Remote Work, Connection & The Culture We're Losing

Mary · 0:01
Uh, Tim, what was your favorite part of today's episode? When

Tim · 0:03
will off camera taught us about a new version of extrovert introvert in the middle area? Yeah,

Mary · 0:08
what about you?

Mary · 0:08
I liked all the talk about Hannah Montana.

Mary · 0:10
Oh,

Dylan · 0:11
I liked Adrian's wings.

Mary · 0:13
Adrian,

Adrienne · 0:14
I like to think I'm gonna say whatever was on my mind and not get judged for it.

Mary · 0:18
I think mine was. Sorry, Mom, I told you to get off your ass, but I really meant it. Have you ever been in a store and you're like talking to people? This is the thing I rest in my family, where it's like we strike up conversation with strangers, and then I felt like, well, I buy something, like I'm too invested for this store person, they're going out of business, it's gonna, they're losing their jobs. I don't know,

Tim · 0:52
you feel like you're supporting them at that point.

Mary · 0:54
Yeah, it was a charity case.

Tim · 0:57
All right, you want to start? I'm gonna try out a new intro. Let's see how this goes. Let's

Mary · 1:01
go crazy.

Tim · 1:03
Ready. This is Age, the podcast where we talk for a long time about something we randomly pull out of a trash can. But what is it really? We're all in a culture where we're aging much slower than the culture around us is aging, and some of us feel like we're just arriving. No, sorry. Let's do it again. You're just arriving. Ready. This

Mary · 1:26
is

Tim · 1:27
Age, the podcast where we have an incredibly long conversation about something we randomly pull out of a trash can. But what is it really? We're in a culture where we're aging much slower than everything around us. Some of us feel like we're ahead of our time. Some of us feel like we're aging out. Others of us feel, how do you feel, Adrian?

Adrienne · 1:49
That I'm swimming in a sea of multi-age people, and I'm like, where, what lane am I in? Floating. Yes.

Tim · 1:58
And then others of us feel like we're just arriving. I'm

Dylan · 2:01
just here,

Dylan · 2:02
this guy here.

Tim · 2:04
So, age is a weekly experiment we do to discuss the meaning of it all, through randomness, through casual improv, and through just live conversation. So, we invite you into this experience that you definitely don't have time for. Welcome to Age. Let's pull a topic

Mary · 2:26
you finally figured out what this podcast is about. Can I tell you an improv moment? Since you said improv, yeah, we were at the zoo yesterday, day before. We're watching some chimpanzees, and we've been at the zoo for a while. It's raining, so the animals are really active, and it's festive zoo experience in my life. And we're watching the chimps, and Alex goes, "Wow. And then we're with this other friend, Rebecca, and she goes, "Wow, and they just keep going, "Wow, like on accident. And this little, like, six year old girl walks up to them and goes, "Stop saying wow, and they're like Alex is like really comfortable with kids. He's like, you're not saying wow right now, this is so wow worthy. She's like, she's like, stop saying wow, I have a gun. They're like, I don't forget what they said next. You said I'm the police

Adrienne · 3:20
commentary on youth culture,

Mary · 3:21
it's like scary at the same time, but also that she like went on this whole thing, she's like you're a gorilla,

Tim · 3:27
oh my, that's amazing.

Mary · 3:29
So anyway, you said I love that I was like getting her on stage yesterday, I mean it's terrifying, but this

Tim · 3:35
topic is oddly applicable, being that our fourth

Speaker · 3:41
is remote,

Tim · 3:42
remote is the topic.

Mary · 3:43
Oh God, 40 hearts is going through a moment with remote.

Tim · 3:48
Oh man, that's true. That's true. So, like, what's the first thing that just pops in your mind when you hear that the topic?

Dylan · 3:56
I have trauma from high school when COVID shut down. Oh, they were

Tim · 4:01
like, not about that

Dylan · 4:02
one going remote, and I went, me and one of my friends, when we found out spring break, we were like, we're gonna go on spring break for like three weeks. One of my family had a place down in St. Augustine, so we're like, we're gonna go remote, we're watching like the NC like education guy, and he's like, yeah, you are going back to school. We're making plans for, like, next year for you guys to be remote. And I was like, this is gonna.. it did suck. I didn't learn anything my senior year, by the way, so it sucked. But that is my..

Mary · 4:32
it's

Tim · 4:33
funny, it didn't make as big of an impression on me, obviously,

Speaker · 4:35
because

Tim · 4:36
I wasn't in school, but it just wrecked.

Mary · 4:38
Yeah, I remember you were the generation that I was thinking of when it happened. I was like, God, can you actually have

Adrienne · 4:44
seniors graduating, like missing out on all those like group experiences,

Dylan · 4:49
and they would do it like remotely, and I was like, this sucks. Yeah,

Tim · 4:53
I was so burned out on Zoom, I remember.

Dylan · 4:55
Yeah, so to

Dylan · 4:56
go through that. Oh, it's okay.

Mary · 4:59
Did you. Um, like, we don't have to dwell on it if it bothers you, but did you like have all the tech and stuff that you needed?

Dylan · 5:06
No. So our school was thankful enough to be like sponsored by Apple at the time, so we all got our iPads to go home. So that was interesting. I live in the middle of nowhere, and we just got Wi-Fi at my parents' house two years ago,

Mary · 5:21
that was a thing in McDowell County, was like most of the kids don't, didn't have it's like cell phones were the way that they used, yeah, it

Dylan · 5:28
was really like nobody, nobody knew what they were doing, it would have been an easier transition, like if we lived in somewhere like a metro city area, where you're living in the middle of nowhere,

Mary · 5:39
so I remember a former colleague of ours, and I were talking about, yeah, let's switch to remote, and the idea of like Wi-Fi deserts

Mary · 5:51
it's a con, you can Google it, it's like an I like food deserts, you know, like you can live with people, but you might not have the resources that you need, you might not be able to afford internet for whatever reason, or they haven't run the line out to your house, and like that was a foreign concept to this person who had been raised in not America, just like dropping into Adrian, and yeah, had been lived in New York City for the rest of their lives, like, oh yeah, there's definitely places that aren't there yet. My

Tim · 6:19
speaking of Adrienne, I want to introduce you real quick. I did point at her, right? So Reggie's out on vacation with his family. Hope you're having fun, Reggie.

Speaker · 6:29
Yeah,

Tim · 6:30
and we brought in a really good friend and colleague,

Adrienne · 6:32
Adrian. Well, this is actually perfect segue from remote, because I am here in Asheville because of remote working, that's what brought me here, but I'm Adrian New Can. I run a little branding agency called East Wealth Studio. We specialize in CPG food and beverage for pets and people,

Speaker · 6:51
consumer

Adrienne · 6:51
package good package good, but it doesn't get that

Mary · 6:53
elevator pitch down.

Adrienne · 6:56
I've been trying for a while, but yeah, I met.. well, can I give the mains? Mary and I worked together previously in a different location, and I met these lovely folks here because my job went remote, and I got to move from New York City, which I never thought I'd be able to do. I always thought, like, oh, if I'm gonna have a job, I have to be in some metro area, and then remote work happened, and I was like, it took me like a few years, but then I was like, wait a minute, everyone else is working remotely, I could,

Tim · 7:31
oh, so you were staying, you just stayed there for a while, and then

Adrienne · 7:33
yeah, I stayed there for like almost all of the pandemic, and then I was like

Tim · 7:37
the worst place to be during the pandemic,

Adrienne · 7:39
yeah, it was pretty awful. It was like locked down for three years, but after, after I got through the trauma of that, my brain was able to open up, and I was like, hey, I could live anywhere to

Tim · 7:51
Asheville, North Carolina. Yeah, long story

Mary · 7:55
short, you had some family type

Adrienne · 7:56
family here, so I'd been here before, but then the pandemic, like me and my partner, we started traveling down here, staying a little bit longer than our last trip. We were like, let's not go back, let's see if we can stay.

Mary · 8:09
And then Adrian and I, we had worked together remotely, and we would like see each other on Zoom all the time, and every so often you would be in town, and maybe we would be able to cross paths, maybe we wouldn't. But then one day I'm working in the Center for craft, and like, they've got this center, like, if you have a desk month to month, I call it the fish bowl area, and I look over, and I'm like, Who is that working in the back corner? And I think I like pop my head, my hair was very different, I think. The last time, oh, thank you. We've been on, I can't tell you people need to

Tim · 8:46
know. It looks great.

Mary · 8:48
Thank you very much. Anyway, I'm particularly glad Adrian is here, and I think that when Reggie was going to go on vacation, we debated, should we just cancel this week, and I was like, oh, we just figured out how to do this, third one, we're gonna forget how to ride this bike if we get off of it right now, and also I was like, we've just got so many incredible people like in our orbit, and I think you're our first, so we were like the first person,

Adrienne · 9:17
sorry,

Mary · 9:18
amateur, but yeah, I just can't say I'll not be too effusive, I'll try, but like Adrian, I've done, I've written a couple of peer reviews for Adrian at a previous life

Adrienne · 9:32
that those were anonymous,

Mary · 9:35
now you know, now here it goes, I'm taking credit, but I think the like the thing that always popped out to me about Adrian, and the thing that I still, I bring you up more than I'm proud to say in the office, but like Adrian compliments,

Mary · 9:49
but it's so sweet, don't stop,

Mary · 9:54
she is an incredible creative, I mean, obviously like a guru in the past. Packaging world, which is such like a dense design assignment, I think, but the thing that really struck me and made Adrienne special in my mind was she is probably the most impressive person I've ever met, in terms of like crossing midbrain and being like I can use my creative la la la brain, and also you could like keep the ship explode and like steering in the right direction, spend all the money, and like let's ask clarifying questions before I like throw some shit at the wall and hope that it, you know, looks fine, and it made you like an incredible advocate for I think creatives who came to work underneath you, and she develops talent in a really beautiful way, so I'm very, really good get for this episode.

Tim · 10:47
We're so happy to have you on.

Mary · 10:49
Yeah,

Adrienne · 10:50
I'm trying to like not touch my mic and also be emotive, and I'm also very like a person with my hands now. I probably look very awkward, where I'm like,

Tim · 11:01
thank you, thank

Adrienne · 11:03
you.

Mary · 11:05
We won't do any more of that. And now it's over,

Tim · 11:08
and now it's over. Back to the topic.

Speaker · 11:10
Remote,

Mary · 11:10
so remote brought us here today. What a gift,

Tim · 11:13
but I didn't think about the same. I guess it's my age. I have this this sound system that Reggie gave me to set up, and it comes with its own old remote, and now, yeah, it's old, like it looks like an old.. I mean, it may not be that old, but it looks ancient compared to the little Apple remote next to it. And then I also have my, like, Sonya Bravi remote, so they're all sitting there, and it's annoying. I have to get up from the couch, and I have to grab the remote, and gotta figure out which one is it, and turn this one up and that one on, and push the right button. So that's what I thought of,

Mary · 11:46
you know. I figured out a beat later that that's what it was. I also, the first thing in my mind is this little

Tim · 11:52
remote control, remote.

Mary · 11:55
So I don't know what that means about us living in this like analog world.

