Search Engines, AI & The People We're Asking Instead

Tim · 0:00
Okay, Mary, what is your favorite part of today's episode?

Mary · 0:04
Uh, I loved hearing about the Bob Kittens.

Reggie · 0:06
Yes, that was so cool.

Mary · 0:08
Was that yours?

Tim · 0:08
Reggie?

Reggie · 0:09
My favorite part was how Liz kind of closed the show for us in such a beautiful way. Yeah, that was good.

Tim · 0:15
William?

Will · 0:16
Uh, I love how it always comes back to AI recently because I have a lot of thoughts about it, but nobody wants to hear those, so I get to hear yours.

Liz · 0:22
Oh, I would say many pieces were my favorite, but also utilizing Google Maps.

Mary · 0:29
I'm very excited to utilize that.

Tim · 0:32
Yes.

Mary · 0:32
Oh, I got you.

Tim · 0:34
Hang on. My favorite part was how we stayed off topic almost the whole time. It really was like—

Mary · 0:40
What else is new? 19!

Reggie · 0:56
I felt that soul doing it.

Mary · 0:58
I'm sorry. Hi, I'm Mary Greene. I'm covered head to toe in Tiger Balm, and this is age. Just thought I'd mix it up on y'all today.

Tim · 1:08
That's good.

Mary · 1:10
It's like this whole shoulder, pretty much.

Reggie · 1:13
Are you really?

Mary · 1:13
Yeah. Well, not head to toe.

Reggie · 1:15
I don't smell it.

Tim · 1:17
Ooh, getting intimate over there.

Reggie · 1:20
Is it like the new—

Mary · 1:21
Liz can probably smell it more than you.

Reggie · 1:22
Is it like the new fancy scented Tiger Balm?

Mary · 1:26
Because I don't smell the like Oh, no, it's, it's herbal for sure.

Tim · 1:32
Herbal.

Mary · 1:33
Maybe I'm just polyestered in and it's like insulating.

Reggie · 1:36
Yeah, that's, that is the benefit of polyester. Nothing's escaping.

Mary · 1:42
I'm here for Will. Like, if I can make Will laugh, that's a golden moment in my life.

Reggie · 1:48
Will has the best laugh. I wish you guys could see it.

Liz · 1:50
One day.

Reggie · 1:52
One day. One day when a guest doesn't show up and Will has to come and sit in the seat.

Tim · 1:58
Oh, you can have guests.

Reggie · 1:59
Yeah, speaking of guests.

Mary · 2:01
Oh my gosh. Who is this beautiful person?

Reggie · 2:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a guest.

Mary · 2:05
Liz, thank you for joining us. Before we start, we've realized that if anybody's not watching on YouTube, they probably don't know who's speaking. So I want Tim.

Tim · 2:14
I'm Tim Scroggs.

Reggie · 2:15
Reggie Tidwell.

Liz · 2:16
Liz Williams.

Mary · 2:17
Liz Williams, thank you for being here. Oh, it's great to be here. Tell the people, like, who you are, what you got going on. Oh, sure.

Liz · 2:25
So my name is Liz Williams. I use the pronouns they/she. I am the director of Southern Equality Studios, which is the art program of Campaign for Southern Equality, an Asheville-based LGBTQ nonprofit that works with all the southern states.

Reggie · 2:42
Love that.

Tim · 2:43
Oh, I love it.

Reggie · 2:45
Awesome.

Mary · 2:45
She/her.

Tim · 2:48
He/him.

Reggie · 2:48
He/him.

Mary · 2:49
So boring. I had to wear my bolo so that we could Spice it up. Reggie, I want to address the elephant on your head.

Reggie · 2:57
The elephant on my head. Well, this is where I saw Liz on Sunday and was like, hey, please be on our show. The Big Crafty is an amazing collection of phenomenal local artists and crafts makers who are selling their wares. Justin Raybuck, a good friend of mine, he and his wife Brandy, I think, put it on. And they have for years such an amazing job, so much amazing art, so many good people. It's like a really great opportunity to like see your community and connect. Mary was there and ended up getting a bunch of good—

Mary · 3:37
If you're looking to lose some money but feel great about it, yeah, go to the Big Crafty.

Reggie · 3:42
That's the best way to describe that. Lose money, feel good about it.

Mary · 3:46
It's just like, I was talking to my mom. She and I are both super nerds about craft. And you're walking around, you're looking at these beautiful things, and you're discovering things that you had never even conceived of existing. Like, that came out of somebody's brain. It's so bespoke. It's so special.

Tim · 4:02
Mm-hmm.

Mary · 4:02
And the person who made it is right there. And you're thinking, it's not like they're a celebrity, although I do get kind of giddy, but it's more just like, oh, wow, you saw the beauty in this thing and I see the beauty in this thing.

Reggie · 4:15
Mm-hmm.

Mary · 4:15
And so even though we've never met before, I know we connect. Like there's something about us that we share. I could just like cry at every booth. It was so good.

Reggie · 4:24
I know.

Mary · 4:25
Were you in the Big Crafty or enjoying the Big Crafty as a—

Liz · 4:28
I was in the Big Crafty for both days.

Reggie · 4:32
The player is behind a booth.

Liz · 4:33
Yes. For the entire day with my program coordinator and friend Andy Morganlander, we were manning it. Luckily my wife, she came in for a little bit for relief. Very grateful. Thank you, Amanda. Also, like, I know exactly what you mean about if you want to lose money. I mean, I lost money, but I gained so much. In fact, I'm wearing some of the items that I got from Big Crafty. I believe that the artist's name is Darcy Ward, and she made this bracelet and this ring, and it's hard to see, but it's from the downed power lines post-Halloween.

Mary · 5:09
No way.

Liz · 5:10
And it's like absolutely gorgeous. And yeah.

Mary · 5:13
That is Ingenious.

Reggie · 5:15
I love that.

Tim · 5:16
Downed power lines.

Liz · 5:17
Wow. I'm just like, where did you come up with that?

Reggie · 5:19
That's like mind-blowing. Wow.

Mary · 5:20
The River Arts District was one of the worst-hit places through Helene. And I remember being just devastated because so much of our arts community was there. And I'm like, like artists needed another thing to make life hard. But just seeing like the ingenuity and the optimism and the love in the community was like really cool. And I'm glad you have a little A memento.

Reggie · 5:44
There were about 250 artists displaced post-Helen. And so to see them there selling, like making again and selling their, their art, their work, just was so— there was a lot of hope. It was so hopeful. Yeah.

Tim · 6:01
It's not the first one since Helen, right?

Mary · 6:04
No.

Reggie · 6:04
No, it's not the first one.

Tim · 6:06
You see them starting to—

Reggie · 6:06
Oh yeah, it's definitely getting bigger and bolder and stronger.

Tim · 6:10
I know it's odd when you have a storm of that magnitude and it mostly took out our creative sector. Yeah, it's like somehow the creative music venue, Marshall and River Arts District. And Asheville is known for its creativity and its weather. I mean, it's like this natural, beautiful place. And so the artists set up near the river, the river rose 20 feet, and It drove— it just washed everything out.

Reggie · 6:37
That was crazy.

Tim · 6:38
We're coming back from a major disaster.

Reggie · 6:41
But we're back. We're open for business.

Tim · 6:44
Oh yeah.

Mary · 6:44
Totally open.

Tim · 6:45
Definitely open.

Mary · 6:46
And like, who better to rebuild than the most creative people in our town?

Reggie · 6:50
Yeah.

Tim · 6:50
Yeah.

Mary · 6:51
It's hard. And at the time that it happened, I mean, I'm really emotional and dramatic. And so it happened and I was overwhelmed and I just thought, God, how are we ever gonna get back from this. We have, and people are doing some really cool things.

Reggie · 7:08
Yeah, that's a perfect example right there.

Liz · 7:10
Yeah.

Mary · 7:11
What sort of maker are you, Liz? What stuff do you like to create?

Liz · 7:14
Well, I dabble here and there. I'm usually doing digital work, be it through photography or like a little bit of illustration. I've been getting into experimental film here and there where I have footage of the wildlife that's in my front yard from like turkeys and squirrels and rabbits to bears and bobcats. And I've made a little montage with those animals on this video that I have of me as an overlaid image, like within the yard. And I'm just kind of like laying there with all these different bits of technology around me.

Mary · 7:52
That's awesome.

Liz · 7:53
Yeah, that was just something that came to the top of my mind when thinking about Halloween because it was kind of a response to how the wildlife is responding running to Helene and, like, also coming back because a lot of the footage came from after Helene, especially the bobcat. That was a very cool and interesting—

Reggie · 8:08
What a nice surprise.

Liz · 8:09
Discovery.

Tim · 8:10
Yeah.

Liz · 8:10
Especially North Asheville, like, just a mile from the Ingles and Fresh Market. That's where we're seeing bobcats. Exactly.

Mary · 8:17
I haven't seen a bobcat in a while.

Liz · 8:19
I haven't seen the bobcat in person, but, like, maybe 2 months later, there were bob kittens. Oh, no way.

Reggie · 8:26
That means there's 2 of them at least out there.

Liz · 8:28
They're coming back.

Mary · 8:30
But don't go out and pet them.

Tim · 8:30
That's so cute. I love the name.

Liz · 8:34
Indeed.

Tim · 8:35
Indeed.

Mary · 8:35
I feel the same way about the bears though. We see so many black bears in Asheville.

Reggie · 8:39
And I just saw 2 this morning.

Liz · 8:40
Really?

Reggie · 8:41
Yeah. Across the street going up my neighbor's yard.

Mary · 8:43
I love that like everybody has an agreement with the black bears. We're like, yeah, mama, keep going.

Reggie · 8:48
Oh yeah.

Mary · 8:49
They are so cute and seemingly docile. So somebody's gonna get mauled. It's gonna be fun.

Tim · 8:54
No, no, no.

Reggie · 8:55
Don't say that. Nobody's gonna get mauled.

