Thought Nuggets, Banana Bread Next Tuesday, People Aren’t People, and Stu-Stu.

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Delve into a discussion navigating history from Catalina de Erauso's life to cutting-edge generative documentaries. Explore journaling and personal archiving, AI's impact on creativity, and the evolving nature of identity through philosophical musings. Engage in reflections on identity, human interactions, and the essence of authenticity in relationships. Explore contemporary art, sound art, personal experiences in art creation, digital legacies, identity, systems thinking, engagement, teaching approaches, and disrupting patterns for meaningful interactions.

You can find a.m. on Instagram and TikTok at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.

You can contact us at [e-mail].

Episode Transcript

a.m. (01:33):
And the voices in today's conversation are Kylie Sam
Asensio, And our producer, asalways, is Scott Amore.
all are colleagues of mine atDAE.
Let's listen in.

Sam (01:44):
The thing on my mind is that story that I shared with
you, Scott, which was I've beenrecently reading about, like,
prehistory of gender, and Irecently found this really
interesting story of it's likethis, this individual who was
going to be a nun, and she,like, ran off because she didn't
want to be a nun, and she, likeshe started dressing, like, as a
male, and, like, acting as amale in society, and, like, I
think it was, like, 17th centurySpain, but the really

(02:05):
interesting thing about thisstory is there's so many close
calls We're like she's standingoutside as like a squire her dad
comes by to complain about howshe's like Oh my daughter ran
away is the worst thing evermean while she's standing in the
room like looking left and rightlike I'm gonna go and like she
ends up on the same boat as herbrother going to war and the
brother just happens to take aLiking to her and it's like oh,
you know what?
I'm gonna save you from war andthen like it's just it's like a

(02:27):
whole It is the most dramaticstory I've ever read about
history and pre gender That'sthe only thing that's been in my
mind is how interesting that isIt's like I don't think I could
get away with that to this day.
Just I Think my mom would clothme a mile away.
It's the only thing I got thisweek.
I don't know if you got anythingKyley, usually you have
interesting things.
What, what period was that?
I think it's Like what?

(02:47):
I think it was like 16th, 17thcentury Spain?
Let me see if I can pull it up.
Yeah, it's called the LieutenantNun.
That's the name of this.
Wow.
So, Catalina de Uraso fledDominican Convent in Basquet,
Spain, cut her hair anddisguised herself as a young
man.
She started a new life on theroad.
In this rebirth, she was nolonger Catalina, but Antonio, or

(03:09):
Alonso, or on another occasion,Francisco.
She was no longer a nun, butrather a traveling soldier,
merchant, musketeer, gambler,murderer, conquistador.
She spent her years travelingthroughout the Spanish American
empire, going so far as theChilean frontier, where conquest
still raged against theAchacurian, I think, Indians.
So, yeah, it looks like 1626.

(03:30):
Yeah.
It's really interesting.
Cause the whole story kind ofexplains like how, even though
they were masquerading as amale, they're kind of presenting
this, like the idea of like, youknow, the colonizer attitude,
like that a lot of maleindividuals had at that time,
which was really interestingexploration of like gender and
power differentials.
It's a really cool story.
Check it out.
Lieutenant Nun.
I thought that was just so cool.

Scott (03:50):
So I went to, New York last night to see the premiere
of the Brian Eno documentary.
If you heard anything aboutthis, it's a generative
documentary.
It's never the same twice.
So I saw version 2.
9.
It was coded and then there's ahardware box that it plays out
of where all the scenes areloaded into this thing and it
randomly pulls scenes and kindof arranges them with music and

(04:10):
interstitials and stuff.
And it was amazing.
It was really good.
It was pretty straightinterviews and stuff, but the
way it bounced around, there wasno, it was all thematic, and
then it would be like, allthese, see all these code go
across the screen, and it wouldpull up another scene, and then
you would have this new sectionthat played and stuff, so.
It was pretty amazing.
It was smoother.
I thought it was going to bemore glitchy, but.
Obviously, there was, you know,glitchiness was part of the

(04:32):
aesthetic, because it's allcomputer generated and then
regular interviews and stuff,but,

a.m. (04:37):
you're, you're, you're implying what you're leaving out
the, the punchline.
It's not a generativedocumentary, it's a generative
AI documentary.

Scott (04:42):
Well, it's not AI.
It is.
Well, I mean, the guy wrote codeto pull the scenes randomly from
a file list.
It's not creating the scenes.
The storyline is generated.

a.m. (04:52):
The storyline is generated and I thought there's
interactivity that generates it.
No

Scott (04:57):
There's a box, but they just hit generate and it kind of
randomly writes a script andthen pulls from that script.
It shoots for about 80 minutesout of 168 hours of footage.
Right.
And so it's,

a.m. (05:08):
yeah, so it's, it's, I don't know, I, I, I haven't dug
into it enough, but from what Iunderstood is that they, that
they.
That they built an AI for thisthing, right?
So they trained it on the kindof, you know, voice and
aesthetic and all this, and thengave it a finite amount of
content.
In essence, what they did isgave it, instead of giving it a
prompt, they're saying here's acollection of prompts.
There's a macro prompt, which ismake a movie, and then there's a

(05:31):
collection of prompts.
But then the AI is trained on

Scott (05:33):
And it's a physical piece of hardware made by the company
Teenage Engineering, a musicalinstrument company.
And they also made that rabbitAI device that just came out
recently that

a.m. (05:42):
I'm tempted to get that thing.

Scott (05:44):
Well, I talked to Mo cause he, he did some stuff in
deep dive.
It's basically like an Androidcode running inside.
They found out and it's not, youknow, it's not, it could have
been an app.
They just made it to get youaway from the phone screen.

Sam (05:55):
What is this rabbit thing?

Scott (05:57):
It's a, it's a little, looks like a little game thing,
but it's a AI you talk to.

a.m. (06:01):
Does, is, is, does it not have a camera?
I'm not sure.
So it's not like, it's not theHumane AI, I thought it was a
Humane AI competitor.

Scott (06:08):
It's a little different, I think, and I'm not, I'm
positive about all the littlehardware iterations of these
things that are coming out, but,yeah.

a.m. (06:14):
I'm, I'm tempted to play with the Humane AI, but I just
really, you know, lack oftransparency on where the data
is actually going.
Yeah.
It just kind of bugs me, but.
I'm sort of tempted to play withwalking around.
That's it right there.

Kyley (06:24):
It does have a camera.
It does.
Okay.
It does.
Sorry.
Sorry.
It has a 360 degree rotationaleye.
Yeah.
So it looks at you almost whenyou're looking at,

Scott (06:33):
depending on, I remember that now.
Right.

a.m. (06:35):
Which is the humane promise, right?
It's sort of interacting with,which then that gets you out of
app, right?
Because you're not doing thatwith your phone.
You can't clip your phone ontoyour, you know

Scott (06:43):
yeah.
And there's, you know, all therumors coming about, about
different companies coming up.
Like the rumor is Apple's got aring, what they're working on.
We'll see if that kind of comes,you know, comes to fruition.
They're probably more forfitness and health, I would
imagine, not like interactivity.

Kyley (06:56):
They had the first successful AI dogfight with a
real plane.

Sam (06:59):
Really?

Kyley (07:00):
Yeah.
The pilot in the back wassharing safety with the other
plane that was fighting it Itwas like a practice dog fight,
didn't have to touch a stickonce.
Very exciting.
Yeah, it's

Sam (07:09):
interesting.

Kyley (07:10):
War.

a.m. (07:10):
We're training it for war.
And I think there's a tank.
First AI tank is beingdeveloped.
Oh my god.

Scott (07:15):
Give the machines the power.
How many of y'all keep a journalor diary?
I'm holding mine up.
And what, what kind of what kindof stuff goes into it?
Is it distilled?
Is it bread, milk, eggs?
Bread, milk, eggs.
I'm just wondering, because, youknow, in watching the film I was
talking about, like, it waspiles of journals since, for
fifty, you know, forty fiveyears.