Tim · 11:59
What does that mean? I know that there's like an age gap you're experiencing, you know, like school being all remote, and I'm experiencing like watching TV. I wonder what that word, you know, like when words exist over time, they change and they mean something different. And my son's always telling me random words that I didn't know words, and they may not be yet, they may just be

Mary · 12:21
share an example,

Tim · 12:22
you know, like, well, I think all of them are letters, actually, like

Mary · 12:26
we're shortening,

Tim · 12:27
shortening, like

Adrienne · 12:29
text talking, yeah,

Tim · 12:30
it's it's like Reddit or not Reddit Discord,

Mary · 12:35
yeah,

Tim · 12:36
language,

Mary · 12:36
yes, yeah, so it's all acronyms and

Tim · 12:39
stuff, right, acronyms and these other words, and why is my mind blinking? I wish I,

Mary · 12:45
you're gonna have to educate him better,

Tim · 12:47
maybe I can not

Adrienne · 12:48
study,

Tim · 12:48
I can ask him, and then I'll put him in the description, because they're good.

Speaker · 12:51
Oh, if

Mary · 12:52
we need to bleep your son's name, we can do that,

Tim · 12:54
we can do that. So that was probably not

Mary · 12:56
kosher.

Dylan · 12:57
I asked, what I asked when they came into the office the other day, I was like, I'm like, your generation, are you gonna watch the podcast? And he's like, no,

Dylan · 13:03
he was like, no,

Tim · 13:10
who really will watch? I mean, there's so many, like,

Mary · 13:13
these are the questions,

Tim · 13:15
so honest.

Mary · 13:16
I was trying to pitch it to Adrian, but just before we go on, will would you mind to grab a glass of water, because we didn't offer one to Adrian earlier. There's cups in the kitchen, you can just pick one out of the cabinet in the kitchen. I just realized Tim's over here drinking, I'm over here drinking, you know, you can drink whenever you want, and we never offered,

Dylan · 13:40
though. I'm like a dog.

Tim · 13:45
We'll bring the water bowl to

Mary · 13:47
studio.

Mary · 13:49
I thought, well, it wasn't the first thing I thought of when you said, but when I think of remote, yeah, there's like a lot of sadness in some ways about it. But the first job I had that let me work remote was at this really big agency, and my boss was based out of Boston, but they had a New York location that I like had the option to go into dream world, where you, you can go in, but you don't have to go in, and it's like a sexy office that's like fully stocked, and that kind of thing, but I, the whole time, I was like, wow, there's something dreamy about this to me, because, like, I could go - I talk about this all the time - I could go to Italy for a week, and, like, technically, if I'm willing to keep those hours, like, it's not locationally based.

Speaker · 14:30
Yeah,

Mary · 14:30
I think that's something that's always bothered me. Thank you. Sorry, thank you. There you have this,

Tim · 14:39
and you'll probably hit the chair on the way down, yeah. And don't

Mary · 14:42
worry, we'll put it in the edit, like everybody will love it.

Tim · 14:44
Now that I'm, now that I'm on the topic of remote, real remote, now that we're current

Mary · 14:50
century,

Tim · 14:50
I, I'm going through a little bit of a remote renaissance.

Mary · 14:55
Wow,

Tim · 14:55
and it's due to you, Mary. I think that I've experienced and pushed against hard. Aquarius remote. I hated my kids being remote because I feel like they got a whole jaded experience from that.

Speaker · 15:04
Yeah,

Tim · 15:05
and I didn't want to go remote as a designer. I love working with people in real space and time. I don't like the tools largely until I met Mary at 40 Hearts. We're trying to create a virtual office, which I originally felt a little bit of a traumatic, maybe tinge against, but now I'm seeing this potential, the ability to travel and move, and when you set the tools up right, they're starting to feel better to me than they have in the past, but I think it's like the different paths of communication that to me feel heavy about being remote, and I knew this when I was watching my kids, there's like Power School, and there's this other app they're supposed to get on and do this, and then

Speaker · 15:48
tech

Dylan · 15:48
stack,

Tim · 15:48
there's a tech stack that they didn't actually hold in their mind, so it's not like they're learning school stuff, they're actually learning how to use technology, is really the

Mary · 15:59
learning, half the time it's copy technology, yeah. Because the government and schools get to it last,

Tim · 16:04
and it wasn't ever optimized for remote school when that happened. They optimized it along the way, yeah, on the kids,

Mary · 16:11
yeah, but on the fly, yeah,

Tim · 16:12
right. So teachers are just flying off the cuff, trying to do whatever they can to survive and keep things moving, and then kids are like playing Minecraft on the side, it's just this circus happening, and so remote, and even before I think remote was a thing before Covid hit, you know, people like talking about going remote, and then whether or not corporate should inhibit that, whether they should require people to be in..

Mary · 16:37
well, then there was like this expansion contraction

Adrienne · 16:41
back hard.

Tim · 16:42
Yeah, so I was talking to someone locally, and they were talking about how they were remote from New York City. Yep, but the work has started to dry up, yeah, because he even got offered a really great job, and the firm, or the agency that wanted him to come back, said, "You have to be here three days a

Adrienne · 17:00
week. Yeah,

Speaker · 17:01
he can't

Tim · 17:01
travel, he has a kid, and so I wonder what it's starting to mean now, and why it's shifting. Like, we're a small agency, and we're creating a virtual office, so we can do it more.

Speaker · 17:12
Yeah,

Tim · 17:13
but other agencies, I think, I don't know if it's a productivity thing.

Adrienne · 17:16
So many ideas, I have so many thoughts for this. I thought about this a lot, and maybe they're a little jaded.

Tim · 17:23
No, this is the top. This is the part of the conversation we talk about. What drives

Dylan · 17:26
us crazy about..

Adrienne · 17:27
I feel like, in the more.. I think it's agencies, but corporations. I hate to say this. I think the thing that rides a lot of it is real estate, and only because I've heard this from some business owners that have very expensive real estate that are locked into leases and are like

Tim · 17:44
we gotta fill these up.

Adrienne · 17:45
I just did a $5 million renovation on this space and I'm locked into this lease for 10 years. It's kind of practical, I gotta, I have to use it. Yeah, I think, but that's like very like business reasons for it, I think the corporate folks I've heard is that there's like this fear of, I think, it's the real estate too, because they all usually own very expensive pieces of real estate, are invested, have bought property, but also I think it's like there is this fear that if I can't see the people working, they're not doing the work. This is like an old thing, I think. This people have always felt this, and I'm like, well, we just went through this whole period where no one was here, and all the businesses kept going. But it's like this old philosophy of, if I can't see you doing, like, you know, what is nothing like a tree falls in the woods. Yeah, it's like, if someone, not if someone's, I can't see them working. Are they really working?

Mary · 18:42
Yeah,

Adrienne · 18:43
and I think it's like a control thing for a lot of these companies. They don't trust their employees.

Tim · 18:49
I was actually just listening to a podcast on the way here this morning, and they were talking about intrinsic versus extrinsic value, and I think there's this - is an underlying issue - is that in the research when you pay someone to do something, they lose intrinsic value for that thing, no matter if it started as a really core thing to them, you pay them for it, and it devalues it from their intrinsic point of view, it pulls it into an extrinsic value, which is something you get a reward for.

Speaker · 19:14
Yeah,

Tim · 19:14
so I wonder if, and this may relate to what 40 Hearts mission is in creating inner brand inside an organization, so that the values and the meaning for being there is lived.

Adrienne · 19:26
Yeah,

Tim · 19:26
and so I wonder if these employees don't even really want to be there.

Adrienne · 19:30
I think that's your wonder,

Tim · 19:32
and so there is an oppression like work because they don't want to work, they're avoiding it or they dread it.

Mary · 19:37
And I wonder, like this is I'm always this guy, and I kind of hate being this guy, but if there was another one of these guys in the room, but I think that there is, you know, both sides can be true in one way. I think it's obnoxious that people, managers, feel like they need to be right there every second. That's clearly not like a dignified way to work, kind of starts to sound like a different way of where. Working that we said we moved past, but the other side of the coin is like I might not be motivated as an employee to work, and if I'm at my home or somewhere else, I might have other great reasons not to be working, and I don't think it's about am I working or am I not. I think it's about like we talked about this yesterday, how much value is there to me in taking like the rest and care that my body needs, whether that's doing my laundry or taking a nap or playing Minecraft or going and getting in the pool for a couple of hours, like I do think it's also a function of burnout, and it's like, well, let me take back what I can.

Adrienne · 20:37
I also feel like there's this great book called Quiet, and it's about, like, introverts, and, but it talks about, and if you guys have read it, it talks about, like, the evolution of the workforce in the US, based off of, like, introverted versus extroverted, and the US culture is based - I'll just speak for us, and all the rest of the world is based off of an extrovert paradise,

Speaker · 21:00
yeah,

Adrienne · 21:00
and I think this also gets back to like not understanding how some people work best. There is like half of the population that's forced to be out there with the extroverts that actually don't perform really well in office environments, because it's like draining for them, but I feel like we don't acknowledge that because we're like fit into the box, be this perfect worker, and that's culture, and like,

Speaker · 21:24
but it's

Tim · 21:25
limiting their entire creative flow.

Adrienne · 21:26
Yeah, exactly.

Mary · 21:28
Well, there's even I think that even exists within a job. Like, there are things that will be better if I'm in a room talking to people, and I'm a verbal processor, surprising no one. But I think that there are also things that if you don't give me a second alone it's not going to get done or it'll get done, it's like I'll feed it to AI.

Tim · 21:50
Well, what I'm wondering is if it's an age thing too, because how do you guarantee you feel different about what remote means than

Dylan · 21:57
yeah,

Tim · 21:58
I didn't have remote when I was 22 I was traveling around doing furniture repair, and I couldn't do that remotely, obviously, but there wasn't an option, and sometimes when there's not an option, you really don't know what's different, you're not comparing them. How does it feel?

Dylan · 22:12
I mean, I am the extrovert, so I do really like being in the office, and like that kind of thing. I feel like I'm more comfortable being in the office than I am being remote right now, just because, like, I don't know how to properly get everything I want out of a Slack message. I'm like,

Dylan · 22:27
right,

Dylan · 22:28
like I'm thinking in my brain, and I'm like, okay, this is what I need, and then, like, three minutes later, I'm like, damn it, I need like something else. And so I think, like, being able to mature in that, I think remote will become a lot more efficient.

Tim · 22:41
Do you feel like my life? Yeah, do you feel like when you're typing in Slack, you're not.. it's like getting the clarity of what you're trying to type out. The thought is hard.

Dylan · 22:50
Yeah, so like

Tim · 22:50
I struggle with that too, and I.. that drapes me.

Dylan · 22:53
Yeah, me writing the like Slack message, if you like put a gun to my head, you wouldn't know the difference behind my computer. Someone put a gun to my head, like you wouldn't know the difference. They are the same

Tim · 23:04
note, mental note, Slack intense.

