue, and structures and architecture. 

And given this, we need to ask ourselves if the language of bodies is indeed a language - if the structure of the instrument, if that is a language -

What is it communicating?

ASTRO: There was a huge amount of content that we didn't get to talk about, because this episode was already very dense, so we're going to be releasing an episode eight point five. It will be mostly theory, but useful theory. The purpose of the Dreaming Prophet is to arm club members with the facts. Some of this information is really hard to find, and we've spent hours trying to pull it together. Therefore, we'll present what we have. You judge and you decide, but at least you'll have a place to start. 

Cal, Archers Volley and Skegulium, has made a lore master doc. If you're new to the game, or if you know someone who is, please check it out. They're trying to source as much info as possible with transcripts and videos, compiling the disparate info of the community into something comprehensible.

Cass has made a law primer comic. This is a compilation of some of the latest in the lore field, broken down from an in character perspective, so check it out. 

LAVANYA: And also, on the Dreaming Prophet Twitter, we have a new feature called Breaking News. It is a weekly compiled version of the latest news in the Blackout Club, in terms of what has happened this past week -

ASTRO: and it looks sick as hell.

LAVANYA: Feel free to retweet it. Feel free to look at it, if you can't keep up with the rapid fire nature of SAS, and get yourself updated on some of the basics.

ASTRO: You can follow the account at THEDREAMINGPC on Twitter.

Spoder-Man has made a transcript master doc. If you have transcripts or video links, please send them to him. Further information is on the doc itself, which is at TINYURL.COM/TBCTRANSCRIPTS. All of these links are in our description, so visit them as you please.

And finally, if you enjoy the Blackout Club, please leave a review of the game. If you already have, wonderful! If you haven't, time to get on that.

We'll be linking this store page in the description. After you've left your review, use the hashtag the Dreaming Prophet and hashtag the Blackout Club on Twitter to share your favorite Blackout Club memories. 

The Blackout Club is made by question games

Our advertising director is Bellamy.

Our transcript and video is by Lavanya.

Audio editing is by me, Astro. 

Spider-Man is our publicity guy.

Xaviul smells like blue paint. 

[satyathemehta]

