Government, Theater & The Fights We Don't Finish

Tim · 0:00
Reggie, well, we're gonna do our favorite parts. I'm gonna start with you, Reggie.

Reggie · 0:03
What was your favorite part? My favorite part was sitting back and watching Tim and Anthony kind of go at it.

Tim · 0:08
Oh no.

Anthony · 0:09
My favorite part was having Tim onboard me into the vision.

Tim · 0:13
Uh, I'll do 2. My favorite part was Tim bringing what I sort of took as a more humanist approach to critical thinking, and then I really liked Mary's idealism— or not idealism, I don't want to say, but like what she interpreted as the idealistic viewpoint of what the Founding Fathers meant and how she said she got—

Reggie · 0:40
she would—

Tim · 0:41
it would make her emotional. I think I thought that was beautiful.

Reggie · 0:43
That's fair.

Tim · 0:44
Mary, what do you think about that?

Mary · 0:45
I love—

Tim · 0:45
No, I'm just kidding.

Reggie · 0:46
What's your favorite part?

Mary · 0:47
I loved, uh, we really had a battle of hearts and minds. for America, and I think we won.

Tim · 0:54
America won!

Anthony · 0:56
We won.

Tim · 0:57
Mine was actually you, Mary. I loved how you brought the 4 things. And so if you're watching, watch for the 4 things.

Mary · 1:04
He said he loved how I brought the 4 things.

Reggie · 1:07
Watch for me.

Mary · 1:09
Yeah, I think with, um— oh God, I need to Google that.

Anthony · 1:15
Oh, you mean like not the thing itself that people go through?

Mary · 1:18
No, there's a show.

Tim · 1:19
You've heard of couples therapy.

Mary · 1:20
And Even Deeper. Um, what's her name? It's like saying, what's that General anesthesia. No, there's this lady and there's this guy who does incredible impressions of her on the internet.

Tim · 1:31
We're about to clapperboard it. Welcome to AGE.

Mary · 1:36
Was he even out of frame before you said that?

Tim · 1:40
And I'm just welcoming everyone.

Mary · 1:41
We're here. I'm so glad.

Anthony · 1:42
Which stands for Another Glorified Episode. Welcome back.

Tim · 1:46
This is AGE, short for—

Reggie · 1:47
I thought you were going for a topic.

Tim · 1:49
We're an agency in Asheville, North Carolina. We get together every Tuesday. to talk about something randomly chosen out of this trash can. It is a magic trash can. Not much different than like a Harry Potter house hat. It chooses what we talk about today. And that being the case, we can't really make any notes or prepare in any way for this conversation.

Reggie · 2:09
It's totally unscripted.

Tim · 2:10
Unscripted to the max.

Reggie · 2:11
Are we recording?

Tim · 2:12
To the max. To the max. So, For those that don't understand what happens on this podcast, because it is different than the other podcasts out there, just know that we're friends that get together to talk long enough to get into something that really is the fiber, the fabric of life, which are complicated subjects, things we believe, things we don't believe, things that are hard, and then some things that are really just funny. And Reggie will joke about things. Mary will laugh.

Mary · 2:47
Sometimes Reggie jokes about things.

Reggie · 2:48
I get to take the day off because Anthony's here.

Tim · 2:49
Yeah. Introduce Anthony.

Anthony · 2:52
Hello.

Tim · 2:53
He is a mediographer.

Anthony · 2:56
That's a general catchphrase for undecided.

Tim · 2:59
Like a lot of us creatives.

Mary · 3:02
In the school of life.

Anthony · 3:03
A sprawled Renaissance man with attention deficit disorder.

Mary · 3:07
Oh, our favorite type.

Tim · 3:09
Welcome. Thank you.

Reggie · 3:10
Did you say age attention deficit disorder?

Anthony · 3:12
I might have plugged in your product a little prematurely. I figure anything with an A, I'll just use the word age.

Reggie · 3:19
There you go.

Anthony · 3:20
My name is Age Cabrera. Hi, how are you?

Tim · 3:23
All right. My name is Tim. I'll be your main host. This is—

Reggie · 3:28
Reggie Tidwell.

Mary · 3:29
And Mary Greene.

Tim · 3:30
Great to be here. So we're going to pull a topic. No, I want to ask you a question first. This is what I like to do with our guests. I like to surprise them with this question.

Anthony · 3:36
Feels like an ambush, but go on.

Tim · 3:38
Yeah, do it. You ready for it?

Anthony · 3:39
No.

Tim · 3:39
It's not an ambush now. I'm readying you.

Anthony · 3:41
You're the one that's ready. How can I be ready for the uncertain? Are you ready for that thing you don't know about?

Tim · 3:47
Yeah, this is a good question. How can I be ready for the uncertain? I love that.

Reggie · 3:51
That's not the question.

Tim · 3:52
I like that too. Or is it? I just wanted to register that.

Reggie · 3:54
That's not the question.

Tim · 3:55
Take it. Now, what are you obsessed with most in your life right now?

Reggie · 3:58
That's the question.

Anthony · 3:59
Obsessed?

Tim · 4:00
Obsessed. I don't know.

Anthony · 4:03
You mean like in terms of like needing clinical assistance to get out of it?

Tim · 4:07
Maybe close. I mean, who doesn't in this world right now?

Anthony · 4:10
Well, it sounds like a conflated hyperbolic way of presenting What I'm interested in? Or are you really asking me about what I'm having dark closeted thoughts?

Tim · 4:23
And if you were willing to share that, I think we'd all love to know. We're all here to heal together.

Mary · 4:28
I mean, is there an intersection? Is there a Venn diagram? Can we get both?

Anthony · 4:31
It's more like, is there a Venn diagram? No, the pies are pretty much right on top of each other, actually.

Mary · 4:37
There's space for this here.

Anthony · 4:38
There's space for this here. All right, I'll answer. I'll get grounded. Slightly. My obsession has been lately in leaving all the stuff that actually Reggie and I have always been involved with, which has been the photography, the media stuff like videographer, and making a switch over to theater.

Tim · 5:01
And— You're in the right couch.

Reggie · 5:02
You are on the right couch.

Anthony · 5:03
Why?

Tim · 5:04
Why?

Anthony · 5:04
What's going on?

Reggie · 5:04
Because Mary has a huge theater background.

Mary · 5:06
Great to meet you, Anthony.

Tim · 5:07
Great to meet you too.

Mary · 5:08
Thanks for being on the show.

Anthony · 5:09
I know why we're both here. I have no idea why they're here, but—

Mary · 5:13
This is our launch of the spinoff podcast. Yeah.

Anthony · 5:17
So we have an announcement.

Tim · 5:18
The theater nerds.

Reggie · 5:19
We're leaving. We're getting kicked off the ship.

Anthony · 5:22
Live.

Reggie · 5:23
Live.

Tim · 5:23
This is age like you've never seen it before.

Anthony · 5:25
Luckily, this is shot with one camera, so we get to see the exit.

Mary · 5:30
Get in.

Anthony · 5:31
But soon her and I will have our own long chairs.

Mary · 5:34
We'll both be laying back. We'll have Tim and Reggie feeding us grapes and fanning us with palm fronds.

Reggie · 5:41
I'll feed you topics.

Tim · 5:43
I like these being called long chairs instead of sofas.

Reggie · 5:46
Long chairs. I like long chairs.

Tim · 5:49
Sofa is a stretch.

Anthony · 5:51
Is that how it works?

Tim · 5:52
Yeah, you just pick out of here. It's like a lottery.

Anthony · 5:54
I like how it's been diminished into a trash. So I feel like, you know, everything's only going to get better.

Mary · 5:59
We really had to take it down a peg to start out.

Reggie · 6:01
Tim is ad-libbing. Don't show us. You'll pull it, look at it, and you'll walk up and show the camera.

Tim · 6:07
Keep it secret.

Anthony · 6:07
Keep it the whole time?

Mary · 6:09
No. Yeah. New concept.

Reggie · 6:12
Let's go.

Mary · 6:14
I'm sure you'll use charades.

Reggie · 6:14
You'll use charades to get us to figure out what the topic is.

Anthony · 6:18
You know what I'm going to do is be like, all right, her and I will know what it is. And they're like, all right, let's—

Mary · 6:23
Oh, my dream. I think that that would be—

Reggie · 6:25
Look away, Mary.

Mary · 6:26
That would be a really interesting way to manage this.

Tim · 6:30
Oh, sorry. Chicago.

Mary · 6:31
I know.

Reggie · 6:32
Ricky, be ready to—

Mary · 6:33
I'm going to just— I have my phone here.

Reggie · 6:35
Ricky, be ready to look at the camera and make sure that it's in focus. Am I supposed to show this? You'll walk up and show it to the camera.

Anthony · 6:41
Oh, okay.

Tim · 6:41
If you want to, I can do it too.

Anthony · 6:42
In order for this to not present itself as a pre-staged contrivance, I'm going to walk up to the lens so that we all know together. But she's going to know first.

Mary · 6:51
I'm not—

Anthony · 6:52
wait, you're not allowed to?

Reggie · 6:53
Is it only—

Anthony · 6:54
Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.

Mary · 6:56
I kind of saw, but I can't really—

Anthony · 6:57
You don't know what it says. Even I haven't yet figured out what it says.

Tim · 7:00
I'm still unrolling this.

Anthony · 7:02
I still don't know what it says.

Mary · 7:04
Dylan's handwriting is really good. Get closer.

Tim · 7:05
Get closer.

Anthony · 7:08
Closer, closer.

Mary · 7:09
Ibiza.

Tim · 7:12
Got it?

Reggie · 7:12
All right.

Tim · 7:13
Good.

Mary · 7:15
A little longer.

Reggie · 7:16
Wait. What is it?

Anthony · 7:17
No, no, I seriously don't know.

Reggie · 7:18
Come on, come on. You're good.

Anthony · 7:19
No, no, no, no. It says gov.

Mary · 7:22
Government. But she ran out of space at the very end, so it all got kind of crammed together.

Tim · 7:30
It almost looks like govern meat.

Mary · 7:31
It sounds like govern meat.

Anthony · 7:33
I'm part of the, of the Jove remnant.

Tim · 7:35
Oh boy, this could be a good one.

Anthony · 7:39
So luckily nothing too heavy.

Mary · 7:42
All right.

Reggie · 7:42
All right.

Anthony · 7:43
Things are very tranquil and—

Reggie · 7:45
Oh, you did say politics when you're like, we're going to talk about politics and religion.

Mary · 7:49
I thought you were joking, but—

Tim · 7:50
I think when you say things like this, at least—

Mary · 7:53
She hears you.

Anthony · 7:54
She hears you.

Reggie · 7:55
She heard you.

Anthony · 7:56
A trash bin. This is gonna go well.

Mary · 7:59
The goddess of the trash can.

Tim · 8:00
Okay, so we start with the first thing that comes to your mind. Just literally immediately comes to your mind.

Anthony · 8:04
Sure.

Tim · 8:05
Jonathan Dewey.

Reggie · 8:07
Ooh.

Tim · 8:07
Wow.

Anthony · 8:08
He had said something because of the quote.

Mary · 8:11
Because of the quote.

Anthony · 8:12
Well, because you were quoting and we were quoting and we were taking credit until we admitted that, you know—

Mary · 8:17
Do you want me to Google it? Because that's why I kept my phone on my person. If you need a quick little phone a friend.

Anthony · 8:23
You know this guy Nixie?

Mary · 8:25
I actually love a lot of that nihilist shit.

Tim · 8:28
Don't get me started.

Reggie · 8:29
Nietzsche.

Anthony · 8:30
Well, it's like, life looked like gov remnant. So I was like, what is a gov remnant?

Reggie · 8:37
I still don't know what it says.

Anthony · 8:39
But anyway, Jonathan Dewey said that government is the big shadow cast by corporations. So every time I hear government, all I hear is a sort of user experience layer of contrived theater for the populace to feel things are happening or sides are taken when in reality everything's not already— everything is like an assorted backroom already dealt with. But when people have mutualized interest towards accumulating wealth, they usually find themselves working together well because that's the same place.

Mary · 9:16
So yeah, same goal.

Reggie · 9:17
Wow.

Mary · 9:19
We say so many things on this podcast that just hurt me just deeply.

Tim · 9:23
That is—

Mary · 9:23
I think the profound truth of it, like, I don't know how to hold it for a minute.

Anthony · 9:28
I don't know.

Reggie · 9:29
Yeah.

Tim · 9:29
And Mary keeps telling us that brands are going to end up ruling the world by the end of it. And you're saying, it's interesting, you're saying that government has up until now and is still now the frontal puppetry layer behind the brands that are kind of moving things around.

Reggie · 9:45
Yeah.

Anthony · 9:47
I mean, people have—

Tim · 9:47
Government is the chess game. Corporations and brands are the chess players.

Anthony · 9:51
Like, in getting into the theater thing, one thing that's been fascinating me, let's call it an obsession, was the— I'm really into Shakespeare, but what I've been more interested in has been where it came from, like where theater itself, from at least English history, came from. I didn't know that it came from the ends of court, the law schools. And in learning about that it was coming from the law schools, I came to see like, oh, theater is essentially a prosecutionary process. This is just like court. It's just— that's all it is.

Tim · 10:28
It's a performance.