(07:36):
Brian, you know, had keptsketches and notes and, you
know, and his two year olddaughter took it at one point
and like decorated many pageswith, you know, weird abstract
like animals and stuff.
And I was just thinking like,you know, I, I've always been
the person who wish I could dothat.
I did that for a while, probablywhen I was in my twenties.
And then for some reason I justkind of fell off and never
really kept a journal, neverreally kept it.

(07:57):
But.
I found other ways to sort ofdocument kind of what I was what
I was going through, notnecessarily in words.
I feel like once I start puttingit in words, it kind of loses
something for me.
I'm visual, I guess, but I can'tdraw either.
So I'm just kind of like theimages, photography, that kind
of stuff is kind of captured,you know, experiences and
brought back whole feelings andstuff.

(08:18):
And, you know, pretty sure it'smisremembered when I look at old
photos and stuff.
My when my memories distill it.
But you know, is it like, Oh, Igotta write this down?
Or is it at the end of the day?
Or is it in the morning?
Do you have a routine?
Do you have a thing?
I'm always interested in likehow other people kind of
chronicle their existence.

a.m. (08:35):
I have in this thing that I carry everywhere with me,
including to the gym, there arethree notebook, three mini
notebooks inside the notebook.

Sam (08:45):
Oh, okay.

a.m. (08:46):
And the first one.
Is where I capture one of fourthings that are coded, right.
Coded with an n, meaning it's athought nugget and so

Sam (08:54):
thought nugget.

a.m. (08:55):
Yeah.
And so like, like here's, here'sone results at this.
Results as well results at thesacrifice of your humanity
versus as an expression of yourhumanity.
Like, I know what that means.
That's a little nugget.
A ge it's a, it's a, you know, acondensed high, it's a high
density set of words that fromwhich that's like an essay,

(09:16):
right?
And so when I have these sortof, you know, condensed
thoughts, like I, I don't wantto capture all of it.
I can't, but I capture theessence of it.
I've gotten to a point where Ican find a sentence that is the
essence of the thing I'm seeing.
I'll capture that and it goesinto future writing or whatever.
A D is dialogue.
And so like I get like lines ofdialogue that, you know, like,
Oh, this is cool.
And that gets tagged, and thatgoes into creative writing

(09:38):
projects, you know, plays andwhatnot that I'm working on.
I, idea for a project.
And so here's something coolthat would be cool to do either
in my personal life, in mycreative life, or, you know, in,
in one of my organizations,currently only one organization.
The second notebook is just ascratch pad.
And the third notebook is ajournal.
Um, And this is where like I'mdoing the traditional journal
shit and I don't you know, likecapturing my experience, not

(10:01):
ideas, not thoughts, not thingsI want to put out into the
world.
Like that nugget I gave you wasa nugget for an essay I want to
put out into the world.
That third one is just mecapturing my experience.
It's not for anybody.
It's not, you know, maybe whatwe used to call a diary.
So long winded.

Sam (10:17):
How many of those do you have?
How many of?
Like, those journals do youhave?
Like, have you ever filled outin your whole life?
Oh, God.

a.m. (10:23):
The Scratchpad one gets thrown away.
The, the first one gets thrownaway as well once they're
transferred.
So like that, that one, like theThought Nuggets, I mean, they
get transferred over intoNotion.

Sam (10:32):
Ah.

a.m. (10:32):
And so I've got like a list of now ideas potentially
for essays, right?
And so that one eventually getsthrown away.
The last one, the journal one Idon't know.
There's a, there's a, there's abox with it, like, you know, a
big old stack of them.
Yeah.
But I'm not terriblydiscriminating about them.
I just tell somebody about it.
I'm not precious about them.
I'm not like, whatever.
They'll either disintegrate orafter I'm dead, somebody will

(10:54):
find them or, but I don't usethem to go back.
And what was I thinking when Iwas, you know, 10 years younger?
Like, I don't care.
For me, it's, it's, it's, it's acertain kind of shower that they
take occasionally, right?

Kyley (11:04):
Yeah.
Similar structure.
DAE, thinking and planning.

Sam (11:08):
It's actually labeled the way these notebooks are actually
labeled.

Kyley (11:12):
The thinking and planning self, so this is where my ideas
and plans and stuff goes.
My dreaming and envisioningself, stuff I don't have actual
plans around, the stuff that Iwant to do.
And then process reflectingself, like just individual
personal experience.
Okay.
And these are all kind ofsketchy.
Extra.

Sam (11:28):
Huh.

a.m. (11:29):
I've got that larger one that I have with me that I don't
carry everywhere, but you seethe other leather one that's
larger, those are also inserts.
And you know, those are thesecond one is longer form
journal, like where I'm, youknow, like really, this is like
I'm just wandering around andI'm like sitting in a coffee
shop and I'm just capturing,like, just.
What it's like to be here rightnow.
Potentially the other one islike I'm sitting down to write

(11:51):
the end of the day or, you know,like I'm, I'm going to take like
an hour and really capturewhat's going on right now.
And then the front notebook iswhere sometimes I get in the
mood to write like essayslonghand.
I'd prefer to, if I had the timeand the lack of carpal tunnel,
which I have a carpal tunnel, Iwould love to just do everything
in, in that, in that manualnotebook because I just so
prefer writing by hand, butyeah, whatever.

Scott (12:13):
In recent years, I've.
Turned to dictation since it'sgotten good enough to capture
and I can just kind of walkaround and talk and kind of do
that kind of stuff.
But then it's like, you know,distilling that down into
something useful as, you know,as the editing work that is kind
of like, I got to give it sometime, anything that I want to
reuse and, or, you know, distillit to something usable, but in

(12:35):
another format tried using, youknow, AI tools to kind of turn
into something.
But it seems it just kind of,you know, doesn't, doesn't
capture the essence.
It just looks for keywords andgenerates some blurb.

a.m. (12:46):
So here, I just had a thought that's going to go in
this notebook after I stoppedtalking.
But like, I could see, I alwaysthought like, geez, it's going
to be like ridiculous, you know,and this first thought is an
original to me.
I don't know where it first, butlike, like our grandparents, you
know, like, Oh, here's.
Three pictures of when I was akid.
And then here's one picture ofme in high school, and we're
gonna have like, here's 842pictures of the food I ate this

(13:06):
year.
You know, it's just out there,right?
And it's a joke, like, oh, it'sall disposable.
But, but the thought nugget thatjust occurred to me, now this is
original is I could see anoccupation 50 years from now
that is personal archaeologist.
It's like you want to understandyour great grandparents.
You can't go through 8 billionphotos of them on Instagram.
All that will be retained.
But it may well be an AIapplication where it's like,

(13:27):
cool, you're going to be anarchaeologist uncovering, going
through, sifting, and creatingthe meaning.
Oh, here's what your greatgrandfather's or grandmother's
or grandparents life was aspieced together by all of these
artifacts they left.
Like, I could absolutely seethat 100 years from now being a
profession or an app or aservice.

Scott (13:44):
I feel like it's Capable of doing it right now because of
the metadata that's generatedwith photography, gives you
location data, what's in it,that kind of thing, you could
probably, like,

a.m. (13:53):
But it's not a business model, that's the part that I
want to capture.
Yeah, here, I'm not spending itas a business, take it, you want
it, take it.

Scott (13:58):
It would be great to, like, you know, write my
obituary at a time whensomething isn't in my photo
library.

a.m. (14:05):
I mean, it's an interesting thought because, you
know, if you did just, you know,we're about 15 years into the
internet era and just after,like I get on Facebook memories
and I'll repost some of thembecause the stuff I post in
like, oh, that's interesting.
It'd be a really interestingthing right now to have some
third party, you know, maybe anAI scour through all this and be
exactly right.
Use the, all the check ins andthe metadata.

