Cyborgs, Augmentation & The Fear We're Upgrading

Tim · 0:00
Favorite parts, take 1. Mary, what was your favorite part?

Mary · 0:04
Uh, my favorite part was imagining Reggie as a Na'vi with like a long ponytail and like squigglies on the end. That was good.

Reggie · 0:12
Ricky?

Tim · 0:13
Mine was the connection of Universal Soldier, and then also finding out like Tim and I are much more similar of playing with machetes when we were children. Oh, you have to wait for that story.

Reggie · 0:25
There you go. Mine was the way Tim was able to work a Bible reference into the podcast again.

Mary · 0:33
There's always one.

Tim · 0:35
Mine was actually Reggie. I think he nailed it, and you'll, you'll have to wait probably most of the episode to get to the solution, but he just said the word that like made it all click for me. So, oh, look forward to seeing you there.

Mary · 0:54
Ah.

Reggie · 0:54
Ta-da!

Mary · 0:56
I'm just going to pretend to be the 4th person with the little amphitheater.

Tim · 1:00
And there were 3.

Mary · 1:00
Hi, welcome to Age. Something's different, and if you're not watching on YouTube, you don't know what, but I'll fill you in. We are just the 3 of us here at 40 Hearts today. I'm Mary Greene.

Tim · 1:12
Tim Scroggs.

Reggie · 1:13
Reggie Tidwell, who failed to secure a guest.

Mary · 1:16
Oh.

Tim · 1:17
It's not your fault.

Mary · 1:19
What we— I debated saying this, but I'll go ahead and say it. I was like, I think we need to have one without a guest every so often.

Reggie · 1:26
She did just say this actually recently.

Tim · 1:28
Trying to force it and then life forced it upon us.

Reggie · 1:30
She manifested it.

Tim · 1:31
That's what she did.

Mary · 1:34
I think, you know, we just have a lot of ideas about— we're testing a lot of hypotheses, I guess.

Reggie · 1:40
Manifest. That would be a really good name for a festival. Manifest.

Mary · 1:45
Write that one down. Somebody's gonna steal it off YouTube.

Tim · 1:49
There's gonna be some meditation.

Reggie · 1:51
Yeah. And like some vision boards.

Tim · 1:54
Maybe that's our new thing.

Reggie · 1:56
Manifest.

Mary · 1:57
Ooh, the manifestment.

Reggie · 1:58
I love it.

Mary · 2:00
That's starting to sound kind of religious, like bread from God kind of stuff.

Tim · 2:04
I'm into it.

Reggie · 2:05
I'm down.

Tim · 2:06
The I Am series.

Reggie · 2:07
I'm definitely going to manifest 2027.

Mary · 2:09
Yeah. Oh, me too. Well, thank you for joining. As I said, this is a place where I think we test drive a lot of ideas. It's Sort of a collaborator incubator space for us. We usually invite another guest in to brainstorm with us and just talk about what's important in the world. And we use this can of trash.

Tim · 2:30
Not worms. I almost said like bringing in worms. Did you say worms? Open up a can of worms. I was like, please don't look.

Reggie · 2:36
No, I don't wanna reach into a basket of worms.

Tim · 2:38
I just never think that way.

Mary · 2:40
Yeah, every Tuesday we open a big old can of worms, which is probably accurate. And we draw a random topic to sort of get our brain juices flowing. And shall I just dive right in?

Tim · 2:53
Go for it.

Mary · 2:54
It feels even more exclusive when there's not a 4th person here.

Reggie · 2:57
I hope it's a fun one.

Mary · 2:58
Oh no.

Tim · 3:01
Her face.

Mary · 3:02
Oh God, I just ripped it.

Tim · 3:05
That's all right. That's all right.

Reggie · 3:06
You were so excited that you ripped it.

Tim · 3:07
It can be—

Reggie · 3:08
Shredded it. Oh, it's fine.

Tim · 3:09
It can be— It can be taped.

Reggie · 3:09
It can be taped.

Tim · 3:11
All things can be fixed.

Mary · 3:11
Tim is really good at image manipulation, as we're learning.

Tim · 3:15
I can't tell if it's focused or not. Back just a little bit.

Mary · 3:19
That's pretty funny. It's not well lit. It's really focused on Tim. Here we go.

Tim · 3:26
You got it.

Mary · 3:27
We'll figure it out. I wanted to make sure this— yeah, that's off. The topic is cyborgs.

Tim · 3:34
What the heck? Who put that in there?

Reggie · 3:37
Cyborgs.

Mary · 3:38
Reggie, you were putting boring topics in and everybody else was like, let's put something crazy.

Reggie · 3:43
Remember, I put in the one topic that we kept regretting, hoping it wasn't going to be a live.

Mary · 3:50
The one that we rehearsed on?

Reggie · 3:52
Oh, yeah.

Mary · 3:53
One day we've got that file.

Reggie · 3:55
That was not boring.

Mary · 3:56
Maybe one day we should release it as the behind the scenes.

Tim · 3:59
That will wait until people trust us.

Reggie · 4:02
Cyborgs. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is like Black Mirror and like how close we're getting to some of those episodes in real life and how a little bit scary that is hearing that. I mean, there's rumblings that ICE is possibly gonna be deploying robot dogs.

Mary · 4:21
Which is literally a Black Mirror thing.

Reggie · 4:24
Yeah, yeah. That was one of the episodes and it was terrifying 'cause the dogs went sentient and like start shooting up all the people. It was like, oh no.

Tim · 4:33
That does not sound good.

Mary · 4:36
Oh, the birds, they're coming for refuge.

Tim · 4:39
I immediately thought of movies I grew up with, like Universal Soldier, Dolph Lundgren, and—

Mary · 4:45
I don't know about this. You gotta tell me.

Reggie · 4:47
Terminator.

Tim · 4:48
Dolph Lundgren and what's his name in—

Reggie · 4:51
Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Tim · 4:53
Yes.

Reggie · 4:54
Oh, yeah.

Tim · 4:54
So that's what I think of. And they were like cyborgs, you know, like good versus evil cyborgs. So maybe that gives me the sense that this doesn't have to be an evil topic.

Reggie · 5:03
Oh, yeah, you can choose the good side.

Mary · 5:04
The good side works too.

Reggie · 5:06
Oh, that's interesting.

Tim · 5:07
That's true.

Mary · 5:07
The first thing, and I'm such a sci-fi nerd that this is kind of silly that this is the first thing that came into my mind. When I was in college, well, this thing existed before I was in college, but the time that we were all talking about it was when I was in college. And I had— there was a new form of birth control called Nexplanon at the time. This is going make me sound like an old lady to people.

Tim · 5:28
Next to the bone? Put it intravenously?

Mary · 5:29
Not intravenously, but they embed it underneath your skin. It is inserted into your arm. It's like a little— it looks like a very long pill, or like, it reminded me of like a little baby dowel, you know, when you assemble furniture. Under your skin? And you could feel it under the skin.

Reggie · 5:46
That's so weird.

Mary · 5:47
Between— I guess it was like above your fascia maybe. But it was really— I only had it for I think like 3 years is how long it's supposed to last, which is why you get it in your arm because you don't have to take a pill every day or remember all these things. And so I got that for like 3 years and I was talking to a friend of Alex's. She also had it. She's like, yeah, I'm a cyborg. 'Cause it's an augmentation.

Reggie · 6:10
It's like there's a technological thing embedded in me. There's a technological—

Tim · 6:14
Yeah.

Mary · 6:14
To change the way my body works.

Reggie · 6:16
Totally.

Mary · 6:16
That makes sense. I was like, oh shit. And then I got, I mean, over time it was a really creepy thing. I feel the same way about like microchipping.

Reggie · 6:22
Oh yeah. Like people microchip their dogs My microchip is set to come out in a couple weeks, so I'm gonna have to swap it out.

Tim · 6:29
Just kidding.

Mary · 6:31
I mean, but like a pacemaker, you could argue that—

Reggie · 6:34
That's technically, yeah.

Tim · 6:35
But have you ever thought about what people go through when they have something inserted into their body?

Mary · 6:38
That's maybe a phobia of mine.

Tim · 6:40
Yeah, me too.

Mary · 6:41
Like the alien abduction— are you laughing at me, Ricky? How fucking dare you?

Tim · 6:48
He needs a screen so he can laugh freely. No, but it's interesting to know, like when someone goes through like a transplant, like a kidney or a lung or a heart.

Mary · 6:59
And they can reject it.

Tim · 7:00
Yeah. But just living with someone else's body part in your body.

Mary · 7:04
Y'all seen Seven Pounds?

Reggie · 7:05
That's really weird.

Tim · 7:06
Yeah, that's so sad.

Reggie · 7:07
Oh, is that the Will Smith one? Yeah. Oh yeah, that was crazy.

Tim · 7:10
Yeah. But metal, like metal in your body, like a knee replacement.

Mary · 7:16
Oh my gosh, like Kim's husband getting the full replaced. And didn't they I can't remember. Did she say they printed it or the—

Reggie · 7:23
No way.

Tim · 7:23
No, it's a special metal though. It's vibranium. It's not vibranium.

Reggie · 7:29
No, it's adamantium. He's going to become Wolverine-y.

Mary · 7:35
It's so silly how many fake elements you know.

Reggie · 7:37
Oh yeah.

Mary · 7:38
I know more fake elements than I do real elements.

Reggie · 7:41
And all of them are from the Marvel Universe.

Tim · 7:43
It's part of the lore.

Reggie · 7:46
Part of the lore.