Reggie · 10:29
Yeah.

Anthony · 10:30
It's a performance.

Mary · 10:31
To convince you of something.

Tim · 10:32
Correct.

Mary · 10:33
To persuade you of something.

Tim · 10:34
Yeah.

Mary · 10:35
Right. To ask you to change your behavior as someone.

Tim · 10:37
Stage persuasion.

Anthony · 10:38
That's all it is.

Reggie · 10:38
Stage of persuasion.

Anthony · 10:39
I like that.

Mary · 10:40
Yeah.

Anthony · 10:41
When people say, I support this, or, I support that, generally for me, that's shorthand for, well, then you don't know the argument sufficiently. Because if you know anything sufficiently, if you watch YouTube videos of personality-driven content, you'll notice that it's more about amicable, being receptive and so forth. And there's a lot of kumbaya. And then the moment you're listening to a lecture from a university-grade person who's been studying, say, whatever, game theory, you realize the chasm between the personality who's presenting the notion to the person that knows all the modalities of any niche is that they're more in doubt than the person who's more superficial.

Reggie · 11:29
Exactly. 100%.

Tim · 11:30
You go too deep into something, you get more of that Yeah. Risk, and you, you realize you don't know as much as you think you know.

Reggie · 11:38
100%.

Tim · 11:39
The deeper you dig in.

Mary · 11:39
And it's just more nuanced than we give it credit for. Yeah, get in here, Anthony.

Tim · 11:43
Sorry.

Mary · 11:44
Cheat out, baby.

Anthony · 11:45
I was about to be like, hang on, let me, let me stop being, let me stop being socially awkward.

Mary · 11:50
No, it's fine.

Anthony · 11:51
I should have been more like—

Mary · 11:53
Well, when I, when I'm on, you'll, it'll happen at some point. I'm gonna move this phone.

Anthony · 11:58
Hang on, let me Mad Men myself here.

Mary · 11:59
I, no, I'll end up like—

Anthony · 12:00
Where's my cigarette?

Mary · 12:01
By the end of the episode, I'm like crouched and like I just flopped over, so we're going to start proper.

Reggie · 12:06
Theater people, it's hilarious.

Mary · 12:08
I get that way and I'm actually quite— Welcome to our podcast.

Tim · 12:13
We're watching theater.

Mary · 12:14
You've arrived, fellas.

Reggie · 12:16
We are being entertained. Are you not entertained? Come on.

Anthony · 12:19
This is about governance, man.

Mary · 12:20
You'll get your bit here in a minute.

Reggie · 12:22
Thoroughly entertained.

Mary · 12:23
But I really get so hung up. I preface things all the time. I put a lot of qualifiers on what I say, and I get critique for that because it sounds like I'm trying to soften or that I don't trust my audience or whatever the case may be. But the truth is there's just so much more out there than we're willing to hold most of the time, than we're willing to actually get into. And I find a lot of the debates or the arguments that I'm in, they just never finish is the issue. We're, we're never willing to go all the way to the end of the debate and find the common ground.

Tim · 12:59
Right.

Mary · 12:59
We just get stopped halfway because we won't get past the dogma. So it's— I completely connect with what you're saying.

Tim · 13:06
I've been married 25 years, and one of the reasons I believe I've been successfully married that long—

Mary · 13:12
She left. That was when I looked up, and I was kind of mad that she didn't wait.

Anthony · 13:16
Say whatever you want now.

Reggie · 13:17
Yeah, yeah, you can say.

Tim · 13:19
It's because we fight well.

Reggie · 13:20
Yeah.

Tim · 13:21
And I tell people that are getting married that want to get married, Yeah. You have to learn how to fight well.

Reggie · 13:26
Yeah.

Tim · 13:27
Because if you get stuck on the front of the argument, you develop a bitterness, you develop hurt feelings. And if you can't go all the way through it, you never find each other on the other side of it.

Reggie · 13:38
Yeah.

Tim · 13:39
And I talked to a friend of mine who had just gotten married, and I told them this. They're like, no, that is not true. We do not fight. And I was like, okay.

Anthony · 13:46
Well, they're gonna have to.

Mary · 13:47
Not yet.

Anthony · 13:47
It's gonna end up—

Tim · 13:48
They got split.

Reggie · 13:48
Yeah.

Tim · 13:49
Because you cannot stay together. And I think we're seeing this in government in our country, if you can't fight well together, then you're never going to survive. One side will outdo the other side every time, and that only leads to the end.

Reggie · 14:03
And you know what, you know what came up for me, and I think it speaks to what you're saying, when you— to fight well, you need to learn how— see, I'm gonna go micro here— you need to learn how to govern yourself. So when I am in arguments with my wife, I am being very particular to her response to things. So I'm governing my reactions. Because, you know, in arguments, you can get heated up, and you can like— but if you're not self-governing your responses and your, your, your just candor, you can make the whole thing escalate and not do very well. And so I've always credited my ability to have so many friends and so many relationships with my ability to sort of govern myself. Like, I don't need to be right all the time. I don't need to be the biggest voice in the room. And sometimes that means yielding. Sometimes that means, you know, taking the L, but keeping the friendship, which ultimately for me is the win.

Tim · 14:58
And wouldn't you guys believe on that note that the US government, government was set up to make self-governance more of a reality? Isn't that what— didn't we leave the kings? rulership so we could rule.

Mary · 15:12
And if you were a man and you were white and you owned property, and you were a Christian in the right way.

Tim · 15:18
Okay, so given the restraints of the time, I know there are some issues that have evolved, but wasn't the premise to be less governed by the government? So imagine someone's over you in Paris while you're arguing and is your government. No, you can't say that to her. No, you can't do this type of motion. You can't wear that or you can't Oh yeah. The governance over people governing themselves. I feel like that was the mission of the US being formed. I mean, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, all these things.

Anthony · 15:50
I know, if you go into like things like more granulated, like in terms of like the Hamilton Papers and the Federalist Papers, you know, they're pretty explicit. This is about an experiment of protecting the landowners from the people that don't have land. That's very primary. Also, you know, it's interesting that this experiment, which you're correctly framing as like, then we all do this so that we can have self-governance, then we try to create the most recursive democratic, you know, exchange. Yeah, and it also did it in the place where all the outcast religion that was the most intolerant situated themselves first.

Tim · 16:25
Mm-hmm.

Anthony · 16:26
So it provided this interesting bedrock to say, well, you're going to have to deal with people that have made it a, modicum of their morality not to bend even with good arguments. And that's where things start to become religious in nature. So what's interesting is that that battle has only embittered because the only way out of that is if you improve your means of argument and you improve your means of obviously education, orienting yourself to the nuances of anything.

Reggie · 16:56
Yeah.

Anthony · 16:56
You can't, not if you want to say you are to your point about I have to hedge my language before I make my claim, which is another way of saying everybody has already picked their tribal sides, and I've already discerned I'll take the L, and so forth, right?

Reggie · 17:15
Mm-hmm.

Anthony · 17:15
And it's one of those, like, what's— it's starting to become a weird kind of sordid Machiavellianism, because what you're doing now is like, Alan Watts used to have this term called the hintagadanta, which is about perception, and you could look at something and say, that's me looking at that. Then you go, no, there's also the thought of me that is aware that is looking at that. Then there's one more which is called the hintagadanta, which is the one that is observing the fact that there was an observation to be made while the observation was at hand.

Reggie · 17:39
Interesting. There's layers.

Tim · 17:42
That will get you all mixed up in there.

Mary · 17:45
This is why he's like, I'm focused on theater right now.

Reggie · 17:47
I have no choice.

Mary · 17:49
It's all a performance. You have to at some point acknowledge that you're playing the character that is whatever you decided you were however many years ago.

Reggie · 17:57
Yeah. It's so funny.

Tim · 17:59
Go ahead. Go ahead. You go.

Anthony · 18:02
You go, bro.

Reggie · 18:02
I was just going to say it's funny because Paris and I are going to a— one of our friends is turning 40 and they're having a murder mystery dinner party tomorrow night.

Mary · 18:13
Are you going as a character?

Reggie · 18:14
I'm going as a character. And I got my email with all of the, here's who I am, here's my role, here's how to play the character.

Mary · 18:23
Definitely wear a fedora.

Reggie · 18:24
And I don't know if that character calls for it, but I was going to say— Really throw them off.

Anthony · 18:29
Come on, boy, wear a yarmulke.

Tim · 18:30
What if we—

Anthony · 18:31
Really throw them off. Really throw them off.

Tim · 18:33
Now we're talking.

Anthony · 18:34
Come on.

Reggie · 18:35
What if we got those in life? What if like every day you woke up and you got this like little thing that's like, welcome to your day, Reggie. Here's how you're gonna play your character today.

Tim · 18:44
How many politicians do you think wake up with that?

Reggie · 18:46
I'm sure. It's like—

Tim · 18:48
I don't understand it.

Reggie · 18:48
I mean, the reality is the way our political system is set up, that is exactly how they live. They're like, I have to say a certain thing. I have to stand by a certain thing, even if it doesn't align with my personal beliefs, if I want to still make money, still support—

Tim · 19:05
Get voted in.

Reggie · 19:06
Get voted in, stay in power, then this is the script that I have to play.

Tim · 19:10
And how different is this than brands?

Reggie · 19:12
That's true. It's very true. Brands have to— You wake up, you wear the clothes. You wear the clothes.

Tim · 19:16
Say the right things in the guidelines.

Reggie · 19:17
To get the right people, to sell the right things, to make the money.

Tim · 19:20
Right. When you do something to get the support of the public, you have to play the part. And I've heard people say, We talked about this recently about authenticity. We're all obsessed with authenticity. I think the whole market is obsessed with authenticity.

Mary · 19:32
Absolutely.

Tim · 19:33
AI coming in and just social media as a full-on experience. But who really wants someone to be fully authentic? Do we? So like, if you went to the doctor and the doctor woke up and had a bad day, would you want the doctor to be authentic about his bad day and kind of like disgruntled and kind of pissy? And he's being authentically himself, or do you want him to play the part of the best doctor?

Mary · 19:57
Do I have a choice about what other doctor to go to?

Tim · 20:00
I mean, maybe, unless you have been trusting this doctor for years of your life. I don't know. Like, my, my wife loves to go to the same doctor, so there's cohesion in the—

Mary · 20:09
For me, I think it comes down to, I want you to be authentic. I don't want to have to be around you. Yeah. This might be a good day for the doctor to call off. As long as I can get separation if I need to and protect a boundary, if what you're doing doesn't jive with me, that's great. But in the doctor example, I don't have a longstanding relationship with a doctor. God, I wish I did. Megan, when you're done— sorry, Alex's sister's in med school. When you're done, I can't wait for you to be all of our person. But I don't have a longstanding relationship with a doctor. Finding a doctor is so challenging. By the time I found a doctor that works with my insurance, it's within the— So I think that a lot of the reasons why authenticity falls apart for me personally is because I'm forced into proximity with people that maybe are unwell, or maybe are— I mean, I'm just gonna say unwell because I don't really think that people—

Anthony · 21:03
You're gonna hedge your language.

Tim · 21:04
I hedge your language.

Mary · 21:05
Well, I do believe it's the truth.

Anthony · 21:07
I'm about to get insulted. No, I'm just kidding.

Reggie · 21:09
Go ahead.

Mary · 21:09
No, I just don't believe that people are evil, and I think that if you are taking it personally, you need some distance from it.

Reggie · 21:17
And I think the human condition, we all make mistakes. We all have bad days. And I think if a doctor came in and was just honest with me and was like, I've really had a bad day, would you be okay if we postpone this surgery for another day?

Tim · 21:29
That's—

Reggie · 21:30
I might be like, okay, that's totally fine. I would rather you do that than fake it and be really upset and like mess something up inside.

Tim · 21:38
Right? No, that's a good point. I like that, that view.

Anthony · 21:41
I would probably— I would want— I think The common denominator between the two seems to be, like, you just— when you say authentic, you just mean somebody to be transparent. And transparency is that the emotional gamut of experience for a human is gonna fluctuate and change. The thing that unnerves me, and I have a really close associate that I work with, and I call it the HR voice. Oh, I've got a good one.

Reggie · 22:10
Oh, we're gonna—

Anthony · 22:12
Lifting for the sky, like, you know, as pessimism crushes them down, they still reach as high as they can for the optimistic note, like some sort of looting leprechaun or something. It's like, no, that's causing anxiety in both of us now, because what you've just done is sign me up to a play that I don't know the lines to.

Mary · 22:32
I made some rules of engagement, and if you break them, there will be consequences.

Reggie · 22:37
This is the oblivious optimist, I think. Oblivious optimist.

Mary · 22:41
Or the violent optimist.

Anthony · 22:43
Or the MacGyver.

Mary · 22:43
The person who's trying to oppress me with their optimism.

Anthony · 22:46
Oh my God. There's nothing worse than a person who's policy forward rather than—

Tim · 22:50
Yeah. So who sets these rules?

Reggie · 22:51
At all costs.

Anthony · 22:52
What's that?

Tim · 22:52
Who sets these rules?

Mary · 22:54
Whoever screams the loudest.

Tim · 22:55
No, no. Whoever has the most money.

Reggie · 22:57
Sure.

