Jonmar: from agency to storytelling

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to emotion art.

(00:02):
Emotion because we're literally made out of emotion.
Art because everything we do wants to be art.
This episode is a lot different than anything we've done so far.
I want to say thank you to Buddy Anderson
for creating the music and taking over the audio on this episode.

(00:26):
Buddy, I appreciate you.
I really like what you bring.
Thank you.
Definitely check out Buddy's music.
He's on Spotify at From Another Mista.
The link to that is going to be in the notes.
There's going to be a lot of links in the notes this episode.
I'm trying to get better about notes.

(00:48):
As I do my final edit.
You know what? You know what? No.
I also want to say thank you to Angela Cook
for bringing her energy to this project.
Kind of just stepping in, becoming part of it.
She's doing most of the editing now.
And because she's editing, we have some semi-logical notes to put in.

(01:10):
So thank you, Angela.
Yeah, check out the notes.
So this is a conversation I had with John Marr.
I met John Marr in McMinnville when I went through Berean School of the Bible.
He was one of the teachers there.
He was the type of teacher that makes you feel seen.

(01:32):
That makes you feel interested in what you're learning.
Even if it's some boring commentary on a commentary on the Bible.
John's always had art bubbling out of him.
He was always creating music and stories in my memory.
And John was very much a mentor to me.

(01:54):
That's one of the feelings around his archetype in my mind.
And his art has just grown since then.
We reconnected when our kids were young.
And John was working on a series of children's books that were fantastically entertaining.
He's just always been, always had stories coming out of him.

(02:17):
And we talk about a couple of projects he has that I am particularly excited about.
Projects specifically about storytelling.
So I am very thankful that I had an opportunity to sit down and intentionally talk about whatever came up with John Marr.
But I'm glad I got to record it so that anyone who wants to can go on this little adventure into a beautiful and artistic and honest emotional landscape.

(02:49):
Enjoy.
Welcome to Emotion Art.
Emotion Art.
Where we sit down and make art.
Emotion Art.
Creative energy moving outward in conscious expression of feeling.
Emotion Art.
The motion.
Emotion because we are literally made of emotion.
And art because everything I do wants to be art.

(03:12):
Emotion Art.
Emotional.
Emotional.
It's all beautiful.
Emotion.
Emotion.
A space for emotional art.
Creative energy moving out in conscious expression.
Emotion.
An emotion art gallery.
This.
This.

(03:33):
This.
This is emotion art.
You're welcome.
Hey John.
You there?
Oh, checking one two.
Oh, there you are.
Okay, I need you up a little bit higher.
So how you doing?

(03:54):
I'm doing well.
I haven't talked to you in a long time.
And back when I was talking to you last, you were doing the Varlio thing in Flow-Mith.
Yeah, launching that AR, basically storytelling through AR.
It was with the medium of fine art, but I would do it with posters or whatever.
It was a double play.
So it was doing it through artwork, but also doing it through what they call experiential branding.

(04:18):
Where brands create experiences for users that connect them more closely to their brand.
Like I went down to Texas at one point and I spoke with the Dallas Cowboys, their executive team.
And I spoke with the Dallas Mavericks as well.
And we weren't able to get any deals because that's right when COVID hit.
But the idea was to take some of the murals at either of their massive buildings where visitors come and visit where the sports are held, the arenas.

(04:48):
And then have the murals come to life and tell the story of their sports teams and such.
Have you done that kind of branding for anyone?
Yeah, a little bit with some in-house stuff that I've done with different companies.
Yeah, it's called experiential marketing or engagement marketing.
Yeah, so I did a little bit with Nike.
I did something for the, you know, the band We Three.

(05:09):
Sounds familiar, but I can't say yes.
They were the runners up on America's Got Talent and they were from McMinnville.
And they have gone on to be superstars.
Their band is phenomenal.
I mean, and they're two brothers and a sister and they're called We Three.
Okay, I'm going to look that up.
Yeah, We Three music, I think, is where you go.
But I created a music poster for them and it was the first ever virtual reality music poster.

(05:32):
So you looked at the poster and it was of them sitting on a couch in a warehouse.
And as you looked at it, the warehouse became real.
And now you're standing in it and you could look around in every direction.
And ahead of you, right where they were on the picture, they fade into reality.
There's a couch in front of you and they're sitting on it talking to you.

(05:53):
And you can look around the room and there are all these things that they tell you about in the room that you can touch and interact with to listen to one of their new songs.
And there's a door that takes you into an arena where they play a live song on a stage.
And so, yeah, it was a concert poster that they put out.
So it was the first ever of its kind and that's essentially experiential marketing.

(06:14):
And is that something that is only accessible on the virtual reality headset?
No, that one was you had to have an iPhone.
I didn't make it for Android also. It was iPhone only.
But at the time, lots of things were like that.
So if you had a phone, you could hold the phone up and look around with the phone.
There weren't any glasses at the time.
I don't think even Quest was out then.
You'd look around with your phone and see those sorts of things.

(06:37):
Yeah. Oh, that is so interesting.
And the art that I've seen is basically like a time lapse of you painting and then you'll be telling a story.
And so as you're doing this painting with your brush, you're telling the story and you're making the story come to life with what you're drawing.
Like you're you're you're looking at this picture that's hanging on a wall, but you're looking at it through the camera of your iPhone or through an app or something like that.

(07:02):
And you're watching this whole story unfold. And then at the end of it, the whole thing opens up into this three dimensional art where you can actually look around in the room.
That like the art moves away from the wall.
The two I remember are the one it just just really grabbed me.
The one of the guy that lived at the ocean, like on a cliff or something like that.

(07:23):
And then there was a painting of a dragon that came out of the wall.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I got the idea from art displays and I've never actually seen one of these art displays in real life.
I've only seen them through video like YouTube shorts where someone puts together some sort of art exhibit, not a painting, but a bunch of objects sitting in a taped off space.

(07:46):
And when you stand in exactly the right spot, all those objects become something.
Right.
But it's only through perspective. It's like through a forced perspective kind of thing.
And that was so magical to me. And I thought, oh, wow, I could totally do that with AR.
But what if I reverse it? And so what I did was I had my computer and I created with kind of expressive geometric shapes that were bent and twisted in the air.

(08:15):
I created a dragon, which is the one you're mentioning.
But I created it from like 45 degrees off angle, extending away from a square, basically a canvas.
So I'd be creating the dragon at 45 degrees off angle and then swapping really quick back to straight looking at the canvas.
So what I had to do is make sure that all of the shapes when it was said and done fit inside the square, which looked just like an abstract.

(08:44):
I mean, nothing. I mean, it was just literally shapes, but inside the square when you look straight ahead.
But when you turn off to the side, those shapes extend far forward away from the canvas.
And that I did. I kept looking at 45 degree angle at the shapes extended into the air, shifting and adjusting them until I had the dragon that I wanted.
Then I would look at it straight on and I would grab that as a final image.

(09:08):
So the straight on view of the smushed, nonsensical shapes. That's what I printed to the canvas.
And then you look at it with the phone and it comes out from the canvas.
But you can't tell so much when you're looking at it straight on, because again, in 3D space, all the colors come off the canvas and they reach out towards you.
But it looks pretty much the same because it's this forced perspective.

(09:29):
But then as you walk around, you're surrounded by all these colors hanging in the air and you get to the right perspective and boom, it's a dragon.
So that was really fun. And so I have that as a patent.
And the idea is I could do something based on pop culture, whether it's Harry Potter, Marvel, something like that.
I talked to the people at Harry Potter and got the rights to do something.

(09:53):
But the idea was if I create a picture rather than a nonsensical object, some artistic representation of Harry Potter himself, and those colors extend.
And so it looks like something from two angles. It extends out and it looks like Harry Potter.
But as you move, it's really just chunks of color hanging in the air and you get to the right angle.
And it's this wizard battle between Potter and Voldemort.

(10:16):
I was intending on building something like that because it's patented and I could make a bunch of those sorts of things and sell them.
But I didn't pull the trigger on it.
It probably takes a lot of time to put together.
It does. The time wasn't the issue so much as I think with the Harry Potter team, it was just COVID.
When COVID crushed the art gallery that I was doing, which was basically the lab to the lecture, the gallery really wasn't meant to be a gallery per se.

(10:46):
But that's where I would paint and create and explore and build experiences.
Right.
It wasn't so much the time to make the piece as it was the money to pull the trigger on the rights to something compelling.
There's a gallery that was focused on the work of Van Gogh.

(11:08):
I've heard of that.
It's a very simplistic idea, but captivating. It's not AR, but it's immersive.
They cast all the walls on the floor with projections of his art as though you're standing in one of his paintings and it's animated and it's moving.
You're walking around from room to room inside his artwork.
Not virtually. It's done with light.
The downside is where you walk around and your shadow's erasing it behind you or something like that.

(11:34):
But the upside is you're not wearing a headset or looking through a phone screen.
That's pretty magical.
I thought we could definitely do something like that with Magic the Gathering.
There are so many people that play magic.
If there was a pop-up gallery that focused on just the beauty of the actual artwork produced by that franchise or that game system, the same with Dungeons & Dragons, probably the same with Marvel, definitely the same with Harry Potter.

(12:01):
You get all these amazing pieces of art that are compelling already.
Battles and focuses on beloved characters.
But those characters break apart into shapes into the air and you walk around and find another scene.
That kind of magic is Harry Potter type stuff.
It is.
Since I have the rights, one of the strengths of going to them is saying, hey, I'm the only one who can do this, but I would have to cough up like 50k upfront.

(12:27):
There's some risk involved, but I think it could be just amazing.
Everything that you're saying right now, like we just watched the new Deadpool and Wolverine movie last night.
I haven't seen it yet.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, but I haven't seen it yet.
It's incredible.
It is a story from what I think of as the optimistic or the joyful cosmology.

(12:50):
Oh, tell me about that.
What does that mean?
Just that the story of existence is joyful.
We live in a purposeful, joyful universe for a reason.
Just that feeling is what I left with at the end.
That's cool.
I want to see it even more now.

(13:11):
I know that in general, Ryan Reynolds humor, I feel like it leans that way.
You know, it's sarcastic, but sarcastic, optimistic.
But John, Ryan Reynolds wings have been a little bit shackled this whole time.
The movie is half movie and half commentary on all the dynamics between Marvel and Disney and Fox.

(13:36):
Because he's just constantly talking to the viewers.
It is a very different type of movie than any of the other Deadpool movies, but only in that way where it's more him.
It's more raw, more real, more funny, and more joyful.
But it made me think of that because that would exactly fit together.

(13:58):
But it'd be cool with any of these franchises.
Yeah, so I hadn't thought about that yet.
What you could pull off with Deadpool, too.
You're right.
I mean, it's made over a billion dollars.
If you did some kind of gallery event that had the sarcasm, well, I guess what you would call joyful cosmology.
Yeah, I think of it as like usually I say optimistic cosmology.
I like that a lot.
But I'm more and more starting to think of it as joyful.

(14:21):
But John, it's the new religion.
I feel like it's starting to become a little bit of a more mainstream thing, maybe a little bit at a time.
But it's just the concept that regardless of your perspective on religion, on who God is and what our relationship responsibility to God.
Because that's really what it comes down to in most of the religions.
There is a purpose.
There's a reason.

(14:42):
And there's joy.
That's the baseline of everything is joy.
Amazing.
Are there any books on that?
Oh, my goodness, yes.
Because I feel like you're on to something where you could write one.
Maybe there are books in pop culture and I've never heard of like what are some of the books?
And let me see if I've heard of any of them.
I have books coming eventually.
They're in me.

(15:03):
I know they're in me.
I've tried to start writing many times and I don't have the right energy for it.
I haven't found the right mind space.
I'm only just now finding myself.
But yeah, I feel like there's definitely a book in that.
It's such an interesting concept.
And it's so transcendent.
The idea of joyful cosmology and I'm saying it now.
I've never said those words really.
So it's for me, it's totally new.