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Alzheimer's Disease: New Genetic Culprit Found Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola The gene thought to be most strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease is the apolipoprotein E4 (APoE4) gene. Everyone inherits a form of APOE from their parents (it may be type e2, e3 or e4). If you inherit one copy of APoE4, it increases your risk of developing Alzheimer's, while inheriting two copies increases the risk even more — but is not a guarantee that you'll develop the disease. Research published in the journal PLOS One, however, suggests a different gene, known as TOMM40, is also a key player.1 APoE4 is thought to increase Alzheimer's risk by influencing the buildup of amyloid plaque in the brain, which is a hallmark of the disease. The featured research revealed a TOMM40 variant may actually be more influential than APoE4 in declines in immediate memory, i.e., the ability to hold onto new information, according to the study's first author, Thalida Em Arpawong, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychology at the University of Southern California.2 The study involved testing more than 30,000 participants for immediate and delayed recall by reading a list of 10 nouns and then asking participants to recall them immediately and five minutes later. A large discrepancy in the test results of each test can be a sign of dementia, including Alzheimer's. They then examined genetic data to see if there was a link between any genetic variants and the memory test results. Medical News Today reported:3 "Only TOMM40 was found to be strongly associated with a decline in immediate and delayed recall. The results also showed an association with the 'traditional' genetic culprit, APoE4, but the link was not as strong. Additionally, the analysis revealed that the e3 variant of the ApoE gene was also associated with a low memory score, when found in conjunction with the TOMM40 gene." As noted by the study's senior author, USC psychology professor Carol A. Prescott, TOMM40 appears to play a role in memory decline independent of the APoE gene, particularly the decline of verbal learning after age 60. Further, she suggested memory problems attributed to APoE4 in other studies may actually be due to TOMM40 or a combination of the two, stating, "the causes of memory decline are even more complicated than we thought before."4 Genetics Account for Less Than 5 Percent of Alzheimer's Cases An estimated 75 million Americans have the single allele for ApoE4. Those who are ApoE4 positive have a 30 percent lifetime risk of developing the disease. Approximately 7 million have two copies of the gene, which puts them at a 50 percent lifetime risk. It's unknown how many Americans have the TOMM40 gene or others that may affect risk. It can be unsettling to hear that having a certain gene may predispose you to a disease like Alzheimer's, but keep in mind it's estimated that genetics account for less than 5 percent of Alzheimer's cases.5 Further, even if you have the aforementioned genes, it does not mean your fate is set in stone. Dr. David Perlmutter, a board-certified neurologist and author of The New York Times best seller "The Grain Brain Whole Life Plan: Boost Brain Performance, Lose Weight, and Achieve Optimal Health," explains: "To be clear, no one inherits Alzheimer's. Some of us who have relatives [with] Alzheimer's … are at increased risk. We certainly know there are some genes, the apoliprotein E (ApoE) 3, 2 and 4 genes that are playing a role in carrying the ApoE-4 allele. It does increase a person's risk. But this is not a determinant that you will or won't get the disease. It does indicate that you have a higher risk for that disease. But the beauty of what we are talking about is you can offset that risk. You can change your destiny." In short, yes, there are certain genes that may be linked to Alzheimer's risk, some of which are likely yet to be discovered. But there are dozens of other factors that are also involved; genetics is only one small piece of the puzzle. For instance, research presented at the 2014 Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) revealed Alzheimer's patients with TDP-43, an infectious protein, were 10 times more likely to have been cognitively impaired at death than those without.6 Mounting research also suggests Alzheimer's disease is intricately connected to insulin resistance; even mild elevation of blood sugar is associated with an elevated risk for dementia.7 Diabetes and heart disease also elevate your risk, as all three conditions are rooted in insulin resistance. Arterial stiffness (atherosclerosis) is even associated with the buildup of beta-amyloid plaque in your brain.8 As such, according to Perlmutter, your diet is by far the greatest contributing risk factor. To prevent Alzheimer's, you need to focus on a diet that powers your brain and body with healthy fats, not net carbs (total carbohydrates minus fiber), i.e., a ketogenic diet. A Ketogenic Diet for Brain Health A ketogenic diet calls for minimizing carbohydrates and replacing them with healthy fats and adequate amounts of high-quality protein. I recommend a cyclical or targeted ketogenic diet for everyone, where you increase carbs and protein once you are able to burn fat for fuel on the two to three days a week you are strength training. I believe this is healthy for most individuals, whether they have a chronic health problem or not. I say that because the ketogenic diet will help you optimize your health by converting from burning carbohydrates for energy to burning fat as your primary source of fuel. You can learn more about this approach to improving your mitochondrial function, which is also at the heart of Alzheimer's disease, in my book, "Fat for Fuel." One of the most common side effects of being a sugar-burner is that you end up with insulin and leptin resistance, which it at the root of most chronic disease. Keep in mind that adopting the ketogenic diet along with intermittent fasting may further boost your results, especially if you have the ApoE4 gene. Why Intermittent Fasting Is Critical if You Have the ApoE4 Gene Interestingly, ApoE4 is actually a rather useful gene, as it helps your body survive famine. However, lack of food is a rare situation in most developed nations — most suffer health problems from an overabundance of food — but as soon as I heard this, I suspected having this gene could be a strong clinical indication that you absolutely need to do intermittent fasting or longer fasts on a regular basis in order to avoid Alzheimer's. Dr. Dale Bredesen, director of neurodegenerative disease research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine, and author of "The End of Alzheimer's: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline," confirms my suspicion. For ApoE4-positive patients, 14 to 16 hours of daily fasting is recommended. He continues: "This is absolutely the case. I think it's a very interesting point. ApoE is such a remarkably interesting gene … [It's] is a fat-carrying