Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to simulation. I'm your host now in sake and we are still on site in San Jose at triple a the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting. We are now so grateful to be able to sit down with dr. Augustine Fuentes. Hello. Hi That's my pleasure really excited the hairs looking so good right now I Can't grow a hair like that. Look at this. Let's get involved up there I'm I'm super pumped. Let me give a background on Augustine So we have the program chair for 2017's triple a annual meeting Professor of anthropology at University of Notre Dame in Indiana since about 2002 ish but so he did a PhD at Berkeley in anthropology and He's done things everything from chasing monkeys and jungles and cities to exploring the lives of evolutionary Ancestors to examining what people actually do across the globe and he's authored six six books 14 edited volumes 150 papers there's in chapter something like that. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of work it's a lot of work and Everything from misconceptions about human nature specifically in areas of race sex and aggression To create a spark how imagination made humans exceptional will be talking about a bunch of these different things now But before we you know go into all the current stuff, you know, who were you as a kid and how did you pick up anthropology? So when I was a kid, I didn't know anthropology existed. I like stuff, right? I like I like the past I like the present. I love trying to figure out what makes this tick what makes us what makes other animals I've always really been excited about that and I remember getting to college sitting in a Class a college classroom, which it turned out was an anthro class and they were sort of generally going over What we're gonna do and I thought wait This is a thing that there's actually something that touches on sort of humans the past the future the present other animals all connected It's like, okay. Yeah, I think I could do this What was the I guess, you know, where did they get? Where where did that happen? Where was the well? I mean, so there's a lot of different things that have happened over the course of my life I've always been interested in asking questions. I'm really to the point of being really annoying I'm interested in how stuff works And I'm particularly interested in how humans work and why humans work and how we can talk about them What does that mean for us? Right? So by the time I got to college. I was really excited I was gonna double major in theater and biology and it turns out they don't like it when you make science and humanities So they're like, no, no, you can't do that But and then I had heard about, you know, some anthro classes and I remember sitting in an anthoclass from the professor Phyllis Dolanow who would eventually be my graduate advisor and I'm sitting there and is a class on primate behavior And she starts lecturing and talking about this chimpanzee or this langur And she's using the pronoun she again and again referring to these monkeys and apes and it dawned on me I'd never heard a professor use the pronoun she in general sense when talking like what's going on here? This is pushing against what I, you know, usually hear and the more I got into anthropology The more I understood that asking questions about who we are in a deep sense and what we do in a deep sense really is exciting. I would love to help get that Those these questions and the whys of the deep sense to the roots of children being born around the world Yeah, I think that's gonna give us to some good question asking and some good Kind of inquisitive spirit about how to best build an engineer at the world moving forward Okay, so I can totally see with your energy just like wanting to like ask questions And I can see how you also got really excited about about anthropology. So now Okay, so now as you know, what was what was was was there a link between um between that moment and about primates especially and then your interest in that and PhD and whatnot I mean, I think if you if you ask this sort of big picture what what clicked right What clicked for me was because I've always been interested in biology the body, right? And I've always so been really interested in behavior and culture and literature and history And to see that there was a space here where you could link the biology the bones that the muscles the guts The dna to our behavior to the way we are in the world to our closest relatives the primates, but yet not Detach that from history and institutions and politics and power to actually try to mix all those things together I was like, oh, yeah, this is what I want to do I started by being really interested in the other primates because to understand what humans are We have to understand where we sit in the sort of broader world, right? We are primates So understanding what other monkeys and apes do and what we share with them and what we don't share with them Really sets this baseline So I became very interested not only in studying the human but studying the human as part of the primate landscape To start with and then I moved forward to focus more on the human But to start with you got to know what you're comparing. Let's let's talk about that What did you learn as you were figuring out the comparisons? So what I learned really quickly and this is from I've spent now decades studying Other primates monkeys and apes in the field in the field and in captivity and in captivity So what did I really learn? Well that humans think a lot of themselves A lot of the stuff that we think is totally human That's actually primate this strong social connections the role of social networks and connectivity the whole reality that our lives are just multi-layered complex social day-to-day interfaces with all of these different individuals that have different personalities in different ways of being That's primate. Yeah, right now humans put a special twist on But to understand that was actually liberating and challenging at the same time liberating because it's like okay We can actually understand a lot about the human experience by studying broadly But then we have to focus down because evolution is about continuities and discontinuities And so the continuities between us and the other primates are critical in understanding the core the base of what humans are or can be But the discontinuities The last bit of our evolution that trajectory in humans is what's most exciting because that shows us what the capacity of human is Yeah, because it's just What is it less than 1% genetically different? Yeah, I mean we have to be careful though. So like yeah, we share, you know 98.6 or whatever 98 percent of our DNA with the chimpanzee. We also share 37 percent with a daffodil Right, what does that mean? What's really important is this sort of evolutionary commonalities So, you know about 8 to 10 million