Mary · 8:57
I love Oh yeah, bears get into our trash too.

Tim · 9:01
Oh yeah, in your house?

Reggie · 9:04
Yeah, it's a perfect case in point this morning. So we always—

Tim · 9:08
bears won't hesitate to come inside sometimes, I'm going to warn you.

Reggie · 9:10
They will come inside if they can get in. They will. We usually keep our trash in the garage until the morning of trash day instead of the night before. I've learned that lesson years and years ago, but so many people still do it. And this morning, sure enough, It's not even trash day. Trash day isn't until tomorrow. Somebody put their trash out and I'm riding up my road and their trash is all over the street.

Tim · 9:34
I'm like, I string my trash up in the trees until trash day.

Mary · 9:38
It's like Camp Bear.

Liz · 9:41
With the canister and everything.

Reggie · 9:42
You get one.

Tim · 9:42
You know. A giant city canister just hanging in the trees.

Reggie · 9:45
Just hanging up in the trees.

Liz · 9:46
They love it. They love it.

Mary · 9:47
I will say, and this is, we're going to draw the topic in a minute, I swear. But I will say—

Tim · 9:52
Oh, we do that still?

Liz · 9:53
He dares. That's the topic.

Mary · 9:55
I have seen enough I've seen people with their trash strewn down my street for that same reason. Yeah. And I'm, so now when I'm putting something in the garbage, I'm literally thinking, okay, if this gets drug out by a bear, am I gonna be embarrassed? Mm-hmm.

Tim · 10:09
Have your trash—

Reggie · 10:10
oh, I know. What are we doing here? I didn't even think about that. Like all your stuff is just laid out for everybody to see.

Tim · 10:15
You don't throw your underwear in the trash.

Reggie · 10:16
Especially if they're like pedestrians, they get more time to take it all in and they're like, whoa, this person's expensive electric bill.

Tim · 10:24
What are they doing in there? That's what they're subscribed to.

Reggie · 10:26
Yeah. Oh, yes.

Mary · 10:28
Yikes. Oh my God.

Liz · 10:29
They're keeping magazines alive, at least.

Tim · 10:31
Oh my God. Ooh.

Reggie · 10:33
Drum roll, please, Reggie.

Mary · 10:35
No crush. Okay. We have had some very magical— some very magical drawings.

Liz · 10:40
Okay.

Tim · 10:41
No drum roll, Reggie.

Reggie · 10:42
The drum roll got crushed.

Mary · 10:43
No, no, no. It's great. I'll cue you.

Tim · 10:46
Okay.

Mary · 10:46
We'll breathe together and then you'll go on 1.

Reggie · 10:49
Yes.

Mary · 10:49
Yes.

Reggie · 10:49
I'm so excited.

Mary · 10:50
There's a lot in here.

Liz · 10:52
Okay.

Mary · 10:52
There's some goofy stuff. Okay. Weird stuff. You're going to be okay no matter what.

Liz · 10:58
Yeah, I saw crying was a topic.

Mary · 11:00
Oh, yeah. Well, that one's gone. Okay.

Liz · 11:02
I was like, oh, the Aquarian is not into that.

Mary · 11:05
Weeping is still in there.

Tim · 11:06
Oh, wow.

Mary · 11:06
I'm going to ask you to pull one and then uncrumple it. Don't show us.

Liz · 11:10
Okay.

Mary · 11:10
And then walk up and show the camera where only you and Will know about it, and then come back and read it to us. Okay.

Tim · 11:21
There you go. Don't pick that one on the top. Go real deep down in there.

Mary · 11:24
Get in there, Liz. Eyes are closed.

Reggie · 11:26
All right, all right.

Tim · 11:26
My eyes are closed and everything.

Mary · 11:29
I want to see Liz's reaction to it before I see what the word is. Oh, yeah. Nice.

Tim · 11:38
Okay.

Mary · 11:39
What are your feelings?

Tim · 11:40
Here it goes. Show us, because you can't just make something up. You'd be crumpling it and be like, I'm going to make this word up. I'm just kidding.

Reggie · 11:47
I'm just kidding.

Mary · 11:49
You're taking it in. What are you?

Liz · 11:50
Oh, it's a love-hate relationship. Definitely. I think we all will relate.

Mary · 11:56
Yes. Oh, okay. I'm ready.

Liz · 11:57
I'm ready to— okay, here we go.

Mary · 11:59
Search engines.

Tim · 12:03
Oh, love-hate is a good way to say it.

Reggie · 12:07
Love-hate is definitely—

Mary · 12:09
This is such a topic right now. We didn't even know when we put that in the trash can.

Tim · 12:13
I don't think we could have foreseen the, like, search engine overhaul.

Reggie · 12:18
That's right now, right?

Mary · 12:19
We like weren't even thinking about what's it called? Not SEO, but the new one, GEO. That wasn't like even in my brain at the time.

Tim · 12:28
Generative Engine Optimization for AI.

Reggie · 12:31
Okay.

Mary · 12:31
Yeah.

Tim · 12:31
What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you say search engines?

Liz · 12:34
Now I think of AI overview.

Tim · 12:38
Okay.

Mary · 12:39
Yeah.

Tim · 12:40
Yeah, because that's kind of standard now with Google.

Liz · 12:42
Yeah. And I keep trying to get out of it and it keeps showing up.

Tim · 12:45
They won't let you opt out.

Liz · 12:46
They won't let me out.

Reggie · 12:47
You can't opt out. It's AI or bust now.

Liz · 12:49
And it enrages me. Everybody's like, yeah, give up AI. And I'm like, I can't. They literally are like, no, we know better for you.

Reggie · 12:57
You can use Firefox.

Liz · 12:58
That is true.

Reggie · 12:59
Yeah. I forgot about Firefox. I totally forgot about Firefox.

Tim · 13:02
Chrome. I mean, no, not Chrome. Safari.

Liz · 13:06
DuckDuckGo. Brave.

Reggie · 13:07
DuckDuckGo.

Tim · 13:08
I use Brave.

Reggie · 13:09
DuckDuckGo. Use Brave. Yeah. And Brave doesn't have that. Any of that. I guess the first thing that comes to mind for me is that all the Hurdles we used to jump through for clients to try to get them on the first page. Yeah, like all the meta keywords and titles and descriptions and like, oh my God, I, I actually hated it. Because everybody— But you thought that you wouldn't survive as a business unless you were on the first page. And that was like the thing that was like their goal.

Tim · 13:42
What do you think made Google So rich.

Reggie · 13:44
I know, right?

Tim · 13:45
That narrative.

Reggie · 13:46
It's the— actually, everybody trying to achieve being—

Tim · 13:49
they're all paying attention to that.

Reggie · 13:50
Wasn't even being on the first page. They're just all throwing their money at just trying to get as close to it as possible.

Mary · 13:55
Wild.

Reggie · 13:56
And does anybody even care anymore?

Mary · 13:58
About what's at the first page?

Reggie · 14:00
Yeah.

Mary · 14:00
Well, I ignore everything that's sponsored.

Tim · 14:02
Oh, totally. Absolutely.

Liz · 14:04
Don't they have it on the bottom as well? Yeah.

Tim · 14:06
Why doesn't anyone realize that we all ignore that?

Reggie · 14:09
And you know what's funny?

Mary · 14:10
Why even pay for it? Well, because they're like, it's subliminal. You don't have to think about it. It's just that you're seeing their name.

Reggie · 14:15
No, I scroll right past it. And as a matter of fact, even if the thing I'm searching for is one of the sponsored links, I'll still scroll down and do their—

Tim · 14:25
Yeah, because I don't want to be manipulated by a stupid intrusive link. Don't send me to your landing page.

Reggie · 14:31
I'm like, I'm not clicking on that.

Mary · 14:32
But I don't want your advertising.

Tim · 14:33
Yeah. What is that? What is that? mean about us? Is this a designer thing or is there like other people in the world that avoid sponsored?

Mary · 14:40
Everybody hates the sponsored thing.

Reggie · 14:42
Yeah, nobody likes the sponsored.

Mary · 14:43
I just realized as you were speaking, I was like, you know what? I mean, I'll use Google. I'm going to Claude more often than I'm going to Google these days.

Tim · 14:51
That's a growing trend.

Mary · 14:52
You know what I do more than just like Googling for websites? If I'm looking for something, I'll more often go to Google Maps and type it in.

Liz · 15:00
Really?

Mary · 15:01
Because I don't want like the e-commerce store. I want somewhere close to me that's new that's actually So what I was thinking when I said—

Tim · 15:08
when I heard search engines, because we were just talking about Helene and all the search and rescue that had to happen because of people getting lost in the water. And I was thinking about search engines from that perspective, but you were looking at Maps, which is kind of like a search of space.

Reggie · 15:24
Well, because then you can either— you can call them from Maps because it gives you all their information.

Mary · 15:28
Business hours.

Reggie · 15:29
Your business hours.

Tim · 15:30
Oh, so you want to get right to it.

Reggie · 15:31
Okay, it gives you business hours. and Street View and all that. So you can just map yourself right there if you decide that's where you want to go. And I think that's a really good practice.

Mary · 15:40
More people are investing in making their Google Maps. By the way, I started trying to make one for 40 Hearts and I got stalled, but we should do that ourselves.

Reggie · 15:48
Oh, yeah.

Mary · 15:49
But more people are investing in making Google Maps like more of a destination. People are investing in like, hey, go review us on Google Maps, which I really appreciate that I can get some like social credibility out of it.

Tim · 16:00
I'm in this trend.

Mary · 16:02
It's wild.

Liz · 16:03
And I did.

Mary · 16:03
I started doing it without thinking about it.

Tim · 16:05
it.

Mary · 16:05
I was just like, well, I want somewhere to go to. I mean, lunch is a bad example because I think a lot of people— like, you could type into Google where to eat in Asheville and you'll get a bunch of sponsored things and then maybe some things that show up and you'll get a Gemini overview. Or you can be like, what's the vibe I want to be in? I want to be in the River Arts District. It feels like a day that I want to be by the river. And then you go see what's down there.