molecule … What does that have to do with Alzheimer's disease? Why do you start with ApoE4 and end up with Alzheimer's? We started looking at this. It turned out, surprisingly, that ApoE actually enters the nucleus. It binds to the promoters of 1,700 different genes. It literally reprograms your cell toward a more inflammatory state. In fact, if you look at the groups of genes, you couldn't tell a better story about Alzheimer's. It binds to things related to neurotrophic support … ApoE has a big impact … The ApoE4 was the primordial gene that appeared between 5 and 7 million years ago … For 96 percent of all of evolution of hominids, we've all been ApoE4 double positive … ApoE3 appeared 220,000 years ago. ApoE2 appeared 80,000 years ago. Interestingly, ApoE4 prepares you to change niches. When we moved from in-the-trees arboreal ancestors to walking on the savannah, stepping on dung, puncturing our feet, eating raw meat filled with microbes, we needed a pro-inflammatory gene. In fact, if you look at the genes that are different between simians and hominids, a surprising number of these are pro-inflammatory. It also allows you to eat fat, absorb it better and go longer without eating. If you take people who are ApoE4-positive and -negative and starve them, the ones who are negative will tend to die earlier. Therefore, it's not that it's better or worse. It's different. It gives you some advantages. It gives you some disadvantages. Therefore, you can learn to live your life slightly differently that is of advantage to you. My argument is that if you do the right things, Alzheimer's disease should be a very rare illness …" 150 Factors May Contribute to Alzheimer's Disease Download Interview Transcript Dr. Dale Bredesen's ReCODE protocol evaluates 150 factors, including biochemistry, genetics and historical imaging, known to contribute to Alzheimer's disease. This identifies your disease subtype or combination of subtypes so an effective treatment protocol can be devised. For instance, Bredesen states that type 1 Alzheimer's is "inflammatory" or "hot," and patients present predominantly inflammatory symptoms. Type 2 is atrophic or "cold," with patients presenting an atrophic response. In type 3, or toxic "vile" Alzheimer's, patients have toxic exposures. There's also a mixed type, type 1.5, which is referred to as "sweet" and is a subtype that involves both inflammation and atrophy processes, due to insulin resistance and glucose-induced inflammation. An algorithm is used to determine a percentage for each subtype based on the variables evaluated, and an individualized treatment protocol is created. For example, if you have insulin resistance, you want to improve your insulin sensitivity. If you have inflammation, then you'll work on removing the source of the pro-inflammatory effect. Oftentimes you'll need to eliminate toxins and/or address leaky gut or a suboptimal gut microbiome. Interestingly, they also place great focus on the rhinosinal microbiome, the microbes residing in your nose and sinuses. Further, as mentioned, restoring mitochondrial function is a cornerstone of successful Alzheimer's treatment, and one of the most powerful ways to optimize mitochondrial function is cyclical ketosis. Bredesen also recommends the following Alzheimer's screening test so you can evaluate your risk and then get on an appropriate program for prevention or, if you're already symptomatic, reversal: Test Recommended range Ferritin 40 to 60 ng/mL GGT Less than 16 U/L for men and less than 9 U/L for women 25-hydroxy vitamin D 40 to 60 ng/mL. You can get test here. High-sensitivity CRP Less than 0.9 mg/L (the lower the better) Fasting Insulin Less than 4.5 uIU/ml (the lower the better) Omega-3 index and omega 6:3 ratio Omega-3 index should be above 8 percent and your omega 6-to-3 ratio between 0.5 and 3.0. You can get the omega-3 index test here. TNF alpha Less than 6.0 TSH Less than 2.0 microunits/mL Free T3 3.2 to 4.2 pg/mL Reverse T3 Less than 20 ng/mL Free T4 1.3 to 1.8 ng/mL Serum copper and zinc ratio 0.8 to 1.2 Serum selenium 110 to 150 ng/mL Glutathione 5.0 to 5.5 μm Vitamin E (alpha tocopherol) 12 to 20 mcg/mL Body mass index (which you can calculate yourself) 18 to 25 ApoE4 (DNA test) See how many alleles you have: 0, 1 or 2 Vitamin B12 500 to 1,500 Hemoglobin A1c Less than 5.5 (the lower the better) Homocysteine 4.4 to 10.8 mcmol/L You CAN Prevent, and Possibly Reverse, Alzheimer's It's often said that Alzheimer's disease is incurable and there's no known cause. A more accurate statement would be that there are many causes, and, if you address the specific factors causing the cognitive decline, as Bredesen says, "There a tremendous amount you can do." Alzheimer's disease has grown to be one of the most pressing and tragic public health issues facing the U.S. With the number of people affected expected to triple by 2050, the Alzheimer's Association estimates that by mid-century someone in the U.S will develop Alzheimer's disease every 33 seconds.9 However, by getting to the root of the disease, it may be possible to change that. In addition to the dietary strategies and intermittent fasting already discussed, Bredesen recommends, exercise to increase brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), stress reduction, optimizing your sleep, which is critical for cognitive function, and nutritional support. Important nutrients include animal-based omega-3 fats, magnesium, vitamin D and fiber. There are other exciting treatment strategies in the works as well, including photobiomodulation, in which stimulation of the brain with near-infrared light has been found to boost cognition and reduce symptoms of Alzheimer's, including more advanced stages of the disease. Dr. Lew Lim has developed a device called the Vielight, which employs light emitting diodes at these frequencies. Alzheimer's patients using the device for 20 minutes a day report remarkably positive results. Electromagnetic exposures from wireless technologies are a crucial component that needs to be addressed, as this type of radiation activates the voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) in your cells, and the greatest density of VGCCs are in your brain, the pacemaker of your heart and male testes. It is my belief that excessive microwave exposure and glyphosate, which disrupts the blood-brain barrier, and at the root mitochondrial dysfunction, are among the most significant factors contributing to Alzheimer's. Getting back to genetics, you may or may not be among those who have an "Alzheimer's gene," so to speak, but it doesn't change the fact that you do have control over many factors that can cut your Alzheimer's risk considerably. If you are genetically predisposed to the disease, it's even more important for you to take proactive steps to lower your risk, but, really, everyone could benefit from doing so. To learn more, be sure to pick up a copy of Bredesen's "The End of Alzheimer's: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline," which details all the different evaluations recommended in his ReCODE Protocol.

