Anonymity, Trust & The Absolution We're Selling

Craig · 0:54
Johnny Bravo.

Mary · 0:54
I was going to say, that's Johnny Bravo. Tim 0:56 [MIC=Tim margin=2.86 — diarizer said Craig] No way.

Tim · 0:57
Is that Johnny Bravo for everybody?

Mary · 0:57
I was totally— I was just about to say, is this after everybody's time? But no, you're all over it.

Craig · 1:03
I introduced Johnny Bravo to the world.

Tim · 1:05
The change is in the culture. I feel that. You're never too old to be in the culture.

Mary · 1:09
I buy that. Cartoon Network stuff.

Tim · 1:11
Oh yeah, you were working for Cartoon Network.

Reggie · 1:13
Yes, indeed. Tim 1:14 [MIC=Tim margin=1.97 — diarizer said Mary] He gets it. Reggie 1:15 [MIC=Reggie margin=4.88 — diarizer said Craig] Wow, episode 20.

Reggie · 1:18
Damn, 20.

Mary · 1:19
Oh my God.

Reggie · 1:20
2-0.

Tim · 1:21
It feels like a good thing, 20.

Reggie · 1:23
Yeah.

Mary · 1:23
It's a nice round.

Tim · 1:24
It's like we've— 2 decades of—

Craig · 1:26
At some point you'll be like episode 482.

Reggie · 1:28
Yeah. Craig 1:29 [MIC=Craig margin=6.77 — diarizer said Mary] Whoa.

Reggie · 1:30
But this feels like a milestone. 20 is like nice.

Mary · 1:32
20 weeks is a A lot of your life.

Reggie · 1:34
Yeah.

Craig · 1:35
Yeah.

Mary · 1:36
I mean, not in the grand scheme of things.

Tim · 1:37
In the internet world especially.

Reggie · 1:38
20 episodes. And in like human age, we, you know, we're done, we're going into college, maybe we're freshman year.

Craig · 1:46
It's not even a half a year.

Reggie · 1:47
We're like—

Craig · 1:48
You guys are just babies.

Tim · 1:49
Yeah, you know, like dog years, you know, like every one dog year is like 7 years. Every one internet week is like 3 years.

Mary · 1:56
Dog years, that's a good way. I did, when he said 20, I was like, We're so old.

Reggie · 2:00
I know, right?

Mary · 2:01
Like we were aging in real time.

Tim · 2:03
Joe Rogan, he's got like, I don't know, 50 years.

Craig · 2:05
He has a 15-year-old and they say, oh my God, when you're 40, you are old.

Reggie · 2:08
When you're 30, you are old. I mean, in podcast years, we're going through puberty, I think.

Tim · 2:12
Oh boy. This should be good. Mary 2:14 [MIC=Mary margin=1.79 — diarizer said Reggie] It's gonna be good.

Mary · 2:15
Or we think we're going through puberty and we're like a 13-year-old. We're like a tween. We're like pretending that our voice is really low.

Reggie · 2:21
Oh yeah.

Mary · 2:22
Speaking of voices.

Reggie · 2:23
Keeping it low.

Mary · 2:24
Uh, hey y'all. Welcome to Age. I'm Mary Greene and I'm joined by my co-hosts and colleagues, Reggie Tidwell and Tim Scroggs. And we have an incredible guest on today, a man that we all know and love and have worked together several times, family man and marketer, Craig McAnsh.

Craig · 2:42
Craig McAnsh. Nice to meet you all. Craig.

Reggie · 2:44
Yeah, nice to be here.

Mary · 2:46
It feels like it was inevitable. Like at some point, you've always been on the tip of our tongue. And I'm glad the stars aligned today.

Craig · 2:52
I'm so happy to be here.

Tim · 2:54
Yeah.

Craig · 2:55
And I'm glad you postponed a little bit to allow my yoga this morning.

Mary · 2:58
I mean, it was great to have you in and also to We have— talk about like multi-generational, we've got Tim's son over in the corner. Maybe we could get his input at the end. I don't want to show his face and do that whole thing, but if you're open to it, a little like—

Tim · 3:13
I would love to.

Craig · 3:13
What was your favorite part?

Mary · 3:14
Yeah. Yeah, could be cool.

Reggie · 3:16
You're glowing from your yoga, so it's good that you did it.

Mary · 3:19
You are. Craig and I accidentally did yoga together one day.

Reggie · 3:22
Really? Where? In Japan.

Mary · 3:23
Yeah, it was that day that you were recording the podcast and I was technically back in Asheville.

Reggie · 3:28
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like, I'm not ready to be back yet. Oh, that's funny. And I was like, oh wow, that's awesome.

Mary · 3:35
I had been right behind him the whole time. Tim 3:37 [MIC=Tim margin=1.91 — diarizer said Craig] I love the class.

Mary · 3:37
You got a great down dog. Good job.

Craig · 3:38
It's my favorite. It's my favorite class. Craig 3:41 [MIC=Craig margin=1.72 — diarizer said Tim] It's my favorite.

Reggie · 3:41
Was this the vinyasa flow class you were talking about? I should come do that. We should do a class sometime with them. Mary 3:45 [MIC=Mary margin=2.06 — diarizer said Tim] It's a great—

Mary · 3:46
absolutely.

Tim · 3:46
I'm not so stretchy.

Reggie · 3:47
Yeah. But you should do it.

Tim · 3:49
Maybe.

Reggie · 3:50
Yeah. But I don't look good doing what I'm doing. Vinyasas.

Tim · 3:51
Because my downward dog is not—

Reggie · 3:52
Nobody's judging you.

Mary · 3:54
Nobody's thinking about my downward dog.

Reggie · 3:54
We do downward dog in Pilates all the time and you look great.

Tim · 3:58
It's more this thing, you know?

Mary · 4:00
Yeah.

Craig · 4:01
What is it called? Half— no.

Reggie · 4:03
Half down?

Craig · 4:04
Just hang down. I forget what that is.

Mary · 4:06
Oh, like a forward fold.

Reggie · 4:07
Forward fold.

Craig · 4:08
That's it.

Reggie · 4:08
It's a forward fold. Yeah.

Craig · 4:09
That's a good—

Mary · 4:10
I can forward fold. If you try to maybe do half moon, that's what you were about to say.

Craig · 4:13
Oh no.

Mary · 4:14
I don't— you gotta have glutes for that. And mine have fallen asleep many years ago.

Tim · 4:18
So I'm working on it.

Craig · 4:20
We're getting together.

Reggie · 4:20
Sleepy glutes. Sloots.

Mary · 4:23
So as you may or may not know, We— this is a podcast where we just pull a random topic out of a trash can. Mary 4:29 [MIC=Mary margin=2.51 — diarizer said Tim] Oh boy.

Mary · 4:30
We made these topics up so long ago that we don't even remember what's in here anymore. And Craig—

Reggie · 4:35
Which makes for a nice surprise.

Mary · 4:36
I should say this, it has sort of proven to be a magic trash can in that there have been moments where we picked one completely at random and it felt totally in sync with the person that we brought on.

Tim · 4:46
It's true.

Craig · 4:47
It'll never happen today.

Tim · 4:48
Oh, well, there's something like—

Mary · 4:50
there's one in here.

Reggie · 4:51
The pressure is on.

Craig · 4:52
Bottle feeding.

Mary · 4:53
I have been adding them slowly. Like, when somebody comes on and they share an idea, or sometimes we'll ask people for an idea, we have been adding them slowly. And you gave us one that's in here. So wouldn't that be crazy if we— there's something metal in here.

Tim · 5:08
What is this?

Reggie · 5:09
Oh yeah, I hear a little—

Craig · 5:11
Somebody's using it as a wishing fountain.

Reggie · 5:13
Yeah. Or somebody's throwing a wishing— That's actually a wishing can.

Tim · 5:16
You have good energy on that day. Yeah.

Craig · 5:18
Fontana di Trevi.

Mary · 5:19
Tide before you go. All right, I'm going to—

Reggie · 5:22
That's funny.

Mary · 5:23
This is a small, watered-up one. I wonder if that has significance. Mary 5:28 [MIC=Mary margin=4.68 — diarizer said Craig] It must be old.

Mary · 5:28
Yeah, it's from the original set.

Craig · 5:29
I'm not gonna lie, compressed over time. Mary 5:32 [MIC=Mary margin=2.13 — diarizer said Reggie] Ooh. Tim 5:33 [MIC=Tim margin=11.17 — diarizer said Craig] Okay, I'd like to see your face.

Mary · 5:34
I like to show this.

Tim · 5:35
The reveal.

Craig · 5:37
I didn't realize that was part of the—

Mary · 5:38
Yeah, maybe.

Craig · 5:39
Nice.

Mary · 5:41
The word is anonymity.

Tim · 5:44
Ooh, okay. Reggie 5:45 [MIC=Reggie margin=3.86 — diarizer said Mary] Oh.

Tim · 5:46
Got that one.

Mary · 5:47
And I think we spelled it right.

Tim · 5:48
I think we did.

Craig · 5:49
Anonymity.

Tim · 5:50
I can barely spell— I can barely say this word.

Craig · 5:52
Yeah.

Tim · 5:53
Anonymity. Is it only words or sometimes phrases when you play?

Reggie · 5:55
Well, there was a phrase.

Mary · 5:57
We've got some 2-word phrases.

Reggie · 6:00
Yeah, yeah.

Mary · 6:01
Subculture was one that we did, but—

Reggie · 6:03
And then that one—

Tim · 6:04
Same font.

Reggie · 6:04
No, same font. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Craig · 6:06
Craig doesn't know what it meant, but—

Mary · 6:08
Yeah, we figured it out.

Reggie · 6:10
That was a new one for me, actually.

Mary · 6:11
It was. We're gonna probably pull some of those where like Dylan was the inspiration for putting it in there and we're all gonna be like—

Reggie · 6:17
What is this?

Mary · 6:18
Somebody wiki this real quick.

Tim · 6:20
I'll text Dylan.

Reggie · 6:21
She's a giant.

Mary · 6:22
No, we can phone her in.

Reggie · 6:23
The Gen Zers, yeah. Oh yeah, phone a Gen Zer.

Mary · 6:27
She wouldn't pick up. We have to FaceTime her. Does anything jump to mind, Craig, when you hear the word anonymity?

Craig · 6:33
Actually, yes. The words that jump to mind for me, anonymity—

Mary · 6:39
That's gonna be a problem.

Craig · 6:40
Anonymity. Pros and cons. Pros and cons. And I don't know if you want me to tell you why.

Tim · 6:46
That literally— so pros and cons is what jumped into your head? Yeah, totally.

Craig · 6:49
Because there's pros to anonymity and there's cons to anonymity. And we're seeing them play out right now in the world.

Reggie · 6:54
Yeah.

Craig · 6:55
We need our anonymity.

Tim · 6:57
Yeah.

Craig · 6:57
We have our freedom of speech.

Tim · 6:59
Yeah.

Craig · 6:59
But we also shouldn't have anonymity when we're—

Reggie · 7:03
Same.

Craig · 7:03
Yeah.

Reggie · 7:04
Yeah. Accountable.

Tim · 7:05
Equal and opposites.