years ago the human lineage and the chimp and other ape lineages sort of split out And sort of went their ways now Doesn't mean we stop influencing one another and we're messing with chimps horribly right now But what it means is that for the last six seven eight nine million years Our evolutionary trajectories have been particular relative to everything else and it's that particular history. It's really interesting Okay, okay. Yeah, the particularity rather than the necessary necessity to talk about the specific genetic right, right So, I mean there are genetic differences, but people overplay what that means or doesn't mean, right? So all humans are 99.9 percent identical genetically. Yeah, right. That's cool. But what's your particular trajectory versus mine? And it's not be completely for lives. Exactly. Exactly. And it's not just about our DNA, right? It's never just about our DNA. DNA does nothing by itself We spend way too much talking about DNA How you behave in the environment and what yeah, so because I specifically reference that point about the DNA difference Just because it's it's interesting because of the what would it look like for one more, right? Augmentation evolution because we got to The celestial bodies just like where do we go after the next one? Well, I think there's something interesting in this whole giant panoply of life, right? Like if we would just take that let's just take the the sort of genetic diversity of the planet or whatever humans are This little teeny teeny sort of insignificant like in the sense of what genomic diversity looks like across all living things However when you talk about what humans are doing to the planet and doing to each other and doing to everything else We're huge. That's the question, right? So the real exciting thing about understanding the human and human evolution is how how did that happen? What's going on? Why are humans so important so amazing and so horrible all at the same time? So we're we're one of I think 10 million species on the planet and then we're but we're by far at the top of the I don't know where the top we're definitely messing with the whole system. We are yeah We're now we figured out we are stewards of earth and we have to figure out how to do that properly birth out of this womb And go out into the space. Yeah, so I want I want to ask you about the I want to get a little bit new into the nuance of the primate primate studies The way you explain social networks, there's been a lot of Of videos that are now being released about how kind of like in many ways there's like alpha chimps Yeah, and so there's like, you know, there's people here that have succeeded in many ways How did they succeed or people out in the business world? Whatever? So yeah, what is your social sort of Yeah, this is a great topic because I think this is misrepresented all the time We have always this notion about height dominance hierarchies, right? There's an alpha and then you know on top and it's almost an alpha always a male right alpha male the male wolf Even though frequently the alpha is female, but Let's break that down for a moment. What does that really mean? This actually whole idea of these dominance hierarchies comes from this idea of priority of access to resources So, you know, you put a peanut in the middle of four monkeys Three are gonna be like, I'm not touching it. That guy's gonna get it and that guy will come and take it Right. We're like, oh, that's the alpha What we're really seeing is this complex set of relationships of histories of personal dynamics We're not seeing some endemic genetic component that makes one alpha and another not So what we're really seeing when we talk about dominant hierarchies We're seeing really complicated social realities that change over time We don't talk about it that way. We tend to think about what there's the high ranking. There's the low ranking It's like that stuff switches that stuff moves around and it's all contingent It's all dependent upon their they're growing up and who they hung out with and who their friends were And what opportunities they had or didn't have that's true for humans It's true for chimpanzees And then what was the word you used you said and it was like access to resources? Yeah, yeah, yeah, priority of access to resources Priority of access to resources is dependent on your hierarchical position Or your relationships or your histories. So for example in macaque monkeys They're pretty clear dominance hierarchies for many of the different species And so like a high ranking male will come by and get access to the food, right? Others won't even bother But in some cases that high ranking male will be around and then this one female Who has three offspring That male come up and that male won't do anything as long as that female is around and those offspring outrank the adult male Social dependence context and it's all about social relationships and histories and experience So dominance is not something inherent of an individual, right? It's a process It's a pattern and we have to remember that because we think we tend to think well This is a type a personality or this is a dominant male. It's like well. Why how where when it's not in his genes the the It's so cool when you talk about going out into the field and seeing the behaviors first and then being able to see how we Um, the we're very hubrisistic in many ways. And so when you look at chimps, you kind of get that Oh, like I get I get where we evolve from right now when did How does this relate with your current professing because do you are you are you teaching these types of Of teachings to students are they coming out sometimes with you to the field? Do you still go out to the field? What are you teaching students? What have been some cool realizations of teaching for you? So, I mean, I think there's a lot of things so, you know a lot of my work is looking at the other primates It's also looking at a human biology. It's also looking at the way in which we conceive of and think about human nature What does it mean to be human right whether it comes sex aggression gender racism all that kind of stuff It's funny though because going into the field to watch non-human primates watch macaque monkeys for example in the field Gives humans the students in this case. You said not a human primates. Yeah I mean I like to use other primates that most people say non-human primates just because to remind it. That's the monkeys These are the humans. We're both primates. Yeah, that's good. Okay, so you got humans You got primate. You got monkeys both being primates. What's amazing about taking students into the field, right in this context is that They're forced to sit and watch other complex social mammals hang out be with each other sort of live their lives And and they can reflect even if subconsciously on our own experience in the way in which we are even more complex than that But