[sherristockman]

Alzheimer’s Deaths Exceed Half a Million a Year in the US Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola Alzheimer’s disease, which is the most serious form of dementia, eventually leads to the inability to carry out even the most basic of bodily functions, such as swallowing or walking. It is ultimately fatal, as conventional treatment options are few and universally ineffective. Like autism among children, Alzheimer’s among seniors has reached epidemic proportions, with no slowdown in sight. On the contrary, evidence suggests the trend is worsening. At present, Alzheimer’s affects an estimated 5.4 million Americans.1 Projections suggest the disease will affect 1 in 4 Americans within the next two decades, and by 2050, Alzheimer’s diagnoses are projected to triple.2,3 Shocking statistics published in the journal Neurology in 2014 revealed Alzheimer’s killed more than 503,000 American seniors in 2010, making it the third leading cause of death, right behind heart disease and cancer.4 Now, data published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reveals that between 1999 and 2014, the death rate from Alzheimer’s increased by 55 percent,5,6,7,8 — a rather radical increase in a mere 15 years. The CDC report also noted the number of people dying from the disease at home, opposed to in a care facility, has increased from 14 to 25 percent. This means many Alzheimer’s caretakers are unpaid family members and friends — a task known to be taxing from both an emotional and financial perspective. While these statistics sound dire enough, the reality may be even worse than that. Alzheimer’s Deaths Are Likely Severely Underreported The CDC report used data collected from U.S. death certificates. However, the 2014 Neurology study revealed Alzheimer’s deaths are grossly underreported on death certificates. In 2010, death certificates showed there were less than 84,000 deaths from Alzheimer’s. Meanwhile, by ascertaining the cause of death based on evaluation of donated organs from the diseased, the actual death toll attributable to dementia came out to 503,400. If such a trend of underreporting Alzheimer’s disease as a cause of death holds true, the increase in Alzheimer’s deaths over the past 15 years may in fact be far greater than 55 percent. Indeed, the CDC claims Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death, while the results from the 2014 study ranked it third. According to the CDC, Alzheimer’s killed 93,541 Americans in 2014 — a far cry from the estimated annual death toll of 503,400, reported in the Neurology study. Whatever the case may be, what’s clear is that severe, lethal dementia is rapidly rising, and the medical establishment is no closer to solving the riddle of causation than they were 30 years ago. What’s Causing Alzheimer’s Disease? It’s often said that the underlying causes of Alzheimer’s disease are unknown, but there’s no shortage of theories. Based on the available science, here are several of the most prominent or likely culprits that can raise your risk of Alzheimer’s disease: ✓ Insulin resistance Mounting research suggests Alzheimer’s disease is intricately connected to insulin resistance; even mild elevation of blood sugar is associated with an elevated risk for dementia.9Diabetes and heart disease10 are also known to elevate your risk, and both are rooted in insulin resistance. Neurologist David Perlmutter warns anything that promotes insulin resistance, like a processed food diet, will also raise your risk of Alzheimer’s. Recent research has strengthened the link between insulin resistance and dementia even further, particularly among those with existing heart disease.11,12,13 Studies have also confirmed that the greater an individual’s insulin resistance, the less sugar they have in key parts of their brain, and these areas typically correspond to the areas affected by Alzheimer’s.14,15 ✓ Vitamin D deficiency The Scotland Dementia Research Centre also noted there’s a very clear link between vitamin D deficiency and dementia.16 Indeed, studies have shown vitamin D plays a critical role in brain health, immune function, gene expression and inflammation — all of which influence Alzheimer’s. A wide variety of brain tissue contains vitamin D receptors, and when they’re activated by vitamin D, it facilitates nerve growth in your brain. Researchers also believe optimal vitamin D levels boost levels of important brain chemicals, and protect brain cells by increasing the effectiveness of glial cells in nursing damaged neurons back to health. Considering an estimated 95 percent of seniors are at risk of vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency, vitamin D may be a very important factor for successful prevention among the general population. Research also shows people living in northern latitudes have higher rates of death from Alzheimer’s than those living in sunnier areas,17 suggesting a link between sun exposure, vitamin D and brain health. In a 2014 study,18 considered to be the most robust study of its kind at the time, those who were severely deficient in vitamin D had a 125 percent higher risk of developing some form of dementia compared to those with normal levels. The findings also suggest there’s a threshold level of circulating vitamin D, below which your risk for dementia increases. This threshold was found