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Vitamin D is nutritional key for prevention of breast cancer
The cancer industry still refuses to teach women about vitamin D. Ever wonder why?
The following is a compilation of expert quotations on vitamin D and breast cancer, cited from some of the most authoritative books and authors in the world. Feel free to share what you learn here with others who may also be suffering from breast cancer.
Vitamin D and breast cancer
Sunlight triggers the formation of vitamin D in the skin, which can be activated in the liver and kidneys into a hormone with great activity. This activated form of vitamin D causes “cellular differentiation” – essentially the opposite of cancer. The following evidence indicates that vitamin D might have a protective role against breast cancer: Synthetic vitamin D-like molecules have prevented the equivalent of breast cancer in animals.Two equally effective sources of vitamin D in humans are derived from plant ergosterol, which is converted to ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) and cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) by the action of sunlight on the skin. The body uses vitamin D3 for normal immune system function, to control cellular growth, and to absorb calcium from the digestive tract. Vitamin D3 can inhibit the growth of malignant melanoma, breast cancer, leukemia, and mammary tumors in laboratory animals. Vitamin D3 can also inhibit angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels that permit the spread of cancer cells through the body.
– Permanent Remissions by Robert Hass, M.S.There’s surprising new evidence that older women who skimp on foods rich in vitamin D are more likely to develop breast cancer, according to Frank Garland, Ph.D., of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at the University of California at San Diego. This may also help explain fish’s anticancer protection, because fatty fish is packed with vitamin D. Specifically, Dr. Garland finds that dietary vitamin D wards off postmenopausal breast cancer in women over fifty, but not in women who get cancer at younger ages.
– Food Your Miracle Medicine by Jean CarperIn animals fed a high fat diet, which normally would produce a higher incidence of colon cancer, supplements of calcium and vitamin D blocked this carcinogenic effect of the diet. Vitamin D inhibits the growth of breast cancer in culture, and also seems to subdue human breast cancer. Cells from human prostate cancer were put into a “…permanent nonproliferative state”, or shut down the cancer process, by the addition of vitamin D. Human cancer cells have been shown to have receptor sites, or stereo specific “parking spaces” for vitamin D.
– Beating Cancer with Nutrition by Patrick QuillinEven though vitamin D is one of the most powerful healing chemicals in your body, your body makes it absolutely free. No prescription required. Diseases and conditions caused by vitamin D deficiency: Osteoporosis is commonly caused by a lack of vitamin D, which impairs calcium absorption. Sufficient vitamin D prevents prostate cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, depression, colon cancer, and schizophrenia. “Rickets” is the name of a bone-wasting disease caused by vitamin D deficiency.
– Natural Health Solutions by Mike AdamsGeorge’s Hospital Medical School in London finds local production of vitamin D in breast tissue reduces the risk for breast cancer. For women with low breast tissue levels of vitamin D the risk for breast cancer rose by 354%! This study suggests women sunbathe with breast tissue exposed to the sun to enhance local vitamin D production. The provision of 400 IU of vitamin D per day has been found to reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer by 43%.
– You Don’t Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill SardiTaken together, these facts suggest that vitamin D and its derivatives may play a role in regulating the expression of genes and protein products that prevent and inhibit breast cancer. The cancer-stopping power of vitamin D has been documented in osteosarcoma (bone cancer), melanoma, colon cancer, and breast cancer. These cancer cells contain vitamin-D receptors that make them susceptible to the anticancer effects of this vitamin-hormone made by the skin when it is exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D-rich foods include salmon, tuna, fish oils, and vitamin D-fortified milk and breakfast cereals.
– Permanent Remissions by Robert Hass, M.S.Low levels of vitamin D may also increase the proliferation of white blood cells and may accelerate the arthritic process in rheumatoid arthritis. Vitamin D supplements are likely to be useful in retarding these adverse effects of alterations in metabolism. Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to several cancers including those of the colon, prostate and breast. Laboratory experiments show that vitamin D can inhibit the growth of human prostate cancer and breast cancer cells. Lung cancer and pancreatic cancer cells may also be susceptible to the effects of vitamin D.
– The New Encyclopedia of Vitamins, Minerals, Supplements and Herbs by Nicola ReavleyLaboratory experiments show that vitamin D can inhibit the growth of human prostate cancer and breast cancer cells. Lung cancer and pancreatic cancer cells may also be susceptible to the effects of vitamin D. Sunlight also seems to be protective against several types of cancer including ovarian, breast and prostate cancers; and this effect may be mediated by vitamin D levels. Synthetic vitamin D-type compounds are being investigated for their potential as anticancer drugs.
– The New Encyclopedia of Vitamins, Minerals, Supplements and Herbs by Nicola ReavleyIf mutations aren’t corrected or if a cell has already undergone malignant transformation, activated vitamin D can team up with other proteins to stimulate programmed death of abnormal cells. This evidence, along with animal studies, suggest that a girl who lacks adequate vitamin D during puberty years will have abnormal breast development. This, in turn, may increase a woman’s susceptibility to risk factors such as alcohol for breast cancer development. In other words, the window of greatest opportunity for vitamin D to reduce breast cancer risk may be during childhood and puberty.
– The Vitamin D Cure by James Dowd and Diane StaffordA key development for vitamin D was the appearance of increasing evidence that experts had detected a strong relationship between vitamin D and breast cancer risk. The important Nurses Health Study found a 30 percent lower risk of breast cancer in pre-menopausal women when comparing the highest to the lowest intakes of vitamin D, calcium, and low-fat dairy, especially skim milk.
– The Vitamin D Cure by James Dowd and Diane StaffordOut of every 100 women who might get breast cancer, 50 of them can avoid breast cancer by simply getting adequate levels of vitamin D in their body, and that’s available free of charge through sensible exposure to natural sunlight, which produces vitamin D. This vitamin, all by itself, reduces relative cancer risk by 50 percent, which is better than any prescription drug that has ever been invented by any drug company in the world. Combine that with green tea, and your prevention of breast cancer gets even stronger.
– Natural Health Solutions by Mike AdamsThere’s so much more to vitamin D than enhancing calcium absorption; its anticancer benefit is just one other possibility. Most of 63 recently reviewed studies found a protective effect between vitamin D status and cancer risk. A study presented at the 2006 American Association for Cancer Research meeting suggested that an increase in vitamin D lowered the risk of developing breast cancer by up to 50 percent. How might vitamin D help?
– Food Synergy: Unleash Hundreds of Powerful Healing Food Combinations to Fight Disease and Live Well by Elaine MageePlace sunshine or vitamin D pills on your list of preventive or therapeutic measures. A daily intake of 2,600 units of vitamin D (65 mcg) is recommended to attain blood concentrations that will optimally protect against disease. There is no way the diet can provide this much vitamin D. Sun-starved females are at great risk for breast cancer, particularly women living in northern latitudes where wintertime sun exposure produces little vitamin D because of a decline in UV radiation in solar light.
– You Don’t Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill SardiSunlight produces vitamin D in humans. A deficiency of vitamin D is linked with breast cancer. Was the increase in male breast cancer caused by magnetic fields or by lack of vitamin D? These are the types of questions that make it difficult to ascertain if there is a link between EMF exposure and cancer. To make matters worse, a cell biologist doing work on EMFs for the Department of Energy, faked data linking cancer to electromagnetic fields in order to gain $3.3 million worth of grants for scientific research.