watching monkeys is humbling Because a lot of the stuff that we think we're all we're so smart. We're so socially dense, you know humans do all this stuff So do a lot of other organisms Right, and so we got to step back a little bit just because we can destroy a rainforest Doesn't mean we know how to get along better than all of those things living in the rainforest And so taking students into the field is a great way to sort of show them. What does the world look like? How does the world behave? And then they can bring that back into the classroom in the classroom I try to do that with information about human biology about human history and about human society, right? So mixing together all of these different data from Ranges of anthropological biological sociological and historical sources To sort of bring them together and offer a little bit of a glimpse of what does reality look like? It's always messy. It's always entangled. It's always You know complicated But it's awesome And then if we can convey that in anthropology in the classroom and we have the opportunity more than anyone else If we can convey that we're going to prepare those students no matter what they go on to do with this skill set Right They'll know it's complicated, but they'll be able to say something about that complexity Yes And there's this process of just being mindful when you are in the field and I really I'm just so Fascinated by field work now. Okay. Now. Now. What is give us an example of when you connect in the biological and the cultural? Ties into field work when they come back. How yeah, what does that look like? Well, so let's think some of the work I've been doing for the last couple decades is Particularly in this area called ethno primatology, right? So it's thinking about humans and other primates entangled in ecologies Co-constructing their relationships in different places at the planet. I've done a lot of work in Bali Many years ago looking at macaque monkeys humans Balinese hinduism temples, forests rivers Tourism all of these things connected together and they kind of cohabitate. Yeah, they co-create each other They co they shape those interfaces whether we're talking about, you know, sharing the same space We're talking about the economic input from tourists who come to see monkeys for the local villages Or whether we're talking about the potential exchange of bacteria and viruses all of those levels And so when you when you think about this from an in an anthropological context when you ask students to sort of reflect on this it's that crazy Mesh of reality that acts to inspire the students to think that they can take this information and go somewhere else Maybe some of the students who work with me I know some of the students who work with me on monkeys and humans and interfaces have gone on to do all sorts of different things But in their new lives in their new worlds They're like well, I understand these things are all related. They're entangled. They're pushing and pulling on each other and in anthropology One of our underlying goals or what we say is we want to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar And once you break this Bubble of well everything is the way I just lived and realize there are many many successful ways to be human or to be primate All of a sudden the world opens up a little bit to more possibility and more hope even in times of great tragedy Yeah, I love how uh, how you said that make the familiar strange and the strange familiar That's really important and just this is inherently a very multidisciplinary field So that that and our show is as well. So when I when I hear you Talk about augmenting the perception of students to see things as multidisciplinary. That's fascinating Augustine give us your Kind of like your some of your most profound realizations of dealing with students or with teaching students What have been some of your favorites? Well, I think I think I mean, there's a couple things that just jump out I think one of the most important things is is teaching students Is a great humbling experience, right? Because even in in in the classes that haven't been great You can see those sparks, right that that that potential of those aha moments That this desire to know what's going on. How does stuff work? Even in the most blase students every now and then you hook them with something interesting and and all of a sudden It's there and and that that always gives me great confidence that that is messed up as the world is And is getting There are so many people a majority of people want to do something good in the world They want to figure it out and teaching actually constantly reinforces that because if you do a decent job If you open the space for the students to be the co-producers of knowledge Stuff happens stuff gets done That's exciting So that's that's that's one. I think another thing in the eyes of the students To learn and to build value into the world Exactly and and another thing is that by teaching I learn and I know that's a trite phrase People say this all the time But I can't tell you every time I step into the classroom every time I start a lecture or a workshop or some sort of engagement It's material. I know I wrote the stuff. Maybe I've even wrote the book we're using and here I'm going along and someone says something or someone introduces a perspective or someone just raises their hand and asks me to slow down And sort of re-explained this and in those cases all of a sudden, you know, my my mind is blown I'm like, oh, wait a minute. I did not even recognize this or I didn't understand these two things Or I didn't see how this relates and so constantly being pushed by students and graduate students in particular Or great because they're like, you know Junior colleagues in the sense that they have so much knowledge and so much excitement They don't have the experience that you do but they push in really amazing ways And so it's those mind-blowing events, right? And that's like hanging out with friends, right or family or sometimes you sit there It's when someone is just like, well, what why is that and pushes you a little bit That's when you get really that's when you learn, right complacency is the worst thing that can happen, right? And and in a good classroom, there's no complacency because you're constantly getting pushed I love that it's it's so true when you're asked a question by like a junior colleague And then you gain a new sense of seeing things because they're teaching you right. Um, that's that's really that's really Even teaching you what's important now, right? I mean, it would be horrible if we were all in these like age cohorts never being able to talk across ages, right? We wouldn't know what was going on because they grew they grew up with the computers and so they've had a different access to The abundance of information, right the whole way and just and all every sort of