to be right around 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) or 50 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L) for Europeans. Higher levels are associated with better brain health in general, and based on a broader view of the available science, 20 ng/ml is still far too low. The bulk of the research suggests a healthy range is between 40 to 60 ng/ml. ✓ Lack of sun exposure While vitamin D deficiency is directly attributable to lack of sensible sun exposure, vitamin D production is not the only way sun exposure can influence your dementia risk. Evidence suggests sunlight is a beneficial electromagnetic frequency (EMF) that is in fact essential and vital for your health in its own right. About 40 percent of the rays in sunlight is infrared. The red and near-infrared frequencies interact with cytochrome c oxidase (CCO) — one of the proteins in the inner mitochondrial membrane and a member of the electron transport chain. CCO is a chromophore, a molecule that attracts and absorbs light. In short, sunlight improves the generation of energy (ATP). The optimal wavelength for stimulating CCO lies in two regions, red at 630 to 660 nanometers (nm) and near-infrared at 810 to 850 nm. I’ve recently interviewed two different experts on photobiomodulation, a term describing the use of near-infrared light as a treatment for Alzheimer’s. To learn more about this fascinating field, please see my interviews with Michael Hamblin, Ph.D., and Dr. Lew Lim. Both have published papers on using photobiomodulation to improve Alzheimer’s disease. Photobiomodulation also improves oxygenation to your cells by releasing nitric oxide, and is a vasodilator that helps relax your blood vessels, lower your blood pressure and improve vascular health. Additionally, delivering red (660 nm) and near infrared light (830 nm) to the mitochondria promotes synthesizing of gene transcription factors that trigger cellular repair, and this is as true in the brain as anywhere else in your body. ✓ Prion infection In addition to viruses, bacteria and fungi, an infectious protein called TDP-43, which behaves like infectious proteins known as prions — responsible for the brain destruction that occurs in Mad Cow and Chronic Wasting Diseases — has been linked to Alzheimer’s. Research presented at the 2014 Alzheimer's Association International Conference revealed Alzheimer's patients with TDP-43 were 10 times more likely to have been cognitively impaired at death than those without.19 Due to its similarities with mad cow disease, investigators have raised the possibility that Alzheimer’s disease may be linked to eating meat from animals raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). ✓ Environmental Toxins Experts at the Edinburgh University's Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Research Centre have compiled a list of top environmental risk factors thought to be contributing to the epidemic, based on a systematic review of the scientific literature.20,21,22,23 As much as one-third of your dementia risk is thought to be linked to environmental factors such as air pollution, pesticide exposure and living close to power lines. The risk factor with the most robust body of research behind it is air pollution. In fact, they couldn’t find a single study that didn’t show a link between exposure to air pollution and dementia. Particulate matter, nitric oxides, ozone and carbon monoxide have all been linked to an increased risk. Living close to power lines also has “limited yet robust” evidence suggesting it may influence your susceptibility to dementia. ✓ Non-native or artificial electromagnetic fields (EMF) Non-native EMFs contribute to Alzheimer’s by poisoning your mitochondria, and this is not limited to living in close proximity to power lines. It also includes electromagnetic interference from the electric grid and microwave radiation from your cellphone, cellphone towers and Wi-Fi. This is a very deep and important topic that I plan to greatly expand on later this year. Based on what I’ve found so far, I’m convinced enough now to never put my cellphone on my body unless it is in airplane mode, and will not hold my cellphone unless it is on a selfie stick. ✓ Inactivity / lack of exercise Exercise has been shown to protect your brain from Alzheimer's and other dementias, and also improves quality of life if you’ve already been diagnosed.24 In one study,25 patients diagnosed with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s who participated in a four-month-long supervised exercise program had significantly fewer neuropsychiatric symptoms associated with the disease (especially mental speed and attention) than the inactive control group. Other studies26 have shown aerobic exercise helps reduce tau levels in the brain. (Brain lesions known as tau tangles form when the protein tau collapses into twisted strands that end up killing your brain cells.) Cognitive function and memory27 can also be improved through regular exercise, and this effect is in part related to the effect exercise has on neurogenesis and the regrowth of brain cells. By targeting a gene pathway called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), exercise actually promotes brain cell growth and connectivity. In one yearlong study, seniors who exercised grew and expanded their brain’s memory center by as much