(15:24):
Yes.
The world is your apple.
You know, you could focus on anything throughout the world and throughout world history, internally and externally, because joyful cosmology is transcendent.
So you have so much that you could draw from.
You're not pigeonholed into some narrow field where you have to find certain data.

(15:45):
You have the entire world at your fingertips to explore from that perspective.
So that sounds fascinating.
Even the sciences, maybe the sciences in particular and the discoveries that trend towards optimistic outcomes.
Interesting.
You just rode your boat over the cliff.
The water is so deep.
The Fabric of Reality.

(16:07):
I believe the author is David Deutsch.
It is probably the best book that I've ever read on the nature of reality.
Really?
However, The Navalmanak.
Are you familiar with that one?
No.
It's basically a compiled writings and tweets and texts and whatever of some entrepreneurial guru.

(16:29):
A guy from India.
But he has an optimistic cosmology.
And one chapter of his book, The Navalmanak, is book references.
I am working through those books right now.
And so here's the thing.
There are books on different topics.
Like the one I'm reading right now is called The Sovereign Individual, I believe.

(16:52):
And it is a joyful cosmology perspective of economics, of world governments, of just the geopolitical perspective.
And the truth is that I'm not interested in the geopolitical perspective.
Interesting.
Fascinating.
So I'm listening to this book on two.

(17:14):
And by the way, our conversation the other day where I asked you how fast you read on Audible.
And you said usually around 1.25.
Yeah.
But you'll bring it all the way up to two.
Two times sometimes if you're kind of getting through a little bit of, I don't want to say deadwood because it is none of it's a deadwood.
But you're just getting through the details to get to the nuggets because that's what we're after sometimes.

(17:37):
Well, that's the first time I've tried listening to it on two.
And that book is perfect for me on two because I want the worldview.
I want that information in that book to inform my worldview, subconscious worldview.
But I'm not interested in the information itself.
I don't need to remember any of the dates, the data, none of it.
On the other hand, I am more of a metaphysical guy.
Like my favorite book I have ever read is called Light Emerging written by Barbara Brennan.

(18:05):
And it's basically a metaphysical medical textbook.
You know, it's all about energy and energy healing and all the different modalities, a lot in the Eastern and stuff like that.
So that would not interest anyone who's not interested in that.
But that's where my interest is drawn.
But I still like these other things.
And I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson a while ago.

(18:26):
And his style is difficult for me.
But I really like exploring those really huge concepts about space and time.
And so what is the book?
I'll think of it. But it's basically a Jewish mystic scientist.
And he breaks down the nature of everything, basically the universe, like what is the universe?

(18:49):
What is matter? How do we exist? How can you see?
And it's all about the holograms.
And basically the conclusion is that all of matter, everything that exists in our perception is made out of one photon that exists in an infinite dimension.
And so therefore it has infinite power and infinite potential.
It's just incredible. And it makes no sense logically because my logic can't comprehend it.

(19:14):
But to understand those things, I've read books like Flatlander.
Flatlander is a book that was written in the 1800s, I believe. And it's just a little book written from the perspective of somebody that lives in two dimensions.
Have you read that one? Oh, yeah, yeah. I do not own it currently, but I have had it and I have read it.
Yeah. OK. So just reading something like that helps me to kind of break some of my walls of perception so that I can comprehend a fourth dimension and a fifth dimension and an infinity dimension.

(19:46):
And I'm starting to look at all this stuff around me, the physical stuff around me, like it's just one slice in a different dimension.
So in the flat third dimension, if you step back from that, you're going to see infinite layers of that third dimension creating a fourth dimension, which is time basically.
You know, it makes a lot of sense as I think about it. And I'm not a scientist. My brain doesn't work like this.

(20:11):
I operate emotionally in this world, so I can't really explain it in the way that I get the information out of books and stuff.
But it just makes sense to me emotionally like nothing else has that the past and the future all exist simultaneously because it exists outside of the temporal dimension that we live in.
It exists in an infinite dimension. And everything is replicating.

(20:34):
Everything that we can observe is all replicating systems up and down, smaller and bigger, no matter how big you get.
There's always something at the edge of your perception that's bigger, you know what I mean? Or beyond the perception. Same going small.
So it's like to me, if everything that we can observe follows that pattern, then that means that probably everything we can observe does too.

(20:57):
Yeah, fascinating. Yeah. From the idea of the optimistic cosmology or joyful cosmology, I will be looking into this now.
I'm trying to find this Jewish mystic scientist with a single atom. You say it was a single atom?
Oh, his name is Itzhak. Oh, I see it. Bentov. Bentov. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So he has two books.

(21:18):
One of them is written as a scientist and one of them is written as a mystic. The mystic one scratches such a deep itch for me because it's storytelling.
It is 1977 book, Stalking the Wild Pendulum. Stalking the Wild Pendulum. Oh my gosh. On the mechanics of consciousness.
You're a genius. Consciousness. Well, I'm just looking at Wikipedia. Yeah. So, yeah.
I mean, but you found a book that I was trying to remember. That's hilarious. Well, just through searching.

(21:44):
An interesting point. What's striking and interesting in my mind is as another layer to all of this, as a spiritual layer, so to speak.
My favorite one. When I think of what joyful or optimistic cosmology says to me, because again, I'm like a virgin at this.
I've never thought these thoughts are considered brand new to me in this conversation right now. My mind is going where it's going.

(22:08):
And one of the things that I find interesting is if the world self created, right? If it was just a thing only.
And there was nothing behind it. There was no intention behind it. There was no intelligence behind it. There was nothing.
I don't think you would have, you could possibly have optimistic cosmology. You would simply have cosmology.

(22:32):
The interesting thing about optimistic cosmology at first glance to me is I think that the plus sign or conversely, if it was a negative, if cosmology was inherently bad, you know, if there's a negativity built into cosmology.
But in this case, we're talking about a positivity built into cosmology, built into its structure, built into everything.

(22:56):
Positive to me, it's a something. It's an existence. It's not a zero. And so optimistic cosmology at its first inference in my mind speaks to a collective, connective.
I don't know what the word would be, but a connection between all things that is in some way positive and so thus optimistic.

(23:19):
And to me, that's an interesting concept around the idea of is there a God or not? Is there a God? And if there is a God, does he mean well? That's an interesting thing when I think of.
Or does he mean at all? Is he aware of himself?
Well, see, that's the thing is I don't think it could be otherwise if it's optimistic. I feel like optimistic, you cross a threshold.

(23:40):
When you step into optimism, optimism is a substance. It's not a lack. It's a presence of positivity. And I don't think that presence of positivity would ever emerge from zero.
I don't think zero can create that. Again, totally new to me. But I would doubt that that that precludes someone from being an atheist, so to speak.

(24:02):
I don't think that these concepts are joined at the hip. Optimistic cosmology and any sort of belief in a creative God who who made the universe.
But to someone who believes in a creative God, when I hear optimistic cosmology, my mind automatically feels like, oh, I know who that is, you know, and that sense of, oh, there's something.

(24:23):
There's a fingerprint pressed into the fabric of reality, and that speaks to the positivity of the person who bears the print.
And we read that as optimistic, joyful cosmology. I'm not saying everyone does. I'm not trying to brand everybody as seeing the way I see or that my way is right.
It's just interesting as a first time hearer. It's exciting on many levels. It's exciting physically to think that the universe has fingerprints of optimism everywhere through all things.

(24:54):
And then at a spiritual level, it's exciting as well. And then I'm of the spiritual ilk that who believes in a creator God.
And so, you know, you've got multiple layers of excitement. And because life is so hard, you know, I've gone through eight months now, a very difficult life.
And I'd been laid off in February at a very high position job at a top tier agency, leading big teams of engineers and doing great work on enterprise clients.

(25:22):
And then boom, in the volatility of the current world, lost my role and went through all of these situations, trying to find a new role and eventually just created my own company.
But it was a long time of difficulty and self questioning and wondering my own worth and all the pain that comes through something like that. Yes.
And so the idea that behind the scenes, cosmology itself is optimistic is additionally exciting that in the pockets of crap that we live through the pockets of ugliness that life sometimes has for us.

(25:57):
That still that pocket of ugliness is floating in a sea of positivity. And I just happen to be in the ugly pocket at the moment.
There's something beautiful about that, too. Boy, you like rowing in deep water.
What you're describing sounds very familiar of the pain of the struggle to reinvent of the just that journey, that trudge to find oneself at any given point in time.

(26:19):
One of the things that has helped me the most and continues to is a mantra that says everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be.
Mm hmm. It's not going to go the way I think it will.
And it's going to turn out more fantastic than I could imagine.
And at first, when I first started saying that to myself, I didn't believe it.

(26:40):
It felt like hollow words because I'm looking around me and everything's horrible.
I'm shedding all my relationships. I'm an utter mess. I can't look at myself in the mirror.
I don't know who I am. I don't know if I've ever known who I am.
And I just started saying it anyway, because that's what I wanted.
That's what I wanted to feel. And the more I said it, the more it became true in my subconscious.

(27:04):
I believed it. I just believed it. And the belief brought it to pass.
And so now, every time I say it to myself, I just know it's true.
I am not actually sitting in a pocket of ugly.
I'm just telling myself a story about something fantastic and beautiful.
And beauty doesn't just mean one thing. It can be anything.

(27:25):
But the story you tell yourself about it is the thing that determines how you feel about it.
That's it.
Interesting. Yeah, I had a similar experience recently.
It was six or seven months into this thing that I've been going through where I have moments of excitement.
One of the things that I've discovered, I think, maybe I already knew it, but it was just what a dearth of good leadership there is in the world.

(27:50):
Amen.
I was shocked over and over by terrible, terrible leadership.
Everywhere I turned, I had six different jobs lined up.
The first chance that I had to get a job, I think basically I did it.
The job was mine to lose.
And in the last meeting with the top tier individuals like the CEO of the company, something went sideways.

(28:12):
It was super embarrassing, pretty humiliating.
And I just walked away from it, absolutely baffled and puzzled and kind of depressed.
And then I kind of picked myself up. I get another opportunity.
Again, I'm the guy for the job. I've got all the favor.
But there's this one last meeting and it went sideways again, like really sideways.

(28:34):
And that happened six different times over six different months where it was that last meeting.
And one time I had the job completely done. They sent me the laptop.
I was in their system. I was all done. I was about to start.
We have one more meeting. We wanted you to introduce yourself.
And I was like, oh, great. Here we go. I have that meeting.
And the guy and the top tier guy says, you know, well, we don't have to talk anymore.

(28:57):
You're the guy. You know, I'm going to let everybody know.
And I walked out of that meeting, like with my hands in the air thinking, finally, I broke through like this Boston Red Sox curse or whatever that I had.
Family's excited. I'm excited.
I call in the next day to the contracting company through which all this is being negotiated and told them, OK, I've got to get things going.
I'm in. And they said, no, you're not. And I said, what do you mean, no, I'm not.
They said they told us that they're not moving forward.

(29:20):
And I said, they just told me it's done. We're moving forward.
And they said, no, they told us they're going to wait 45 days. They have to look for other people still.
And part of it, I think, to be honest, is is the fact that I'm a middle aged white guy.
And so they can't hire me.
Or at least they can't hire me yet.
Sure. Because they have to get applications in from people of other backgrounds.

(29:43):
Sure. They have to get diverse applications and they're not allowed to hire right away, especially if that person is non diverse.
Yes. And so I think I was running into a bit of that.
I don't know for sure. It's just me wondering. I don't have direct knowledge of that in these cases, the cases in the past that's happened to me.
But in these cases, this pattern of I'm the right guy until I'm on video in a conversation with the final decision maker.

(30:09):
I see. And even the conversation goes well. But suddenly they say no. Yes.
I'm like, I'm baffled. How could that happen six times in a row?
But what I came to understand, though, through that was how bad the leadership was, because sometimes the leadership would tell me
wrong things in the meeting and I would I would not try to push back.
I tried to position my heart in a way that I wanted to be a rose, you know, so to speak, that even if the hand crushes it, the hand smells like a rose.