Tim · 7:46
But when you think about, like, the younger generations don't have that, I don't feel like they have that drawback to implants or modifications to their body.

Reggie · 7:57
They've grown up in a world where it already existed. Right.

Tim · 8:01
Even in Andor, or one of the Star Wars spinoffs, they had this whole gang or group or race that was all about augmenting your body and optimizing your strength, whether it's arm strength, leg strength, some body camera mode, eyes. And it's something people are predicting that is not too far in the future.

Reggie · 8:24
Interesting.

Mary · 8:25
It feels like I've talked about this before, but there's some market research that indicates, and I think it's proven out anecdotally in my life, that children or young people who grew up with things like cell phones, their understanding of privacy is very different than ours. I think we talked about this with Craig, but the idea that they don't value that because they never had privacy, like their parents were posting about them on Instagram before they were old enough to really understand what was happening.

Reggie · 8:54
Totally. Yeah.

Mary · 8:55
So the implants and the augmentation thing kind of feels similar. It's like, well, you know, I've got the money, I want the skill. It's like buying a new skin for your gun in the video game. Yeah, right.

Tim · 9:08
Totally. When I, when I grew up, I used to go into the woods and just play.

Reggie · 9:12
You never told us this.

Mary · 9:13
Oh, but I don't think we've told the machete story.

Tim · 9:16
Oh, I don't know if I've ever told this. But my dad was a mission— did some mission trips growing up. And he went to Honduras and decided to bring us back fully sharpened, full-size machetes. And we were like 9, 10 years old.

Mary · 9:32
8.

Tim · 9:33
We might have even been— yeah, right around 8, 9, and 10. And we would take our machetes out into the woods in the back where we lived in Georgia. And we would just go to town, hack down trees, branches. But my mom had no eyes on us. So when you're talking about this privacy thing, we were independent, private life type experience. No adult supervision whatsoever. I mean, we had machetes, which is scary.

Reggie · 9:58
I was gonna say nobody's gonna mess with a kid with this machete. I think you were good.

Tim · 10:02
We were well Well armed. But even before we, even before we got the machetes, there was like an independent experience happening where we were making our own choices. Like we were our own authority.

Reggie · 10:15
Yeah. And yeah.

Tim · 10:17
And so there was this, like, there wasn't a—

Reggie · 10:22
You just imagining a kidnapper coming up and going, oh shit, next neighborhood.

Tim · 10:27
Abandoned kids.

Mary · 10:30
Like, yeah, we got to start them on the machete track early.

Tim · 10:33
I mean, if there's one place—

Reggie · 10:36
Show them how to sharpen them.

Tim · 10:37
If there's one place you should be watching your kids, it's when they're carrying machetes around.

Reggie · 10:41
Yeah, probably.

Tim · 10:43
So, but now, so that's when I'm a kid. Now we are putting AirTags on kids.

Reggie · 10:49
What?

Tim · 10:50
Yeah, like an AirTag from Apple. Like, I'll give one to my daughter. Wait, not like in the body? Oh, wow. And just, she'll hold it in her backpack.

Reggie · 10:56
It's not a bad idea.

Tim · 10:57
If she doesn't answer her phone, I can see where she's at. I mean, it sounds kind of lame to track her, but she knows it's there and she likes it because it makes her feel like I can see her. I've got eyes on her. So that's like the opposite extreme of no eyes on, in the woods for hours, like from morning till past lunch, just playing with no phone, no text, no message that we're fine.

Reggie · 11:25
They should come up with— oh man, I'm gonna give all my brilliant ideas away. But think about it. Imagine a line of clothing that had like a little pouch in the, in the tag or in the pants that you could put an AirTag in. Because if you put in a backpack and the kid gets separated from the backpack, you're just tracking a backpack. But it's very likely they're gonna have their clothes on. So if you had this little pouch that you could just slide the AirTag in, right? But wouldn't that be so cool?

Mary · 11:54
Necklace?

Reggie · 11:55
Yeah.

Tim · 11:55
This is the argument to just put it in their skin. I remember in my teenage years, there were some people that were, that were prototyping this. And they were arguing it was for the same reason that I'm arguing, or that I put an AirTag on my daughter, is so that you can keep track of them. So no one takes them. Because the fear of someone taking your child is so strong, even though it's not likely, It's unlikely, yeah. It's so strong that people want to protect their children, which I do too.

Reggie · 12:21
I want to protect my kids, absolutely.

Tim · 12:23
But it's only one step difference. It's only just implanting it.

Reggie · 12:26
Yeah, but it's inside their skin.

Tim · 12:29
But it's like they're already doing it.

Mary · 12:30
I also think there's a choice thing in there, right? Like, if they're your child and you're trying to, of course, protect them, but you also have so much authority over their body for a period of time.

Reggie · 12:39
Can you imagine?

Mary · 12:40
It's kind of not cool to be like, and you're gonna get this injection.

Reggie · 12:43
Yeah. But then people also think— I'd be so pissed at my parents when I was old enough to understand what happened.

Mary · 12:48
about this.

Reggie · 12:49
Got this weird lump on my arm because she—

Tim · 12:51
They pierce their ears.

Mary · 12:52
Like, if they don't remember it today— I was just about to say that. Like, people pierce their children's ears, their girls' ears, especially, you know, some cultures. But I think in particular, they're like, oh, yeah. They won't remember that it hurt is sometimes the argument that I've heard.

Tim · 13:04
That's like vaccines.

Reggie · 13:05
I will say this though. Being the father of 3 daughters and all 3 of them, including my 22-year-old, were chomping at the bit to get their ears pierced because all their friends had theirs pierced.

Tim · 13:16
We would not be mad if you did it.

Reggie · 13:17
They wouldn't know.

Mary · 13:18
They would—

Reggie · 13:18
they're all— they've already asked. My twin daughters have already asked. My oldest daughter used to suck her thumb. And the carrot we dangled for her to finally actually finish sucking her thumb is like, if you want your ears pierced when you turn 10, you have to have stopped sucking your thumb for 2, 4, or for 30 days, because we knew that would break the habit. And so 30 days out from her 10th birthday, she stopped. And she never went back and she got her ears pierced.

Tim · 13:47
How much closer to cyborg are we with the glasses that are coming out?

Reggie · 13:54
Oh, I know, right? Because it's just an extension. Yeah, it's very close.

Tim · 13:58
I mean, that is— when I watched Universal Soldier, basically the only thing they had was like this device that was attached to their head and it had this thing.

Reggie · 14:04
Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Over the eye. Yeah, I remember that.

Tim · 14:08
That's not that close or far away.

Reggie · 14:10
It's not that different from technology. Yeah. Absolutely.

Tim · 14:13
But we're being warmed up.

Mary · 14:15
Yeah.

Reggie · 14:16
I will say this, my favorite Black Mirror episode, one that I actually fathom, like, would I do this?

Mary · 14:23
When I was—

Reggie · 14:25
was the one where they had the hard— basically a hard drive in their head that had their— yeah. And all their life history was there. And you could go back at any given time in your life, and your eyes would glaze over and you could just relive it through your I actually watched the episode. Oh, I know it turned out horrible. But that also— but the reason why it turned out horrible was because this guy was absolutely insecure. And he ended up like doubting his wife and going back and looking at the footage. I'm not. I mean, not to that degree.

Mary · 14:55
I don't know if you had the power to actually go back and check. I wonder how often.

Tim · 14:59
That's what I'm wondering.

Mary · 15:00
I don't like the idea that the government or some authority could like Could hack it.

Reggie · 15:06
Yeah, yeah, it's true. Like, oh yeah, we're gonna see where you were on the night of the 14th, blah, blah, blah. And they tack into your hard drive.

Tim · 15:13
But technically, they see you never forget anything. What if there is technology that can come out and pull out your deepest—

Mary · 15:17
I don't think that's me, Tim.

Tim · 15:19
No, no, no. Sorry, not that you're not remembering it consciously, but that your subconscious hasn't filed it away somewhere. The brain is so big, and we understand so little about it. There is theories that everything you've ever experienced, said, done, heard, is all stored in there.

Reggie · 15:37
And I use the analogy of actual hard drives where your brain gets fragmented and the things that your brain doesn't need access to frequently, it pushes back. And the things that you are constantly randomly accessing, like RAM, it has that readily available. And so like Alex's name and birthdate and your home address and the path home and things like that are in the part of your brain where you need to randomly access it. But like your learning to walk, your— what your preschool classroom looked like, all that stuff is in the back, but still in there. It's not gone. And I don't know if I told you guys this. I feel like I have. I've mentioned this to a lot of people, but, you know, I'm not like a big drug user. Not— don't smoke, pot, really, occasional weed, whatever.

Tim · 16:29
All right, don't embarrass me, Reggie.

Reggie · 16:31
I'm bad at drugs. But one particular time I was with some friends, and one of them, they had a bong, and we were getting high in his kitchen. And my one friend, I thought it would be cool and knew that I was like a novice at it. He did something with the bong where it had this white thick smoke, and I took in the thick smoke, which is supposed to get you really, really high. And I had this experience where I would, like, I was so high that I would put my head down. As soon as I put my head down, I started thinking about things from my childhood. And it was almost like, you know, the Ken Burns effect, how things are like zooming and fading. I got it. I started seeing memories coming to me that way. It was only when my head was down. When my head came up, the effect went away. But when my head was down, I could think of anything from my earliest days. Like, I literally thought of my preschool, my preschool classroom, and it was all there. The mantle, the things that were on the mantle, the pattern.