as 2 percent per year, where typically that center shrinks with age. Evidence also suggests exercise can trigger a change in the way the amyloid precursor protein is metabolized,28 thus slowing the onset and progression of Alzheimer's. By increasing levels of the protein PGC-1alpha (which Alzheimer’s patients have less of), brain cells produce less of the toxic amyloid protein associated with Alzheimer's.29 ✓ Hypertension and heart disease Arterial stiffness (atherosclerosis) is associated with a hallmark process of Alzheimer’s, namely the buildup of beta-amyloid plaque in your brain. The American Heart Association (AHA) warns there’s a strong association between hypertension and brain diseases such as vascular cognitive impairment (loss of brain function caused by impaired blood flow to your brain) and dementia.30 Moreover, in one clinical trial,31 test subjects who consumed high fructose corn syrup developed higher risk factors for cardiovascular disease in two weeks, demonstrating just how influential your diet can be on your heart and brain health in the long term. ✓ Genetic predisposition Several genes that predispose you to Alzheimer’s have also been identified.32 The most common gene associated with late onset Alzheimer’s is the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene. The APOE e2 form is thought to reduce your risk while the APOE e4 form increases it. That said, some people never develop the disease even though they’ve inherited the APOE e4 gene from both their mother and father (giving them a double set), so while genetics can affect your risk, it is NOT a direct or inevitable cause. Your risk for early onset familial Alzheimer’s can also be ascertained through genetic testing.33 In this case, by looking for mutation in the genes for presenilin 1 and presenilin 2. People with one or more genetic predispositions are at particularly high risk of developing Alzheimer’s at a very young age. At just 31 years of age, Rebecca Doig is thought to be one of the youngest Alzheimer’s cases presently known. Early Alzheimer’s Prevention Is Required to Stem the Tide of Dementia There is no known cure and no effective conventional treatments for Alzheimer’s, making prevention an overarching priority. Regardless of your age, now is the time to really start looking at which of these possible causes might be influencing your risk. If you’re finding this information now and are in your 20s or 30s, consider yourself blessed with foresight. You still have time to address most if not all of these possible factors. But don’t dawdle too long. Early-onset of Alzheimer’s is also on the rise. Already, nearly 5 percent of Americans with the disease are younger than 65. The video above features the story of Amy Norton, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 43. As noted by the American Alzheimer’s Association:34 “Many people with early onset are in their 40s and 50s. They have families, careers or are even caregivers themselves when Alzheimer's disease strikes. In the United States, it is estimated that approximately 200,000 people have early onset.” The good news is that lifestyle choices such as diet, exercise and sleep can have a significant impact on your risk. As previously noted by Dr. Richard Lipton of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine — where they study healthy aging — lifestyle changes “look more promising than the drug studies so far” when it comes to addressing Alzheimer’s.35 Cyclical Ketogenic Diet Can Help Reduce Risk of Alzheimer’s In recent years, I’ve become deeply interested in and familiar with the medical literature detailing the influence of mitochondrial function on health. It’s become quite clear to me — and to many other experts in the field — that mitochondrial dysfunction is at the heart of virtually all chronic disease, including heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s. Mitochondria are tiny organelles found in most of your cells, responsible for production of energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Your mitochondria have a series of proteins in the electron transport chain, in which they pass electrons from the metabolic products of the food you eat to combine it with oxygen from the air you breathe and ultimately form water. This is called aerobic respiration. The more mitochondria you have and the healthier they are, the more energy your body can generate and the lower your risk of chronic disease. Disturbingly, research suggests 50 percent of people under the age of 40 have early onset mitochondrial dysfunction. It’s no wonder then that diseases historically known to affect the very old are now affecting people in middle age or even younger. Dementia is certainly one of those. The good news is there are many ways to optimize your mitochondrial function, and this is the focus of my new book, “Fat for Fuel,” which details my metabolic mitochondrial therapy (MMT) program in full — starting with what you eat every day. Mounting evidence suggests the ability to burn fat for fuel is a crucial component of good metabolic health and mitochondrial function, and to do that, you simply cannot subsist on a standard American diet of processed food. You need a diet that powers your brain and body with healthy fats. When your body burns fat as its primary fuel, ketones are created, which burn efficiently, are