generation has a different experiences They're different lives and by listening to them, you know, we get enriched and they by listening to us Totally. Yeah, totally. It's that um the intergenerational wisdom dissemination and and integration Wisdom man. I'm part of this big project called the evolution of wisdom working philosophers, theologians, humanists, anthropologists, biologists It's a this whole notion that there is something out there that we can think of as wisdom The capacity to discern and do do right in the world as best you can Yeah, it's a really cool concept And I wouldn't even have thought about it given my training until I was interacting with philosophers and theologians and Literary folk they push me to think well, you know Can we think about this in a way that makes sense outside of just biology or outside of just an ethnographic context? Yeah, and and the hundred billion people that built civilization They would want us to retain some sort of an essence the essentials of wisdom that that can be passed on I can't I mean I could be totally wrong But this is what I believe that you know a couple million years ago are deep ancestors, right? And in eastern Africa or maybe even southern Africa We're we're developing this incredible capacity to see a stone and in that stone to see something else to see a tool to see a change And reshaping that recreating that and sharing that not just individually, right? But sharing that with the young and the old and working together to sort of craft something this kind of creativity and collaboration And I would like to think that we have inherited it down all that time We are constantly doing it We're working with iPhones now instead of stone tools, but it's the same capacity this this this I this capacity to imagine To create to collaborate what I think being human is is to look at the world See what's around us see what is Imagine alternative possibilities and to get together as a group and try to make those things reality Yeah, that's so well said man. That's so well said. Yeah, but this is anthropology That's so right anthropology offers this insight because it forces you not to just say well It's this reason or it's that reason or single cause it's all about this complex mass And that's what turns out the public off to anthropology because you know anthropologists are famous for saying oh, it's complicated But it's complicated doesn't mean we can't talk about it. We can't know about it We can't learn it We just have to figure out how to best convey that complexity In its wondrous, you know reality and I think you just did the it did it right there with the Contrast you gave a contrast something that's super relatable today of using an iPhone and building apps and collaborating on that And then using a stone tool seeing a rock and making it into a stone tool that can be used for that that that is So I I've they're connected man And I and I kind of and I kind of did a similar thing where I Was very recently writing about just what it would have been like to you know Look at the moon and worship the moon and whatnot and then now we have rockets that go to the moon So it's just this yeah But we haven't lost that on wonder right so I was flying in last night from boston late night right you like went and Anyways, I came back so I'm flying in doing horrible things for the planet by flying too much But that's a whole another thing So I'm flying in and I'm sitting on the aisle seat But the windows open and the airplane is about to land here in San Francisco and it banks And and I see this slip like a half moon Shining brilliant, but a little bit the smoke is making a little bit red So not quite a blood moon But you know just sort of that look and I look at that and in that moment I shared everything across millennia of that wonder for the moon even though we've sent people there and landed there It doesn't in any way shape or form change that awe and wonder and I think that's that's the ticket And how do we get? Is it important to get seven and a half billion people to when they look at the moon to get them to be More awe and have more wonder is to have that sense of they all have that capacity They have the capacity we beat it out of them as they grow up You know we we've we've taken this incredible what I call the creative spark this incredible capacity for creativity and imagination and humanity And many societies ours in particular tries to grind that out of people to become functional become practical Right we can do great things and still have on wonder We can be playful and imaginary and creative and still produce on a regular basis I think we have to be very careful every human alive has the capacity for on wonder And yet most humans because of inequality because of political oppression because of other Contacts aren't able to even find the time to do it whereas others have been had it trained out of themselves And that's that's what scares me Let's this is the newest book My last book I have a new book coming out next year, but the last book was the creative spark how imagination made humans exceptional And and this is kind of what we're what we're talking about right now is that the imagination of the rock the imagination of the phone that The imagination to get to that place has in that collaborative spirit to get there So um, so tell us I mean tell us a bit about that but also some of these other You know, I really also want to talk about the misconceptions human nature race sex And aggression so let's just bust this down clearly right so this concept of human nature is wrong Let us say human natures if you're really interested in that there are many successful ways to be human period We know that the data are in there's just a huge diversity of ways to do the human thing well So let's let's put that aside natures human natures human natures. I think that's the way it is um The problem is many people think that there's some core usually some sort of genetic or a biological core for the complexity of those natures Right and and and obviously everything has a biological facet work organisms or organic creatures, right? But we're never disentangled. Let me give those three examples right race sex and aggression, right?  They are not Yeah, right. This is very important race as we use it is not reflective of a biological unit However, it is a very real lived experience when we say race is a social construct. We don't mean it's fake We mean it's totally real. It's just we made it up and and imposed it on the world and because of racism Right what race you happen to embody or be classified in can have deleterious biological social political historical experiential outcomes That's what's really important. None of this is in our nature Right it is in our histories our institutions our cultures Human biological diversity is is is incredible humans vary in skin color and height and shape and by multiple populations around the planet None of that fits into african european asian Those races are not biological units, but they're sure are real things in people's minds And so I think one of the things to push against is to say well, what do we know about race and racism? And those two always have to be together right because race is Prominent because of racism. So that's one example, right? There's no gene for black white or asian, but there's a lot of institutional political and economic infrastructures for black white and asian That's one example way to look at it.  