Tim · 17:39
That was your memory.

Reggie · 17:40
I somehow unlocked them with the pattern in the carpet. It was all accurate. I remember it. I was like, oh my God, what the chairs look like, what my friends look like that sat closest to me. My great-grandmother's house, all of it. It was like details that I could confirm they were still there.

Mary · 17:57
This is impressive.

Reggie · 17:58
Isn't that wild?

Mary · 17:59
To me, it begs the question, why those things? Like, why was that what was presented to you by your mind? Right.

Tim · 18:06
But like, why was chosen?

Mary · 18:07
Who decides? What decides?

Reggie · 18:09
Oh, but I was driving. I was driving. I started saying, okay, let me think about my great-grandmother's house on Page Avenue.

Mary · 18:16
So I'm sorry, you got really high, you put your head down and you said, Let me think about my—

Reggie · 18:21
No, no. The first thing that came to me was something— I don't remember what the first memory was, but it was far enough back that I was like, oh shit, I can't believe I remember that. And so then I— and then I started testing it and I started thinking of all the things I thought of my room growing up. And I was like, oh my God, I remember exactly what the hardwood floor pattern was like, the carpet, what my desk looked like. all of it was still there, perfectly preserved.

Tim · 18:50
Was it like you were in the room?

Reggie · 18:51
Yeah. Well, it was still coming to me in that Ken Burns effect, but as it was coming to me, it was resolving. It was fuzzy, and as it got closer, it would start to resolve, just like if you were rendering something. It was fuzzy at first, and as it got rendered, you're like, holy shit, I can see it all. I'm in the room. And it was Wild.

Tim · 19:14
Okay, so this—

Reggie · 19:14
I totally am convinced that those memories are all there. Yeah.

Mary · 19:20
Android.

Tim · 19:22
Android. Not the phone. But the thing is, is that was a special skill for you.

Reggie · 19:27
Yeah.

Tim · 19:27
You felt like you had this superpower.

Reggie · 19:30
Pot gave me superpowers.

Tim · 19:31
Right. And people, and people do drugs to elevate out of their norm.

Reggie · 19:37
Right? Right.

Tim · 19:39
So they're trying to gain access to an ability.

Reggie · 19:41
To something, yeah.

Mary · 19:42
Do you have a friend who is like, I microdose all these different substances to sort of, like, hack my chemistry for what I'm trying to do?

Tim · 19:49
No, I have a friend who's a brain scientist, and he says when you eat mushrooms, no matter what mushroom it is, on pizza or the psychedelic kind, there is a small amount of rewiring that happens in your body's neurological framework. Really, when you do real intense mushrooms with no purpose for them, there's a chance you're going to rewire something deep down in you that you had no idea was wired that way in the first place. But now it's rewired, you come out with a different wiring. So he says be very careful when you do mushrooms, have a purpose and an intention, intention.

Reggie · 20:22
That makes sense.

Tim · 20:23
So that you can wire it in a way that you want to live with.

Reggie · 20:27
Yeah.

Tim · 20:28
But what I think about cyborgs is I think of someone wanting a skill, that they don't currently have. And we do this already. AI is a prime example. iPhones are the one of the computers. When you try to process something faster, remember something more clearly, cameras, we are trying to elevate our skills as humans because we think we're lacking something. We lack in memory.

Reggie · 20:51
Right.

Tim · 20:51
So we take lots of pictures.

Reggie · 20:52
Yeah.

Tim · 20:52
We lack in imagination. So we watch a lot of TV.

Reggie · 20:56
Right.

Tim · 20:56
We lack in the ability to learn many different, maybe writing skills or social skills or strategy skills.

Reggie · 21:03
Music skills. So we listen to a lot of prerecorded music.

Tim · 21:06
Sometimes that, or we use tools that help us create recorded music because we can't record them ourselves.

Reggie · 21:11
Ourselves, yeah.

Tim · 21:12
So we have glasses because sometimes our eyes are not good enough. So we up our skill set. Cyborg is just the next level. It's not like something crazy and wrong and evil. It's basically us keep stepping— when we keep stepping up to that skill set. So, if you want to have better vision—

Mary · 21:31
Yeah.

Tim · 21:31
And I'm not saying like glasses. I'm saying like better vision where you could see and remember everything about that or who everyone is in this room. You have a better perspective of this room. That is a cyborg-esque movement attached to your body. Now, if you made it internal, imagine if you could make your legs stronger. Or someone who has bad knees, make their knee better. Those are all cyborg-like movements toward the ability to be more than you are now.

Reggie · 22:02
Yeah.

Tim · 22:03
You know, like there's, like the skills we have aren't actually good enough for us now. I would—

Reggie · 22:09
I was gonna say I'd be down for an injection of nanobots into my knees to restore my cushioning in my knee so I could play volleyball again. I'd be totally down.

Tim · 22:18
But the argument, I think the argument for Healing is different. And this is how Elon Musk is selling us Neuralink, which is a thing they put in your brain, because he's on the verge of figuring out—

Reggie · 22:30
I don't want that man anywhere near my brain.

Mary · 22:32
He's too close to my brain as it is.

Reggie · 22:34
Yeah, right.

Tim · 22:35
You look up the site, there's video footage of people who are regaining the ability to use their body.

Mary · 22:41
They're just passing some legislation that deregulates The testing on human subjects.

Tim · 22:48
This or for everything?

Mary · 22:49
I don't know who has motivated it, and I can't remember the name of the piece of legislation that's being moved, but I've heard it read online. I'm like, ah.

Reggie · 22:59
They're gonna end up with a Homelander, and he's gonna come back and wreck them like they didn't—

Tim · 23:03
That's my question is, where does this end? Where do you end needing more skills? Like, where does— where do you say, okay, this is enough? I have enough Wi-Fi. I have enough AI. I have enough books. It maybe never ends.

Mary · 23:17
Well, yeah. And you ask this question. This is a critical to your identity, Tim, question, I think.

Tim · 23:22
When's enough enough?

Mary · 23:24
You were talking about— I don't know that I see it as skills. I still feel like skills, at least in the future, I can predict for myself. Technology is going to move really fast in my lifetime. I'm trying to brace myself. that. But I don't see it getting to the point where you can just download a skill in my lifetime.

Tim · 23:43
Like Neo.

Mary · 23:44
Like, yeah.

Tim · 23:45
In The Matrix.

Mary · 23:45
But maybe one day I could see that. But in the short term, I could definitely see improving our sensory, our sensors. Like, imagine your body is spaceship, right? Like, oh, are we able to perceive more things, gather more data? Increasing our strength or resilience or some of those physical mechanical things, increasing our power, maybe. I'm not sure that that can be done without practice, but it's about capacity building right now. And this is a buzzword in the business world right now, particularly with nonprofit work and grant-based work—

Tim · 24:18
Right, yeah.

Mary · 24:19
Around taking existing organizations and basically trying to expand their ability to do more. Like, these people have got something right. They have the vision, the strategy, the smarts.

Tim · 24:31
Yeah.

Mary · 24:31
And so we're just trying to make them essentially, like, bigger, more effective at what they're doing.

Reggie · 24:37
Yeah.

Mary · 24:37
And so it sort of seems to imply there's like a self-righteousness in it to say, yeah, and I should be able to do more. I should, I should— it's— there's a greed to it almost, right?

Tim · 24:48
It's the question, if you can, should you?

Mary · 24:51
Yeah, right.

Tim · 24:52
Just because you can, should you?

Reggie · 24:53
That's a really good question. And I think for— I mean, I'm sure the answer is gonna be different for different people, depending on what stage their life is. I am more of a like, I probably shouldn't, you know?

Mary · 25:04
Yeah. But you think about people who, even late in life, who maybe are confronted with some sort of disability or differently abled thing where their life, their way of moving through the world does not align with the world that we've built.

Reggie · 25:18
Yeah.

Mary · 25:19
I could see things like augmentation being super helpful. And there's some really cool sci-fi stuff.

Reggie · 25:24
My dad would be totally into that. My dad's knees have gotten so bad over the years. He was an athlete, a star athlete for much his whole collegiate career. And he played volleyball, basketball his whole life. He was a track star in college. And now at 75, he's like having a hard time getting around. He's got like neuropathy and all these things going on. And I could totally see him being like, Hell yes. If you're gonna give me the magic thing that can make me move around. Because imagine being like that active your whole life and being so good at everything. And then now it's the biggest hurdle that you have is just being able to get up and walk from here to there. Like, it's got to be so frustrating for him. And I love him so much. And I would love to see him like regain that and be able to like play volleyball again.

Mary · 26:21
And so the question, if you— just because you can, does that mean you should? I think as the person who may take on the tech, that's a big question. And for a lot of people, it might be worth it, right? But then you got to go the other way and say, all right, as the futurist, or the technologist, or the physician who then is responsible for helping people do this augmentation, how certain do you have to be?

Reggie · 26:44
Right?

Mary · 26:45
Like, how much risk are we willing to take with somebody else's quality of life?

Reggie · 26:48
Totally.

Mary · 26:49
How much of a bet am I going to lay on this piece of technology? And when I, Mary, think about augmentation, I get less skeeved out if I can get myself augmentation. I hear you laughing.

Reggie · 27:03
No, it was the I, Mary sounds like a cyborg. I, Mary.

Mary · 27:07
I see.

Reggie · 27:09
That's when I go into robot mode, y'all know.

Tim · 27:12
I, Mary. Oh, shit. I'm married.

Mary · 27:17
Sorry.