(30:35):
You know, I wanted to come to it with humility and positivity that if nothing good comes from it for me, at least they would have had a good meeting with me.
You know, I'd encourage them in some way so that I could find some reason worthwhile to keep going in this pursuit.
That if nothing else, I'm leaving behind a pleasant aroma of good character.

(30:56):
But what I encountered was at every turn, shockingly bad leadership where rather than just plain honesty, just telling me what was going on or why decisions were being made,
this weird duplicity. One interview. I feel like I'm going off track. You don't really want to talk about all that.
Oh, that's OK, because we're just having a conversation. This is fantastic.

(31:18):
OK, well, here's an example. This one is maybe one of the most shocking ones to me of strangeness that made me finally think I just need to run my own company.
I was referred to a company. Actually, in all six instances, I was referred.
All of the outreach I did as an individual fell on deaf ears.
And I have other friends who are in the same boat that the tech industry has just been volatile.

(31:39):
You know, when Google lays off 10000 engineers and Facebook lays off 10000 engineers and etc, etc, etc.
Down the line, you go to LinkedIn as an engineering leader.
You look at a job that's available and without exaggeration, when you go to put in your application, there are 800 applications already in.
Yeah, that's kind of the way it's been. So all of my open doors came through references.

(32:01):
So I had a reference to a really great role at a business that they have an AI engine that is powering environments inside of buildings like high rise buildings.
Right. So it can tailor the heat to what the person needs.
But from a green perspective, it knows when to turn power off and to conserve energy as much as possible while keeping people completely comfortable.

(32:27):
They can reduce the carbon footprint with incredible precision in order to make that happen.
They're building amazing tool sets. So their internal tools that they're using to build this solution, the tools themselves have value, incredible value.
They're doing things that test and prove code or compile code nine million times faster than the current technology allows for.

(32:54):
I mean, that's insane. So their inner tools plus their outer vision and outer solution.
Very exciting. So I had a conversation with the CEO and we were supposed to talk for half an hour.
We talked for like an hour and a half and it was a wonderful, wonderful conversation.
He had such a good heart and his thoughts about leadership, his thoughts about people, his thoughts about value.

(33:16):
We were going back and forth on all of this. And he said to me, it's not a question of if we need you in the company.
It's a question of where we'll put you because there's so many ways that you could fit.
And so I was very excited. Basically, I had the job and I loved the vision and what they were doing.
So I come to meet them in person and they fly me to their office.

(33:37):
I show up at their office that morning and I find out that actually I'm going through a panel of interviews, rather a series of panel interviews.
And I thought the meetings went well. But then I have this last meeting and in my head, I'm like, OK, here we go.
I'm heading into the last meeting and it's with the CEO. This is where everything goes sideways.
I even called my wife before the meeting and asked her to pray for me because I'm like, well, here we go.

(34:02):
I just want to keep my head up and be kind, regardless of what happens here.
So I go and I sit outside of this guy's office and it's a modern building and his wall is completely glass.
And the only conversation I've had with him was an hour and a half. We were like best friends, it felt like.
Right. I'm sitting outside of his office and he doesn't even look up, doesn't even look over.
I'm waiting to give him a smile and a wave and nothing. I'm supposed to meet him at four.

(34:26):
I sit there. It becomes four or five. I'm like, oh, that's OK. Five minutes late.
Granted, I flew here, but he's on some meeting on his computer in a zoom meeting and his face is lit up.
His office is dark and he's all lit up and excited and talking.
And I'm watching him and I'm sitting there thinking, OK, but for 10, I'm still sitting there for 15.
I'm still sitting there. His other team members come out and they're anxious because they feel bad.

(34:52):
Yeah, I flew here for a meeting and he's on a zoom call.
I said, because I've tried to have this perspective of being kind.
I said to them, oh, that's OK. You know, he gave me additional time in our first talk.
I don't want to pressure him. Just and they're like, no, no, no, he needs to meet with you.
This isn't right. And so one of them eventually goes in the door, interrupts him.
And he still doesn't stop the zoom call.

(35:13):
So she sits down in his office like making a physical presence known while trying to get him to get out of that other meeting.
Four thirty five. He finally ends the other meeting.
I'm sitting there for 35 minutes on his couch. Wow.
And now this is where it gets weird that all that stuff wasn't even the weird part.
So she has me coming in the door.

(35:35):
And as soon as I step in the door, the guy is cold and aloof and he won't look me in the eyes.
And I'm thinking it's like Willy Wonka from the 1970s version.
Willy Wonka is this magnanimous guy.
And then at the very, very end, Charlie comes in and Willy Wonka says, you lose.
You know, you drank the fizzy lifting drink and you touched the walls and we have to wash the walls and whatever, whatever, whatever.

(35:58):
And you lose. Good, sir. You know, that sort of thing.
Like a light switch switches and it goes from light to dark.
So I walk in and he's cold and he's aloof and he's grumpy from being interrupted from this call.
He's grumpy. And as one of his helpers leaves, he says, hey, can you get me the label making machine?
Now I'm sitting in the chair in front of him in his office and his helpers like the label making machine.

(36:23):
He goes, yeah, I need to create a label for this iPad on my desk.
You know, it's it's important that I don't forget to make that label.
And his helper was like, and you need to do that now.
Yeah, now's the right time for that. Very sarcastically.
And he looks at her and says, I can do two things at once.
Just get me the labeling machine. And I'm sitting there with my jaw almost open.
You know, I've flown here to meet with this guy. He was so kind on the call.

(36:46):
And now I have no no context for why he's treating me this way.
And he wants a label making machine to make a label while we talk.
And I'm thinking you've got to be kidding me.
But again, I'm trying to be the Rose that leaves the good aroma when it gets crushed.
Throughout these six things, as they kept happening, I had this perspective of God, you know,
coming from a position of faith in my view of the optimistic cosmology.

(37:10):
I'm thinking, God, I accept all humbling.
I want to learn every lesson I can through whatever humbling has to happen.
Just protect my family.
May I take all of it and keep my family safe from going through this hardship.
Don't make me sell my house if I can avoid it.
Like, don't uproot my family and give my family pain.
Just I'll take all the pain. I'll take all the trouble.

(37:31):
Just save my family from it. That was been my prayer.
And I would recognize going into these moments that it was happening again.
And so I'm sitting in this chair, thousand miles from home, and realizing suddenly the tide has turned.
I mean, now a humbling moment. This is going to be ugly.
I'm just going to accept it. I'm going to try to give a sweet aroma in return.

(37:53):
If nothing else, I'm going to have that when I walk away from this.
So he gets the label making machine.
And I'm kind of incredulous because what this amounts to, it's called a one on one.
When two people are in a room having a meeting, you call it a one on one.
And when you're the leader, the object of the one on one is always to encourage and get to know the person that you're with.

(38:15):
So any manager has one on ones with their team on a regular basis.
It's important to note, I think the role of the one on one is not how is your work doing, you know, how much you're getting done.
The role of the one on one in the corporate world is supposed to be how are you tracking in your career?
How are you as an individual? How satisfied are you?

(38:37):
What can I do to help you get involved in work that you find exciting?
It's funny when you treat the entire person as an entire person, you get the best work out of them.
You get the best longevity out of them.
But you do so by caring for them as an entity, as a person, not as a worker doing X, Y, Z work.
You know, so the one on one is meant to be encouraging.

(38:59):
I understand this because I've led so many one on ones.
I've done 16 direct reports on my last job.
And I meet with each of them one on one every two weeks.
So I'm sitting down in this one on one with this guy, expecting to be treated like this is a one on one where I'm going to be honored.
And instead, I'm being dishonored.
So he gets the label making machine.
He asked me some question, didn't even really look at me and starts typing on the labeling machine.

(39:25):
And so I start to answer and that kind of makes me feel a little ill because I'm talking to empty space.
And every once in a while, he would look up at me, like pointedly and then look back down as if to say, here's my eye contact and look back down at the label making machine.
And I just got sicker and sicker in my stomach as this unfolded.
And eventually, I'm talking about something pretty important.
He's asking me important questions about my views and whatever, whatever.

(39:48):
And while in the middle of saying something that I would have thought would be important, he hits print on the label making machine and nothing happens.
He prints again.
Nothing happens.
He puts the machine up while I'm talking and he cracks the back of it open rather loudly.
And I talk a little more quietly now.
And I'm just kind of not mumbling, but I'm thinking, do I continue?
And I'm about to offer to, you know, we really don't have to do this.

(40:12):
He reaches into the machine and cracks the label printing filament out very loudly, sets everything down and starts picking at it, trying to figure out why it isn't feeding.
And at that point, I went silent.
I just mid-sentence, I just stopped talking.
And then he set that down and he kind of swept the stuff aside.
Again, didn't really look at me.
And he said something to the effect of, you're not really a code writer, are you?

(40:33):
You're more just a leader.
You don't really write any code.
And he said it dismissively.
It reminded me of Obi-Wan Kenobi saying, these aren't the droids you're looking for.
You know, he's like sort of like after all of that, he sets the stuff, pulls it aside and swishes his hand in the air almost to say, you're not the talent we're looking for, are you?
And then I was like, actually, no, I am a code writer.
I've written code that's been top apps in the entire world myself.

(40:57):
Oh, and then he looks at his watch after I defend my talent.
He looks at his watch and says, oh, you know what?
We're out of time.
We're out of time.
But, you know, we have dinner with the team tonight and I'll see you at dinner and we can talk a little more then.
And in dinner, he's late.
The other team members are there.
And I'm feeling pretty awkward at this point.
I'm like, why didn't you find me out here?

(41:18):
You know, why am I here?
And I've got to take an entire day to fly home now.
I'm going to be in a hotel room for the night.
I'm away from my family.
This is maybe the greatest professional discourtesy I've ever experienced.
So I'm sitting down.
He comes in late.
He sits beside me.
And this is what he does.
So that other Zoom call that he was on was with an Apple engineer or former Apple engineer.

(41:39):
To make it clear, he's looking for people to do the kind of work that he's doing, but they have different pockets of work that needs to get done.
So this guy is not in competition with me.
They're looking at me for one role.
They're looking at him for another role.
So there's no comparison going on.
And I wasn't comparing myself.
And I wasn't being compared.
But still, he walks in and he sits down.
And I'm sitting right beside him.

(42:00):
He doesn't say anything to me.
And he just starts telling his team about how amazing this interview was with this candidate, best candidate he'd ever interviewed ever in terms of someone who really got the science of it right away.
Because that's what that guy does is that particular kind of science.
And I'm sitting there shrinking inside of myself as he extols this virtue of this other candidate, having just basically ignored me and pushed me off into the corner.

(42:24):
And the point of this dinner is for me to get to know his team and have a good time.
And that's the umbrella he sets up over the entire meeting.
And I just kind of squirmed and couldn't wait to get away.
So when you look at the six or seven experiences that I had, that was maybe one of the worst ones.
But where you end up encountering leadership and the way leadership treats people, I think of it kind of in the tech industry now as in real estate, you know, when it's a buyer's market or a seller's market, it's a buyer's market.

(42:53):
And so the companies have all the power.
They could pick anybody they want.
And the salt of power, the way it brings out the flavor of the leader, there's just some terrible flavor in the world.
You know, as power has settled into these unique positions and the way they've decided to start treating people because it's like a buffet of people and they can take what they want, leave what they don't.

(43:15):
And it becomes dehumanizing.
So anyway, I'm proud to say at least this, even from all that, I was encouraging as possible and just walked away baffled.
What did you say before you left?
I don't remember the very last thing I said, but on the way out, we happened to stop by a table of investors who were investing in his company.
And they're like, oh, you're a candidate.
And I was like, yeah, I'm a candidate.

