 Rhythm. This is the Rex Monthly Tekken Call Wednesday, July 10th, 2019. No idea how it got to 2019, but it is. It is what it is. And I have a poem for us by Louise Gluck, or Gluck, if you were to speak German and use the omelot, titled Telescope. I will put the link right now in our chat, so you can follow along if you'd like. There we go. Telescope by Louise Gluck. There's a moment after you move your eye away when you forget where you are, because you've been living, it seems, somewhere else in the silence of the night sky. You've stopped being here in the world. You're in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning. You're not a creature in a body. You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity. Then you're in the world again at night on a cold hill, taking the telescope apart. You realize afterward, not that the image is false, but the relation is false. You see again how far away each thing is from every other thing. Let me read it again. Telescope by Louise Gluck. There is a moment after you move your eye away when you forget where you are, because you've been living, it seems, somewhere else in the silence of the night sky. You've stopped being here in the world. You're in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning. You're not a creature in a body. You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity. Then you're in the world again at night on a cold hill, taking the telescope apart. You realize afterward, not that the image is false, but the relation is false. You see again how far away each thing is from every other thing. Let's read that again. Always bears, always bears the double, the double meeting. Hey, Asti. Hey, April. Hey, Todd. Everybody remember you're muted by default when you came in? I am at my mom's right now. She had a new brand shiny new high technology hip installed on Monday. The installation was done like 10.30 in the morning. She was on her feet at six, because that's what they do now. If you're going to have some kind of operation on your body, recommend it's your hip, because other things seem to be a lot messier. Things are going pretty well, so other than my mom being a stubborn like horse, but there we are. I thought we'd do a little round of checking and see where we are in rexie things in our lives, just as we normally do, and figure out what's in our lives this moment. Jaume, it sounds like you're just coming off a flu. Yeah. Yeah, it's around why. And I thought I had managed to dodge that bullet, but apparently not. So I've spent most of the last three days sleeping, but I have some work I need to get done today. In fact, I may even need to drop out a little bit early. But yeah, here I am. Yay. And as opposed to your usual movie announcer voice, you now have like Dr. Doom voice, which is awesome. He's totally kissing German. Say we should keep bombing Laos, Mr. President. We should keep bombing Laos and perhaps the other countries around just to make sure. Just for fun. And like there's another one of these Latin American countries has elected somebody a little too far to the left. Let's let's throw let's overthrow them. Let's make sure he kills himself with shooting himself in the back, pausing only once to reload. Anything, rexie, on your on your radar, any of the things you've been putting together? You know, actually, I think the the rexiest thing of late for me is the TV show. Have any of you watched The Good Place? I've heard of it, but not watched it. It is a ostensibly a call it a sitcom. It is funny. Kristen Bell stars along with Ted Danson, a few other folks. And at the beginning of the series, she's dead, and she finds that she's in the good place. And over the course of the multiple seasons, she discovers all is not what it seems. What's particularly rexie about it is, at least from my perspective, is how much it dives deep into out and out philosophy, as in one of the characters is a moral philosopher who's trying to teach people how to be good. And so we get in comparatively, especially for television, in-depth discussions of Kierkegaard and the trolley problem and all sorts of things that you never would have anticipated showing up on a mainstream broadcast network TV show aimed at a general audience. And it's surprisingly in-depth. I thought that the attention that they paid to the trolley problem while it was funny was also really well done and really addressed the issues in a way that, frankly, it was better than I've seen in a lot of other discussions of that, because that issue has come up quite a bit around self-driving cars. So the first two seasons are available on Netflix. Third season is coming out shortly on DVD and presumably streaming the fourth and last season starts in September. And now it's just like surprisingly pleased, Janice and I binge watched over the weekend. And if you have a chance to sit back and just watch TV for a bit, it's worth watching. Sweet. My assumption was that Ted Danson could only be in hell, not like in the good place. So I was like, ah, miscast somehow, but it's apparently really good. It's not miscast. No spoilers. Okay. Okay. Okay. Cool. So intriguing. Yeah. What's named about the show is it tricks you because yet it has the banal version of what heaven would be, with all its banality and what the bourgeois would think. And I'm just going to leave it there. Yeah. So did Big Bang Theory open up a crack in the universe in the world of sitcoms so that somebody could do something that was a simultaneously silly and maybe serious? Or maybe not Big Bang? No, that's silly