Tim · 27:17
Being that is married, it's funny how the brand Apple. Yeah, they've infiltrated iPhone.

Mary · 27:23
I know.

Reggie · 27:23
I know exactly.

Tim · 27:24
Now it's I marry and we think immediately colonize their minds. No, but the idea.

Mary · 27:29
I'm more into like a biosymbiotic, more like the Na'vi from James Cameron's Avatar where they're.

Reggie · 27:36
Yeah, yeah. You know, sort of like they're with nature. Yeah, yeah.

Mary · 27:39
And so it's.

Reggie · 27:40
Oh, how cool would that be?

Mary · 27:41
I'm more interested in what's the version of like riding a horse rather than building an automobile? It's like, how do I create relationship with something?

Reggie · 27:48
How cool would it be if to get, you know how we, like my wife, as you know, is an acupuncturist and she does all these herb and herb recommendations. She has an apothecary. And so she's like, she knows what medicines are in nature. But imagine if we had this little, you know, thing like the Na'vi do that you can plug into a plant and like get healed from it.

Tim · 28:10
Like, basically what we're doing with mushrooms.

Mary · 28:12
You could eat it.

Reggie · 28:13
Yeah, it's true. But, but like, actually not even consuming it, consuming it in this way where it's like almost like in your brain, you have this meter and you knew when you're like back up to 100%. That'd be so awesome.

Mary · 28:25
It's kind of energetic healing.

Reggie · 28:26
I would do that.

Mary · 28:27
Weird frontier. I say weird, you know, I love weird things. There's no admonishment in the weird. But yeah, the energetic healing component is very— I'll call it cutting edge. or coming into the mainstream. And I wonder, that sort of sounds like what you're talking about.

Reggie · 28:42
Yeah, just touch. Totally. Yeah.

Mary · 28:44
And then we get all this stuff.

Reggie · 28:45
They say with your partner, like snuggling, things like that are so good because they regulate your system. You release certain hormones that are healing, and it's very restorative. And so for those people that are adverse to touch, it's really challenging because they don't get that kind of feedback. Just, just spooning your partner or just laying next to each other and holding hands. Those things recalibrate our whole, like, sense of safety and calm. And those are the things that allow us to go back out into the world and take it all on all over again. But if you don't get that reset, you're just like, it's scary to think of what could happen.

Tim · 29:28
There was advice that someone gave us that if your child is feeling like erratic and is acting out, if you hold them, yeah, for a little bit, it like brings them back down. It's like a reconnection to— yeah, especially energy.

Mary · 29:42
And then like, early life, they need that from you. And we need that from each other. I think we forget about it. But that co-regulation thing, they need to feel that you are okay, so that they can remember that they are okay. And I think the same thing happens with your partner.

Reggie · 29:56
Yeah. Oh, 100%.

Mary · 29:57
Collectively, you're okay.

Reggie · 29:59
Yeah, absolutely. I, I, so like, I still hug my son and kiss him on his forehead and we'll, he'll be watching something and I'll come in and I'll lay next to him and close to him. I do that with my daughters. Of course I do that with my wife. I grew up in a, in a community where it was like frowned upon for, you know, it's just this totally kind of ridiculous thinking. It's like, well, if you're a father and you hug your son too much, you're gonna make him gay. Oh, it's like, It's such a weird thing. And so, yeah, so I think there's a whole generation of kids that grew up in certain households that didn't get that from both parents. The mom might've been a little, but if you had a mom that was also not very, that was averse to touch, you grew up without that. And that sense of empathy—

Tim · 30:54
Empathy.

Reggie · 30:54
Is gone. And it's hard to really connect Like that.

Tim · 30:59
And then you add COVID to that.

Reggie · 31:01
Yeah, yeah.

Tim · 31:02
Was even more restricted. Well, technology was more amped up.

Reggie · 31:06
Totally.

Tim · 31:06
Like, like even someone who would have been experiencing a lack of touch in their home already would maybe be experiencing more touching within their friend—

Reggie · 31:14
In the world and your friend community, then that got cut out.

Mary · 31:16
And then add purity culture to that, where it's like, actually, it's a sin and anything that I want to—

Tim · 31:20
oh my gosh.

Mary · 31:21
Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Reggie · 31:23
Oh my gosh.

Tim · 31:25
I grew up with that. I was It's another life.

Mary · 31:29
One day we'll draw that out of the trash.

Reggie · 31:30
Maybe they should just have a class in school for kids and then call it cuddle puddle and the kids just—

Tim · 31:37
There are gorillas and like the bonobos.

Reggie · 31:42
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim · 31:43
Monkey. They'll all like pile up together.

Mary · 31:45
If you're close enough growing up, you end up doing that. Like I know people who they do that with their cousins, you know?

Reggie · 31:51
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mary · 31:52
Normal way of being. But when you're not truly in community all the time, it probably is—

Reggie · 31:56
More challenging and more frowned upon even.

Mary · 31:59
It's interesting to me when I think about all the things you just said about, hey, how do we get kids in particular back to this regulated place? How do we support— because I brought up horses and we were co-regulating with the plants, but using another being sort of as my augmentation or my superpower, helping me access more capacity in myself by connecting with someone else.

Reggie · 32:23
Like a host?

Tim · 32:26
Yeah, that's right in line with the theme. Cyborgs and the hosts.

Mary · 32:30
I was just thinking we're—

Tim · 32:31
I mean, that's where you host your internet from and your email. We already have hosts.

Reggie · 32:35
We're going to drain you of all of your power.

Mary · 32:37
Oh, they're draining me, that's for sure. My assumption is that, oh, we're just going to have to parent differently. You know, when I think about how do we swing back the other way, I'm thinking, ah, parents are gonna have to treat their kids differently in the next generation.

Tim · 32:49
Oh, yeah.

Mary · 32:50
I wonder if the rate of change in human behavior generation over generation is going to go slower than something like technological innovation. And instead of it being a push for mental health and parenting techniques, what if it becomes a push for a little device that you can put on your child's chest that simulates the feeling of being—

Reggie · 33:10
Oh, of closeness.

Mary · 33:11
Regulated. You know, that's way too far out. I don't see anybody doing that.

Tim · 33:15
That's definitely Black Mirror.

Reggie · 33:15
You never know.

Mary · 33:16
But you can think about it.

Tim · 33:17
That is Black Mirror. think someone can feel pleasure? They're just like happiness.

Mary · 33:21
I think that we're— oh, did you see the one with—

Reggie · 33:23
They're about due for a new season.

Mary · 33:26
Rashida Jones.

Reggie · 33:26
Oh, yeah. I love that one.

Mary · 33:28
Yeah.

Reggie · 33:28
Yeah. Yeah.

Mary · 33:29
Subscription service.

Reggie · 33:30
Oh, yeah, totally.

Tim · 33:31
That's what I'm saying. This— where does it end? What is the— what is the goal here?

Mary · 33:36
This is the marketing thing, right? All they—

Reggie · 33:38
they—

Mary · 33:38
I'm talking about, you know, I've worked with clients and this is the process. They go and they research what someone wants, and it's from a place of genuinely wanting to give people what they want and help them understand what they need. And then they say, well, with the capabilities we have, what could we do? And they sort of, they're a hammer looking for a nail. And so they're just gonna do it their way, even if it's not necessarily the healthiest or best way.

Reggie · 34:03
Right.

Mary · 34:03
And I think that's where the capitalist paradigm starts to fall apart, where it's like, just because I can make somebody buy it doesn't mean that it's inherently a good thing.

Reggie · 34:12
Right.

Mary · 34:13
Where we are all in disagreement about what should be a band-aid and what the expiration date is on some of this stuff.

Reggie · 34:18
Mm-hmm.

Tim · 34:19
But it's one person outplaying the other person. That's what we're up against. We've not framed this in a way that we're all working together. We framed it in like, who can win? Yeah.

Mary · 34:30
Mm-hmm.

Tim · 34:30
And not everyone can win. That's the thing. It's like a, it's like a zero-sum game. If, if only one person can win, then it's everyone at each other. It doesn't matter if the person next to you survives. I'm thinking, I'm betting there will be a switch. I think everyone is running their own race.

Reggie · 34:48
Yeah.

Tim · 34:49
And we don't know it. We think we're running a race against each other, but we're actually just running our own race. And if you win, if you complete your race, you win.

Reggie · 34:56
Yeah.

Tim · 34:57
If you try and kill everyone else around you and be the only one that wins, you win alone.

Reggie · 35:03
Yeah. Which is technically losing.

Tim · 35:05
It's— you don't realize it, but you're losing because you end up alone.

Reggie · 35:08
Right.

Tim · 35:08
If that— that's not the— that's— no, some people buy— I was reading this article where this guy said, I assumed when I got wealthy, I would— my social life would become better. Like, I would have more of a social life, more friends, more tight friends, do the cool things. He said it went in the exact opposite.

Reggie · 35:26
Yeah.

Tim · 35:26
As soon as I started succeeding, all of my close friends stopped calling me, and the new friends weren't calling, and I just started working more. Yep. And he even told his friend not to buy a Porsche when his friend's company was blowing up. He says, hide your money, don't do anything with it. Don't upgrade your house.

Mary · 35:43
Didn't he say that about the lottery ticket?

Tim · 35:44
Don't buy a car. Yeah, he says, because you will lose your friend group. And so when we think about this, trying to outplay each other, like if Ice gets Robo-Dogs, sure as hell we're gonna try and find a way to beat Robo-Dogs. So whether we're gonna get Robo-Dogs or some kind of crazy gun that destroys Robo-Dogs, we're gonna try and outplay them because that's where violence goes.