Reggie · 7:06
Yeah. I think the first thing that pops to mind to me is probably just piggybacking a little bit on that is just how, especially in the social media landscape, so many people like to hide behind a fake avatar and fake names so they can say the most heinous shit to people.

Craig · 7:25
Or it's bots that are anonymous.

Reggie · 7:26
Yeah. And they're— or it's bots. And you don't know if it's bots. You don't know if it's bots or trolls because the anonymity is like, this obviously isn't a real functioning human.

Tim · 7:36
That might be the issue actually, is bots or AI.

Reggie · 7:39
Or AI.

Tim · 7:40
Data anonymity with no face or human proof. How do you know what is real?

Reggie · 7:45
I know, I know. It's hard to tell.

Craig · 7:48
You don't. And they're intentionally designed from what we all know and read. Yeah.

Reggie · 7:53
And chaos. Right.

Tim · 7:54
And this is, you know, the one person trying to prove humanity your humanness around the world. The major proponent of this is Altman, Sam Altman. He has a, he has a crypto-based or blockchain-based human-proof mechanism. It's an orb that someone looks into, it records their eye scan, and then it records them in his blockchain platform as a real human. And he's trying to create an economy or a Yeah, a world around this currency. Tim 8:27 [MIC=Tim margin=1.70 — diarizer said Craig] Or you want to own everybody's eyes.

Tim · 8:28
Well, well, people have a worry about that. There is some level of investigation into whether or not it's kept, the records are kept, but it sends a ZK proof, I think, which is a very secret cryptographic message that proves the person is human. And then that person has been approved to use the currency on the blockchain that He's created called Worldcoin. But he's also the biggest proponent of AI. So how do those things—

Reggie · 8:56
yeah, it's like an oxymoron.

Mary · 8:58
So I can sell you food, right?

Tim · 9:00
Like, let's make so many people, fake people, personas in the world that now you need something to prove that you're an actual human in the world of all the bots.

Craig · 9:08
I just don't go on any of those things.

Reggie · 9:10
Yeah.

Tim · 9:11
Like, what do you mean by those things?

Craig · 9:13
Well, primarily social media world. I mean, I'm really not on it at all, except for a few times for work nowadays. I remember the value of it when I first started, when I first moved to Asheville in 2008, 2009, and I had left all of my main contacts back in Atlanta.

Reggie · 9:28
Yeah.

Craig · 9:29
The ability to get new business literally came from posting on somebody's page that said, hey, Juan, how's it going? Or, hey, so-and-so, how's it going? And they're like, oh my God, I was just thinking about you, we need to do work together, project.

Reggie · 9:41
Yeah.

Craig · 9:41
And so that was when I felt it was good, it was honest and And now I feel as though you don't even know if the person's real or not. Reggie 9:48 [MIC=Reggie margin=1.85 — diarizer said Mary] It's taken a turn.

Tim · 9:49
Yeah, that's the thing is, and what does real mean? Like, what if a person's real is what they're saying? What they're saying is more important, right? Because if an AI is going around doing, saying all these things, humans aren't going to take hold of that, hold weight on that, right?

Reggie · 10:03
It just feels like you would like to think not.

Mary · 10:04
It's inviting. I'm gonna say inviting, but maybe forcing is the more apt word. It's inviting us to like engage with these platforms differently, and the value that you get out of it is going to be entirely different if you don't see people on the other side. It's funny that we all went to like an internet place, which I guess is just a sign of the times. But when I saw the word anonymity, my first thought— I had 2, boom, boom. My first thought was small town.

Reggie · 10:28
Yeah.

Mary · 10:29
And then my second thought was surveillance.

Reggie · 10:31
Oh yeah. What's the name of that thing now? What's the—

Craig · 10:36
what are the cameras that they installed?

Reggie · 10:38
What's this? Yeah, yeah. And did you hear, do you hear that a cop somewhere in North Carolina, oh, Charlotte, a cop just illegally used— he's got arrested, he's gotten arrested, but he illegally used the Flock camera system for some kind of personal thing, like he was trying to check on somebody or something, and he got caught and he got arrested. So that was people's concern, was that they would use— Yeah, probably would use it. Like, it's one thing to say, yeah, we won't use these because we've got rules in place, But people break rules all the time. That's why they're concerned about—

Craig · 11:18
especially— I recently broke rules, and it has to do with these cameras. We were driving up to Maine.

Tim · 11:22
Are you confessing right now?

Craig · 11:23
I literally got 2 traffic tickets.

Reggie · 11:26
Whoa.

Craig · 11:26
In Virginia, from cameras mailed to me. Wow.

Reggie · 11:30
I've had that happen before.

Mary · 11:31
They treat the speed limit differently.

Tim · 11:32
Yeah.

Craig · 11:33
The interesting thing was it was that both of them were in construction zones where it was a weekend, so they weren't working.

Reggie · 11:39
Right. But you're still supposed to go under 55.

Craig · 11:42
Yeah. And both tickets were $100.

Reggie · 11:44
Oh my God. So you added $200 to your trip.

Tim · 11:48
That's so annoying though. I feel like they're not working for it when you get a ticket that easily. There's no one chasing you down.

Reggie · 11:54
Yeah, yeah. You don't get an opportunity to—

Mary · 11:56
You can't be the bandit.

Reggie · 11:57
You can't like state your case with the officer and be like, hey officer, you know.

Tim · 12:03
This camera glitched out or if it was off timing.

Craig · 12:04
They send you a photograph of your car.

Reggie · 12:07
And your license plate.

Tim · 12:08
And that's not easy to—

Reggie · 12:09
You can't back out of it.

Mary · 12:11
I'm going to go on record right now. And I'm kind of embarrassed to even say this, but I'll speak my truth. And it comes down— there's a lot of reasons why I think the photographic thing is more fair in a lot of ways, because if I got pulled over as a kid, it was sort of implied that I needed to just say that my dad was in law enforcement somehow, sideways, backwards. I needed to somehow give that information.

Reggie · 12:34
You know, my dad is Captain yada, yada, yada. And they're like, okay, you can go. Doesn't that give you a chance to try out your negotiation skills?

Mary · 12:40
But I'm more likely— Reggie and I each get pulled over in a different car. Who's more likely to talk their way out of that? In reality, it's probably Reggie, but I'm saying—

Reggie · 12:50
I'm pretty good at this. I'd be like, did you just polish those shoes today, officer? Those are really nice.

Tim · 12:57
I can see that. Yeah, there's a lot of—

Craig · 13:00
I can see that reflection in there, and I look like a healthy, happy young man that wasn't speeding.

Mary · 13:04
But you see how some anonymity in that regard makes it just about, was this Was the car going too fast or was it not going too fast?

Reggie · 13:12
Right, right, right. Totally. No, that's a good point.

Mary · 13:15
It's complete bullshit. You shouldn't have gotten a ticket.

Craig · 13:17
I will also say that the only other time in my life where I've gotten a ticket through the mail like that from a camera was in 1989 in Germany when we were living there. My boss got the ticket.

Reggie · 13:29
Really?

Tim · 13:29
Wow.

Craig · 13:30
He literally said, so you were in Belgium this weekend?

Reggie · 13:32
Oh wow.

Craig · 13:34
And I'm like, how do you know? Because I had a company car.

Reggie · 13:36
He's like, because we got your ticket.

Craig · 13:37
You have a ticket. Don't worry, we will pay this one, but you need to know there's cameras out there.

Tim · 13:43
So this is like, wow, 30 years, 40 years?

Reggie · 13:45
Well, hey, at least we know those cameras can't racially profile because they're shooting the back of the car as it's going by.

Craig · 13:51
Yeah, but believe it or not— oh, by the way, in Maine—

Reggie · 13:54
And that was to your point.

Tim · 13:55
Yeah, really? For this reason?

Craig · 13:57
Probably. I don't know why.

Tim · 13:58
That's in Europe. They have front and back license plates too.

Reggie · 14:00
Oh, really?

Tim · 14:01
Oh yeah, and the big letters. So maybe—

Reggie · 14:02
Oh yeah, they're really big letters for a lot of Yeah, I'll bet.

Tim · 14:06
Yeah.

Reggie · 14:08
Yeah. 2 megapixels.

Tim · 14:10
First thing that popped in my mind was crypto, because the whole industry is built around the foundational value of anonymity.

Reggie · 14:17
Oh, yeah.

Tim · 14:17
It's literally the whole money system is built around ID. The world's economics are built around identification. And a lot of people in the world don't have bank accounts and can't access money in a lot of ways or move money around, send to family. So people who really believe in the blockchain technology believe in anonymity at its core, because it's the ability to move money of your own free will. Reggie 14:42 [MIC=Reggie margin=1.62 — diarizer said Mary] Can I just ask?

Tim · 14:44
But it's not always good.

Mary · 14:45
I know very little. I know a little bit about blockchain because I was trying to help IBM sell some stuff for a while to do with it. And I understand like there's a decentralized nature to it. So you're not like beholden to a bank, it's a whole different ballgame. But don't you— if you want to participate in the crypto market, you still have to have money, tangible real-world money to go buy a device in order to access blockchain technology.

Tim · 15:11
I think that's still a barrier to entry.

Craig · 15:12
Isn't the device a phone now?

Tim · 15:14
Yeah, it's a phone. And there's so— access to phones has become so easy.

Mary · 15:19
You think there are enough waste phones? Sitting around that everybody in the world could have a phone?

Tim · 15:27
Oh yeah, definitely. I think that the way we update our phones every year or 2 years, they just become junk in the drawer.

Mary · 15:33
Yeah, I'm steady on that train.

Tim · 15:36
I'm steady too, but you see that degradation of your phone. It quick drops battery and memory, right? Yeah, 2 things that we need a lot.

Craig · 15:43
The cameras keep getting more megapixels, so therefore every time you take a picture, you're using more memory.

Reggie · 15:48
Yeah. Oh yeah, it just builds your memory.

Mary · 15:49
I'm starving so I can sell you some food.

Tim · 15:51
That's the quote for this one.

Craig · 15:53
A 50-megabyte camera pixel now has a 7-megabyte photo or a 10-megabyte or 15-megabyte photo.

Reggie · 16:01
Do you think as the surveillance tech gets— as the surveillance tech gets more sophisticated, do you think there will be anti or anonymity?

Mary · 16:16
I want a supercut. I want a supercut of every time somebody says anonymity instead of anonymity.

Reggie · 16:27
Denominar? Uh, anonymity, like technology so people can walk around like just things like nodes or invisible nodes on their face. So it like scrambles and disturbs it so it doesn't identify them.

Craig · 16:43
Already, like you can wear a scarf.

Reggie · 16:44
Is it already happening?

Craig · 16:45
No, you can have— there's scarves out there that you would wear and then jam the facial recognition.

Reggie · 16:49
Wow. See this? I just knew that would be something that would happen. Yeah, totally. But at some point it's going to be just a little like something you just polish on your face or something, you know, like a mascara that just kind of— yeah, that throws it off.

Tim · 17:03
Just wear a hat and big glasses.

Reggie · 17:05
That's true. Like, who was Matt Damon's— who was the Jason Bourne? Like some kind of walking around with your hoodie.