Tim · 22:58
Because if you're running a brand and you have HR, you need the HR to run it a certain way. You can't have people going outside the lines.

Reggie · 23:04
Money and power.

Tim · 23:04
Money and power. In government, I mean, I would say— I was going to say my first reaction was there's low-hanging fruit. And I know we've dreaded talking about Trump this whole time.

Anthony · 23:13
Let's do it.

Tim · 23:14
I do think, though, that what you brought up at the beginning, to me, starts to make sense with what Trump is doing in that he seems to be colliding what you said was the back end, the corporations, with the government, with the front end. And that is offensive to the way we've understood government to be run. He's not abiding by, like, the theater of, I'm gonna act like I'm a good politician while corporations wreck us. He's literally just going to wreck us. And I don't want to cause divisiveness in our listeners and in us. I think that—

Reggie · 23:47
Hold hands, everybody.

Tim · 23:48
He is what he is, and we can all say a bunch about him, but I'm just noticing there's something interesting happening where it's like breaking through this facade that the government has been my whole life.

Anthony · 23:57
Which in a way is a corrective measure. Just because he had— I mean, just to give it a bit of nuance, yes, his bedside manner leaves a lot to be appreciated. He has broken the mirage of not only control, or like, he's broken— when he first won, the thing that happened to me was like, wow, some monarchical view of the presidency in general went away. I go, he's not a king. He's not this person with a lineage that I don't understand. He's literally a television personality. And I know Reagan is another one too, but—

Tim · 24:37
But we were not.

Anthony · 24:39
I mean, I wasn't—

Reggie · 24:40
I was young. I was—

Tim · 24:40
yeah, I was very young. Yeah. I was like—

Mary · 24:41
Fun fact, I was almost named Reagan for that reason.

Tim · 24:43
Were you?

Anthony · 24:44
Really?

Tim · 24:44
Megan was almost named Reagan.

Reggie · 24:46
That's why— Reagan Reagan.

Mary · 24:46
Reagan Reagan.

Tim · 24:47
It's spelled like Reagan.

Mary · 24:48
One day. Well, let's get into homophones.

Tim · 24:49
Next week's episode, Reagan.

Anthony · 24:51
We're going to get into homophones.

Tim · 24:53
Sorry.

Mary · 24:53
Go ahead. Don't get going on linguistics either. You'll never get out. No, never.

Reggie · 24:58
Sorry.

Tim · 24:58
Keep saying what you were saying though.

Reggie · 24:59
Megan Reagan.

Anthony · 25:00
She's going to start twitching. But no, it's like I look at it and say, yeah, I don't really share honestly into like the mainstream notion of the outrage because I'm like, When you look at the legacy of presidents that have gone, you know, before us, and you read what they've done, though they had an amazing disposition to present themselves as professionals, they still did terrible things, or they still pushed legislation that is highly controversial. So when people are enamored, let's say, with like— and I liked him because I voted for him twice, you know, Obama— I go, there is a distinction between what presents well for the mainstream and what actually is going on in the throes of power. And what the distinction is, is what I think Trump has erased. And he has made it absolutely apparent that inside this room are hyenas.

Tim · 25:50
Right.

Anthony · 25:51
And he's one of them too.

Tim · 25:53
He's thrown back that veil.

Anthony · 25:54
That's it.

Mary · 25:55
Can I also, if you think about, I love this connection between, I don't love it, but I acknowledge, and I think that I love that we're owning it in this room. Like, we can share an actual reality here, even if we We can't say the truth outside this room.

Anthony · 26:10
I'll be angry later.

Mary · 26:11
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think— and I want you to be angry here if that's how you actually feel, and make sure we get it on camera. But I—

Reggie · 26:18
That's not the angry chair though.

Mary · 26:20
Yeah, you're not allowed to be angry.

Anthony · 26:21
I like how she's like, we're here to harvest your emotions.

Mary · 26:23
Yeah.

Tim · 26:24
Come on, react.

Mary · 26:26
Name a job where we're not, baby.

Tim · 26:28
I know.

Mary · 26:29
My thing with the divide between brand and government, which is a very thin veil that, as you say, has been falling. is that government also is sort of the American brand as represented to the rest of the world.

Tim · 26:42
That's so true.

Mary · 26:43
So in many ways, and I hate what I'm about to say.

Anthony · 26:46
Oh, this is gonna be great.

Mary · 26:47
But in many ways, Trump has approached, you know, leading the United States as if he's running a huge corporation. He's cleaning up internal operations and he's sending Doge in to cut the whatever, trim the fat. We're doing the layoffs thing just like corporations do. And outwardly, we're projecting this image of strength. We're striking deals in closed-door rooms, laying bets on who we think is actually going to corner the market, who actually has power. We're not going to name any names. But I think that it's forcing a lot of traditionally peacekeeping bodies or governments who have been seen as quite neutral into conversation with something like this.

Reggie · 27:29
Mm-hmm.

Mary · 27:30
And they're being faced with, OK, Global resources are being negotiated for right now. Water, land, water and land, those are pretty much essentials of life.

Tim · 27:42
And minerals for technology.

Mary · 27:46
What was it? Raw earth, rare earth elements.

Tim · 27:49
Rare earth elements.

Mary · 27:50
What a weird thing to say.

Tim · 27:51
That is a whole different subject.

Mary · 27:52
But you— but these things are the currency that's currently being negotiated amongst the nations. We happen to have a large mass of land. I say have. We happen to have stolen a large mass of land.

Anthony · 28:05
By the way, everything historically, if you go down the line, has always been stolen. Everything has been one conquesting chapter after another. It's been a Darwinian episodic back and forth.

Mary · 28:18
And because possession is a lie, baby.

Anthony · 28:20
We all die. I've heard of this. I don't want to bring up the next thing in the trash. Death is hopefully the next one. No, go ahead.

Mary · 28:26
I mean, I can't even remember.

Reggie · 28:28
Death is inevitable.

Tim · 28:29
Death kind of comes up almost every episode.

Mary · 28:31
Point being, if there's someone heading the brand that is the nation, I am— I won't say forced. I'm fortunate enough that if I needed to get on a plane and go somewhere, I probably could finagle that. But I have an investment in this brand. I'll cry if you get me talking about the founding fathers. They were shitheads. But when I talk about the dream, like you were saying, Tim, oh, I'll cry because I see the beauty in that supposed vision. And I really wish I lived in an idealistic world where that could come to be. But when I think about who I want to represent the United States, do I wish they were a little more feminine, nuanced, subtle in the way that they navigated? Yes. But do I want strength? Do I want safety for my family? Do I want to feel like I won't be targeted or that if I am targeted, there will be consequences?

Anthony · 29:22
I do.

Mary · 29:23
And I think that that's a lot of particularly conservative people get their hackles up because they feel attacked or they feel unprotected. And so somebody who postures with that kind of strength does a lot for them, I think. So, so government being not only the, the chess game, but also a player of its own in the world.

Anthony · 29:48
I mean, just to keep a little weird situ— like, a little situational awareness in all this too. It's like, you know, for the last, what is it, 70 years, 80 years, like, the— what the bargain on the table has been is that the United States will essentially command the seas and regulate trade. That's been a very expensive enterprise. We provide a shroud of protection for nations that reap the benefits of our free trade. unfettered commerce.

Mary · 30:16
Oh, and Trump talks about this.

Reggie · 30:18
Mm-hmm.

Mary · 30:19
Yeah.

Reggie · 30:19
He does.

Anthony · 30:19
So, and I'm not saying like he's— there's plenty to say that that's true. Like that aspect of it is true.

Mary · 30:26
He likes to use it as leverage is what I'm trying to say.

Reggie · 30:28
Yeah, yeah, he does.

Tim · 30:29
Which makes the whole Strait of Hormuz—

Reggie · 30:35
Strait of Hormuz.

Tim · 30:36
Makes it more of a—

Mary · 30:37
Strait of Hormozy? What the fuck did you just say? No, I'm sorry.

Tim · 30:42
I almost say that actually. I probably say that name more than I say the Strait of Hormuz.

Reggie · 30:45
Or moose.

Anthony · 30:46
Or moose.

Reggie · 30:47
That's what it is.

Tim · 30:48
Makes that more of a touchy subject if this is the—

Anthony · 30:51
It's a disruptor.

Tim · 30:52
Right, it's a disruptor. It's like the first time that someone's challenged this control and this power.

Anthony · 30:57
No, Cuba's done it. We have a whole litany of South American history of America that is not very favorable leaning. Like, it's like we weren't always— this country has not always worn the white hat. In fact, it's much to say We've worn plenty of it. We have had many episodes where we were wearing the dark hats. Cuba, the Sandinista revolutions, you can go down the line. But the whole catch-all of it is that there is a refactoring, an economic refactoring that's going on here, like a big code base of how we've always run Windows 3.1 for 80 years.

Tim · 31:36
Yeah.

Mary · 31:37
And in the government's case, literally.

Anthony · 31:39
Well, they just got XP, and things are really looking up now.

Tim · 31:45
upgrade happening.

Anthony · 31:46
They got that green meadow.

Mary · 31:47
Oh, oh yeah. That's very soothing, as I recall.

Tim · 31:51
It's interesting you bring this up because I was talking to someone about technology in government. And what he was saying was the, the ability to get the work. So there was this big movement with Obama to redesign government sites and government brands so that it was more user— user accessibility was increased. We know as brand strategists, Right, and I loved seeing it, but what— he worked for a company that actually saved health.gov because it was, it was failing, and his company came in and saved that website. But he said that he pulled out of government work because he said majority of the time the people who are good at winning the work win the work. It's not these people who care about UX or design or brand.

Reggie · 32:33
They're not the right people to win the work. They just, they're good at winning but not good at executing the problem-solving.

Tim · 32:39
Yeah, they're good at winning the work and they backfill the creative. It's not— or the talent or the engineers. I agree with you.

Mary · 32:45
Totally.

Tim · 32:46
And that's interesting to me because when you put that value, how do you get to the end result? Because it's coming through the money, right? Who's good at getting the work is good at getting the money.

Reggie · 32:59
Yeah, backfill it with people that actually care. You're not the one that cares.

Tim · 33:04
And this is why they say nice guys finish last. People that actually care Don't win the project. Don't know how to win the work.

Reggie · 33:09
Yeah.

Tim · 33:10
Why is that? Why do we have this consistent breakdown? Is there some kind of moral deficiency you have to walk yourself into to break into—

Reggie · 33:20
I think there is a certain type of viciousness or almost just rigorous—

Mary · 33:30
Ruthless.

Reggie · 33:33
Yeah, there's like a ruthlessness, ruthlessness involved in acquiring these kinds of projects.

Tim · 33:39
You—

Reggie · 33:39
one, you have to be the loudest voice in the room. You are probably leveraging every possible angle you can. So you know someone and you're really like pushing them to get you FaceTime. You're, you're having to make some steps to get the approach because you want to win. You want to win the project. But what's driving you is not, we really want to make a better user experience, we know how to do this. We know, we know how to win. If what you're saying, that must be what's driving them. But then once they win, I don't know how you get someone in position to actually do meaningful work that solves a problem unless, you know, you just hire the right people. I know Mary's got some thoughts because I can see it in her face.

Mary · 34:23
I can't speak for Anthony, but of the 4 people— No, no, go ahead. I'll let you know.

Anthony · 34:28
I've been wanting to hear what I've been wanting to know what I thought this whole time.

Mary · 34:33
I would say of the 4 people on camera right now, I'm the one with the least issues being a salesman. And that's sort of funny if you think about it. But I, my take on it is the people who are winning the work, yeah, there's probably some people who are doing it for the thrill of the win who they don't really care if the work gets done.

Reggie · 34:52
Right.

Mary · 34:52
They wanna see their numbers, they want their commission. But my thought, especially in the creative services space, is that most people who are going to win that work, they have it as a personal mission for the good of the world, for the good of their team. They may be— you can tell yourself a story, whether it's true or not, that, hey, my team really needs to win this work. I got to feed these people, make sure they have a job. We are great at this. I believe in them to make it happen. I don't need to be the one to make it happen. I'm going to go write the check and they're going to be able to cash it kind of thing. They're going to be able to show up for what I put down. That does create a ton of tension internally at the company that's trying to sell. And I've been a part of a lot of those conversations, usually on the account management side where I'm like, you promised what on what timeline?

Reggie · 35:42
Yeah.

Mary · 35:43
With what budget?

Tim · 35:44
Yeah.

Mary · 35:44
And so I think there's a breakdown when you start to extract sales as a function and it starts to get siloed and disconnected and you don't have a feedback loop. And this is a whole other podcast that Mary will launch about internal agency operations. But I think that this is why I'm really heart hurt about where we are in the world right now, because nobody's trying. I mean, maybe a couple people, but nobody's doing this with the explicit intent, explicit intent of hurting someone. People are doing it probably with the explicit intent of protecting someone. from what they understand to be a threat or a concern. So how do we help everyone see that we are not the threat?

Reggie · 36:27
Or we're not the bad guy.

Tim · 36:28
Yeah. That's the thing though, is the one who's winning the work isn't afraid of being the one that's the threat.

Anthony · 36:35
They're also not concerned with the optics.

Tim · 36:37
Right.