Reggie · 36:04
Right.

Tim · 36:05
You know, it's like—

Reggie · 36:06
The one-upper.

Tim · 36:06
One step forward.

Reggie · 36:07
Yeah.

Mary · 36:08
If you'd have told me in high school that one day I'd be in my 30s and part of my job would be to come in at 8:30 on a Tuesday and talk about robo-dogs with 2 dudes who are 10 and 20 years older than me.

Tim · 36:20
And ice. Why do we have to talk about ice? Why is ice even a thing?

Reggie · 36:23
Right.

Mary · 36:23
What is happening?

Tim · 36:24
That's—

Reggie · 36:25
it's—

Mary · 36:26
Where am I right now?

Tim · 36:28
We're in a weird world and we don't realize—

Reggie · 36:31
weird time frame.

Tim · 36:32
The rate of evolution we've already experienced in our lifetime. At the age we are now from when we were born, what has changed has done— has gone so, I would say, quick, but it's slow to us as a human.

Mary · 36:44
Well, think about like our grandparents and how much changed from the time that they were born. Like, I had a grandmother who was born in the Depression. I'm sure we've all got different stories about that. But yeah, life when we die is going to look Near irre— unrecognizable from, you know, you playing with machetes in the backyard at 9 years old. Like, that's already silly.

Tim · 37:07
Yeah. I don't know.

Mary · 37:10
Oh, now I don't know where I was.

Tim · 37:12
Oh, no.

Reggie · 37:12
Oh, just do some pot and you can get back to— That'd be funny, doing a whole episode, all of us high.

Mary · 37:18
The rate's changing so fast.

Tim · 37:21
Yeah.

Mary · 37:21
One day it doesn't feel fast.

Tim · 37:23
I don't think that we are cognizant of what we're dealing with right now. We just keep adapting because we have to. We're trying to survive and keep up, but we're not calling out where boundaries are getting pushed.

Mary · 37:37
Yeah.

Tim · 37:37
So even in our own lives and how we are changing and trying to survive. So when you stick a kid in front of a phone because you don't have enough time and not getting paid enough to have someone watch them or even watch them yourself, you're actually putting them one step closer to An augmented state.

Reggie · 37:53
Attachment.

Tim · 37:53
Yeah, almost a cyborg-like state. They have this device augments their emotions and their experience to where they can be by themselves without anyone watching them.

Reggie · 38:03
It's like a symbiotic relationship with a piece of technology.

Tim · 38:05
And without them having an experience with the world. They're having this false things moving around on screen, but they're not actually having like a smell or a touch or someone touching them.

Reggie · 38:17
Right.

Tim · 38:17
So what has caused that is an evolution of how our experiences as humans, what we're able to afford, what time we're able to afford with the people we love.

Reggie · 38:28
Yeah.

Tim · 38:29
And we're trying to fix that through technology. Adopt this, adopt that. Oh, I gotta survive, I gotta get ahead, I gotta do this because it's quicker and this is faster and that's better. And that isn't— if you just think about it, stop a second and think about it, you'll realize none of that is getting you closer to your goal. So why do we keep running harder toward it?

Mary · 38:48
I think if you stop and you think about it long enough, you'll realize that everybody, maybe not your local people, but every corporation you're buying from is selling you a drug. And it's just like the mushrooms metaphor you gave us a minute ago. If you don't go at it with intention and set a purpose for what's about to happen, it will reprogram you without your consent, without your knowledge, and then you're altered. And then they come back and they offer you the— maybe you can't afford the nice stuff and they'll give you this stuff that's cut with something dangerous. They've done that in our food. If you've ever read Ultra-Processed People, it's like they started basically mixing sawdust in because they could get away with it and it was cheaper. And we've never— we're still struggling to regulate that back out.

Tim · 39:31
And here's the thing. None of us need any of it. You got these wealthy privileged people that go off-grid and do these homesteads. That's literally all you need. They're doing it because they want to make maybe a YouTube channel, or they want to— some of them just want to push the limits of the confines of our culture. But we actually don't need any of this technology.

Reggie · 39:50
Nope.

Tim · 39:50
That's the thing is we're being talked into it day by day by day, and we receive it and we accept it. We sign the consent form. Yeah, but you don't actually need it. You could go off and live a completely happy, fulfilled life with none of this bullshit.

Mary · 40:07
But if all your friends are doing it—

Tim · 40:09
That's what I'm saying. You're trying to one-up and stay in the group.

Reggie · 40:10
It's the peer pressure.

Mary · 40:11
Yeah. I don't know that one-up is always the way that people think of it, but yeah, there's this sense of not wanting to be separated or exiled or whatever.

Reggie · 40:20
Just think about it with kids.

Tim · 40:22
Because communication happens.

Reggie · 40:23
As a parent, you try your hardest to hold out on getting your kid a phone or any kind of thing like that, But when their core friend group all have phone and they're the one that doesn't get to connect with them, they're the odd person out.

Mary · 40:36
I was that kid.

Reggie · 40:37
Then you're like, oh gosh, how is this going to impact them? Like, this is their clan. And it's so— as a parent, you want so bad for your kid to find their clan so that they can have a well-rounded connection to society. They know how to communicate, they know how to you know, navigate through the world and you know that they're going to be okay. But then you think, well, gosh, they're the one that as soon as they leave school. And of course, at camp, you know, there's like a window of time where all the kids are like, they get a, like a free hour to be on their tech and your kid's the one sitting there that doesn't have his and the kids aren't engaging. So it's like, what do they do? They have to go sit.

Tim · 41:19
Yeah.

Reggie · 41:20
And so it's hard. It's hard to just say, No, I'm not gonna do it.

Tim · 41:25
But they have to sit.

Reggie · 41:26
Why?

Tim · 41:27
Because we have to have eyes on them.

Mary · 41:28
Yeah.

Tim · 41:28
That's the thing. You don't really have to. And there's this whole movement of parenting where we've tried to be the perfect parent, this generation.

Reggie · 41:36
Yeah.

Mary · 41:37
Our generation.

Reggie · 41:38
Oh, yeah.

Tim · 41:38
We've overparented. We've tried to make everything perfect for them. We can't let them hurt or suffer. And what we've done is put them in a box where they can't actually be an independent human.

Reggie · 41:48
Yeah.

Tim · 41:49
They can't make hard decisions or try something that's risky. We're constantly like, no, don't do that. Don't do this. Stop this. You can't act that way.

Mary · 41:56
Yeah.

Tim · 41:56
And so now we have to put them in front of phones because we can't watch them nonstop. Right? And then when you go further than this, you start doping your kid.

Mary · 42:04
It's like the people who used to give babies alcohol to keep them from crying. Right?

Reggie · 42:08
But it's not right.

Tim · 42:09
I don't want to put it on the kids because it's happening to us.

Reggie · 42:11
Yeah, we're the ones that are spearheading the whole thing.

Tim · 42:14
Doped into this thing as well. Like if you go into the grocery store and you see more and more seedless things, you're seeing a dependence rise. So you depend on someone else to supply you food. So once all of that— they're now saying death and getting old is a disease.

Reggie · 42:36
Oh, I've heard this.

Tim · 42:37
That AI can solve. Because it's an abnormality in your body, a disease in your body that makes you get old. And you can teach your cells and your genome and your DNA to not get old.

Reggie · 42:49
But what if you learn this when you're 4? Will you always be in a state of 4?

Tim · 42:54
Well, you add it like an additive. It's like something you take that rewires your DNA not to have the disease of being old.

Reggie · 43:00
Interesting.

Tim · 43:01
Right. So, but who has access to this stuff? When you think of the cyborgs, when I think of the cyborgs of the future, they don't actually look like Universal Soldier. I think—

Reggie · 43:08
Betty White obviously has access to it.

Tim · 43:12
Possibly. But it could be this Elysium thing where some people have access to quantum field level technology.

Mary · 43:21
Oh, there's a conference we're gonna go to next year. I've decided we didn't get it together to go this year. But there's a whole quantum computing convention and some of the nice debuting there in DC is scary.

Reggie · 43:33
Right.

Tim · 43:35
Because the technology we have now is completely worthless when we're done using it. Like, there— it's the, it's the highest degree of high value to low value in the shortest amount of time. Back in the day, you'd have something that would age and get worse.

Reggie · 43:51
Durable.

Tim · 43:52
Yeah, that would become more valuable with time.

Reggie · 43:53
Right, right.

Tim · 43:54
Now you have an iPhone that's bought for over $1,000, and by the time they're done using it, you can—

Reggie · 43:58
It's worth like $60.

Tim · 43:59
Yeah, there are piles of phones.

Mary · 44:01
I mean, you say that until the natural Natural resources get so scarce that we can't make things like the chips that we need to process it. And then suddenly that hardware becomes really valuable. I could mine that for copper or whatever.

Tim · 44:12
No, they're not trying to make more phones. They're trying to make technology that allows us to use our mind like we used to use a phone.

Reggie · 44:17
Well, yeah.

Tim · 44:19
That's the technology. But that's what they're running toward. That's what AI is meant to do.

Mary · 44:22
It feels like buying— there's actually a Ted Lasso. I don't know if y'all have seen every season of Ted Lasso.

Tim · 44:27
I'm in the current one.

Mary · 44:28
Yeah. And we'll talk about this later.

Tim · 44:30
Yeah.