Mary · 17:15
As part of a— I was doing some like continuing ed on experiential marketing when I was in New York, and they took us on sort of like a field trip to this guy in New Jersey, I'm gonna have to find his name later. But he ran basically like an innovation lab. And the way he would make money is he would bring in people from usually big corporations in the retail space. And they would come demo new tech that could revolutionize the way that—

Craig · 17:40
Stealing stuff out of stores?

Mary · 17:41
Well, sure, it started like that, right? But then the next wave was personalization. And how do we make your experience walking into a Walmart as personalized as it might be when you like log on to Amazon?

Craig · 17:53
Where they already filmed you when you come in, knows everything about you.

Mary · 17:55
And it was around— yeah, it was also the kind of— it was the time when like the Amazon— was it Amazon Go that you didn't touch lists?

Reggie · 18:03
You could just walk out. Yeah, that's right.

Mary · 18:05
A lot of that stuff. But he was— we had a long discussion about in order to reap these benefits, you are giving away some privacy and some stuff that maybe you didn't realize you valued.

Reggie · 18:17
And data is king.

Mary · 18:18
I think it's the trend that younger people don't see it as as big of a gimme because they've never lived in a world where they had it. Craig 18:25 [MIC=Craig margin=2.06 — diarizer said Reggie] Right.

Craig · 18:25
Crossing of lines. The more of your freedom and anonymity you are comfortable giving up, the more convenience you can get out of the world.

Reggie · 18:36
Right.

Craig · 18:37
So if you imagine that if you're— if you just plugged into a system in your car when it went low on gas, At night, a gas truck would just come up and fill up your car. Okay, you're giving your address, you're giving them access to your vehicle, your location, giving them your money, right? And they just— but that's the ultimate convenience, right?

Reggie · 18:54
Because the next morning you're ready to go.

Craig · 18:56
And it's the lessening of your freedom and your kind of humanity.

Tim · 19:00
So when you're more anonymous, you're kind of on your own.

Reggie · 19:02
Yeah. Should we be as concerned about data? Like, we grew up in a world where we were— we actually had true anonymity. We Like, we could literally move about and nobody knew who the hell we were if we wanted it to be that way. But now you're born into a world where immediately your parents are posting you on Facebook and like, look, welcome to the world, little baby Eli. And then you're getting on social media, and then you're getting smartwatches, smartphones, and everything wants your data. Every single app that you download needs to have your login and your A lot of them, you're giving away cookies and you're tagged. So is that okay? Are we in a world now where we shouldn't be as concerned? Like, to your point, young people aren't as concerned. Or is it just because we're leftover from the generation that didn't have to live with all that, that we are like, wait, we don't want to give away?

Craig · 19:55
I vividly remember when ATMs first came out. Yeah, myself. But my dad was like, never use an ATM. They'll know everything about you, right? They'll have access to your money. etc., etc.

Reggie · 20:07
But same mentality, same mentality.

Craig · 20:09
He was obviously born in 1938, right?

Reggie · 20:12
Yeah, yeah.

Mary · 20:13
So he felt a hold of—

Reggie · 20:14
so he was like, holy crap, people have— so see, my point is, we might be like, social media is our ATM.

Craig · 20:20
The downside comes when the data is weaponized by quote-unquote evildoers or manipulators, especially when it comes to voting and things like that. You QR— you have your grocery You're scanning in and you're buying your groceries. Well, what if that information made it to a, you know, Blue Cross and Blue Shield?

Reggie · 20:40
Like Palantir or something?

Craig · 20:40
It's a lot of ice cream.

Reggie · 20:41
Oh, yeah, that's a good point.

Craig · 20:42
Your insurance rates are now 40% higher.

Tim · 20:44
Yeah, that's definitely coming. Reggie 20:46 [MIC=Reggie margin=3.70 — diarizer said Mary] Yeah.

Tim · 20:46
Your driving record, they'll track your driving.

Mary · 20:49
Well, they're already—

Reggie · 20:49
Oh, yeah, they're already doing that.

Mary · 20:50
They're offering you the option to— you can put the device in your car. And it's like, I think—

Craig · 20:54
Yeah, a lower rate if you're a good driver.

Reggie · 20:55
Yeah.

Tim · 20:56
Which I do condone safe driving.

Reggie · 20:58
So I mean, I would definitely— I would be okay with that.

Mary · 21:00
But a lot of people are like, yeah, I want a reason. I want incentive. An incentive to drive better.

Reggie · 21:05
Right. An incentive to eat healthier and have lower insurance premiums, right?

Craig · 21:09
Right, exactly.

Mary · 21:10
But then again, well, let's—

Tim · 21:12
That's like Minority Report stuff, you know, like trying to predict technology.

Mary · 21:16
The data thing, the way when I was growing up that it was phrased to me that allowed me to sort of relax about it, and my parents more so than me, because I didn't really know what was happening. They would say, well, nobody's looking at your specific Mary's user journey. My data is being put into this huge bucket of data and they're looking at trends across the whole set. What a ridiculous thing to think that they would come look at— I mean, at the time I was a teenager, so that would have been—

Reggie · 21:41
Right, right. Feels a little pretentious.

Mary · 21:42
But I've been on the other side of those conversations where we'll go buy that data because you scanned at Harris Teeter or whatever and they've got your whole log and it's expanding too. They're tracking more things like your fuel usage, etc., etc. Maybe it's Costco or Sam's Club. Club, and they're giving you discounts on things like Broadway tickets, and they know what you've bought there. And then suddenly they're getting these more robust consumer profiles, and I'm building products based on what I think you want. And yeah, it's like upping this level of convenience to a place that I don't think we're even asking anymore, is this a good thing to exist? We're just asking, do you think they'd buy it?

Reggie · 22:18
Right.

Craig · 22:18
Well, you remember there was that famous one happened, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago where Because of the purchase behavior of a young woman, they— the algorithms figured out that she was pregnant before she knew she was pregnant.

Mary · 22:33
Holy shit.

Craig · 22:33
She starts getting stuff in the mail like preemie diapers.

Reggie · 22:36
That's crazy.

Craig · 22:38
They literally knew before she knew.

Reggie · 22:40
What? Well, I think of— there's 2 things that come to mind. One, when we went on our double date recently, Megan was telling us about an app that your kids were using to sell stuff, sell clothes and stuff.

Tim · 22:57
Depop.

Reggie · 22:57
Yeah. So here's Depop. Well, because that's the— my pool robot is BeatBot. BeatBot.

Tim · 23:05
That's what I'm getting confused with.

Reggie · 23:07
But here's the thing. I had never heard of that, never got an ad for it or anything. But the very next morning, First thing I saw on Facebook was an ad for that. I was like, I sent it to my wife and she's like, they're always listening. So that's one thing. So that's a little weird to me. The other one—

Mary · 23:25
Remember after 9/11 where everybody's like, the NSA is listening to your phone calls?

Craig · 23:28
Oh yeah.

Mary · 23:29
And now we're like, of course they're listening to my phone calls.

Reggie · 23:31
Yeah.

Mary · 23:32
Not me personally.

Reggie · 23:32
Yeah.

Mary · 23:33
Like, it's just accepted.

Reggie · 23:33
It's just accepted that they're always listening.

Craig · 23:35
This is a little bit different. This idea that if you have your microphone turned on, In your phone, you can keep it off. There's settings you can turn it off.

Reggie · 23:43
See, I thought I turned all that off, which is—

Craig · 23:45
Because the exact same thing happens to everybody. Yeah.

Reggie · 23:47
Nobody doesn't have that experience. Yeah. They're wanting to feed you ads based on the conversations you're having. But that's just a little creepy, right? But then the other thing is them using data, like voter data, to like do malicious things with like the voting. Like there's like Apparently, there's evidence that they are now collecting, or at least trying to hit the Board of Elections to see who's voting for who, so they can figure out how to counter it and how to somehow use that and manipulate the votes. Now, I don't know what—

Craig · 24:25
It all can happen because it's all data.

Reggie · 24:27
It's all data.

Craig · 24:28
We're getting more and more used to the idea of whatever.

Reggie · 24:30
And it's an abuse of power if someone's, you know, Obviously trying to get that data to use to turn an election or to, you know—

Tim · 24:39
Aren't we at the point already where it's all a big black box anyway?

Reggie · 24:41
I mean, to some degree.

Tim · 24:43
Who could prove it?

Reggie · 24:45
Right. I know.

Tim · 24:46
That's the other thing. I'm looking at this sheet. This doesn't line up.

Mary · 24:50
Lines are pulled off. You were talking about your Bitcoin thing and I was like, okay, so I'm going to trust another millionaire to build some technical product that I don't fully understand the ins and outs of. I could never check. myself. Reggie 25:00 [MIC=Reggie margin=22.97 — diarizer said Tim] Right.

Mary · 25:00
But he's telling me this is this infallible thing to verify that it's a human being. Well, in this case, it's Sam— what's his face?

Reggie · 25:07
Altman.

Tim · 25:08
Worldcoin. Yeah.

Reggie · 25:09
Sam Altman.

Mary · 25:09
Worldcoin.

Tim · 25:10
Bitcoin was built by they don't know who. It's not anonymity.

Reggie · 25:14
Oh, really? Tim 25:14 [MIC=Tim margin=3.93 — diarizer said Craig] Yeah.

Reggie · 25:15
They have their suspicions, but they don't know. I didn't know that.

Mary · 25:20
The idea being that like, okay, here's somebody that I'm supposed to trust to credential real humans. It's like, it all comes down to, do I trust that person who's telling me that story? And do I feel like they have credibility to even know whether the story they're telling is true? And half the time, I think people are telling me something that they've heard from somebody that they've heard from somebody. Half the time it's a salesman who's just picked up the talking points and has never actually interacted with the product. And I'm like, I don't— I can't trust you any further than I could throw you.

Tim · 25:49
I would say, here's what I would say about it, because I've been going back and forth, pros and cons. On anonymity, just all of it, because I was into crypto for a while. I'm not as much into it now, but I was really fascinated by the technology. Tim 26:00 [MIC=Tim margin=2.02 — diarizer said Craig] I lost 50% of it.

Tim · 26:04
No, 90% of my—

Reggie · 26:05
Wow.

Tim · 26:07
So much. It's so easy to lose. And I think it's that.

Reggie · 26:09
But do you gain it back when it goes back up if you hold protection? Tim 26:12 [MIC=Tim margin=4.54 — diarizer said Craig] Right.

Tim · 26:13
You're alone. If something— if you put the wrong number in and you send something, it's gone.

Reggie · 26:19
Yeah.

Tim · 26:19
Or if you send it to someone who's not a good player. And this brings me to my point. Know the game you're playing and whether or not you want to play the game. There are rules to every game. So I think we complain about things that will never change, but we have a choice whether or not we want to play the game. There's like, there is places we can— not we do, we're very— Tim 26:38 [MIC=Tim margin=1.82 — diarizer said Craig] We're awake.

Tim · 26:41
We're privileged. I want to make that clear. There are some people who can't choose the game they're playing.

Reggie · 26:45
Totally, because they don't have the resources or the understanding.

Tim · 26:48
There is some study in research into there is the potential to change your position no matter where you start, but it's very, very difficult for some people. They start way, way, way behind, lifetimes behind.