and serious have been the sour and sweet of media for quite some time. I don't think that's the combination. I think the combination is comparatively silly and thoughtful. Something with some sophisticated ideas. I don't know how much Big Bang Theory really got into the sophisticated ideas because I only watched it when Will was on it. The episodes Will Wheaton was on. So anyway. Well, we're talking TV. Oh, good. And silly and sweet. I find myself watching this Catch-22 series on whatever it is, Hulu. And it is normally, I avoid things made from books, particularly books that were important. And this is really unbelievably well done. And it's not that many episodes. So it's not a life commitment. It's quite astounding. And very dark. Yes, but very silly. I mean, very, it's not silly. It walks that fine line between, right? Yeah, brilliantly, brilliantly. And it's a beauty to watch. And it's directed by George Clooney. Oh, right. And this is not a war, war, raw, raw show at all. No, no. No, no. As was not the original Catch-22. Right. And I wouldn't expect that from Clooney anyway. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's quite, quite, I won't say I was kicking and screaming to drawn into it, into watching it. Because it's, I think it's my husband's sort of lodestar book from early in life, right? So I don't think I had a choice. Yeah. Do, does anybody have a lodestar book? Anybody on the call right now? Is there a lodestar book for you? All I have to say was a Dune series. Dune, okay. Before, which I just reread. I don't know if I would say a lodestar. I think maybe a load constellation. Yes. A load scatter plot, which would consist of, well, mostly science fiction, but Dune foundation. Just had it in my head. Neuromancer and islands in the net, which is probably the least well known of the four. It's Bruce Sterling. And, you know, the, the others would go to float in and out asteroid-like. I don't have a particularly, I don't have a hero. I don't have a single book that I look at as being my inspiration. So hero protagonist is not your hero? No, although that would be, that would definitely be one of the asteroids. Yeah. Snow crash. Yeah. Before, before Neil Stevenson got too overly in love with his own words. April, you were going to jump in? It's a book I haven't read in full, but I was recommended to it and spent a good chunk of yesterday reviewing some of it in the quest for my own book, which I'll talk about in a little bit with big thanks to Todd for helping instigate a new part of that process. It's a depressing book, but it's extremely well written and extremely good called This Uninhabitable Earth, or The Uninhabitable Earth. Have you guys heard of this? It's not surprisingly, it is about climate change. It's shockingly, shockingly good. So it sort of begins with the premise that, you know, we all think that climate change is going to be bad. And it's like, it's going to be worse than anything I imagined. So it sort of starts there, but then I can imagine quite a bit. It goes through, it focuses specifically on the human implications. So not what it means other species, but it walks through, what actually does it mean in terms of the different impacts, not just on weather patterns and whatnot, but on human's ability to thrive and food systems and that and the other. And then it, but it does so in a very, it's not trying to, he's not an, he's not environmentalist. He's not a scientist. He's a reporter who has been collecting these stories for a long time and just got increasingly shocked that the research that was coming out, none of it was making major headlines. And even if it made major headlines, it was really being sort of packaged and delivered in a very like, Oh, well, you know, the end of the day will all just have to be used, get used to it. Kind of like it was. So anyway, not to go on about it, but the uninhabitable earth, it just, I went because I was advised to look at this book for how it is structured, having nothing to do with content. And at the, I got sucked into the content immediately. And the approachability and, and he does get into solutions. But I will leave it there for now. Lovely. So they talk about coffee. It's written by, well, actually the guy you might actually enjoy. I took photos. Let me see. It's David Wallace Welles. Yeah. The reason I asked, do they talk, does he talk about coffee? That was one of the things. It's okay that coffee, coffee agriculture was exactly. Well, a two degree, even a two degree increase in the temperatures means you cannot grow coffee anywhere in Latin America. Well, never mind what that means for what we might drink, but the economies give you a sense. And even things like a degree and don't quote me on whether it's two degrees or three degrees, but within the realm of not even reason, like what's kind of we already know is going to happen, things like, for example, trees will no longer turn colors in the fall. They just kind of go brown and die. And then they come back, you know, stuff like that. But coffee was a big part, both the, from the food systems perspective, from the migration perspective, from the agonara perspective. So that's, I like that you bring that up because he kind of goes around each of the different angles of a particular topic. Very cool. Well, very frightening. But go ahead, Jamey. So, undoubtedly, there's a lot of discussion around climate migration, climate refugees. And actually, I have this sneaking suspicion that's probably, I only believe about 25% of the way, but I find it hard to dismiss entirely