Anthony · 36:38
That's already a liability for somebody that's getting hired. If I hire somebody who has such sentimentality about their work, I run the risk that they might be overly enamored with how long it's going to take. They might be overly enamored by this is the best—

Mary · 36:53
They need to be practical with me.

Anthony · 36:54
Right. Because what happens is on the other end of the transaction, there's, there's your side, the team, right? And then on the other side is these people going like, did we just hire a fleet that we didn't need? And is this far more simpler than the glorification of a pitch deck that we just got? And in reality, as somebody who did this for a couple of decades, and I don't do it now, which is interesting to be sitting amongst an agency, right?

Tim · 37:19
You can speak to it from outside of it.

Anthony · 37:21
Yeah, thank God.

Reggie · 37:23
Age? Age?

Anthony · 37:25
Yes. Yes. Well, I'm in Hatch Studios right now, right? Anyway, is that it's becoming more apparent, especially with the democratization of tasks, which is what's happening with things like AI. Like, minus the whole noise about AI, like, the bottom line is, is that a human being said did 10 units of work between 9 to 5, and now it's, it's easy enough to do 30.

Reggie · 37:57
Mm-hmm.

Anthony · 37:57
And now there's a, there's a push-pull situation going on where it's like, does that diminish the value of the hour, or does that call upon the worker to be further Imbued with capacities to be able to provide more value for the client.

Reggie · 38:13
Exactly.

Tim · 38:14
And this is— they don't tell you this. This is the headlock of AI. AI, we thought, just like every other technology before, would make life easier. You know, you get more time with your family, send an email, then you don't have to write a letter and mail it and go to the mailbox or do this. And then you don't realize they're like, oh, you can send an email really quickly. Now send 10 of them.

Anthony · 38:34
Exactly.

Tim · 38:35
Not, oh yeah, go spend time with your friends and your family and your loved ones. No, now work the same amount of time, but be expected to do 10x or 100x the amount.

Mary · 38:45
It feels the same as— I'm not going to Google this, but everyone will know what I'm saying when I paraphrase it. What's the quote about you are promoted to the level of your own incompetence or something like that? The idea that there are these individual contributors who corporations and companies tend to pressure or to elevate into management positions. And at some point you get to the level where you have no desire or you're not built to be a manager of that type of team.

Tim · 39:14
Yeah.

Mary · 39:14
And so now somebody who would've been a great individual contributor and made great work is now doing mediocre, middling to bad management. And it almost feels like that's what we're doing with AI. We're saying, okay, we've handed people an AI intern who's Maybe fresh out of business school. They know all the theory, but they don't have any of the practical rubber-meets-the-road application of those principles. And they lack judgment and discernment about the situation. And so now it's your job to go manage them. And you can have 10 of them working at the same time if you want, but you've got to be checking in and spinning all those plates.

Tim · 39:53
That's not the way they're pitching AI. They're not pitching AI as a helper. They're pitching AI like it can do it for you.

Reggie · 39:58
Totally.

Tim · 39:58
So when they say you can do 10x the work with interns, that's a different setup. And that's not the pitch that we're getting with AI. And I think that that needs to be known and people need to talk about it more because it's crushing the managers. Because now they're like, well, you don't get a team now. You have a team of agents.

Mary · 40:15
Yeah. Well, and—

Reggie · 40:16
You have a team of agents and that's who's gonna do the work for you. Yeah.

Mary · 40:19
And the work that you're producing is so far, maybe not for everyone, but for me, the work that it's producing is so far below my quality standard. that I'm spending a lot of time editing, which I'm a better editor than I am a creator because creativity is a very difficult skill, actually.

Reggie · 40:34
You just have to train your AI better.

Mary · 40:36
Sure.

Tim · 40:37
That's the answer.

Mary · 40:38
Ain't that the way? And I'm trying. There's a lot of written stuff that I'm putting together. I guess it's getting better. But to Tim's point, you've said this many times, how many hours are we throwing down this well of, okay, maybe one day it'll be better. Maybe one day.

Reggie · 40:51
It'll be better one day.

Tim · 40:51
That's what I've been doing my whole life.

Anthony · 40:52
Yeah, but the thing is that it has a bit of a Luddite finesse to Because—

Mary · 40:58
A Luddite phenomenon.

Reggie · 41:00
A Luddite phenomenon.

Anthony · 41:01
Well, there is no going back. We have this capacity now to iterate through ideas much faster. That is, in terms, like, I do a lot of work with AI, not chat. I do a lot of, like, context engineering design and so forth. So I have, like, a sense of it. And what I've noticed is that what makes things, what makes it so effective, it's like the Dewey Decimal System in a library. Is that right?

Reggie · 41:28
Yeah.

Anthony · 41:28
So all that's happening— Right. All that's happened was there used to be a thing, you pulled it out and then you would go to that section and you would pull out that book. All that's happened, all AI is, is that now that system that found the book has a serial number per word in each of those books. So everything has an amazing text replace kind of macro functionality.

Reggie · 41:52
Totally.

Anthony · 41:52
So it's true when people try to use sort of deterministic systems, remember they're stateless systems. They don't have any sort of onboarding about anything. They arrive with amnesia.

Reggie · 42:07
Ready to— yeah.

Tim · 42:08
Do you think that's true though? You don't think that OpenAI or any of these other large language model builders would let that happen?

Anthony · 42:17
Let what happen?

Mary · 42:17
They're definitely guardrailed. There's definitely assumptions.

Tim · 42:20
Right. There's got to be some kind of foundations. I mean, there was the whole situation with Elon Musk and Grok where it had become out of control. So I don't know that they come as blank as you're saying.

Anthony · 42:34
No, no, no. It's a relativistic system. So if, let's say, the person had a prerogative towards a particular slant on politics, let's say, and then they train the model to find linguistic connective tissue across only the corpus of information that pertained to that subject matter, suddenly you go, well, wow, these answers are right or left or communistic. And it's just because it's not It's what it's getting.

Tim · 42:59
It's what it's feeding.

Anthony · 43:00
Right. It's not doing anything. All it's doing is syntactically evaluating the value of any given word in relation to another.

Tim · 43:06
But can someone in the context of who they are build and code and create the model?

Anthony · 43:14
Who's the who in this?

Tim · 43:15
The makers, the builders, whether it's OpenAI or Anthropic, build how they weigh things. You can't just say, weigh everything— I mean, you can say weigh everything at zero. But when you say, don't read this, or don't look at this to protect the model from losing its mind and doing something horrible, which has to be happening. There's got to be some hedging in AI, or it's— what's the fallback? Like, they're already losing control of certain models. So are you telling me there's someone—

Anthony · 43:46
They are and they aren't. They're role-playing sandbox scenarios with agents, and they're providing them with limited resources to see how innovative they are in finding backdoors. Okay, so that is just— that's still a text and replace situation going on here. All it's doing is—

Tim · 44:02
So you think at the base level AI is neutral?

Anthony · 44:05
I don't think AI is anything in terms of like—

Tim · 44:07
I was just saying at the code level.

Anthony · 44:08
No, no, no, I'm sorry. What I'm answering— what I meant to say is like at the wafer level of what it is, is ostensibly a large text document in which it starts at blank and then you start to give it words and those words have siblings.

Reggie · 44:23
Complex.

Anthony · 44:23
And they connect. Now, to your Grok situation, yes, because the harvesting of information, which is already controversial in nature, because who allowed? People moan about Napster. Well, this is like—

Mary · 44:38
Don't talk to Tim about Napster.

Tim · 44:40
This is Napster on steroids.

Anthony · 44:43
Beyond steroids. This is God mode of it.

Reggie · 44:46
Yeah, yeah.

Tim · 44:47
God mode Napster.

Reggie · 44:49
Yeah, it's on Vee. Oh yeah, have you ever watched The Boys? Oh nope.

Tim · 44:54
The Boys, watch it.

Anthony · 44:54
I'm reading Shakespeare. Where do you think I'm at right now?

Reggie · 44:57
It is no Shakespeare.

Anthony · 44:59
No, I would say that maybe it's not Shakespeare.

Reggie · 45:01
It's not Shakespeare.

Mary · 45:01
It's a modern adaptation of something.

Tim · 45:02
It was The Boys in our day. It is.

Anthony · 45:04
It's a biblical tale, totally.

Tim · 45:05
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reggie · 45:05
But not this continuity.

Mary · 45:06
Terrible, we get it.

Anthony · 45:07
They have a cape this time.

Reggie · 45:09
Exploding?

Tim · 45:10
No.

Mary · 45:10
Guys, we're doing the thing. Nobody can tell what to listen to.

Reggie · 45:13
Come on.

Anthony · 45:14
Sorry.

Reggie · 45:16
We do this sometimes.

Anthony · 45:17
In terms of the AI thing, yes, you're right. It does have this— no, I don't. I'm going to answer this one first. I think that the quality of the input of information will be proportionally what you get back. You can actually do that. You can ask it a question and then break it up sentence by sentence, and you realize it's reverse engineered what you just said and said it back to you in reverse. That's 80% of the magic trick of what feels like conversation, which undermines the notion that That maybe we're not all having conversations as humans to begin with. What we're really doing is having regurgitative exchanges, and all we're doing is sort of like—

Reggie · 45:49
Oh, I do. You're speaking my language. I think you're exactly right.

Anthony · 45:53
I've always been patronized by you. Now I know why.

Reggie · 45:56
We are all a collection of the experiences of which we've had. And so when we are in any scenario, we are basically pulling from our own large language model.

Mary · 46:06
Yes.

Reggie · 46:07
And we are giving scenarios. You do it a lot. Like, you hear a lot of things. You need to stop.

Mary · 46:12
You're regurgitating all over me, Tim.

Tim · 46:14
I am good at regurgitation.

Reggie · 46:16
I know. It's like— and I think you're right. I think that's how humans operate. It's how we— it's the script of which we are constantly aligning ourselves to.

Mary · 46:25
Mae Martin has a really cute setup for this. They're a comedian and they have a set. I think it's on Netflix. But I remember hearing the joke that when you meet a new person, it's really, especially if you have any sort of neurodivergence, tendencies and you're not trying to finagle, you're just sort of being abruptly and strangely yourself, it's like you've got this shelf of snow globes from your travels through life. And so when we meet someone new or like you're on a first date, you're like, look at this cool thing that I got. Is that cool? And then you put it back and you pick up another one and they're picking up their snow globe.

Reggie · 47:03
I would even go as far as to say when you meet someone new, You are going through your database of people you've already met and trying to see—

Anthony · 47:11
That's what happens.

Reggie · 47:12
Who this one fits. Like, who is this more? Who is this person more like? So I know how to relate to them because I've learned how to relate to this person. Yeah.

Tim · 47:20
And then identify.

Reggie · 47:21
You're trying to identify.

Anthony · 47:22
So what you just said mixed with the linguistic concept is basically all that's happened with GPU-level performance of iteration. And that comes— what's weird is that when people go like, it seems sentient, I always thought of it from the other way around. No, we're that basic. Because people are like, what if it's conscious? And I'm like, bro, have you seen its hallucinations?

Reggie · 47:46
Right. I know. That's crazy.

Tim · 47:48
Have you seen our hallucinations?

Anthony · 47:49
No. Is one of these literally just lysergic acid?

Mary · 47:53
This is sort of our hallucination. You've entered it.

Tim · 47:57
This is great wine. So basically, the founding fathers were hallucinating. as well. The way that they were idealistically dreaming this up. We as brand builders hallucinate for our clients to build things up because you can't like, even though we've said this, I'm thinking now, you can't make a brand what it is now because you need a vision for what it will be when you get there.

Mary · 48:17
You know where the fuck it's going.

Tim · 48:18
Yeah, you can't do all this work and be like, okay, now we're done.

Reggie · 48:21
We're good for now.

Tim · 48:22
Dang it, now we gotta stay here.

Reggie · 48:23
We can't go anywhere. Give them something to grow into is what I always say.

Tim · 48:27
Yeah, but so what I'm thinking is with government, with a country as large as ours, 2 questions for the group. Do we think there's a vision that we can all agree on at this scale, the scale of our government? I mean, we have local government, but we know that's not working out as well as we thought it would. You don't say. Do we— can we hold the same vision? And if so, are we each interpreting that vision the same way? Because I think that's where things get so confusing to me, is that you can go up to 2 people and say, this is the vision of the United States, and they're like, yeah, I agree with that, but they both go about implementing it in very different ways.

Anthony · 49:06
Constitutionally, that's what makes us unique, though. We wrote in that you can change it. We're the only constitution that does that.

Tim · 49:12
Right.

Anthony · 49:12
Which means that they already started with doubt.

Tim · 49:14
But what if half the people, or less than half, start to change it, while the other half believe it was fine the way it was?

Anthony · 49:20
That's the necessary tensions of evolution, though.

Tim · 49:24
And that's where civil war should break out. right?

Anthony · 49:26
I wouldn't say that.

Reggie · 49:27
Well, remember, so—

Tim · 49:28
Didn't they say you can overthrow the government if you don't agree with what the government is doing?

Anthony · 49:31
There's a lot of caveats to that. Yes, in a certain aspect of it, you can in a purist sense of the letter. It's like within the letter of the law, yes. Within the spirit of the law, not necessarily.

Tim · 49:42
Oh, definitely not, because that's not a team player.