– You Don’t Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill SardiThe dosage of vitamin D required to inhibit the growth of prostate cancer may be much higher than the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 400 international units per day. Since vitamin D can be toxic in doses that greatly exceed this value, researchers have developed synthetic analogues of vitamin D that retain the ability to inhibit cancer cell growth without the toxicity associated with high doses. These analogs have been successfully used in animal models of leukemia and breast cancer. Vitamin D may be related to other cancers.
– Permanent Remissions by Robert Hass, M.S.Sunlight exposure, which leads to an increased level of vitamin D, correlates with a reduced risk of breast cancer. I usually recommend small amounts of vitamin D (400 to 1,000 IU) for those people without sunlight exposure, especially during the winter. I also occasionally recommend cod liver oil during the winter months as a source of vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids. Vitamin D deficiency is very common in the elderly and in people who live in parts of the world with little sunlight; it is also one of the major contributing factors to osteoporosis.
– Herbal Medicine, Healing and Cancer: A Comprehensive Program for Prevention and Treatment by Donald R. Yance, j r.,C.N., M.H., A.H.G., with Arlene ValentineBut how does vitamin D actually work? For many years that was a mystery. The “revolution of information” on vitamin D began in 1968, when J.W. Blunt and colleagues discovered the form of vitamin D that actually circulates in the blood (25-OH-D3). This hormonal form of the vitamin, created in the kidneys, is ultimately responsible for the classical action of the vitamin. At the molecular level, some cancer cells appear to have receptors on their surfaces that are capable of receiving the vitamin D molecule. Scientists studied cancer cells from 136 patients with breast cancer.
– Cancer Therapy: The Independent Consumer’s Guide To Non-Toxic Treatment and Prevention by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.Symptoms of vitamin D toxicity include anorexia, disorientation, dehydration, fatigue, weight loss, weakness, and vomiting. New analogues of vitamin D3 allow cancer victims to take high doses of the vitamin without fear of elevating calcium in the blood to dangerous levels. These new forms of vitamin D have very high potency in controlling cell proliferation and differentiation. One of these, calci-potriol, can be used topically to treat psoriasis and inhibit the growth of metastatic breast cancer in patients with whose tumors have vitamin D receptors.
– Permanent Remissions by Robert Hass, M.S.In an investigation into the relationship of breast density as measured by mammography to serum-vitamin D levels, it was found that there was a strong inverse correlation; the higher the density, the lower the vitamin D levels. Does the blood level of vitamin D at the time of diagnosis of breast cancer make a difference in a woman’s time of survival? Yes, it does.
– The Clinician’s Handbook of Natural Healing by Gary Null, Ph.D.Although not part of the study, outdoor exercise where you are getting some (but not too much) sun exposure also raises vitamin D levels. Low levels of vitamin D have been associated with a greater risk of cancer. Relaxation techniques such as writing, meditation, yoga, or massage therapy can aid in battling breast cancer. There is a clear link between alcohol consumption and an increased risk of breast cancer. A study reported in The New England journal of Medicine has stated that consuming as few as three alcoholic drinks a week increases the potential for breast cancer by 50 percent.
– Prescription for Nutritional Healing, 4th Edition: A Practical A-to-Z Reference to Drug-Free Remedies Using Vitamins, Minerals, Herbs and Food Supplements by Phyllis A. Balch, CNC -
How To Setup A Free PGP Key Server in Ubuntu
There are a number of public PGP key servers out there, but if we wanted to make sure we had some level of trust, we wanted to maintain and control our own key server. Well it turns out that in Ubuntu, setting up a PGP/GPG key server is just as easy as setting up PGP/GPG in general.Just do the following:
- Install the sks package>sudo apt-get install sks
- Build the key database>sudo sks build
- Set database permissions>sudo chown -Rc debian-sks:debian-sks /var/lib/sks/DB
- Set the server to start automatically at bootset initstart=yes in /etc/default/sks
- Start the service >sudo /etc/init.d/sks start
That is it! Now your server is listening on port 11371 for key requests. You can now send and retrieve keys to and from the server using your favorite key manager!
If that is not good enough for you, then you can also add a web interface to handle your key searches and requests. To do that you will need to install Apache:
>sudo apt-get install apache2
Once installed create a directory called www in /var/lib/sks/. Download the index.html and keys.jpg file you will need here: (OpenSKS Web Interface)
Extract the contents to /var/lib/sks/www/. Edit index.html and change the three references to your.site.name (currently at lines 20, 36 & 62) to the url of your keyserver, for example keys.bauer-power.net. Now set the correct permissions on that directory: >sudo chown -R debian-sks:debian-sks /var/lib/sks/www
Now if you browse to http://your.server.name:11371 you will see a nice, user-friendly web interface for doing public key exchanges!
How to run a web server on your own PC
If you’ve created a website and want to test it properly, then you could get some web space, upload all your files and see how everything looks. But that’s not always too convenient, especially if you have to make several changes, as you’ll need to upload the tweaked files each time. The whole development process can be much faster if you run a web server on your own PC, then. And while this can be complicated — especially if you try to download and install each component individually — it doesn’t have to be that way. Especially if you grab a copy of Uniform Server.
The package includes all the core components you need, with the latest versions of Apache2, MySQL5, Perl5, PHP5, phpMyAdmin and more. Yet it’s a surprisingly compact download at 15MB. And it’s a self-extracting archive, too, so all you have to do is run it, specify a folder and everything will be unpacked there.
If you’re a server novice then you might be worried about what’s coming next. But it’s all very straightforward. Browse to the UniServer folder and you’ll find three further executables:”“help.exe”, “Start_as_program.exe” and “Start_as_service.exe”. Launching either of the executables will fire up everything you need, along with some explanations of what to do next, while Help.exe provides even more details.
Whatever you do, there’s no complex installation here, so you’re not left on your own trying to figure out some MySQL issue, for instance. Simple alerts explain the basic server essentials, and within a few seconds you’ll be looking at the main Uniform Server console. You can start Apache with a click, and immediately you’ll be able to try out PHP or HTML pages just by copying them to your UniServer\www folder.
This all works very well as a development server. You don’t have to run it all the time, it doesn’t add a bunch of extra components to your PC, you could even run it from a USB key on any convenient Windows system.
But Uniform Server also includes everything you need to run a live web server, host your own sites and make them available online. This does require a lot more thought and configuration time, but again the package does a good job of helping you through the setup process. It really is a great way to get started with Apache, PHP, MySQL and more.
Kinect Conditioning Video Games Comparison
What you spend at LA exercise will undoubtedly pay you back again in the variety a contented and aesthetic daily life- this is what its members assume about it.
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The Value Of Natural Vitamins When Dieting
Some natural supplements can bring about aspect results in selected individuals. If you want to get excess weight the in the sort of diet to array give rice fibers, worthless basically specific diet regime. Your principal treatment physician will be in a position to present the ideal advice to get the body weight down safely and securely and hold it that way.