Tim · 16:28
That's really— I think I like it because it's It's like a proximity search.

Reggie · 16:32
Yeah.

Mary · 16:32
Forces it local.

Reggie · 16:34
I like that. Yeah, I definitely do that when I'm traveling because it's like, it makes sense because you don't know the lay of the land.

Tim · 16:40
So that is a search engine, right? And I always think of Google being the search engine, but the Maps is a serious search engine.

Reggie · 16:47
Yeah, it's a really nicely put together one.

Mary · 16:49
I actually, when you pulled it out and you were like, what's the first thing? I was like, well, that is synonymous with Google to me. Search engine.

Reggie · 16:55
Google is search.

Mary · 16:56
Yeah, totally.

Tim · 16:57
Even though all the other ones had the same, like, thing, but it had a search engine.

Reggie · 17:00
Had a search engine, yeah.

Mary · 17:02
Were they just the first movers?

Reggie · 17:03
Bing, remember Bing?

Liz · 17:05
Bing, Yahoo.

Reggie · 17:06
Bing, Yahoo.

Mary · 17:07
AOL.

Reggie · 17:08
AOL. AOL, that's right.

Tim · 17:09
I remember being a little kid, like, Ask Jeeves. 12 years old.

Reggie · 17:12
That's right, Ask Jeeves.

Mary · 17:14
Yes.

Reggie · 17:14
I forgot about Ask Jeeves. Oh yeah.

Mary · 17:17
Damn. That was like the vision of AI for a while. Like, Ask Jeeves, the concept was, here's somebody delivering you the information.

Tim · 17:24
Yeah, Resident Evil.

Liz · 17:25
In-game chatbot.

Mary · 17:26
Oh my God. I was a little young for AIM. Like, not young, like too young to use it, but like my family hadn't gotten the technology until kind of late and like nobody around me was using it. And there's nothing wimpier than being on AIM by yourself. You don't have any friends and you're setting your little signature thing for nobody to see.

Reggie · 17:50
I mean, that was like the, that was the early version of like Apple Messages. Like Richard Norris and I used to have our little AIM boxes up on our computers, another fellow designer, agency owner, and we'd be typing to each other. I pranked him so many times in that little—

Tim · 18:09
Really?

Reggie · 18:10
I remember having my little AIM chat box open, and I was working at the time for— I still had my business, but I was also working part-time at a web design studio called 72 DPI. Great name, right?

Liz · 18:26
What you want to avoid now.

Reggie · 18:28
Yeah, right. And I was chatting with Richard and I was telling him that my boss was having like this crazy— the whole thing was made up. But I was like, my boss is having this crazy like meltdown. He's like, what? Tell me more. What's going on? And so throughout the day—

Mary · 18:48
Like realistic situations. To prank you? That's infuriating.

Reggie · 18:52
Throughout the day, I was giving him these little nuggets like, oh my God, he's locked himself in his office. Nobody's getting in. I think he went in a corner and like took a dump. He's like, wait, what's going on? He was like, what's happening? And I'm like, I think the police just arrived. And I just kept him giving these little nuggets throughout the day. And then finally, at the end of the day, I like let him off the hook and it just became this legendary prank. He still brings it up. It's so funny. But it was all in a little AIM window.

Mary · 19:20
I just need to go back for a minute. I think I said there's nothing sadder than being on AIM by yourself in your little signature.

Reggie · 19:28
Now you can change it.

Mary · 19:30
And I think that Tim said it was foreshadowing, like you're always going to be alone. And that was how you ended up as a human. What did you mean by that?

Tim · 19:38
I think generally foreshadowing, like in social media, if you're alone, it doesn't feel good. So.

Reggie · 19:43
Oh yeah.

Mary · 19:43
You're right.

Reggie · 19:44
But what's interesting—

Tim · 19:45
Not for you, but for everyone, it was the group. Groupthink.

Mary · 19:49
Oh, I see what you're saying.

Tim · 19:50
Technology, how technology would become the thing we revolve our lives around now.

Reggie · 19:54
You just learned the one thing sadder than being in AIM by yourself is being in AIM with Reggie because he's going to prank you.

Mary · 20:01
Oh, I just left water all over your thing.

Tim · 20:04
Sorry.

Reggie · 20:04
It's okay. I like hydration. It's going to absorb right into my body.

Mary · 20:08
I think that you are— that was when, like, I've known that you're a prankster from Day one, I walked into the studio and there's a huge fake spider on the wall and it jump scared me the first hour that I met Reggie. So like, I knew this was part of who you were, but I've seen some like such cleverly, masterfully executed pranks that are so like embedded into the daily life of people that you're like, there's no way. And now I'm nervous. Every time Reggie starts a story, I'm like—

Tim · 20:38
I know.

Mary · 20:38
I'm trying to suss it out.

Reggie · 20:40
Am I the butt of this joke? Boy, they tried, Wolf.

Mary · 20:42
Where am I gonna— Have you ever been pranked by Reggie?

Liz · 20:45
I feel as though asking me where I am at 8:30 in the morning, I'm like, I'm asleep. And you're like, you should come to the podcast.

Reggie · 20:52
You're like, surely that's a prank.

Mary · 20:55
For real? For real?

Liz · 20:57
And then also when you sent me the email that was like, see you tomorrow. And I got the email on Sunday and I was like, wait, I thought it was Tuesday.

Mary · 21:05
I can't, I have all these meetings.

Liz · 21:07
He's like, it was a template.

Tim · 21:08
Sorry.

Reggie · 21:08
She had a minor meltdown. Wait, tomorrow? I got a staff meeting at 9.

Mary · 21:16
That's unfair.

Reggie · 21:18
So she was inadvertently pranked by her cat.

Liz · 21:20
Yeah, it just runs in your block.

Mary · 21:21
What drives you crazy about search engines?

Reggie · 21:28
Oh my gosh.

Liz · 21:29
The Gemini, the algorithm getting the same results all the time. So now I'm actually going to Reddit for help as well.

Reggie · 21:36
Oh, that's a great idea. Reddit's awesome.

Tim · 21:41
Some foreshadowing on that is that that's where AI goes to.

Liz · 21:44
No.

Mary · 21:45
Yeah.

Tim · 21:45
Oh yeah. It stops.

Reggie · 21:46
It does.

Mary · 21:47
Because there's real people.

Reggie · 21:48
Yeah. There's real people, real answers, real commentary.

Tim · 21:51
They go toward answer-based websites and not websites like branded websites.

Liz · 21:56
Yeah.

Reggie · 21:56
Yeah. Marketing people that are actually like curating what they want you to know. They're going to real people.

Tim · 22:03
Yeah. And searching all the posts that people are actually making instead of trying to overbrand.

Reggie · 22:09
No, that's a good call.

Mary · 22:10
I think it was smart because it's, I mean, like, they're so hard to know with anything. I feel like such an old lady saying this. With anything online, it could all be a mirage. It could all be fake. It could all be fake.

Liz · 22:24
We're all in the Matrix.

Mary · 22:26
But yeah, you go to Reddit and by the way, Reddit could all be bots. You don't know.

Reggie · 22:32
Yeah.

Mary · 22:32
Somebody could be farming it out.

Reggie · 22:32
It's true, man. The bots.

Mary · 22:33
But some of the stuff people are, especially the funny stuff, Oh yeah. Maybe that's like, I think humor is becoming to me a tell of like, is there a real human here? Because I don't imagine that a computer could have made it.

Tim · 22:44
The thing about AI being on Reddit, I actually saw— they're going to have some, they're going to have to create some kind of authentication, which they're working on now so that you can prove someone's a person.

Mary · 22:54
Yeah.

Reggie · 22:55
Like, I actually saw a pretty alarming stat the other day and it was something like 40%, 35 or 40% of, of comments and social media traffic is all AI and bots.

Tim · 23:09
Mm-hmm.

Reggie · 23:10
That's a—

Tim · 23:10
no, it's over 50% now.

Reggie · 23:11
Is it over 50%? That is crazy.

Tim · 23:14
That's why that— that's the video that Mary sent because they're—

Reggie · 23:18
Oh, maybe that's where I saw that. Yeah. And it's just—

Tim · 23:21
It's almost 60%.

Reggie · 23:23
That is crazy.

Mary · 23:24
The, like, bot traffic thing.

Reggie · 23:25
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mary · 23:26
Like the warehouse with all the phones.

Reggie · 23:27
It was the thing you sent me.

Liz · 23:29
Oh yeah, there's like different warehouses that have phones that are creating these ridiculous chatbot replies and content. It's really creepy.

Reggie · 23:38
Yeah.

Tim · 23:39
It's on its way to destroying the internet.

Reggie · 23:41
Oh yeah, exactly, because there's no relevance to it anymore.

Tim · 23:45
Yeah, they call it the dead internet theory where there's no more humans on it.

Reggie · 23:48
Yeah.

Mary · 23:49
Well, and it's like—

Reggie · 23:50
We all abandoned it.

Tim · 23:51
People have already been— people have thought and theorized it's already a dead internet. Yeah, it's just a minor—

Mary · 23:56
Yeah, we're just figuring it out slowly.

Tim · 23:58
Yeah, but, but it's going to be accelerated by this.

Reggie · 24:01
But I think to your point, I think people will be going less to more open platforms and going to people's websites where they actually can learn more authentic— yeah, it's more authentic information. You're in a safe space, you can interact, engage, and it's not this big open platform where you don't even know if the people are real or not.

Mary · 24:23
I want our faces on our homepage, not because we're gorgeous, although I think everyone would agree we're gorgeous. But I think, I feel like going to the website, it's so easy for anybody to stand up a website now, and it could just be another phone and somebody's using Lovable and faking it out. And I'm just like, I think people want to see real people.

Reggie · 24:46
But what if we look like, maybe what if we look too good? What if they think we're AI?