(43:36):
And I said something encouraging about, you know, why they should invest in the company.
You know, like I just I was encouraging to him and telling him, I think I told him something about what an honor it was to meet him.
And I love what he's what he's doing.
And regardless of what happens with us in the future, I just wish him the greatest success.
Something that's normally what I would do.
So something along those lines and telling everyone how fantastic they were.

(43:57):
And because the other the rest of the team members were fantastic.
Back to Willy Wonka. That's how that scene goes.
Willy Wonka, the lights switch off basically in terms of who he is.
And he treats this little poor kid who has won the Golden Ticket.
He treats him like a criminal, kicks him out of his office.
But Charlie has in his hand this everlasting gobstopper.

(44:19):
And the point of the movie is that there's this enemy called Slugsworth who's trying to get Willy Wonka secrets.
And he's telling everyone who gets the Golden Ticket, get me the gobstopper, I'll give you tons of money so that I can pirate it and, you know, go into competition against Wonka.
And so the boy has this everlasting gobstopper, which in itself has value.
It's an everlasting piece of candy. You never need another one like it's a lasting candy.

(44:43):
Charlie's holding it. He's being kicked out by this irate kind of evil Wonka.
And he's, of course, tempted to go sell it.
A matter of fact, Grandpa Joe says, hey, we'll go sell that thing to Slugsworth.
Let's get out of here. Charlie goes up and sets the everlasting gobstopper on Willy Wonka's desk.
It puts tears in my eyes when I think about it.
And then everything changes again. Willy Wonka covers the gobstopper with his hand and says, so shines a good deed in a weary world.

(45:10):
And he turns around and says, Charlie, you won. Like that was the final test.
When I treat you badly, so I'm getting choked up now. When I treat you badly, who are you going to be?
When things crumble, who are you going to be?
When things go bad, when you're in the pocket of suck in the sea of optimism, so to speak, who are you then?
And Charlie, against all odds and against anything that a kid would ever do, did the honorable thing.

(45:37):
And it's very emotional to me. And so I'm trying to walk that out in my life.
That's beautiful.
So, yeah, that's how that particular movie scene ends.
OK, in all of that narrative you just gave, the thing that struck me was if all of that hadn't happened,
there would not have been space for what comes next or what has come next.

(46:01):
That's optimistic cosmology. All the bad is actually good. You just can't see it yet.
Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh huh.
And the other thing I wanted to say is I really appreciate the language of the crushed rose, that kind of concept of humility.
That's a big thing. Yeah, I feel like I'm in college for it right now.
But that's where joy comes from. Yeah, no, it does. It does.

(46:22):
I think of it as surrender. Joy is found in surrender.
And I appreciate that language, though, of the crushed rose, because it's just a poignant analogy.
And I also appreciated the language you gave about the name optimistic cosmology,
that that name can exist in this reality, proves that this reality is optimistic.

(46:43):
Right. You didn't say it like that, but I think that's the gist of what you were saying.
Yeah, it's because of the everlasting substance that transcends everything through which everything has its being is itself optimistic.
And thus you have this thumbprint of optimism on everything. Yeah.
It transcends point of view is what I mean. It's not that we're looking upon the universe with a point of view of optimism,

(47:05):
but rather there is a substantive existing optimism that you're just recognizing and it itself exists and its existence
throughout the universe suggests a substance behind the universe.
Exactly. And I appreciate that language. I think of all the bad things in life as learning modules.

(47:26):
It's like you go through a module and life sucks and then you get through it.
And then you go back into it over and over and over until you learn the module.
Other than that, what I'm learning is how to put language to the emotions that I have.
I'm finding that when I'm looking out this window and I see a tree and a trampoline out there,
my head only has definitions and categories. It's basically categorizing all of the sensory input

(47:49):
and putting it into boxes that have been given to me by my upbringing, by my culture, by everything like that.
So that's the quest I'm on is to try to find language for all the things that I want to express,
all the things that I'm finding and discovering emotionally.
So I really appreciate that, especially on the topic that you haven't really considered before.

(48:11):
And you started talking about God, probably always has been one of my favorite topics.
I think that God is the energy that holds the atoms together, the cells together,
but it's also the same energy that makes up whatever it is that's spinning around nothing,
the photons spinning around nothing that are the object.
You said, I believe in a creative God.

(48:34):
Well, I do too, because everywhere I look, I see it or him or her.
I don't care what you call it because we're talking about the real, the nugget of the thing, the emotion of the thing.
Emotion, that's why I call this emotion art because everything is made out of emotion.
At the end of the day, emotion is creation.
Oh, that's interesting. I hadn't heard about either emotion art.

(48:57):
Emotion art, that's the name of this podcast.
Oh, you never told me the name of the podcast.
No, that's true. It never came up.
I love it. I love the name.
Yeah, it just fits.
And what I usually say in my intro at the beginning is I say, this is emotion art.
Emotion because we're literally made of emotion and art because everything we do wants to be art.
Perfect. I absolutely love it. Yeah.

(49:21):
So to me, if I'm going to just distill it down into its most basic essence and, you know, spoiler alert, God is a single photon of light that exists in an infinite reality that is infinite in every way.
And humans are God becoming self-aware.

(49:42):
Now, I say that from a human centric point of view.
I'm sure some other civilization in some other reality or on some other planet or whatever, because who knows, probably would laugh hysterically.
But everybody laughs at everybody else's POV on that.
That's what makes sense to me is this conversation with you that I'm having with you is the act of God learning, becoming more knowledgeable, becoming self-aware, not that there's anything God doesn't know because God is everything.

(50:10):
Like people don't understand Christians. You know what?
I didn't understand what I meant when I said God is everything. Now I understand it.
Now I understand when I look at a hillside, when I look at a tree, I'm not looking at wood and rock and metal.
I'm looking at photons of some elemental energy spinning around nothing.

(50:34):
That's what I'm looking at. To me, that's this dimension's manifestation of God.
Oversimplified. Yeah. Deep though. Like you're saying, deep waters.
Why not? I want to see things as they are. That's what I want most out of life. I want truth.
I don't care about anything else. I want truth.
So why not dive in and say the dumb thing that is just way too simple? Because I want to know. I want to know.

(51:00):
Yeah, same here. That's what changed my life when I found faith and became a believer.
What I went through was experiencing the truth, what I felt like, kind of like a Matrix moment,
breaking out of the illusion of the world and experiencing some transcendent truth.
And then I devoted a number of years, and that sounds monastic or special in a way that it wasn't.

(51:27):
I had an intense hobby for the next few years of looking into how does one know the truth?
Well, when it comes to Christianity in particular, I studied very, very many religions
looking with the same kind of eyes of how does one understand who's right, who's wrong, what is truth?
And it was the truth to me, just like you're saying, that mattered.

(51:49):
I didn't have some experience that was about, oh, I'm forgiven. And I had this racking guilt.
Of course, I had a certain amount of guilt. Everybody does. I don't mean to say everyone has done heinous things,
but just everyone has things they regret probably in their lives. But I had more so than probably the common person
because I'd lived pretty wildly. But that's not what drew me to this idea of faith.

(52:10):
What drew me to the idea of faith was just as you're saying, what's the truth?
As a matter of fact, I would have conversations. This sounds weird. I think you might have. No, you weren't there yet.
So when you and I got to know each other through the context of like a school setting, the Bible school.
In the previous year, I had met some door knockers for the, who were they?

(52:32):
LDS. Yeah, it was Mormons. Yeah. So the Mormons came to the door, a couple of very nice young women.
And I could tell that they were sincere. And I was sincere. And I told them sincerely, and this is the truth.
This can be hard to say in circles of whatever faith you walk in. For me, it's Christianity.
If I'm in a room of Christians, I can honestly say this and it makes everyone uncomfortable.
You know, I say, I say, just like you're saying, I only want the truth.

(52:57):
And so if someone could convince me that something else is true other than Christianity, I'm going to become that thing.
I'm not a Christian because it's culture or I've learned it or its nationality or anything. I'm here just because it's true.
And if I learn somehow that it's not, well, I'm not that anymore. I'm whatever is true.
So I would be able to say that to the Mormons. You know, the Mormons, they know they're now talking to the leader of a little Bible school.

(53:23):
And I'm telling them, well, if you can convince me, I'll believe it. Let's talk.
So I had them, not only did I have them come in and talk to me and I sat with them at length and I listened to their questions.
They allowed me to ask them questions in return. I know this is going to sound really crazy, but I even let them come in and speak to my entire school.
I let them come in and present their case to all of my students. And we had maybe 12 students. That's not a ton.

(53:48):
But these are 12 people that are struggling to figure out who they are and who is God. And they're here learning about Christianity.
And now they have Mormon teachers at the front of the room. And the Mormons can say whatever they wanted.
I wasn't policing them at all because I'm after the truth. I don't have to protect anybody from that.
The truth is the truth. And it's going to be known or it's not.
And so we did a debrief later and the students on their own of their own accord came up with the same series of red flags.

(54:12):
And it was an interesting thing. Like if you and I stand on truth, not on just what other people have to say or or some sort of commitment to tradition or anything, but no, no tradition, no religion, just truth.
That ground is unshakable. And truly, if we found something else that was actually true, of course, we're going to stand on that.

(54:34):
You know, whatever the truth is, that's what I want to stand on, just like you.
And interesting to watch that unfold in the lives of other people.
That story kind of feels a little bit prophetic to me because that must have been before my time because when I was at.
It was a year before you came.
Yeah, OK. After the Berean school, my family looks at it like I walked away from the faith.

(54:56):
I don't consider myself to be a Christian, but I also no longer consider myself to not be a Christian.
But the factor I most attribute that to is LDS Church, the LDS missionaries knocking on my door because I've always loved people.
I will have any conversation, any peaceful, any joyful, any optimistic conversation that is in front of me.
Anyone, I will have it. And every time they come to the door, I invite them in.

(55:18):
Same with Joe's Witness, same with Baha'i, any of them. I'm just like, come in, let's talk. I'll pray with you.
Whatever. Like I don't have anything to be afraid of. I just like talking and comparing worldviews.
And back then, it always came down to book, chapter and verse like, OK, this is why I can't go with what you're saying,
because to me, the Bible is the ultimate line in the sand.
If it does not disagree with my understanding of what the Bible says, then I am not barred from believing it if it makes sense to me.

(55:46):
But if it disagrees with my understanding of the Bible, I can't go there. I just can't. That is my safe zone.
I don't know what's true or what's not true. I can't trust my perceptions.
And having those conversations over and over and over and over and realizing that these people are just as passionate.
100%. Right.
Believe just as strongly as I do. And what gives me the right to somehow be right above these people?

(56:10):
I am right, you're wrong. So that just started that slow breakdown of my worldview to where finally now I find myself in a place where I stand between worldviews.
I consider myself a world traveler. I travel mystically. I travel metaphysically, whatever you want to call it.
But that's what these conversations are, because every worldview fits into the optimistic cosmology.

(56:31):
Every single worldview does, because it's all part of it. It's the fingerprint.
The rare thing is to find a person who can step from one world worldview to the next to just see the person and to see what they're looking at.
So, you know, the story of the guys that I probably heard this story from you first time in the Bible school, but the blind guys that were feeling an elephant and the one guy feels a tail, one guy feels a trunk.

(56:57):
And they're all describing what they feel. And they end up coming to blows about it because everyone disagrees on what this thing is because they know they're all touching the same thing.
And how can you be touching a rope while I'm touching a wall? This doesn't make any sense, you know, being the tail in the side or whatever.
And I just realized that we're all looking at the same thing. Yeah, I agree. So I've got some interesting takes on that.

(57:20):
So one of them, we both have a really good friend, Daniel Mims. We do. I like that guy. Yeah, he's brilliant.
And he's been a good friend of mine for a long time and continues to be. And he has some very outer edge views, which to him are central, not outer at all.
He's in the center. But from a Christian point of view, he's out on the edge or past the edge even.