Dylan · 23:07
So they are the same, especially like when we have a deadline, and I'm like, oh shit, like what am I just

Tim · 23:12
remember that project we're doing? Literally living on Slack for like 18 hours straight,

Mary · 23:16
the very beginning of your

Tim · 23:19
man, that was intense. I'm traumatized by

Adrienne · 23:21
sending things back and forth, like images too, or mostly images,

Tim · 23:25
files,

Dylan · 23:25
like it was everything, and it was pretty. It was pretty intense. I was like, "What to

Mary · 23:32
do?

Mary · 23:33
Weren't you also like the only one in the office? Yeah.

Tim · 23:35
No, I was sitting by that. This one I'm talking about, but yeah, you were pretty much. Yeah,

Dylan · 23:39
Reggie and Tim were both gone somewhere, and I was sitting in the office, and the clients like calling me are calling

Speaker · 23:48
me

Tim · 23:49
trial by fire.

Dylan · 23:50
This was like my, you passed, yeah,

Speaker · 23:51
for sure.

Dylan · 23:53
This was my third week on the 40 yards, like actually like signed on from college, and I was like, these people are slacking me, I don't know how to even respond

Mary · 24:02
well.

Tim · 24:02
It even sounds violently

Mary · 24:06
that little, that little ping, that little

Adrienne · 24:09
I turned that off. My

Tim · 24:12
client would ask me, do you want to come into our slack? Yes, I'm like,

Adrienne · 24:14
no,

Tim · 24:15
no, no, never want to

Adrienne · 24:17
ask anyone to enter your Slack space.

Mary · 24:20
We do keep up with a client on Slack, and thankfully, like, our point of contact is absolutely lovely, but I do think it's kind of hard to discipline, and yeah, it's like you can't be all the time back and forth.

Tim · 24:34
My problem is humans may have been made for less channels of communication. I'm not gonna say this tricks, I haven't done any research, but for me personally, and maybe for you, when there are too many conversations happening, like I have to reply this email, I have these Slack messages, I have these voicemails, I have, I get so overwhelmed, and all of that, because I don't, I can't keep track of where all these channels are, for some reason, I will say it's. Gotten better since you did that. Mary did this virtual office for us, so she's training these old guys. How do you organize

Adrienne · 25:06
more about

Mary · 25:07
Adrian? You and I have been through the ringer virtual office. Yes, we have. And, but imagine like having not done any of that ever before in your life, and then some crazy lady comes in and is like, I need a virtual first office, so this is what we're doing, and I'm not kidding. Like, three weeks in, they went from zero to 100

Tim · 25:25
It's amazing.

Adrienne · 25:26
That's awesome. Slack

Tim · 25:26
is all organized, and my wife even said that video. So I was like, she recorded this.

Mary · 25:33
I will say this, and I keep saying it to them internally, but I feel like I need to put it in a public forum. I kept every morning I would wake up and be like, today's gonna be the day, somebody's gonna break, somebody's gonna.. I'm gonna be in the middle of trying to share something like I can't handle it anymore, and I'm gonna respect that, and we're gonna back off of it, but I kept pushing, because that.. I'm a pusher,

Tim · 25:56
that's what we like about you,

Mary · 25:57
yeah, that was a Mean Girls reference, yep. but I, the like level of open-mindedness, and I'll say resilience, because it can be a lot with the virtual stuff, and like willingness to learn and try new things, and like pull together, I think is the most important thing to be like, hey, I have a problem, and then everybody rushes to the problem to try to help. It has been very inspiring. It's, yeah, it's like you start one of these processes, and you're like, well, my expectations are kind of low, and yeah, have a lot of grace for any of the whatevers, but like, it's been incredible. And

Adrienne · 26:36
when everyone uses it in the way it's intended to, it works really well. They're like, oh, this is helping my life

Mary · 26:42
than it is about the tech.

Adrienne · 26:46
Sorry, sorry listeners.

Speaker · 26:48
The

Tim · 26:48
live raw

Mary · 26:49
conversation is gonna be fine, but I do think it's more about like behavior than it is about the tech itself.

Tim · 26:56
There's also this research about whether or not these technologies were intended to help us, or whether we're intended to distract

Adrienne · 27:03
us. I'm always skeptical,

Tim · 27:06
right? Because, especially social media, but also I think for Slack is like an inner social media,

Adrienne · 27:10
yes,

Tim · 27:11
for a company, especially if you're at scale, and they will commonly say, not they Slack, but the researchers around this will say, is there a guide that teaches you how to most efficiently use this app. No, because the more you're on the app actually benefits the being

Mary · 27:27
there trying to figure

Mary · 27:29
it

Speaker · 27:29
out against adding features or moving things around,

Tim · 27:32
right? Because the more you're in the app, the more it benefits them as an organization, as a business model.

Adrienne · 27:38
I totally believe that.

Mary · 27:39
Yeah, and you know what keeps happening to Reggie, and Reggie, I'm gonna talk to you about this IRL before you see the first time. No, I do think there is, like, I'm gonna notice an age gap, but it's not at all like, okay, Boomer, he's not a Boomer, by the way. I'm so sorry,

Adrienne · 27:55
I'm like, wait a minute, I am not sitting in for a Boomer.

Mary · 27:59
I don't think suspecting Boomer, yeah, age is an illusion these days. Like, I don't know how old anybody is, but I.. I've noticed that Reggie is really.. I've said before, like, we need to complain more. Like, I think if people don't know you're hurting, how can they help you? And I think most people do want to help you, but we got to figure out a way to complain that's not, whatever, punitive. But Reggie's great at complaining, and I've told him this many, many times, and my life has been made better because Reggie complains, like our windows get fixed and our doors get frosted, and

Tim · 28:30
but he, yeah, he's not only a complainer, yeah,

Adrienne · 28:35
that's a good combo,

Mary · 28:36
yeah, the motivation of, like, I see how great this could be, how do I get this fixed, but he also expects things from software that I wonder if it's from, like, a bygone time. The idea that you could reach out to the customer service portal, and that they might actually help you navigate these,

Speaker · 28:51
which

Tim · 28:51
is where, yeah, he grew up, yeah, in touch with the maker of the software,

Mary · 28:55
yeah, and like he was a flash pioneer, you know, so like he understands how these things evolve, and I think he's probably accustomed in some way to being like the super user who can push the software forward, right? But these,

Tim · 29:08
they're not working like that.

Mary · 29:09
We are not a priority. Maybe their biggest enterprise client is able to like sway that in like a head of account kind of way, but like I never feel heard or seen,

Tim · 29:21
but the funny thing is that Slack actually made their impression on the market as an app because of how they heard their customers. Literally, in the beginning, they would change their software daily, hourly,

Speaker · 29:32
yeah,

Tim · 29:33
because of how aggressive they were in listening to the users.

Speaker · 29:37
Yeah,

Tim · 29:38
but when it gets to a certain point, it's more important that it's just their priorities change, and then we're not a priority, which is kind of sad. And,

Mary · 29:47
like, where are you listening? Is my other question. Like, before the product existed, you had to go listen to, like, issues in the market, and then after the product exists, are you listening broadly? Are you just listening to the people on the app? Are you being surveilled and. Everything that you say, and they're pulling whatever. I don't know engineering. Yeah,

Tim · 30:05
well, I think this gets into a conversation of scale again in capitalism, like always growing type mentality. Is that when you get to a point at which you see apps and development happen where this real, this real specific app was working for this real specific problem, and then they got to the max

Adrienne · 30:23
Miro,

Tim · 30:24
yeah, and then Miro, but you'll watch them all do it, they try to eat all the other apps, yes, we're the all in one app, every app's the all in one app, I don't know what I'm gonna do with 15 all in one apps, and it's frustrating because that is the way they have to move with our culture,

Adrienne · 30:40
yeah,

Tim · 30:41
that's so

Adrienne · 30:41
true,

Tim · 30:41
right? They have to eat more market share,

Adrienne · 30:44
so true.

Mary · 30:44
I mean, they do it with every CPG. We've been in all kinds of meetings like this, where they're like, we make cereal for the morning, but what about nighttime cereal you've never thought about? And then they start to open up these different like parts of your life that they can colonize, for lack of a better word, yeah, like let me go plant my flag on this part of Tim's brain,

Tim · 31:01
bringing up a good point. What about colonization was like remote when you send your worker into another region?

Adrienne · 31:11
Interesting

Tim · 31:12
work remotely, and

Adrienne · 31:15
feedback, the intel,

Speaker · 31:16
you

Mary · 31:17
know, there's

Tim · 31:17
this well, I think, like, you know, or like,

Adrienne · 31:21
yeah,

Mary · 31:25
but the Nina, the Pinta, and the.. I, there's a group here in town called Digital Nomads, and I have many Digital Nomads. We're coming for you. I've never attended a single event. Every other thing that I've attended, I'm like, oh, how do you two know each other? It's like everybody I meet, they're like, oh, we met in digital nomads, and it's because I think why they're so strong is because they're people who individually have their own fulfilling work that's like kept them in this job, whatever it is, and then they go and they have fun times, like they're just a group of people who hang out to have fun times, they're like, you work remote, I work remote,

Adrienne · 32:01
that's what gives us something in common.

Mary · 32:02
Yeah, whatever.

Tim · 32:06
Have you heard this concept of third space?

Adrienne · 32:08
Yeah, yeah. I

Tim · 32:10
wonder if that's most people try and capture the third space, but they just make it into another working space.

Adrienne · 32:15
Yep,

Tim · 32:16
but I think if someone knows how to have fun, this comes.. this came up when we're talking about play.

Mary · 32:20
Here's an insight. Are you listening? Big business,

Tim · 32:23
I mean, like, we have a space in town. What's the space called that you went and checked? Oh,

Dylan · 32:25
Switch Yards.

Tim · 32:27
Switch Yards.

Mary · 32:27
Oh yeah, it's

Tim · 32:28
a different kind of co-working, where I think they're trying to capture a third space, but the true third space is where it's totally relationship driven.

Adrienne · 32:36
Yes, and

Tim · 32:36
natural work, and natural, right? Yes. So there is that level of play that I think actually connects people, because work relationships are driven by a goal, so you all want to get to somewhere, so you make nice, so that you get to this place.

Adrienne · 32:52
Yep,

Tim · 32:52
but friends are things you really have to cultivate, and they take work and time. Most work friends, when you get out of work, it falls apart in a really short amount of time, but friend, friends, that's true, that you make in these third space as a concept in relationship and play, and whatever it is, hanging out, and I wonder if that's why digital nomads

Speaker · 33:13
is

Tim · 33:13
what it is,

Mary · 33:14
they're like,

Tim · 33:15
because they're hanging out and they don't have anyone else, imagine,

Mary · 33:18
yeah, you're

Tim · 33:19
digitally remote,

Mary · 33:20
oh yeah,

Adrienne · 33:20
our own system.

Mary · 33:21
Well, you know, moving to this town, we were both remote at the time that we moved to Asheville, and very isolating. Yeah, I would say, and like, never mind. It was, it's COVID, yeah, for a time, so it's like I can't go to a bar and meet people, I'm gonna contract a life. Very

Adrienne · 33:35
Very true

Tim · 33:36
And you both

Tim · 33:36
are extroverts, right?