Tim · 24:51
You have pores. You still have pores.

Reggie · 24:54
You look at our photos and it's like, hmm, are these AI people or are they real?

Mary · 24:58
No, I'm looking at Liz's.

Liz · 24:59
You looked at your own photo and you're like, hmm.

Reggie · 25:01
Yeah, I don't know if that guy exists. Is that really me? That guy can exist.

Mary · 25:07
That's our goal. Pretty, but not too pretty. And honestly, we're achieving it.

Tim · 25:14
People start praying for breakout. That proves human.

Reggie · 25:17
Oh yeah.

Mary · 25:18
Give it time.

Reggie · 25:19
I need some pimples in it. I can put pimples on in post.

Mary · 25:23
I'm— you do not need to. Oh my God, baby. I've been experiencing like a second puberty and it's been worse than the original puberty. No way. I've come out the other side. Japan helped me reset hydration, all the things. But like, yeah, beginning of this year between Christmas and I don't know, right before I went to Japan, I was just like, what is happening to myself? It's never—

Reggie · 25:48
oh, that's crazy.

Liz · 25:49
You think you were stressed about going?

Mary · 25:51
Well, probably. When am I not stressed? I think I drank over the holidays. And so that was like what kicked it off. And then I just didn't ever really fully come back around.

Reggie · 26:03
But I was on my way back from Africa, speaking of international travel. Oh, gosh. 2013. But what's funny is the long-ass travel on the way back and sandwiched on the flight like this. My, my My scent changed from having my arms crammed like this though. I smelled different to myself.

Tim · 26:26
Just that time or now?

Reggie · 26:27
Like, for like months after, I'd be like, that's not even me. Like, I'm like, how did that even happen?

Mary · 26:35
That would never happen to me.

Reggie · 26:36
16 hours being like that, your body is like, I gotta do something different here.

Mary · 26:41
You're saying you just peed differently when you were in Africa?

Reggie · 26:46
I don't know. It was weird.

Mary · 26:47
It's not real, Reggie. I'm going to say it so somebody has to come for you in the comments.

Reggie · 26:52
I am not joking.

Mary · 26:52
You scrunched and it made you smell different?

Reggie · 26:54
It totally did.

Tim · 26:55
I'd do it. I'd do a test. Do another test and like just hold your arms that way all day at work.

Reggie · 27:00
Yeah, I'm going to do it.

Tim · 27:01
And maybe in Paris. Paris.

Reggie · 27:03
It's got to be like 16 hours. It smells different.

Tim · 27:05
Yeah. 16 hours.

Reggie · 27:07
Do I smell— do my pheromones smell different? Did I pick up some international pheromones? On the flight, maybe. I don't know.

Liz · 27:14
You can also use like fragrance sample sticks and just stick it under.

Tim · 27:18
Yeah. Like a cinnamon stick.

Reggie · 27:19
There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, what do you think?

Liz · 27:22
And then at the end of the day, compare and contrast.

Reggie · 27:25
Somebody would be like, that's wild boar, right?

Mary · 27:27
Yeah, I love this.

Liz · 27:28
Take it to the microscope, see what's happening underneath. But speaking about travel, I'm curious when thinking about search engines and travel, How did you find your trip? Like, you're probably looking for good deals. How did you find your trip? You're probably looking for good deals. So good.

Mary · 27:44
Thank you for hosting this show.

Liz · 27:46
Yeah.

Mary · 27:47
Because I want to go to Japan as well.

Liz · 27:49
So I'm like giving you tips.

Reggie · 27:50
You went to Japan? Oh.

Liz · 27:51
No, I want to go.

Reggie · 27:52
Oh, okay.

Tim · 27:52
But I don't know how to find the best deals. Reggie, did you even have a search engine when you went on your trip? I was trying to think about when did search engines start? When did like, because that's—

Reggie · 28:02
Definitely before 2000.

Tim · 28:04
2010 or '09 is when the iPhone came out.

Reggie · 28:07
Right. No.

Tim · 28:08
You trace that back 5, probably 5 more years.

Mary · 28:10
I have known about Google as long as I have known about the internet.

Tim · 28:13
Right.

Reggie · 28:13
But yeah.

Tim · 28:14
Okay. So maybe the search engine was less in—

Reggie · 28:16
Yeah. Yeah. They were around.

Mary · 28:17
It was in the beginning. And I think the features and the functionality have changed dramatically.

Tim · 28:22
What date are we talking about? Like 2000?

Mary · 28:25
Okay. Mary was asking for a laptop for Christmas when she was 5 years old. Never happened. I've got a whole traumatic story about that. But I think we go We had—

Tim · 28:37
we need to unpack that, Mary.

Reggie · 28:38
We need to unpack that. We've got time.

Mary · 28:40
We had dial-up, or my grandpa had dial-up, and I was like 6 years old.

Tim · 28:44
So '93 plus 6 is '98, '97, '96, '99. '93 plus 6, you guys.

Reggie · 28:52
Wow.

Tim · 28:52
I graduated from high school the day it started.

Reggie · 28:55
No, Tim. Yeah.

Mary · 28:57
Tim and I feel the same.

Reggie · 28:59
We are not a math agency, just letting you know.

Mary · 29:02
I use Google when I'm trying to add something up. I plug it in.

Tim · 29:04
I take no shame. Math is not something you need to know.

Mary · 29:06
Hot takes. Arithmetic is something you don't need to know. Well, and like, I don't know, have you ever used Chat or Claude to like do complex math before?

Liz · 29:18
You haven't been trying to maybe figure out like a budget?

Tim · 29:20
Yeah.

Mary · 29:21
I did it one time when I was hanging up that freaking curtain in my office and you wouldn't know how complicated. Don't, everybody don't look. It doesn't look good. I was trying to pleat it and I was like, okay, here's how wide the thing is. Here's how many Crampits, crampons. What are they called?

Liz · 29:38
Clamps? Clamps.

Mary · 29:40
Oh, is that—

Liz · 29:41
you mean—

Mary · 29:42
So you know, they're familiar. Oh, they're clamps.

Liz · 29:45
Completely. Oh, I see the clamps now. Yeah, yeah.

Mary · 29:48
Crampits. Crampus?

Reggie · 29:50
Crampits.

Mary · 29:51
What are crampits? They were like doing derivatives.

Reggie · 29:54
It was like a whole—

Mary · 29:55
and I was like, oh, this is a whole application that I never accessed. But it's okay, old man. Yes, when you were graduating high school, it definitely existed.

Tim · 30:04
'99.

Liz · 30:05
'99.

Reggie · 30:06
Yeah, '99.

Mary · 30:07
Wild times.

Tim · 30:08
Like, I just— like, you're asking this question, it's interesting to think about how much search engines become important when you're trying to travel.

Reggie · 30:14
When I went to Africa, I was going to support 2 NGOs, so I didn't have to do any searching, and trips were already planned.

Mary · 30:22
Prepared for you. Okay. We, um, a lot of Google Maps. I, uh, we'll talk. Okay. Got some resources for you.

Liz · 30:33
Okay. Thank you.

Reggie · 30:34
That's awesome.

Mary · 30:35
I was planning a trip not only for myself and my partner, but his family. How many people are in the family? It was the same. There were 7 of us total traveling and like a wide range of ages and like travel experience. and we knew which cities we wanted to hit because Alex had been there before.

Liz · 30:55
Mm-hmm.

Mary · 30:55
But, and he ended up booking lodging 'cause I was like, Alex, I don't know what your family is comfortable with. Can we do an Airbnb? What is gonna be a normal Airbnb in Japan? Like, there's a lot of cultural difference. Um, and he ended up helping book like bullet train tickets if we were gonna go point A to point B. But all the in-between stuff, I used Claude a lot. We would, like, find one tourist attraction, usually like a shrine or something that we all wanted to see or a museum. Shout out Kyoto Railway Museum, much cooler than it sounds. And then I would use Claude, which it was really sad because when I was there, it's when I forget the gentleman's name who passed away. He and his family had come to Japan and his mom was using AI to plan the trip.

Reggie · 31:41
Oh, nice.

Mary · 31:42
He got really mad at his mom because he was like, it's not Do you know how unsustainable that is and what a terrible thing that's doing to the planet? And he was a big nature guy and loved to go hike. So he got angry and went and hiked out in the woods in Japan in places that I assume he'd never been before.

Reggie · 31:58
And died.

Mary · 31:59
Mudslide because there was a typhoon.

Tim · 32:00
Oh.

Mary · 32:01
He died. Yeah. And so we were there and the search was on.

Reggie · 32:04
Oh, that's horrible.

Mary · 32:05
And so it was just a bizarre thing.

Reggie · 32:08
And there— Wait, the search was— they were searching for him while you were there? Oh my God.

Mary · 32:12
It was— I was on TikTok and it was like half of what I was—

Tim · 32:15
There was a typhoon while you were there?

Reggie · 32:16
But they did find him.

Mary · 32:17
It was a very eventful trip. I'll tell you that.

Reggie · 32:19
They found him eventually?

Mary · 32:20
Uh, they found his body. Yeah.

Reggie · 32:23
I think—

Mary · 32:23
God, I hope I didn't get that wrong. But yes, it was very sad. And all of it was about this argument, to hear them tell the story, this argument about AI. But it was so useful. I would be in a part of town and like, I don't know where the neighborhoods are in Osaka.

Reggie · 32:39
Yeah.

Mary · 32:40
And I'd be like, I wanna hear some live music tonight. These are the genres that I like. Uh, could you recommend me some places? And at first it would gimme a bunch of places and I would look at them and I'd be like, these feel touristy or too commercial or whatever.

Reggie · 32:52
Mm-hmm.

Mary · 32:52
Are there like weird underground places? And we went to some very cool restaurants, venues, things that I never would've found just searching on Google Maps or whatever.

Liz · 33:02
Yeah.

Mary · 33:03
Because Claude was able to do the deep dive and like analyze. the information that was there.