Yoga is an efficient way from ages to keep healthful body as it rid added flab from system. Have one portion of advanced carbs or one part of fruit (medium sized refreshing fruits, or brown rice, substantial fiber, oatmeal or total grain cereal. The Tony Ferguson Body weight Loss program is the latest plan that gets less than my skin.
Sibutramine helps in keeping the brain’s organic stage of serotonin and norepinephrine by inhibiting the reabsorption of these substances in the mind. A superb suggestion is to start off off keeping a meals diary, this way you can rely your calories and see what you are consuming. Some people today determine to become vegetarian, leaving out meat and eggs, but the salad dressings, nuts and peanut butter, for instance, do a lot more hurt than a lean steak!
It is now in substantial desire for weight loss significantly more so than any other will need. Individuals do the job inexhaustibly through the working day and thence are “lifeless-drained” and just favor to loosen up out on the sofa, leisure is no additional actual physical exercise sessions. Folks are meant to make an exertion & have carbohydrates as well as proteins in their every single day foodstuff stuff.
dieting.is also an essential element of cutting down your body weight on your hips, thighs and buttocks. Have that chocolate pastry you have been seeking so poorly, or a slice of your preferred pizza. For more in regards to atkins diet but no weight loss visit Ketogenic diet program is colloquially used for low carbohydrate food plan, in which the food menu is strictly planned to give small carb, sufficient protein and best fats.
The superior choice is go slower and acquire a healthier solution. This could seem odd but experiments have uncovered that followers of lemonade eating plan system frequently shed 7-8 kilos in a time period of ten days. There are lots of diagrams and books pointing to charts out deprivation your and which however glasses of faucet drinking water all through the day.
It is ready to be really complicated for components and prevalent. Dinner: Have 2 portions of lean protein, and endless servings of non-starchy veggies like cauliflower, broccoli, blended green salads. This plan is straightforward to understand and try to remember given that it only uses crystal clear-minimize terms unlike these other diet classes that bombard you with healthcare conditions.
Lineup of speakers for TEDCity2.0, unveiled
Around the world, cities are growing at an exceptionally fast clip. As the oft-quoted statistic goes, by 2030, 6 out of every 10 people on the planet will live in a city. So how do we make sure our urban areas are filled with beauty, complexity and possibility rather than simply with overcrowding?
TED is pleased to announce TEDCity2.0, a one-day conference focused on the future of cities. Themed “Dream me. Build me. Make me real.,” TEDCity2.0 will be held on Friday, September 20, at The TimesCenter in New York City from 9am-5pm EST. The event will be hosted by Chris Anderson, Courtney Martin and John Cary.
TEDCity2.0 will go far beyond the average urban policy conversation, bringing unexpected thinkers with bold ideas — from a junkyard anthropologist to an architect who went blind midway through his career to a photographer who took the iconic aerial image of New York after Hurricane Sandy. Below, the speakers who will appear at TEDCity2.0.
Session 1: Redefining Citizen
- Poverty professor Ananya Roy, exploring the ingenuity of the world’s most vulnerable
- Peace strategist Mohamed Ali tackles terrorism with entrepreneurial verve
- Entrepreneur Eric Liu is reinventing citizenship for the 21st century
- Harassment avenger Emily May is reclaiming public safety for women and for all
- Mayor Kasim Reed is shaping the future of Atlanta, one of America’s most diverse cities
- Urban bard Felice Belle is a poetic voice of the city
Session 2: Reinventing Urban Experience
- Walkability advocate Jeff Speck, who fights against suburban sprawl and bad urban policy
- Aural artist Jason Sweeney, who is reinventing the urban experience through a crowd-sourced public art project
- Civic technologist Catherine Bracy is scaling “Code for America” internationally
- Radical professor Dennis Dalton, an Ivy Leaguer with a thing for street philosophers
Session 3: Reimagining the City
- Visionary architect Chris Downey, who lost his sight and gained new ways of seeing the world
- Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is putting pedestrians at the forefront of transportation policy in New York City
- Robin Nagle, an anthropologist in residence at the NYC Department of Sanitation, talks trash
- Street performers John Pita and Avi Snow of City of the Sun are flamenco/blues/indie rockers
- Place maker Toni Griffin, an urban planner working to make cities more just
- Housing advocate Shaun Donovan, the U.S. Secretary of Housing & Urban Development
- Sustainability guru Lance Hosey, who’s on a mission to make green design beautiful
Session 4: Redrawing Geographies
- Transportation evangelist Enrique Peñalosa turned Bogota into an international model for pedestrian life
- Photographer Iwan Baan captures life in informal communities, including the world’s most notorious vertical slum
- Impact designer Alan Ricks believes the global south has something to teach the global north about beauty
- Burkina Faso architect Diébédo Francis Kéré creates elegance using local crafts and materials
- Writer Joshunda Sanders, who’s remapping the mental urban landscape with memoir
Working Fathers Need Balance, Too
An interview with Joan C. Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California and coauthor of the forthcoming book, What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Every Woman Should Know.
A written transcript will be available by August 20.
UCLA researcher invents new tools to manage ‘information overload’ threatening neuroscience
California Health Interview Survey releases new 2011-12 data on health of Californians
Additional data will be released through AskCHIS in the coming months.
The data represent a two-year (2011–12) effort to survey a representative sample of Californians in all 58 counties. CHIS is the largest state health survey in the nation and one of the few to provide robust samples of many typically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.
- How many Californians are uninsured?
- Who is eligible to participate in Medi-Cal?
- Who is eligible to participate in Covered California, the state’s new health insurance exchange?
- How many Californians are signing up for high-deductible health plans?
“CHIS will be an invaluable measurement tool in assessing the impact and success of health care reform implementation in California,” said Ninez Ponce, the survey’s principal investigator and a professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “These data provide clarity on the first and largest state health care reform effort in the nation.”
New topics
Diverse data
The survey is conducted by telephone, and the 2011–12 survey includes a much larger cell phone sample (over 20 percent) than previous cycles (6.4 percent in CHIS 2009).
CHIS provides data free of charge via AskCHIS or through public-use files available for download here (a one-time registration or login is required). Public-use files contain even more variables than those available on AskCHIS. In addition, access to even more — and confidential — CHIS data is available through the Center for Health Policy Research’s Data Access Center (DAC). The DAC can also provide access to one-year samples of CHIS data.
CHIS is conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research in collaboration with the California Department of Public Health and the Department of Health Care Services and is supported by several public and private funders committed to improving the health of Californians.
Treating the diagnosis rather than the individual: A look at the increase in recognized disorders and prescriptions
By Grace Rubenstein
Eleanor Longden’s new TED Book, Learning from the Voices in My Head, charts her harrowing journey from terrified young woman trembling in a psychiatric ward to a
Eleanor Longden: The voices in my headstable, successful doctoral candidate who has learned to live peacefully with her inner voices, medication-free. She recounts how her mind shattered into pieces and how she slowly and delicately put it back together.
In recent decades, psychiatry has come to view mental illness through a mainly biological lens, hunting for causes and cures in our brain chemistry. While that approach helps some patients, Longden says, it very nearly destroyed her. She testifies to the need to view patients as individuals, not diagnoses, and to empower each one to heal in his or her own way. As a Ph.D. student in psychology, she also serves up a hefty scientific literature on the problems with over-medicalizing mental illness.