Adrienne · 33:38
No, I'm actually an introvert,

Tim · 33:39
high-performance introvert,

Adrienne · 33:42
I think,

Tim · 33:42
in theater, probably.

Adrienne · 33:44
I,

Mary · 33:46
okay, we're just both French horn players. I know in town I walk in because I'm collecting this group, and I'm like, I think we should start a quartet.

Tim · 33:59
What is it about French horn players,

Mary · 34:00
yeah.

Adrienne · 34:02
Yeah, there's something off about them. I'm like, why choose? Like, I'm in seventh grade, why choose a french horn no one cares about you. They're like, pipe down French horns, though.

Mary · 34:14
It looks like a toilet or something. And now you hear it every time you watch a movie, don't you? They're singing out.

Tim · 34:20
All right, we'll speak for all the fake, let's see, skilled extroverts, but truly introvert,

Adrienne · 34:26
because I view it as after reading this book, Quiet, which I suggest all you read.

Speaker · 34:31
We saw a book on every episode, I love this,

Adrienne · 34:34
it's good to read. Yeah, that's another topic. How you judge on the, like, a very loose way, it's like, how do you get your energy, and I get my energy by being by myself, like, being I can be out with people, I actually, I really enjoy it, but it's draining for me, like, after I'm out being extroverted,

Mary · 34:53
yeah,

Adrienne · 34:54
I have to, like, retreat back into my little hole and, like, recharge by myself for a little bit, where. Extroverted people are like, I'm alive. I love being around people. They're

Tim · 35:04
alone, they're like, I'm draining.

Mary · 35:06
I feel like I'm just high intensity, like no matter which of those I'm doing, I'm doing it all.

Tim · 35:12
You don't identify

Adrienne · 35:12
high intensity turned on. Yeah,

Mary · 35:19
like it's rugged, no matter which version.

Tim · 35:21
Introvertedness dependent on intensity.

Mary · 35:26
I'm saying, I think when I'm alone, I'm alone, and God, do I love

Speaker · 35:30
it?

Mary · 35:30
Like, I, if I've lived for many years without a bathtub, and I moved into my house in 2021 and we have a bathtub now, and I'm like, and now I'm a different person, like you didn't know me in the non-bathtub years, but you would not. Adrian knows it was

Mary · 35:47
age of

Speaker · 35:47
the

Mary · 35:48
bathtub the whole time of New York, like sitting on the shower floor, like opening

Adrienne · 35:54
just drain

Mary · 35:56
my worries. Yeah,

Tim · 35:59
it's funny because my, I'm just finding out that I think my dad is an introvert, and he's been like a pastor his whole life, literally extroverted time that I ever saw him,

Mary · 36:07
so personable.

Tim · 36:09
Yeah, and now he kind of has the freedom to be introvert, and that's his natural place, and I wonder if that's my natural place too. Yeah,

Adrienne · 36:18
interesting.

Tim · 36:19
I'm just discovering this about myself,

Adrienne · 36:21
that's what I think I was trained to be an extrovert. The world is designed for extroverts,

Mary · 36:25
that's

Adrienne · 36:26
the American standard, like you were saying. It's like, if you're gonna be successful, you need to be.. there's something wrong with you if you're not that

Mary · 36:31
way. Yeah, and I think that I'm sort of like just recovering from it a little bit. And you talked about overwhelm with too many channels of communication, which I went to therapy because of that. I was like, why can't I function like a normal human? Why am I like shut down when I have 10 emails and 30 texts? Like, just answer the text and be like, sorry, bye. But

Tim · 36:53
that's like ruthless authenticity. Yeah, you start feeling like, just stop.

Mary · 36:56
Well, like, I was realizing I see every like bid for like connection, which is a compliment in my view, like people want to be connected, yeah, is a good thing. I was seeing it as like obligation, like everybody wants something,

Adrienne · 37:07
same way too.

Mary · 37:08
So, like, I've had to flip that switch in my brain and be like, I don't have to give people anything if I don't want to, and I can say that's awesome and be done, like I don't have to take any action because I receive this communique, but I think remote work puts you in kind of a weird spot with that, because every communication does sort of imply that you're gonna do,

Speaker · 37:28
and you kind of

Adrienne · 37:29
have to respond too, because I feel like this is again, it's like you're getting towards a goal or community, like you need to do a task, so you need to tell people what you're doing, but it also can't ignore it, yeah, it becomes

Mary · 37:39
really easy, though, I'm looking

Speaker · 37:41
at you,

Mary · 37:41
because I'm like, this has happened to you.

Mary · 37:42
I watched

Mary · 37:43
it happen where, like, people will just sort of like punt, or like, they'll like kick the can down the road. It's like, because you're the one who will actually pick it up and be like, guys, we need to do something about this.

Adrienne · 37:52
That's true. You

Mary · 37:53
get stuck holding the baby, and you're like, okay, I'm not gonna put this baby down. But

Tim · 37:57
so you wonder, like, you know, when they started having all these different types of school that you can send your kids to. I'm experiencing this now because I'm sending my youngest into kindergarten, and there's like a buffet of options, like charter public this wall door.

Mary · 38:16
You didn't go through this with your other two kids,

Tim · 38:18
well, kind of, but it was just beginning because Ezra 16 and Lila is 12, but there was so there's this thing where people discovered that not everyone learns the same. It's amazing, like not everyone's meant to sit in the desk, take a test the way that we've done it. I would argue

Mary · 38:35
who is design,

Tim · 38:36
maybe no one, maybe like some rare nerd who I love nerds. I think nerding out on anything like design, like we do, or nerding out on science, it's amazing. But I think that there's a very small percentage of people that work like that.

Adrienne · 38:49
Yep,

Tim · 38:50
so I think also we're finding maybe in the realm, or in the age of being remote, where it's possible that it's good to allow certain types of us to work differently,

Speaker · 39:01
yeah,

Tim · 39:01
you know, and there's this, and what corporates gonna miss on this is that they're wanting to force it back into the extroverted lane when these introverts are going to create something so magnificent in their isolation, or in their, I don't want to call isolation, because you're still connected, like you need to be supported, I think every human needs that, but you

Dylan · 39:18
get,

Tim · 39:19
yes, there's a

Dylan · 39:20
safe wall,

Mary · 39:20
yeah,

Tim · 39:21
where you can retreat, yeah, because I remember working, and Mary does it sometimes. She doesn't know this about me, but sometimes when I'm in the moment, my brain slows down to like a tortoise pace. Well, actually, tortoise move fast, my brain slows down to like very slow, what's slow, like syrup or glass?

Adrienne · 39:38
Okay, yep,

Tim · 39:39
and I am taking it all in. It's like I've become passive, and I'm taking in all this information. And then, when I go off by myself, I grind it, and I know how to get through the information. I know how to make creativity comms, all this inspiration, and I think you process actually on the board in real time, drawing sketches, taking pictures, and moving it forward. It's amazing, and I. Me and I'm like, so jealous for me, I'm blank, I see everything happening, and I'm taking it in. It's like I love computers taking all these inputs, and then I need to go off by myself, or nothing happens. If I don't have time to go off by myself and process it, it's almost like digestion, like I'm eating a lot of food,

Adrienne · 40:17
yep,

Tim · 40:18
data and information, and then I need time to like digest this and do something with it, and so that's the way I work, and it didn't have it didn't go well for me until I created my own agency, because I created my way. Yeah, and some, you know, like some people say you're wasting time by surfing the internet. Yeah, I finally, someone told me that, or I may have told myself I gave.. I did a talk for really

Speaker · 40:46
good

Mary · 40:46
advice. We should say that more often. I

Tim · 40:48
didn't talk for college.

Mary · 40:50
I sat myself down. I had a little talk. I said

Tim · 40:53
I did a college conversation, or I did a talk for college students, and I told them to notice your process. Everyone wants to tell you what your process should be, very

Adrienne · 41:02
smart,

Tim · 41:02
but you figured out your own process through working. Yeah, and so one of my processes was wasting time surfing. That's how I researched. I didn't call it research, but I would be overwhelmed, or I wouldn't know what to do, and I would find myself surfing, and then the internet, not surfing out in the ocean, surfing the internet, and I would, for clarify, and I would find things that, like, sparked me, yeah, and I would collect them, yeah. And so I started wasting time as a part of my process, yeah. I would just go in my office, and I would surf, and I would collect, and then I would be driven to do the thing, and I would find the solution,

Mary · 41:36
and that was invisible to me, and I think invisible to a lot of people who don't identify first and foremost as creatives or designers. Until Adrian stepped up, it was like, this is a step we need to do this step before we do these other steps. At least

Adrienne · 41:51
I like to talk about it. I think maybe this is the same thing you do. I like to be like, I want the images to talk to me, like I have. I go through the same process where I have to, like, do like a big pool, I guess I gotta like get all the stuff, make it kind of messy, and then once I have it out there, like there's something about looking at all of that where it like tells you a story,

Speaker · 42:12
yeah,

Adrienne · 42:12
but I can't do it without doing what you're talking about, which is like wasting time,

Tim · 42:17
I think I'm

Adrienne · 42:18
finding the stuff,

Tim · 42:19
yeah, compare it to like when you do pottery and you take all that clay and you throw it on the wheel,

Adrienne · 42:24
yeah,

Tim · 42:24
but it doesn't work unless you center it,

Adrienne · 42:26
yeah, yeah,

Tim · 42:27
you know, like you push it into place, and that's what I do in my own space, and so I wonder if there is this freedom now, if we correctly learn how to create the culture and the community in it, and not the pressures and the intensity of it, and it's not always going to be easy. Life isn't that way, but if there's a way to center your process, however you work, the introverts, extroverts, some that ride the 50% line, you know, like in the middle, like my wife does. What do you call them?

Mary · 42:53
Ambiverts,

Tim · 42:54
ambiverts,

Mary · 42:54
and Jake, my best friend, who I think also identified as an ambivert for a long time. There's a new one. Oh, really? And I'm just

Mary · 43:00
to

Mary · 43:03
try to do any poly verbs, probably on the last,

Tim · 43:08
what do you call

Speaker · 43:09
it?

Mary · 43:10
No, there's another one that just came out, but we put it on a story like three days ago. What is this? I watched about that theater episode where I was like, let me teach you about theater, I got so many things wrong, it was very..

Dylan · 43:28
what

Adrienne · 43:29
is it? What does that mean?

Tim · 43:34
Well, as well as doing some research off camera,

Mary · 43:36
thank

Tim · 43:37
you. Will

Mary · 43:40
socially capable and yet

Adrienne · 43:41
emotionally independent

Mary · 43:42
of group identity, so anti

Adrienne · 43:42
of group identity,

Speaker · 43:54
an individual is socially capable yet emotionally independent of group identity,

Tim · 44:01
I think that's me too.