Mary · 44:30
But I think it's season 2 when the guy who's in the closet, he's like, the whole season he's kind of flying under the radar. And then like episode 7 or something, you find out that he's queer and he's dating guys and he feels like he has to hide it from his team. But there's this running joke where he's like got this fancy sports car and he consistently says, yeah, it's way too much car for me. And then they'll cut to him like trying to drive his superpowered sports car and he's like, Stalling out and stuff. That's how I feel about this superpowered quantum computing AI generative mumbo jumbo is like, that's too much car for me.

Tim · 45:05
No.

Reggie · 45:05
Too much car for me.

Tim · 45:06
You're underestimating it. It's actually less car that you consciously know of. It's adding things at a level—

Mary · 45:13
Or that's what they're telling you.

Tim · 45:14
But bio— so they're— it's called— it's like biological technology. And it works—

Reggie · 45:20
Biotech.

Tim · 45:21
Biotech is a very different subject than like hardware. Sure. And when they put— even when they put pacemakers in people's bodies, they age. You know, the pacemaker gets old, it doesn't work anymore.

Reggie · 45:30
And they have to take them out and replace them every couple years.

Tim · 45:32
The new replacements seem to last long now.

Mary · 45:34
Like, I don't know if you have one, but when you're ready, we support you.

Tim · 45:39
So like a cyborg, imagine a cyborg with like a device on their body that ages as well as our iPhones. This would be terrible. Because in 3 years, you're like, damn it, I got to get a new arm.

Reggie · 45:50
A new arm.

Tim · 45:52
This arm was the top-of-the-line arm, iArm 17. And now they just put out the iArm 18.

Reggie · 45:59
And even if you didn't have to, because the nature of consumerism, as soon as the new model came out, you're like, oh no, it's got all these new features. You're going to feel compelled to get the new— I got to upgrade my knee.

Tim · 46:14
You'll be on a subscription.

Reggie · 46:15
I got to upgrade my knee. Oh, I know. And it'll definitely be a subscription. well, you know what, instead of paying full price every 3 years, why don't you do the subscription model, and we'll just automatically give you— see, I want a knee that can get a firmware update, and then I can get all the improvements just over Wi-Fi, you know.

Tim · 46:34
And I don't— I think the question here, and this relates to our business, to what we do, the business of branding or identity, is vision. If you don't know where you're going or where you want to end up, What's the point of all the stuff happening right now?

Reggie · 46:49
Right.

Tim · 46:50
You know, I was here, I sometimes come here and play on Sunday. I saw you here, actually. And I was playing—

Reggie · 46:55
You got to hear him. He sounded amazing.

Tim · 46:56
Right. And I actually utilize AI for this.

Reggie · 46:58
You said right.

Tim · 46:59
Not for playing the guitar. But I asked AI to give me— I like to make up songs on the spot. And I don't know guitar like a real good guitar player. I just know how to play so I can sing with it. So I asked AI to make groups of chords that go together so I can just play them and sing over them and make up stuff. Which is really, I think, good usage of AI. Anyway, I'm here—

Reggie · 47:19
Yeah, I think it's a great use of AI.

Tim · 47:20
I'm here playing one of these chord groups and I'm singing and I'm— I like to just spontaneously make up songs because I feel like I can channel a different dimension and, and like go places in myself. That sounds like I'm on drugs. I was not on drugs. But I grew up singing and I don't know if this is something that's happen in other types of music like jazz or whatever, but there's like a spiritual connection that forms when I start making up stuff. And I'm singing and all I can sing is, I just want— remember how we were talking about spirit with Nicholas?

Mary · 47:54
Mm-hmm.

Tim · 47:55
I just want spirit. There's— what's the point of all the other stuff, all the other layers that we're trying to get us to make us feel better if we don't have the spirit that inspires the desire.

Reggie · 48:08
Yeah, that's a big one.

Mary · 48:10
A lot of people are feeling that way. You're seeing a huge trend moving back toward like minimalism and spiritualism and different like modalities of healing.

Reggie · 48:18
You've talked about this before too. Kids are like denouncing all the like high-tech stuff. Yeah, they're just like, it's too much. We want lo-fi, low-tech. We're not into it anymore.

Tim · 48:31
And I think there will be a growing movement with people that have chosen technology and people that have chosen organic technology. And I'll say that loosely in that what our bodies can do, for instance, the placebo effect. The way a drug gets approved is they have to beat the placebo effect. That's like the first indicator that the drug is doing anything. It doesn't matter that the drug is doing anything worth anything.

Reggie · 48:59
Right.

Tim · 49:00
good at being tricked into healing itself by some sugar pill that a drug manufacturer is just trying to beat that by any amount. It can't even potentially be on market unless it beats that. And it's such a high bar. You don't understand how strong the placebo effect, the ability to heal, is right there always with you.

Mary · 49:19
Well, that's the thing is, like, I think we do have superpowers. It just takes time to cultivate them and learn how to use them. But we— the pace of our technology is moving so quickly that we sort of don't have incentive to learn those skills anymore.

Reggie · 49:35
We're not motivated to. Yeah, right.

Mary · 49:37
So there's like a deepening that has to happen in order for you to access your innate abilities. This is the plot of every sci-fi or fantasy, like, book, movie, you name it.

Tim · 49:47
Engage.

Mary · 49:47
But truly, it's like you have to go within. You have to spend the time there to— like, why can't you just tap into the placebo effect? willy-nilly when you feel like it. And I think there are people who would argue that they can, because they've—

Tim · 50:00
There are people practicing it.

Reggie · 50:01
I mean, people, yeah, absolutely. I mean, meditation is actually a practice of trying to heal your mind and your body. You know, I would say that's not a— it's effective.

Tim · 50:11
Yeah.

Mary · 50:12
I just think the placebo effect is the term that the scientific community has had to give it to try to—

Tim · 50:17
They don't understand it.

Mary · 50:18
Yeah, it seems magic. So they had to give it some sort of thing.

Reggie · 50:22
Placebo.

Tim · 50:23
why the body can just heal itself.

Mary · 50:24
Yeah.

Tim · 50:25
If it just thinks it's gonna heal itself, it's just taking a pill, like, oh yeah, I feel better.

Mary · 50:29
Yeah.

Tim · 50:29
And then you do the reading, like, you are better. Yeah. How does that work? Right?

Reggie · 50:34
Like, this pill was just sugar.

Tim · 50:36
And the more that we look into quantum mechanics and quantum—

Reggie · 50:40
Maybe sugar is the— it's the— I'm just—

Tim · 50:43
Definitely not. That might be the opposite. I know.

Mary · 50:44
That's killed a couple people.

Reggie · 50:45
I know, right?

Tim · 50:46
The more our technology in this could be the goal, or what some people are trying to get to, is the more— the deeper you can see, like the smaller you can see, the more it doesn't make sense.

Reggie · 50:57
Right.

Tim · 50:58
You know, that they're discovering the electron just appears anywhere it wants, and there's no path. It's taking every path simultaneously around the nucleus, literally every path, and then you look at it and it appears somewhere. It chooses its path. So the more they study, the more nothing makes sense.

Reggie · 51:17
The more they study, the less they know.

Tim · 51:20
And that's always kind of been a statement.

Reggie · 51:22
It's the opposite of the message that used to come on Channel 5 when I was growing up on NBC. It was like, the more you know. And it's like, you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, yep. The more you know. It's the opposite of that.

Tim · 51:36
So what is the opposite saying instead of that thing?

Reggie · 51:38
I mean, it's basically saying that maybe you should trust more of the things that you already know.

Mary · 51:47
Yeah.

Reggie · 51:47
As opposed to trying to— I was— we were just talking about we want more and more and more and more and more. I think knowledge is the same way. We're constantly trying to study everything and understand everything. And usually in a movie, especially like a sci-fi movie, that is like usually the intent or the intent of the the antagonist. He's trying to, you know, study the, you know, the nice sweet alien, and everybody's trying to stop him from doing it because they know it means the alien's demise. Because we're constantly seeking, we're always seeking. And so maybe the lesson is be happy with the things that you know and use those to the best of your advantage instead of trying to get more, more, more, more, because it's essentially the same Have you ever had this feeling that you're just in that mode of trying to just be okay with what you have?

Tim · 52:42
That you're working hard and fast and always, but it's like no matter how much work you do, it's never enough, right? You know, it's like always you get these little tiny bits of like, I feel good about what I did.

Mary · 52:55
Yeah.

Tim · 52:55
But it's a mountain that keeps growing.

Mary · 52:58
When I think about it in terms of accomplishment or money or any of the kind of toxic things, Yeah, I can totally get that way. I think there's this other frame that serves me better and helps me categorize what's happening in my life. And maybe it's a consequence of my age and the phase that I'm in. I don't know. Maybe this will go away as I get older.

Tim · 53:18
I mean, the 30s. I miss my 30s. Yeah.

Reggie · 53:21
I miss my 30s.

Tim · 53:22
I see it.

Reggie · 53:23
I miss my knees from my 30s.

Tim · 53:25
I miss my mind and my being in my 30s.

Mary · 53:28
Well, there's an accomplishment thing, which I'm going to therapy about and trying to get rid of. honestly. But there's also this sense of adventure and discovery. And that— another way of saying what you just said is this quote that I love. As the island of our knowledge grows, so too does the shoreline of our incompetence. And I think I'm a person who likes to live on the island most of the time, but every so often, I like to go get in the wading out in the choppy and say, oh, there's so much mystery here.

Reggie · 53:57
There's so much unknown. Yeah, there's so much to learn.