Tim · 33:07
That's like search engine on steroids.

Mary · 33:10
Yeah, on steroids. It was, it was really, really helpful. And AI also helped me make like an HTML interactive HTML itinerary. So like I had basically an app. It was a web page that I pushed from Netlify. John David taught us about this. Shout out John David Clark, Airframe Digital.

Reggie · 33:33
Netlify? Netlify.

Mary · 33:35
He's gonna laugh if he ever hears this. We'll find it later. We'll get a logo. We'll shout them out.

Liz · 33:42
But like it was able to push—

Mary · 33:44
basically it set up an interactive webpage based on some code that I gave it, some HTML.

Liz · 33:49
Yeah.

Mary · 33:49
And you could save it as a bookmark on your home screen on your phone. It basically acted like an app. And it had like, where's your embassy? What is the phone number for your hotel? What apps do you need to download? That's the main thing.

Reggie · 34:05
That's awesome.

Tim · 34:06
All the apps are definitely there.

Mary · 34:08
But yeah, it was integral to what we were doing in Japan. And I never could have— we had a fantastic trip, but all AI enabled and no, I mean, pretty much no search engine. I was like, inspiration from TikTok, reference from when Alex had gone just for like which cities. I don't know how I feel about that.

Tim · 34:33
I just heard something recently that said the AI, what do you call them? These places where they do all this serving and the, what do they call the data centers? Oh, they cause so much electromagnetic or some kind of field around them that it's confusing bees.

Mary · 34:52
They were talking about this with 5G.

Tim · 34:54
And they're not, they don't know how to navigate. They're having trouble navigating because it's messing up the patterns.

Reggie · 35:00
It's just one more layer of like— Awful.

Mary · 35:02
I've always heard the bees already.

Reggie · 35:04
I know, right?

Tim · 35:05
I've always heard the water thing, you know, like the water things are soaking up so much water.

Mary · 35:09
Noise.

Tim · 35:11
Now, like, it's so, it's so strong. The strength that what's needed to run the AI is so strong that it's distributing the power out into the world where we can't feel it. Remember, we were meeting with one of our clients who said they use biosensors, and bees are a really good biosensor.

Reggie · 35:28
Oh, that's right.

Tim · 35:29
Because they can sense nature's paths, weather changes, storms. And so you can, if you watch the way bees move and navigate, you can sense if something's wrong. It's a biosensor. And I'd never thought about this before. So bees, intelligence of bees is just in their nature. And now the data centers, they're having trouble navigating and getting back to where they need to be or reproducing because of these data centers.

Mary · 35:53
Don't you think we knew that they were biosensors intuitively? I like to think our ancestors were watching the bees. Anyway.

Tim · 36:00
And this reminds me of something. When you were saying, I use AI to do this, and it is very helpful. We've all used AI and it's stupidly helpful. It really works. But when you do something that you don't see the direct consequence of, when you're just separated from it by any amount of space, you don't comprehend what the action is. And so this— I used to have this feeling on social media where I would be on social media and someone would say someone has died, or something is happening in another country. And it was like I did not know what to do with it because I was detached from the situation. Like, I knew about it in my head, but I had no way. I had no direct connection with it to do something with my body or with my emotions about it. You know, you could, like, comment or whatever.

Mary · 36:44
Desensitized.

Reggie · 36:45
Yeah.

Tim · 36:46
But there were—

Reggie · 36:46
yeah.

Tim · 36:46
So there was, like, in before the internet, in my younger years, things were happening in your life, or maybe someone would send you a letter, but you never got global news 24/7 about what all's happening. And so I think there's this interesting thing about this disconnect between what we're doing using AI and what it's doing, the impact it's having. So that human needs that connection to actually make sense about what the experience really is.

Mary · 37:13
We need to see cause and effect. We don't really have a sense of it.

Tim · 37:17
And so they're both like 2 different versions of the same thing. If a human doesn't have space to be a part of a situation, to know about a situation, and to act in a situation is a different response because you get to put yourself into it. But when you're just watching, there's a desensitization.

Mary · 37:36
Empathy is— it has to function differently.

Tim · 37:38
It's voyeuristic. And you almost have to numb yourself so that you don't feel so much emotion because you're just seeing a lot. And using AI, people always talk about it's doing this, it's doing that, and we're all yada, yada, yada. I got to use it. This is what we're being forced to do. And I, and I agree with that. It is what we're being forced to do. But I wonder if you were to connect those in some way, if there was— create an app where when you did it, you literally saw the reaction.

Reggie · 38:05
Oh yeah.

Mary · 38:07
Like they're making you watch a livestream of a data center.

Reggie · 38:10
Yeah.

Mary · 38:11
And every time you make—

Tim · 38:12
and you start seeing everyone's AI conversations happening and how it's impacting the servers and the space around the servers. In the data centers.

Reggie · 38:22
Or like every time you made a request to Claude or ChatGPT, it said, here's your response. You just killed 2.5 trees and this many people.

Tim · 38:32
It's still detached because you're not at the tree seeing it actually happening. You're thinking someone's manipulating with you with some kind of movement branding or some kind of campaign where they're like, every search is a bottle of water getting thrown out the window. Research is this. You know, like we've been trying to feed kids who don't have food. We're like, every time you spend money at Starbucks, a kid goes hungry. So you get all these things and we're desensitized from that. We don't even— that doesn't even work for us anymore.

Reggie · 38:58
It doesn't.

Mary · 38:59
Don't you think, and I don't know in the craft space or any, I mean, anything you're trying to get done online, you said the thing, Tim, about emotion and it not like translating fully through the screen. I feel that there are even places where I want to be getting emotion out of the internet. And it takes a lot for me to get the feeling. Like if I'm looking at art online or like if I'm buying something, trying to buy, like I bought this on Etsy, which we now know is corporate shills. But, you know, you're trying to get a sense of like, what's the materiality of that thing like? Or like, is this really handmade? And you just know if you're in person, you could just tell if somebody—

Tim · 39:38
It's got spirit.

Mary · 39:38
Yeah. It's got spirit. But online you're sort of like, They say they made it themselves, and then it gets to you.

Tim · 39:44
You can't touch it, you can't feel it.

Liz · 39:46
Then you use Google Lens and you see that actually that Etsy listing is on Amazon as well, right? There are multiple listings.

Reggie · 39:53
Yeah, I use Google Lens a lot because I think it's good to find things that you don't even know what they are, first and foremost. Like, if you have a part that's like broken on something, you can take that little part and like take a picture of it, and it'll be like, oh, this is what it is, and this is where you can buy it right now.

Mary · 40:11
Is that how you use Google Lens?

Liz · 40:13
Here and there, yeah.

Tim · 40:16
Yeah, there's this app for plants and bugs.

Liz · 40:19
Yeah, I use it for plants.

Reggie · 40:20
You use it for those things. But yeah, I use it for like identifying because I'm always fixing stuff around the house. And so I, I'm using it to like find where I can get the thing that broke.

Tim · 40:29
But this is a search engine thing. You found it on Etsy because you culturally connect to Etsy's brand and what they do. Speaking of which, that Center for Craft Really?

Mary · 40:41
Oh, nice.

Tim · 40:41
Which is good because Center for Craft in Nashville has been an Etsy national—

Mary · 40:45
Oh, what a great turnaround for Etsy.

Reggie · 40:45
Wait, Etsy is their partner?

Tim · 40:47
Yeah.

Reggie · 40:47
I love that because Etsy is such a great craft—

Tim · 40:50
But what she was just saying—

Mary · 40:51
They're turning it back around, I think.

Tim · 40:52
I think they're trying to, but what I— yeah, so the search engine thing with it being on Amazon and Etsy and other stores is they're actually optimizing their search to get found, but it's ruining the point of what you're trying to find.

Reggie · 41:06
Oh yeah.

Tim · 41:06
You know, like you're trying to find this thing handmade on Etsy because Etsy was a brand about makers selling their things. But now you have search kind of ruining that.

Liz · 41:15
Exactly.

Tim · 41:16
Or that maybe it's the incentives of search engine optimization is ruining that because they're putting their things in different places to get that.

Reggie · 41:22
That's where I got my big creepy spider. Etsy.

Mary · 41:25
And that doesn't surprise me at all. I— there's like, I'm sure you're on Etsy every day, Reggie.

Tim · 41:33
Like, maybe that's where I got my creepy spider.

Mary · 41:35
Sweet. Poopy cushion.

Tim · 41:37
Art machine.

Mary · 41:39
Yeah.

Reggie · 41:40
Vintage.

Mary · 41:41
It is sort of a bummer to me though. I don't think about it this much because I've just acclimated to the way the world is. I'm desensitized, like you say. But like the idea of being able to discover things, that's something I feel like if you actually absorb Reddit, if you live on Reddit the way that like Alex does and you follow things, being surprised by what's there. I think TikTok also is giving people that, and maybe Instagram to some degree, but it's waning.

Reggie · 42:05
It's like a lost art for the most part.

Mary · 42:07
Versus like the big Crafty where you're walking around, it's like a dessert bar for your eyes.

Reggie · 42:12
Yeah, that's a really good description of it.

Tim · 42:15
Crafty's a search engine.

Liz · 42:17
Absolutely.

Tim · 42:18
It's your visual creative. Yeah.

Reggie · 42:22
The real-time search engine.

Tim · 42:24
So when— what was the guy who created the tour book that is the most famous tour book if you want to go travel? Steve's Rick Steves.

Mary · 42:32
So famous.

Tim · 42:33
Really? Y'all never heard of Rick Steves? He creates these huge books.

Reggie · 42:36
I don't know Rick Steves.

Liz · 42:37
Oh my gosh.

Tim · 42:37
He's the, he's the, the encyclopedia of travel.

Liz · 42:42
I know about Lonely Planet, but—

Mary · 42:45
Was it called Ask Steves?