Here’s a glimpse at what the numbers say about psychiatry’s medical obsession:

With the array of possible diagnoses exploding, Longden writes, “it’s apparently becoming harder and harder to be counted as sane.” Meanwhile, the number of prescriptions being written for certain psychiatric drugs is ballooning:

In the nightmarish throes of her initial diagnosis, doctors told Longden she’d have to take antipsychotic medication for life. That was the conventional wisdom on psychosis. But should it apply to every person with the diagnosis? For Longden, clearly not. This landmark study suggests there are many others like her:

In her TED Book, Longden writes, “This is the story of one, but in many ways it is also the story of a whole — of all those who hear voices in the head. The details will vary, acknowledging the enormous diversity in the voices people hear and the ways in which they understand them, but for many of us the essential messages remain the same. It is also a call for an alternative conception of voice hearing, one in which the occurrence is not catastrophized as bizarre and precarious, but acknowledged as a meaningful human experience that can be intensely disturbing yet may also be readily supported and understood.”
Learning from the Voices in my Head is available for the Kindle, the Nook, and through the iBookstore.
Can Jeff Bezos and John Henry Teach Old Media New Tricks?
Transformationally speaking, technological innovation is easy. Culture change is not. Jeff Bezos knows this. If he wants to kindle his newly-acquired Washington Post into Amazon Prime, he’s free to do so. Technically enhancing the Post will be a digital snap. Getting his paper — pun intended — to adopt, adapt to or embrace an authentically customer-centric Bezosian vision, however, will prove very, very hard.
The reasons for that resistance will have little to do with money but almost everything to do with the Post‘s proud, defiantly elitist and self-righteously professional self-image (a self-image equally ensconced in papers like The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times, as well). That prideful culture is simultaneously responsible for the paper’s greatest successes and most humiliating journalistic and commercial failures.
As a former reporter and columnist there, I genuinely admired and respected both my newsroom colleagues and our business counterparts. But the Post’s brave new entrepreneurial owner undeniably embodies two values that were never part of the paper’s cultural norms: (1) being data-driven and (2) providing measurably superior customer experience. That’s simply not what newspapers do.
Almost everything that makes Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos as an innovator is organizationally alien to what made The Washington Post The Washington Post as a newspaper. At the Post, reporters report, editors edit and ad sales people sell ads. Journalists tell stories and report news; they don’t do UX. Newspapers are indeed in information and digital content businesses. But their decision-making is typically far less data-driven than the big box retailers whose advertising they’re so desperate to get. As a rule, newspapers know less about their readers and advertisers than an Amazon, Google or Facebook does.
These institutions built their brands not by focusing on customer experience or using strategic analytics but by successfully defining the most important and newsworthy stories in their communities and beyond. Those days are officially gone. So are the business models that made them profitable. The competition has both bigger and better data while offering much better customer experiences. There’s little these papers do that deserves to command a marketplace premium from customers.
Serious innovators look to Amazon, not The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or The Boston Globe for innovation inspiration. Being a better newspaper or having better reporters, editors, web masters and ad salespeople doesn’t solve the problem. They’re no longer fit for purpose. The whole is worth less than the sum of its diminishing parts.
So when Bezos writes, “We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about — government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports — and working backwards from there. I’m excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention,” he effectively acknowledges that the status quo he purchased is unsustainable and — more importantly — existing cultural norms cannot endure. Can elite — and elitist — journalists who professionally prefer to tell readers what’s important reinvent themselves as interlocutors and explainers who can digitally engage to inform? Will editors who’ve learned how to motivate prima donna reporters be able to turn themselves into “crowdsourcing shepherds” capable of tapping the collective intelligence of reader communities into stories everyone tweets, links to and talks about? Can people who went into publishing precisely because there was no math learn how to take statistical advantage of petabytes of data to better customize, personalize or illuminate a customer app or experience? Will an industry that has institutionally treated customer feedback as an irritant — look at the online comments section of any major newspaper — finally have the wit and innovation to monetize their readers’ best, brightest and most provocative comments?
The answers, as Bezos surely knows, have little to do with the Post’s technical abilities to interoperate with Amazon Web Services and everything to do with profound cultural transformation. You can’t lead at Amazon unless you’re willing to be data-driven and relentlessly invested in improving customer experience. Will that Bezosian ethos be true for the Post in three or four years? Or will Amazon’s founder be demonized and dismissed as someone who “just doesn’t get” what elite journalism is supposed to mean?
These cultural challenges aren’t unique to the Post; they’re endemic to the industry. Nate Silver, arguably the most innovative data-driven journo-blogger in America, recently left The New York Times for ESPN. John Henry, the billionaire investor who brought Bill James and “Moneyball” insight to the Boston Red Sox — and winning the World Series in the process — just purchased The Boston Globe from The New York Times Company. Could a Bill James/Moneyball approach transform newsroom culture and best practice much the way it did for baseball? Of course. Then again, there’s already a Bill James/Moneyball innovator in the daily news business; it’s called Google. Bezos knows about competing with them, too.
For now, Bezos is keeping the current leadership of the Post in place. The Washington Post I know was a “lead by example” place. What data-driven decision and customer experience leadership examples will they now set? What do they want to learn from their new owner to help transform their old newspaper? How will they reinvent themselves?
Because if the paper’s leaders don’t embrace and enact Bezos’ values, you can be sure the newsroom won’t either. That would truly be the end.
Eleanor Longden’s selections for further reading on voice hearing
Eleanor Longden’s riveting story – featured in today’s talk and more in depth in the new TED Book, Learning from the Voices in My Head — raises many provocative questions. Longden talks about her recovery after a diagnosis of schizophrenia, in the process calling into question the attitudes of traditional psychiatry, the role of drug manufacturers and the very definition of madness. If her tale piqued your interest, there’s plenty more to explore. Here, take a look at a list of resources Longden put together exclusively for TED.
Articles:
Transforming Diagnosis, by Thomas Insel, director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, April 29, 2013. [See also Insel’s TED Talk, Toward a new understanding of mental illness.]
Statement of Concern by the International DSM-5 Response Committee, March 24, 2013.
Psychiatrists: the drug pushers, by Will Self, The Guardian, August 2, 2013.
Antipsychotics: is it time to introduce patient choice?, by Anthony P. Morrison et al, British Journal of Psychiatry, 2012.
The Illusions of Psychiatry, by Marcia Angell, The New York Review of Books, July 14, 2011.
Negative childhood experiences and mental health: theoretical, clinical, and primary prevention implications, by John Read and Richard P. Bentall, British Journal of Psychiatry, 2012.
Books:
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness, by Robert Whitaker. (Crown, 2010.)
Doctoring the Mind: Is Our Current Treatment of Mental Illness Really Any Good?, by Richard P. Bentall. (NYU Press, 2009.)
Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meaning of Madness, by Gail A. Hornstein. (Rodale Books, 2009.)
Living With Voices: 50 Stories of Recovery, by Marius Romme, Sandra Escher, Jacqui Dillon et al (editors). (PCCS Books, 2009.)