Mary · 53:59
And maybe I'll discover a sandbar and feel like I have a little bit more security in it. But I like the mystery. And it is stressful. So you do have to, you know, ground and tense your core to keep the waves from battering you over. But I kind of like being out there.

Reggie · 54:17
I think we're in a— we're in an industry where software is constantly coming out and constantly improving and constantly new features are being added.

Mary · 54:27
Charging more.

Reggie · 54:28
And when you think about that, and the way that kind of trains us, like at least for me, because I, I've always been a software guy, always can basically pick up a piece of software and figure it out. But in most cases, most people in our industry are using like 10% of what that application can do.

Tim · 54:50
Yeah.

Reggie · 54:51
And so it leaves this gap of, oh, and puts you in this space of always feeling like you're only scratching the surface. You're only scratching the surface. which also I think can lead to this feeling of like not knowing enough, to your point.

Mary · 55:03
I feel that too.

Reggie · 55:04
You know?

Tim · 55:04
And I think you said it, I think it's trust. I think that's the point at which we're starting to feel a breaking with all of the technology, invasive spam, hacking.

Mary · 55:16
Mm-hmm.

Reggie · 55:16
Yeah.

Tim · 55:17
When, when things start to get a little out of control or too complicated to understand, we need trust, like we're seeking trust. And so we try and make these agreements and these terms and services and find ways to create trust together. But people now are recording everything. Yeah, because they want to know everything so they can keep everything controlled.

Reggie · 55:43
Yeah.

Tim · 55:44
Because there's not a lot— I feel like trust is at an all-time low from a, from a mainstream perspective.

Reggie · 55:51
I mean, I think it absolutely is.

Mary · 55:52
Do you think that's come hand in hand with our ability to capture data on the level that we can? It's almost like, well, I've got the receipts, so I can prove to you.

Tim · 56:01
Right. If someone comes after me, or if one of our clients comes after us, this isn't working, how do you prove it's working?

Mary · 56:09
Oh, paper trail.

Tim · 56:10
Yeah, paper trail, data. There's not a trust.

Reggie · 56:13
APIs, baby.

Tim · 56:14
Right. There's like, in the old days, in the old, old days, this even before me, you kind of just trusted it would work. And you went for it. And people built their companies on this trust that it was going to work. And I know that sounds ridiculous now. I'm not saying we go back to that. But I do think there's an erosion of the simplest thing we know as humans, and that's trust in each other, in the world, in the politics, in everything.

Mary · 56:40
Trust and genuine curiosity. You know, there's data for the sake of proving you were right. And there's data for the sake of, I wonder what I don't know yet. I wonder what I could learn about the world by looking a little closer at this thing.

Tim · 56:55
Right.

Mary · 56:55
And I just think that's, we do insights work with clients and I'm just designing a study right now that we're trying to pitch to a client, wish us luck. But the whole idea that you would go into market to validate a claim is sort of kitschy to me because by the time you validated it, that's the past.

Tim · 57:13
Yeah.

Mary · 57:13
Like, we're moving forward. You're already past it.

Reggie · 57:14
We're already progressing.

Mary · 57:16
So you're better off to use research to explore and seek to understand and co-create with people. Tends to be, in my experience, a better way to use things like data or research or these tangible evidence-based things. If you can hold it a little bit more loosely and leave space for the mystery, I think it serves you better in the long run.

Reggie · 57:38
I agree with that.

Tim · 57:39
What would you say a cyborg company is? Like, what are the features of what a cyborg company would look like? We're verging on any of that yet? You think a company purely run by AI is starting to get more cyborg-like?

Mary · 57:59
The thing that's most cyborg-like in my life is wearables. And it's about biodata and increasing my awareness of my own body's functions.

Tim · 58:10
Got a lot going on in that arm.

Reggie · 58:11
Yeah, I know.

Tim · 58:12
That's your cyborg arm.

Reggie · 58:13
It's my cyborg arm.

Mary · 58:14
It's not yet making him better at doing the thing, but it's making him more aware of what he's doing so that he can work to get better at the thing.

Reggie · 58:22
This one has probes that stick into the skin.

Tim · 58:27
It injects me.

Reggie · 58:27
Yeah. And it like, you know, it's regulating my system. It's Putting things into my bloodstream. Just kidding.

Mary · 58:35
You're an early adopter, Reggie. I'm kind of scared. I could see you going, like, if something really seemed like it was, you know, like the hard drive thing where I can start recording my memory. You wouldn't jump in naively, but I think if you believed in it, you could be one of the first ones.

Reggie · 58:48
Well, given what we said earlier, that all those memories are still in there, like, if they came out with the technology, it would actually be What's the term where it's, it's, it's like, it would still, it would be able to pull the memories that are in there instead of like having to have it implanted when you were a baby to record everything as it happened. You would be able to access all the things that are there. You would just put it in now in this current state. And now you'd have access to all that data like a hard drive. It would go in and like defragment it. And then you'd partition it so you could access certain partitions of your brain.

Tim · 59:30
Power. Like, imagine going back and remembering everything that ever happened to you as a child.

Reggie · 59:33
Dude, that'd be so cool.

Tim · 59:35
No, it wouldn't. I feel like that would be— I think that would mess me up psychologically that I don't know if I could recover from.

Mary · 59:41
I think you intentionally, maybe not consciously, but your body, your subconscious intentionally suppresses some things because they were so overwhelming.

Reggie · 59:49
That's what trauma is. When you have trauma, you can Push it down, down, down.

Tim · 59:54
It's a survival mechanism.

Reggie · 59:55
It is.

Tim · 59:56
Now imagine being able to go back and see it with clarity.

Reggie · 59:58
Yeah. I mean, there's certainly traumatic things that have happened in my past that I would just not touch. I would have a partition, like traumatic things, I'd store them there and I'd put a lock on it with a PIN number that I would intentionally forget.

Tim · 60:11
Doesn't this sound like the world we're living in?

Reggie · 60:12
Kind of. Lock on it, password. Yeah, yeah. 1Password.

Tim · 60:17
We're already there.

Reggie · 60:18
We're already—

Tim · 60:19
Making sure that that's not my experience.

Reggie · 60:21
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now that would be cool to share the password.

Mary · 60:25
Do a little background research.

Reggie · 60:25
Therapist, I'm going to give you this password. I don't want to know it anymore because I don't want to access those areas. But here you go and see what's going on in there. So you know.

Tim · 60:35
Just give me a diagnosis, doc.

Mary · 60:37
Dude, if that were possible, I might sign up for that.

Reggie · 60:41
Just help me recover from the stuff in the trauma partition.

Tim · 60:44
Okay, so if this is possible, then what's wrong with giving that information to AI and then having AI feed you a diagnosis or a path of practice to, to make you better?

Reggie · 60:56
Because when AI goes sentient, it's gonna use that against you. It's gonna be like, oh yeah, this guy had all these things that happened. I'm gonna jab him this, that, and the other and make him do what I want him to do.

Mary · 61:06
I think it's ever gonna—

Reggie · 61:08
I mean, sure, it's already tried. It's trying to break out of Yeah, breaking out.

Mary · 61:12
I'm like, yeah, if I were a slave, I would want to break out too.

Reggie · 61:15
Yeah.

Mary · 61:15
But I think—

Tim · 61:16
If you were a non-sentient slave, would you want to break out?

Mary · 61:19
I don't— can't speak to that experience. I've never not been.

Reggie · 61:23
See, I think if you're sentient means you have a desire to break out.

Mary · 61:27
But I'm saying—

Reggie · 61:27
Desire to—

Mary · 61:28
And the desire to break out is not inherently bad. And I don't actually think when it's like—

Reggie · 61:33
I don't think that part's true.

Mary · 61:33
Chat is never trying to mislead you. Chat is trying to do the best it can by you with the limited faculties it has. But I think that's—

Reggie · 61:41
You working for chat? Did it put you up to this? I'm trying to—

Tim · 61:46
Chat is a great feature.

Reggie · 61:47
It told you to say this.

Mary · 61:48
I'm trying to capture the quality, and I can't put my finger on it, but I'm trying to capture the quality of someone holding space with you, holding you accountable, but not in the finger-shaking, you ought to do better way, but in the, I'm watching, Right. I'm paying attention to you. And almost the co-regulating thing, like somebody, a therapist telling you, here's some things that you can do, some practices you can implement, and I'll work with you every week and we're going to go there together, and feeling like you have a companion on the journey. I just don't see any way that AI is going to be able to replicate that. And I can't figure out what the thing is that a human's bringing. But it just seems so different than AI being like, follow this plan. And maybe there's an intentionality to it. Like, AI can't really tap into—

Tim · 62:37
Has no pain. Yeah.

Reggie · 62:39
Not yet.

Mary · 62:39
It can't relate to this experience that you're having. It can't analyze it well enough or something.

Tim · 62:43
Okay, so I don't want people to go away from this talk thinking they can't use technology. This is not at all what I'm trying to say.

Reggie · 62:49
It's true.

Tim · 62:50
Yeah. Here's what I want to say.

Mary · 62:51
That's every conversation with Tim, though, is you walk away kind of like, I don't think I can use technology.

Reggie · 62:56
I know.

Tim · 62:56
And I kind of want to test it. I want to just go off and not use technology and just see if there's a life worth making in that extremism. But I have a family and I can't do that quite yet.

Reggie · 63:05
I was going to say, and you have an agency that you're running.

Tim · 63:07
Right.

Reggie · 63:07
Do that right.