Mary · 44:04
Okay, we're all better, we're a group

Adrienne · 44:06
now that we've identified, and do we have to stop? Do you have, like, I don't know if it's anxiety or maybe it's just like my maybe now I'm learning this is just built into my way of being. I don't like, how can I say this, I don't like joining up into groups, and I don't know, I've been that way my entire life, and I don't know, yeah, me too, and it's not that like I don't like people that are in groups, like, I just don't want to be a part of it, like, I'd much rather be off doing my own thing. I can enjoy what you're doing from afar, but I don't want to be part of it. Maybe just solve my, yeah, it

Mary · 44:53
feels to me like I like being in a group. I'm discovering that I like being in, like, we. Have a friend group that I keep wills in it, and I'm like, guys, we got to keep this thing rolling. What are we doing next? Like, are we going to the beach or what? But I think I've never been that person before, but I think it bothers me to join a group that already has like a pre-existing culture sometimes. Yeah, I'm noticing, yeah, it sounds really judgy when I get home and I'm like decompressing and processing it. I'm like, well, it was fun for these reasons, and I liked this person, but as a group they kind of bring out this weird thing in each other that I don't really want to fake for them. And so it kind of,

Tim · 45:33
well, I would attribute that to having options. I don't want to let Dylan speak on this, because you grew up in a small town.

Dylan · 45:38
No, that is fair.

Tim · 45:39
And when and speak to your experience in what it means to be connected in a small town where there aren't options, you can't go to 15 of your schools or choose

Mary · 45:47
from

Tim · 45:48
multiple different friends.

Mary · 45:49
Well, and by the way, whatever the story is, you've come out on the other side like an incredible community builder everywhere you go. Teach us your ways. Yeah,

Dylan · 45:57
yeah, I think in high school it was like I ran in so many different crowds, probably literally sometimes. No, literally, like you didn't run. I did run, but I ran with so many different people. I never had, like, this like one gonna say click, because it was high school. I never had this one click that I was like associated with. I was like always like morphine, and I was like hanging out, the clicks

Tim · 46:21
recognize you.

Dylan · 46:22
Yeah, like I was like I was a friend, and I'm like, I'm not saying that because I was probably a total brat in high school, but like I was like at least like friendly enough to be like I will be totally honest, me and Connor went back for Easter in Franklin, and I do not speak to anyone from high school, not even a single soul, and it's not

Tim · 46:43
on purpose, or is it unintentional?

Dylan · 46:45
No, it's really not unintentional. It's like I think high school, like, frames what you want for your friends, like in the real world. And so, like, I was always constantly like, "Man, like, this is so small town drama. I want friends who, like, see this bigger picture that I do. So when I went to college and like got my real friends, and then like when I got into Asheville, and I've got like people who are all in these different circles, I'm like, oh, this is like mature, this is fun, it can also be childlike, so yeah, I just run with a lot of different circles,

Tim · 47:16
so you used your, that's a bad word, you experienced high school as a, like, a training,

Dylan · 47:22
yeah,

Tim · 47:23
and maybe that's what it is for all of us, like, we take it so seriously, and I tell my kids, like, matter what's happening right now, yeah,

Dylan · 47:31
I was like one of those people in high school, like, I did everything, like, I literally did everything in

Tim · 47:36
sports, and

Dylan · 47:37
I'm ashamed to, yeah, I'm ashamed to miss, admitted I'm mrs. FHS for our high school, and

Dylan · 47:43
like

Adrienne · 47:43
FHS,

Dylan · 47:44
like the high school, frankly. Oh, so I like, I can see

Speaker · 47:48
that

Mary · 47:48
she's the queen. Yes, you were. I hate to clean, because I hate,

Dylan · 47:57
I hate to admit it, because it's like it's true. It was like, so for me it was like, so stereotypical. Like, I thought when I got to college, my friends were gonna make like so much fun of me, because they were like, "Oh, you were that girl. But

Tim · 48:11
isn't it beautiful that you didn't want it, and you got

Dylan · 48:14
it? Yeah,

Tim · 48:14
secret code to life, that the things you don't want, like the things you're like, "I could take it or leave it, and everyone's like, "You give it to him, they

Mary · 48:21
tell me that

Tim · 48:23
it's such a weird irony. I

Dylan · 48:25
remember being at prom, and I was just like, "Shit talking on, like, the whole thing, and I was like, "Tell my friends, I was like,

Tim · 48:32
'Don't you think this is why Trump won the election? Like, he's shit talking the whole thing, probably.

Dylan · 48:36
I know I was just.. I think it's because, like, the nonchalant of not wanting something, but maybe secretly down. I don't know.

Tim · 48:43
Okay. Shall want is a word. Thank you for reminding

Dylan · 48:45
me.

Tim · 48:45
Not nonchalant, Shalon.

Adrienne · 48:48
Yes,

Tim · 48:49
like, are you Shallan? Are you nonchalant? I know what I mean.

Adrienne · 48:51
We should bring Shallan in time vocabulary, because they have

Tim · 48:55
nonchalant,

Adrienne · 48:56
yeah, like

Tim · 48:56
nonchalant about

Speaker · 48:57
it. I

Dylan · 48:57
was nonchalant about it. I also just wanted to get, like, I was so head focused. I was like, I want to get out of my small town. I moved to Asheville.

Tim · 49:04
Okay, so you were pushing against it, like you felt like you wanted to expand your..

Dylan · 49:09
yeah, I felt like my parents were like giving me this framework to like see the world, and then I was like coming back, and I'm like, guys, look at this thing, and if I was like, what the hell is this?

Tim · 49:20
You need your people.

Dylan · 49:21
Yeah, I needed my people, and I think that's what high school's for, is because you get a taste of it. You've like got these people in this proximity, but it's not like, and I mean, there's high school best friends, but for me it wasn't like life giving, it was more of a draining factor those four years than it was like a life giving moment for me.

Adrienne · 49:37
I think that's good, though, because I think people that dwell in their high school is like the best years, they miss out on everything else that comes after, because they're like always looking back,

Speaker · 49:45
and they

Tim · 49:45
still look exactly the same as they did in high school. I don't want to crack on anyway, but there are people that are fine with that.

Adrienne · 49:51
Yeah, but they're

Tim · 49:52
comfortable

Tim · 49:52
with right, you think back and there's not an evolution that's happened. The

Adrienne · 49:55
growth, you miss out on the growth.

Dylan · 49:57
I get really scared about stuff like that when it. Like you're living in the past, I get really freaked out about stuff like that.

Tim · 50:04
Well, I do too, because I live.. I well, I was here so early that I feel like this is my hometown,

Dylan · 50:09
right?

Tim · 50:09
And I'm the only person that hasn't moved on to a town that's not their hometown, but just so happens that my hometown became cool.

Speaker · 50:16
Yeah,

Adrienne · 50:19
I'm

Tim · 50:20
like, I'm not in the old town that's like no one wants to be at my town, just got cool,

Mary · 50:25
yeah. And I just, from here, you got lucky, like I went, Marion, I mean, I don't think it's quite, quite as isolated as Franklin, but like similar vibes, a lot of people stay close at home, that kind of thing, Marion to Chapel Hill, like Raleigh-Durham area, to New York, back to Asheville, and I was like, oh, Asheville is on the rise, where it's like some places you feel like, oh, it's declining, and I don't know, Helena hit, and we kind of had a weird, rough moment, but it definitely feels like something's brewing,

Dylan · 50:57
yeah, you'll always find your way back home,

Tim · 50:59
there you go,

Dylan · 50:59
yeah, did you

Tim · 51:00
see your Hannah Montana 30th?

Dylan · 51:02
I love

Tim · 51:02
20th.

Dylan · 51:03
Yes, I

Speaker · 51:04
play 20th. It's not

Adrienne · 51:06
that old.

Dylan · 51:07
I grew up on Hannah Montana,

Tim · 51:08
really.

Mary · 51:09
Yes, did it give you a personality disorder? You think maybe I've got all these all the closet, the closet though, like with the rotating thing, anyway,

Tim · 51:22
I have never watched

Adrienne · 51:23
me neither. I

Tim · 51:24
just found out that she was like a singer, Miley. Yeah, you don't know, I know Miley. Sorry, no, that the actual show is about a singer who, yeah, not

Speaker · 51:35
a singer in real

Mary · 51:35
life, very meta.

Adrienne · 51:37
I didn't even know that.

Tim · 51:38
No, I just found this out because I turned it on, because I was like, what did everyone like about Hannah Montana? I don't get it. And it was funny, actually. She created the 20th just by telling people it was gonna happen. Yeah, yeah, she was

Dylan · 51:49
just starting to tell people.

Adrienne · 51:51
She just spread the word, and then it forced the big guys to make this happen. But anyway, when she said that, that she in the show, she was explaining this. That's the first time I found out about it. I didn't even know that about it. I just, I knew the show. I didn't know what the premise was, and I saw on, like, TikTok or Instagram, they did, like, a cut screen of, like, she recreated the final scene, I guess. And I saw that, but it

Mary · 52:12
was like a social experiment that they did on Miley Cyrus,

Tim · 52:14
right? It

Dylan · 52:15
was,

Tim · 52:15
but here's the thing, is we

Mary · 52:17
didn't know,

Tim · 52:17
talking about, like, I was trying out, I didn't know if I was gonna get the part, she was nonchalant. She's Billy Ray Cyrus's daughter, she's

Mary · 52:25
Dolly Parton's goddaughter.

Tim · 52:26
That's what she is. Like, I hate this bullshit about people saying I just worked so hard and I tried out, and I could.. I didn't take it or leave it. Not

Mary · 52:35
only were like this feels to me like my parents just assuming that I was going to go to college on merit-based scholarships, they're like, "Our child's a genius, learn her AP scores, she's going to.. we don't need to say we're going to be fine, and that was not the case, because by the time I went to college, everybody else's parents were also like gunning for that stuff, and so, yeah, you're competing with a lot of people, never mind, and this is like kind of incendiary to say, like, I'm that guy who's like, let me just voice the conservative view in, like, a micro way, but, like, uh, there's also this push for diversity, which is right and good, and it should be happening, but it means that, for the first time in American history, anyway, like, white people are having to, like, wake up and become excellent, we don't get it just for like rolling out of bed that morning, so I feel like from Miley Cyrus's perspective she probably was up against a bunch of other girls.

Tim · 53:28
Well, she said she only did it so that she could get the guy back at her hometown, a kid in high school. Don't

Mary · 53:32
you think she's..

Tim · 53:34
I don't like the bullshit story about like I was gonna get it, and I'm like, you were primed for this,

Adrienne · 53:42
and you have every connection possible. Make

Tim · 53:44
it

Adrienne · 53:45
happen.

Mary · 53:46
What if you take the word primed and instead you said groomed?

Speaker · 53:50
And what

Mary · 53:50
if you were like destined your whole life? People, this was your function, and you need to go perform

Speaker · 53:55
it.

Mary · 53:55
And by the way, you don't get to go home where your boss isn't watching you anymore, because your boss is watching all

Tim · 54:01
the time of the Michael Jackson.

Adrienne · 54:02
Yeah,

Mary · 54:03
by the way, there's a new movie coming.

Tim · 54:04
I know Michael. Okay, so tell me here, what is happening with Michael Jackson? Because at first we're not supposed to listen to him, because I thought

Adrienne · 54:11
he was canceled back.