Podcasts:
An Interview with Pat Bracken on Post-Modern Psychiatry and the Social Context of Trauma podcast interview, by David Van Nuys, Seven Counties Services, Inc., Louisville, KY.
Millennial Women Aren’t Opting Out; They’re Doubling Down
Wonks have zeroed in on a detail of last Friday’s lackluster jobs report and a recent report from the Urban Institute to discuss a notable data point: a small decline in the number of twentysomething women entering the workforce. Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas of the Washington Post write, “In particular, [labor force entry has] suffered among women — and it’s really suffered among young women — who are a lot less likely to enter the labor force than they were in 2002 and 2003.”
The question is: why?
As Papa Kwaku Osei at Quartz writes, “The labor force participation rate hasn’t been falling because of discouraged workers, but because the very people who used to look for jobs are now choosing to go to college. And most of them are female millennials.” This is interesting from the perspective of the jobs report, but let’s not lose the bigger picture: the trend toward higher college enrollment among women dwarfs the decline in labor force participation. Indeed, while the Quartz slug reads “opt out,” these women are actually doubling down.

This investment in education makes sound economic sense. While the youth unemployment rate has remained high, post-recession, the more education you have the more likely you are to work. “For those [aged 16-24] with less than a high school diploma, 14 percent worked full-time, compared to 66 percent with a bachelor’s degree or higher,” notes Diana G. Carew at the Progressive Policy Institute.
Indeed, when you look at the rate at which young women have flocked to college in the last ten years, and compare it with the rate at which they’re delaying entry into the workforce, you realize that most of these women are working and attending college at the same time.
This raises a bigger question. Why does our monthly jobs conversation cover such a paltry part of the picture? It’s well known, at this point, that the headline unemployment rate only covers those who are actively seeking work — thus, discouraged job-seekers aren’t even counted. For a fuller picture you have to dig deeper into the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly report to get at “alternative measures of labor utilization” such as U-5 and U-6 unemployment. Most media coverage of the jobs report still mentions only the headline number, although the pieces cited above are good examples of trying to get beyond it.
But even nuanced coverage struggles to get beyond the measurement limitations of the jobs report. It doesn’t cover those who are either actively improving their marketable skills in college (and most of the women in college are not studying liberal arts topics at $40,000-a-year universities, but studying pharmacy or medical technology or other immediately practical subjects at more reasonably priced community colleges). It also doesn’t include people who are actively contributing to GDP by working as volunteers or interns — roles that have become increasingly attractive to cost-cutting companies, and to experience-desperate would-be workforce entrants.
The employment picture for America’s twentysomethings is grim enough, with a youth unemployment rate that has been in the double digits since 2008. That’s a pretty big hurdle to overcome whether you are female or male.
But perhaps the lesson we should be taking from this “nontroversial” jobs report is that the news isn’t all bad. In fact, some of what looks like bad news might actually be a sensible investment in the future, when there are few other options on the table.
My emotional world, externalized: Jon Ronson talks to Eleanor Longden
Jon Ronson, who spoke at TED2012, has a conversation with Eleanor Longden, who gave today’s talk at TED2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson
By Jon Ronson
In 2010, I made a radio documentary about Eleanor Longden for BBC Radio 4. When I heard that TED was doing a talent search — looking to give the TED2013 stage to people who might not normally have access to such a place — I thought of Eleanor. I told the TED people about her, they auditioned her in London, and she got through.
Doing a TED talk is very anxiety-inducing. You have to stand in front of people like Al Gore and Bill Gates. Plus people keep telling you it’s the most important 18 minutes of your life.
Jon Ronson: Strange answers to the psychopath testIn my year, 2012, Susan Cain was doing her introvert talk and everyone kept saying, “Oh she’s so brave giving a TED talk when she’s an introvert.” But when I was chatting with Susan Cain backstage, I was the one so nervous and fidgety I destroyed my TED ID badge. It exploded in my hands. Whereas Susan Cain was just fine.
I worried what the stress of being at TED might do to Eleanor, given her previous mental health problems. But it’s six months later and Eleanor’s TED talk has just gone online, and TED has published a book called Learning from the Voices in My Head to go alongside it.
Eleanor Longden: The voices in my head They asked me to do an email Q&A with Eleanor. The entirety of the conversation can be found on The Guardian’s website; or read short excerpts from it below. I started by asking Eleanor about how she handled the stress.
Eleanor Longden: Yes, [I was] definitely very nervous in the run-up. In fact, the day of the talk itself was agony — like waiting to take an exam in front of a colossal audience. I was never worried that it would have a severe impact on me, though. In fact, having experienced such serious difficulties in the past has probably given me very useful skills in managing emotion and taking care of myself, more than I most likely would have had if the breakdown had never happened.
Jon Ronson: Let’s back up a minute and talk about what happened to you. Whenever I tell anyone your story, I always begin with a bit of a narrative flourish: You are just a regular student somewhere in England. And then one day you got out of bed and … what happened?
Eleanor Longden: Well, essentially what happened was that — although I couldn’t possibly have known it at the time — my whole life, and the life I’d expected to have, was about to change beyond all recognition. This brewing catastrophe began in a relatively mundane way; the appearance of a single, neutral voice that calmly narrated what I was doing in the third person: “She is going to a lecture,” “She is leaving the building.” I was startled at first — very shaken. It was quite a weird sensation. But I got accustomed to it pretty quickly, because it was so unthreatening. I knew what voice hearing was, of course, but this didn’t seem anything like the types of voices you read about in the media or see in films — frenzied, violent voices that drove people to acts of destruction. And after a while, I even began to find it quite reassuring. Owing to a series of childhood traumas, I was a very confused, anxious and unhappy teenager, and the voice started to feel like a reminder that in the midst of crushing unhappiness and self-doubt, I was still carrying on with my life and responsibilities. I wondered whether other people had similar commentaries but just never talked about it. Also, although this took a bit longer, I began to feel that the voice was very closely connected to my sense of self, in that it reflected emotions I couldn’t express. So, for example, if I felt angry and had to hide it, then the voice would sound frustrated. It began to seem vaguely fascinating, creative even – how my emotional world was being externalized through this voice.
Jon Ronson: So this story is about to get hugely worse. But before it does, let me ask a question. I remember when I was a kid once or twice hearing a kind of weird babble of voices in my head. Like there was a party going on and a whole bunch of people were all talking at once, and I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. It didn’t bother me at all. I think a lot of people have had a similar experience: hearing a voice just as they’re falling asleep, or whatever. Before everything got worse for you, is that the kind of thing we’re talking about? Something as innocuous as that?
Eleanor Longden: That’s a really interesting question, because what research actually suggests is that voice hearing (and other unusual experiences, including so-called delusional beliefs) are surprisingly common in the general population. The recognition of this had led to the popularity of “continuum models” of mental health, which suggests different traits and experiences are all part of human variation — not strictly categorical in terms of “us and them,” “sane and insane,” “normal and abnormal.” However, I do think life events play a vital role in determining who becomes distressed and overwhelmed and who doesn’t. This might include experiences of abuse, trauma, inequality, powerlessness, and so on, but it can also include the immediate reactions of the people around you. If you don’t have people who will accommodate your experiences, support you, and help you make sense of what’s happening, then you’re much more likely to struggle.