a superior fuel for your brain, and generate fewer reactive oxygen species and less free radical damage. A ketone called beta hydroxybutyrate is also a major epigenetic player, stimulating beneficial changes in DNA expression, thereby reducing inflammation and increasing detoxification and antioxidant production. MMT Is Part of the Answer As a general guideline, until you are able to burn fat as your primary fuel, it is best to restrict your intake of net carbs (total carbs minus fiber) to about 20 to 50 grams per day while also keeping protein low enough to allow you to make the shift to nutritional ketosis — the metabolic state associated with an increased production of ketones in your liver. This is the biological reflection of being able to burn fat for fuel. Nutritional ketosis is defined as blood ketones that stay in the range of 0.5 to 8.0 millimoles per liter (mmol/L). I explain the ins and outs of implementing this kind of diet, and its many health benefits, in the book. In it, I also explain why cycling through stages of feast and famine, opposed to continuously remaining in nutritional ketosis, is so important. By periodically pulsing higher carb intakes, your ketone levels will dramatically increase and your blood sugar will drop. The pulsing will also prevent the loss of muscle that can occur when you remain in nutritional ketosis for extended periods of time. A fascinating paper that demonstrates the power of lifestyle modifications for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s is that of Dr. Dale Bredesen, a UCLA researcher who, by leveraging 36 different healthy lifestyle parameters — several of which are included in my MMT program — was able to reverse Alzheimer’s in 9 out of 10 patients. This included the use of: ✓ Exercise ✓ Ketogenic diet ✓ Optimizing vitamin D ✓ Optimizing hormones ✓ Increasing sleep ✓ Meditation ✓ Detoxification ✓ Eliminating gluten and processed food His work was published in the journal Aging in 2014. You can download the full-text case paper online, which details the full program.36 According to Bredesen, “The results … suggest that, at least early in the course, cognitive decline may be driven in large part by metabolic processes.” Lifestyle Strategies That Reduce Your Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease While genetics can raise your risk of Alzheimer’s, even genetic predisposition does not mean dementia is your inevitable fate. On the other hand, you may have no genetic predisposition for dementia and still lose your mind. It’s important to remember that your genetic expression is predicated on epigenetic factors such as your diet, exercise, sleep and environmental exposures. You can, to a great degree, influence your genetic fate, no matter what you start out with. When it comes to preventing Alzheimer’s, enhancing your mitochondrial function, which I detail in my book, “Fat for Fuel,” is paramount. MMT, I believe, helps you build a solid base for health and general disease prevention. In addition to that, the following strategies (some of which are part of MMT) are particularly important for the prevention of Alzheimer’s: ✓ Address your diet: Eat real food, ideally organic, and avoid processed foods, especially refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils Contrary to popular belief, the ideal fuel for your brain is not glucose but ketones. Ketones are what your body produces when it converts fat into energy. Healthy fats to add to your diet include avocados, butter, organic pastured egg yolks, coconuts and coconut oil, grass fed meats, raw nuts and animal-based omega-3. High intake of the omega-3 fats EPA and DHA help by preventing cell damage caused by Alzheimer's disease, thereby slowing down its progression and lowering your risk of developing the disorder. Avoid all trans fats or hydrogenated fats. This includes margarine, vegetable oils and various butter-like spreads. Keep your added sugar levels to a minimum and your total fructose below 25 grams per day, or as low as 15 grams per day if you already have insulin/leptin resistance or any related disorders. Most will also benefit from a gluten-free diet, as gluten makes your gut more permeable, which allows proteins to get into your bloodstream where they sensitize your immune system and promote inflammation and autoimmunity, both of which play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s. ✓ Optimize your gut flora To do this, avoid processed foods, antibiotics and antibacterial products, fluoridated and chlorinated water, and be sure to eat traditionally fermented and cultured foods, along with a high-quality probiotic if needed. Dr. Steven Gundry does an excellent job of expanding on this in his new book “The Plant Paradox.” I will be interviewing him later this year, but his innovative approach has great potential to help your health. ✓ Intermittently fast Intermittent fasting is a powerful tool to jump-start your body into remembering how to burn fat and repair the insulin/leptin resistance that is a primary contributing factor for Alzheimer’s. ✓ If you enjoy black coffee, keep the habit While I would not encourage you to drink coffee if you’re not already a coffee drinker, if you enjoy it, there’s good news. Caffeine triggers the release of BDNF that activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, thereby improving