(14:25):
And the phrasings and the natureof the quotes and, and then, oh,
you quote Mary Oliver, you know,the highest out of everybody.
Let the AI also is going to goresearch Mary Oliver and, and
pull the aesthetic there and,and, and come back with like, I
don't know.
It's, it's, it's sort of what'sthe word?
Not, it's not an ethnography.
What's, what's thearchaeological?
I don't know.
The evolution of you as, asrepresented in what you put out

(14:47):
into the world.
I think it'd be reallyinteresting.
Take my box of journals and thenhave it, you know, have those
scandic and have those too.
Though that gets into it forthe, I would want to look at
just the public facing stuff andsay publicly who have I been in
the last 15 years?
That I may not even be aware of.
I think

Scott (15:01):
like I did go back and look at journals from when I was
in my 20s and stuff and you knowthe Turmoil and angst was, you
know, it seems less relevantnow.
It seems like I'm readingsomebody else's story.
You know, I was like, youdropped that in your twenties.
Did you?

Sam (15:14):
Yeah.

Scott (15:14):
Well, I stopped writing it down.
I just went right into it.
So that was the that was thetakeaway.
I was like, Oh, who wrote this?
You know, I was also like, Ican't read my writing from, you
know, that, that period of timeanyway.
So that's another reason why I'mnot Hand to paper kind of
inclined.
Horrible handwriting, neverreally spent a lot of time
getting good at that.
But now it's more like, youknow, my notes app is, you know,

(15:36):
just filled with things that arecategorized and stuff.
So just being able to tag thingsand kind of sort them that way.
But at the same time, you know,I never think about it.
Now there's a new journal app oniPhones that kind of pops up
every day like, oh, you know,You Journal entry, and it
suggests a journal entry foryou, like, you know, spent the
day in New York City, like,whatever was happening that day,

(15:57):
or, you know, had a greatdinner, you know, like, it
starts it for you, and I'm justlike, no, this is creepy, get
out of there, I don't want tonecessarily have it done for me,
I think the prompt is great for,folks who want to capture this
kind of stuff, but it's, likeyou were saying, like, here's
every meal I eat.
You know, it's not important.

Sam (16:13):
Yeah, it's interesting because I do like art journals,
so like wherever I have mysketchbook I just draw.
But it's really interestingbecause sometimes I'll take old
ones and I'll rip them apart andI make like collages.
And then that one gets rippedapart and gets made into a new
thing or like I go back to anold drawing and I watercolor it.
Or like, kind of similar to whatyou talked about, I put like,
oh, I gotta buy milk, eggs,cheese, whatever, I write it,
and then later on I'm like, oh,you know what, I'm gonna draw

(16:35):
that, or I'll draw my breakfastthat day while I was at work,
and so it's funny, because like,as you go through the books,
there are times I'm like, oh mygod, I was dating this person,
this time you can see this, andthen you can see like an entire
new year come in, and then itcomes back to the old year, so
it's really interesting toexplore that in like a, a visual
way, so it's really funny,because I was thinking of like,
as I am sounds like, I have Ihave so many sketchbooks, and
now since I've moved, they'reall at my old house, and my

(16:56):
mom's like, well you gotta dosomething with them, and some of
them are huge, they're like mysize, but they're like really
big explorations of where I wasat periods of time, and I'm
like, well, shoot, what do I do?
Do I just throw these away?
But they feel so personal,because there's so much work put
into them, like there are timesI've come back and I've done
entire like acrylic, like threehour long paintings into these,
and it's like, A circle, just acircle, but it's really deep and

(17:19):
meaningful and I know what itmeans and I'm like well I don't
want to put this on someone elsewhen I die and it's like oh
shoot I would get all thesesketchbooks, but it's funny
because when I do show them topeople and I go Yeah, I'm gonna
be throwing out this sectionpeople always try to take them
like people are like I want yoursketchbooks I'm like, what is it
about this thing?
Like me living out this likebreakup in this sketchbook that
you want And it's reallyinteresting because some people

(17:40):
take it and I notice they put intheir offices And I'm never sure
how to feel about it because I'mlike I know what that means
You're making your own meaningout of this thing.
And it's just, yeah, it's reallyinteresting.
So I always wonder about peoplewho have like written journals,
like what that's like as aperson who is very visual and
like sometimes I give awaypieces of my journal for people.
Like when I draw people, they'realways like, can I have that?
And in my head I'm like, no, butI know this is meaningful to

(18:02):
you.
So I'm going to give it to youanyways.
And the joy that people have isreally interesting.

Scott (18:06):
I think it's interesting to make collages of your own
work.
After years of go by, it's kindof a.
Concept.
Think about it that way.

Sam (18:14):
Yeah.
I I was, I would take this likeBrazilian clash or something and
they were talking about like howto like, kind of like, cause you
know, when artists, when theydraw, they're like, they're like
their work.
It's always just like, oh, thisisn't good enough.
And so they, they kind of saidlike a really interesting way to
re engage with your work is tomake it into something new, to
explore it in a new way.
Because like, maybe you reallyliked the line, but the art
itself wasn't good, but you wantto keep that line.

(18:35):
Like.
Put it in something new and seewhat happens.
And I think it was when my artteacher said that it's, it's
really interesting to rip thepaper rather than cut it with a
scissor, because a scissor isclean.
But like the way it's ripped iskind of a unique way that you
can never get again.
Even if you make a mistake, itis like a really lived moment
that you're capturing in thatart piece.
So I've always just gone to likeripping the paper and sticking
it together moshposhing.

(18:56):
And it's always come in theselike, Really beautiful ways and
I had my husband do it one timeand he had like a really
cathartic experience with it SoI do recommend like if anyone
ever does art and you don't likeit or you have some old art as a
kid Like rip it up collage itand it's just a whole new
wonderful experience.
I highly recommend

Scott (19:11):
redefining it.

Sam (19:12):
Yeah, it's it's really nice

Scott (19:14):
I do that with sounds Like I'll record 10-15 minute
long Soundscape kind of thingsjust randomly as a sort of, you
know, way to shed my skin at theend of the day or on the weekend
or something.
But then I'm like, I got hoursand hours of this stuff.
Does anybody ever want to, Idon't want to sit and listen to
it.
How can I expect anybody else towant to sit and listen to it?
But I'm always kind of likegoing back to little pieces.

(19:35):
So if I'm working on a film orsomething or even some of the
stuff I've done here, I'vegrabbed sections of that as
music bed to use on videos andstuff.
So it's kind of like.
I don't know what this is for,but it's like just a, a chunk of
content that can be, you know,have an emotional tinge to it
when it was made, carry thatthrough to the, where, where it

(19:55):
ends up, it becomes more of asupporting, you know, a
foundation to some, somefeeling.

a.m. (20:00):
This is also where AI, you could play with, right?
Because you can just feed, ifyou've got 10, 000 sound clips
of a variety of things, justFeed that in and then give it
prompts, right?
Like I want something that'sthree minutes long, that has
this tonality, that has, youknow, and use my shit and make,
you know, make a collage.

Scott (20:17):
I've been playing around with one of the, you know, the
AIs that Kay was using to makesongs and stuff and it's just
like horrible like pop or hiphop music and stuff, but the
idea of using a prompt to createa whole song feels kind of like
yucky to me, because I've spentdecades, you know, sometimes
working on specific projects,music projects, and just

(20:38):
generating it in 30 seconds witha, you know, a sentence.
It seems kind of like, wait, butat the same time I could see
like, all right, so, you know,we talked about this a long time
ago.
Like, how do you, how do Imisuse this creatively?
You know, how do I maybegenerate a pop song and then
chop it up and kind of throw itinto something so it's, you
know, it's remixed every timethat it plays?
Kind of like the film that I wastalking about.

a.m. (21:00):
Well, I mean, listen, you're, you're I mean, you're
not generating it in 30 seconds,right?
You've generated it over 30years.
The final step is 30 seconds, ifyou're using your own clips.
But then in terms of chopping upand reshopping, I didn't think
of this initially.
I can't, I'm drawing a blank onthe name.
What is are you familiar withthe disintegration loops by
William Basinski?
Yeah.
So for you guys, if you don'tknow, it's, it's, it's, I mean,

(21:22):
I'll play a little piece of itmaybe, but it's, it's, it's
pieces, it's sound.