You know gender is the lived experience dynamic embodiment In a cultural context of sex and sexuality Sex in the most specific context is about biology So we tend to identify male and female that is in mammals, right females, right? tend to give birth and lactate males don't But if we actually break down the biology we find that it's pretty complicated There's a whole range of things that we associate as male or female. They're not two separate things. It's the same species It's a biological continuum and humans fall along that continuum again There are many successful ways to be human. So when we talk about human natures, right?  Those are nonsensical statements What we can say is different cultures institutions histories and bodies map to this diversity of a way of being gendered and sexed in the world So that's really important because if if we just use that as our starting point Not that male men are from mars and women from venus if we use this sort of diversity of successful ways to be sex and gendered Then people have a lot less problem fitting in in the society because right now We're trying to cram everyone into two little cubby holes And you know what the vast majority of us cannot fit in either of those spaces Not perfectly. Yeah, so that's that's really good. And then you know the thing on aggression I think that's really important in this day and age because we have this whole notion Deep from our sort of western political Philosophical histories of this this demon inside us this horribleness particularly in men, right? This sort of original sin if you will of violence and aggression that humans are demonic males Um, and we tend to think that warfare aggression violence cruelty seem to be at the heart of what it means to be human If you look at the fossil and archaeological record if you look at the other primates We find that no, what is characteristic of primates? What's characteristic of humans? Strong social bonding social complexity the potential for great violence and aggression but the reality that Compassion and working together collaborating is probably at least as if not more common than aggression So peace and war are not opposites They're all part of the same capacity we have for getting together for bonding for making stuff happen Sometimes it has horrible outcomes other times it doesn't but there's no naturalness to a Super aggressor if that was the case we wouldn't be here, you know, yeah two million years ago We were small naked bangless hornless clawless critters right with some rocks and some sticks and all of these giant Predators out there and all these challenges. Yeah, what do we have? We had each other That's actually really well. Yeah, I think that's really evident in human bodies and in human biologies and the human paleo-anthropological and archaeological record That doesn't mean that we didn't run around hitting each other in the head too Yeah, but that's just not our go-to right Aggression is not the human nature Whoa the the that was that was really Profound at the end of when you said that when we were just so naked and raw in our in our In our nascent stages of being human that we were That we had each other that that was really I was really profound. I I want to see if I can If I can give us let's see if I if I got this right so with so with race there is A we're all human We're all one race human race, right human race Looking from the moon. We're all human race and then biologically biologically, right and then the And then the the It's become a We we made the societal we said societal differences historical political social structures We're going to divide this cluster here this cluster here this cluster here and we're going to call them things They're real things, right? There's divisions are real in the sense that they're created. They have history. They have institutions. They have impacts But they're not biology. Yes.  And so yeah, okay, and so the what we would call like where do you draw the line between male and female? Right biologically speaking it's arbitrary, right? It's like drawing line between Europe and Asia We we don't have a line. We just say well, that's these mountains, right? These are Europeans. These are Asians. That doesn't and then we say well, this is masculine or this is feminine We make up those decisions. Yeah. Yeah, the human spreads across the whole place and then there are certain things like ocean the big five personality And so you can make approximate assessments of of psychometrics and whatnot Totally and so and then in there, you know, like what's classified as feminine in one society might not be classified Holy as feminine in another and what's interesting what's classified feminine as masculine may not map to the sex body That's right, right? They may be, you know, the sex body might move around between all of those gendered concepts Because now you see a whole movement for males to be more vulnerable Women want to take on more work or career roles in that sense and and they always did, right? I mean that the thing is is that gender roles are fluid and they're historically variable, right? So the way we are right now It's not necessarily the way that we were in the past nor will it be in the future But it is the way we are right now And so we got to deal with that and sort of think about what does that mean? What it does mean is that we're malleable We're open to change and and I and I am always very interested in what the next Evolutions of civilization are and if humans because I do think there is something to do with this The way that we use technology and how that's affecting our brains and where that's taking us And then also to have the singularity to transhumanism Merging with AI all that kind of stuff So there is going to be this next evolution and then just the way that you know Even with neurodiversity the way that some children are being born into not wanting to have Social engagements, but wanting to just go really deep into learning about something And so if that's the case Who are we to pull people away from that thing and push them towards other things and Neurodiversity is actually that's one of the new frontiers, right? Yeah, when we get now that we're realizing oops wait, there is no normal There's just a whole range of being human And understanding that is actually going to be critical for