Tim · 54:13
But I wonder if it's the Epstein Files have revealed something about his real role in trying to protect these kids. I've asked my kids if they know about

Adrienne · 54:20
this,

Tim · 54:21
but I think there's a lot of Instagram reels, or like a viral thing happening, where he was literally trying to protect them from Epstein, and Epstein-like people.

Speaker · 54:31
Yeah,

Tim · 54:31
now doesn't that fry your brain? I grew up learning he was a pedophile.

Adrienne · 54:35
Yes, and then you know, remember, they had the documentary came out, and then we were all supposed to like stop listening

Speaker · 54:40
to

Adrienne · 54:40
his music,

Mary · 54:42
yeah.

Adrienne · 54:44
Well, it's like the artist from the art. It's the same with like Woody Allen and all these like creepy dudes, where you're like, why do you make good things horrible and make

Mary · 54:55
great things? Incredible.

Dylan · 54:57
I can do the Michael Jackson thing, where he gets on his. Toes shoes, I can't crease my

Mary · 55:03
whole film of Moonwalk,

Tim · 55:04
crease my jade,

Dylan · 55:07
but that was one of the.. that's my connection to Michael Jackson.

Adrienne · 55:11
Actually, what's your perspective on Michael Jackson? Like, not

Tim · 55:15
been through the whole, yeah,

Adrienne · 55:16
growing up in the 80s, and like him being a pop star,

Dylan · 55:19
I just music.. I was like, "Oh, this is really good, and I was like, "Oh, my, you know, like, and I was telling my parents, and they were like, "Yeah, so by the way, apparently he's a pet file, and I was like, "Noted, and then I would still go put it on in Spotify, so I don't know if that says something about my moral character, but that was my connection, and none of us.. like, I've never really talked to any of my friends, I will say this. When I talk about Michael Jackson in my age, a lot of the older people are like, you still listen to Michael Jackson, really? Yeah, so that's like the only thing the rest of us were like, oh, there's like really cool like hype reels on TikTok, two Michael Jackson songs,

Mary · 55:54
they're hype.

Tim · 55:56
You just reminded me something. Oh, actually brought an idea into my mind. What about ideas coming to us remotely through these devices?

Mary · 56:05
I think remote ideas, we talk about gravity and about, like, attracting things, and I can get really down about the world, like, if we start talking politics, I like, don't know how to dig myself out of that hole half the time, skills I'm building, but I am so jazzed to be alive during this time, like I can get really down in the mouth about it, but if I zoom out far enough, I'm like, whoa,

Tim · 56:27
it's a crazy time,

Mary · 56:28
I'm so thankful I got to experience the internet and like the connecting of the globe and the free flow of ideas, which might be about to close down, you know, it was the wild west when the internet started, and we're

Speaker · 56:40
closed

Tim · 56:40
down just as a consequence of it being inundated with AI. I think it'll close down

Mary · 56:47
like server space and storage. You're trying to reckon with, but the idea that I grew up when you could just like pirate music, you know, that

Tim · 56:55
killed my music career. Thank you very much.

Mary · 56:56
Sorry, but as someone, it really expanded my palate, and I'm really thankful,

Tim · 57:01
but here's the thing: is that once that started happening, music ceased to get, have its, its regional taste, its flavor.

Mary · 57:14
Now we've got a global

Tim · 57:15
right, every type of music started to be influenced by all these different pieces and started being a melting pot of sounds, versus like a Seattle sound, or a Nashville sound, or a Memphis sound, or a South Florida, Miami sound. Like, there used to be pockets of movements that would happen, but now our sounds and our ideas are drawn in remotely, and then influence what could have been real about that culture. What could have been authentic in that culture?

Adrienne · 57:42
I think I'm going down a path that you maybe you're going down, and I'm feeling opposite of you.

Mary · 57:47
Really, you feel like it's landing out?

Adrienne · 57:49
Yeah, because I was just in Madrid, which is a city that I love, and it was the first time I've been there a few times. It was the first time where I was like, there's too much American culture here, like it was trying to be New York. There were like brunch spots, and I'm like, no, there should not be brunch in Madrid. Like, this goes against everything that's part of that culture. Yes, which is what I want to travel for eight hours on a plane to visit, because I want something different, and I feel like all this ease of connectivity is really diluting new ideas, exactly, because we just want to like recycle and pass through the ideas that are out there already that are popular, and I don't think there's space for a lot of new ideas to come to the surface.

Tim · 58:37
It's kind of like what you see in movies, where you don't really see, I mean, the one you were talking about this morning, maybe

Dylan · 58:42
the Project Hill Mary.

Tim · 58:43
I think that's one of the first, like, a fresh idea on the screen, but all of them are like remakes, yes, reboots,

Adrienne · 58:51
remixes of the same thing.

Tim · 58:52
And I think the internet is a remix, and I'm not against the remix, because hip hop is killer, and it's all about the remix, but I wonder if when you don't have some sort of container or restriction, it's if it starts to be diluted,

Adrienne · 59:07
yeah,

Tim · 59:07
because there's too many things being added to give it its flavor, like a richness.

Adrienne · 59:12
There's no, oh, sorry, there's no digital isolation, like you can't, so it's all like, you know, like you hear about, like great artists of time would go off and create their own art, but they had to do it away because they, they wanted to have, like, their own mind influence them. And I feel like there's that doesn't happen in the digital space, exactly.

Tim · 59:30
The mystery of our own ingenuity.

Mary · 59:32
Yeah, I wonder, though. So, like, I live, my partner, Alex, wonderful, wonderful qualities he has. He does not get out of the house much, and we're working on that. He's, yeah, you can say that he has to balance my energy out. So I'm also

Tim · 59:51
called my own body,

Mary · 59:52
yeah. He's well, he loves being around people who just like isn't gonna, without the prompt, go out and see things. So that's what I do, but he. He, he really does open my mind. He's this is the video games guy you were talking to Reggie about. You, we don't like video games, but he's working on me. He, you know, spends so much time online almost as if he's a generation younger, I think. Like, he says he was raised by a TV who's raised by Nintendo, and he laughs about that. Sorry, Brett and Lisa, we don't take it too seriously, but he, he is a big Redditor. He doesn't post, but he lurks.

Adrienne · 1:00:23
Yeah,

Mary · 1:00:24
and he, because he invests his time and energy in the space, he finds little nooks and crannies. He finds these little niche communities out there, so it's like a different form of, it's a more sort of maybe intellectual or psychological grouping of people versus a regional grouping of people, and from somewhere I think it starts to, I do think there's gonna be a resurgence. I think it's already happening where people are like, I'm tired of the Americanized white lens being shown on my culture, and like it getting mellowed out. I think people are starting to ask the question, like, where am I from, and what does it mean to be from that place? And I think being from just moving back to Asheville has really put this in perspective for me. There's a lot of stuff about I'm looking at you because I'm like Appalachian, there's a lot of stuff about Appalachian culture that I think hurt me as a kid, like that changed who I was in ways that, yeah, I'm not really always proud of, but there's also like we are a flavor of white person, like we're one of the segments of white people that I'm like, oh, we've got something that's true, it's not like purely good,

Dylan · 1:01:35
we have Dolly Parton, we've got Dolly Parton

Tim · 1:01:39
Dolly,

Mary · 1:01:40
yeah, but it's made me and my brother moved home, and we've got all these things happening, but it makes me a lot prouder to be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna take this piece of Appalachian culture, this belongs to me, and like, let's not let this part die off, like playing a banjo.

Dylan · 1:01:54
Could you imagine us having this conversation while I'm just like,

Tim · 1:01:58
I would love that. I, okay, so back to the Alex niche thing. As I think it's a rebellion against what we're talking about, I don't think it's because of what we're talking about. I think it's gotten so people are so fed up, like my son's fed up with culture, he wants

Mary · 1:02:13
real life culture,

Tim · 1:02:14
just like the culture, the mainstream culture, and he wants the niche into his gamers, guys, gamer friends, people

Mary · 1:02:21
who speak this language.

Tim · 1:02:22
So, I wonder if it's not a result of it. Well, it's a consequence of it, or the it is a result of it, but I don't think it's fed it. I think it's caused a reversion to niching, to creating these things where people actually care about each other, and it's not just advertising and marketing.

Mary · 1:02:36
I would rather that people did that in person.

Tim · 1:02:39
It's not that I think it's cool. I love him when people rebel against the man.

Mary · 1:02:44
There you go, Alex. You're an insurgent.

Tim · 1:02:48
I, yeah,

Mary · 1:02:49
I just.. I think it is neither better nor worse. It's just different, but I.. I agree that we should not let all these valuable, rich, interesting cultures just completely get assimilated or annihilated by whatever it is we're putting out there. I remember when I was studying linguistics in school, they were talking about how quickly different languages are dying off, and sometimes I think about culture through that lens, as like culture is music, so much, yeah, and there already has been, and I think that's - I'm going to blame colonialism, I'm going to blame on some level patriarchy, but I think that we're waking up to it. So, yeah,

Tim · 1:03:30
call it immature patriarchy.

Mary · 1:03:31
Sure, agree,

Tim · 1:03:32
immature boy men trying

Adrienne · 1:03:34
to

Tim · 1:03:34
dominate everything.

Mary · 1:03:35
Yeah, yeah, the whole.. I'm more of an egalitarian, but I do think the idea that something has been lost that is true to me, but I also think there's not - that's not to say that it can't be like found, rediscovered. I think this is one of the reasons I love older people, like they just remember a different version of the world, and I'm fascinated by that.

Tim · 1:03:55
I love old people too.

Mary · 1:03:56
Yeah,

Tim · 1:03:57
I just wish we could like bring old people back.

Adrienne · 1:04:00
Our culture doesn't really admire, like, go away, we don't want to see you, and

Tim · 1:04:05
like, I dream of a time when you could sit around a fire and hear from the old people, yeah,

Adrienne · 1:04:13
learn from them, yeah,

Speaker · 1:04:14
should we schedule

Dylan · 1:04:15
something,

Mary · 1:04:19
but

Tim · 1:04:20
also, here's the thing, is I also think old people have also lost the practice. Yes, because if you sit with an old person, it's like the culture has trained us to kind of.. I don't know if it's trained them that they don't matter.

Mary · 1:04:33
Yeah,

Tim · 1:04:34
hard to get something out of them.

Adrienne · 1:04:36
I think,

Tim · 1:04:37
like, they're.. yeah, they're like they're not relevant.

Adrienne · 1:04:39
Yeah,

Mary · 1:04:40
they've been dis. they've watched other elders be disrespected, and they're expecting that.

Adrienne · 1:04:45
And society, like my you guys are asking, like, what do we do on Easter? My neighbor turned 80, she's a twin, yeah, she still lives by herself.

Tim · 1:04:55
Wow, she's

Adrienne · 1:04:56
fabulous. She's like a, she was an artist her whole life, and so. She threw a big, like, potluck party, and, oh my god, I just lost my train of thought.

Mary · 1:05:04
Sorry. Welcome

Adrienne · 1:05:06
to a potluck party. I know the most storytelling I've ever been to in my life.

Tim · 1:05:11
The point of the whole idea, potluck,

Mary · 1:05:14
we do this all

Adrienne · 1:05:15
the time. I feel like that word's got to be in this. I was going somewhere,

Mary · 1:05:21
storytelling confidence and respecting our elders.