Mary · 26:59
And like, you've got to have mindset and open-mindedness to even think about that.

Tim · 27:04
Right, so even as I say that, which makes sense to me, it also doesn't work in one regard because we have to fight for everyone's existence in this game that we're playing. But I do think there's something interesting to note about anonymity leaves you alone. Because when you— before technology came in and could track you at every moment and paint pictures online, you weren't— you couldn't go about your life anonymous, or unless you were some creep in the woods living alone.

Reggie · 27:32
Right.

Mary · 27:32
Even then, somebody'd be talking about you.

Tim · 27:34
Right. Someone would know. Like, there was zero anonymity in the old world. Zero. People knew you. You had to go somewhere to get food. You had to go somewhere to get this and that.

Reggie · 27:44
Especially small towns.

Tim · 27:45
People in the community knew you.

Reggie · 27:46
Yeah.

Tim · 27:46
So there was no anonymous thing. But now it's grown to a level—

Reggie · 27:49
Unless you're in a big city like New York, a big metropolitan—

Craig · 27:52
Anonymous in a major city.

Reggie · 27:54
Which I think is— that's what used to happen.

Tim · 27:56
Alone with no connection to a community.

Mary · 27:58
Well, this was—

Craig · 27:59
I didn't.

Reggie · 28:00
But you could.

Tim · 28:01
Were there people that could do that?

Reggie · 28:01
Oh, you could. You couldn't do that in a small town, but you could totally do that.

Mary · 28:04
That was such a relief to me.

Craig · 28:06
Because there's so many people moving around.

Mary · 28:07
Yeah, exactly. And like, I came from my— you were checking on child who will not say his name, but I don't want to be named. I was just trying to save Will from getting double quack, and I think I just made it worse. But I went from small town, everybody knew who I was. I couldn't go anywhere without somebody stopping me and saying hello, which sounds like a wonderful, idyllic, like Mayberry-style thing.

Craig · 28:30
Nashville.

Mary · 28:31
Well, yeah. And my dad was a public figure and my mom worked in schools. And so, like, people knew me and I guess they all just wanted good things for me. But you start to get to be like a teenager or you start to get where you're trying to make your own choices and it feels really heavy. And then you go to New York and you're like, I can do anything.

Reggie · 28:48
You can just disappear.

Mary · 28:50
I can wear crazy clothes. I can wear my pajamas. I could have my hair up in a ponytail or I could have it done. No one knows you. Do whatever you want.

Craig · 28:57
And you could be as intentional as you want to be anonymous in New York. You can be. I'm not saying you should be.

Reggie · 29:03
Yeah, yeah. It's on the table. You could do that.

Mary · 29:07
Yeah. It was a relief, but I do think it also makes it a little more difficult We'll get to secret societies in a minute, but I do think you have to kind of find your lane when anonymity is the baseline.

Reggie · 29:18
Yeah.

Mary · 29:19
And now, but although we're talking about surveillance culture, and I feel like all that surveillance technology is hitting big cities faster than it's hitting rural areas, so true.

Reggie · 29:26
This is true. Yeah.

Craig · 29:28
But I do think what Tim said about understand the game you're playing, and there's lots of them every day in all of our lives, and we're all playing different games all the time.

Reggie · 29:36
So yeah.

Craig · 29:37
And then last layer on top of that, apply common sense. Craig 29:42 [MIC=Craig margin=1.67 — diarizer said Mary] How dare you?

Craig · 29:44
And that is defined by how do you feel in your gut oftentimes about something. You know the knowledge, you know the game and how it's played, but how do you feel? Like, how do you get in touch with that? Yeah, that's how you can then make better decisions.

Reggie · 29:55
It's like your internal compass to guide you through whatever the game is.

Tim · 29:58
I always feel like anonymity may be like your health in that you don't know how valuable it is until it's gone. You know, like, if something comes up in your life where you really need to be anonymous, like you're gonna stand for a cause, or you're gonna do something that may bring negative impact on your family.

Reggie · 30:13
Yeah.

Tim · 30:14
You know, then you're like, great, my name is everywhere. And I just recently saw this tool where you can completely erase— AI now has the potential to completely erase your digital footprint.

Reggie · 30:24
Really?

Tim · 30:25
So there is an AI tool now that you can sign up for, and it'll go through and erase everything that you've DeleteMe.com or something like that.

Craig · 30:33
Yeah, that's the AI one. But that's—

Mary · 30:34
oh, wow.

Tim · 30:35
You just also put that in.

Mary · 30:36
We're open to sponsors.

Tim · 30:37
So put that— put it into context now. So if you, if you can comprehend the consequences of going completely anonymous, right, going off-grid, right? I think we all fantasize about it. I have fantasized about it like crazy. Yeah, it would be so amazing just to be in nature and to just be alive in a world of living organisms. Yeah, in this digital game. Yeah, the digital game seems like a layer that's not necessary.

Reggie · 31:02
Totally.

Tim · 31:02
But what does it really cost to make yourself completely anonymous? What is it worth to be anonymous? And then what does it cost you to be anonymous?

Reggie · 31:11
Yeah, what opportunities do you miss out on?

Tim · 31:13
Yeah, you're paying for something.

Reggie · 31:15
Is there an opportunity cost that you're paying for?

Tim · 31:18
There definitely is, but what is it, and are you willing to pay it, or is it worth it?

Craig · 31:21
If you're in that situation where you're, you know, alone, or you and your family are alone in nature, you have to then own, build, buy, grow every single thing to live, right? Right. So that's not— you can't go to a neighbor and say, hey, can I borrow your wheelbarrow? You've got to either go buy your own. So now there's duplicating everything. Craig 31:41 [MIC=Craig margin=1.92 — diarizer said Reggie] Yeah.

Craig · 31:41
You have to— and then if you say, well, I'll just join the Asheville Tool Library, well, you can't.

Reggie · 31:44
Yeah, you're not anonymous anymore.

Tim · 31:47
Such little connected points.

Mary · 31:49
Yeah, you made the connection between anonymity and convenience.

Reggie · 31:53
And I agree with that.

Mary · 31:54
But I also wonder if there's some relationship between anonymity and community.

Tim · 31:59
Like, that's what I'm trying to—

Mary · 32:00
you can't pretend to be in community. You have to be known.

Reggie · 32:03
Yeah, you have to be known.

Mary · 32:04
Yeah. Good point. Yes.

Tim · 32:06
Yeah. Itty bitty thing.

Mary · 32:10
But I, you know, I think that was the trade-off is I, for a For a time, I didn't feel that the community was worth the cost of being seen in the way that I was, or being whatever. You could make up a lot of things that I felt at that time. But the anonymity felt like such a relief, and the burden of community was taken off of me for a time.

Craig · 32:34
Yeah.

Mary · 32:35
Which is sort of a taboo thing to say, I think, right now. And everybody's talking about building community and how important community is, neighborhood.

Craig · 32:42
Never.

Reggie · 32:42
Now, totally.

Craig · 32:43
Yeah. But again, you're at a different stage of your life back then.

Mary · 32:46
But I also think that, you know, there's a lot of expectation that comes with it. And if you didn't opt in of your own accord, if you didn't pick where you were born, you didn't pick who knew you, you didn't pick all these things, it can, it can feel like a lot. And it can feel like surveillance.

Tim · 33:00
Look at this. This just came to my mind. This will, this will bake you a noodle. Have you ever seen A Good Place?

Reggie · 33:07
Oh, yeah.

Tim · 33:07
It's hilarious.

Reggie · 33:08
I've seen a couple episodes.

Tim · 33:09
I don't want to spoil it. But What it made me think of is that sourcing has become anonymous. So like big companies and corporations can source what they're doing, what they're getting, where they're getting their crops or their procurement. They can procure things anonymously and you can be eating something that's harmful for an entire culture. Reggie 33:30 [MIC=Reggie margin=8.94 — diarizer said Craig] Whoa.

Tim · 33:31
That's the— that kind of anonymity I didn't even think about.

Reggie · 33:33
I thought of like personal anonymity. That's terrifying.

Tim · 33:36
It's like the whole idea is that you actually can't live good anymore. It's based on the religion that if you're good, you go to heaven. But literally, if you try to be good and you buy a flower for someone's funeral, that flower was raised by a culture where they were not getting paid enough.

Reggie · 33:52
A company that— Reggie 33:53 [MIC=Reggie margin=1.85 — diarizer said Mary] yeah, yeah.

Tim · 33:53
So the evil that went into making the flower didn't override the good you did in getting it.

Reggie · 33:57
Wow.

Mary · 33:57
It's like you think you're doing better by doing almond milk, but almonds are killing the planet. Yeah. But that was one of the applications of blockchain. was, hey, we can do this in a completely transparent way, and you can track the supply chain all the way back to every transaction level.

Tim · 34:10
Yeah, but then they turn that into, you can also launder money through lots of different channels.

Craig · 34:15
Why aren't we in a war?

Tim · 34:16
I want to play that game.

Craig · 34:17
So I think the idea of anonymity also overlaps with the idea of trust.

Tim · 34:22
Exactly.

Craig · 34:23
If you don't have— if you have anonymity but there's no trust, then it doesn't work, because these, these stores, if you will, that are using child labor or underpaid people or whatever. If you go to a brand that you expect is not going to buy from them, right? Trader Joe's, Whole Foods in the grocery world.

Reggie · 34:40
Right.

Craig · 34:41
Not to say that they definitely do, but they have the persona that you think they do.

Mary · 34:45
They're selling you the narrative that they would never.

Tim · 34:48
And for small towns and communities to survive, there has to be trust.

Reggie · 34:51
Yeah.

Tim · 34:52
So that it's like it's a microcosm of something that should be applied Globally.

Reggie · 34:56
Yeah.

Tim · 34:57
Right? Like, we lose the convenience, but there's a trust factor that if someone— if you create a hammer and there's someone who's a violent person uses the hammer to kill someone, it doesn't— it's like this tool idea. It doesn't make the hammer a bad invention. It just makes the person a bad person for doing this.

Reggie · 35:15
Yeah.

Tim · 35:15
I mean, not a bad person, but they've done a very bad thing.

Reggie · 35:17
Right.

Tim · 35:18
And now there's no trust for that person.

Reggie · 35:20
Right. They've lost their trust.

Tim · 35:21
What powers that be in break trust so often, it makes this conversation more difficult to have because now your anonymity or your lack thereof makes you in the target.

Craig · 35:32
Well, we're at the point— sorry, we're at the point in our civilization where trust has eroded.

Tim · 35:38
Yeah, it's almost gone.

Craig · 35:40
Every single institution on the planet. Yeah, specifically in the United States, but on the planet overall, trust in government, trust in— the only one that's kind of left a little bit is trust in business because you know that capitalism rules.

Mary · 35:54
I'm voting with my dollars. Craig 35:55 [MIC=Craig margin=2.32 — diarizer said Reggie] Yeah, there's still—

Tim · 35:56
No one fucks with capitalism.

Craig · 35:57
It's still voting with your dollar. So, there's a little bit more trust in brands.

Reggie · 36:00
Because they need to have trust. They have to build your trust to get your money.