educational policy Right for for what our future societies look like Um, there's a whole bunch of other diversity that that that we already know about that We still have trouble dealing with man neurodiversities can be the heart It's going to be really hard for people to deal with yeah And then that then the then the last point they made about aggression was was quite interesting that that I really enjoyed thinking about just the cooperation That we've had over time to to build what we have and cooperation doesn't mean lack of aggression, right? Like who who who wins the battle right the army that's most aggressive or the opera army that cooperates best The army that cooperates best the army that is strongly bonded Right and so like the sparta Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah So that I mean that's what's actually really important people try to do Peace and violence as opposites. They're not They're just humans do cooperation really really well So when we do it for really violent cruel things we do it better than anything else But we have the capacity to do that at the same time We have the capacity for incredible peace for incredible Compassion and that is just as if not more common in our histories Than the violence Part of our capacity, you know, so stop Saying that they're opposites And talk about them as capacities and what do we do with capacities? We modify them. We exploit them. We engage with them. Let's think seriously about this stuff What's the lie about monogamy? So, I mean here's the big problem. Uh, monogamy is a particular Historical concept about marriage practice, right? So monogamy in the in the reproductive biology is that One part two partners stay together for one mating season or longer exclusively. It's actually very rare in in a mating season Yeah, well even a mating season, right? So many many organisms don't do that, right? Most organisms are Polygamous in the sense they move around and have multiple mating partners, right? So do humans we have social structural cultural historical norms and expectations about Reproductive relationships and we've codified those in marriage contracts or different kinds of things And so monogamy as a political philosophical orientation has got all mixed up with the biology and separate those two There's no, um putting there's no rings on on chimps. There's no like no, but there's these incredible relationships between individuals Sometimes they're called social bonds. Do they have a lifelong? Well, many do sometimes they have sex sometimes they don't so that's the thing is when we think about pair bonds Bonds between two individuals that are very very strong. Those can go for a lifetime, but they might have nothing to do with reproduction Yeah, they might be about all sorts of other stuff. That's right. And it's the same for humans And we could have you know, two humans could be very very tightly Bonded in a reproductive context, but it doesn't mean they don't find interest in having sex with other So that that conflation with sex reproduction social bonding, you know, those are actually all different things They all come together in certain contexts But if we try to pretend that they're all the same and like if everyone is spending their whole life trying to find their You know, uh soulmate You know, that's a problem find Soul partners find social partners find bonds Hang out and make connections and not and not always will those bonds be sexual and Yeah, exactly. Sometimes they'll be for a year. Sometimes they'll be for seven years or whatever, right? But that that weird expectation that like oh boom, you know Find one and done. That's a weird concept. Not that it doesn't happen a lot. Yes. Yes But it works for certain people But it is not we can't think again back to the human nature, right? What do humans do? We're messy We're complicated and we're social get over it. Yeah Wow, this has been so enlightening Awesome, and I guess just to wrap it up. I'd love to Um hear some of your um your synthesis about like what you see as the current state of humanity and where we're going Hey I mean, so my my the two things one is general humanity, right our species homo sapiens sapiens, right? I I love humans. I I'm incredibly optimistic about human potential and human capacity Everything I know about human biology about our deep history about our recent history and about our present Inspires me to see what humans can do, right for good and for worse So I'm optimistic about humanity what I'm not optimistic about is our contemporary political Economic and social landscapes. I think there's a degree of cruelty and a degree of inequality that is just unsustainable And so I'm really worried about the immediate future because of inequality because of racism because of sexism and because of a kind of institutional bias that Cru rips people apart And and while humans have great potential fighting against these inequalities and injustices is pushing us to our limit So I'm worried about that and what would be a solution that you Well, we've got to ramp down and if we're never going to get rid of any inequality That's always here to stay now given our systems in our histories, but we can ramp it down Um education. Oh and I and I and I thought I I've I've started proposing this on the show now that Here's the top scs in the world. There's the lowest scs in the world It's just that um if everybody can move up at the same time and then you just bring the lowest scs up closer Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I mean what you do is shave a little bit off like, you know, you could anyways That's a whole economic argument. Yes reducing inequality. I think that's critical But also education is a great way to do that. So let's reinvest in our schools Let's make teaching matter. Let's make learning matter. Let's really really care about kids I think that's uh right now.  They don't care about kids in health. Not really If we cared more about kids We'd probably get a little bit further along the route road to making the world better and reducing inequality Yeah, and we were mentioning that earlier in the conversation as well Just as deep care for augmenting the perception of children to understand like the contrast that you were making Before about where society was and where we are now that we had the stone and we made it into tools and now we have Technology like computers and I make that into tools with the apps and the things that we use them for But it's all social. It's all creative and it's how we use it, right? I mean we could use that stone tool to Knock someone over the head or we could use it to work together To build more stone tools to teach others and to go skin a critter or dig up a root or something like that We have that choice. Yes. Yes. This has been so fascinating. Um, I'm I'm deeply grateful that you joined us. I always love having this opportunity to chat. Thank you. Thank you Thanks for coming on the show. I've hugely appreciated my pleasure. Appreciate it Um, please check out the links in the bio for triple a and for augustine's work Um, also do give us your comments. We'd love to hear from you about the episode what you all thought Uh, go and manifest your dreams in the world. Go and build the future everyone. Thanks much love and we'll see you soon by Wow, that was so fun This is a great concept. We would grow a fun interview man. I'm glad you had a good time