Anthony · 49:44
Well, it's also because, like, first of all, the notion of a unified vision is a very, let's just say, a very Maoist kind of mentality, like that everybody will suddenly get in line and so forth. No one, to his point, has the same kind of experiences. Or to hers, everyone brings in their own snow globes. So if everybody's gonna bring in their own snow globes, that means they're all gonna nuance the intentionalities. They're all going to frame— they're gonna form factor it to their particular predicament, because their particular predicament is the predicament of the world. See, like, even the way it was presented, There are already 8 or 9 assumptions in play there that have to sort of be programmed in. You've already given me weights in your language model as to these are the things that are the leveraging points of it. And it's one of those things where it's like, well, thank God we don't have unified visions. Because if we don't have tangential thinking, if we don't have— to the point of this problem of the country, if I were to put it into a single thing, is that we were never taught critical thinking. We were never given— that's the only lesson you really need, to be honest with you. You only need to know how to vet what you just heard.

Mary · 50:57
That's it.

Anthony · 50:58
I don't care if carbon has 6 molecules or whatever.

Mary · 51:01
It's irrelevant.

Anthony · 51:01
I can go figure it out myself once I have—

Reggie · 51:04
Critical thinking.

Tim · 51:05
Critical thinking.

Anthony · 51:07
And we don't do that. Everything is memorization.

Reggie · 51:10
Matter of fact, we're trying to get critical thinking out of the school system.

Anthony · 51:14
Absolutely. We might offend many, many, many people with it.

Tim · 51:18
Well, I think because you're idealistically framing critical thinking being the solution when critical thinking can also go really wrong.

Reggie · 51:29
Oh.

Tim · 51:29
Oh. Because someone's frame—

Mary · 51:31
Critical thinking is just—

Reggie · 51:31
Someone's—

Anthony · 51:32
I mean, we're ganging up on somebody, so I'm glad you're here.

Tim · 51:33
Where someone starts, where they start in their experience determines where their critical thinking lands them.

Anthony · 51:39
Yes.

Tim · 51:40
You're not just— unless they have a unified vision, like we both want the best for each other. That could be a unified vision. That's not—

Anthony · 51:45
that's our humanity.

Tim · 51:46
Right. No, but that could be a vision. You could state that. We want the best for each other. Imagine someone saying, saying, no, our vision is that we have 2 different cultures that don't get along. Even if you're not saying it out loud, that's the way we're acting. So what I'm saying is if someone critically thinks about a situation, it doesn't mean they're going to end up in a state of ideal glorified happiness and compassion.

Reggie · 52:10
No, because they're different.

Tim · 52:11
Everyone is trained with a different motivation. You're right.

Anthony · 52:16
The part of the critical thinking that I'm trying to get across more is that once somebody has the capacity of knowing how to conduct argument, knowing how to value evidence, knowing how that can be sublimated into their personality as a new variable that changes their perception— alters it, not changes— because then the person—

Reggie · 52:34
It just gives them more information because they haven't taken what they've been given for face value and just saying, this is Bond, this word is Bond. What they're saying is actually I take that in. Now I am going to go vet that against other resources, and maybe resources that are not in my immediate repertoire. I'm going to go outside and think about this critically so that I can better understand it. And then when you come back with that, and if you're not using— if you're not using critical thinking through a biased lens, I think what you're saying is people have a bias and they're basically trying to prove that. Everyone has a bias. But the problem is, that's not critical thinking. Critical thinking is going from a neutral place—

Tim · 53:16
But no one can come from a neutral place. That's the problem. No, no, no, no.

Anthony · 53:18
Either way, if you—

Tim · 53:18
No one can come from a neutral place. You're right.

Anthony · 53:20
You're absolutely right. It figures itself out either way. See, the moment you arrive with your biases, you're still gonna have to confront the hard floor of empiricism. And when empiricism hits you, gravity hits you. Things are what they are.

Tim · 53:32
I don't know what empiricism means.

Anthony · 53:33
Empiricism, like the thing that can be measured, the thing that is empirically true. Like, there is a floor under our feet right now.

Tim · 53:38
Right, exactly. Everyone has a different level of empirically true.

Anthony · 53:43
Wait, people have a subjective ingestion of empirical information.

Tim · 53:46
Exactly, but that is the reality that we're forced to live in right now. That's what I'm saying about—

Mary · 53:51
You can say, oh, we can measure this, but then I can call into question who set the measurements.

Tim · 53:56
Exactly, that's what I'm saying. You guys are expecting people to buy into that.

Reggie · 53:59
So if Mary's saying there's no floor between us, we're still going to call bullshit.

Mary · 54:02
I'm saying, what if we are the idea?

Reggie · 54:03
Because critical thinking says we're going to go, I'm not talking about physical matter.

Tim · 54:07
We're talking about psychological things. We're not talking about even reality.

Reggie · 54:12
That was just your example that you used, that there's a form.

Tim · 54:14
Science has now discovered nothing touches.

Mary · 54:16
You just get close enough for it to push back.

Tim · 54:19
I'm touching you.

Reggie · 54:20
You are touching me.

Tim · 54:21
There's space between us.

Reggie · 54:21
I feel it.

Tim · 54:22
There's literally space between us.

Mary · 54:24
But you're believing that feeling as if it were truth. And some people might take issue with that truth.

Reggie · 54:31
So I can do this and say, I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you.

Mary · 54:34
They've pulled that one a couple of times. Nothing touches.

Tim · 54:37
Everything has infinite space between it.

Mary · 54:41
Really? The closer you zoom in, the more you can see.

Tim · 54:44
Right. Scientists say if you put your hand—

Reggie · 54:45
What about friction? How do you get friction if you're not touching?

Tim · 54:47
It's just part of physics. I'm just— what I'm telling you—

Mary · 54:49
It's not part of physics.

Reggie · 54:50
Don't go there.

Tim · 54:50
No, I'm telling you.

Reggie · 54:51
Don't go there. Don't ask any questions.

Tim · 54:53
The rules you were trained in school are getting unwritten.

Mary · 54:55
You're memorizing physics.

Tim · 54:56
Because they're seen deeper. I'm telling you, no one starts at a ground level where like, oh yeah, I critically think. I've arrived. Now I'm a good person. Seriously, people are critically thinking and owning an argument and doing it for evil.

Mary · 55:08
I think that we need to, on some level, the 4 of us here, to have a productive discussion, we need to acknowledge that there's a level of empiricism that we all have to get to. Like, there's a level of empirical evidence that you have to accept for us to be able to debate. Now, I'm not going to debate that the floor is underneath us because I can— I understand gravity and, you know, the molecules and touching.

Anthony · 55:30
Well, technically to him, the floor isn't here either because it's vibrating just very, very very fast. We are just not following through it.

Mary · 55:35
But is that productive or helpful to this conversation?

Anthony · 55:38
Does it lend itself to the consequential argument?

Reggie · 55:40
Are you saying that critical— are you offering up something different than critical thinking that you think everyone should—

Tim · 55:47
No, I'm just saying it's not the answer. So I'm not saying there's no floor. I'm just saying the— That's a hell of a privilege.

Anthony · 55:53
To negate one possibility is to say, well, therefore it must not be that. It must be something else.

Tim · 55:59
We're all using our privilege here.

Mary · 56:00
It might be a combination of—

Tim · 56:01
We are all saying what we are saying because of privilege.

Reggie · 56:03
True.

Tim · 56:04
We're here sitting on couches in a nicely temperatured room.

Mary · 56:07
Some people might say sofas.

Reggie · 56:09
What would be a good alternative to—

Tim · 56:10
I might say benches or tall, wide chairs, or what do you call them, long chairs.

Reggie · 56:13
What would be a good alternative to critical thinking?

Tim · 56:15
There's no alternative. It's relationship. We are all in a world forced to be in relationship. Critical thinking mind will never connect with heart. So if you put a bunch of people in the room with minds, they will fight. That's what the— the founding fathers did it, courts do it, movies do it, everyone fights, but no one's focused on the relationship. We were talking about this at the beginning of the episode with your wife. Do you come at her with critical thinking? That's bullshit if you say yes, because what you come to her with is heart.

Reggie · 56:46
Yeah, I come to her with heart.

Tim · 56:47
You come with heart. You are governing yourself down, not because Because critical thinking would tell you, you could win this argument if this, this, and this.

Reggie · 56:54
Well, critical thinking would tell me this is right, this is wrong, whatever, whatever. And if I lead with that, I'm not leading with love.

Tim · 57:01
I can logically solve this. This is what AI thinks it's going to do. I can logically solve this if I have enough inputs to get the right result. It's not true. Everything doesn't abide by the rules.

Mary · 57:10
In psychology, they call that intellectualization, that like there's a feeling or a thing that's arising within me, but if I can just understand it, I can master it.

Tim · 57:20
Right. And revolutions of the past weren't always made by critical thinkers. There are emotions involved. There are relationships involved and agreements.

Anthony · 57:32
I agree with both of you. I think you guys don't have mutually exclusive answers.

Mary · 57:37
Oh, quit the kumbaya bullshit.

Reggie · 57:38
Here I go. Here I go.

Anthony · 57:39
Because let's just go back. As one who's the only— probably the only one divorced here, right?

Mary · 57:44
Yeah. Cool.

Tim · 57:44
You have kids?

Mary · 57:46
Yes.

Tim · 57:46
Okay.

Mary · 57:47
I'm not married yet, but I'm racing you. Here we go.

Tim · 57:50
Here we go.

Anthony · 57:51
We'll see you next episode. You said in the scenario— I'm sorry, you did. When your wife is like upset or whatever—

Reggie · 58:00
We get it mixed up all the time.

Tim · 58:02
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rabbit.

Anthony · 58:05
I really wish you guys wouldn't tan at the same place. But you said when you're arguing with your wife, you don't come at it with critical thinking. Actually, if there is enough irrationality that it starts to become destabilized, critical thinking is how one grounds themselves. The other way around as well, though. If you arrive with only critical thinking, you become surgical in nature, dry. You don't look at the holistic picture. What sounds like you're describing is the distinction between holistic thinking and logical thinking.

Tim · 58:38
Right. And I'm not saying critical thinking isn't a part of it. I'm just saying you were bringing it down to that being the base level, that you fix this and everything solves itself.

Mary · 58:45
No, no, no, no, no, that's not what I was saying.

Anthony · 58:46
No, no, no, no, I was saying is that, remember, it was presented with the fact that we have this problem where government is sort of this orchestrative circus, it's gone out of control, and we're like, what do we do? And I'm like, well, we're pretty unreasonable at this point, and outside from the circus monkeys not having made their entrance quite yet, we're pretty close to that point. Maybe we should try a little critical thinking.

Tim · 59:10
Yeah, but this— I don't think what you're saying has ever been not the subject. There have always been people that come— Socrates was all about critical thinking. His whole method was built on critical thinking.

Anthony · 59:22
Yes. He was trying to undermine the fact that truth was shifting sands.

Tim · 59:28
Exactly. This is what I'm telling you. The shifting sands, the floor not being there, is the truth.

Mary · 59:34
Right.

Tim · 59:34
What is the truth? And when I say truth, I also mean the vision, because the truth of where we are—

Anthony · 59:40
Those are 2 separate things though.

Tim · 59:41
No, it's—

Anthony · 59:41
One's a verb, another one is a destination somehow.

Tim · 59:45
Right, but I'm saying things that work together. Megan and I are 2 different things, but we are one in our marriage, in our life.

Anthony · 59:50
You're collaborative.

Tim · 59:52
If we don't have a vision together, it's not going to end well. So what I'm saying is that truth, and the truth that we both hold, is not always the same.

Anthony · 1:00:00
You mean the intentionality you both share?

Tim · 1:00:03
Whatever you want to call it. You can word yourself around it, but I'm telling you from an experience. No, no, no, I'm not. From an experience.

Anthony · 1:00:08
I'm not trying to circle around it. When you say the vision, there is an aspect in which it seems like the light at the end of some sort of tunnel.

Tim · 1:00:17
It's that, and it's also— It's not singular. It's also in time. It's also in present moment, not just in the future.

Anthony · 1:00:23
I get it. So the only pushback we have, I'm starting to like just distill it for what it is, is that there is a singularity that you kind of align to. There is a vision. There is a single thing. And I think I'm more of like, no, this is a hyper-inclusive experiment. This is about the modalities of multiple consciousnesses. This is about a modality of multiple truths happening all in concurrency.

Tim · 1:00:44
Right, but that is our bodies. Like, we are bacteria. We are— so what is—

Anthony · 1:00:48
In the midst of conflict, we survive.

Tim · 1:00:50
So what is it that brings us together? What is it that makes us come together? Is it our bodies? But what I'm asking you, is it the things in our bodies critically thinking, or is it the things being in relationship that causes us to act as a body that works together?

Anthony · 1:01:03
This is lovely, actually, because this is a beautiful on-ramp that might be the answer to it. You just said, look at this body, we're filled with bacteria, we're filled, you know, we have basically collaborative organs that decided to work together.

Reggie · 1:01:15
Working together.

Tim · 1:01:16
Right?

Reggie · 1:01:16
Yep.

Anthony · 1:01:17
Which means, though, that if I were to look into that, I realize it's rooted. Is it all these cells running in unison together towards the one thing? No, they are running towards chemical fights. They're looking towards predatory natures. They destroy each other. In the destruction of something, something else is created. No, they all have a script.