Jon Ronson: So when did you first notice that the voices were becoming less threatening? Can you remember a moment when the voices became noticeably nicer?
Eleanor Longden: It happened gradually — and some voices took longer to change than others. But primarily it was when I stopped attacking and arguing with them, and began to try and understand them and relate to them more peacefully. It was about putting an end to the internal civil war I mentioned earlier, because each of them was part of a whole: me! I would thank them for drawing my attention to conflicts I needed to deal with. I remember one very powerful moment, several years down the line, when I said something like, “You represent awful things that have happened to me, and have carried all the memories and emotion because I couldn’t bear to acknowledge them myself. All I’ve done in return is criticize and attack you. It must have been really hard to be so vilified and misunderstood.” There was an immensely long pause before one of them finally responded: “Yes. Thank you.”
Jeanette Winterson, in her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, summarizes a related concept process really wonderfully: “I often hear voices. I realise that drops me in the crazy category but I don’t much care. If you believe, as I do, that the mind wants to heal itself, and that the psyche seeks coherence not disintegration, then it isn’t hard to conclude that the mind will manifest whatever is necessary to work on the job.”
Jon Ronson: When was the very last voice that you heard?
Eleanor Longden: I last heard voices yesterday. They were repeating something I’d read on the Internet. The comment was: “I’m going to spoil the ending for you. The ending is — everything’s going to be great!”
Read the entirety of my conversation with Eleanor at The Guardian »
A Question That Can Change Your Life

For years I’ve exercised every day — doing weights, cardio, yoga — but despite my continuous effort, I haven’t seen much change.
Until a few months ago.
Recently, my body has changed. My muscles are stronger, more defined, and I’ve lost five pounds along with a visible layer of fat. So what did I do differently?
Let’s start with what I didn’t do: Spend more time exercising. In fact, I’ve spent less. What I did change is how I use the time I spend working out.
Instead of doing the same old workout, day after day, I’m mixing it up with new routines. I’m focusing my effort more wisely — confusing my muscles with different exercises, adding balance challenges, power moves, and intervals.
The rapid results I achieved by changing my exercise routine made something very clear to me: We habitually squander time and effort on behaviors that do little to move us toward the outcomes we’re seeking. Spending an hour on a treadmill watching TV had no visible impact on my fitness. But when I used that hour differently, I saw improvement.
It’s not that we’re lazy. We put effort into what we do. I ran on the treadmill every day. But, like my daily run, our efforts often don’t translate into optimum results.
The basic principle is simple: We’re already spending a certain amount of time doing things — in meetings, managing businesses, writing emails, making decisions. If we could just make a higher impact during that time, it’s all upside with no cost.
So here’s the question I’d like to propose you ask yourself throughout your day: What can I do, right now, that would be the most powerful use of this moment?
What can I say? What action can I take? What question can I ask? What issue can I bring up? What decision can I make that would have the greatest impact?
Asking these questions — and answering them honestly — is the path to choosing new actions that could bring better outcomes. The hard part is following through on the answers and taking the risks to reap the full benefits of each moment. That takes courage. But it’s also what brings the payoff.
I was once sitting in a meeting with the CEO of a large bank and his head of HR. Right before the meeting, the CEO had told me that he had lost confidence in his HR chief after he had made a number of blunders without accepting any responsibility. “He really needs to go,” the CEO told me.
Then, during the meeting, the head of HR asked the CEO for feedback. He’s opened the door, I thought to myself. But the CEO said nothing. That led to more dysfunction as the head of HR stayed on, continuing to disappoint the CEO, but without getting straight feedback.
It’s easy to judge the CEO. And he certainly should have been bolder. But how many of us miss similar opportunities out of fear or nervousness or even simply concern for hurting other people’s feelings?
While the CEO’s missed opportunity was a glaring omission with painful consequences, it is, unfortunately, not unusual.
There’s some good reason for that: Sometimes the bold move can backfire. I know a similar situation to the one above, where a VP level person asked her employee for feedback, but when the employee answered honestly, he was shunned and treated poorly afterwards.
Rejection, failure, even ridicule — those are the risks of making the most powerful use of a moment. But in my experience, boldness, combined with skilled communication, almost always pays off because it moves the energy of a situation and creates new possibilities in otherwise old ruts.
Having the courage to take the kind of bold action that creates new opportunities is, possibly, the most critical skill a leader can have. It’s why leadership development should involve experiences that hone emotional courage, and the communication abilities necessary to use it productively.
I recently saw a short video that perfectly illustrates the risk-reward payoff of courageously using a moment well. Billy Joel was speaking at Vanderbilt University when a young student, Michael Pollack, raised his hand. When Joel called on him, Michael asked if he could play the piano to accompany the musician for a song. A silence followed. Michael had taken a big risk just by asking and you could feel the tension and suspense in the room. After a pause, Joel said “yes” and the video of their astounding spontaneous collaboration has now been viewed over 2.5 million times.
How often have you been in a similar situation, at one time or another, wanting to say something or do something, yet letting the moment pass by? Next time you’re in that situation, pay attention to it. Notice the feelings that come along with it. Observe the physical sensations in your body. Can you feel your heart beating? Can you connect with the conflicting urges to act and not to? Getting in touch with those feelings is the first step to acting in the face of them.
Woody Allen famously said that 80% of success is showing up. Maybe that’s true. But, if it is, then I’d say the other 20% is the most important. Simply showing up and watching TV on a treadmill — that’s not enough. Your greatest opportunity is to use your time in a way that will garner the most productive return. To take risks that will shake things up.
What can you do, right now, that would be the most powerful use of this moment?
Making loans and transforming lives in Pakistan
It is quite fitting that as the holiest month in the Muslim calendar, Ramadan, draws to a close this week and Muslims around the world celebrate the arrival of the new moon, we at lendwithcare.org will be celebrating the successful inclusion of our first Islamic Microfinance partner, Akhuwat in Pakistan.
Like ‘traditional’ microfinance, Islamic microfinance is the provision of basic financial services to the poor or those on low incomes. However, what differentiates Islamic microfinance from its more ‘traditional’ form is that these basic services, be it loans, savings or insurance, must conform to Islamic financing principles. More specifically these principles include, financial support for socially productive activities only, no speculation or excessive uncertainty, prohibition of Riba or unjust gains, which includes, but is not limited to, interest and no exploitation by the stronger party against the weaker
Safiya & her husband, Khuda. Farmers from Pakistan. Picture: © CARE
And although lendwithcare.org, as part of international development charity CARE International UK, has been supporting microfinance institutions across the developing world since September 2010, our partnership with Akhuwat now lets people in the UK lend their money to an organisation that specifically complies with these principles.
Since April 2013, people in the UK have been lending small sums of money to micro-entrepreneurs in the Punjab region through our peer-to-peer lending website and so far the partnership is proving to be a great success and incredibly popular with the UK public. In fact, in just 4 months lendwithcare lenders have supported 230 self-starting entrepreneurs in Pakistan to grow or start a small business, providing them with the opportunity to lift themselves, and their families, out of poverty.Naseem Akhtar is an example of one of the entrepreneurs supported by lendwithcare lenders over the last 4 months.