This is Startup Storefront Welcome to season five For centuries mankind has been obsessed with the possibility of immortality After Walt Disney's death reports of his body being frozen in liquid nitrogen spread like wildfire The thought was that he can be brought back to life by future more advanced civilizations These reports turned out to be false, but it didn't stop people from thinking about the concept of living forever While immortality is still science fiction story file has created the next best thing By having subjects answer upwards of sixteen hundred questions a Subjects memories are preserved and created into an artificial intelligence so that future generations can hold a conversation in real time with the deceased From helping teach social skills to kids with autism to leveling up corporate training modules the applications of this technology Extend way beyond just immortality in today's episode. We speak with Heather the founder of story file She explains how story file is preserving history by interviewing Holocaust survivors the applications of interactive adult videos If you know what I mean and the importance of keeping the human element in AI interactions All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Heather co-founder of story file Thanks for coming. Thank you for having me people who don't know what story file is. How would you explain it? What is story file story file is a new concept called? conversational video AI and it's where you produce videos and those videos Can have a conversation with people so it's videos that talk back and when we went to your website So there's this video with like William Shatner and some other sort of I don't want to call them sad But the angle of if I die my family should can remember me and can talk to me whenever I want And so you see these a quick story. I'll give is like a grandparent or even your your co-founders Mother I believe yes, right and so they're at the funeral and then they play video of her And so in some way it's like this legacy that lives on and then you can speak to it And then in fact they respond to the answer that you're getting when you think about what you're doing Is that the main vertical is that the main sort of business because you could do a million things, right? So when I think about story file in the technology, I can think of like professors This becomes super easy for any like learning management any training management McDonald's Burger King Walmart UPS Super easy out the gate go record once FAQ's customer service Anything anything where there's a question? Yeah, and in commonly asked questions normally like you mentioned professors and yeah Anywhere You can think about this in the porn world and we can edit that in or out, but there's some applications here You know it was so funny because I went to where was I I was it like one of those top 10 universities Becky's and I was giving a lecture and the guy we were walking back to the car So he had to take me to dinner.  Our focus primarily it's commercial It's large enterprise like Walmart's a customer of ours. Okay, and they use the training Yeah, they use the story file methodology or the technology for training for onboarding employees They've got a great thing about they call it a financial mentor So you have all these new store managers that are trained and you know, you spend two weeks training them they go away and What do they remember? 10% So, you know Walmart like a lot of companies have their own app and so you just go in you're on the app And if you have a particular they call it a financial mentor And if you have a particular question about the store that something that you know, my Encaps are not selling, you know, how do I improve my? marketing or merchandising or something like that and There's a gentleman that actually does this in real life, but he gets a lot of calls and emails So this is a way for them to just get an answer Really quick to their question No 72 hours later I get an answer via email or the guy doesn't have time to call or whatever and then if you do want to have a Conversation or you do have follow-up questions that they haven't dealt with in the story file Then you have an opportunity to talk to them in person the question that I have about this is how much time is spent on Figuring out the questions that you ask the the people because I know that when you started you were interviewing survivors of the Holocaust right and I read that you would you would have them sit down It would be a week straight eight to five Monday to Friday And that would be the time that you'd interviewed them and you'd asked them like over 2,000 questions I mean that isn't a very extensive Portfolio of knowledge that that you are capturing and I don't know if Walmart Has the same requirements But I would imagine that there's a lot of prep work in in having these questions lined up ahead of time and I want to know your process and how you figure out Which questions ask and what gets left on the cutting room floor. Yeah, nothing gets left on the cutting room floor That's the interesting thing is everything that these people have said every answer is captured and put in the database regardless But the process to develop the what we call the storyline so the lineup questioning can take anywhere from four to six weeks or more We partner very closely with the client Obviously what we would like to do is just train the client in order to so they can do this process on their own We don't necessarily have to be the production house all the time So we we take them through that we you know We talk to them about the questions that they've got we talked to them about their curriculum We ask their subject matters and their people. You know what kind of questions? What are your top just right down for me your top 25 questions you get asked every day then they have curriculum you have to Direct it, you know, you have to ask a question that'll get to them talking about that specific subject or that specific response During the interview process. There are what we call follow-up questions that come up that you want clarifying questions there's a lot of Thinking through It's sort of like the branching narratives that you see kind of yet choose your own adventure like in the gaming industry They use what's called branching narratives a lot. So it's it's starting from a place where what do I see this? Conversation, how