that the, oh god, something blanking on his name, the bright bark guy who was Trump's advisor. The Bannon. The Bannon push to block out migrants was his long term climate change strategy. Wait, he's a smart, he's a smart, Bannon's policy push to aggressively block migrants was his manifestation of a long term climate strategy. He's a smart guy. I'm sure he, I would be surprised if he doesn't actually recognize the reality of climate change. And since I think my suspicion is that climate driven migration, climate consequence driven migration will end up being one of the key political crises around climate change over the next couple of decades. I think there's a non zero chance that this was his stake in the ground to try to build up an infrastructure, a protective infrastructure. Now there's all I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other stuff, you know, not limited to, but definitely including racism involved. And so I don't want to try to make it to try to valorize what he's doing. But I think that there is actually, I think there's a chance that there's a climate element to his policies as well, that he's not talking about because that's not acceptable to that audience. But refugees, migrants, driven by climate consequences, which arguably now we are Syrian civil war was a climate consequence. That's going to be the, I think it's going to be one of the biggest issues that globally we have to we have to deal with over the next couple of decades. Thank you. Todd or ST load star book. I have a reflection and a book to offer one is that as I started thinking load star book and kind of activating the internal mind map, I realized that I actually was thinking in terms of load star voices in my mind, in my brain, in my soul. And some of them were associated with books and some of them were not and that that just just noting the shift from topic or thing to person was some classic distinction or observation about how minds work. And then searching, searching, searching for the book that had the most impact and seems to ramify through the years. I did come up. I came up with a bunch of books, titles that actually address different stages in my life. But the one book that kind of fits as load star is at the end of Brian Arthur's book called the nature of technology, which is, I think it came out in the early odds. And I felt that it brought together my understanding of sort of everything I'd done because he basically among other things he talks about the social construction of technologies within and across disciplines and how a technology solves one of the set of problems that being alive faces humans with, which are less changing than you might think. Anyway, it sort of gave this explanation to my entire life up until that point. And then I shared it with each of my sons. It's the one, I think it was the first nonfiction book that I handed, right, my millennials and they were in middle school, high school at the time, both of whom became software developers. And I really think this book instilled things that are their load stars, though they may not be aware of it that way. So I highly recommend it. Thanks, Estee. I just came up with so many references. I ordered the book. I have it. Thank you for pointing me again to it. You're welcome. Sweet. Thank you. That's super interesting. And I, yeah, Brian Arthur's kind of one of these interesting figures that with Iran and does interesting work. I felt this was his sort of de Numeau book or not so much farewell, but there was something about he at a stage in his life of saying it all at meta, which I particularly. And by the way, I've mentioned Rianne Isler in this context many times. I think she and a co-author have written that book for her that just came out this week. So I'm looking forward to something very useful. Thanks, Estee. Mr. Hoskins. I think for many years, I would have said the load star book is Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which in addition to just being a delight and a way of seeing nature, it's the way of seeing in the book that has stuck with me for, wow, I think I read it in 1996, so 23 years. I can't recommend it enough. It's wonderful. And some of her other works are good, but not as good. Lately, I would say this year, 2019, I've been going back again and again to Frityaf Capra's systems view of life and kind of able to see how monumental that book is in terms of how we look across different disciplines and the history. And it's just a had a huge impact on me. Love that. Thank you. I'm noting these in the in the chat as we go. And I'll mine is kind of interesting because I have a let me share my brain for a second. So the thing that I keep coming back to these days, I don't know why weirdly is that really ancient people were a lot smarter than we think they were. And we're doing really great stuff all around the world and then got wiped out just, you know, between bugs they didn't have and systematic ethno side, they were gone. So in this batch, there's kind of three books. There's 1491 and 1493 from Charles Mann. And then there's also, where is it the greatest state? The biggest estate on earth. There we go. So I need to actually connect this to the same thought. But I haven't read this one through, but the biggest estate on earth, Howard Aborigines made Australia that basically says the same thing was happening in Australia that I had kind of absorbed from man was happening in North and South America, only it happened probably 20 or 30,000 years earlier, which is like mind blowing, because you think of