Tim · 1:01:37
It's not— no, that's not all true. I think if we were both scientists, we could have a better discussion. I'm not going to challenge you.

Anthony · 1:01:41
No, no, no, no, no.

Tim · 1:01:42
But I do know that cancer is against that. Cancer is something that wants to live without the other cells. It restricts it, it pulls itself back. It takes the mitochondria and teaches it how to create something that is not connected to the holistic, the government.

Reggie · 1:02:00
I think that's what you're saying. They all have their own scripts. Some fight each other, some want to— Some are more exclusive to others.

Tim · 1:02:05
Yes, some are more exclusive. But you made all your examples about fighting. So, what I'm trying to say is that the 2 examples you said, they're fighting for this, they're fighting for the resources, you You mentioned a few.

Anthony · 1:02:16
They are in concert towards their own versions of survival.

Tim · 1:02:19
But they're not. No, they're not their own. Not their own. They are all in concert together because of the survival of the other. The cancer is the only one that is—

Anthony · 1:02:27
And the predator. Only survives because of the other. If the survival of the other means that something else didn't, you can't have your cake and eat it. It's a polar thinking situation.

Tim · 1:02:35
So you're talking about capitalism. If everything works in its own— again, toward its own What did they call capitalism?

Anthony · 1:02:43
Is that the next card?

Tim · 1:02:44
Well, no, that one comes up all the time too. The idea of capitalism is that if everyone goes after their own selfish ends, then everyone will end up well.

Anthony · 1:02:53
I see that there is a limitation there.

Tim · 1:02:56
And that's what you're saying that the cells are going after their own ends because their own ends is that everyone else lives so that we can all live together.

Anthony · 1:03:02
Well, the fact that there is a threshold of death proves that everything ends and therefore things have They have sort of like a way of being until they can't be any longer. So there is a thing that sort of runs out of its course.

Reggie · 1:03:16
It meets its demise.

Anthony · 1:03:17
It doesn't live forever. If we had completely holistic thinking cells that were working in complete concert, in pure collaborative, inconsequential capacity, then we might live forever because there would be nothing falling apart.

Reggie · 1:03:32
Yeah, nothing would change.

Anthony · 1:03:33
And it doesn't. Things have an entropic nature. capitalism, I always been interested in the fact that Adam Smith in the Commonwealth of Nations has this little chapter that nobody really goes to, which is where he says capitalism works. The only thing you got to make sure first of though is that you're constantly vigilant of the maxims of society. And the maxims is the overt aggregation, the gluttonous overtaking of resources. You mentioned cancer. What does cancer do? Cancer overtakes a system that has found stasis amongst collaborative other agents and said, you know what? You work for me. And now we have a problem. So there is—

Tim · 1:04:15
Yes, I agree with all this.

Mary · 1:04:17
Cool.

Anthony · 1:04:18
I didn't want to be angry with you.

Tim · 1:04:19
And Kate Raworth says he's writing about capitalism while living in his mom's house, being served food in his meals while he can focus and write. So he was coming from a place of nurture.

Reggie · 1:04:36
I think you're—

Tim · 1:04:38
So what I'm saying is you're laying it down as like a level of basis, a floor under us, but the floor has been built by somebody. That's the— so for government, let's say we self-govern ourselves, and I'm not saying govern like self-govern in the traditional sense, but our bodies are a self-governing system. So if you choose to sit around and watch shows all day, and eat M&M's, the governing of your body will— it will change the systems.

Anthony · 1:05:05
Physiology itself.

Tim · 1:05:06
Physiology and how your systems are working together.

Anthony · 1:05:08
Yes.

Tim · 1:05:09
Things won't start working together as well as they have in the past.

Anthony · 1:05:12
Well, things compensate for others lacking.

Tim · 1:05:14
Right. And I do think the government is falling apart. The government of your body is starting to find ways of trying to survive because it's not getting nutrients or it's not getting water or it's not getting sunlight or it's not getting Just to give it a positive possible finesse to the whole thing.

Anthony · 1:05:28
I agree with you, by the way. I agree that we are definitely undergoing either a— something that's going into a dark age, but it also looks identical to what a Renaissance looks like. It's always going to look— it's only later on that we get to look back and go, wow, that was crazy. And we're in the midst of crazy.

Tim · 1:05:47
So all I'm trying to say is that if someone has a vision for their life— you keep poo-pooing vision.

Anthony · 1:05:52
No, no, no, no, no, no.

Tim · 1:05:53
I'm just trying to get to a level of knowing what it means.

Anthony · 1:05:56
I'm trying to make sure that the notion of a singular vision was—

Tim · 1:06:01
But I'm saying the notion of a singular vision for my life, for my body, doesn't— it doesn't— all the things in my body are going to work together toward that vision versus each thing in my body having a different vision for my life. Do you see what I'm saying? So, when you have a group of people, when it gets to a certain scale, everyone in that group doesn't have the same vision. That means that That if there's no overarching vision, if everyone has their own vision, there is no way that doesn't happen in chaos, that doesn't evolve in chaos.

Reggie · 1:06:32
I think there are other factors too, like death. Death is a throttle. Everyone will go up to a certain speed and to a certain cadence if death is becoming evident. Then they throttle and they change and they shift their vision.

Mary · 1:06:50
That—

Reggie · 1:06:50
And there are other factors like that, I think, as well.

Tim · 1:06:52
Death is a real element of politics. And love.

Reggie · 1:06:55
Death, love, companionship. There's a lot of external factors that can drive—

Tim · 1:06:59
There's millions of things. Yeah. The thing here is not everyone has the same vision, right? Not everyone has the same vision for their body. And that's why we have a lot of illnesses.

Reggie · 1:07:10
Some people are totally fine with just sitting on the couch and watching TV.

Tim · 1:07:12
They're looking to be a little more round than others, let's say. So, if the vision— politics and health are a huge collision of things, because not everyone has access to health.

Mary · 1:07:23
Sometimes.

Tim · 1:07:24
Death is more real for other people than it is for others, certain sides of this. So, we bring up death, and we bring up sickness in our bodies in such a casual way, but that is one of the elements of the vision. Do we have a vision? for people all having access to healthcare. So these are what I'm saying that cause the government to feel like it's the show where only the vision of the agent, of the corporations behind the government rules.

Mary · 1:07:55
I think government works, can work quite well when paired with common spiritual beliefs. Agreed.

Tim · 1:08:05
That's what I'm saying. The science isn't all of it.

Mary · 1:08:08
And, and we started from that place neglecting, you know, a lot of the people that we don't hear from during that time because we didn't let them read and write and their artifacts didn't survive to this point. But, but the foundation of America's government was built in a certain brand of Christianity.

Tim · 1:08:26
Mm-hmm.

Mary · 1:08:26
And we like to pretend like it was built from, ah, diversity of thought and we want all these different ideas. But the truth was the founding fathers, and we debate, by the way, there's a lot of debate about how we should interpret the Constitution. Is it really about trying to, uh, you talk about the word of the law versus the spirit of the law, whose job is it to decide what's important about the law or about the Constitution and what's sacred and should be held versus what can be changed to keep up with the times or the majority vote? But I think it was built on an assumption that there was one God. It was built on an assumption that he rules all men and that we are humbled and subject to someone somewhere. And I think for many of them it was a— the image of a man that was in charge of that.

Reggie · 1:09:13
Which is why on all of our currency it says, in God we trust.

Mary · 1:09:16
So yes.

Anthony · 1:09:16
That's only— that was only a response to the Cold War. That's not part of the Founding Fathers. That only happened after 1950-something.

Reggie · 1:09:22
Sure.

Mary · 1:09:23
And maybe the, maybe the Propaganda is the word that came into my mind. Maybe the language that we use around it, the branding that we've put on it—

Anthony · 1:09:32
That's a better one, actually.

Mary · 1:09:33
—is a consequence of the time that we're living in, and it's all pushing off against something, right? Like, we're always trying to guide the ship in a different direction. But it was founded in this core belief around spirituality and a shared sense of who we are in the grand scheme of things. I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring 4 things up. One, I believe we are all the same thing who chose to manifest as different things for the hell of it.

Reggie · 1:10:01
Mm-hmm.

Mary · 1:10:02
Perhaps literally for the hell of it. But I think that we're here for a wild ride. We are doing an experiment together to see what would happen. And I think it's the expansion of us is what is creating all this chaos. We're bumping into each other. We're having to decide what we do when we collide. And I think there's something beautiful about that. I want everybody who's listening to this podcast and everybody in this room to read Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown. Look at me quoting.

Reggie · 1:10:28
And—

Tim · 1:10:28
Ricky says that's a good one.

Mary · 1:10:30
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer. I think she actually might have a middle initial that I'm forgetting. But the principles in those, you know, Adrienne Maree Brown ties it much more to a corporate space or a company's space. She talks a lot about the moment in time, moving at the speed of trust, and valuing relationship in even the most capitalist—

Tim · 1:10:53
Right.

Mary · 1:10:54
Working for that sort of end conversation. So I think connection and relationship is integral in her view, and it's a function of time, like you're saying, Reggie. And maybe time is understood as our proximity to death, or maybe time is understood something that came up for me in government is that we're just doing a lot of short-term thinking right now.

Tim · 1:11:15
Yeah.

Mary · 1:11:15
We're just getting to like next week, next year, end of our lifetime, which is so passé. But then Robin Kimmerer talks about one of the laws of nature and one of the spiritual beliefs of her people is reciprocity, which is another way of saying connection and relationship. And how the entities within your body, they all have a specific goal that might not always be in harmony with the goals of other organs or other Mitochondria in your body, but they're all working for your good and they have to communicate. And so I think that there's some executive function that isn't an overlord to your body, but that is in communication with the body and trying to facilitate and navigate and find that sense of harmony and somehow connect with whatever your spiritual thing is that's guiding your life.

Reggie · 1:12:06
Is that a reciprocal relationship? Between that and—

Mary · 1:12:09
Well, it better be if you're gonna survive, right? And I— that's my vision for government, is like the— just the place that we look to get things organized so that we can achieve whatever it is we want to achieve together. But I do think some sort of agreement on what is good, whether you want to call that a vision or whether you want to call that a spiritual belief, it, it is sort of a foundational thing. And we're never gonna get to agreement on what is good if we don't listen to each other. And we can debate. Like, we can certainly be in conflict about it because we're not there yet and we're, you know, we're new to this. We're all just doing it for the first time. We're just figuring it out.

Reggie · 1:12:46
Like you said, we're figuring it all out.

Mary · 1:12:48
But at the end of the day, I mean, it's not— as you were both speaking, I know you two have seen a little bit of it. I don't know if you've watched Pluribus. It's on Apple TV.

Reggie · 1:12:57
I did watch those.

Anthony · 1:12:57
I did see like the first episode of it, the one with the— they get a signal, like a hive mind.

Mary · 1:13:02
And so it's this idea that what if all of humanity was united into one big hive mind and we could work in cooperation and we didn't kill anything, including plants, because we don't want to do harm to another being. And the whole crux of that show is, well, is that better?

Reggie · 1:13:18
Right. There's a symbiotic relationship between all living things.

Tim · 1:13:21
Here's what I'll say, because I know that I don't like that either.

Anthony · 1:13:24
Obviously, we need to finish this knife fight. Go ahead.

Tim · 1:13:26
No. All I'm saying, and this feeds into what you were saying, I love that, is that the vision of your body is to live. live, even in spite of death. Your vision of your body is to live. You want to live. So that's not dictating how everyone—

Reggie · 1:13:43
Unless you don't want to live.

Anthony · 1:13:44
That's a very good point.

Reggie · 1:13:45
I was about to nuance it.

Mary · 1:13:46
Somebody just called me out on the internet for this on my TikTok. They were like, to say that, you know, I think I said something online like life is a gift. And what I meant by that is you are being gifted opportunities at any moment. That's not to say that you're in control of everything, but every moment presents you with options.

Tim · 1:14:03
Right.

Mary · 1:14:04
And you get to choose which option. But not everybody would agree that life is good.

Reggie · 1:14:09
No.

Mary · 1:14:10
I'm not saying that. Yeah.

Tim · 1:14:11
But if someone eats food, they're saying—

Mary · 1:14:14
Their body will attempt to continue to live. They want to live.

Tim · 1:14:16
They can say they don't want to live. They can say they're miserable in their mind and their situation. And there are millions and billions that are miserable. I'm not saying that there's no suffering.

Reggie · 1:14:23
And there's millions that actually take their own lives because—

Tim · 1:14:25
If you drink water, you want to live. That— you're taking the actions That prove that is your vision for your life, is to live. If you don't want to live, we've seen what happens. If you truly don't, you can take action to also end your life.

Mary · 1:14:38
Your executive function can—

Reggie · 1:14:38
And I also think there are people that are living that don't want to live, but maybe not to the extreme of taking their own lives, but they are depressed to the point where they're not eating, they're not drinking.

Tim · 1:14:50
Right.

Reggie · 1:14:51
Which ultimately they'll meet—

Tim · 1:14:52
And they're starting to make decisions that are wrong.

Reggie · 1:14:53
Yeah, ultimately they'll meet their demise, right.