Tim · 42:46
No, Rick Steves has books about almost every country and he does, I think he does videos and stuff. It's amazing. Like Megan got a lot of them for the countries we were going to.

Liz · 42:55
Where is Rick Steves from?

Tim · 42:56
I have no idea, but he travels constantly, so maybe everywhere.

Mary · 42:59
He's—

Reggie · 43:00
okay. Oh, really?

Tim · 43:04
He's not on it much. He's out traveling.

Reggie · 43:06
Yeah, he's out traveling.

Mary · 43:07
That was a great question though. Where is he from? It's like he's a man of the world.

Liz · 43:10
Where isn't he from?

Tim · 43:12
Everywhere in the world.

Reggie · 43:13
Where isn't he from?

Tim · 43:14
But you think about the way— so we had one of his books. And so the way you used to travel is you look through the book and you read all the things he'd been to.

Mary · 43:21
Oh, you look through the book and you read?

Tim · 43:23
Yeah.

Liz · 43:23
I mean, search engine.

Tim · 43:26
The original search engine. Right.

Reggie · 43:28
The original brain. Read Steve's.

Tim · 43:29
Not the Claude AI brain. Yeah. So it's whatever. It's just a, it's a different way of looking at the way you travel.

Liz · 43:36
Where did you go with it?

Tim · 43:37
We went everywhere. I don't want to get— I'll get lost in that whole story.

Reggie · 43:40
He definitely did go everywhere.

Tim · 43:42
Yeah.

Mary · 43:42
He took his whole family to Japan.

Reggie · 43:44
Yeah. 8 months.

Mary · 43:45
For a duration of time.

Reggie · 43:46
8 months around the globe.

Tim · 43:50
My wife has all the tips, so I'll hook you guys up.

Mary · 43:52
Are there specific things like, If you're planning a trip to say Japan, what kind of traveler are you? Like a museum person or like an outdoorsy person?

Liz · 44:00
Mostly museum, but I am curious about the wildlife in Japan.

Mary · 44:03
Yeah. Yeah.

Reggie · 44:05
Uh, Nara. Pandas.

Mary · 44:06
Y'all go to Nara? Where the deer bow to you? Have you seen that?

Liz · 44:10
Yes. They get aggressive. I mean, not aggressive, but assertive.

Mary · 44:13
It kind of scary.

Tim · 44:14
Yeah. The bow's the beginning of like a karate move.

Liz · 44:16
They're like, I bow.

Mary · 44:18
Where's my snack?

Reggie · 44:18
Isn't it like the bow right before the fight? Like, what is the bow?

Liz · 44:21
They're bowing and they're like, if I bow, then these stupid humans will give me Some treats.

Tim · 44:25
Oh, probably like a tourist thing.

Mary · 44:27
So like, uh, we were calling them cookies. There's like little wafers.

Reggie · 44:31
You did it.

Mary · 44:32
If they smell that you have, or they see that you have wafers, you've probably seen this online.

Liz · 44:36
Yes.

Mary · 44:37
It's worth going.

Liz · 44:38
Yes.

Mary · 44:38
They'll like nip you in the butt.

Liz · 44:39
But if you put it in your back pocket especially.

Reggie · 44:42
Yeah. Oh, wow.

Mary · 44:43
You think?

Tim · 44:44
If you like that kind of thing.

Liz · 44:44
I would go.

Reggie · 44:45
I don't know that I do like that kind of thing. I don't.

Mary · 44:49
But they're also Sorry, this is just a tangent on beautiful wildlife, but they have antlers that have like these itty-bitty little hairs on them that are silver. And so if they catch the light, if you see them at the right moment, they do look angelic, like celestial glowing.

Reggie · 45:05
Now, see, I would love to photograph them. I don't want them nipping me in the butt, but I would love to get photos of them in like golden hour. Don't carry all your snacks. That sounds amazing.

Tim · 45:14
Don't carry all your snacks.

Mary · 45:15
Very elegant.

Reggie · 45:16
Just don't carry— yeah, have a Sherpa carry all my snacks so they're getting nipped on and I'm photographing it.

Mary · 45:22
I feel like we've been sort of complaining about search engines a lot. They did open up something for us though. They took like the world of the internet that has now become so dense and they're giving you— they're like highways, I guess.

Reggie · 45:36
Yeah.

Mary · 45:37
I'm glad that they exist.

Reggie · 45:39
Yeah.

Tim · 45:39
Yeah. My thing that drives me crazy, I was— I never got to say it.

Mary · 45:42
Please tell me.

Tim · 45:43
But it was that I, that I hate that I like search engines or that I've used them so much.

Reggie · 45:48
I mean, absolutely.

Mary · 45:49
Well, they've been around since you were in high school.

Tim · 45:51
I mean, massive part of my adulthood.

Reggie · 45:53
I mean, Siri is a search engine now, and I use Siri all the time in the car. Yeah, I'm like, I don't like Siri.

Mary · 46:00
I hate her. She's so bad.

Reggie · 46:02
She is really bad. But there are times where I'm like driving, and I'm like, hey Siri, what's— where is such and such? Or—

Mary · 46:10
All of our phones go off.

Reggie · 46:12
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or I'm in the car and the kids ask me some kind of cool, like, question. They're so inquisitive. They're like, you know, how long does a, you know, how long does a, you know, Reese's monkey live or whatever? I can ask Siri that and she'll, like, give me an answer. So that's—

Tim · 46:33
You want me to use ChatGPT to help you answer that?

Reggie · 46:35
Yeah, she does say, do you want me to use ChatGPT? That's true.

Liz · 46:40
Better than Grok.

Reggie · 46:40
I do get that occasionally.

Mary · 46:43
But isn't that interesting that you're— you are modeling behavior that I'm sure your kids are picking up on. And it's the thing that Tim has said for many days, months, many a moon, years, many moons, but that voice search is the new thing. Like when you interact with your tech, it's all going to be by voice.

Reggie · 47:00
I mean, they probably saw me do it a long time ago. And then they actually took that trend and ran with it. So I'm kind of relearning from them because they're always asking Siri stuff. I had to disable it on their tablets at one point. 'Cause they were just asking inappropriate things. And I was like, guys, we gotta like— and once they got through that phase, it's back on. But yeah, it's a search engine. I do think search engines have been a— I think there's definitely, just like anything, there's like P's and Q's, you know? And I think it's like pros and cons, but I don't know what the Q's—

Tim · 47:41
P's and C's, right? Pros and cons. P's and C's, but have you not heard P's and Q's?

Mary · 47:46
I've heard mind your P's and Q's. What does that mean?

Reggie · 47:50
Yeah, what is it?

Tim · 47:52
But you better mind them.

Reggie · 47:53
Maybe I'm using that wrong, but it's essentially pros and cons. Like, it's the— there's been— obviously we talked about a lot of the negative aspects of search engine, search engines, period. But the positive things are that there have been businesses that have been able to be found that nobody knew about, that they were able to Yes, you will. They were able to like get a business. And there was a period of time where so many companies, businesses were thriving, entrepreneurs were having businesses thrive because they were able to game the system to get recognition on search engines.

Tim · 48:29
So could anyone game the Yellow Pages? That was the original search engine.

Reggie · 48:34
Yeah, the game. That was the— God, I loved the manual search engine.

Tim · 48:38
Yeah, the manual search engine. You had to flip through You had to go through the pages and you had to buy an ad of different sizes depending on how much money you had, and you found stuff that way.

Reggie · 48:47
Oh, I saw that.

Tim · 48:47
Did you game that system without just paying a lot of money? Because there's like—

Reggie · 48:51
No, you had to pay to play.

Tim · 48:52
This is what bothers me. The gaming of the system is so intense right now. There are so many games in our system happening, and there's a lot of games tilted toward wealthy people, like the ability to buy, which is the same in the Yellow Pages. You buy a bigger ad. You can use it. But people did game the search system, and I think it ruined search engines. Was it like voice? I think baking their websites with keywords that weren't relevant, it was like a distraction from what you really wanted to find because they just wanted the money, the attention. And so it's kind of ruined the innate, the natural quality of what a search engine is meant to do.

Reggie · 49:33
Yeah.

Tim · 49:34
And that's why Google kept changing the algorithm.

Reggie · 49:36
Changing the algorithm.

Tim · 49:36
Because people kept— yeah, people kept learning it and using it.

Reggie · 49:39
And using it to their advantage.

Mary · 49:41
Right. In your work, do you ever engage with this kind of thing? You feel like you're having to advertise or hack the system to get communications out?

Liz · 49:49
When it comes to social media and also like email letters, like newsletters, yeah, it definitely is curious, especially when our comms department, when they talk about like how many clicks they get for just like opening up an email. I'm like, oh my gosh, you got like 60 and that's good out of like 200 people. I'm like, ah, or like 1,000 people. Oh yeah, that's low. So I don't know how to game the system, but I'm like, lucky lady tonight. Like maybe we should have like a video with our faces on it if we're doing something on Instagram, because if it's just like a regular photo of like somebody's art, then it doesn't really like get any clicks. So there's different things. that come to mind. How do y'all look to game the system?

Reggie · 50:34
Geez.

Mary · 50:35
I'm looking every day. Okay.

Liz · 50:37
Baby, I'm—

Reggie · 50:37
Every day we're like, how do we game the system?

Mary · 50:40
I'm kind of, I'll just say we're in process, so I won't say too much, but I'm trying to design a game that is like our operating model at 40 Hearts for like a conceit for how we share profit. I don't think the game to me is the problem. I think it's like the spirit of play is what's there. You got to love the game. You got to play it honestly. But I think what you're saying is people are kind of cheating.

Tim · 51:06
I think it's not the game. We've loved games. Games are the heart of the human experience. Games have happened since the dawn of time, but it's gamifying. It's when you take something and then you gamify it. There's a real opportunity to take what is healthy about it and turn it into an incentive. And incentives guide what we do. So corporate actually gamified a lot of things. They would give people certain bonuses based on what they would do, and there's credits for this and that, and it created competition.