sort of the depth of culture and how that all went. So there's a bunch of those things. And then actually let me go to connections. The book I always point to or actually the TV series that I didn't never read the book, but Connections by James Burke was kind of my inspiration. And I don't know whether this is a load star or whether this is kind of a life changer. I think I think the load stars might be a little bit different from life changing books. But I have a thought of course in my brain about a lot of people were affected by the whole earth catalog. Some people buy powers of 10, the Ray and Charles Ian video that zooms in and out a simple a simple 10 minute video, but or less than 10 minutes, I think some people and Rand and Atlas shrugged as we may think, which is that of our Bush's essay on that kind of foretells the intertubes. I have some friends who were influenced by the 1939 New York World's Fair. It was a huge thing for them. So it was a vision of America's mechanized vision for the future with technology and companies making the world better for us kind of thing. So that was Futurama, wasn't it? I think so. Yeah, exactly. So and Clutrain actually inspired a whole bunch of people as well. So that's that's quite interesting. So I got and Star Trek and Star Wars, of course, and you might sort of fit in there. I should probably put in their dune and a couple others because clearly those are huge influences. Did you see James Burke's follow on to connections the day the universe changed? I think I watched a couple of them, but not all of them. I should go back and see. Yeah, actually, I found that a bit more compelling than connections. I think you basically had refined the technique. And so that's that's my variation. But I think you're absolutely right that that was a definitive or catalytic bit of media for me, you know, that recognizing the well, the interconnections and and the the web of causality in a way that I think for me is illustrated in my own work and just in the parallels between history and historiography and foresight work. And partly the accidental yet clever juxtapositions or adjacencies that happen in history, where somebody's trying to get this thing done and they're like, well, these people over here are doing something that I might be able to borrow. And that's what I loved about connections, was that you go from unrelated thing to unrelated thing, glue them together, and suddenly you solve the problem here, which then leads somewhere completely different than than you would have thought from the, you know, from the loom, the Jacques card loom gives us punch cards and computing, et cetera, et cetera, kind of thing. That's the Brian Arthur observation or one of them. I'm just throwing out another suggestion here, which is that Hamilton, the musical has had deserves to be on that piece of your brain, right, that you were just in. Enough said, I haven't seen it. And as I was describing to somebody why I had a very short bucket list, but it was on it, like I really feel a debt to myself. It's because I feel like it has been a change point. Love that. So I'm adding the Dune Trilogy and Hamilton to the books, movies, ideas that shape many people's lives. Foundation and foundation trilogy should be in there as well. Sadly, I actually think Game of Thrones, the books needs to or and some of the seasons need to be there. Yeah. If we're true to and the, I think it's Zennip, I can't say her last name's observation. Yeah. About how it changed from the sociological to the psychological once the book went beyond, the series went beyond the books is profound. Cool. So I'm adding a couple more things as we go. And I'm, I have to go. But this has been lovely. And I'll let Todd tell you if, if he feels like it, well, what's going, what's rexie in my life at the moment? Yeah. Okay, Todd. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, I see. Do you want to pick up on that thought or I think it started on a Rex call maybe eight months ago. And Estie mentioned the new grammar of productivity. So we had a few conversations around that with Estie with Sarah Salty, who was a guest on a Rex call, and a couple other people over time. And it's kind of been lying dormant. And we've been checking in with each other every once in a while. And I think there's just, there's new energy, especially within Estie, to see what is this world of relational productivity, a new grammar of productivity, but not just in a theoretical form. There's, she's done a bunch of writing, she has pages and pages of notes. But how does this look as something tangible out into the world? So I think in last month's Rex call, she mentioned that she's been looking into the idea of feminist software. And her passion right now, one of them, because she has multiple, is combining that idea of a new grammar of productivity. And the way that we build software, what is a relational way to both organize, build, deploy, and use, that takes the traditional patriarchal forms out of it. And it's a great area for discussion and debate, because just even thinking about feminist software is a little bit of a mind twist for me. But there's something to it. Is this anything parallel to decolonization movements? That has not come up, but I think that it's, it is, it has to be connected. Yeah, I'm thinking it's, I'm thinking it's a close neighbor, but not the same thing. That these are not at all equivalent, but similar kinds of things. So right now, the focus for Estie is in the world of change makers. People who are inside organizations