Adrienne · 1:05:24
What I was going to say is we're talking about, like, is it society, and I think our society is evolving without thinking about elders at all. So she's

Tim · 1:05:35
scary.

Adrienne · 1:05:35
Has this little sleep, this little sleep app. Actually, I'm really impressed. Like, she researched it online. She has this little device she puts on her finger. Is it an aura ring? It's not an aura, but it's like that, where, but it's just for measuring like her sleep, potential sleep apnea. Wow. So she went, she, she bought it online, which is a big thing. Yeah, but she couldn't get it to work, and she was like, I tried calling customer service, which we know how that goes, and then she was like, they said the Bluetooth, and this and that, and I was like, you know what, our whole society has evolved, leaving behind a whole generation of people just expecting that they're gonna

Mary · 1:06:13
like adapt

Tim · 1:06:14
somehow

Adrienne · 1:06:14
or not participate in it, like it's just, it was really rude, I felt like offended for her that I,

Tim · 1:06:21
and if you go to any place where they keep old people, yeah, it's super depressing. I have a friend that went, he was, he suffered West Nile virus from a mosquito bite around the region, which is kind of funny. Anyway, he was paralyzed in his leg, and he was staying at this place, it's supposed to be a rehab, physical rehab, but it was like kind of old people, almost like they're just sitting watching TV, waiting to die.

Adrienne · 1:06:48
Yes,

Tim · 1:06:48
so walking down this, there's so many stories, there's so many like wisdom, pieces of wisdom that are lying around in this place. Absolutely, just kind of imprisoned,

Adrienne · 1:07:02
yeah. So true.

Mary · 1:07:03
We, my mom has thought for many years, I wish she'd do this. Allison, this is your sign, get off your ass and do this project. She just talked about hard

Mary · 1:07:10
love.

Mary · 1:07:12
She's talked about doing an oral history project and just going and sitting with older people and like collecting the stories of the region,

Tim · 1:07:21
when my grandpa died, I asked my grandma if she could write what she remembered of him in his story, because you realize when you lose someone that that was the person holding

Speaker · 1:07:30
it,

Tim · 1:07:31
they were holding the memories of their life and of their family, and it wasn't

Dylan · 1:07:34
a device holding

Tim · 1:07:36
it, and so when she wrote it down and I got to read it, is like, I wish I'd have asked her before my grandpa died. Yeah, because then I would have known his story, and you think you know someone's story, especially with people close to you. But there's so many things we don't know about each other, experiencing these little universes in ourselves.

Mary · 1:07:55
We're never sitting around a fire with nothing else to do, like, so, where'd you come from, bud? Like, we're like, I have five minutes for coffee on Thursday,

Adrienne · 1:08:02
that's true.

Mary · 1:08:03
What are you transacted? And the

Adrienne · 1:08:04
little thing, your pockets buzzing the whole thing.

Mary · 1:08:07
Why? Yeah,

Tim · 1:08:07
because the intrinsic value of spending time with each other has been stolen by the reward of time is money.

Speaker · 1:08:13
Yes,

Tim · 1:08:14
once you start paying people for their time, you start to lose the intrinsic value of time. It's a waste of time, and some people don't even have enough time to let someone get a full sentence out. That's why we started using letters.

Speaker · 1:08:24
Yeah, that's true.

Tim · 1:08:25
Come to ideas. So I wonder, in this remote world, because a lot, I think a lot of these things are because everything is so remote, whether it's ideas, yeah, we're

Mary · 1:08:37
distancing ourselves slowly, the

Tim · 1:08:39
lack of culture, like being dismembered from culture. Like, I grew up in church because my dad was a pastor, and we moved kind of like a military family or an army family. Where you move as a child, I moved five, six times, so I never knew where I was from. I went to every elementary school, everyone knew me, but I didn't know where I was from.

Mary · 1:08:56
Interesting.

Tim · 1:08:57
So, when you have this remote movement happening, especially in our, in our businesses, where do we find that authenticity, that culture? Like, how do you craft that, or not craft it, even, because I think that comes off as like premeditated and manufactured. How do you reveal the culture or the uniqueness that we possess? Because we all bring something unique to this world, I know that as a fact, and I call it fate.

Adrienne · 1:09:20
Yeah,

Tim · 1:09:20
you have a fate. It's the destiny is shared, but the fate you have is unique. How do you find that if you're inundated and held up by all this stuff?

Adrienne · 1:09:28
Good question.

Tim · 1:09:29
So, like, if we were gonna have an agency that has a virtual office, maybe there's a place where that remote, that freedom that comes in being remote is where we allow the culture to happen and bring it back.

Adrienne · 1:09:43
Well, I love that, and I've also been thinking a lot about, you know, someone who, like, grew up. I went to college in New York, I stayed there my entire adult life, and always having a little bit of egocentric point of view of New York being the center of culture.

Mary · 1:09:58
I mean, they are just better. You know,

Tim · 1:10:00
I love New York,

Adrienne · 1:10:01
but and it will always be my home. Sorry, I keep doing that. It will always be my home.

Mary · 1:10:09
Integrate this, it's good for your posture. She's a New Yorker, we get

Speaker · 1:10:22
it.

Adrienne · 1:10:23
Okay, what I want to say, and I think Asheville has really taught me this, is that actually I think the interesting culture is happening in these little micro pockets of places that aren't the big city that have a big machine behind them that needs, especially nowadays, needs to keep running and needs to keep being fed and manufactured, and I feel like it's in all these small places where people are.. I know we're talking about people not feeling connected here, but I do feel like people in Asheville are more connected to each other than I have experienced living in New York.

Mary · 1:10:59
Colleen was a great example of that, yeah. Oh, I was so impressed, yeah,

Adrienne · 1:11:03
but I think, like, the interesting little cultural sizzle is happening in these smaller places

Tim · 1:11:09
behind the curtain. I think it is. He knows yet

Adrienne · 1:11:13
they're not getting credit

Tim · 1:11:14
for it to it yet, but I just don't want to get ruined.

Speaker · 1:11:19
Whoa,

Tim · 1:11:19
you know, like when someone wants to like bring something like this is a good idea, this is a good trend, we like destroy,

Adrienne · 1:11:25
you know, we go like hardly, we

Tim · 1:11:27
take it 150% like Asheville, I'll use my own town. When someone found out about craft brewing beer,

Adrienne · 1:11:34
I can see that

Tim · 1:11:35
everyone thought to become a craft brewer. Yeah, and we need 100 craft breweries, we

Mary · 1:11:40
have like a guild, like a Brewers Guild, I believe, or something like,

Tim · 1:11:43
and then you have craft beer tours, and it's like everyone got on the same thing, and like all tried to optimize, or like capitalize on the idea, versus it being this thing that just is happy, like we have craft beer, it's cool, let's make craft beer marketing, but

Mary · 1:12:00
mostly men, I'm sure there's some female brewers out there. I, Carlisle, who we are going to have in the studio, hopefully in a week or two. Her husband is a brewer, his name is Tyler. Really awesome couple, and they moved from Florida, where he was also a brewer, and I think they moved to Asheville, in part.

Tim · 1:12:17
I

Mary · 1:12:17
think he got a job at, I want to say, Hillman or somewhere like that, and I went to there's a conference that we hold in Asheville at the Civic Center, put on by the Guild. I went with her to that,

Adrienne · 1:12:28
because

Mary · 1:12:29
she loves, in particular, designing packaging and merchandise for, like, breweries, because they're in the culture, but there's such a culture, not just like the money-making culture, but like understanding the science of brewing and experimenting almost like artistry, so I think you're right, it's probably driven by, like, oh, we can make a mint in it, but I think there's this exciting, like, creative juice, it's like the real arts district, that's the

Tim · 1:12:53
good part of it, that's the identity or the heart of it.

Speaker · 1:12:56
Yeah,

Tim · 1:12:56
but then branding and marketing comes around and says, let's make this into money, yeah, and it destroys it. It like, I mean, even the even musical movements like grunge or pop, it will not pop, pop probably is the problem, but grunge and hardcore, and like all these underground movements get popularized and then get destroyed, like it totally removes the movement.

Adrienne · 1:13:19
I don't know. I think we're talking about capitalism.

Tim · 1:13:23
I don't even know if I like it, because I grew up in capitalism. So, what is this beast that we're living in,

Adrienne · 1:13:31
especially owning your own business? You're like, well, I need to make

Speaker · 1:13:37
it

Adrienne · 1:13:37
so people can have jobs, and you got part of the system, but then I also find myself being like the system has been engineered in a way that no longer works for like regular people.

Mary · 1:13:50
Well, if you're trying, it doesn't work, but maybe if we just let go and we're like, I don't want to be prom queen,

Tim · 1:13:55
okay? Get this, this is gonna be it's

Adrienne · 1:13:57
the nonchalant,

Mary · 1:13:58
the nonchalant, this

Speaker · 1:13:59
is

Tim · 1:14:00
gonna be a Shalott statement.

Mary · 1:14:03
Tim doesn't know

Tim · 1:14:05
there is really.. he

Mary · 1:14:06
can't lie to you, and nor do I. And I think that's one of the things I

Tim · 1:14:09
wonder if that's why I wonder if that's why my son learned the word. He's like, 'This is my dad. But there is a study right now about the growth economy, because growth has defined innovation for many, many years, the statistics around what it has provided in medicine, in food, in progress is off the charts, but guess what, it has just started to fall. So all that has been learned through growth, like we believe growth is like in capitalism, growth is a necessity, everything must grow or it dies, kind of thing, and that's why companies grow into the point of consuming everything else, because they just have to, but what we're, what the research is finding is that growth, all the benefits it brought are now it's a detraction, this obsession with growth, but we're still using the skin. Your city mind

Adrienne · 1:15:01
to

Tim · 1:15:01
keep growing like you don't have enough and this is the whole thing with branding that I have a crisis internally about is that branding or selling something a product is built on telling someone they need the product so you have to actually talk to them talk them into believing they're not enough and that they need this thing that's how you're gonna get happiness and feel fulfillment. Yep, all these things that should be intrinsic and not human. So, there is this our minds in its scarcity has grown to this level that we're at now, where, and this is a part of the research which blew my mind. There is, I think, one and a half times enough food in the world to feed everyone the production. Yes, this is real, a real study.

Speaker · 1:15:45
Huh? One

Tim · 1:15:45
and a half times we could feed literally everyone, right? So,

Adrienne · 1:15:48
is it all going to waste?

Tim · 1:15:49
It's not a production. Yes, it's a distribution thing, it's a control thing. It's there, is you have to be dissatisfied in this culture for capitalism to work.

Adrienne · 1:15:58
That is true. So,

Tim · 1:15:59
if you're not dissatisfied, everyone's taken care of, and then people will say, well, are we going to be motivated if we're not in this growth time? And the thing about it is that motivation existed before capitalism was ever invented. It's

Mary · 1:16:09
been driven by creativity,

Tim · 1:16:11
exactly, and that has always been a part of human humanity.

Adrienne · 1:16:14
Yeah,

Tim · 1:16:14
and so we're going to start experiencing whether or not the test of whether or not growth at all costs is benefiting anyone.