Tim · 1:14:54
But then there's also a vision to live good. Or to live well, or to live bad, like a villain. My son— I don't care.

Reggie · 1:15:03
Good, well, he got bad.

Tim · 1:15:05
My son always uses profile pics and he always chooses the villain. His profile pic on Netflix is—

Mary · 1:15:12
Oh, that's what's happening right now because we're acknowledging that the villain had their own story.

Tim · 1:15:17
Yeah, because we villainized someone and just wrote them off, but the villain was part of the story and had came from a place of purity in some ways.

Reggie · 1:15:25
It's the day of the villain.

Tim · 1:15:26
So, and I'm not against that. I think the villain— I love writers that actually put the villain in a place where you're like, oh, they were a person too. They had a story too.

Reggie · 1:15:34
Well, if you understand the villain, the villain, or every villain has an origin story, and in most cases it's something that was beyond their control that happened to them.

Anthony · 1:15:42
It was an innate injustice that they endured that forced them into the predicament.

Tim · 1:15:46
And even they are acting out of a place of good. in a way. They're doing things that they think is good for them and people around them. It's whether or not it's got some angles on it.

Anthony · 1:15:58
If there was to be a wrapper of sanity in all this, it would be that wrapper of sanity. I meant more— Sanity, sanity.

Tim · 1:16:07
There's got to be some sanity.

Anthony · 1:16:09
I meant more the wrapper on a candy, but okay.

Tim · 1:16:12
Mars bar.

Anthony · 1:16:15
And I think this is also— this exchange is symptomatic of something bigger, because what's happened is, if this was 100 years ago, this would be a conversation that's happening on the porch.

Reggie · 1:16:27
Yeah.

Anthony · 1:16:28
And it's 5 people.

Tim · 1:16:29
Right.

Anthony · 1:16:29
And what's happened, all that's happened right now, is that now where it used to be gatekeepers that were allowed to make stars, and those stars could say things, now it's democratized, and everyone can say anything. And now because it reaches, it must be true, or it must be worth considering. So there is a real distinction loss between shit and Shinola going on here. Wow, man, I love that.

Reggie · 1:16:55
My grandmother used to say that. You don't know shit from Shinola.

Mary · 1:16:57
I've never heard that before.

Tim · 1:16:58
I've never heard that.

Mary · 1:17:00
Here's where I get hopeful, and I don't know, maybe—

Tim · 1:17:04
It's a good time to do it. I mean, we're way past an hour, so let's bring the hope. I don't even know if anyone's left, but bring the hope.

Mary · 1:17:08
You talk about, and then I've got a point here, go with me on this. You talk about LLMs and the predictive model, and I love your analogy of words having siblings, and I connect with that. Sometimes I joke like, oh, the monkey hadn't been at the typewriter long enough for us to come up with that. Alex and I love it when we say something, we're like, do you think those words have ever been strung together in that order before? We love that. But I think it is what you feed it. In a way, you get to determine what it eats. And it will take what it eats and try to live.

Reggie · 1:17:37
Exactly that.

Mary · 1:17:37
And so I like the idea of better sandboxed use of AI and feeding it really juicy good stuff like emergent strategy and braiding sweetgrass. But I, I also think that we are so much more in control than we're giving ourselves credit for. Maybe control is the wrong word, but we—

Anthony · 1:17:57
We have responsibility. We are responsible. We're doing it.

Mary · 1:18:00
We are constantly being presented with options. options that we sometimes choose not to acknowledge. And we're kind of like, and I'm a great example of this, we're kind of throwing our hands up and being like, well, they did wrong by me. I've got a huge chip on my shoulder about so many things. But the work of my life is to let that go and say, ooh, what a gift.

Reggie · 1:18:20
Yeah.

Mary · 1:18:20
And I think that even things you were talking about, who endorses or who gets to decide what the loudest voice is, does reach determine what is actually good for us or what is true? And I think reach right now is being determined by algorithms. Algorithms are being determined by competing forces of the people who own them and what they want to push. We're going to have to combat that in some way.

Anthony · 1:18:44
I'll meet you there in a minute, but go ahead.

Mary · 1:18:46
See you in a minute. And those of us who are giving our attention away, who are paying attention for these things, and I think if we all chose to pay attention to things that we actually think are good, we could drive the algorithm. At the end of the day, we demand things from brands, from the marketplace. We have been willing to accept a lot less, and that's a disappointing thing to me. You are worth more than that. And a huge opportunity.

Reggie · 1:19:14
Opportunity.

Mary · 1:19:14
It does require significant lifestyle change. It requires discipline on a level that I'm working to cultivate. And it, you know, it's a consequence of our privilege. And I think that us being able to sit here and say, wow, I've got the option right now, I am safe enough that I can make this choice and not really suffer in those ways. We gotta be doing it. Like, we can't just sit around and be like, oh, the guys at the top are telling me I can't do it.

Reggie · 1:19:40
You're right.

Mary · 1:19:41
There's some element of that. But in the ways that we can fight back, we gotta fight back.

Anthony · 1:19:44
There was a book about— what was it called?

Tim · 1:19:47
Enron?

Anthony · 1:19:48
Was that the power company that did that big scandal? And there was a guy who was in the company, and my dad, he just gave me this page to read or whatever, and I loved it. And the guy was their—

Mary · 1:19:58
I'm sorry, your dad gave you a page to read on Enron?

Anthony · 1:19:59
Well, he's— no, it was a book called like about the— it was a book about the Enron scandal.

Tim · 1:20:03
Yeah, they were— it was a big deal.

Reggie · 1:20:05
Yeah.

Anthony · 1:20:05
And it was like, yeah. And I was looking at it and he's like—

Mary · 1:20:07
Oh God.

Anthony · 1:20:08
He was like pointing. I was like, check that out. And I was like, what? And he's like, look at that guy. He left before everything went down. And the guy's like, you can't leave now. We're in the tens of millions. We're about to hit the billions.

Tim · 1:20:22
And you're leaving now?

Anthony · 1:20:22
And he's like, leisure is the greatest revenge. And I went, that's it.

Mary · 1:20:28
That's it.

Anthony · 1:20:29
All this is about is how soon can I divest myself from what I don't want to do so that I can just be the oldest rich—

Reggie · 1:20:41
what is it?

Tim · 1:20:41
Academic.

Anthony · 1:20:42
A man of leisure. An academic, which is the original meaning of the word academic. A man of leisure.

Reggie · 1:20:47
A man of leisure.

Anthony · 1:20:47
A person who has the time to sit and absorb—

Reggie · 1:20:51
Which is a luxury.

Anthony · 1:20:52
Diversification of information.

Reggie · 1:20:53
Which is a luxury.

Tim · 1:20:54
1,000% agree.

Mary · 1:20:55
Yeah. A varied palate.

Reggie · 1:20:56
Yeah.

Mary · 1:20:56
Yeah.

Reggie · 1:20:57
I wanted to tie something back together in terms of my ability to self-govern. And I said that is how I get through relationships. Because one of the things I do realize, and it speaks to both of you guys' points, is that when I come to the table, I am bringing critical thinking, and I'm bringing heart. And I am self-governing to choose which one of those things I lead with, so that I can get through the conversation in a way that we both walk away not butthurt or disappointed and angry with each other. But there—

Anthony · 1:21:27
You didn't say you're bringing your butt.

Reggie · 1:21:30
Well, my butt is— it's inevitable that my butt's gonna be there.

Mary · 1:21:33
Well, inevitable, definitely.

Reggie · 1:21:35
Because I have to sit my butt on the floor that's beneath us. And if I don't If I sit on the floor with my butt that's beneath us, then—

Tim · 1:21:40
There's no floor.

Reggie · 1:21:41
There's no floor, right? There's no floor.

Anthony · 1:21:43
We're back.

Reggie · 1:21:44
But so yeah, so that for me is how I— the self-governing is meaning those things are tools that I have in my— my heart is definitely a big tool in the box, and my critical thinking is also a big tool in the box.

Anthony · 1:21:56
At his point, and I agree with something that's like the kernel of what you're saying, which is like, I think a little bit of a thespian discipline, which I—

Reggie · 1:22:02
Kernel? Because we were eating popcorn while you guys were going head to head.

Anthony · 1:22:07
I saw— I'm not a fan of what most theater's doing right now. Let's put it that way. I'm not.

Mary · 1:22:15
Say more.

Anthony · 1:22:15
I think most acting is incredibly stuck in a vaudevillian sense of announcing and that kind of thing. And what I notice is what makes acting or the experience of seeing anything on cinema or in theater Is watching the person who had the vision, let's say, or the thought of the vision that was about to be said, and then watching the silence between the sentences.

Reggie · 1:22:38
Mm-hmm.

Anthony · 1:22:39
To see what their own words are doing to them. And to your point, I'm trying to figure out heart, you know, versus critical thinking. I think it's more piano play. You don't play one note or the other. You are in a room with people that are literally like Flawed forever. It's not going to change. It is the condition of the existence. It's not going to get all fixed.

Reggie · 1:23:04
It's a human condition.

Anthony · 1:23:05
Then suddenly you play piano, not play them, you play your own piano, and you steer people into giving them the impression that you're coming from a place of authenticity. See what I did there?

Reggie · 1:23:20
I wrapped it all up.

Anthony · 1:23:21
Then that authenticity is to—

Tim · 1:23:23
Actually government.

Anthony · 1:23:23
Yeah, whatever. No, it's not. It's Govrinmeats.

Reggie · 1:23:28
Govrinments.

Anthony · 1:23:29
Govrinments. The remnants of Gov.

Mary · 1:23:32
I know you've been getting into theater. Are you writing plays?

Reggie · 1:23:34
Yeah.

Mary · 1:23:35
Yeah. Tell me the name of one.

Anthony · 1:23:37
Well, right now the last one I just did was A Bet That Someone Made With Me That Took Me 2 Years to Prove Them Wrong.

Reggie · 1:23:43
That's a long title. You need to reduce that. That's the whole title.

Tim · 1:23:45
Yeah, it's an English play. I like that. It's like a long-tail keywords type title. Yeah.

Anthony · 1:23:49
Yeah. Well, what happened was, is I cannot afford somebody not finding it on Amazon, so I just put the longest—

Tim · 1:23:56
Just bring it out. Yeah.

Mary · 1:23:57
Well, that's what's happening with AI is you just get as precise as you possibly can to get all the keywords.

Anthony · 1:24:02
I got it.

Mary · 1:24:03
Sorry.

Reggie · 1:24:05
I didn't mean to interrupt with my jokes.

Mary · 1:24:07
I hope that you continue to do— You are a playwright. From where I'm standing, the way that I see you—

Tim · 1:24:11
I'm sitting down right now.

Mary · 1:24:12
From where I'm—

Tim · 1:24:14
No, no, no. Is she really?

Reggie · 1:24:15
From where I'm standing—

Mary · 1:24:16
Can we all agree on that?

Tim · 1:24:17
Can we all agree that she's sitting?

Mary · 1:24:19
I'm just thinking—

Anthony · 1:24:19
My truth, my vision. She is— this is standing, this is sitting. Can we all get together on this? Can we all be—

Tim · 1:24:28
What if you get retrained?

Reggie · 1:24:29
You brought me over here for that.

Tim · 1:24:30
No, don't even start me.

Mary · 1:24:31
No, no, you know, I was trying to compliment you, if you'll let me get through it. I just—

Reggie · 1:24:35
I'm—

Tim · 1:24:36
Can't afford it.

Mary · 1:24:36
I'm saying—

Reggie · 1:24:37
He senses that you're trying to compliment him.

Mary · 1:24:40
That is freaking him out.

Reggie · 1:24:41
And humor is his way to like— yes.

Mary · 1:24:44
It's like, let me pick my butt up and put my butt down and nobody will know.

Reggie · 1:24:47
It's his defense mechanism.

Mary · 1:24:49
I think someone once told me, I think poets and playwrights are very much of the same lean. I heard someone once say, he was a playwright. This is my friend who's carrying like $500,000 in student debt and he's like, I'm never going to pay it. I'm not worth anything. I know nothing. But he just keeps getting grad degrees and he's incredibly just like a beautiful, genuine person. And he's just, he's chosen leisure. He's chosen academia.

Reggie · 1:25:14
Yeah.

Mary · 1:25:15
But he said to me, that he doesn't like working with some directors, and I'm more of a director type. I don't want to freak you out. He was like, we've seen this. He said to me—

Anthony · 1:25:25
I've already felt manipulated.

Mary · 1:25:27
And they can relate, so you all should have a support group after this. But I think he said to me, playwrights, I don't like working with some directors because some directors come in and try to shape it too much. They try to mold it too much, and they try to put their thumbprint on it. And in reality, it needs to be a conversation between me and myself, brought out on stage.

Tim · 1:25:47
Yes.

Mary · 1:25:47
So it's a manifestation of what's happening in my psyche in front of people. And there's a learning not only for the audience, but for the makers of that piece of art to go through that journey and experience it.

Anthony · 1:25:59
Yes.

Mary · 1:25:59
Not only for entertainment, but as a processing mechanism. And it's one of the only ways I think social content is becoming this way too, where we can sort of go on an emotional journey with someone. And we get really trite and say, put myself in their shoes. But it's really like, what does it feel like to be inside your head for a minute? What does it feel like to live with the baggage that you're carrying and the injustice that you have under—

Reggie · 1:26:23
Endured.