consulting to organizations. How can they manage the business of life, not just the business of change or the business of business with some amount of balance or flow in relation to life. So there's an exploration of what tools can be knit together, what is the mode, and this as a promotion for this afternoon's inside Jerry's brain call, what are the modes of communication that will get us further online. And the, there's, if we look at relational software, part of that has to be a more human, open and transparent way of communicating that is risks that avoids the risk of being capitalized. So I wish I could be on that call this afternoon. I would, I am definitely going to be listening to the recording because I'm curious about it. And I've been spreading that around. Love that. Thanks Todd. It's really interesting because there's a bunch of different groups all over the place trying to figure out things like the decentralized web and technology we trust and a series of infrastructural questions about how can we interact without having to sell all our lives and data to these massive platforms, et cetera, et cetera. It's a longer discussion, but it's hard to do. It's an absolutely non-trivial problem. And taking a different aspect about ownership, connectivity, how things plug together, I think is a really nice way of re-looking at the problem. Yeah. Or the possibility. Maybe it's not the problem, but I would agree it's a problem too. Yeah. Fascinating. Any other thoughts on stuff that's come up so far from anybody? Groovy. April, would you like to use the group per second to test any thoughts on writing or thinking? Sure. I guess I'm glad to be able to join everybody. Last few months I've been unable to participate in Rex calls mainly because I've been on the road, but I got home over the weekend and I'm here for the rest of the summer. And yeah, Q2 was kind of off the charts in a good way, but it's good to reconnect. On the one hand, I'm wondering, I mean, probably not so much of a direct ask today, given where I am, but something to sort of put out there on the horizon. So I think some of you know over, as of late last year, I had figured out, okay, it is actually finally time to write a book. And most of all, because finally I felt like it wasn't something that I was doing because told me I needed to write a book or because I needed to tick something off my checklist. I actually started really feeling like some kind of book was coming out of me. And that it was, I had masked enough ideas that I owed it to myself and I suppose to, if I can say to society to get those ideas and connections out in a different way. And so I spent all of the winter drafting my first proposal. And that I had gone to a writing workshop last year and had a table of contents and you had a general sense that I was ready to do this, spent the winter writing first proposal, sent it out and February sent it. And I'm giving you guys this history and context because it sort of relates. Sent it to came up with my wish list of agents figured, you know, shoot as high as I can. Before anyone asks, yes, I am going the agented publisher route. I am not going to do the self publishing right now. It's not that I don't believe in it. It's that that will be for a different book at a different time, at least touch wood. I think that's the deal now. So I sent it out to my sort of eight top agents. I heard back from six of them, which many people have said already like, that's pretty good. And I got pretty consistent feedback, which was one, these, these ideas, this, this, where you want to head. This is interesting, timely, relevant. Second, you are the right person to write this book. Third, this is a proposal for six books. Tell us what is the one book you want to write. So, um, you know, it was frustrating. I was sort of kicking and screaming and like, it was also very humbling. It was also, it was just hard. But at the same time, I'm glad I heard back with that kind of feedback. And I think one of the agents that I was most excited by, you know, he was very clear. He said, listen, please do not send me version two in two weeks. Please take time. He's like, you've got something here. Take six months, take 12 months, take what it take, take the time and need, you need to actually turn over these stones. Don't, this isn't, this isn't a quick fix. This is something you really need to probe further and you need to test ideas with other people and so forth. And so, um, basically I took that to heart and right around that time, bless his heart, I think a month later, uh, Todd sent me an email saying, I heard you mentioned something about your book. I happened to know somebody who might be able to help. And, um, basically, since that time, I have been doing a lot more work on figuring out what is that one book of six. But I've also been working, um, with a wonderful gentleman named Tim Brandhorse, who is a literary strategist. And so he has done everything from agent books to publish them. He is a lawyer. He does foreign rights. Basically a great guy who focuses on books that have some in, some relationship to social enterprise, social impact and so forth. So fast forwarding to now, what's interesting is I've still got my head around the same general set of ideas, but they've been kind of reconfigured. I guess I would think of it as you thought you were going to build one puzzle with this set of pieces. You've still got not the same pieces, but the same, the same general backdrop, but you've really reconfigured things in a way that is appealing and