(21:47):
So this is on like reels, I'massuming.

Scott (21:49):
Yeah, it's reel to reels.
The tape is cut into a loop, soit continues to play on several
reels.

a.m. (21:54):
Until it burns.
Yeah.
And so slowly, you know, kind ofacoustically, Yeah, sorry
deteriorating each cycle

Scott (22:00):
and it's a it's feeding back on itself.
So it's rerecording itself ontothe tape.
So it's, it's like, you thinkabout like, you know, frosting a
cake until it's, you know, goneuntil the cake just gets smashed
by the weight of the frosting,that kind of vibe.
Cause tape is just a piece ofplastic with metal glue to it
and the glue starts to wear awayand all that stuff.
Yeah.

a.m. (22:20):
It's a fascinating experiment and really like, I
mean, if you've got the patienceto sit through the entire cycle
of it.
It's a pretty interestingeffect.
It, it, it, it, yeah.
So my point is, with your, youknow, sound library, you can
just, okay, 30 seconds to createa thing, but great, now I'm
going to chop that up.
And have it, and keep choppingit up until you get to a point
where it's like so manyabstractions removed and now
what is the thing?
And, and, yeah.

Sam (22:41):
You know, that kind of reminds me of You know the
banana with the tape on it?
You know how people hatecontemporary art?
Yeah, it's like how people neverreally get the meaning behind
contemporary art.

Scott (22:50):
Yeah, it's There's quite a few of that those kind of
ideas resurfacing in art.
Sort of like it started in the50s and 60s and then kind of
fizzled and now with digitalaccess to art.
Things.
It's like, how do we degradedigital, you know, digital
artifacts the same way that weused to with a banana or
whatever, you know?

a.m. (23:08):
Yeah, I, you know, this is, this is one of the ways I
might describe the differencebetween pop art or pop music and
art music or art art is, youknow, in pop music, the content
is the focus and they're fairlysimple contexts.
He left me.
Taylor Swift.
The context are fairly simplecontext, right?
But banana taped wall, thecontent isn't the point.

(23:30):
The context might be reallysimple or dumb or right.
It's the context as a rich andthe context is not black and
white.
Content is black and white,right?
Either the song is in tune orout of tune.
The song, you know, the melodyis catchy or it's not right.
And so art, like, has this sortof contextual element to it that
requires you to engage beyondjust consuming it.

(23:51):
And so if you consume, you know,banana tape to wall as content,
yeah, it's a piece of shit.
It's like, what is this?
You get paid for this?
I could do that.
Yeah.
But if you're willing to spendthe time to engage with the,
with the context and then becomepart of the context, I think
there's a different thing that'shappening there.
But we, you know, through socialmedia and a whole bunch of other
forces we are we are unable todeal with engage with context

(24:14):
more and more and solely focusedon content.
And then you get to, you know,binaries and all these things,
right?
Because content is linear andcontent is binary and etc., etc.

Scott (24:25):
That was what they talked about in the Q& A for the, you
know, film.
Was when they premiered it.
It was at the Venice Biennale,and it was because there's 168
hours of footage randomlyassembled.
They let it run for 168 hours,even when the galleries were
closed.
There's no humans in there, justran for straight 168 hours and
nobody saw it.

(24:45):
And it just kind of happened.
Nobody recorded it.
It wasn't anything like that.
They don't plan on recording anyof these screenings to, you
know, for later use.
And he was like, I don't knowhow we screen, you know.
This is not going to be able tobe streamed.
You know, I'm not really surehow it's going to be consumed by
the wider audience.
But at the same time, it's like,you know, why, you know, it
brings me into this, like, Oh,that's, you know, that's a cool

(25:06):
concept.
Maybe it was a proof of conceptto let it run and see if it
crashed or, you know, like what,what was the idea behind letting
it run that way.
But it's kind of like the bananaon the wall, you know, they
closed the gallery at night,banana still ripening.
It's eventually going to.
Turned brown and turned to mushfall off the wall.

a.m. (25:22):
Nobody noticed the stainless steel bowl with the
sugar and flour and eggs in it.
Waiting for that banana to falloff the wall.
And so they missed the wholesort of broader purpose of that
piece.

Scott (25:34):
That's, that's the next one, right?
Yeah.
Banana bread.

a.m. (25:36):
Slow banana bread.
That's the, nobody even read thetitle of it.
That's what it was called.
The original title, I think, wasBanana Bread Next Tuesday, and
then they thought that was toolong.
I've got an idea.
But you just asked why, likearound that thing, right?
Like this, this is, if there's,if I could break one thing in

(25:56):
this society, it would be thateverything has to have a clear
why.
That everything has to have anoutcome.
That everything has to have,like, a purpose.
And if it doesn't, it'sfrivolous somehow.
Like, if I could take asledgehammer to one thing, it
would be that.
Like this has no purpose.
Yeah, this is what I'm doing.
You don't like it.
Go find something else.

Scott (26:16):
I think it's, you know, the idea of it being generative
and based on Brian Eno, youknow, he's been doing generative
artworks and installations foryears now.
And it kind of, he said no toprevious documentaries you know,
made about him, but then oncethey came with this idea, he's
like, okay, you know, thissounds great.
And he's been documentingeverything he did, since day one
film and then video and tape andyou know, all kinds of things.

(26:37):
So all this stuff was ready tobe kind of loaded into the
machine and done.
So I understand the why behindthat.
Like, how do you present this ina way that's exciting and new
every time, as opposed to justlike, you know, listening to the
same song over and over again,or pop music, the context is
different every time.
So

a.m. (26:55):
We haven't even selected a topic that's gonna be
interesting in the editing.
I think you should take thisepisode and and just chop it up
into like 42 second segments.
Just just little 42 secondsegments and then randomly piece
them back together.
And whatever happens, that'sgonna be

Scott (27:09):
This is the banana on the wall.

Sam (27:10):
I was just going to say, I hope that it starts with banana
bread next Tuesday.
Like if it doesn't start likethat, then it's not worth it.

a.m. (27:19):
That's the song that popped into my head.
Yeah, I don't remember.
M.
The artist was M.
1979.
M.
And the song is pop music.

Sam (27:41):
Just that and then him saying banana bread overlaid on
top of it.
Pop music.

a.m. (27:45):
Actually, you could probably sing that.
You know, Should we do it?
Banana bread next Tuesday.
Pop, pop, doo wop.

Sam (27:52):
This is a stupid story, but did you actually hear that the,
like there's people who loveLost Media, and they were
looking for like an old 80s,Song and they were like, oh look
at this.
So everyone's obsessed like, ohmy god, people's parents jamming
out to this song.
And then they come to find outthat the song's actually from an
adult film and this person hadbeen playing a prank on
everybody the entire time tolook for this song.

(28:14):
So everyone finds it and they'relike, wait, where is this from?
No! And it's just like,

Scott (28:19):
Is there lyrics that were adult in content?

Sam (28:22):
No, it was like a Bad intentions or something like
Alright It's like everyone's momjamming out to this music not
knowing it's gonna be lost in 10years Just

Scott (28:31):
Curiosity

Sam (28:32):
So imagine just looking for like AM banana bread music and
just lost in a podcast

Scott (28:37):
There's something about generating something and then
randomly re editing or, youknow, however, physically moving
parts of it around to playdifferently has always been
interesting to me.
And it would kind ofdisintegrate over time because
it just wouldn't hold.
So the same kind of idea as theBasinski pieces.