Tim · 36:04
I don't know if that's true. I do believe everyone believes in capitalism. But I think that there is some bad business happening.

Reggie · 36:09
Oh, yeah. No, I agree there's bad business.

Craig · 36:11
Among all the things.

Tim · 36:12
Yeah, because during COVID I think family trust was gone.

Reggie · 36:15
Yeah, yeah. But I do think ultimately businesses want to gain your trust because they want your money, and it's to their benefit to gain your trust.

Craig · 36:23
Right. And so they should be trustworthy in order to gain my trust.

Reggie · 36:27
Totally. You're gonna say something, and then I have something.

Tim · 36:29
And then it becomes a manipulative game where brand is used. And this is my issue with my career, is that brand can be used to manipulate the story. You have this brand, like even Coca-Cola or Pepsi, like you have these big brands who can— yes, they can do good in the world, but they can manipulate the story to where it sounds like they're doing more good than they are.

Reggie · 36:49
Industries, whole industries would do that. Like with milk, remember the whole milk does the body good thing, which was an absolute bullshit campaign because they had milk spoiling on the shelves. They're like, how do we move this? Well, let's just tell people it does the body good.

Mary · 37:00
That's also degrees of removal, right? Like the person who had the idea, hey, we need to sell more milk, is not the idea— not the person necessarily who came up with the campaign.

Tim · 37:09
You know, you've got to make it a health-connected campaign.

Reggie · 37:11
Right, right, right.

Mary · 37:12
So you like take all these steps. And I think that's why people who get hired to tell stories have a greater responsibility in this than I think a lot of companies.

Reggie · 37:20
They have to have a moral compass because how—

Mary · 37:22
and, and your clientele, it's been my experience that they don't really want you looking too close.

Reggie · 37:27
Right.

Mary · 37:28
The sausage gets made. That's not really your job. You take what I tell you is true.

Reggie · 37:31
Sometimes.

Tim · 37:32
Yeah.

Mary · 37:32
Go tell that story.

Craig · 37:33
Yeah. There was a, there was a guy back in the day. His name was Leo I love Leo Burnett.

Reggie · 37:37
Oh yeah, I know Leo Burnett.

Craig · 37:39
I believe it was Leo Burnett, but it was, you know, advertising is the truth well told. And if you get to that point in however you're doing your marketing, if you're telling the truth but in a great way, a great story, right? Yeah, then you've succeeded.

Tim · 37:53
Yeah, but when has the truth ever been the thing that's incentivized?

Reggie · 37:56
And how much of the truth do you actually get? To Mary's point, from the client, how much of the truth do you actually get?

Tim · 38:03
Well, it doesn't matter how much truth you get, because all that matters is that you do well for your client. So the goal is not to tell the truth. The goal is to increase the profits of their client. No, you can't be a company of any success and have clients that don't do well.

Craig · 38:17
No, of course. But you can tell the truth and do well.

Reggie · 38:19
Yeah. Oh yeah.

Tim · 38:21
Oh, absolutely.

Reggie · 38:22
You could win.

Tim · 38:23
It's not mutually exclusive that truth leads to better results. It doesn't. It doesn't always.

Mary · 38:30
And there it is.

Craig · 38:30
No, it doesn't always. 100%. But, but if you if you stick to your guns and you focus on the truth, how do I make this truth about this product or service?

Tim · 38:38
Right, but truth erodes over time and meetings. And like, once you start— once you— right, but what if that truth, the new truth— how do you really get to the truth if there's anonymous things happening in a large corporation? And we're talking like successful agencies. Leo Burnett had one of the biggest advertising agencies in the country. He's doing work for industries that definitely weren't doing good. And how does he tell that truth? It's still up their line.

Mary · 39:04
It's selective truth, right? Yeah. Let me pick the part that makes me look good and let me ignore the part that maybe people shouldn't hear about.

Reggie · 39:11
And they're probably not giving that part of the truth to Leo Burnett. They're probably not going, well, yeah, we— well, we're using child labor and we're putting, you know, paraffins in our product. But here's the good stuff about it. And that's what we're going to tell you. And so as an advertiser, a marketer, as a brand, Brand designer, how do you know that you're actually getting the truth? You might have the best moral compass in the world, but if your client isn't giving you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you might be leading forward and promoting something and advertising or marketing for something that you in your heart and soul feel it, you believe, so you're gonna do a good job, but there's this whole other part that you don't even know about.

Mary · 39:54
It feels like the the license plate example where we're like, oh, they took a photo, and so clearly they have proof that I was there. But it's like, what if instead of a photo, they hired someone to come in and paint the back of your car?

Reggie · 40:05
That's funny.

Mary · 40:05
It's like, that artist could interpret whatever they wanted. Maybe that was a J, or maybe it was an I, now that I think about it. It's just so interpretive, and people get to pick the parts that they think are important. And I do think, especially if you're outsourcing it to another company who's job is storytelling, I'm going to tell you, storytelling company, the version of me that I want to. And far be it for you to come ask questions about the interior of what I'm doing.

Tim · 40:32
You want to hear the truth. Where does this come from? They're going to give you the right answer, right? They're not going to say, well, honestly, we did have this moment where we were hiring kids to make this because we really couldn't make ends meet. We have a lot of employees here. We have to keep them supported, their families.

Mary · 40:45
Or they just don't look at it themselves. They're like, well, we get it from Thailand.

Tim · 40:48
There's actually a parable in the Bible that says, if the darkness in— if you think the darkness in your eyes is actually light, how deep the darkness goes. So there's a manipulative frame to what truth is. I had tried to have this discussion on my— discussion with myself on my Unconventional Thoughts for Women podcast.

Mary · 41:05
Astronaut of Thoughtfulness.

Tim · 41:05
About truth, because truth is a very touchy subject. Half-truth is worse than an outright lie because half-truth confuses What is truth? Because if you can have truth and use that to your benefit, then the lie goes unnoticed and untouched.

Reggie · 41:22
Undetected, yeah.

Tim · 41:23
So when a company becomes big and popular and very successful—

Mary · 41:27
Financially.

Tim · 41:28
Financially.

Mary · 41:29
Morally, they're having a hard time.

Tim · 41:31
Morally bankrupt in some ways. When they get to that point, and we just talked about this, the means by which you succeed are the means by which you must maintain your success. success. There is no like, I'll get to this point, and then I'll be a great leader, right? When you develop habits of wrongdoing, they stick, and that becomes who you are. That becomes your revenue stream.

Reggie · 41:50
That becomes who you are. Actions. Yeah.

Tim · 41:52
So when you have these breaches of confidence or trust or wrongdoing, there isn't a place where it's incentivized. Oh, yes, tell the truth. Let your company burn, right? It's all about truth here. Truth helps us all. So let your company burn so that we can all benefit From truth ringing true. Right.

Craig · 42:10
No, it's like, basically, there's 10,000 people who are unemployed. Craig 42:14 [MIC=Craig margin=1.67 — diarizer said Reggie] Yeah, right.

Craig · 42:14
Factories getting shut down and all that.

Tim · 42:16
So do you think a lie growing over the course of time is better than people losing their jobs?

Craig · 42:21
Well, I think we also have to realize that, I mean, at one level you could say that every single company, every single organization on the planet is a horrible thing, a horrible company, or does horrible things in their company. I don't believe that. Right, but I think you could go to that extreme.

Tim · 42:36
I wouldn't say horrible, but they've done—

Reggie · 42:37
everyone's done things, some sketchy shit.

Tim · 42:39
We all have skeletons in our closet.

Craig · 42:41
I don't— again, I wouldn't say all. I would say maybe if you're at a certain size, you probably have had—

Reggie · 42:45
you had to have had to do some abstraction that starts to happen. You stop—

Mary · 42:49
a small mom-and-pop shop, for instance, the original truth, and you're taking it on faith that somebody told you that somebody told you.

Craig · 42:54
But I also do think that there are very truthful and powerful aspects of every company that do good.

Reggie · 43:00
in the world.

Craig · 43:01
And so a company that is doing good in the world and maybe have some skeletons in their closet about some stuff that they've done, or they're not doing everything perfectly, they should not be called out. You should celebrate the thing that they do well.

Mary · 43:16
And I think they should own up and say— I think that's the most graceful thing. Here's an example. We just had the— I don't remember the name of the virus Psychoplasm?

Reggie · 43:28
Oh, psychoplasm.

Tim · 43:31
Psychoplasm sounds like explosive diarrhea.

Mary · 43:32
Does it end with plasm?

Reggie · 43:33
No, cyclospora.

Mary · 43:35
Cyclospora. We just had the cyclospora outbreak.

Craig · 43:39
That's from Ghostbusters. Tim 43:40 [MIC=Tim margin=1.76 — diarizer said Mary] I think so. Tim 43:41 [MIC=Tim margin=2.82 — diarizer said Craig] Ectoplasm.

Mary · 43:42
It was closer than I got.

Reggie · 43:44
Dysentery.

Mary · 43:44
We just had that outbreak and it was, you know, ultimately we won't talk about CDC funding and like people tracing down how we don't have enough resources, put all that aside and say, all right, we're trying to trace down this viral issue we're having in the United States. They trace it back to— yeah, good point, parasite. They trace it back to lettuce. And that lettuce is getting distributed in a number of different restaurants.

Reggie · 44:08
Right. Not just TV.

Mary · 44:10
Who steps forward and says, actually, we were part of this problem? Taco Bell. Taco Bell's like, yeah, this was a problem. And that was a huge hit for Taco Bell.

Reggie · 44:17
Oh, I'm sure.

Mary · 44:18
A lot of people have a lot of bad things to say about Taco Bell anyway. You've talked about Taco Bell on this podcast. I'm going to go on record and say I don't mind them.

Reggie · 44:25
I mean, people are saying that if you're not getting— if you're not getting explosive—

Mary · 44:30
I don't eat the beef.

Reggie · 44:32
But I'm saying, wait, if you're not getting explosive diarrhea when you go to Taco Bell, then you're doing it wrong.

Tim · 44:37
That wouldn't even run. That wouldn't even like flag. I wouldn't even flag that.

Craig · 44:41
That's why it took so long to discover.

Reggie · 44:44
They're like, this is normal.

Mary · 44:46
Here's the thing. The way that I go to Taco Bell, it's no longer like cheap food because by the time I've like doctored it and changed all the things, I'm still paying like $20 for a Crunchwrap because I'm like, oh, I'll say shit like extra lettuce. So imagine.

Reggie · 44:58
Oh man. Extra explosive diarrhea.

Mary · 45:02
So Taco Bell comes forward and lays claim and says, hey, yeah, we had some cases of this, but there were, I don't know, numerous other restaurants that that doubtless were distributing this stuff and they didn't step forward.

Craig · 45:15
They don't have the crisis PR team that Young Brands has.

Mary · 45:18
Well, maybe—

Craig · 45:19
They know what it is. You admit to it, you double down.

Reggie · 45:21
You get 'em behind, yeah, yeah.

Craig · 45:22
You're recompensating for it.

Reggie · 45:24
You get on top of it.

Mary · 45:25
But that's where I'm saying, that's the truthful, honest path, is owning up, taking account, and saying, I apologize and I'm gonna move on and I'm learning from this.

Reggie · 45:32
I think there's another path.