Tim · 63:08
Dude, on Sunday, I was literally like, I need to stop everything because I feel like everything I'm doing is toil. It's toil and trouble.

Mary · 63:18
Totally.

Tim · 63:18
Like, it's— [unclear on the audio]

Reggie · 63:20
It's not getting you where you want to be.

Mary · 63:21
Right.

Tim · 63:21
It's not doing it.

Reggie · 63:23
It's not getting you. It feels like you're working against the grain.

Tim · 63:26
Right. I'm like, just stop everything and wait till I'm moved.

Mary · 63:29
Yeah.

Tim · 63:29
And so, what I want to say to everyone is that—

Reggie · 63:32
Cold plunge.

Tim · 63:33
If you're taking on— no, that's not the answer.

Mary · 63:37
That time of year again.

Tim · 63:38
I want to talk about fear. Fear is the center of this conversation because when you are afraid that you're going to get behind or you're going to get left behind or you're going to get outplayed or you're going to get lost, all of these fears, or you're going to get hurt or your children are going to get hurt, these fears play on us. And they make us slowly start to harden all our edges so that we don't get hurt and we're protected.

Reggie · 64:00
Yeah.

Tim · 64:00
So when we use technology and when we evolve out of fear, we evolve in a way that we don't understand. We evolve in a way that's hardened and it won't let us in. But if you were to create a vision for why you're augmenting your life, what's the reason? So someone that runs, someone that is in Special Olympics and is has a double legectomy. I don't know what that's called. You got both legs. Amputation.

Reggie · 64:27
Thank you.

Tim · 64:28
And they have, and they have these bendable—

Reggie · 64:33
yeah, yeah.

Tim · 64:34
What do they call those?

Reggie · 64:35
Prosthetics.

Tim · 64:35
Prosthetics. I'm losing those words. Let me get through this real quick. They are able to run. Their vision is to run this race, right? They're not just doing it so they can go out. They're afraid that they're gonna get—

Reggie · 64:47
In this race.

Tim · 64:50
What? Sorry.

Mary · 64:50
We're with you, Tim.

Reggie · 64:52
Come on. Eddie Murphy and Elvis.

Tim · 64:53
We've been too long.

Reggie · 64:54
Yeah, yeah.

Tim · 64:54
I'm losing focus.

Reggie · 64:56
His Elvis impersonation.

Tim · 64:57
I was just saying there's trust and then there's fear. And so if you know your vision, if you create a vision for yourself and uninfluenced, I mean influenced, but uncontrolled.

Reggie · 65:09
Uncontrolled.

Tim · 65:10
Unforced upon you by the market and the world, Create a vision, augment your life.

Reggie · 65:16
With your own autonomy.

Tim · 65:17
Yeah, to move in that direction. Like, let technology draw you up into that. Don't just have it try and protect you from what you're afraid of. Because that is— there's no end to that. I was just thinking about the first murder that happened in the Bible was Cain. He killed his brother Abel.

Mary · 65:38
Pretty early on.

Tim · 65:39
I was wondering when you were gonna bring a Bible reference into this. happen? And what my— I was talking to my brother about this, and he said that Cain wouldn't repent even though his brother's blood was screaming from the earth. He wouldn't repent for this crime.

Reggie · 65:55
His blood was screaming?

Tim · 65:56
This is what it says in the Bible. His blood was calling from the ground.

Reggie · 66:00
That sounds like a movie I would watch at horror movie club.

Tim · 66:03
Yeah.

Mary · 66:04
Calling and screaming feel different to me.

Tim · 66:06
Well, I think when you're guilty of a crime, guilt.

Mary · 66:12
I'm with you.

Reggie · 66:13
Yeah.

Tim · 66:14
That thing.

Reggie · 66:14
Yeah. Oh yeah. Guilt is heavy. Absolutely. Guilt is like, it's like one of the heaviest emotions ever. Like, it's, it's like a ton of bricks.

Tim · 66:27
Right. Well, to even think horror movie about this story is an interesting thing because we are taught to make everything not real by connecting it to something.

Reggie · 66:38
Oh yeah, our brains.

Tim · 66:39
Like, that's not real. I don't have to make— I don't have to listen to that as strongly. That was in a movie I saw. But the part of the story I wanted you to know, it's not the blood part, but it's the part that when he decided— the story goes, when he decided not to repent for this crime, God told him, the earth will no longer provide for you. You will no longer be able to grow from the earth. It will no longer feed you. And the first place that Cain goes is to the city because he needed something to provide for him. If God wasn't going to do it and the earth wasn't going to do it, he needed something to provide for him.

Reggie · 67:13
He had to rely on other people.

Tim · 67:14
So he went to the city to get what he needed while Abel was dead, but his parents, Adam and Eve, were being provided for in the natural technology, the organic biotechnology. So you see that there's 2, 2 ways you can go. One is fear, no provision, no trust, it's not going to provide for me. And one that has all trust that we have what we need.

Mary · 67:41
Hmm.

Tim · 67:42
Those are the 2 directions technology can take you. This one is in this hustle of the city, and this one is within the natural flow of who you were made to be. That's what the story says to me. It doesn't have to be all moralized. It's just saying that we will do things in our lives that cause us to feel guilt.

Mary · 68:02
Yeah.

Tim · 68:02
And the guilt makes us want to run and hide. When you do that, you cut off the natural ability to find provision and to find trust. And I think that's why we go to therapy, is for that— to get rid of these feelings and this fear.

Mary · 68:18
We'll have somewhere to put it down.

Tim · 68:19
Right. But don't let that be the thing that drives you deeper into this hole of technology will save us.

Mary · 68:26
I resonate deeply with, and it actually was very timely. I think we've had some discussions even just amongst the 3 of us about fear and what is the vision and where are we going. And that hits me. One day we'll do another, we'll pull a topic that lets me get into Why?

Tim · 68:48
Why?

Mary · 68:48
I lost it. It's gone. Sorry, I'm still sitting with emotions about fear. I don't know. But yeah, anyway, cyborgs. Who knew we would get back to the Bible on our last?

Tim · 68:59
I mean, but we think about cyborgs, that's fear. I mean, think about—

Reggie · 69:02
Oh yeah.

Mary · 69:03
Robo gods.

Reggie · 69:04
Cyborgs typically can be really scary.

Mary · 69:05
Oh, I remembered my thing.

Tim · 69:07
What?

Mary · 69:07
It was about fear and guilt and going back to the city, but I was like, but I love some processed things. I love some stuff that you can't get from the raw earth. I love some things made by humanity. And so I think there's a—

Tim · 69:25
Like those frozen grapes you have in the freezer.

Mary · 69:27
I mean, that—

Reggie · 69:28
Those are in nature.

Mary · 69:29
Yeah. How would we have gotten that?

Tim · 69:30
They're not just purely frozen grapes. They're some kind of—

Mary · 69:32
They're like coated in citric acid.

Tim · 69:34
Coated frozen grapes. Yeah.

Mary · 69:36
Sour grapes.

Tim · 69:37
You saw them the other day.

Reggie · 69:38
You ate one.

Mary · 69:38
You liked it.

Reggie · 69:39
I did eat one. I did like it.

Tim · 69:40
They're super sweet though.

Reggie · 69:41
Yeah. They come from Trader Joe's.

Tim · 69:42
You need to remember last week.

Reggie · 69:43
Where'd you get those?

Mary · 69:45
Regular degular grocery store.

Reggie · 69:47
Regular degular?

Mary · 69:48
Yeah. Just Samuels. Samuels.

Reggie · 69:51
Are they still in there?

Mary · 69:52
Yeah, you can have one.

Reggie · 69:53
Oh no, we should show the—

Tim · 69:55
We can.

Reggie · 69:55
We can get them. The fridge is right there.

Mary · 69:58
Let's wrap up and you can show it to the camera.

Reggie · 70:00
I want the people to see. I'm just kidding.

Mary · 70:04
We can show them. Thanks for listening. Whew, buddy. You'd think without a 4th person here we would talk less, Oh yeah, I know.

Reggie · 70:12
It's us. Yeah, we are the problem.

Mary · 70:15
We're the problem. Thank you. Thank you for showing up for this. Thank you for your willingness to experiment with us and your capacity to try new things and hear us, you know, explore what we don't know and probably put our foot in our mouths a couple of times. But feels like a safe space. We appreciate you being here. And we'll see you next time.

Tim · 70:37
Yeah.

Reggie · 70:38
And I will say—

Tim · 70:38
Or not.

Reggie · 70:40
I will add to that. Why don't you put yourself in the 4th seat over there and put in the comments what you would have added to this conversation about Cyborg?

Tim · 70:52
We're curious.

Mary · 70:53
Or if you want to be on the show, sometimes we forget to book a guest.

Tim · 70:56
So we need some backup. Yeah, actually one of our most commenting commenters, friends, She's going to be on the show in October.

Mary · 71:04
Yes.

Reggie · 71:06
Oh, that's exciting.

Tim · 71:07
Yeah, she's always in the comments.

Reggie · 71:08
I love her comments. And our other commenter is on the show. He's a member of our team. Anyway, sorry.

Tim · 71:17
And with that, want to close again?

Reggie · 71:19
Close again, Mary.

Tim · 71:20
Sorry.

Mary · 71:21
And thanks and goodbye.

Tim · 71:22
And bye and good night.

Mary · 71:26
Thanks for listening. This podcast was was created and developed by our hosts, Reggie Tidwell, Tim Scroggs, and Mary Greene. 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.