Sam (28:53):
I kind of wonder what would happen if, like, you could,
there was a way for, like, AI tojust take over you as a person.
Chop up certain parts of who youare, like core pieces, and then
spit out a new person.
Like, who would you be?
That would be reallyinteresting.
Would you be a new person ifcertain parts of you were
missing even like little thingslike that sandwich we ate last
Tuesday, would that change whoyou are?

a.m. (29:11):
It's a, it's a, I forget who it's from.
It's a, it's a philosophicalquestion, right?
The Theseus's ship.
I mean the general, yeah, thegeneral thing is like, you know,
the Theseus from Greekmythology, you know.
If you, if you replaced everyboard.
Oh, right, right.
Of the ship with an exactreplica and put them back in
exactly the right order.
Is it the same ship?
Like, is the ship in the conceptor is it in the pieces?

Scott (29:34):
Yeah, it was the fundamental thought behind, you
know, as your cells die andregenerate, you know, no cells
really last your whole lifetime.
So you're constantly, are youthe same person?
Are you the same body?
Are you the same entity?

a.m. (29:47):
Well, and then, so this is, you know, I mean, I've
talked about this before to, toget now podcasty about it.
Like I don't conceive of myselfas a noun.
I just fundamentally don'tconceive it.
And so like, there is no entity.
This is process, right?
I'm am ing as I say, right.
Yeah.
And so it's just, it's just,it's a cycle.
It's a, it's a, it's a system.
It's a system that's moving andjust this is the pattern it

(30:08):
moves in.
And like those tape loops, asthe patterns are moving, they
are picking up new, but they'rethe same pattern, but they're
picking up the sound, the soundthat the AMing makes gets picked
up by the process of AMing andalters, the And yet still keeps
the pattern of amming.
But each iteration of that hasthe effect of deteriorating the

(30:30):
system until eventually it'llfall apart.
Yeah.

Sam (30:33):
How does that work?
I'm just curious.
How does that work in thecontext of like businesses?
Like, since you have a lot ofexperience with businesses.
Like is, do you feel like if,for example, you replace all of
your employees, right?
With like equal experiencedemployees, right?
Including yourself.
But the business model stayedthe same.
Is it the same business?

a.m. (30:50):
For me, it's not.
Okay.
It's not.
It's a different system.
You know.
Every time somebody leaves hereand somebody new comes, it's a
different system.
Now the, the macro pattern isthe same, right?
It's like a river, right?
Like at any given, any fivesecond period, it's totally
different water.
Like you're standing andwatching a river.
In five seconds, like down tothe atom, it's totally different
water.

(31:10):
But it's the same river.
And so it's totally differentand yet it's not, right?
So the process that this placeis, is kind of the same, the
pattern.
But it's totally different.
The trick becomes, Are you clearabout what the banks are that
make it this particular river?
And can you hold thoseimmovable?
Because if the banks break,

Sam (31:29):
Yeah.

a.m. (31:29):
Now, it's not about different water, now it's no
longer a river.

Sam (31:33):
Right.

a.m. (31:33):
Now it's just water that's absorbed into the ground.

Sam (31:36):
So what goes into the process of, like, sustaining
those banks?
Is that like, Process,paperwork, and all of that junk,
or is it?

a.m. (31:44):
Attention.

Sam (31:45):
Attention.

a.m. (31:46):
Yeah.
What happens is the process andthe the policies and all that,
Too much of that actually turnsthe river into a canal.
Okay.
It's still flowing water, butnow it's an artificial thing.
And it can't react to itsenvironment.
And you get a traditionalorganization.

Sam (32:01):
So I don't have a lot of questions since you're teaching
grad students about theseconcepts, like how do you help
them learn these conceptswithout directly telling them?
Because in that sense, aren'tyou also creating those banks
for them?

a.m. (32:13):
Yeah.
So, so it's, it's it depends onthe class or there, there,
there's one class with my anchorclass, my, you know, P638, where
my intention is, and I'll tellthem this a third of the way
through the semester, I said,hopefully, almost all of you,
and ideally all of you, arereally, really confused and
frustrated at this point,because there's too much
information.
And if you are, and you want tosettle into that, now we can

(32:34):
actually have you do someproductive work.
It's a part of it is justdisintermediation.
I'm not like I'm providingrigorous and, you know, because
I'm looking to help them breakdown not the banks of their own
river, but the walls of the ortheir own canals that they've
been habituated into sort ofliving in by virtue of the

(32:54):
previous 16 years of schoolingand, you know and defined
actually the banks of theirriver.

Sam (32:58):
Right.

a.m. (32:59):
Right.
And to build them up in such away that has some porousness
with it, with, with, with theirenvironment, yeah.
But then after that, you know,the other classes are it's,
it's, it's all, it's like here.
I mean, all the stuff is, it's,it's holographic, right?
It's, it's projects, casestudies, things to work on
versus ideas.
And then working on the thingthat becomes an opportunity,
like, oh, that didn't work.

(33:19):
Okay, let's talk about thisaspect of systems.
Okay.
Oh, this really worked.
Okay, let's talk about thisaspect of kind of language and
reality, right?
And so it's, it's, you know, I,I'm a do and then learn person,
not a learn and then do person.
Learn and do is only useful tome on things that have a high
potential for harm.
And so I don't want to do, like,Nobody should be a fireman by

(33:41):
first doing and then learning.
You know what I mean?
No one should be a surgeon byfirst doing and then learning.

Sam (33:45):
Yeah

a.m. (33:46):
There are some things that really benefit from first Do
abstract learning because thepotential for harm to yourself
and others by just diving in anddoing is too high But most
things I'm biased towards doFumble, fail, find yourself, and
then there'll be context now forthe banana on the wall But if I
deliver it to you in atraditional lecture, it's just a

(34:06):
banana on the wall, and you'll,the degree to which you trust my
authority, you'll memorizebanana on a wall.
But you won't have the contextto really bring it into meaning.
And I'm actually, you know, I'vegone through cycles of this, but
I, I, I told students this year,this is my last year teaching at
the university, and We had adepartment meeting yesterday,
and then the chair of thedepartment said I, I heard
you're telling students it'syour last year teaching.
I was like, yeah, I think itmight be.

(34:27):
Because I, I'm, I'm, you know,sort of concerned that Like, I
was allowed to come in and doweird stuff.

Sam (34:33):
Yeah.

a.m. (34:33):
Because that was the work I did out in the world.
It was ahead of where the worldwas.
The World now is where I wasteaching, you know, 20 years
ago.
And there's other stuff that Ithink needs to get engaged with.
And there's no space to do it.
And I can't, I can't, the mainthing is I can't do it in a, in
a 13 week course.
For 3 hours a week.
And really it's not even 13weeks, 3 hours a week.

(34:54):
It's, it's, you know, 6 weeks at3 hours a week.
Because all the courses now aremini mesters.
You know, half semesterintensive things.
I said, so, you know, if you canhelp me figure out how to do it
at the university, the stuffthat it needs doing, in my
niche, not the only thing itneeds doing, but the stuff I can
see doing that's going to beuseful the next ten years, then
maybe I'm interested.
Because what I just explained toyou about, you know, that stuff
they can now get systemsthinking is fairly ubiquitous.

(35:16):
They can get this other places.
Design thinking is veryubiquitous.
The language and reality stuffand how do you actually, like,
live in a world where, you know,that was MAOL and that I don't
have space to do enough of.
I can only give them a taste,and 20 years ago and 10 years
ago a taste was enough, andright now a taste is not enough,
where we need to accelerate.
I think in here, one of theconversations when we start next

(35:38):
year, July And we've talkedabout kind of design for next
year and all that.
But I really, really, reallywant to up the game on the non
technical side of what we'redoing.