Craig · 45:34
But that's great because there was a trigger point that made that happen. If nobody got sick, they would still be buying the shitty lettuce from the company.

Mary · 45:40
Do you think they would've known though?

Reggie · 45:41
No, I think they're not.

Tim · 45:43
If it was tacos, if no one could tell the difference.

Craig · 45:47
We do know that it's 20% cheaper than every other lettuce. Yeah, no, I'm just making that up.

Tim · 45:52
Like, oh, I was like, that's interesting.

Craig · 45:55
Sure, decision, whatever. You're going to make it on price. Like, are you going to buy the premium lettuce? You're going to buy the lettuce that—

Mary · 45:59
Sure. And they haven't had a track record of buying the most premium product.

Reggie · 46:02
Here's another way. Here's another way that companies, I think, can have a way forward. I think there's 2 buckets. I think there's their good bucket and I think there's their bad bucket that a company has, right? And that's all there is. No, and so think about it. It's not black and white at all. So think about it. There's the scale. And the more good stuff you do, even though you had to do a little bad stuff to get to where you are, that scale tips towards the good side. And if you do enough good stuff, that it tips so far to the good side that the bad stuff just kind of floats away.

Mary · 46:32
Who gets to decide?

Craig · 46:33
Perfect example. I'll give you an example of this. When I was working for McDonald's, they had a thing called the Trust Bank.

Tim · 46:39
Were you working in McDonald's?

Reggie · 46:40
Oh, a trust bank.

Mary · 46:41
I was about to be like, oh yeah, I worked at McDonald's.

Craig · 46:43
I was working at McDonald's.

Tim · 46:44
Because they always say this in the crypto industry. Tim 46:46 [MIC=Tim margin=1.66 — diarizer said Reggie] Were you the deed fryer? They're like, I've got to go back and get my job at McDonald's.

Craig · 46:49
There was a trust bank, and people put money in it at the counter. No, I'm just kidding. The corporation had a trust bank, and they did something, Ronald McDonald House. Craig 46:57 [MIC=Craig margin=1.69 — diarizer said Reggie] Oh yeah, I remember the Ronald McDonald House. They did some good things.

Tim · 47:00
They still do.

Craig · 47:00
And so they build, build, build, build, build. Craig 47:02 [MIC=Craig margin=2.57 — diarizer said Reggie] Bill Gross.

Craig · 47:03
And then when the Rodney King riots happened in LA, when they— people destroyed— not one McDonald's was destroyed. Craig 47:11 [MIC=Craig margin=1.64 — diarizer said Mary] The community had respect.

Reggie · 47:13
They protected those McDonald's because of the work. Yeah.

Craig · 47:16
Every other building got burned to the ground.

Reggie · 47:18
Yeah. Craig 47:18 [MIC=Craig margin=1.64 — diarizer said Mary] Yeah.

Craig · 47:19
McDonald's was left.

Reggie · 47:20
See? So there is— so there is a good bucket that if you fill it big enough, you can outweigh whatever bad stuff your company has done.

Mary · 47:28
Provided that one, people know what's happened, because I think that's my issue is like, do you—

Reggie · 47:34
I think it's an internal moral compass. I think it's an energetic good. Like that was an energetic good, like to some degree.

Mary · 47:40
And you get to decide when you're absolved. And you're— Mary 47:44 [MIC=Mary margin=1.66 — diarizer said Reggie] Maybe. You just do more good.

Mary · 47:46
And you're also caught in like the moral quandary. I think I'm of— I'm the type of person, whether from my upbringing or my genetic code or whatever, I don't think I would ever feel totally confident that I had tipped the scales. You know, like, how do you know when you've gotten past that thing? And of course it's relative to what it— what, like, if you killed somebody?

Reggie · 48:07
I think you know.

Tim · 48:08
That is literally the religious game.

Reggie · 48:11
Totally.

Tim · 48:12
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Reggie · 48:13
Absolutely. Do a bunch of bad shit, you go to church and get absolved of your sins because you— Tim 48:18 [MIC=Tim margin=2.17 — diarizer said Craig] yeah.

Tim · 48:18
So we already know from thousands and thousands of years of practice, this doesn't work. The thing is, is that there's another tree in the garden called life. And if life becomes your goal, peace and joy and the things that are great and good in life, that is goodness.

Reggie · 48:34
I don't think it doesn't work. Here's the thing.

Tim · 48:37
It's like incent— if you incentivize the making of money as success, as the only metric of success, then you incentivize bad happening. It doesn't matter how much good you weigh it against. Because bad is happening, it's injustice, you know? Like, it's not like, oh, they killed someone, but they also delivered a baby.

Reggie · 48:54
Wow.

Tim · 48:54
So they have a one for one, and now they get absolved from the death because they—

Reggie · 48:58
No, see, I think it— I think, yeah, I think there's a—

Tim · 49:01
This is what The Good Place talks about.

Reggie · 49:02
There's an algorithm.

Tim · 49:04
Right, and the AI can maybe create this.

Craig · 49:06
Is there another story that would change the fact that the money and financial gain is the goal in our entire world?

Tim · 49:13
Well, they had like this transparent sourcing chain. You remember they were trying to create which where you could track everything and where it came from.

Craig · 49:20
Yeah, theoretically you scan the QR code.

Tim · 49:21
But the thing about it, it's not incentivized. It doesn't matter what you say or do or think. If you don't incentivize it, it doesn't happen. That's the bottom line. How do you incentivize it to happen?

Craig · 49:30
Minimalism is the incentive. So is there another story in the future that changes that?

Mary · 49:34
You have to make it a benefit. That was— when Reggie was speaking, I was thinking to myself, that paradigm only works for me if you give me visibility to what you've done, because you don't get to decide whether you're okay with me. I decide whether I'm okay with you. But if I don't know who you are, if you're hiding these parts of me, and I never get parts of me, if I'm— you're hiding these—

Reggie · 49:55
But if you don't— if you know about the good stuff and not the bad stuff, you're going to look at a company and say, they do all these great things, they're a really good company.

Mary · 50:03
And that— and but you know what, trust me, trust my judgment for myself to be able to look at everything you did and hopefully come at it with a spirit of forgiveness.

Reggie · 50:11
But who gives you the right to know the bad stuff they did? Like, no company's gonna come out. I mean, they're not—

Craig · 50:17
who wants to spend all their time—

Reggie · 50:19
unless it's public.

Craig · 50:20
This is why brands are existing in the world, because they become the shorthand for, I like that brand, I think they do great things.

Reggie · 50:29
Like Patagonia, for instance. We think of companies like— like Patagonia is, I think, a perfect example. We don't know what bad stuff they've done or if they had—

Craig · 50:38
Where did this milk come from?

Tim · 50:40
Yeah, yeah, it goes right there.

Craig · 50:42
I've heard Maple Hill Creamery has great milk. It's grass-fed, it's all organic.

Tim · 50:47
Right, right, that's the brand.

Reggie · 50:49
I've heard Patagonia is a good company, cares about the environment, putting lots of money into environmental recovery, and they make great clothing. I'm gonna buy Patagonia. Yeah, but we don't know if they've used child labor and do done all these other things.

Tim · 51:02
What about a confessional booth for companies? A brand confessional booth where they can confess their sins and be absolved by the brand economy.

Reggie · 51:10
Well, here's the thing I was gonna say about church. Here's the thing I was gonna say about church. I think just because people go to church doesn't mean that that's the good that outweighs the bad. The church isn't the thing. It's the thing that they do in the community. Like, they go out and they They work for Habitat for Humanity and they build tin houses for people that are unhoused.

Tim · 51:34
But what if you're doing the same bad in another country?

Reggie · 51:36
But it doesn't—

Tim · 51:37
And then you repair the community that you're living in, so they think you're good.

Reggie · 51:40
Right, right. But over here they think, that guy's horrible.

Tim · 51:43
They're raping the land, digging up— what we need for AI and what we need for technology is the killer for other cultures. They dig their worlds up. They dig all the ground, all the cobalt, all the minerals, And they use their people to dig it up.

Reggie · 51:58
That sounds horrible.

Tim · 51:59
Caves and mines. So we can have our phones and our devices.

Reggie · 52:05
Here's one of the things that I love though, and to Mary's point, I do think that more of those kind of, I should just say, bad dealings are being discovered because of really amazing investigative independent journalism.

Tim · 52:23
We come back to social media.

Reggie · 52:24
And so we come back to social media, and we come back to why I think that's a really good thing. Because for instance, a company that did exactly what you just said, somebody's going to sniff that out and say, oh wait, they're doing all these great things here, but they're doing these really horrible things over here, and they're raping and pillaging the land, and the people are being impacted by that. And while they're doing these great things here, people need to know about these horrible, horrific things they're doing over here. And so I think ultimately—

Craig · 52:57
Unless those are done by a competitor and they're not true. Tim 52:59 [MIC=Tim margin=8.24 — diarizer said Mary] Yeah.

Reggie · 53:00
But you can't be completely anonymous if you're doing bad shit as a company, because the investigative independent reporting will do— they will quote their sources. They will, you know, they'll get to the bottom of it.

Craig · 53:16
mayhem in between because we've already seen it. People saying on social media or whatever, right, these people are doing these bad things, they're hurting this, they're harming this. And then somebody actually counterchecks that, like, actually, no, they're not. Craig 53:28 [MIC=Craig margin=1.90 — diarizer said Reggie] They're not. Tim 53:29 [MIC=Tim margin=1.79 — diarizer said Craig] Right. Craig 53:29 [MIC=Craig margin=1.75 — diarizer said Tim] That's what I'm saying.

Reggie · 53:30
You got to follow the source and you got to do the research.

Craig · 53:32
To do that.

Reggie · 53:33
Yeah.

Tim · 53:34
Yeah.

Craig · 53:34
Why don't we just have your feed is only your friends, the people that you—

Mary · 53:38
We've said this.

Tim · 53:39
Reggie presented this idea.

Craig · 53:41
If you follow them, they follow you. That's your feed.

Reggie · 53:43
Yeah.

Tim · 53:44
Well, here's the thing. Do businesses deserve anonymity? That's the question. You can't just say if you're doing bad things, you can't be anonymous, because that is like the circle that never ends. Like, are you doing bad things? No. All right, you can stay anonymous.

Craig · 53:57
Right?

Tim · 53:58
Bad things? No, not at all. You can stay anonymous. Yeah, I'm doing bad things. I'm not allowed to be anonymous. You have to literally decide whether a business deserves to be anonymous. A rule.

Reggie · 54:08
Yeah. How do we decide?

Craig · 54:09
If businesses weren't anonymous, what would that be?

Tim · 54:12
How would you— Well, you'd have to incentivize or punish the anonymity that's happening.

Craig · 54:20
See, anonymity's—

Tim · 54:21
You'd have to literally, like, they can't—

Reggie · 54:24
Like Vault, if you watch The Boys.

Tim · 54:25
Oh, the government has reduced that risk. You can't be anonymous in your taxes, be like, yeah, no one knows who sent those taxes in. No, the incentive is to do your taxes right.

Craig · 54:36
Public record, right?

Tim · 54:37
Right.

Craig · 54:38
But as a company, all your shareholder meetings, all your tax records, it's all public.