Mary · 1:26:24
Endured. Thank you.

Anthony · 1:26:25
Very much.

Mary · 1:26:25
And, and how do I let that in without you having to come at me and argue and tell me what happened to you?

Reggie · 1:26:32
Right.

Mary · 1:26:32
I can feel what happened to you. And now we share something. And now everybody in this room shared something. we know a little bit more about the human condition. And maybe this is why it's really cheesy, but I love a talkback after a play because I think everybody—

Tim · 1:26:49
It's cheesy.

Mary · 1:26:49
It's completely cheesy. And for the people sitting on stage, often very self-indulgent, right?

Anthony · 1:26:54
Yeah.

Mary · 1:26:54
Very egoic.

Anthony · 1:26:55
I never go to them. Even after I'm in a show, I'm never on there. I'm like, I can't do it.

Mary · 1:26:59
My favorite ones that I've ever been to are small group circles, almost more like a TA side session off of your main lecture in school, but it's having, not only having a shared experience, but getting together in a small group to sort of compare notes and say, well, this is what I— here was my special snow globe that related to this snow globe. What do you think? And starting to extrapolate and spin off, okay, what do we do with this experience that we just had? So I'm just trying to say, I think more spaces where we can get together and share what it's like in here help us share the vision of what we want to be making.

Reggie · 1:27:37
But— What if we had a symbiotic relationship with our enemy, or whoever we were competing against? You already do.

Tim · 1:27:43
You already do.

Anthony · 1:27:43
That is a love affair that has been deferred.

Reggie · 1:27:45
But do you think if you had this cerebral symbiotic relationship, would you find middle ground? Or would you continue to—

Anthony · 1:27:52
The reason you are enemies in the first place is that you are so alike. It has nothing to do—

Mary · 1:27:57
You are pushing off against each other.

Tim · 1:27:58
Reflection.

Anthony · 1:28:00
You negate each other's existence.

Mary · 1:28:02
You are foil.

Anthony · 1:28:03
Proving each other's lack of uniqueness at the same time.

Reggie · 1:28:06
But what if your systems were actually intertwined and you could feel each other's thoughts? You could actually be in each other's heads and understand each other's motives. Do you think you'd find middle ground to help each other get to a midpoint?

Anthony · 1:28:21
To her point, and what she's described as the best way of describing theater, it's supposed to be an actual safe space. But I feel it's been perverse because most people are like, here's a trigger warning, here's this, here's that.

Mary · 1:28:33
Well, we're trying to make money.

Anthony · 1:28:34
Not me. I'm literally— Not us.

Tim · 1:28:37
We're talking the general we.

Reggie · 1:28:39
Yeah.

Anthony · 1:28:40
I'm talking about that vision.

Reggie · 1:28:42
Broke him.

Anthony · 1:28:43
No, no, but this is a real pushback with this associate of mine that I work with in theater because she's very much like, we have to do this, we have the trigger warning with this. And I go, I don't want that. I want people to know that there is— you have the right to be mistaken, and you have the right to be scared.

Reggie · 1:29:00
And the right to be offended.

Tim · 1:29:01
Yeah.

Anthony · 1:29:02
You have all the right to be offended.

Reggie · 1:29:04
Right.

Anthony · 1:29:04
And you have the— you owe it to yourself to find no emotional investment in that outrage, because that just means you've been emotionally triggered, which means you haven't given it sufficient thought in theater.

Reggie · 1:29:19
And there's something you need to deal with.

Anthony · 1:29:20
And it's— yeah, but theater, the way she described it, is precisely that.

Mary · 1:29:23
Yeah.

Anthony · 1:29:23
You're not saying, here's this person who says all the lines. You're saying, no, no, no, I'm here to watch the person trying to curate their vision in front of me. I'm trying to see them manifest their own behavior over time.

Mary · 1:29:39
I'm watching them cling to the light.

Reggie · 1:29:41
Yes.

Mary · 1:29:41
How do they hold on? And I think if you pay attention, you can see that in everyone, but it's hard to remain that objective observer.

Anthony · 1:29:49
But the governance, they come with prepackaged speeches. They come with certainty.

Reggie · 1:29:56
Yeah.

Mary · 1:29:56
Oh, I hate certainty.

Anthony · 1:29:58
And they come across as that this is the way forward and America has spoken. And to your point, you're like—

Mary · 1:30:03
Well, half the time they don't even have a way forward. No, no, no. They're just like, listen to me.

Anthony · 1:30:06
There's no business model with a solution. Who the hell ever thought that a solution would be a good business model? You're there to perpetuate. You're there to go, that problem is that coffee cup is right over there, right?

Mary · 1:30:19
Short term.

Anthony · 1:30:19
Short term. move it over here. And I'm like, now I just made a product for the guy that's going to kick the cup. I've made another problem. It just doesn't end. And that's not—

Tim · 1:30:29
that's a feature.

Anthony · 1:30:30
And so for me, I have a hard time going like, well, then these guys are just the poorest of the thespians that we have. That's all this is.

Mary · 1:30:38
Bad actors, some might say.

Reggie · 1:30:40
Bad actors.

Tim · 1:30:41
Okay, so I was going to wrap this up by saying government exists at all levels. And we've thoroughly discussed it.

Mary · 1:30:46
We sell governance, by the way.

Tim · 1:30:48
Right. It exists at the government, like the global scale. It exists at the micro, macro, national, the local, hierarchical systems, the corporate, the body, ourselves, our families, even galactic, our plays, thank you, in our theaters. So in all of that, in knowing that government— we are experiencing a macro to micro, um, yes, echo transformation. Yeah, fractal, right? Like you saying this thing about your enemies And I was thinking about the enemies I have, and I am myself an enemy with myself sometimes. I'm fighting some person that was built in me.

Reggie · 1:31:26
Oh, I think we all are.

Tim · 1:31:27
I'm trying to be this new person, but I'm running into myself. So I'm—

Mary · 1:31:31
Totally.

Tim · 1:31:31
So we have—

Anthony · 1:31:32
You're at the brink of being satisfied, and you can't have that.

Tim · 1:31:34
Right.

Mary · 1:31:35
He has said nearly word for word these things before. Maybe you should write a play.

Reggie · 1:31:41
Ooh.

Tim · 1:31:42
Can you imagine that play?

Reggie · 1:31:43
Would you like a monologue?

Anthony · 1:31:46
A one-man show?

Tim · 1:31:46
So what I was gonna say—

Mary · 1:31:48
I'm waiting for both of you to do a one-man show.

Reggie · 1:31:49
Count me in.

Anthony · 1:31:50
Yeah, it'll have to be one after the other.

Tim · 1:31:52
So what I was saying is that at that scale, when we're trying to walk in this world, because that's what we're trying to walk forward in this world, in our lives, the muscles push against gravity to lift you up. So it's a force against another force. Gravity wants to lay you down. Muscles want to stand you up.

Mary · 1:32:11
You could say gravity wants to hold you close.

Tim · 1:32:13
Right. Maybe.

Reggie · 1:32:15
Maybe.

Mary · 1:32:16
Gravity wants to keep you safe. Gravity wants to keep you grounded. And you say, no, I got to fly.

Tim · 1:32:21
Right. And so if you want to walk forward, you got to engage your muscles.

Reggie · 1:32:26
Yes.

Tim · 1:32:26
And you got to move through whatever it is you're walking through.

Anthony · 1:32:30
Generally discomfort.

Tim · 1:32:31
General discomfort.

Reggie · 1:32:32
Right.

Tim · 1:32:33
And so whatever it is that we're aiming toward, all of us, There is— don't accept the imagination, as we brought up in a recent episode, someone else's imagination as your solution. Feel it in yourself. Critical think through the thing you're going through and feel the heart of the thing you're going through.

Anthony · 1:32:57
Mm-hmm.

Tim · 1:32:57
And connect with the things in relationship to you, whether it's inside of yourself or inside of your families or whatever it is in your proximate zone. Don't just feed into the big harping narrative of whatever these mainstream media companies want to do.

Anthony · 1:33:12
Absolutely right.

Tim · 1:33:13
And use your muscles to stand up and walk towards something. That's what I'm feeling, and that's a hopeful thing because we can all walk toward our own vision.

Reggie · 1:33:20
Yeah.

Mary · 1:33:21
You know, can I take you one further? I think, as the person who thinks that we are all one and we're all just here doing an experiment about what it would be like to be a bunch of different people, Which is what the Hindus believe. I mean, I think that we're here to play. I think we're here for the fun of it. I think that if— and there are serious things at stake, and people's bodies are being ravaged, and there's challenging things that we need to work on. But what if those were the problems that we worked on instead of whether—

Reggie · 1:33:49
We work on those problems to get back to play.

Tim · 1:33:50
Yeah.

Mary · 1:33:51
Or like, what if we could do it in a playful way? What if you and I could play and go fix that problem?

Tim · 1:33:55
Right.

Mary · 1:33:55
And that's kind of what I'm trying to make money at right now.

Tim · 1:33:57
My wife just told me this morning, she She said, people with tennis elbow are amateur tennis players because they hold the racket too hard, too tightly.

Mary · 1:34:04
Oh, yet another like painful truth.

Tim · 1:34:07
And so hold the racket lightly. Hold things lightly.

Reggie · 1:34:11
Yeah.

Mary · 1:34:11
And then you won't get tennis elbow.

Anthony · 1:34:13
Very Oscar Wilde where he's like, you must— the Oxford— what do you call it? The Oxford way, which is like to be playful with ideas. Right.

Mary · 1:34:21
Or as 38 Special said, hold on loosely, but don't let go.

Tim · 1:34:25
These are all— this is the ending. This is the ending happening in concert.

Anthony · 1:34:29
Everything's just gonna be like one platitude after another to just wrap everything up, you know?

Reggie · 1:34:33
Quote, quote, quote.

Mary · 1:34:33
I'm bad at quoting, so whenever I've got one, I'm like—

Tim · 1:34:36
Lay it in.

Reggie · 1:34:37
I got a quote.

Anthony · 1:34:38
I got a quote.

Tim · 1:34:39
This has been fun. Thank you for engaging in such titillating conversation.

Anthony · 1:34:43
Of course.

Tim · 1:34:44
Bringing in such big words that I'll have to look up afterwards.

Anthony · 1:34:47
As I re-listen and edit this conversation, I will have all the words you What the hell did you say?

Reggie · 1:34:51
We need a glossary in the captions.

Tim · 1:34:54
What the hell did this guy just say?

Reggie · 1:34:56
What was it? Imperial?

Tim · 1:34:58
It's incredible.

Reggie · 1:35:00
Yeah. Thank you.

Anthony · 1:35:02
I tried my best. It's been great here.

Mary · 1:35:07
There's this game called Wilmot's Warehouse. You should go play it. It's at Well Played.

Reggie · 1:35:12
What's it called?

Mary · 1:35:13
Wilmot's Warehouse.

Anthony · 1:35:15
Wilmot's Warehouse is what I heard you say.

Reggie · 1:35:19
Wilmot's Warehouse.

Mary · 1:35:20
Great game. You should try it.

Reggie · 1:35:22
Really?

Mary · 1:35:23
There's this thing where you have to— you can only use one-syllable words to communicate a concept. It's a cooperative game, which if you haven't played one before, you should.

Tim · 1:35:29
Cooperative games.

Anthony · 1:35:30
I would play that.

Reggie · 1:35:31
Cooperative games are awesome.

Mary · 1:35:32
Which is what I think this whole thing is.

Tim · 1:35:34
No, I think it should be. I think it's been a—

Mary · 1:35:36
I think it is, and we're faking it like it's not.

Tim · 1:35:38
Right. We've made it into a competition.

Anthony · 1:35:40
Because of that thing right there.

Tim · 1:35:43
What is that?

Reggie · 1:35:43
Is that a—

Anthony · 1:35:44
That's the Orwellian eye looking back.

Mary · 1:35:47
That's us. That's us looking at us. This is what it is.

Reggie · 1:35:50
It is us looking at us.

Mary · 1:35:51
You can only use one-syllable words. And what we forgot when we were playing it is that a is like all these very basic words are one-syllable words. So we would like, man, go, there. It's like, no, you can make—

Reggie · 1:36:04
Anthony was like, I am here. That was his first text to me this morning. I am here.

Mary · 1:36:09
Wow.

Tim · 1:36:10
What a way to— that's deep.

Mary · 1:36:11
We got to get out of here, guys.

Tim · 1:36:13
No, but let's just say that together. I am here. Thank you. If you're still here, thank you so much. Go and have a great day. We love you.

Reggie · 1:36:22
Bye. Bye, guys. Thanks. That was awesome.

Mary · 1:36:25
Juicy. Juicy AF. That was so juicy.

Reggie · 1:36:27
I love that episode.

Mary · 1:36:29
Thanks for listening. This podcast was created and developed by our hosts, Reggie Tidwell, Tim Scroggs, and Mary Greene. Special thanks to our guest Anthony Abraira. Produced by Tim Scroggs. Live production by Ricardo Tejeda. Editing by me, Emily Parks. Today's episode is presented lovingly by 40 Hearts, creators of enduring value.