attractive to, I don't want to say more people, but the right people that is delivered in a different way. And that actually for me helps create a more robust and coherent platform that I can build on over time. Because I guess one point to mention is the more I learn about this, you know, sometimes people just want to write a book and write that book and be done and that becomes a sort of feather in their cap. And what I'm really hoping to do with, with this first book is to lay a foundation on which I might be able to write five or 10 additional books or kinds of materials over time for different audiences. And, you know, no big surprise. The things that I'm looking at are how the ways that we are living and working and learning are changing and shifting and what that means for individuals and for companies and for policymakers and what that means from a global perspective and all of the things that you guys know I seek to embody. But one of the challenges for me, for example, has been that in, as I give keynotes and let's say I give a keynote that's broadly speaking on the future of work, right? I'm invited in to talk about what it means for business. But not nine times out of ten, ten times out of ten, the questions I get end up being, well, shit, what does this mean for my kids? Which is a very different conversation to have and not as I was asked to come do. But I share this because there's clearly a book that's for business folks. There's clearly a book that's for young adults. There's clearly a book that's for kids and for universities. And I can't do all of that once. But those are the things that I hope to be able to do over time. So right now, I've been working with Tim throughout Q2 while I've been on the road. It's been a bit crazy, but gone well. And now that I'm back, really as of Monday, I am diving head first into finishing the proposal that we've been working on, getting it into the right hands. And I have a ways to go because I haven't done the sample chapter or anything like that yet. But that's, in a nutshell, what I've been up to. I would like to think that it's all very rexy because I'm taking a non-traditional lens on some of this. And I'm even going to be able to fold in some of what my yoga teacher training and yoga philosophy has led me to see how, I mean, I think all of us would agree that there's just so much that's asked backwards, if I can say that. But the yoga stuff actually has given me a lot more fodder from a perspective that some people might think of as woo-woo. But actually, when you look at it, you can see it that way. But I'm not going to pitch it as yogic. I'm going to pitch it as a different lens or thesis that actually fits very much in line with what corporate boardrooms are talking about. But, you know, has a lot of the answers if we could just get our peripheral vision sharper. So maybe let me pause there. I don't know, Daria, if that's kind of what you were thinking. I would love, actually, maybe what I can do is, as I move forward with this writing, I would love to have any and all rexers who are interested in reviewing parts, having a conversation about it, lending, being interviewed, as certainly being interviewed once I get to actually write the book, all of that open request. And yeah, no pressure, but that would be something to put on your radar on the, let's say midterm horizon. So when I get the, what does this mean for my kid's question quite often too, when I give talks, especially when I talk about climate? Doom. You know, and it's, it is difficult not to take that approach. You say, you know, well, they're screwed. Doom. And, you know, or my preferred way of answering along those lines is, well, they might eventually forgive you. So I'm wondering how much, when this question comes up around work, how much do you fold in other issues, you know, whether it's climate or democracy? It depends on the setting, but as much as I possibly can. And going back to the whole doom piece, and, you know, again, this is where, and Jerry has seen this, I'm really grateful. I'm still a bit surprised, but I've found myself in front of audiences that I just never, I would have seen myself as a bit of an odd fit. And they're like, no, exactly. We want somebody who has an outsider perspective. So come on in. So I've been a very like, like welcomed stranger. So it's given me a little bit more leeway, but it's also helped me do sort of orthogonal thinking to a degree that I wouldn't expect. But I think going back to just a more, more basic sentiment is that I often tell people it has to do with this ongoing debate that Jerry and I have at home, which is if it's back to the whole doom and gloom or not, if you could be 12 years old today, would you like to be 12 years old? You know, and see, I'm a little bit like, well, see, I'm a little bit like, well, I don't know. I don't, I don't want to necessarily say that the world feels dangerous. Some days it does. But the world does feel overwhelming, right? I'm like 12 years old, like, holy crap, I don't know what to do. Meanwhile, we've got Jerry over here in the other corner going like, I would give my left arm to be 12 years old. Because 12 year olds can debt today with curiosity, access to basic technology and YouTube. 