Reggie · 51:37
Yep.

Tim · 51:38
Which creates— we think it always creates good. Capitalism has been all about competition. But I think at some point, you— once you get— I think Mary introduced us to the cooperative game, which isn't the norm in our culture.

Mary · 51:53
Right. I think it's a new—

Tim · 51:54
I think it might be a new thing.

Mary · 51:56
I mean, it's another thing we did a ton of in Japan. I think I came back with $200 worth of board games that my partner had bought.

Tim · 52:02
Oh, wow.

Liz · 52:02
Right.

Tim · 52:02
And someone told me, I was like, I've never heard of a cooperative game. And they said, yeah, you have Dungeons and Dragons. It's one of the first cooperative games because all the players are helping each other succeed by defeating this and that. We don't hear about that in capitalism in our culture. There's not a cooperative game doesn't exist.

Reggie · 52:19
Have you ever heard of it?

Mary · 52:20
I think it's in my office.

Reggie · 52:22
Oh, you took it back.

Mary · 52:22
It's called The Crew. The Crew.

Reggie · 52:24
Yeah.

Mary · 52:24
I'd like to uptick that.

Reggie · 52:25
It's a cooperative game.

Mary · 52:27
Yeah. But I think, I don't know, the idea of using games as a way to drive incentives innately is not problematic to me. That's just economics, right? Like we need to move people in one direction or the other. I just—

Tim · 52:41
But it's, it's, so it's not right. It's the using of psychology is what it is. The, the—

Reggie · 52:48
So cool.

Mary · 52:50
We love them. There's a second one out too. It's Deep Sea something.

Tim · 52:53
It's, it's manipulation when you use psychology. So social media was classic for this. They took what they knew people were addicted to and they optimized on that. So they— right. Duolingo does the same thing.

Reggie · 53:07
I was gonna say.

Tim · 53:08
That's a gamification of learning and it's been disproven as it being a valid form learning.

Mary · 53:13
It's flashcards at best.

Reggie · 53:15
It is flashcards.

Tim · 53:16
But flashcards is not a game. You just look at them. It's a memorization. The game is when you get the ding and you haven't been on in 5 days. Or you have a streak.

Reggie · 53:25
Or you lose your streak.

Tim · 53:26
Or like you compare it to other people's progress. There's the gamification is the thing that drives you. And so sometimes I wonder if we're being driven by things that we don't actually need to be driven by because they got into our psyche Like, you got to finish this. Like, my son does Wordle, like millions of people do, and he's got to finish it before the next one shows up, or the crossword. And, you know, like, there are these— those are games.

Mary · 53:50
They're bringing you back to the trough.

Tim · 53:51
Right. But when you have gamification that brings you to a capital gains perspective, like, come to my platform and read all the things I'm writing, then the gamification is for profit. And that's where I wonder if it's If it goes awry. Gamification for profit.

Reggie · 54:07
Yeah, I think because that is—

Tim · 54:09
then that is capitalism.

Reggie · 54:10
Gamify for profit, and you're basically preying on people's— because I think ultimately our— it's our human nature to gamify things. I just remember even thinking about, um, just going up the stairs, you know, you kind of like, see how fast I can get up there. Or yeah, I do things all the time more enjoyable, like shooting, like throwing trash into the trash can. You're like gamifying—

Tim · 54:33
What's that? What's that for?

Reggie · 54:35
Fun. It's for fun, right? But you're right. I think what they're doing is they're capitalizing on people's, um, nature to be competitive and to play games, and they do it for profit.

Tim · 54:46
For money. And so when you turn— this is like something I read in, I think, Kate Raworth's book Donut Economics. She says when you take an intrinsic value and you make it extrinsic, it removes the intrinsic value. It dies. You begin to only do it. And that's why they say don't do— don't turn your hobby into your profession.

Reggie · 55:09
That's why I've never done it.

Tim · 55:10
Because it can burn out that natural love of it.

Reggie · 55:13
Yep.

Tim · 55:13
So it's like, imagine taking games that are for fun and then you take games that are for money. That's gambling. Right? You go to it, you go to a game, you game. I mean, if you're gonna play that game for money, what do you— how would change the dynamic if you change that cooperative game that we just showed and you made the end result money?

Mary · 55:33
I teeter on a knife's edge. Oh, say what you're gonna say.

Liz · 55:36
Oh, in a way it kind of makes me think of graphic design.

Mary · 55:39
Yeah, definitely.

Liz · 55:41
It's basically like, oh, you have this passion for expressing yourself visually, how can you make money off of that? How can you utilize that? And then it turns out that like people who have like more money are usually like corporations and you're like, how can I, you know, kind of wrestle with my values with how to gain money? And also like, oh, I have to use blue in order for it to seem more corporate. I have to use purple for it to seem more loyal and regal. And it's just like finding the color psychology.

Mary · 56:10
Totally.

Liz · 56:10
And also the different shapes and everything and like how to make it pop and stand out from everybody else's stuff. It's, it's very interesting. And especially like when, like, I love when I'm hanging out with the graphic designers, but also when people ask me to do something for graphic design, I'm like, because, you know, you have to keep sending all these different revisions, revisions, revisions. And you're like, I think my first idea was fantastic. And I thought it was dope. But then they're like, no, you need to dull it more and more and more. And then, yeah, it's just a different type of weird game.

Reggie · 56:41
It's like gamifying and then degamifying.

Mary · 56:44
Yeah.

Reggie · 56:45
It's—

Mary · 56:46
I think— I see what you're saying. And I also think there aren't enough people by design. It's unfortunate that it is just the reality. I don't think anybody's intentionally drawing away, but like graphic art—

Reggie · 57:02
No pun intended.

Mary · 57:03
Art.

Liz · 57:04
Yes.

Mary · 57:05
Yeah.

Liz · 57:05
Absolutely.

Mary · 57:06
And we don't think of it that way often because so much of the stuff that gets made is for hire. Right.

Liz · 57:11
Yeah.

Mary · 57:11
Because it's like if you want to have time to do your art, you kind of have to make it make money because otherwise when am I gonna have time to do it or energy to do it?

Tim · 57:20
You have to come back to the heart of it.

Mary · 57:21
Yeah.

Tim · 57:22
All my energy goes to this money thing.

Mary · 57:23
So when you say— when we lash out at gamification, I can see what you're saying. And this is one of the wonderful, beautiful things Tim Scroggs brings into my life. I do think you have a sense of— discipline as a virtue and self-guidedness as a virtue. And I also share that, although I don't live up to it as often as I think you do. But I think that there is a point where the game isn't the problem, it's addiction to the outcome that becomes the problem.

Liz · 57:54
Mm-hmm.

Mary · 57:55
And, or like you're saying, like sacrificing your artistic drive or your conviction for somebody else's gain. But on some level, it's also kind of like you can do graphic design like it's art, or you can do graphic design like it's a puzzle. Like, I have to solve this for the client. It's a problem that I'm working through logically, and that can have its own sort of satisfaction. But at the end of the day, it is tough when your creative spirit is being subjugated to something. But I don't think a cooperative game for money, You asked the question, and that's kind of what I'm positing for the 3 of us. Like, I think that if we get there together, not such a big deal. Let's not hurt anybody on the way.

Tim · 58:42
If you all get there and one gets 60% of the pot and the other 2 get 20%, I'm wondering how that does on morale.

Mary · 58:49
Are you pushing for 60% right now?

Tim · 58:50
Yeah, I'm gonna win. No, I'm just saying that the, uh, The, the balance of the money at the end, like that, you said the money or the addiction to the outcome, that is what the problem with gambling is, is the addiction to the outcome.

Reggie · 59:04
Yeah.

Tim · 59:04
They don't ever win a lot. Any— there's not many successful gamblers. It's the addiction to the possibility you might win.

Reggie · 59:11
Mm-hmm.

Tim · 59:12
And that's what makes the game so addictive. So I, I don't know. I mean, we are talking about this, and there's something to me that's fun about making life about a game. Because when I first got into Breath of the Wild in my early—

Mary · 59:28
You love games. Did you have the 40 Hearts idea around games?

Tim · 59:32
No, that was later. So our name is 40 Hearts. And so I was— Duck of Hearts?

Mary · 59:37
Huh?

Liz · 59:37
Okay, duck of—

Tim · 59:38
No, we were going— well, I mean, we could do that.

Mary · 59:41
Okay.

Tim · 59:41
Playing like the game Hearts. Well, there— yeah, there is that.

Mary · 59:44
You're doing that for this. We've got a deck of cards here.

Tim · 59:45
No, but I was just thinking, you know, when you're designer, you're thinking about different ways to present the brand. And one of my ideas was to create a world, you know, like an 8-bit world.

Mary · 59:55
Yeah.

Tim · 59:55
Maybe not so Minecrafty, but it could come off Minecrafty. But it comes from my, my, my love of Zelda, early days Zelda, where you had the hearts in the top corner. And when you got really strong in Zelda, you'd get many, many— you get like, I think it's 32 hearts or something max. And so 40 hearts would be like the amount of hearts you need to beat the final boss. So that was my idea, that the brand could be like a gamified type And I know that business is a game. Life is a game. It's all a game. It's just the, like you said, the end result. If you're— once you turn graphic design into the money, you do have to start to form yourself into the paths that are paying the money for what you're doing.

Mary · 1:00:35
Maybe that's it. It's like the art was me for a while. The art is this outpouring of expression from my heart. But if I'm gonna get paid to do it, I kind of have to start to separate myself from that.

Reggie · 1:00:46
Yeah.

Mary · 1:00:47
See it as an object separate from me that I hand off It's like giving birth to a child and then selling it.

Reggie · 1:00:52
It's the only way you survive, honestly, because once it becomes—

Mary · 1:00:56
So sorry. Was that too much?

Tim · 1:00:59
Let's do a pause there and really take it in.

Mary · 1:01:02
Can we reel it back from a baby first? But like, I don't know.