Kosar, an embroiderer from Pakistan. Picture: © CARE
Naseem has faced many personal and financial difficulties in her life. Her husband had substance abuse issues and frequently sold valuable domestic household items cheaply in order to finance his addiction. Eventually her husband abandoned the family and has never returned. With help from 2 daughters Naseem now runs a tailoring business from her home. She earns around 28,000 rupees per month (around £200). However, there are 10 members in her family and Naseem finds it difficult to adequately clothe and feed everyone. She wants to expand her business and requested a loan of 15,000 Rupees (approximately £150) in order to buy an additional sewing machine.For Naseem, like most of the micro-entrepreneurs supported through lendwithcare, small and reliable sources of credit can create a virtuous cycle of investment and increased income and thereby break the cycle of poverty in which many poor people like Naseem, are trapped.
Naseem, a tailor from Pakistan. Picture: © CARE
With 2.5 billion adults, predominantly in developing countries, currently considered ‘financially excluded’ we at CARE are working very hard to create access to basic financial services more readily available. However, in addition to this forced exclusion from the formal financial sector due to social or economic conditions, there is an additional aspect to this exclusion that is not being addressed with perhaps quite the same gusto and this is that many Muslims (estimates vary from one-fifth to half the population) refrain from accessing interest based finance for fear of breaching their religious beliefs. And when we consider 650 million Muslims live on less than $2 a day, it is reasonable to conclude that the unavailability of Islamic microfinance constrains the development of many Muslim owned micro-businesses and therefore the creation of sustainable livelihoods.
In a context like Pakistan, where we have recently started working with Akhuwat, these figures become all the more significant when we consider a third of the population live on less than 30p a day and the majority of the population (95-97%) are Muslim.
Muhammad, a rickshaw driver from Pakistan. Picture: © CARE
Since teaming up with Akhuwat (meaning brotherhood), an organisation in Lahore, to offer Islamic, or Shariah-compliant loans, our lenders have been able to support some of the poorest people in Pakistan with their businesses by providing loans that comply with their religious beliefs. Through our partnership with Akhuwat we are able to target the poorest and most marginalised people living in Pakistan, who traditionally have the most difficulty getting money for their business – especially women.The World Bank recently found that access to finance remains one of the biggest challenges to Pakistani women who want to grow a business, with less than 25% of Pakistan’s businesswomen being microfinance borrowers. Whilst offered on Islamic principles, the loans are not limited to Muslim borrowers and many Christians (a minority group in Pakistan) are also able to take up these loans.
Expanding lendwithcare’s reach to Pakistan, and our first Islamic microfinance organisation, has been a great addition to our microloan initiative and definitely a cause for celebration for us at CARE. In the words of one of our lenders ‘Lend with care is one of THE BEST practical ways to do something worthwhile with our money. Find out more!’
Eid Mubarak everyone!
Over the next few weeks we’ll be highlighting our development support to Pakistan and how we’re helping to push for change. We’ll be linking up with partners from across the British Pakistani community who are making a huge contribution to Pakistan’s development and promoting the positive voices for progress in country. To get the latest Pakistan development news straight to your inbox sign up for our quarterly newsletter.
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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British government.
Everything you ever wanted to know about voice hearing (but were too afraid to ask)
Eleanor Longden gave a candid talk about the fact that she hears voices at TED2013. Today, we also release her TED Book, which delves further into her experience in the mental health system. Below, all the questions you’d want to ask Longden. Photo: James Duncan Davidson
During her freshman year of college, Eleanor Longden began hearing voices: a narrator describing her actions as she went about her day. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Longden began what she describes as a “psychic civil war,” fighting to stop the voices as they became antagonistic.
Eleanor Longden: The voices in my headWhat helped her was something unexpected: making peace with them. By learning to see the voices as a source of insight rather than a symptom, Longden took control.
What’s it like to hear voices? Read Eleanor’s FAQ below — where she tells you everything you wanted to know about voice hearing, with her signature honesty and humor.
Want more? Longden first spoke during our Worldwide Talent Search; then told a longer version of her journey toward acceptance of her own mind on the mainstage at TED2013. And today, Longden premieres her TED Book, delving deeper into her experience. Learning from the Voices in My Head is available for the Kindle, the Nook and through the iBookstore.
Do your voices ever talk to each other (and exclude you)?
Sometimes. In the old days they would talk about me a lot more, but now they usually speak to me directly. And when they do discuss me, it’s more likely to be compliments or positive encouragement. Or sometimes they’ll discuss something I’m worried about and debate possible solutions. There’s one particular voice that will repeat helpful mantras to the others. A recent one was: “If you can do something about it, there’s no need to worry. And if you can’t do anything about it, there’s no point in worrying!”
Do the voices sound like they are coming from inside your head or through your ears?
This is something else that’s changed a bit over time. They used to be more external, but now tend to be internal or outside, but very close to my ears. It can also vary depending on which voice is speaking.
What would you miss if you lost the voices? Would you be lonely?
My voices are an important part of my identity – literally, they are part of me – so yes, I would miss them if they went. I should probably insure them actually, because if they do ever go I’ll be out of a job! This seems extraordinary given how desperate I used to be to get rid of them. But they provide me with a lot of insights about myself, and they hold a very rich repertoire of different memories and emotions. They’re also very useful when I do public speaking, as they’ll often remind me if I’ve missed something. They can be helpful with general knowledge quizzes too! One of them even used to recite answers during my university exams. Peter Bullimore, a trustee of the English Hearing Voices Network, published a beautiful children’s book that was dictated to him by his voices.
Do your voices ever overlap? Could they harmonize?
They sometimes talk over each other, but don’t really say the same things in unison. I’ve met people whose voices do that though, like a chorus. Other people sometimes describe voices that sound like a football crowd, or a group talking at a party. At a recent conference, I heard a really extraordinary fact: that people who’ve been deaf from birth don’t hear voices, but see hands signing at them.
Do your voices happen all the time? Like, even during sex? Do you have to shush them during a movie?
No, not all the time! Although they’re often more active (and sometimes more negative or antagonistic) when I’m stressed. Even this can be useful though, as it’s a reminder to take some time out and look after myself. I relate to them so much better now, so if they become intrusive and I ask them to be quiet in a calm, respectful way — then 99% of the time they would.
Can you make certain voices pop up at will?
Yes, some of the time. Actually, this was something I used several years ago during therapy – my therapist would say for example, “I’d like to speak with the voice that’s very angry,” or “the voice that talks a lot about [a particular traumatic event],” and he’d dialogue with it.
Is there a time when you want to hear voices or are you always trying to get them to be quiet?
I sometimes discuss dilemmas or problems with them, or ask their opinion about decisions, although I would never let them dictate something to me that I didn’t want to do – it’s like negotiating between different parts of yourself to reach a conclusion ‘everyone’ is happy with. So, for example, maybe there’s a voice that represents a part of me that’s very insecure, which will have different needs, to a part of me that wants to go out into the world and be heard. Or the needs of very rational, intellectual voice may initially feel incompatible with those of a very emotional one. But then I can identify that conflict within myself and try to resolve it. It’s quite rare now that I have to tell them to be quiet, as they don’t intrude or impose on me in the way that they used to. If they do become invasive then it’s important for me to understand why, and there’ll always be a good reason. In general, it’ll be a sign of some sort of emotional conflict, which can then be addressed in a positive, constructive way.