Scott (35:47):
No, I was going to say, do you find as time went on in
the, you know, the universitylevel, grad level stuff that The
reasons for attrition weredifferent because of the way the
world changed.
Like if people were like, Ican't handle this right now or
something, and then I kind ofleave a course or people audit
the course and that kind ofthing.

a.m. (36:06):
No, we've always had really high retention in that
program.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That, that, that's never been anissue.
At a course level where I'd beoccasionally somebody leaves a
course.
It's like not going to be anoccasion.
Somebody who's the program, butwhen people leave the program
almost always it's like somelife event or something, you
know, And it's rare, like it's,you know, one student a year or
one student a semester.
It's not, it's not common.
No, I'm more concerned that weare So I was on the phone last

(36:28):
night with a good friend who isat Columbia decided to, cause
she had a really, really bigcareer going on and decided to
halt it to go do a PhD atColumbia because there's a
particular, very specific thingthat she's, you know, We've been
working on it, decided shewanted to bring, you know, some,
some deep research to it.
And so she's there, and theseprotests are going on, and she's
talking about, you know, the,the you know, the military

(36:49):
invasion of you know what,what's the hall, the What's the
name of the hall that the

Sam (36:53):
Oh yeah, they just renamed the hall.
The protestors.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But

a.m. (36:56):
whatever.
You know, the same hall that,that,

Scott (36:58):
Hamilton Hall.

a.m. (36:59):
Yeah.
Hamilton Hall in 65 that the youknow, the students back then
seized back then they held adean hostage, you know what I
mean?
And, and they were allowed tokind of, you know, and, and, and
these guys, you know, kind ofcame into military gear and, and
disrupted.
And, and so I, I raised that tosay like, where I'm teaching.
Like, I, I am so, even on thebusiness stuff, I like really
push hard on saying, it is notonly not my desire, it's not my

(37:22):
right to tell you what to thinkon any of these things around
the workplace and, andorganization and all that.
My interest is that you ask thequestions and form a perspective
and don't go out into the worlda just kind of compliant, the
organization is going to tell mewhat to do.
Right?
Form a perspective.
Whatever that perspective is.
You want to be the next Elon,even though I can't stand Elon,

(37:43):
I will support you in that.
But, but you will not leave mewithout at least getting
uncomfortable questions.
So the issues, you know, thatthe Columbia students, the
students at Yale are raising,putting aside which side of the
conversation I'm on, the, atthat age, exercising in inquiry
about These things in the world,I think, like, should be table

(38:03):
stakes.
Like, we should demand studentsengage in these things.
And I find less and lessstudents connected to having a
perspective, whatever thatperspective is, over the last
ten years.
It might be collective trauma,it might be just collective,
like, I just want a lot ofstudents my friend Joan, Dr.
Joan Ball who teaches undergradat St.
John's.
She and I were talking aboutthis thing.
It seems like in recent years,the last few years, there are

(38:25):
kids coming in who just wantstability, like they want the
corporate job, not because theylove corporate, not because
they're delusional about, youknow what corporate is, but they
just want stability.
I just want calm stability, andI think I could see that in the
grad side as well.
A version of that.
And I get it, and I understandit if you kind of grew up in
these, you know, these last 10to 15 years of school shootings

(38:46):
and the 2008 crisis and thepolitical environment and the
climate and the, you know, COVIDand all that.
But I'm really bothered thatthey're not at least asking
questions, inquiring, you know.
And I think it's not.
My speculation, I'm going to endhere, my speculation is not that
it's a lack of desire to, a lackof confidence, whatever.

(39:06):
I think that they don't have thetools to engage in those things
without it being a burden.
An ontological burden.
Because everything is so heavy.
Then I'm going to take on worldissues, and political issues,
and social issues, and economicissues, and I'm fucking
exhausted at the age of 22.
And, and, and we've got toolsand frameworks and perspectives

(39:28):
that allow people to engage withthese things, right?
And so, so that, that's all inthe background of driving, like
I, I, I want to keep offeringgrad students programming.
I just don't know if I want todo it at the university.
There might just be free classesif you're registered in that
program.
I don't know.
You get, you get, you getautomatic admission to the, to
the school of AM if you'reinclined.
I just don't know, you know,down the road if anybody shows
up to that if I'm not in theprogram, so.

Scott (39:50):
You have to build a compound.

a.m. (39:51):
That, that is, that is exactly, that is a perfect
postcard picture of, of theopposite of what I want to do.
Like I couldn't, I couldn't findthe other side of the coin
better than building a compound.
With a little hut in the middlefor me and, and everybody else
is, you know, camping and once aday I come out for 30 minutes
and give a lecture.

Sam (40:12):
God, no.

a.m. (40:12):
It's almost like a nightmare.

Sam (40:13):
Jesus, no.
Kyley wants to live on amountain, away from people.
Away from people.

Kyley (40:17):
No, I want to live on a mountain, with very controlled
contact with people.

Sam (40:22):
That's not better!

Kyley (40:26):
I, I, I want to cook them food at the night, and then I
want to go back to the top of mymountain and sleep until the
next night.

Sam (40:32):
Yep.
Oh my god, Kyley, no!

Scott (40:35):
It's your wizard staff.
Shall not pass.

Sam (40:37):
You are going to become a Netflix documentary.

Kyley (40:39):
People are exhausting sometimes.

a.m. (40:41):
Here's the problem.
People aren't exhausting.
It's people aren't people.
This is the problem.
Danielle, you know, obviouslyyou know, used to joke because I
would say, you know, she was astudent and then she worked for
me and then we were peers andfriends and, you know, we're now
kind of, you know, good friends.
But, you know, back in the olddays, that's fucking humans, you
know?
And then she joke about theother humans bothering against

(41:02):
and it occurred to me somewherein there.
It's, it's actually theopposite.
It's, they're not being humans.
They're being this role, they'rebeing this pattern, they're
being this habituation, they'rebeing this story that they
ingested from the world and theworld as it is now from the, not
even from the economy, right?
They, they are agents of aneconomy versus participants in
an economy.

(41:23):
And then they play patternsaccordingly.
And that's exhausting.
Like I love engaging withhumans.
I just find so few of them,which sounds terribly
condescending and judgmental.
And I apologize.
Because I, I could fall into itas well.
I could fall into, I mean, thismany years into the journey, I
can, you know, find myself andthen, you know, writing it in my
journal and going back to thatof, Oh shit, I'm in a, I'm in a

(41:44):
loop.
I'm in a pattern.
I'm in a habituation.
I gotta do something to breakout of this.
I'm not here.
This pattern is here,

Scott (41:49):
awareness, right?
So it's not a blame thing.
It's just like getting caught upin believing your thoughts
sometimes can be the wall thatshuts off your awareness,
closing the closing the lenscap, metaphorical lens cap to
your,

a.m. (42:03):
it's showing up to an interaction with clarity of the
outcome.
That is only good if we're goingto transact something like if I
hire you to cook me a meal.
Great.
Please show up with the outcomeclear in your mind, but for
human interaction, people showup with the outcome in mind.
And now there's no interaction.
Now this is a transaction ofwords.
And then we either got somewherewe didn't.

(42:25):
But human beings don't show upagain.
You know, the music thing,right?
Like, you know, We're playingthese four songs.
We got, you know, 12 minutes,got three minutes a song.
Here and then boom boom doneout.
Perfect, right?
Great.
I mean, that's fine.
You get paid for it, but that'snot

Scott (42:39):
I'm of two minds because having, you know, played in
front of people for a while andcoming up with a set list and
really getting dialed in thatset list, like it's never the
same twice, even though you'redoing the same thing.
Sure.
At the same time, it feels to melike I'm in the middle of a
meditation.
But yeah, there's a certain, youknow, prescription of like, we
play, we stop, you clap, weplay, you know, just the

(43:02):
repetition of the whole thinggot very fatiguing after doing
it every night for months and,you know, months at a time.
It became this kind of like, youknow, This, this dance for the
sake of the dance as opposed tothe enjoyment of the dance.
And that's the reason why Idecided studio is better, you
know, for me, studio is a betterplace.

a.m. (43:22):
I'm not even talking about those things though.
I could certainly, I mean, not,not being a musician, I don't
know directly, but I could seethose things getting, you know,
grinding as well.
But I wasn't even talking aboutthat as outcome.
Like I'm talking about likegoing to a show, it's like,
okay, this is the point at whichnow you're going to have your
guitar solo.
And like, you know, before youstart playing.
This is what the solo is.
This is what we're gonna do.
You got 30 seconds for a drumsolo here.
You got like, I gotta thinkthat's just like, okay, why am I

(43:44):
here?
Like, can I just phone this in?
Can I just record this for youand just play it?