12 year olds can do stuff that 50 year olds couldn't do 10 years ago or with all due respect still can't do today, right? Jerry's like, ah, and so I share this because with the parents, that's often where I kind of phrase it, which is like, we can get doom and gloom about this as fast as you'd like. And I will, you know, unvarnished it. Yeah, we're facing unprecedented unknowns and, but also the key is, if you know where to look, there are ways in which and whether this is the workplace, whether this is solving climate, whether this is like all of these are things, if you know where to look, like the future of work, but the future of life can actually be super, super interesting. Now that doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but in terms of finding the solutions and making an impact and why you get up in the morning, following Jerry's lead actually I think takes us on a very different direction. So I try to kind of hold that tension and in terms of is there, and I don't even want to call it an optimistic spin, but is there a positive lens we can rebind here? Yeah, there is. Well, certainly if you're in the global top 10%, which all of us here definitely are. Whenever I give these talks about, you know, that may end up being doom and gloom, it's important to recognize that for a lot of us, it's not going to be doom and gloom over the next few decades. We'll be watching doom and gloom happening around the world, but we'll still be living okay. But I'm not convinced. So this is where, and I know that global citizenship has, you know, just as much can provoke just as much debate as a term like the sharing economy, which is like global citizen, you know, it doesn't, I feel like the track record of my career is like picking themes that sound really good, but then get co-opted by others. But when I say raising, raising individuals or when younger people today have a much more global sense of the world, it doesn't mean that all of a sudden somehow there's more equality, but it does mean, I look at this and I go, how do I want to say this? Yes, a small percentage of people, but small 10%, 20%, you know, some minority will be just fine. I have this question of if that many people though are, there's a point at which we will have a social crisis globally, a breaking point. The leaders we will need at that point in time are those that understand the interconnectedness and interdependence, such that it's not that everybody ends up equally well off or equally poor off, but there is a much greater calibration than what we have today. No dispute here, absolutely agree. And you know, I'm not trying to boil the ocean quite as good as much as I was in the first proposal, but I am cutting off quite a bit of stuff to explore. And I would say where I'm focusing right now, it's really looking at new ways of learning. And in the learning piece though, it's the skills, I'm not going after necessarily the, oh, you need to have the technical training or the digital expertise. I'm looking at things like curiosity and empathy and tolerance and some of those softer skills, building a lot on the work I've been doing recently and talks have been giving on the humanities and sort of the need for humanities in a tech driven world, because that conversation in too many cases is just getting buried. But looking at making sure that as we think about the skills and the attitudes and the mindset shifts, part of which we're being forced into and part of which we need to bring ourselves into, looking at learning, then looking at what that means or how that's related to ways of working and then more broadly ways of living. And the living piece is everything from access over ownership to possibly to e-residency, but also things like the fire movement, financial independent, you know, various things where people are saying this isn't more as better, bigger is better, how do we live sustainably on the planet? And again, people opting into that and also people being forced into that or nudged into that. So let me pause there. I feel like I've been having the mic for a bit here, but anyway, feedback like this is totally welcome. And if you have ideas or you're like, that's just not going to work or I don't get it or I disagree, please. Now down the road or whatever. And just to slip in a comment before you jump back in Jamei and to pick up on what you were saying earlier about Steve Bannon. I think we're at this moment where people like Bannon and millenarians or you know, people who think that the sooner we break the earth, the sooner we will all be raptured off to heaven or whatever. There's a whole bunch of people who were on the let's accelerate the approach of doom kind of scenario for our own. Imminentize the eschaton. Let's do that exactly. And I think what that catalyzes is opportunities to rethink, reframe and rebuild everything completely differently. And that a bunch of people will be like, well, things are broken and we don't like what's what's being offered on the menu for some of these authoritarians. How else might we come together and solve these things together? And I think it gives us an opportunity to counteract a lot of the crap that's changed our lives in the last 50 to 100 years. It could all melt and fail. And those of us on the call here are privileged more than 99% of the humans on earth. So we are less likely to suffer the direct consequences of all this stuff. But it gives us an opportunity to sort of put things into swing and try to be helpful in ways that in the 50s would have been difficult if not fruitless. There is a line from The Dark Knight, the Batman movie from a few years ago. You are going to quote The Dark Knight. Okay, okay. Where Alfred says to Bruce Wayne, some men just want to watch the world burn. And that stuck with me because I think that there is a fairly sizable population, a growing population of