Tim · 54:42
Yeah. But all your— you think all your decisions are?

Craig · 54:45
Well, as they show up in the results, they are. Yeah.

Tim · 54:47
Not the decisions.

Reggie · 54:48
What has to be reported.

Tim · 54:49
So I'm saying, what if all the decisions were audited like taxes were?

Craig · 54:53
So every— like there's like speakers in everybody's office and that's happening more and more.

Tim · 54:57
But yeah, every decision you make for your company has to be recorded.

Reggie · 55:02
It's funny. It's similar when I was doing the Hatch Labs thing. with Hatch, we did a thing where our— we broke out into groups and you had a couple buckets. One of them was environmental, you know, support, like trying to save the environment. One of them was like food, like, you know—

Craig · 55:27
Food security.

Reggie · 55:27
Yeah, food security. But one of them was like diversity and inclusion. And so we tackled this problem, big brains, You know, we're all in these Zoom breakouts and we would just go on. And one of the ideas that came up was to have companies rate it like, you know, you go into a restaurant and you see like their sanitation score or whatever up on the door.

Mary · 55:49
The FDA's forced you to put calorie count.

Reggie · 55:52
Yeah. Yeah. Well, this— well, that, but also just like you get an A, B, C, D, like of how clean and how, you know, if you're doing everything by the— yeah. And so So we had this whole idea of having a certification for— this was as it pertained to how inclusive a company was. But how cool would it be if you had a similar kind of setup to where you had a rating based on how truthful, how good, what kind of things a company was doing, and you had a company that came in and did deep, deep research to really— got in with all your stakeholders, all the truths were untold or told. Reggie 56:29 [MIC=Reggie margin=8.10 — diarizer said Craig] Yes.

Reggie · 56:31
you gave them a score, and in order for them to get a higher score, they have to do the things.

Mary · 56:37
This is wildly different than B Corps.

Tim · 56:38
Yeah.

Mary · 56:39
I mean, it's not exactly the same.

Reggie · 56:41
Yeah, it's a different thing.

Mary · 56:42
But I mean, there's a lot of—

Craig · 56:44
I also think that, yeah, as AI progresses and AI agents and all of that, like, they're— most companies that are forward-thinking are embedding them into their machines, right? So AI, a layer of AI, could just do that thing you just said.

Tim · 56:58
Yeah, scouring.

Reggie · 57:00
Oh yeah, absolutely. Audit the whole audit of the company.

Craig · 57:03
Yep.

Tim · 57:04
All emails.

Reggie · 57:05
Yeah. Communication. Here's your score.

Mary · 57:06
We send management consultants in to observe.

Reggie · 57:08
Oh, that would be really cool.

Mary · 57:09
So it's really just having— the theory could be like, oh yeah, we were just sending out agents.

Reggie · 57:14
I would imagine some stakeholders want to know if the company that they are involved in bed with is doing shady shit. Like, they're— they would want it. Like, if I was someone If I'm someone who is a multimillionaire and I'm invested in this company, I don't want to be connected with a company that's got child labor or something happening.

Craig · 57:32
But I mean, also at some point you're a rarity. I mean, most people—

Reggie · 57:37
If I'm making money, don't tell anybody.

Craig · 57:40
Everybody's just barely scraping by and they've invested in a company and the money's coming in like, this is awesome. I'm actually— my stock's going up and they don't have the ability to say, oh, I don't—

Reggie · 57:52
Ethically, I don't want to be involved with this because you guys are doing shady stuff.

Craig · 57:55
I mean, this is why— this is why, you know, what, almost 8 billion—

Reggie · 57:57
I would definitely not want to be involved.

Craig · 57:59
There's a lot of people who don't have the wherewithal to do anything like that. So just, just getting the delivery of X, Y, or Z product, no matter how badly it was produced, they still have a product.

Reggie · 58:10
Can we just change humanity so that everybody feels that way, that they want Actually, I'm coming around to hope.

Mary · 58:17
It took me a while. We got really into it.

Tim · 58:20
Bring us all in.

Reggie · 58:21
Bring us all in.

Mary · 58:22
We started with the experience of me being surveilled and my anonymity being lost.

Reggie · 58:29
Right.

Mary · 58:29
But I'm coming around to hope because we also have the opportunity to turn that back around on some of these systems that we feel subject to, right? A capitalist society or the government or whatever. And the idea of holding people to task. You gave the hammer metaphor a minute ago where you're like, if I sell somebody a hammer and they go kill somebody, that's not my fault. But I'm like, actually, I don't— and I don't want to profile. That's, that's the scary thing is like, I don't want to look at somebody's behavior and be like, you look like you're about to hammer somebody to death.

Reggie · 58:58
We are all so fucking good at hammers.

Mary · 59:00
Let me preemptively prevent you from doing that. But I'm saying if someone has bludgeoned somebody to death with a hammer, I hope this quote goes on LinkedIn. If someone has— I'm saying, like, I don't— we've got a whole separate—

Reggie · 59:12
I don't want to sell them a hammer.

Mary · 59:14
The whole separate thing about the justice system, we're not going to get into it.

Craig · 59:17
It's like he's never going to build a birdhouse again in his life.

Mary · 59:19
But I'm saying, like, that's a choice he made, and then the community just gets to make their own choice about whether or not they're willing to sell him hammers. And the second time you sell him a hammer, you're going to feel bad about it.

Reggie · 59:29
Can he repent?

Mary · 59:30
Perhaps so, but that's not for him to decide. He doesn't get to decide whether Tim believes in him or not. He's got to build trust and he's got to have a personal connection. So this is why to me, transparency is a huge value.

Tim · 59:44
Are you saying trust on the data? Like trust in his actions on a social platform?

Mary · 59:49
I'm saying that it goes the other way.

Reggie · 59:51
He has to know people to be absolved so he can have trust. You have to build trust.

Mary · 59:54
Nobody, no organization gets to say he's absolved, let him go. I'm saying you as an individual, you as an individual, you get to look at what has happened. and make your own choice about it, right? And maybe not everybody's going to look into it, and maybe people are going to take the 3 main concepts we sell them as a brand. Yeah, but I want everybody, journalists included, to have the opportunity to go seek that truth and make their own assessment.

Craig · 1:00:17
What if somebody makes an executive order saying everybody needs to sell this guy a hammer? Reggie 1:00:21 [MIC=Reggie margin=1.96 — diarizer said Mary] Oh geez, quit the company.

Tim · 1:00:23
That's a lot of hammers.

Craig · 1:00:24
Quit the company? I'm talking about the country.

Reggie · 1:00:26
Yeah, yeah, well, and I might—

Mary · 1:00:29
looking into options. Mary 1:00:30 [MIC=Mary margin=2.07 — diarizer said Reggie] Quit the country.

Tim · 1:00:32
This takes an equal buy-in to what we're doing this for, what game we're playing. One thing I noticed when I was in Japan is that they all feel aligned on what they've created.

Mary · 1:00:42
It would seem.

Tim · 1:00:43
It would seem. I'm not saying this is the truth. I'm just saying the feeling you get there is that everyone's bought in, yeah, on the same civilized way of being.

Mary · 1:00:51
Yeah, they're like, sure, we're all gonna walk this way, right, because it makes things easier.

Tim · 1:00:54
It feels very cohesive, unified.

Reggie · 1:00:56
Singapore is the same way.

Tim · 1:00:59
in subways, in public spaces, it all feels unified. We don't, and it's way smaller of a country than America. We don't have that here, and there's research that shows you cannot have that with a country our size. You cannot be unified anymore. There's too many people to unify.

Craig · 1:01:17
Yeah, well, part of it, sorry to interrupt, but part of it is culturally, we're a nation of fondue, Yeah, independent, and we're not, you know, we're like a chopped salad. And then slowly, at one point maybe a melting pot, but now definitely like, yeah, different dishes. We're factoring dishes on a plate. Whereas Japan, thousands of years old, has a culture of community and togetherness, which is why they literally closed their borders off for a period of time.

Reggie · 1:01:45
They're very insular.

Craig · 1:01:46
I mean, so I mean, it's not even trying, right, like trying to change. Change is saying something like, well, we've got 3,000 years, so maybe we could change in that length of time if we had systems and policies that changed.

Tim · 1:01:58
So you're saying with 3,000 years America could change?

Craig · 1:02:01
That's the—

Tim · 1:02:01
that's what you're saying, there's a chance.

Reggie · 1:02:04
Well, you gotta start somewhere though.

Mary · 1:02:06
But I—

Tim · 1:02:07
We don't win another like 1,800 years.

Mary · 1:02:10
What if the thing that holds us together doesn't have to be a litany of policies? What if we get aligned on a vision and a couple of core values? And we start there.

Tim · 1:02:18
Freedom isn't free.

Reggie · 1:02:19
Yeah, you gotta start somewhere.

Mary · 1:02:20
But let's look at it clean slate and be like, what does it mean? Do we all agree? Like, I don't know.

Tim · 1:02:26
That's not really— Do you wanna rebrand America?

Mary · 1:02:27
I absolutely do.

Reggie · 1:02:29
Let's fucking rebrand America. I'm down.

Mary · 1:02:31
I don't think a single politician has painted me a picture of what we could do. Everybody's just telling me what's wrong and what we need to fix, and nobody's even—

Reggie · 1:02:39
I think that's the problem too.

Mary · 1:02:40
—painting together a narrative or like painting a picture. The person I've seen do it best is Zohran Mamdani, and he's got his critics too. I'm not a political expert. I don't know about all the tactics that go into that. But I think it's interesting that he's painted a picture and people totally jumped on board.

Reggie · 1:02:56
You know what's interesting? I think when you do have a politician that does show up in that way where they're not just trying to smear—

Mary · 1:03:04
I thought you were going to say full stop.

Reggie · 1:03:07
No, no, no. Just shows up. I'm like, gosh, that'd be great.

Mary · 1:03:09
Full stop. Absolutely.

Reggie · 1:03:09
But when they show up in a way where they're not trying to smear the other side, like for instance, when John McCain spoke up for Biden and he was like, no, this is what's happened. He's a good guy. We've done good work together. It wasn't this— and I think he might've done the same for Barack, but ultimately it gave me a lot of respect for him as a politician because here he is in a moment where he could just be— picking a side and saying all the bad shit about the other side. And he's like, no, I'm gonna say good shit about the other side because we're humans, we're all in this, and we all have ultimately the same goal.

Craig · 1:03:46
The country needs to gain, not just one side or the other side. Craig 1:03:49 [MIC=Craig margin=3.52 — diarizer said Tim] Right.

Craig · 1:03:49
But you know, you're talking about like politicians not showing up with a solution. The thing is, there are lots of people showing up with solutions. Think about the Ezra Klein Abundance book that just came out.

Reggie · 1:03:59
Oh yeah, yeah.

Craig · 1:04:00
I mean, like, there's a vision in there, very specific vision about how—

Tim · 1:04:04
But who's buying it?

Craig · 1:04:05
A lot of the politicians are buying it, starting to.

Mary · 1:04:08
But I've heard a lot of critique of it.

Tim · 1:04:09
I thought they bought Ayn Rand, and that's been the developing narrative for hundreds of years. Ayn Rand, all the politicians were in on it.