your brain health. High-quality coffee also has many beneficial polyphenols that can improve brain function. In one study, people with mild cognitive impairment whose blood levels of caffeine were higher (due to coffee consumption) were less likely to progress to full-blown dementia compared to those who did not drink coffee.37 In another study, older women whose coffee consumption was above average had a lower risk of dementia.38 Just make sure your coffee is organic, as coffee tends to be heavily sprayed with pesticides. For more details on making your coffee habit as healthy as possible, please see my previous article, “Black Coffee in the Morning May Provide Valuable Health Benefits.” ✓ Move regularly and consistently throughout the day The following lecture by physical therapist Teresa Liu-Ambrose, Ph.D., details the impact of exercise on dementia prevention and treatment. ✓ Optimize your magnesium levels Preliminary research strongly suggests a decrease in Alzheimer symptoms with increased levels of magnesium in the brain. Magnesium threonate appears particularly useful as it has the ability to cross your blood brain barrier. ✓ Get sensible sun exposure to optimize your vitamin D and reap other photobiomodulation benefits Sufficient vitamin D is imperative for proper functioning of your immune system to combat inflammation associated with Alzheimer's. If you are unable to get sufficient amounts of sun exposure, make sure to take daily supplemental vitamin D3 to make your blood level at least 40 to 60 ng/ml. This is typically about 8,000 units of vitamin D for most adults. That said, please do remember that sun exposure is also important for reasons unrelated to vitamin D. The near-infrared light in sunlight actually helps boost cognition and reduces symptoms of Alzheimer’s via a process known as photobiomodulation. ✓ Avoid and eliminate mercury from your body Dental amalgam fillings are one of the major sources of heavy metal toxicity; however, you should be healthy prior to having them removed. Once you have adjusted to following the diet described in my optimized nutrition plan, you can follow the mercury detox protocol and then find a biological dentist to have your amalgams removed. ✓ Avoid and eliminate aluminum from your body Common sources of aluminum include antiperspirants, nonstick cookware and vaccine adjuvants. For tips on how to detox aluminum, please see my article, “First Case Study to Show Direct Link between Alzheimer’s and Aluminum Toxicity.” There is some suggestion that certain mineral waters high in silicic acid may help your body eliminate aluminum. Later this year I will be interviewing Wendy Meyers, an expert on detoxification and minerals, about some simple strategies you can use to address this. ✓ Avoid flu vaccinations Most flu vaccines contain both mercury and aluminum. ✓ Avoid statins and anticholinergic drugs Drugs that block acetylcholine, a nervous system neurotransmitter, have been shown to increase your risk of dementia. These drugs include certain nighttime pain relievers, antihistamines, sleep aids, certain antidepressants, medications to control incontinence and certain narcotic pain relievers. Statin drugs are particularly problematic because they suppress the synthesis of cholesterol, deplete your brain of coenzyme Q10, vitamin K2 and neurotransmitter precursors, and prevent adequate delivery of essential fatty acids and fat-soluble antioxidants to your brain by inhibiting the production of the indispensable carrier biomolecule known as low-density lipoprotein. ✓ Limit your exposure to non-native electromagnetic fields (cellphones, Wi-Fi routers and modems) The primary pathology behind cellphone damage is not related specifically to brain tumors, or even to cancer. The real danger lies in damage from the reactive nitrogen species peroxynitrites.39 Increased peroxynitrites from cellphone exposure will damage your mitochondria, and your brain is the most mitochondrial-dense organ in your body. Increased peroxynitrite generation has also been associated with increased levels of systemic inflammation by triggering cytokine storms, autonomic hormonal dysfunction and mitochondrial dysfunction. Peroxynitrite is an unstable structural ion produced in your body after nitric oxide is exposed to superoxide, and this complex chemical process begins with exposure to low-frequency microwave radiation from your cellphone, Wi-Fi and cellphone towers.40,41 ✓ Get plenty of restorative sleep Sleep is necessary for maintaining metabolic homeostasis in your brain. Wakefulness is associated with mitochondrial stress; without sufficient sleep, neuron degeneration sets in. While sleep problems are common in Alzheimer’s patients, poor sleep may also be contributing to the disease by driving the buildup of amyloid plaques in your brain. While you sleep, your brain flushes out waste materials, and if you don’t sleep well, this natural detoxification and clean-out process will be severely hampered. ✓ Challenge your mind daily Mental stimulation, especially learning something new, such as learning to play an instrument or a new language, is associated with a decreased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. Researchers suspect that mental challenge helps to build up your brain, making it less susceptible to the lesions associated with Alzheimer's disease.