people who are at a point of saying, fuck it all, just let it burn. And I suspect that that was at least some of the support for Trump, some of the support for Bernie. Let's break the system because the system is no longer working. The system doesn't work for me. The system is biased. The system gives too much to people I don't like. Whatever is a rationale, the desire to break it, and then we'll deal with cleaning up afterwards, or somebody else will clean it up afterwards. Or there won't be anything left to clean up afterwards. That, I hear that from a lot of quarters. I think you're right on there to me. You got to realize all these opioid deaths and the term that no one in America hears of, that you do in Europe and you do if you read the stuff that we read, deaths of despair. The suicide rate of white males without a BA is double what me, Jerry, and Jermaine, double. Those people, you think they might want to see the world burn and not give a shit? Well, they're going to kill themselves tomorrow, of course. They're already gone tomorrow. Yeah, deaths of despair. Mental health, global mental health crisis. I think there's a lot of indirect suicide as well. I feel this just in my own life of looking ahead and thinking, okay, I can eat the thing that gives me a nice endorphin boost right now, the thing with extra salt, or the thing with extra sugar, or extra fats. Or I can be a good boy and not eat the tasty stuff and extend my life by a few months. Oh, won't that be fun? You know, and so you're basically making choices that have for short-term pleasure knowing that they will kill you eventually as both of us are smoking. Yeah, thanks, Jermaine. No, but that's exactly. It smells like a chimney. Oh, no, no, wait, that's by the chimney. I want to chime in here before I have to go at the top of the hour. And I know Jermaine is going to have something to say about this, too. Because I just can't shut up. I think it's the content, not the personality. And this is in response to what April shared or what April brought up. I think climate change is presenting us a global opportunity to work out what are perceived as differences between science and spirituality. My impression is that there's never been a crisis in which both are equally needed. And in my worldview, they're not in opposition. There's people who take a Gaia perspective who say trust planet, trust Mother Earth, care for her. Anything can happen. You just need to believe. Others who are just saying, pray, God will take care of us. And then you have the scientific community waving banners saying the world is coming to an end and both have truth. And I don't think that there is a scientific solution and I don't think there's a spiritual solution. I think it requires both. And I wish we were having more of that conversation. And I'm actively seeking out people who are looking for and creating those conversational opportunities and moments and methods. That's really, really important. And the more I think about the jam we're in, the more I realize we have to go deep into those communities and figure out how to reattach and reconnect. We're probably going to wrap the call a little after the top of the hour. I think that'll make a lot of sense. Any sort of closing comments for where we are, or advice, other than stay cheerful, keep away from sharp objects? Well, thank you guys. I haven't actually shared a lot of what I've been doing. I mean, I shared very small tidbits here and there. But I don't often get a chance to have a broader conversation with a group of people. Thank you. And I don't know, I'll say not apologies in advance, but rather I look forward to dipping back into these topics together. And April knows, but I'll just say it here as an invitation that Rex calls can be set up at any moment to explore any experiment or a particular question or aspect or A-B test or whatever you'd like to do. So just say the word and we can do this or of course contact everybody individually. But totally happy to apply the Rex lens to whatever you're doing. Well, I hope April will take that offer as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you're in this process, consider us here as supporters for you. Yeah, thank you. So many were saying? No, just gonna say that I don't know how much of a value I'll offer as a book reviewer or reader. But I'm certainly happy to provide to bounce ideas off of to provide a sounding wall for some if there's anything that I can provide that's relevant. Thank you. I think right now, I look forward to having a book that has been green lighted to write. Right now, it's like, that's, oh, please, yes. I think once that happens, absolutely, I will be, I will be reaching out. But right now, it's like getting this thing done, which on the one hand, one thing I do like is I have figured out in the process of this that like, I was never destined to write fiction, where you have to write the whole darn thing and then submit it. Basically, you know, proposals are hard, but they're like business plans a little bit. I'm like, I like this, but I like it. It's just that is the lift that I'm in right now. So stay tuned. Maybe we can like toast rexy champagne at some point. I think we'll have several toasts in the future. Yep. Absolutely. We can we can stagegate this or whatever it's called. Yeah. I'm gonna need to go at the top of the hour as well, Jerry. I think we I think we fold our pop tent here and thank you very much. This has been great checking. Really appreciate it. Good to see everyone. Thanks guys. Bye for now. Bye. Ciao, ciao.