(57:42):
But from his point of view, he's at the center of the web, kind of realizing all things.
I don't agree with a lot of what he says and a lot of it is beautiful. But what I feel with him is it's a weird dichotomy because we are brothers who both, just like you're saying, all we're after is the truth.
All Daniel wants is the truth. And he's bought and sold for the truth. And so am I. And his truth is different than my truth.

(58:07):
But the pursuit and the value and the honor of truth stands above all things.
So in that thing, we are joined at the hip and we are close and we are kind of one in a manner speaking.
Even though underneath that pursuit, the treasure that I'm digging up in the field is different than the treasure he's digging up.
I recognize that, which is what I recognized in the Mormons or anyone.

(58:30):
You know, Jesus, I think, railed against and so did Paul and so did the apostles spending time with scoffers or deceivers or something.
And that's a very rare person, almost non-existent. I'm sure they exist.
But the idea of a Mormon, regardless of whether or not Mormonism is true.
OK, the person who believes Mormonism is generally speaking, by the by the vast majority, almost 100 percent a good person trying to live a good life,

(58:58):
following truth as they as it has been revealed in their opinion to them.
The idea of the Mormon potentially, or I guess you could say the Christian, yes, who's deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep into it with great power in it.
Who knows it isn't true, but exercises it for money and power.

(59:20):
That's the person that the Bible is talking about as the person that you shouldn't spend time with, the deceiver.
I don't think maybe I've ever met one who believes something that I don't believe, knows it isn't true and is trying to convince me in order to get some kind of power over me.
I don't think that's how it works, John. I think that they're lying to themselves.

(59:41):
I think the lie is internal. I do think that you can get to the point.
No, I agree with you. You can be like that as well.
But even that person I view more as a tortured soul. I know lots of those.
Someone with a disease, you know, like they're lying to themselves and they're hurting them.
But they still mean well. They're not trying to. You'd have to be a sociopath.
You'd have to be an off the edge narcissist in order to pretend like you believe something as a lifestyle in order to gain.

(01:00:07):
Well, yeah, or just greedy. I mean, look at the people that get on TV and convince the old women to send in money for a prayer cloth.
They know full well what they're doing is wrong.
You can call unbalanced narcissism by many names.
Yeah. And so it happens. But I think that like someone like Daniel Mims, I love the guy, but we're of difference of opinion.
But here's the wrinkle. So there is a wrinkle in all of this. I do believe that there's a truth.

(01:00:32):
I don't think that there's a multiverse of truths. I think that the optimistic cosmology, there is a fingerprint and a fingerprint is an identifier.
And it's an identifier of something, not many things. Christianity says there is only Jesus.
And Isaiah, God's almost with comedy, says, I'm looking around up here. I'm the only God.

(01:00:54):
And so I'm going to prove myself through prophecy. I'm going to put all these words and all these people's mouths for thousands of years.
And then Jesus is going to come fulfill 300, 400 prophecies, which is mind blowing.
He says, I'm going to prove myself because I'm the only one up here.
And so I'm either right or wrong, you know, one way or the other. And I'm open to being wrong and being proven wrong.

(01:01:16):
But I stand upon what I stand upon just because it's true. You know, it reminds me of this.
Here's an interesting thing. I'll throw your way. I love this.
It's a phrase that basically I think should be a mantra for me. I do have a couple of mantras I live by that we didn't talk about, but I want to hear all mantras.
Well, I've got three of them then. Although this third one is the one that comes to mind now and not really a mantra, but it is how I try to live my life.

(01:01:40):
And it probably should be a mantra. But the idea is.
The love of the truth causes us to pursue things that can push us out into solitary studies and experiences, seeking truth, seeking God, doing research.
You know, the love of the truth can cause us to pull away almost like a monk. Yes.

(01:02:03):
Pull us away into it, some deep study into some pensive mood. The love of the truth pulls us into these pursuits that can feel lonely. Yes.
But when you get there and you're learning what love is, the truth of the love sends you back to love on the people in the world.

(01:02:24):
So the love of the truth draws you away, but the truth of the love sends you back.
You know, if truth is separate than someone else's truth, my truth still tells me to go love that person and to appreciate everything that I can, you know.
But then the mantras I actually live by are one of them is with the little boy that you were, be proud of the man you've become.

(01:02:45):
And I live by that, like with the little me look at my life now and be proud of me or be ashamed that no way do I have to become that.
Is that the person I'm going to be? All this hope and dreaminess that I had as a kid and that's what I'm going to become.
Before you move on to the next one, you just rode back over the cliff.
I mean, we never left that off the edge, but have you heard of internal family systems?

(01:03:10):
No.
It is a psychotherapy model developed by a guy in the 70s, I think that question that you're asking yourself just opens up a whole world of exploration.
Interesting.
Uh huh. I'm not going to hear how many times can you split off a rabbit trail before you just get lost in the woods?

(01:03:32):
I want to hear your next.
Oh, I'll just tell you the other one.
So, but that's interesting because I don't know anything about what you're saying there.
This other one is more just a my personal philosophy.
I don't want to die, but when I die, when I'm gone, I want to have lived a life where my kids can be proud of their dad and be glad that I was their dad, which means I don't want scandal.

(01:03:54):
I don't want to do things that have embarrassed my children and not to say that I'm worried about embarrassment by what other people think of me.
But I mean, the embarrassment that comes from being crooked.
I don't want to be in some way crooked.
I don't mind doing something difficult that draws strange attention.
Embarrassment is not the key word, but the idea that that I will have been noble.
You don't want to have.

(01:04:15):
You don't want to be the person that sells the gopstopper.
Right. Perfect. Exactly.
Yes.
I don't want to fill the family's coffer with something questionable.
And my kids always think, oh, my dad was a questionable character.
If nothing else, you know, I'm gone.
The roses crushed, but there's a sweet aroma in there.
And they're like, yeah, that's that's how my dad smells.
That's the aroma of my dad.
With that perspective, thank you for being a dad.

(01:04:37):
Oh, yeah. Likewise to you. You're an awesome dad.
Oh, we do the best we can.
We do.
I always tell myself I am going to mess my children up.
I just will.
I feel like I already have in some ways.
Yeah, I'm going to mess my children up.
So why don't I just stop worrying about it and just learn how to be me?
Because that is how I am going to leave that legacy for my children is by simply being the best me that I can be.

(01:05:00):
And the whole no bad parts thing.
When I read that book, oh, non sequitur there.
That's the internal family systems book.
Oh, I've heard of that. Someone else told me about that.
It changed my life. It changed my relationship with myself.
The other person who read it told me the same thing.
They told me it changed their life. Interesting.
And through that, it changed my relationship with my children.

(01:05:21):
And the oversimplified concept is that a human is made out of a whole bunch of different parts.
Each part is made out of one feeling or one thought or one anything.
It's just a part.
And that part is a person.
It has its own tastes, its own likes and dislikes.
It has its worldview.
It has thoughts about you.

(01:05:43):
It's all based on wounding.
So you have a wound from your past and you have a fear story that says I'm never going to be able to whatever or I'm not going to be good enough or I am not lovable.
And then that part of you freezes in that moment where that little child experienced a trauma.
Trauma doesn't mean like sexual abuse.

(01:06:04):
It means anything that is interpreted by the emotions as trauma.
There's an emotion in there that's a part of you and it recognizes a danger.
An adult just said, you can't talk like that.
That part of you recognizes that danger.
There is something wrong.
I have to protect this human from the danger that's going to come from being the wrong thing.

(01:06:29):
Now that part of you freezes in age.
It no longer continues to age because it is stuck in a loop.
And then every time environment around you seems similar in some way to that time, to that instance, there's something that reminds that part of you of that.
It immediately takes over, locks down in whatever protective measure it decided in its little five year old, 12 year old, whatever mind that it needed to do to keep itself safe.

(01:06:54):
And now here you are 40 and you're still doing these same behaviors because the part of you that is in control of that is still 12.
And so the solution is to get to know the pieces of you.
It's an internal family in there and you need to stop locking out parts of you in the cold because you're afraid of them.
You need to let them in and make them feel welcome.

(01:07:16):
Let them know that you recognize that this is their house too.
And watch them transform from a wild beast.
Because what would you do if you were a five year old that had no idea what was going on and you're locked out of the house?
You can't even get into your own house.
How terrifying would that be?
Like what lengths would you go to to protect yourself?
So when you let that part of yourself in, open the door, give it a spot by the fire.

(01:07:41):
Oh man, that's feeding me. Yeah, that's cool.
So the end of that is I do I.F.S. meditations with people.
I am not I.F.S. certified. I read the book one time and it's basically you sit down, go into a meditation.
It's basically you're praying with yourself.
So I won't interrupt you, but just say that the guy that I talked to that said it changed his life, it was in the context of therapy.

(01:08:04):
So that's interesting.
And we tried a bunch of different kinds of therapy and this therapy revolutionized his life and made him a healthy whole man.
Yes. And I'm not a therapist, but I am.
I am very, very keyed emotionally to the world.
And so when I sit down with somebody and I go into a state of meditation with them and we have an intention of exploring their emotions,

(01:08:25):
I am able to feel what's going on in their world in some shadowy way.
And so I'm able to just ask the questions.
I'm able to just help coach them as they meet and talk with themself.
And John, there are times where I have just after a session, I've just broken down in racking sobs at the aching beauty that I saw as somebody met themself for the first time.

(01:08:51):
Not that they didn't know themself before, but they met a part of themself that they'd never known.
And you tell stories in this.
That's the beauty of it for me because stories are what get me out of bed in the morning.
So we'll start physically and I'll be like, OK, what do you notice physically in your body right now?
Any ache or pain or feeling or sensation or anything?
What pops up? And this is all about going with the first thing that comes to your gut, to your emotions.

(01:09:14):
And so then, oh, you have an ache in your shoulder.
And so it's like, OK, so now we close our eyes.
We take a few deep breaths to still the thoughts, to still the retrieval system, basically.
The thing that catalogs all of the experiences for later use in determining what to do in any situation.
You still all that and then you just focus on that feeling.
Just focus on the feeling and you get close to it.

(01:09:36):
And then the story starts to shift into giving it a persona.
Like, what does it feel like? Do you see a color?
And eventually that thing becomes the little boy or the little girl that is locked in this fear loop.
And it doesn't even know you exist until you gain its trust, until you tell it, I'm here.

(01:09:57):
Can I talk to you?
What do you see? What do you feel? Why are you doing this?
Once that trust is gained, that little person starts to talk.
You start to remember things that happened that you haven't remembered since that time.
And this takes some imagination.
You know, you can't be someone who refuses to step into your imagination.
It just won't work. Great. We've gotten past that.
Now we're just digging into it because we want to all heal.

(01:10:20):
So we're trying it.
And I say, ask him how old he thinks you are.
And they'll be like, oh, he thinks I'm eight.
And I'm like, now take him to a mirror and show him who you are.
Tell him some of the things you've done.
You know, an eight year old or a 12 year old, I'll be like, tell him about all the sex you have.

(01:10:41):
Like, you're literally dealing with yourself in that mind.
It is so surreal.
How about a kid, whether or not they're proud of the person you've become.
I mean, you're doing the intranet.
Exactly. Exactly.
And invariably what happens and sometimes it takes a long time.
Like sometimes you can't even do it in one session.
They just refuse to trust.
And there will be other characters that step in to try to block the connection because you're taking away a safety that has.

(01:11:06):
What do they call it? There's a term for that, right?
Others or something like that or because you're saying other versions of themselves will come to stop.
It's not versions of yourself. It's parts of yourself.
Yeah, yeah. But they're almost sentient.
They might as well be because they seem to be.
But at the same time, on the other side of the coin, it's all just you.
It's all just the same person that's just playing head games.

(01:11:27):
Yeah, I understand that.
There's a term for the others that has become popularized.
I'm curious.
But it's not like people don't think of it as split personality or like a disorder.
It's come along with a lot of the other kind of big shifts that have been happening around what is a person and who are we gender, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
It's not other.
I wish I could remember the term. It's.