Scott (43:48):
Yeah, it comes across that way sometimes and you get
wrapped up in, you know.
But I mean, obviously if youhave a lot of people that like
what you're doing, it kind ofboosts your ego a little bit and
there's a different motivationbehind it.
And then eventually that becomesempty.

a.m. (44:02):
Well this, but this is the thing, right?
This is what, you know, I'mdoing, I'm doing the
commencement speech for the NewHaven High School so I'm doing
the commencement speech, right,in June, middle June.
And thankfully the person thatasked me doesn't have an
outcome.
Like they know me, they've seenme talk, right?
But that thing is, what is thatnormally?
Like.
Cool.
You're going to show upinspiration.
You're going to say you're goingto say something provocative and

(44:25):
then you're going to saysomething about how hard and
then you're going to saysomething about how you overcome
what's hard and then you'regoing to share a personal
anecdote

Scott (44:34):
throw the cap in the air.

a.m. (44:35):
Sure.
Right?
Like, that's the expectation.
Like, nobody has to say it.
You just say it.
Commencement speech.
I already know what it is.
The set list.
That's it.
I already, you tell me you'redoing a commencement speech in
any, I know what it is.
I already know.
I don't know the words.
I don't know the details, but Iknow what it is.
That's what I mean by showing itto an outcome, with an outcome
in mind.
Right?

(44:55):
And people do this in humaninteraction.
Last night I had dinner with myoldest friend.
And we just, you know, we'veknown each other since 7th grade
or 8th grade.
And sometimes, you know, we seeeach other, you know, four times
in a month.
And sometimes we don't see eachother for eight months and, you
know.
But it's human.
You know, we go and there's no,like, there's nowhere to get to.

(45:15):
And we just have a meal and thensurprising stuff comes up and
predictable stuff comes up.
People don't approach it thatway.
They do it with a limited numberof people, but they go and I'm
having dinner with somebody.
We're going to this monthlyreception, right, of a group,
and they're great people.
We like these people.
I don't know if you're goingtonight, but, but, like, don't
you already know what it is?

Sam (45:34):
Yeah.

a.m. (45:35):
Yeah.
Do you have to know what 90percent of the conversations
have already are?

Scott (45:38):
I went last time, made a 15 minutes with them, like, who
are you, who am I?

a.m. (45:44):
And they're all good people.
This is the thing.
Nobody's like, like schmoozing.
This isn't like, it's not that.
Like that's like, not even onthe table.
Like I don't even pay attentionto those things that kind of,
you know, networking fests.
Right.
I'm talking about good people,really hip, but I already know
what the conversations are.
There's nothing surprisingthat's going to happen.
There's nothing for me humanthat's going to happen.
And so that's why I say when I'mexhausted about, you know,

(46:05):
humans, it's I'm exhausted bythe lack of humans, you know.
I'd love to be spending timewith humans all day long.
Here I get to, you know.

Scott (46:12):
I think those would be better for me if there was like
a, something central to it.
Like, I don't know.
I mean, what if we showed upwith board games?
I love board games.
Just like, roll that.
All right, who, who wants toplay this game?
You know, that kind of thing.
Because then there's like, theconversation happens naturally
about what's happening, youknow, in the, the task or the

(46:34):
game or that you're working oninstead of like, Who are you?
Are you important?
Do I need to rank you socially?
And then engage with that?

a.m. (46:41):
Listen, I go in with that mindset.
I always have.
When I was younger, it was likejust playing with house money
and it didn't matter.
And now it's, you know, playingwith a different kind of house
money and it doesn't matter.
In the middle, I think I wasprobably less inclined to do
this.

Sam (46:53):
I was going to say like I love board games for that reason
that like I just love to pull itout at a party and be like, ha
ha.
Like I think at a holiday partyI did that and Kyley was like,
what are we doing?
And I'm like, we're going tofigure it out.
Do you

Scott (47:03):
always have like a pack of Uno cards in your pocket
ready to go?

Sam (47:06):
I, you know, I actually do have a couple of small board
games with me at all times.
Like I really stress that when Idon't because I, I am terrible
at peopling like I'm just likeyou're gonna ask me about what I
do and then they ask me about myresearch and that's cool But you
don't really care cuz I getreally excited, but you're not
excited.
So then I'm gonna get botheredforget it Let's just fight over
orcs It's easier

Scott (47:28):
Yeah, last time we went I was talking to this guy and you
know works for the regionalwater authority and describing
what he does.
And there was just like, andthen we started telling him
about here, and you could seejust kind of like, I was like
looking around the room, like,who else am I gonna talk to?
I had a hoodie on, you know, hehad a suit suit on, and so it
was like, all right, we'regonna, we're gonna move this,
this way.
You know,

a.m. (47:49):
I'm here clear on what the outcomes are.
Oh, this, the outcome's notgonna happen here, so lemme go
somewhere else.
And it's like, you know.

Scott (47:53):
Food and drink were good.

a.m. (47:54):
Again, I'm telling you, good people, man legitimately no
shade.

Sam (47:57):
not peopling.

a.m. (47:59):
Yeah, no.
So I mentioned another clubhousename.
Maceo Paisley, who's, who's outin Detroit.
Really cool guy, works, works inthe art world.
He used to run these amazingrooms on Clubhouse.
He's actually, he ran the bestrooms on Clubhouse.
Really, really good, giftedmoderator.
He was running this room onceabout, about are we in a
renaissance, are we about to bein a renaissance, right?
And I showed up late and I waslistening and then, you know, he
invited me up and I, I went andtalked and, you know, he said,

(48:21):
I, I don't, you know, this isgoing to sound like, this is
going to sound like out ofcontext, it sounds so self
involved, but, but I will tellyou how I engage with the world.
And again, early on, it was, Ihad, you know, house money
because, like, I was, you know,You know what I mean?
A poor immigrant had noexpectations.
It's all win.
It's all win, man.
It's like, whatever, I'm gonnado my thing.
And now, at this stage of life,I'm like, eh, psh, nothing you
can do to me.
And in the middle, I probably,you know, gravitate more towards

(48:43):
the mean.
But what it said to us is, inthe interactions, my mindset is,
I am the Renaissance.
Right, that I am the piece ofcontent that's going to
fundamentally disrupt your,whatever.

Scott (48:53):
That could come off kind of crazy, though.

a.m. (48:55):
Well, no, here's the thing! I am the piece of,
because they're dismantling it,what did Renaissance mean,
right?
Like, so, I am gonna, I, like, Iwant to be the piece of content
that disrupts your context.
And, I want to bring contextthat reshapes your content.

Sam (49:09):
I am the banana.

a.m. (49:10):
And so, yeah, so how do I want to engage is, fundamentally
reframing your content andfundamentally shifting your
context to see if we can't getto actual interaction and
something new, you know?

Scott (49:21):
So maybe I'll go down there tonight.
And tape a banana to the wall

a.m. (49:25):
See, that's not that, but that's, that's performative.
That's not, that's the oppositeof what I'm talking about.

Sam (49:30):
What you gotta do is just start a food fight, just
straight up make allies.

a.m. (49:34):
If you plan it, it's not, it's no good.
You know, that gets back to now,you know what the, now you're
just doing what they're doing.