Speaker · 1:16:22
Yeah,

Tim · 1:16:23
or are we all driving ourselves off a cliff? Because we're intrinsic, we're extrinsically value driven.

Speaker · 1:16:29
Money,

Tim · 1:16:30
money, money, as Justin Bieber says. I know this because my daughter's a beaver, Bieber fever, money, money, money. I always said that, money, money, money.

Mary · 1:16:39
See, I went Abba, I think you're right, and I feel like the distribution problem is a solvable one, and I think definitely

Tim · 1:16:49
solvable.

Mary · 1:16:50
I'm sort of back to, like, am I bummed or am I excited to be living this time? I really believe I'm gonna see the solution. I'm not gonna see the ultimate solution. Who

Tim · 1:17:00
are you? I

Mary · 1:17:01
hope

Mary · 1:17:01
I'm not gonna see the openness. I don't think it's never gonna end, right? But some of these things that we're bringing up, I'm like, ah, I live on the tipping point.

Tim · 1:17:10
Yeah,

Mary · 1:17:10
I'm hoping that I get to see it before I'm older, and so that I can talk, I get to see the Renaissance, and I get to see the rebuild instead of just the falling down. But that's the part

Tim · 1:17:21
work,

Speaker · 1:17:22
yeah,

Tim · 1:17:22
make that system

Mary · 1:17:23
actually start it like we're the

Tim · 1:17:24
push, because we are in brand. I mean, we're not going to say it anymore, because it kind of has an icky feeling. I'm

Mary · 1:17:29
telling people not to use brand anymore. We're a creative studio,

Dylan · 1:17:32
and I love it.

Tim · 1:17:33
It's about identity, and yeah, we are. Yeah, we identify with things, but use it to change the system.

Speaker · 1:17:39
Yeah,

Tim · 1:17:39
don't use it to just add more nonsense to the system.

Mary · 1:17:42
I brought that, would

Adrienne · 1:17:42
be the goal.

Mary · 1:17:43
You should look at this book too. Yeah, I

Tim · 1:17:45
did. End of branding, or the..

Mary · 1:17:47
I need to fess, I did buy it on Amazon, so think about that for a minute. But, and Amazon's in the book, they sold me propaganda against them.

Mary · 1:17:56
Have you

Tim · 1:17:56
ever seen The Good Place?

Mary · 1:17:57
Yeah,

Speaker · 1:18:00
guilty.

Mary · 1:18:01
Yeah, but

Mary · 1:18:02
all right, maybe. recommended,

Adrienne · 1:18:05
it

Mary · 1:18:06
wasn't being sold anywhere that I could find it locally. So, talk about distribution of ideas,

Tim · 1:18:12
but we do live in such a plentiful time.

Adrienne · 1:18:14
We do, which one could say that AI could help with all of that?

Tim · 1:18:18
Imagine,

Adrienne · 1:18:19
because AI is supposed to, in its most utopian state, be able to stop us needing to have to grow, because it's gonna, it's gonna provide these things for us that we spent our time trying to acquire and grow, so I, as much as this may be controversial, I just feel like in the creative field everyone is so anti AI.

Mary · 1:18:43
We're so fearful,

Adrienne · 1:18:44
and there I do. I understand the slop issue. I get that, but I also see how it could be super beneficial if we could put some good parameters around it and use it in the ways that I think it actually helped us as humans. Yeah, and maybe part of that is in this branding design field,

Tim · 1:19:05
it

Adrienne · 1:19:06
can take away some of our tasks that were really labor intensive

Tim · 1:19:09
and let us be human together again.

Adrienne · 1:19:11
Yeah, and free up the extra time to be human to then be creative to make things. So, I don't hate AI. Sorry, everyone. All my peers are gonna slay me.

Mary · 1:19:22
Well, it'll come back around and people be like, she was so wise. Even

Speaker · 1:19:27
archive

Tim · 1:19:27
this podcast,

Mary · 1:19:29
it's gonna.. here's my.. I'm really.. I realized last night I was like, oh, right before I met Tim and Reggie, I got really into conceptually into the idea of these long form video or like self film projects, and I actually started one in 2024 before all of my life fell apart, and I have a little bit of the devolution, so that's gonna be fun to post one thing, but the idea of like a time capsule, like this is a moment captured in time, and what a crazy thing that. I'm gonna get morbid, sorry. Like, we could, in 30 years, let's give ourselves 70 years. We're gonna, technology's gonna be crazy. We're gonna live forever, but like, we will die, and somebody could go back and find, like, your greatest hits, you know? Not to, like, maybe not your voice. Let's be tasteful about the funeral, should we? But, like, it's there. And so I'm really into the idea of this as like a long form art project that we return to, and like we're we're making something that means something to

Tim · 1:20:28
us,

Mary · 1:20:29
but there will be.. I'm studying some other people as well. There's gonna be.. it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

Adrienne · 1:20:35
Oh, I think it's definitely gonna get..

Mary · 1:20:37
it's gonna.. people, you're

Speaker · 1:20:37
gonna go

Adrienne · 1:20:38
into the sludge. Yeah,

Mary · 1:20:39
you're gonna

Mary · 1:20:39
feel real

Tim · 1:20:40
into it. Yeah,

Mary · 1:20:41
you're gonna feel like everything you said is stupid, and everybody hates you, and like nothing. Yeah, and then give it like another year or two, maybe a little more. Things move quickly these days as well, and it's accelerated. Yeah, so

Adrienne · 1:20:52
I don't know. I know you watched a lot of sci-fi, and I grew up watching a lot of

Speaker · 1:20:58
sci-fi

Mary · 1:20:58
house at Adrian's house one time, and many things I did strangely, but one of the things was I watched like almost a whole season of Star Trek: The Next Generation on her best show, and yeah, couldn't get that off before best show. Anyway, you watched a lot of sci-fi growing up,

Adrienne · 1:21:18
and Next Generation was one of the big shows, Jean-Luc

Mary · 1:21:24
Picard, an inspiring figure, even nowadays in my life, yeah, sometimes

Mary · 1:21:30
yes,

Adrienne · 1:21:31
yes,

Mary · 1:21:32
beat me up, so

Adrienne · 1:21:33
maybe because of all the sci-fi I see the potential, and I'm like, we can do it, and AI is like one of those tools that can get us to be there. I just don't trust the politicians and the owners that are managing it right now. So, maybe the revolution is like, and who gets to manage the AI? Who gets to take control of it? Because right now I don't trust them, and I don't know how that culture changes,

Mary · 1:22:02
yeah. Tech anarchy, have you heard

Mary · 1:22:04
about?

Adrienne · 1:22:04
Yeah, I mean, it's happening. Yeah, I'm

Mary · 1:22:09
so sorry. Could you write that one down too? Tech anarchy, we're gonna need anyway. We're probably, you know, we probably need to wrap this clock.

Tim · 1:22:17
I guess you brought up something, which I think is something that we should bring back around. Tiff

Mary · 1:22:21
and I have this problem where we can never end the podcast. The

Tim · 1:22:24
capsule in I grew up. I'm gonna tell you out there, make videos for yourself where you're talking to yourself. It's like a journal, but it allows you to process a thing, like prompt yourself with a question, I was, yeah, like Captain's log, starting,

Speaker · 1:22:46
whatever,

Speaker · 1:22:46
yes,

Tim · 1:22:47
and then you start to go through, sometimes we loop around the same ideas over and over, yeah, and we, we experienced this when we were doing your, your PBA, we do this thing in 40 hearts called the Vision Accelerator, and we did one for Dylan, for like personal vision, and, and where we're going, and sometimes we loop around the question in kind of a dark, mysterious space, and it never feels solved until you lay it out there, and you're like, oh, I, these all these make sense together, all these ideas I've been having make sense, they're not a confusing circle, they're actually a path, and so I took this course because I was terrible at talking in the line, I still am not great at talking on camera, and so I took this course where I just had to make these videos every day, and in talking to myself, basically, who I was talking to, I started to process things in a different way, because I started talking things out and they got out of me, and they weren't like jumbled up inside of me, bouncing around my own thoughts, not everyone else's thoughts, my own thoughts. And when you talk on camera, it's kind of like it makes all the other noise. It's frightening how it makes all the other noise like silent, and you're like, you don't know what to say, kind of thing. But that you just let that uncomfortable place be there, and it's almost, if I bring it back to the word, it's like a remote conversation with yourself

Mary · 1:24:07
through space,

Tim · 1:24:08
through space and time. Used to do it with journals, and how much discovery was made through journals and research,

Mary · 1:24:14
just like the archive that you existed. People we remember are the ones who wrote their ideas,

Tim · 1:24:19
beg your old people, your grandparents, your mentors, beg them to record themselves talking about their story, about their, their, their, their life, because I think if we lose that, we will be adrift.

Speaker · 1:24:34
Yeah,

Tim · 1:24:35
there's no way we'll get back.

Mary · 1:24:36
Great use case for Otter. I have several. I've been even like, there's some friends of mine, I asked before we do it, but I'm like, do you mind if I record this and it's like a little podcast for myself?

Dylan · 1:24:46
Yeah, do you

Adrienne · 1:24:47
listen to it?

Mary · 1:24:48
We're talking about this a second ago. Not yet. I am. I've got this.

Tim · 1:24:53
Yeah,

Mary · 1:24:54
well, honestly, I'm telling you, I'm gonna like devise something with it, I think one of these days. But yeah, life stories are where it's at, that's that's how we get back to novel storytelling, yeah, and not just like the remix of the remix, yeah. Although we live in remix culture, and there's something, if you lean into it, there's something really cool,

Tim · 1:25:12
yeah. And I'm not, and I'm not, I don't ever want to say that you can't find ingenuity and creativity in the remix, yeah.

Adrienne · 1:25:19
Vintage shopping,

Speaker · 1:25:20
there you go.

Tim · 1:25:21
Yes,

Adrienne · 1:25:21
my favorite thing.

Tim · 1:25:23
Right, so I really enjoy this conversation.

Adrienne · 1:25:31
I feel like you just sit here all day.

Tim · 1:25:34
I know

Mary · 1:25:34
that's how you feel,

Tim · 1:25:35
but they are definitely feeling like they're wasting their time now. Go back

Mary · 1:25:38
to your work. We only want to record like around an hour of content, and I book a two hour window, and we are almost to the end of my time.

Tim · 1:25:47
Oh, wait, did we really talk that long? That went

Adrienne · 1:25:49
by fast.

Tim · 1:25:50
Well, I appreciate everyone out there who's listening, and we do value your time, and we hope this was interesting, helpful to you in some way. But we'll see you next

Tim · 1:26:00
time.

Mary · 1:26:02
Holy. Age

Tim · 1:26:04
loves you.

Mary · 1:26:08
Thanks for listening. This podcast was created and developed by our hosts Reggie Tidwell, Tim Scroggs, Mary Green, and Dylan Garcia. Today's episode featured special guest Adrian Mukin, produced by me, Mary Green. Live production and editing by Will Canady. Graphic design by Dylan Garcia. Set design by Megan Scroggs.