Craig · 1:04:16
Well, that's old. The new is—

Tim · 1:04:17
Isn't everything we're dealing with old? Economics are 100 years old.

Craig · 1:04:21
Abundance is not old. I think abundance is the new voice.

Mary · 1:04:25
Some might say that it's the oldest is abundance. And we've worked our way out.

Craig · 1:04:29
Yeah, we've taken— we've—

Reggie · 1:04:31
it's come full circle.

Tim · 1:04:32
So my— I, I say a lot of things about my dad. I was raised by my dad, obviously, and I want everyone out there to know that my dad is an incredible person.

Reggie · 1:04:39
Did your mom raise you too?

Craig · 1:04:40
Yes, probably mostly.

Mary · 1:04:42
A little bit of time.

Reggie · 1:04:43
I was raised by my dad.

Tim · 1:04:45
I don't bring my mom up enough, as much as my dad.

Reggie · 1:04:48
I'm shouting out your mom because I don't want her to get left out of this equation.

Tim · 1:04:52
Because anytime I do say something negative about my dad, you know, like in raising—

Reggie · 1:04:57
Yeah.

Tim · 1:04:58
It's not because he was a bad father, you know, he was a great father.

Reggie · 1:05:00
Right.

Tim · 1:05:01
But me and him had this conversation because he loves that our country was a Christian nation. Whether or not anyone agrees with that or not is not what I'm trying to discuss here, but he— I tell him that, and he wants it to be more of a Christian nation. So I tell him, Dad, if you imagine someone else on the other side of the the aisle wants a Muslim nation, and they want it. They believe in it. They love— they have love, they have all this stuff, but they want a Muslim nation. Would you want to live in their Muslim nation if they got their way?

Reggie · 1:05:34
So what did he say?

Tim · 1:05:34
Your way, it's like them being forced to live in Christianity, just like you're being forced— you would have been forced to live in Muslim.

Reggie · 1:05:41
What was his response?

Tim · 1:05:42
It just— it's, it's a whole— it's a long discussion. It ends up heated. But the point is, is that when you get to a place of defining a vision, you must require everyone who doesn't want to live under that vision as in some kind of consequence. You must punish them to abide, to make an abidance to the vision. So when you say—

Reggie · 1:06:02
Which sounds horrible.

Tim · 1:06:03
You start to say everyone must live under these standards. This is what every cult or religion does. We are too big to force someone that this is the general good. No one agrees agrees on what the general good is.

Reggie · 1:06:14
No, I disagree, actually.

Tim · 1:06:16
It's too many people. People have different perspectives.

Reggie · 1:06:18
I disagree, and I'll push back on the one part that, for instance, I took a world religions class in college. My dad, as you know, is super religious. He's like a deacon, teaches Sunday school, Christian Southern Baptist. We would have conversations, and that time when I was in world religion, I had all of these lenses that I was looking at religion through. One of the biggest things that I noticed was that there was a common ground. Every single religion believed that you should be good. Do unto others. Yeah, do unto— there were a lot of common threads that I think we can all agree on. One of the things I was actually able to push back on my dad, because he is Christianity first, and if you don't believe in Christianity, then you're going to hell, and if you don't believe exactly as we believe and exactly how this Bible says we should believe, then you're going to hell. I'm like, well, how does this thing— why should this book discount this book? And these people are doing all the same things and have all their own beliefs that are good and wholesome. Like, how are you going to say— how can you be so pretentious to say that this is the only way? And then he started to, like, back up and open up a little bit to the idea that maybe there should be a freedom of religion as long as we can agree that you shouldn't kill people and you shouldn't, you know, do certain things.

Tim · 1:07:45
There is technically freedom of religion.

Reggie · 1:07:47
That's what there should be.

Tim · 1:07:48
My point is, it is—

Reggie · 1:07:49
that is here. But people push back that we should have a Christian— that there should be a separation of church and state.

Craig · 1:07:55
Earlier, though, about if somebody sets a vision for anything and there are people who don't believe in that vision, then they're going to be compromised in some way, right? Tim 1:08:05 [MIC=Tim margin=1.85 — diarizer said Reggie] Right.

Craig · 1:08:05
I mean, that's true, right? So in a company, if you don't believe in the vision, you leave, right?

Reggie · 1:08:10
Yeah, you go to a different company.

Craig · 1:08:11
The question is, okay, as the leader of that company, how do you make the vision broad enough? Craig 1:08:18 [MIC=Craig margin=2.38 — diarizer said Reggie] Yes, still accomplish your goal.

Craig · 1:08:20
Exactly. And include as many people as possible.

Reggie · 1:08:22
Yeah.

Craig · 1:08:22
And in that case, if you don't want to be a part of it, fine.

Tim · 1:08:25
Right. I would say that's what America has done, though. They diluted it down to the—

Craig · 1:08:28
well, we've done A vision on the right and a vision on the left.

Reggie · 1:08:30
Oh yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, the right is trying to make it a Christian nation. Like, the whole Project 25 thing is about Christian values.

Tim · 1:08:38
That's what I'm saying. Yeah, the way you go about your goal, yeah, is what defines people's buy-in, right? Like, everyone believes—

Reggie · 1:08:45
You can't force them into it.

Tim · 1:08:46
I mean, 99.9% of people believe we should be good to each other. Yeah, and if you've raised a child, knows that this is the truth. Totally. Or anyone that's been a child, and we've all been children. I'm not saying that we don't all have agreement on some surface level.

Reggie · 1:08:59
It should be about those—

Tim · 1:09:01
When you thread it to the depth.

Reggie · 1:09:02
Yeah.

Tim · 1:09:03
When you enforce it, that's a different subject. Some fathers spank their children. Some fathers put their children timeout. Some fathers don't speak to their children, give them the cold treatment. They all want them to— They have good intention to make them good citizens, good humans. But they all do it differently. And you will say or I will say, that's a wrong way of parenting. So someone in the country will say that's the wrong way of countrying, or of enforcing the goal we're going towards. So you have to— you can't just state, we just all have to believe in love, and all you need is love, and everyone be good to each other. It has to be enforced and executed.

Craig · 1:09:34
Yeah, but I do think, I mean, that's any country anywhere in the world, any organization anywhere in the world. You have to have a vision that is alluring, that is emotionally connected to as many people as possible, See, that's what—

Reggie · 1:09:47
because you have to create a country that is values-based, not religion-based. You can't say you have to be Christian. You can say, though, you have to be good. You can't kill people. You can't steal.

Craig · 1:09:57
Crossing the line of religion. I'm just saying, like, somebody needs to set a vision for the future of our country. You know, ask not what you can— the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Right. These are people who've said certain things at certain times that aggregate a passion for what— how to move forward in the world. And, you know, hope and change— there's different messages. They're not— they don't all get executed. And of course, certain things are making our country more polarized, i.e., social media and bots and algorithms.

Reggie · 1:10:29
Bots and algorithms. Yeah, absolutely.

Craig · 1:10:31
So there's lots of policy decisions that could be made to lessen the polarities and, and bring a more unified vision. But somebody still has to take the lead on the unified vision. And we're not— to your point, Mary, we're not seeing that.

Mary · 1:10:43
Yeah. And I think it's interesting whenever somebody talks about as broad a message as possible that's trying to appeal to gen pop, so to speak, I get kind of like my hackles get raised because I don't truly believe that we will all—

Reggie · 1:10:56
Your hackles?

Mary · 1:10:57
Completely. All my hackles. Mary 1:10:58 [MIC=Mary margin=1.63 — diarizer said Craig] Just 4 of them.

Mary · 1:11:00
That we're going to— but I don't think that it's actually feasible that we're all going to completely fall in line. And so when I start to think about brands, I'm like, you don't want to appeal to gen pop even within your employee set. You don't want to be that broad. That's the point. But I do think politically, like you're saying, you got to have a broad— if we want to maintain the borders that we currently have. Yeah. We want to be unified in our infrastructure or our ways of spending money, at least. Yeah. We got to start including more people.

Reggie · 1:11:30
You have to have a broader—

Craig · 1:11:32
As long as everybody's anonymous. And that takes us back to where we're at.

Tim · 1:11:36
I mean, you could ask, what does anonymity bring to this vision?

Mary · 1:11:40
That would be great at the beginning of the episode.

Reggie · 1:11:42
But I'm just— Yeah, we can't get into that for another hour.

Tim · 1:11:46
It's an interesting collision of things.

Mary · 1:11:50
Say it again, because I do want to— let's play it out. Mary 1:11:52 [MIC=Mary margin=1.76 — diarizer said Tim] I can't remember. I'll have to record it.

Mary · 1:11:53
Oh, I'm so sorry. Well, if only we were recording this.

Craig · 1:11:56
What do you see in the—

Reggie · 1:11:57
If only we were recording this.

Tim · 1:11:59
How do they work?

Mary · 1:12:01
It's— wow. Yeah, I think that there's a place for anonymity. I think that it's leading to some good stuff and also some bad stuff. Some people might say pros and cons.

Tim · 1:12:10
Exactly. I heard this recently.

Craig · 1:12:12
The founders of our country wrote pamphlets anonymously to distribute them in the community to rise up against a tyranny. Yeah. So there is a positive power of anonymity. Yeah, there's also a negative power of anonymity when it's used—

Tim · 1:12:29
Make those pamphlets to put Jewish people into camps.

Craig · 1:12:32
The British didn't feel like the anonymity was a good thing. They wanted to find out who was writing those pamphlets so they could hang them as a traitor.

Reggie · 1:12:39
Right, right, right.

Mary · 1:12:40
So it depends on—

Craig · 1:12:41
everything depends on the perspective of where you're coming from.

Reggie · 1:12:43
It's all about perspective.

Tim · 1:12:44
And what you're willing to do to get there. Reggie 1:12:45 [MIC=Reggie margin=6.47 — diarizer said Mary] Yeah. Reggie 1:12:46 [MIC=Reggie margin=1.87 — diarizer said Craig] Why you'll compromise.

Mary · 1:12:48
Well, that's— I think that's about enough to call an episode. What do you think?

Reggie · 1:12:53
I think so. I think that was a really good episode.

Craig · 1:12:57
Really good. Mary 1:12:59 [MIC=Mary margin=1.60 — diarizer said Reggie] Greg, thank you for being on today.

Mary · 1:13:01
As we knew, you've added so much and continue to add so much to the world of 40 Hearts. And I'll let you know when we draw your topic.

Craig · 1:13:11
Maybe we'll have you back and the day will come. Stoicism.

Mary · 1:13:14
Yeah, yeah. Thank you all for watching or listening. Thank you for listening wherever you are. If you're just listening and you're wondering, who are those men speaking? I can't tell them apart. I would invite you to go to YouTube. You can tell a bigger difference there. And we hope to see you next time. Take care.

Reggie · 1:13:31
Thanks, guys. Hope you enjoyed the conversation.

Mary · 1:13:33
We got a lot of—

Reggie · 1:13:36
That was good. I will say this.

Craig · 1:13:39
We didn't say the other things. What makes you—

Reggie · 1:13:41
We did. We naturally went through those.

Mary · 1:13:44
I try to pull it up and then sometimes