Tim · 1:01:08
Yeah.

Liz · 1:01:08
I know. I'm like, my art baby.

Mary · 1:01:11
Yeah. Yeah.

Reggie · 1:01:11
Yeah.

Tim · 1:01:11
Sorry.

Liz · 1:01:11
Sorry. Yeah. I haven't sold any of my babies. I don't have any to sell.

Mary · 1:01:15
Happy Yeah, this is how it happens.

Liz · 1:01:17
I was like going while you were speaking, I was going down like one route. I was like, I'm the cashier just handing off a good. Maybe I made a little cookie or something where you're like, my baby.

Mary · 1:01:26
I'm way overidentified with my work. So that's what we learned about Mary today.

Reggie · 1:01:32
That's why music production for me is always just for fun because I know as soon as I'm like scoring stuff and doing it for money, I'm gonna have a similar relationship to what I have with like photography and, and, and video. Like I don't do as much photography for fun anymore. I mean, it's—

Liz · 1:01:53
Yeah.

Tim · 1:01:53
Yeah.

Reggie · 1:01:55
Yeah.

Tim · 1:01:56
The, the art of photography or graphic design or music.

Mary · 1:02:01
Mm-hmm.

Tim · 1:02:02
Is something that comes from a really deep place of a creative and a human who is creative. And I think all the humans are creative. All of us start, yeah, in that place, whether or not it's But it gets killed by the realities of life. But when I— so one of the most important places that brought up singers was church. That was one of the only places where kids could sing.

Mary · 1:02:22
And it was celebrated. Like, it didn't even have to be good.

Tim · 1:02:25
Yeah, they would sing all together. It wasn't criticized. And kids grew up singing and they turned into really great singers.

Mary · 1:02:31
Yeah.

Reggie · 1:02:32
Some of my favorite singers were like, came from choir.

Tim · 1:02:35
Right. And there was usually no money involved. It was just singing.

Liz · 1:02:39
singing.

Reggie · 1:02:39
Yeah.

Tim · 1:02:39
And it was just the performance of song.

Reggie · 1:02:42
Yeah.

Tim · 1:02:43
And there was no one getting paid most of the time. Because I know, because I grew up in church and I was singing in church, so I relate to that. But then when I went into secular music, or when I tried to make a career out of it and make money out of it, it burned me out. That's why I'm not on social media other than like LinkedIn for business stuff, is because of that being in that world for the money and selling my my soul for the money burned me out. But now I'm coming back into music and I don't want to do anything about the money with it. I don't even want to be connected.

Reggie · 1:03:14
It's just an expression, as it should be.

Mary · 1:03:16
It almost makes you start, depending on what game you're playing, what money you're trying to make off of it, or what goal you're trying to achieve with it, it makes you start measuring yourself against some metrics. It's like, what if I don't want to be measured? What if I just want to flow and let it out and I don't want to worry about whether I sound good or not when I'm playing guitar and wailing at the top of my lungs, you know.

Reggie · 1:03:38
You guys were just subjected to me wailing at the top of my lungs on our little road trip back. I was just—

Tim · 1:03:44
we were just—

Mary · 1:03:44
Any day, anytime, roll those windows down. I'm there with you, Reggie.

Reggie · 1:03:49
That was awesome.

Mary · 1:03:50
So search engines, am I right?

Reggie · 1:03:53
What do you think? Like, is there a Is what's the future of search engines? Like, where are we headed?

Tim · 1:04:01
Is there hope? Is that what you're asking? Yeah.

Reggie · 1:04:03
Well, I mean, is there hope? I mean, is there like, is there—

Mary · 1:04:07
Oh, wow.

Liz · 1:04:07
I'm just wondering how they are going to pop up. I mean, when you think about smart glasses and everything, like, how are people— I guess they're going to do it by voice to text or like, hey, Siri.

Reggie · 1:04:17
I even have a pair of smart glasses already.

Liz · 1:04:19
And then there's also like, aside from smart glasses, they're, you know, experimenting with lenses, smart lenses as well. So I'm just like, And facial recognition.

Mary · 1:04:29
It's just all—

Liz · 1:04:30
it's a little scary. And also I feel as though that makes it, like we said earlier, so vital to speak to people in real time. Like, I was like, Mary, you're like a search engine just telling me all these different things that you discovered about Japan.

Mary · 1:04:44
I'll gladly be your search engine. Thank you, Mary.

Tim · 1:04:47
Very good.

Liz · 1:04:47
That's a new song, everybody. I'll be your search engine.

Mary · 1:04:49
I talk about TikTok and these guys don't really get on TikTok. I'm like, I'll rot my brain. So you don't have to. That's my function.

Liz · 1:04:58
Thank you very much.

Mary · 1:04:59
You sound like you have some trepidation about it, like it might not necessarily be hopeful.

Liz · 1:05:03
Well, I, I mean, next year I don't feel as much trepidation. But when you're thinking about search engines and you're thinking about bots and you're thinking about deepfakes, I'm nervous about how valuable search engines will be. Which also makes me think about, like, how are people going to utilize things like the Internet Archive for their new version of the search engine? And also, how will Reddit answer these times when AI is trying to implement itself into Reddit and take away more of the human interaction factor? So I don't know, it's, it's a wild, wild west that makes me nervous. But I think the human condition is always striving to break against the machine. So we'll find some other answer because like we went from AOL, we went from AIM chatbots to Google to Gemini Overview to Reddit and to Google Maps to Claude. So we're going to find a way to keep navigating. We'll search within ourselves, we'll search within our communities and beyond. And yeah, I think even though we find different challenges, we always find a way to meet the moment. And yeah, I am curious though about the different, the glass half empty and the glass half full aspect of search engines.

Mary · 1:06:20
So what are your thoughts?

Reggie · 1:06:22
I love that whole, that was perfect. That was so perfect. Perfection.

Mary · 1:06:27
That's the real game, right? We're like gonna maintain our humanity. That is the objective. And I like that we're gonna bite back.

Reggie · 1:06:35
That's the game. It's like you have so much humanity, you have your humanity bucket and you're trying to maintain as much of it as possible and you lose a little bit here and there, but there's ways you can get back.

Tim · 1:06:45
Yeah. There's hope in the experimentation that we humans hold.

Mary · 1:06:48
It's just a new level. We're just leveling up and we're like, oh, shit. I don't think it's the final boss, but this guy is a bigger baddie than the last big baddie that I fought. It's like, no, but you're strong enough.

Liz · 1:07:00
Yeah.

Mary · 1:07:00
You can do it. Absolutely.

Liz · 1:07:01
You can figure it out. We just have to keep talking to each other and getting inspired.

Reggie · 1:07:04
We can do it together. We can beat the final boss together.

Liz · 1:07:06
Together.

Reggie · 1:07:08
That's what we need.

Mary · 1:07:09
We got desks. The vibe is immaculate. Come back anytime.

Liz · 1:07:14
Thank you very much.

Reggie · 1:07:15
Yeah, seriously, you can come and hang out and work.

Liz · 1:07:17
Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Mary · 1:07:20
Yeah. Any closing thoughts before we wrap it up?

Reggie · 1:07:24
Man, I think Liz just nailed the closing thoughts.

Tim · 1:07:26
I just was thinking based on what you were saying, because you said search inside yourself. I thought that was very fascinating.

Reggie · 1:07:31
I love that.

Tim · 1:07:32
Yeah. Someone recently told my son, my oldest son, if he would want to stay in one of these new capsules where they are testing what a human would do on Mars in these capsules. So they will pay you to live in one of these things for a year, or you have— I cannot remember if it is volunteer or paid yet. I was wondering, I know volunteer to stay in this capsule, but my son does not come out of his room a lot, so he is kind of in a capsule all the time. Oh, how fun. If Mars is just capsules and internet, he would be fine, but I was wondering what it would be like to be in a place where you didn't use search, search global search engines, and you were able to search in yourself and in your community, because I think we overlook our community because of search getting us outside, and not that it's bad to get outside and be global, but there is something special about where we are, you know, and to search in ourselves and how that connects with someone that we know and someone that's in our community.

Mary · 1:08:29
Mm-hmm.

Tim · 1:08:30
So I think I find hope in the experimentation that we will try those type of things, because we're at that point where we got to find something that works.

Liz · 1:08:38
Yeah.

Tim · 1:08:39
Brings us goodness back.

Reggie · 1:08:40
Something we can feel good about.

Tim · 1:08:41
Yeah.

Reggie · 1:08:42
So, love that.

Mary · 1:08:43
Wow. Liz, what a journey. Thank you for pulling that excellent topic and for being here today and for all the work that you're doing outside of this podcast. Thank you. We hope to stay in touch and follow what you're doing everywhere. We'll put some information about what Liz is doing in the comment— or not the comments, in the description. I'm a professional podcaster.

Reggie · 1:09:08
Right below where we're sitting right now.

Mary · 1:09:10
Thanks for spending some time with us today. I know that's not an easy ask in a time where your attention is fragmented, and there's so much going on, and there's probably a million ads popping up on your search engine later today as we look. But, um, yeah, we're really grateful for you. Hope you have a great rest of your day.

Reggie · 1:09:29
Bye.

Mary · 1:09:29
Thank you. Oh, Liz, incredible.

Reggie · 1:09:32
That was awesome.

Mary · 1:09:33
Thank you. I, there was a time when I was like, we're getting really into this, and I hope you felt like you had space to say what you wanted to say.

Reggie · 1:09:40
Thanks for listening.

Tim · 1:09:41
This podcast was created and developed by our hosts, Reggie Tidwell, Tim Scroggs, Mary Green. Special thanks to our guest host, Liz Williams. Produced by Mary Greene. Live production and editing by me, Will Canady.

Reggie · 1:09:58
Graphic design by Dylan Garcia and set design by Megan Scroggs.

Tim · 1:10:04
Today's episode is presented lovingly by 40 Hearts, creators of enduring value.