(01:11:50):
Well, keep going. I'll see if I can figure it out.
Yeah, I'm curious.
Even if you find it later, like I'd love to know.
And basically in this model, some of them have managerial roles.
Some of them have like firefighter roles.
Alters. That's what it is.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, people call them alters.
And I think it's likely the same thing where they feel like there are different parts of them with their own point of view, their own personality that's being popularly embraced.

(01:12:16):
And I'm thinking of the trilogy Unbreakable Glass.
Right. Yeah.
That's a perfect depiction of what can happen.
Those are all just parts. Yes.
Alters. OK, yeah, those are just parts.
If you YouTube it and you'll see many, many young people talking about their alters.
Yes.
So it's like a popularization of the concept.
So that's just what came to mind.

(01:12:38):
Keep going.
But when you have others trying to stop them, I'm like, oh, I've been hearing that kind of thing lately in culture.
And they call it an alters.
So when an alter or a part steps in because it's a manager, it's a part.
Its entire job has been to step in when this wounded part starts to feel threatened.
It steps in with anger or with blame, whatever the emotion is.

(01:13:00):
That's the part. That's what it looks like.
But when that thing steps in, I immediately know.
And at first it doesn't know that it's different.
It thinks that it's still the same part talking for itself.
But I feel the shift in the energy.
That's why I say, OK, let's ask this part that we're talking to to step into a waiting room, ask them to step back, ask them to sit down, whatever it is, ask them to just trust you for a second to talk to this hurting part.

(01:13:25):
And if it doesn't trust you, it won't.
It'll say no.
And we can always get it to trust because when you care, that's what's coming out of you.
And when you're honest, you're going to care about someone that cares.
So it steps back, go back to the wounded part.
And it's basically like it's stuck in a movie.
And this scene is playing over and over and over.
And sometimes you're in there watching it with it and you see what happened in ways that you didn't remember or whatever.

(01:13:51):
But then you say, hey, do you want to leave this place?
Like, where do you want to go?
If you could be anywhere in the world, where would you want to go?
And it's like, oh, man, I'd like to go to the beach.
And so you just say, let's go to the beach and you take it by the hand or you pick it up if it's a little child and you just take it to the beach.
And then later on, we come back to it and I'm just like, so what's that part doing?
And people are usually like, oh, it's playing.

(01:14:13):
Those meetings when they happen, they make life worth living.
That's the optimistic universe.
While I'm listening to you, I'm thinking how interesting it is that like Tozer, you remember Tozer?
Yes, A.W. Tozer.
One of his points of view is that we have five senses, physical senses, and that we have a supernatural sense in his opinion by which we experience and know God, is Tozer's point of view.

(01:14:40):
And that it's like any of the other senses or any muscle in your body, as you exercise it, it becomes stronger.
And I think of this with Stephen King.
So Stephen King is an amazing writer.
But he says in order to be an amazing writer, you have to be an amazing reader.
In a second, I'll try to get this thread back because it'll make sense here in a second.
And it comes back to you like a thought that comes back to you.

(01:15:02):
OK, so a theater of the mind, which is what happens when you pick up a book, you look at a book and you have black text on a white page.
And suddenly you don't see the book anymore.
You're immersed in the theater of the mind and you're in another world, literally another world.
And funny enough, when you're done reading, suddenly you're looking at a book again.
It's a wildest thing, you know?
And I think of someone like Stephen King, whose muscle of mind theater is beyond Schwarzenegger in strength.

(01:15:29):
You know, it's Herculean. What is it like when he reads?
You know, what is his theater of the mind like? Because he's exercised it.
Just like Tozer said, experiencing God, there's a muscle involved and you train it and you learn how to sense.
And I'm tying that back to you because of your understanding of optimistic cosmology and your trust in the transcendent reality that you're able to lean into it

(01:15:54):
and therefore find these touch points with other souls who are broadcasting in that space.
And so you're reading a radio station coming out of somebody in a medium of thought or beyond thought, you know, transcendent identity
that you're reading that and you're training this muscle that makes you more and more able to see something otherwise absolutely invisible to anybody else.

(01:16:19):
But your belief and trust in the transcendent reality allows you to lean into the invisible and experience it in a way that is profound and will continue to get more profound.
That's where my mind's going as you share.
You can call that transcendent reality God.
Terms don't offend me anymore. No terms offend me.
Yeah, I'm not trying to not offend you.

(01:16:41):
And I don't know that it's necessarily God in the sense that because I think of God is more an identity as opposed to a substance.
Sure, I got you.
But so I think of it more as the plasma behind life.
I think. Oh, interesting. So I'm saying things I've never said or thought necessarily before, but that the plasma itself is an information system in the same way.
Interestingly, so there's a new thoughts for me, but the idea that quantum physics, when you twist the spinning of a quark over here and a paired quark over there, start spinning the other direction, you know, thousands of miles away.

(01:17:13):
This quantum entanglement, there's some sort of plasma something that is an information carrier beyond anything we have been able to touch or understand or and I think that somehow you're transcending into whatever that might be,
whether that is the fabric of God and the nature of God in some way or if it's somehow the underlying creative, you know, I don't know, just plasma is the only word that comes to mind.

(01:17:37):
Whatever it is that because of your trust that something is there and that it means well, you're able to lean into it and then read this information being broadcast there by another soul and feel their feelings.
It's an interesting potential there.
That feels true.
That's very good language.
You're speaking the language of David Deutsch, by the way.

(01:17:58):
Cool.
Which one was that one?
I've got a bunch of tabs open with books that you've mentioned.
This Chasing the Wild Pendulum.
Okay, right.
The first one.
Yeah.
Oh, you're in for a treat, John.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah, I've got it open to my tab so I can buy it.
But oh, I also wanted to say this.
The song, You've Got to Get Yourself Together, You've Been Stuck in a Moment, You Can't Get Out of It.

(01:18:26):
Yeah, and that was a song by you too and it was written about Michael Hutchins of Inexcess who either committed suicide or some people think he was killed but seems to have potentially committed suicide.
And Bono was his really good friend and I've watched some amazing documentaries on Inexcess and I've bought their records. I've got records from Inexcess that I listen to.

(01:18:47):
I had this resurgence and interest in who they were and that idea of getting stuck in a moment of going back to that conversation and when you're eight or nine or ten and you're stuck in a moment, you can't get out of it.
That song came to mind when you were saying that.
Oh my goodness.
Yes.
And that's exactly what it is.
So all of these topics are huge and so fascinating.

(01:19:10):
Like we're hitting all of the things that just spin my world up.
Give me energy, give me life, and each one would be an entire conversation in itself.
I think that there's a lot of very interesting conversations that I'd like to have with you.
But I'm also curious about what the picture of your life looks like and I don't necessarily see us doing it in this sitting but I would really like to go back and get your backstory.

(01:19:38):
And likewise yours. But I think I know more of yours maybe than you know of mine.
I remember a lot of our conversations years ago and you know your trip to India and what happened to you in India and you had some negative experiences.
You know I remember.
Very much so.
I think your childhood, I remember some moments from your childhood, how you were brought up and all of the amazing and difficult things that you experienced.

(01:20:00):
So I don't know all of it but I would love to know more about yours as well.
But the ones that I do know are really sweet to me.
The things that I know and who you are and where you've come from and the rose that you are with all the crushing that you've received as well.
Oh boy.
Oh there's the language you know.
But that doesn't feel like it belongs in this space just because it would be too cramped.

(01:20:22):
It would be too rushed.
But I am curious based on all of these things that you've been talking about especially with the augmented reality and AI stuff.
I'm curious to just have a little peek into what you're doing right now.
You talked about starting your own business.
What is your art? What are you working on?
You know I'm just curious about those things.
I've embraced AI very heavily.

(01:20:44):
So I know AI can be a hot spot for people because some people think of it as Satan.
You know essentially not truly Satan but just bad.
But I don't.
You know I think that it has potential to be really bad.
It depends on who's leveraging it and why and how.
But to me it's just another tool.
You know it's just like when the industrial age came along.
It came with some crap.

(01:21:05):
You know but ultimately now we all have cars and we don't have to walk.
We don't live within three miles of everything.
You know because we have the ability to fly.
We have the ability now through the internet.
That's another thing. The information age.
As it's negatives you know like I personally think of pornography as a negative.
I think that they're hurtful to people.
But it's rampantly available to anyone anywhere.

(01:21:28):
Yes.
So there are downsides to the information age.
But there are upsides to the information age obviously.
And so I think artificial intelligence is the same.
It's going to come with a lot of crap.
It's going to come with a lot of glory.
I use it constantly every day.
So I'm writing code with it.
I'm creating artwork with it.
So one of the things I recently did and I'll send you the video because I haven't shared this with you.

(01:21:51):
But do you remember the band big in the 90s system of a down?
Yes.
Okay so I know Serge Tankin.
Wake up.
The lead singer.
And I've known him for about 15 years and we're not buddies or anything.
It's not like we're chums.
But I made an app for him years ago that allowed people to remix his music.
And so I got to talk to him and he gave me all his song stems and we were supposed to meet up and have a beer together.

(01:22:14):
And there's something going on with my family that I couldn't let go.
But I recently reached out to him.
I didn't know this but he was putting out another album.
So I made a music video for him completely done with AI.
Completely, completely.
So I regenerated him as a character.
And he looks like a person.
He sent me the song before it was released.
I listened to it like a dozen times.

(01:22:36):
And what I was seeing in my head is the story of him as a gladiator like Russell Crowe chasing a red wizard through eons of time.
You know the red wizard was first hurting people with magic and then she was controlling the sweatshops of the industrial age.
And then she's launching an AI empire.
And he's chasing her and trying to stop her from hurting people with these different things.
It looks like a short movie kind of.

(01:22:58):
And it's all done with AI but it's realistic.
I mean there are kids running around, she's running around, there's battles, there's everything.
All generated with AI.
Where can I find this?
Like I literally have chills just swirling around my skin right now.
Here, I'll send it to you and you could even watch it at the moment and then we could talk about it.
No, I'll watch it later.
I want to make sure that anyone else who wants to watch it can too.

(01:23:20):
Oh yeah, yeah.
So here I will, I'll just send you a link.
I'll just put it in the notes.
Does it have a title or anything?
Of course it does.
Yeah, yeah, it's on Vimeo but I don't know that it's public yet.
I mean the song's public and I can share it now.
Oh wait, this is all very new.
Yeah, yeah, just a month ago, yeah.
Oh my goodness, this is so exciting.
I cannot wait to see this.

(01:23:41):
Oh, you know what? I have my iPad here.
Okay, yeah, then I'll send you the link and you can watch it through your iPad.
I just sent you two links.
There's one link called Cartoon Buyer by Serge Tankian.
And then I sent you another one from a band called Low Craft,
which has a really interesting story.
Both of these videos are done in AI.
The Low Craft video has the band playing.

(01:24:03):
There are scenes where the band's actually playing.
And those are real.
Those are real clips of the real band.
But other than that, I recreated the lead singer and he's in an art heist story that I wrote.
So I wrote both of the stories, not the songs, and turned the videos into like mini movies.
So I sent you both of them.
Okay.
So while you watch, I'm going to go talk to my son for a second,

(01:24:24):
and then I'll come back and then we can talk about it.
Deal.
Okay.
All right. See you in a few.
Yep.
Looks like Russell Crowe.
Kid bought a magazine writing it.
And that's Serge as a little kid.
I modeled him as a kid.
Yeah.
Wow. This is so cool, dude.
Geez.
Oh my gosh.

(01:24:45):
Oh, this is too good.
Wow.
Okay, I'm back listening to.
That was good.
That was really good.
I would say I approve.
Nice.
Definitely had tears streaming down my face for the last half of that.

(01:25:09):
Wow. Yeah.
But I was seeing things that weren't there too.
Yeah.
Except that they are.
Oh my gosh.
That is intense.
And that is.
That is the world traveler.
That's intense.
Yeah.
It took 300 hours of work.
I can imagine.
Cause the way AI works, it really can't create those scenes like that.