Do you ever confuse your internal voice with ‘the voices’?
No, they feel quite distinct.
When you talk back to the voices, do they react differently if you speak out loud or just think your response?
I rarely respond to them out loud now, but they wouldn’t react differently to when I ‘speak’ to them internally.
What’s the difference between schizophrenia and voice hearing?
While the experiences that get labeled as symptoms of schizophrenia –and the distress associated with them — are very real, the idea that there’s a discrete, biologically-based condition called schizophrenia is increasingly being contested all over the world. While voice hearing is linked with a range of different psychiatric conditions (including many non-psychotic ones), many people with no history of mental health problems hear voices. It’s also widely recognized as part of different spiritual and cultural experiences.
Do you feel like other voice hearers understand you better?
They can appreciate what it’s like more precisely, but I’m fortunate enough to have met some really empathic, imaginative non-voice hearers who really want to understand too. In this respect, I think there’s actually more continuity between voices and everyday psychological experience then a lot of people realize. For example, everyone knows what it’s like to have intrusive thoughts. And most of us recognize the sense of having more than one part of ourselves: a part that’s very critical, a part that wants to please everyone, a part that’s preoccupied with negative events, a part that is playful and irresponsible and gets us into trouble, and so on. I think voices often feel more disowned and externalized, but represent a similar process.
What makes the voices talk more at some moments than others?
Usually emotional experiences, both positive and negative. In the early days, identifying these ‘triggers’ were very helpful in making more sense of why the voices were there and what they represented.
Do the voices ever make you laugh out loud?
Yes, sometimes! Some can be very outrageous with their humor, very daring, whereas others have a droll, Bill Hicks-like cynicism. Well, maybe not quite like Bill Hicks. Wouldn’t that be great though … having Bill Hicks in your head!
Emerging-Market Engineers Power Global Innovation

Recently, Thomson-Reuters published its latest list of the Top 100 Global Innovators honoring the leading organizations and companies most responsible for sizeable, influential patents worldwide. A quick scan of the list indicates that all 100 organizations are located in developed countries. The United States has 47 entries, Japan 25, Western Europe 21, and South Korea 7.
From this list, some readers may infer that innovation is largely the realm of engineers and scientists working in developed countries for large companies, assuming that innovators from countries such as India and China don’t matter after all. While we believe that Thomson-Reuters’ methodology is meticulous and logical, we warn against this faulty assumption. Here are three main reasons why.
Captive R&D Centers
First, many of the Top Innovators employ engineers in emerging countries such as India and China. The Lullaby Baby Warmer engineered and built by GE Healthcare engineers sells well in Europe—but engineers in India designed the device. Working at Google’s India labs, Lalitesh Katragadda and Manik Gupta conceived of and designed Map Maker, a popular online application that enables users to correct and enhance maps. (Even before the US government released photos of the site of Osama Bin Laden’s final hideout, users worldwide pinpointed the location using Map Maker.) We estimate that tens of thousands of engineers and scientists working for top innovators are actually located in their offshore technical centers in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China); these are often called “captive” R&D centers or offshore R&D locations. And this estimate does not count legions of foreign-born and foreign-educated techies who populate R&D centers in hotspots such as Silicon Valley. Over the next decade such engineers from emerging countries will play an increasing role in global innovation. Some will continue to work for their current Western employers, while others may lead startups or help catapult Chinese and Indian companies to higher positions in the innovation value chain.
The Top 100 Innovators also benefit from combining the power of their brands with the patents and engineering skills of third parties. Until the early 1980s, most innovation was performed inside the four walls of large corporate central labs; AT&T’s Bell Labs in New Jersey, 3M’s Innovation Center in Minnesota, and the Skunk Works of Lockheed Martin are among the legends of innovative horsepower of large corporations. Our next two insights examine ways in which this lab-centric innovation model has changed.
Offshore Outsourced Product Development
Let’s examine one specific aspect of Otis Elevator, a unit of the Top 100 innovator United Technologies Corp. The 161-year-old Connecticut company is the world’s largest designer and builder of vertical transportation systems such as escalators and elevators. Its Gen2 “machine-room-less” product replaced woven ropes with flat polyurethane-coated steel belts for savings in noise, energy consumption, and space, eliminating the traditional rooftop “machine room.” (One critical element of high-capacity belt elevators is the load bearing termination assembly, which must withstand starting and stopping loads of up to six times the stated weight capacity of the device.) Six of the eight inventors of this Otis patent are Indian. In fact, these six Indian engineers were not employees of Otis at all, but rather on the payroll of an outsourced product development company headquartered in Andhra Pradesh, India. We are not saying that Otis’ American engineers are not innovative—the bulk of the breakthroughs of next-generation products originated inside the company—but forward-looking leaders at United Technologies recognize that engineers in faraway places and some who may work for third parties can also contribute brilliance to Otis’ product line.
We are suggesting that companies like Otis who embrace such external brilliance will have a compelling competitive advantage over those innovators who continue to look exclusively inward. Offshore outsourced product development gets less press than outsourced IT and call centers, but it has the ability to create additional revenues for nimble innovators. According to a Booz study, such external R&D in India alone will exceed $37 billion annually by 2020.
Original Design Manufacturers
Finally, much of the innovation currently marketed by the big brands originates in relatively quiet and often unnamed Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs). For example, many notebook computers are designed and built by Compal Electronics of Taiwan. The company’s clients include Top 100 Innovators such as Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, Siemens, Sony, and Toshiba. Another Taiwanese ODM, Quanta Computer, serves innovators such as Apple.
Another ODM, Jabil Circuit, headquartered in Florida, is not exactly a household name. But the $16 billion company operates in 60 countries, including Shenzhen, China, and Pune, India, employing a large number of engineers. Jabil and its peers often simplify the work of design, engineering, and innovation for their clients by creating “reference designs” that can be tailored by the big brands. One such example is a rack-mounted storage server system for the “cloud computing” market. Known as Sandy Creek, the design combined the Intel Xeon enterprise chip with current storage technologies, and was intended to be sold by Jabil’s clients and not by Jabil itself. In another example, as illumination powered by light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has become mainstream, Jabil’s materials engineers created a novel heat sink made from conductive plastic to keep the LEDs from overheating. In both examples, Jabil created a new product capability.
Utilizing the ODMs has enabled many well-known innovative companies to magnify their power in the marketplace and conserve their own engineering talent for their most crucial projects that cannot be outsourced.
The number of patents awarded to an organization is seldom the sole measure of its home country’s level of innovation. American innovation is often powered by the willingness of many corporate and technical leaders to embrace good ideas from anywhere in the world. Whether good ideas originated inside a company or country, the ability to convert these ideas to market-shaping products in a globally competitive environment ultimately determines long term success. Innovators from emerging countries will increasingly play a larger role in all our lives.