Sam (49:40):
Just trip a couple times.
It'll be all right, I'll makesome friends.

a.m. (49:43):
You can't, you can't plan your way to improvisation.
You can have good boundaries inplace.
You can have good rigor inplace, but all preparation has
to get done ahead of time.
And then you just show up,

Scott (49:53):
act natural, be authentic.

Sam (49:54):
Business, business, business.
Is it working?
Yes.

Scott (49:57):
The, the, the term that comes up at those things a lot,
it's like, you know, anetworking event.
I mean, it's, I don't know.
To me, it seems like theopposite.
It's a it's a separation event.
Like, you know, everybody kindof, like, stratifies in the room
to different places.
Yeah.
Know, it's not throwing shade onthe whole group that's doing it.

(50:19):
It's more about You know, thisis just a natural stratification
of the way we arrange ourselvesas humans that we people, you
know you know, I used to havemore patience for it because I
was younger and hungrier youknow, 20 years ago, working at a
digital agency where you'realways looking for clients.
It was like, that was what youdidn't do.
You show up and you shake hands,you know?

a.m. (50:40):
Yeah.
And listen, the whole thingbecomes, it's, it's, it's gotta
be self, you know?
The snake has to get its owntail on this one.
Where it's like, just the waywe're talking about this now
over time is cool.
We're being machines.
Cause now it's like, we alreadyknow because we already know
what that thing is going to be.
Right.
Which is exactly the problem,right?
It is this sort of, you know,it's so easy to fall into this.

(51:01):
And, and, and so I think thething is just, just That is
default.
I find for me, that's default.
It's just predicting, knowing,taking past patterns, and
projecting.
Like, that's just what happens.
My speculation is that's justwhat happens to human beings in
general.
But I know that's what happensto me.
And so the work then becomes,can I be in the moment?
And, and can I, you know, again,can I shift context and reframe

(51:24):
content.
But in

Scott (51:25):
the moment.
Is it one of those things where,you know, we're, we're designed
for pattern recognition ashumans.
Is the work in your ideas, like,to go beyond the pattern
recognition to some sort ofmeaningful action?
Once you have a patternrecognized or is it to ignore
the pattern and continue on?

a.m. (51:43):
Again, if you go back to music and, and clean me up
because I'm not a musician butlike you got to recognize the
melody and then you can play onthe melody.
But if you really are payingattention to melody, you can
play a note that's off themelody and have it be something
really interesting.

Scott (51:57):
It's my whole career right there.

a.m. (51:59):
And so that's what it is.
Like what's going on is there'sa certain kind of melody.
You know, most of the times it'sthis pop melody.
It's like, okay, whatever.
But if you can pay attention toit, now you can introduce
something again, a piece ofcontent that's not going to be
dissonant, but it's going toalter the melody.
And then it becomes, oh wait,well what?
And then now you have potentialfor them playing music with you,
as opposed to them just playingout their melody over and over

(52:21):
again.

Sam (52:21):
Which you did, you got Kyley journaling.

Kyley (52:23):
Or you do what I used to do.
There was a time in my lifewhere I was like, I'm just gonna
be genuine in every conversationall the time, and it would break
their melody.
They'll be like, what's yourbiggest fears?
Spiders, Bobcats.
I'm afraid that you're all gonnafind out that I'm not good
enough and I'm gonna die alone,and I would just like shut down
the conversation, because that'sgenuinely what I'm afraid of all

(52:43):
the time.

Scott (52:44):
That's a different board game.

Kyley (52:45):
And, yeah, that's, and that's, and that's, I got a lot
of feedback for thoseinteractions.
How are you doing today?
You know what?
I'm not doing great.
That kind of stuff, and I findthat it would break, you know,
Break the music that was beingplayed with these people.

a.m. (52:58):
That stops the music.

Kyley (53:00):
Yeah, yeah, it kills it.
It kills the whole thing.
Yeah, yeah, learn, learn thatlesson.
That's why I was laughing beforewhen you're like, how do you go
into those?
I remember what I used to tryand it would go badly.

a.m. (53:10):
So to continue the analogy, right?
So that's like, like, you know,paying attention to the, to the,
to the melody that the symphonyis playing.
Mm hmm.
And introducing something, youknow.
That's different, but doing itwith a, you know, I don't know,
a sitar, like an instrumentthat's so foreign that it
distracts them from, you knowwhat I mean, it's just, it's
just, it's too, yeah.

Sam (53:31):
Bro, you brought a kazoo to an orchestra.

a.m. (53:33):
Oh, a kazoo, yeah.
That's cool.
Yeah.

Scott (53:35):
I'll bring a kazoo to the networking.

Sam (53:38):
Stop bringing kazoos.

a.m. (53:40):
Now, if you're with me, hopefully we are a symphony that
plays a certain melody and whensomebody comes in and plays a
kazoo, we're not thrown by it.
We can like have all those, infact we invite, who's got a
kazoo?
Who's got an instrument we'venever seen before?
And then play a note and then wecan write but you rarely find
yourself with people like thatand so yeah.

Scott (53:59):
If you think about it as play.
those situations that are, youknow, you're not drawn to.
I'm not drawn to necessarily anylonger.
But if I think about it as play,I'm gonna go, you know, play
this game for an hour.
This, you know, event game.
Doesn't have any weight.
You don't feel like you need tolevel up or anything like that.
It's just, you're just there.

Sam (54:18):
Speaking of games, one of my favorite games is whenever I
feel like I see people talkingabout something really serious,
I like to start my ownconversation with my, like, my
neighbors next to me and say themost absurd things and see if I
can get them to stop theirconversation and listen in on
mine.
So like I'll, like, they'll justbe talking like, yeah, you know,
I did this like amazing thing onmy test and like it's just like,
I'm just annoyed by what they'resaying.
So I'm like, dude, you'retelling me I can't drop ship

(54:38):
bananas?
Who told me I could have done,you convinced me, you said it
was a crypto thing.
And just seeing how invested andhow much I can escalate it
before I realized they're payingattention is my favorite thing.
So like speaking to that, liketreating it like a game is a lot
of fun.

Scott (54:53):
Yeah.
I think it's, you know, there'sdiminishing returns for the
amount of effort you put in, butit can be can be relieving that,
that anxiety and stress ofsocial interaction.

Sam (55:02):
Yeah.
My, my usual thing is I justkind of start talking to kind of
some little Kyley set.
I just kind of try to break therhythm.
And I think it was like theother day I was, I was talking
with a couple of you know, I waslike, well, I'm an alumni, and
she was like, from Yale, and,you know, she's like, oh, I'm a
paralegal, like, all this, thisstuff, and I was like, man,
that's good for you.
I'm, I'm stu stu.
And she's like, what?
I'm like, you know, I'm a littlestupid, man.
It's, it's fine.
I'm stu stu.

(55:23):
And she started cackling, so sheliterally got my number, texted
like, I've been using stu stuevery day, because you go, like,
I'm glad I made a friend.
We could be stu stu together,because, oh.

Scott (55:31):
Sometimes you gotta just sit back and, you know,

Sam (55:34):
Sometimes, sometimes I just go fully for it, I just say the
dumbest thing I could possiblysay in this situation just cause
I'm like, I don't want to seewhat happens, just Uno card it.
Forget it, man.

a.m. (55:42):
But I'm going to give you your outro.

Kyley (56:10):
appreciate the music we started with and the music we
ended with,

a.m. (56:13):
it's great.
Sometimes in my weird, random,non linear head, to this day,
that song is like 40 years old.
Yeah.
Something like that.
Just randomly, New York, London,Paris, Munich, everybody talking
about pop music.
That just goes off.
I remember the MTV.
It just, like, just, it'll just,for no reason, no, yeah.
Yeah.
There's another line though, theNew York, London, Paris, Munich.