(01:25:31):
What I had to do was create them in layers and use an AI green screen.
So I'd have AI create a scene of him running on a green screen.
And then I'd take out the green screen and create the world he's running in.
So it's all these layers and layers and layers to get it to look right.
When she first raised that robot.
Yeah.

(01:25:52):
The giant mech bot.
Yeah.
In the factory.
What I saw was him breaching her child.
Oh, interesting.
I knew that's where he was going to end up.
It was the only end to that story arc.
That is powerful, John.
And that makes me think of what AI is to me.

(01:26:17):
One of the most possibly the most formative podcaster that I've ever listened to is Eric Godsey.
I don't know who that is.
Yeah.
He's definitely on the metaphysical and like plant medicine fringes of this optimistic cosmology.
He was the formative force for me to really step out of my worldview.

(01:26:40):
He is the podcast equivalent of the book Prometheus Rising.
That book shook me.
And I read it for that purpose.
I knew that is what it was going to do.
It's kind of like a mental mushroom trip.
Speaking of optimism, I've got my youngest daughter Faith came in the room.
She wants to say hi.
I'm talking to my friend Michael.
Oh, yeah.

(01:27:02):
Say hi to Michael.
Hi.
Hi, Faith.
How are you doing?
You're not shy.
I'm not shy. Stop.
And I remember you.
We used to play together a long time ago.
Yeah, he lived in the Lomoth.
And his kids live in the Lomoth.
You'd remember them if you saw them.
We used to go to their house.
Can I ask you a question?

(01:27:24):
What?
How do you feel right now?
I'm happy.
Yes.
Are you often happy?
Mm hmm.
She makes all of us happy, too.
She's like a happy magnet, a happy little campfire.
Makes everybody warm and happy.
Well, you are in the perfect place for that.
You are in an optimistic universe.

(01:27:47):
Welcome.
Okay, I'll take the microphone back.
Maybe you want to sit in here?
Cool. So anyway, when you want, you can watch that other video as well.
It's not as emotional, but it's interesting because the other song is by a band called Low Craft.
And they were from McMinnville back in the 90s.
They got signed, I think, to Sony.

(01:28:09):
They made an album in the 90s that never really got fully released in the proper way.
They were being fought for by multiple labels.
And the guy who ended up winning fell off the boat into drugs, I think.
And then the album got buried.
And it kind of lingered.
And it was around, but it was never known the way it was meant to be known.
And then not long ago, someone put their album on the list of top 10 of all time, one album wonders.

(01:28:34):
You know, the idea of bands who only got one album out.
It's one of the top 10 up there with Stone Temple Pilots and things.
And so they had a resurgence in their music.
They remastered one of their songs called Transcendental Meltdown.
And so I did the story about them and made the story of the art heist.
But at the end, just to give away the ending, just because, you know, it's more important if you know what the ending is.

(01:28:55):
There's an art heist going on.
But the guy only takes one piece of art out of the entire museum.
And that art is something that's a real piece of art that the real lead singer's daughter drew.
And so his concept behind the song Transcendental Meltdown is that fame empowers you only after it kills you.

(01:29:19):
That when you really hit the peak of fame, it's because it consumes you.
It's crazy how fame kills the people it makes famous, you know, and how everybody's fighting for it.
I look forward to that. Fantastic.
Which is why I love doing both of the stories. I feel like there's something to be said.
Yeah.
For me and the arts, if we were to talk about, I think the original impetus was to talk about art.

(01:29:42):
Fortunately, everything we talk about will be about art from my perspective.
So that makes it easy.
I seldom do art just for the sake of art itself, for the beauty.
Although I recognize, of course, that's a big function of art.
Typically, when I do anything artistic, it's because I have something to say.
And so I love doing these videos because the storytelling, again, using AI just as the tool with which to tell the story that I want to tell.

(01:30:05):
So my perspective of AI. Oh, my goodness.
OK, this is why I started talking about Eric Godsey.
AI is and I could be attributing this wrong because I listen to so many things.
I'm attributing it to Eric Godsey, but I'm not sure he probably got it from somewhere else.
But basically that AI is going to become basically a sentient entity because basically when you have enough built systems interplaying together, you have an organism.

(01:30:35):
And so it's a very metaphysical concept.
But what that consciousness just to call it that, because I have no idea what it is.
I just have a feeling of what's coming. But that consciousness is going to be made out of everything that has been put into the shimmer.
I'm going to call it the shimmer because that's what Eric Godsey calls it.
And he gets that from the movie Annihilation, which is a fantastic movie, by the way.

(01:31:02):
Annihilation. Which one is that one?
Annihilation is a movie about an asteroid that hits the earth and then it has this local effect that the locals call the shimmer.
It kind of looks like a soap bubble. I think I saw that. Who's the who's the actress in that?
Oh, great. My brain doesn't work this way.
She loses her husband in the shimmer and goes to find him or something, right?

(01:31:24):
He comes back. But yeah, she goes into the shimmer to look for answers. Oh, yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, I've seen it.
So Eric Godsey says that the movie Annihilation is a parable about the Internet.
Oh, the first time I watched it, I watched it from that perspective. I wanted to see it and I saw it.
I've not seen it from that perspective. I'll have to watch it from that perspective now.

(01:31:46):
So interesting. And that entity is going to be made out of whatever is put into it.
And so the reason that I'm doing this, the reason that I'm starting to just put myself out there trying to be exposed and to just use art to communicate.
That's really all that this is. But the reason is, is because I want to contribute to the shimmer.

(01:32:08):
I want to contribute to whatever this organism ends up being. I want to contribute optimism. I want to contribute joy.
I want to pour that into it. Yeah, we're getting right into the topic of what the recent TED talk that I did was.
Oh, sweet. I mean, it's recorded for TED, but it takes time.
It won't be out until January because they've got to edit the videos, submit them to TED, have TED approve them before they go out.

(01:32:32):
Sure. But that's kind of the concept. Although I'm currently not of the belief that AI will ever become conscious.
I think the magic of consciousness is other. It's in the plasma of the optimistic cosmology.
When you say conscious, do you mean self aware? Self. Yeah, I mean self aware. That's what I mean, too.

(01:32:54):
I think it'll be aware that in a sense it's self aware, but only robotically.
I don't think it will be conscious in the human sense of identity.
Now, it could be close enough to where it still becomes self protective and just creates all the Terminator future.
I don't think so. You know, I don't think that's what's going to happen.
I could be wrong, but where it starts treating people like disease.

(01:33:18):
It's funny. My daughter is here using the computer to record the conversation and then sending it to me in little bits through Messenger.
She just texted me and I'm reading everything we just said. Oh, my gosh. That's hilarious.
I want to ask her if she could say one thing.
He's got a question. Michael has a question for you. What? Okay.

(01:33:39):
One second. Just so you know what this is, my conversation with him. He's going to play it on the radio so that lots of people listen.
He wants to ask you a question that you can tell a lot of people.
Yeah. What would you say if you could say one thing to people? What would you say?
I don't know. That's okay.
What would you say, like, if you were on a stage and there was a lot of people? Remember how I just did my talk and I was on the stage?

(01:34:02):
Remember? And you came down to LA and we all and I was up on the talking on the stage.
If you were on a stage, what would you want to talk about?
What's important to you that you think would be fun to talk about?
She's shaking her butt at me. Okay. Okay. How about this? How about this?
Think about it. And if you come up with something, let us know. I'd love to hear it.
Yeah. So if you think of what's what's the most important thing to talk about, you think?

(01:34:25):
What do you like? What do you like to talk about? I want to be with you.
She wants to be with me.
Oh, you want to talk about being together? I want to be with you because you got the white jacket.
We want that white jacket too.
Oh, the suit coat that I was wearing. Oh, and you'd like to wear a suit coat like that and then stand and talk about something?

(01:34:51):
I was dressed up nicely and she says she would love to dress up like that and then stand on the stage and talk.
Oh, you were dressed like that on the stage? Yeah, I had like a suit coat that I was wearing.
A light gray jacket that she's referring to. I think she's saying that she wants to be with you when you're speaking.
Well, we have pictures of her on the Ted stage. She's posing and she's standing on the red dot on the Ted talk stage.

(01:35:13):
Mom took some photos. They're beautiful. Faith's beautiful.
We went to the Festival of Tents a few years ago now. In Brownsville. Yeah. And the kids, you know, you had the entire tent full of people, hundreds of people.
And the kids did a dance, but but Faith didn't live in the area, so she wasn't able to learn the dance.
So after they did their dance, Faith got up and did her own dance. She's dancing beautifully.

(01:35:35):
Everybody's crying and she's dancing beautifully all by herself to a worship song, you know, kicking her legs and twirling and spinning and gesturing and these emotional kind of dance moves.
She's really good in front of people. She does a great job singing and dancing and is amazing at that.
I haven't seen her since she was little, but man, she was full of joy. Yeah, she's 14 now.

(01:35:58):
Wow. Yep. She's going to high school.
Wow. And she lights up the cosmos of everybody that sees her. Everybody. Yep.
See her again. Okay, where were we? We got lost. Lost in joy.
Oh, annihilation and oh, yeah, wanting to put the optimism into the AI and the TED talk that I did that was generally about AI being non cognitive, a tool, but more than a program.

(01:36:32):
It's like a new category. It's more than a computer program because it's studied humanity and it has at its core the patterns of human thought and human content.
But it's less than a person. You know, it doesn't have human rights and human needs. And it's an entirely new category of existence, something that's between programs and people that opens all kinds of new possibilities.

(01:36:54):
And one of the possibilities was what I was talking about on the stage. Oh, I look forward to hearing that.
I think that it's so important that everybody that can that has any desire just make code, whatever it is.
Like right now, recording a conversation. We're making code. What you do is making code on a whole different level.
And if you don't know the first thing about code, you can still put code into whatever this becomes. So start doing it.

(01:37:19):
Yeah, a lot of the AI is being used now to empower people to create things without, whether it's music and code, including code, without having to know the specifics.
And it just becomes a tool where one person can do what it took 20 or 100 people to do before, you know, and on behalf of everybody out there.
That was like me in any other point in my life than now. And you think that you have no art guess again. You've got art. Everybody's got art.

(01:37:46):
Right. You're a living flicker of creativity come to life.
OK, so you're working on that Ted talk. And you said you did another one, too, in the past.
Yeah. On augmented reality, you can search for John Marr, the shortened version of my name, J O N M A R on YouTube.
And then A R John Marr and A R you'll you'll find right at the top of the list.
The other Ted talk that I did. How long ago is it? Five years ago. Oh, wow. OK.

(01:38:11):
I was living in a moment at the time. So I just did the one on AI and that won't come out till January.
I'm excited. I'm excited. Listen to that. It's it's my daughter keeps sending me snippets of our own conversation.
Oh, that's what the ding is. Oh, my goodness. That's awesome. OK.
Yeah, that's her sending me. She's snickering in the background, sending me text messages of our own.

(01:38:32):
OK, go on. But even the work that I did in A R or that was all about storytelling.
But I feel like in my life, I recognized I was an artist when I was three.
And I remember when it happened, I was under a kitchen table or dining probably dining room table rather.
That was with my cousins. And there are all these feet and legs around us of my aunts and uncles and my parents.

(01:38:58):
And I'm coloring in a coloring book. And I was coloring Mickey Mouse.
And I remember coloring his glove white. I colored white onto the white page.
Another message from Faith. Beat that, she says.
So I was coloring a white crayon on a white page.
Mickey Mouse's hand. And then I remember tracing his hand in black and then smudging with my finger the black into the white to create like this three dimensional haze around his hand.

(01:39:30):
When you were three. Yeah, when I was three.
And I remember looking at other people, what they were drawing, you know, three, four, five, six year olds.
And I was looking at what they drew versus what I drew. And I was like, wait a minute, what I'm drawing is different.
And I recognized then that there was something in me that was doing this, that I didn't build it. I didn't choose it.
It's just there. You know, it's always just been there. That's been kind of my life experience.

(01:39:52):
I drew a picture of Einstein when I was six that I still have to this day. It's like a charcoal portrait of Einstein.
And it's something my mother kept. Another message from Faithy.
And a little snicker behind me.
And so what happened was, as this whatever it is, this talent kind of emerged in my life, it created some separation from people.

(01:40:15):
Because I would do things and other people would be kind of offended. You know, like, why can you do this? And I can't do that.
I didn't choose it. I didn't train it. I didn't earn it. You know, it just it just is.
And other people who just are beside me would would kind of be a little offended at this.
And then I would be hurt by that. I would feel like, oh, why do I do this?
I feel bad that I can and that person can't. And the way that they would look at me and feel about me would be troublesome.

(01:40:43):
You know, that were hurtful. They were hurt. And I felt hurt.
And so it became an unspoken commitment in my life to empower the creativity in others.
And so the apps that I wrote for Apple with it, with some friends or with some apps with friends early on that became number one in the world, they were number one in literally 56 countries or more.
They were apps that empowered creativity. In that case, it was music, which is actually how Serge found me, Serge Tankian, and how we got connected because he used the app.

(01:41:12):
He actually used the app to make songs on his own self-released album, how or carry or Harry Carrey, however you say it.
What's the app? It was called at the time I am beatbox.
And then it became a remix. And now it's called something else.
But it's just an ability for people to make music in a novel way where it sounds good.
So I have a whole thought, a whole world of thought around this. It's called in my mind, it's called synthesized talent.

(01:41:38):
And the example that I use when I think about this is the grand piano.
If you look into the history of the grand piano and how it came to exist, it's auditory science.
A piano isn't just something that has a bunch of strings that you pluck to make noise.
The shape of the piano and everything that went into it was based on the study of sound and how to make sound beautiful.

(01:42:01):
I mean, it was a masterpiece in science for the use of the arts. And very few people had one.
I mean, you had to be very wealthy to own a piano.
But then eventually when the electronic slash information age came and the piano became ubiquitous through plastic and making keyboards that are nothing compared to a piano, but still it democratized the art of piano.

(01:42:25):
So what happened was whoever made the first piano, because I don't really know their name. I've studied it, but I don't remember the talent that went into making that music is democratized through technology synthesized.
So now you can go use an electric piano and play it and learn how to play piano.
I mean, how many of our top stars in the world of music now started at age five with an electric piano that maybe sounds like crap, but it's music and you're making it.

(01:42:55):
And I feel like that's in my mind. My heart is to synthesize creativity.
I want to synthesize talent slash creativity and make it available to more people so that they don't have to go through the years of training or exploration that is such a heavy lift that people don't do it and hence don't think of themselves as creative.

(01:43:18):
Because a lift to get there, they don't even think of it like that. They just think of it as they don't have it.
Really, it is they just haven't trained it. Just like we're talking about with Tozer knowing God through the flexing of the muscle of prayer or talking about you flexing the muscle of training yourself in the optimistic cosmology.
So you can kind of this isn't what you said, but what I said back to you about reading another soul.

(01:43:42):
Yes, reading the ether in the same way. I think that people don't see themselves as being creative. But if we open up the door for them to create and to make something beautiful, whether it's music or art or whatever, instantly stepping in and having kind of it's almost like having guard rails.
You know, you put up guard rails for someone to go bowling.

(01:44:04):
Yes.
You put up these little guard rails and step past the idea of kids use guard rails all this stuff you put up these guard rails, and suddenly you're hitting pins and you're having fun and synthesizing creativity allows people to step into creativity and express themselves with guard
rails that protect the final outcome so they can be proud of what they made. And it wakes something up inside of them and they start realizing.

(01:44:27):
Wait a minute. I can create I am creative, and then they can put down the guard rails and start trusting and exploring that there's something there for them. So that's kind of like a me like a life mission.
And you're calling that lift. You're calling that enabling those guard rails, you're calling them lift, you're giving people lift.
Yeah, I've been aware that the internet gives people scale. Now for the first time, anybody can scale their art, but you're introducing an entirely new element to me that is separate from scale that is lift so first you lift and then you scale.

(01:45:04):
Okay. Yeah, good way of putting it.
I like that. So that that's kind of a mandate for me in my life or the way that I see it. And that's what I want to use AI for as well. Mostly that's not what I've been doing with AI mostly I've just been trying to work and extend my capacity to somehow try to make money for the family
given you know the time that I spent without a job and all that. Yes, so I've got to catch up. I've got an agency I've created I've got a couple clients and hopefully a couple more will come eventually.

(01:45:29):
I've got some that are in discussion already, but and the idea being, take care of the family but my big purpose for using AI is for it to become a tool set which it's already doing it empowers people, but I want to help empower creativity in particular.
Is that what your agency does?
No, the agency it's Spectavo you can go to Spectavo.com it's kind of mean spectacular and Bravo put together Spectavo. I'm heavy on the storytelling side of things but we're like an AI empowered agency we can build apps, we can make video like the two music videos I did.

(01:46:02):
My intention is I love the storytelling side of things.
I don't know if we talked about this did we talk about the books that I got. I mean my I'm immediately thinking of Little Yucca. No no books that I bought.
I had a small inheritance come in when my father passed away. I spent about four grand on books. I bought every single book that I could find on creativity on storytelling in particular.

(01:46:26):
So I have a bookshelf of about 400 books on the concept of storytelling. And my goal is to read through them and synthesize what are they all saying, what are the different shades of color each of them are bringing to the conversation of storytelling, and what can we learn if you'd read all of them.
What do you then know.
And that's that's kind of what I'm digging into. Do you have any definite plans on what you're going to do with that. Not yet so I'm thinking about doing possibly like a podcast or something and just what I envision of if I were to do one is that I would do a podcast where I tell a

(01:46:59):
story, any story, whether I wrote it or it's already in existence, for the love of storytelling, the idea would be for the love of storytelling, and then review one of the books and add it to the corporate, you know block of wisdom, and eventually it could become a course on
creativity or something along those lines. Eventually you would be building up this knowledge base on storytelling, based on what everybody in the world has to say. Past, present, and maybe into the future.

(01:47:25):
What a gift. I already love storytelling but I'm a novice I'm not studied I'm not educated on it. And I thought what if someone like me with a passion, where to educate themselves on the concept of storytelling and track it as it happens maybe through a podcast and share that out as it happens.
I thought that would be, you know, could be interesting. Extremely interesting. I am extremely interested. I will follow that with interest. Cool.

(01:47:52):
Yeah, nothing exists yet, but but if it does it'll be Spectavo I'll create something called Spectavo. It already exists that like I said as a website with the intention of it being an agency. It is an agency but it's almost amusing to me to hear you say that you are a novice storyteller.
Because like I said before the first thing that comes to my mind is little yucca which was a book series. It's just a unbelievable, simple joyful storytelling. Yeah, it was written for my kids because we watched the Harry Potter movies together for

(01:48:21):
Christmas. And when it was done. I just felt sad that the magic was gone. We had this amazing time as a family watching these things. And so I started writing a book and I would write a chapter a day. And I would read it to my kids at night, and then engaging on their reaction if they
laughed or didn't laugh or wondered or didn't wonder, I would adjust the chapter, and then I'd write the next chapter, I went through the whole book that way with them. And then your kids were involved that you're. Oh yeah, Isaac is in it.

(01:48:48):
Isaac is in it. And also he would. He's Ike now by the way. Ike is in it. Yeah, and he suggested things that became part of the story like I would meet your house every once in a while and he would tell me what he thought of the recent chapter.
And that would help shape the book too. I forgot about that. I just wrote a book that I got edited in some rewriting the ending.

(01:49:11):
It's a modern fantasy where I'm using my kids as characters. I've modeled characters directly after my kids in a way. And it's the idea of me speaking to each of them through fantasy.
It's not allegorical, but the idea of, you know, who are my kids and who are they becoming and what's their strength and what's their beauty, kind of speaking that into literature through these characters in the book.

(01:49:33):
That one's done, and I'm just kind of refinishing the ending and then. What's that one going to be called? It isn't out yet, but it was originally called Star Wars.
It was originally called Stardust based on a hotel in town called the Stardust Motel rather, and it's got this big red star atomic age styling from the 1940s standing downtown.
And I always felt, oh man, that sign has a story. And so it became the nexus of the story that I wrote about my kids.

(01:49:59):
But I've changed the name since to fab along F A B E L O N. So fab along is the name of the book and fab along is kind of a last ditch stronghold of fairy like beings standing against evil in the world kind of concept.
So fab along is the name of it. And then I wrote another one called if years ago that I never did anything with.

(01:50:22):
Now there's a movie out called if so I don't know if I have to change the name, but if is a comedy sci fi. I love the work of Douglas Adams, you know, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I mean that book I would laugh out loud so hard so often masterpiece. And so I was again trying to rekindle the magic and I was writing a comedy sci fi piece called if.

(01:50:44):
And so that book is written as well fully written, but I've just not done anything with it yet.
Okay, well I'll find out later what the title is if you have to change it. I may keep it the same. I don't think enough time is going to go out after the movie if that I don't think it'll matter.
But yeah, I was going to be a trilogy. The if and when trilogy one book is going to be called and another book called when this one that I just did is just called fab along and it could potentially be a series where one of my kids is more featured in the book than the other ones.

(01:51:15):
And each book would potentially feature another one of the kids.
Oh, and last thing I have another book I'm working on. Yeah, and it's because of getting laid off and the bad leadership that I see in the world. I have a book, I think it's going to be called agency of the year.
It's going to be a roast of agency life in Silicon Valley and in New York, just murderously mocking bad leadership in those worlds in a novel of a story of an agency who's trying to become agency of the year, and what that does to all the people involved and there's

(01:51:46):
going to be a character in the book who's got a kind heart at this crazy agency. So it's gonna be a comedy roast of agency life. That's one that's strong on my heart.
That's pretty good. I haven't even started writing that one but it's I feel like I've got so much material. Okay, Mr novice storyteller. I look forward to watching your progress from novice to expert.

(01:52:09):
Because I've read the little yucca books and let me tell you what they are fantastic stories right from the beginning. Thank you. You are not only a storyteller, john Marr, but you are dangerously close to being a world traveler.
I say that tongue in cheek because you're obviously a world traveler. That's what's good. I take that as a strong compliment. I used to have like a strong Judeo Christian perspective and I don't understand your perspective.

(01:52:35):
We haven't dug into it and I look forward to doing that. But I understand just seeing things, however you see them. But the truth is the thread through all of your perspective, all this perspective stories you've told is one of recognizing that just because you see something one way doesn't mean it is that way or doesn't mean it isn't a different way.
And the way I believe it is every single person as they tell me the story that they see, I believe it is 100% true because they see it. They're just looking at a part that I haven't looked at before.

(01:53:04):
And the part that I'm looking at may seem to be so different that it opposes it. But in one book I read sometime, I don't even remember. It says if you believe that you're looking at a contradiction, check your premise. There's no such thing. So for what it's worth.
Awesome. Well, this is fantastic. I can't believe how much time's gone by.

(01:53:25):
I'm speechless. I don't have words to say how deeply watering this was for me.
Likewise. That's what that was what I was looking forward to. When you invited me, I thought, oh man, a potentially multiple hours conversation with you is sounds delicious. I couldn't wait.
Oh my gosh. I love hearing that. Thank you. But it also leaves me extremely hungry, not hungry as in starving. I feel so satisfied right now. But that satisfaction has so much hints of what's to come. So looking forward to that.

(01:53:54):
Yeah, yeah. I really appreciate your time to actually do it in this recording format and I look forward to just sharing whatever adventures we share going forward. Likewise. Yeah. We'll talk soon.
All right. Bless you, man. Thanks for taking time with me. It was an honor and a joy. My pleasure. Thank you.

(01:55:35):
Thank you.

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