do I see this conversation going and what are all the iterations of that conversation that someone could have? the reason that we did so many questions with in particular with the Holocaust survivor is we were covering their whole life from beginning to end and Dealing with most of those questions had to do with maybe a five or six year period in their life And then the rest of it was the impact of what that what that meant to their families to themselves and Mostly trying to get at how were they resilient enough to come back and just be productive citizens again after experience like that How did they do that and they were so inspiring that you just keep asking questions about their lives We have approximately 2,000 questions on the consumer product, which is story file life Not many people would be able to answer all of them because they haven't had specific experiences There's storylines in there for World War two veterans. Maybe you weren't a World War two veteran There's things in there about divorce and adoption, you know Just different life cycle events different things that a normal human being and this planet who's lived any given time has probably Experience touched on things like that. So you want to Lay out all of those topics all of those questions and give people the option to either opt-in Answering those or not if they don't have anything to say about it. They skip it It's a lot of research for most of the the clients that we have but it's a process that we train them to go through themselves and Ultimately do for themselves. Do you guys fit in the SAS business model? Yeah, okay And so are you training in AI to onboard the clients or is it very hands-on? There's an implementation person the SAS product that we have is called Conversa Okay, and it's a platform that you go on and it helps you create your own conversational video module So whatever your use case is you lay that out It helps you find the different questions gives you hints and ideas and kind of walks you through the whole step And then it helps you publish it at the end whether you want to embed it in your website You want to share it, you know, put it on your LinkedIn share it on all your different social medias You want to use it in a another training module and your learning management system, etc So so there is like training modules that you can pull on top of it like questions and then if they get it wrong They're sent back to the Yeah, so I guess that too, but actually let's reconsider this answer this question if it's a learning module They're like an interactive video. Yeah, if it's a learning module, it's a component of the curriculum, right? so it's it's within that the general curriculum and It's normally some place that people can practice having conversations or asking or getting more information See the thing is people learn probably six times deeper than when they just read something If they are the ones asking questions like you and I were talking about curiosity earlier before curiosity It it's actually a human trait that you can see in in babies You know, that's how we learn and how do we learn when we get to be adults and we have language skills We start asking questions Human beings are trained to just get information and ask their own question. You learn deeper when you do that So it's really kind of taking those curric that curriculum Having an expert that you can personally talk to you can ask your own question and You get their answer they talk to you. That's the pitch, right? That's the okay So in my head, I'm thinking about this like this is a real true story So maybe maybe eight years ago if I was a Google employee I get hired at Google I go through all these online courses and so as you know, they have professors the professors come on and do this Video and there's this interactive component to the video and so these videos aren't like if you're a coder They're not meant to teach you out of code. They're more of like this is emotional intelligence, right? And so there's this emotional intelligence module and it's built in a way where it's a professor at the beginning Explaining to you this thing and then it goes, okay Think of a sad time in your life and then you do that and then it goes and it flashes all these things at you and Ask you how many of these do you remember and then because you're sad You remember X of them then then it was I think of a really happy time in your life same scenario How many of these things did you remember? You remembered less than X because you were happy and so then they show you you see this is emotional intelligence But in that so if I'm Google right and I have and I've already spent all this money to develop this What you're saying is your pitch is the human being so Google your employer Walmart your employer My product story file is much more effective because for the first time ever your employees able to interact with me Mm-hmm with our product exactly and that's that's interesting So they're able to ask that that professor if you had done that scenario mm-hmm I guarantee you would have five questions afterwards Yeah, yeah to ask that professor, so but I'm not a Google employee is just Paycheck and and some duckling feet. So we're a little different. But yeah, it engages you for sure You know you you remember that conversation you remember Even if it's somebody else asking your question like I'm sure you've been to lectures with Maybe a book launch or whatever and and then it it's opened up to Q&A afterwards and The Q&A is never long enough first of all. They're always Even if if somebody else asks your question You're gonna engage more Then if you were just While you were listening to that lecture The energy changes in the room when you open it up into a Q&A Do you see support moving in this so so there's a whole new in the news right now is the AI support It's like all over Instagram where people can't believe it because it's like just an AI But you're just you're talking to it and it's working and there's no need for a human being on the other side of that computer And so let's let's think about us texting that's all automated now actually Home Depot has a really good version of it, too But you're texting but you're texting and so do you do you view or maybe this matters? So maybe if I'm a five-star hotel group, I think I'm just thinking out loud That customer service should be a human being or the appearance the illusion of a human being When you're able to be more personal and you're able to put an actual human face on it You'll be more successful and you'll get a lot more customer loyalty happiness Satisfaction everything will be higher. We have companies coming to us and say they actively tried to take the human out of it For years right and you're saying now no no they're coming to us and say we We want to put the human back in Because it's just it's not working. Is it seamless does it feel seamless? Yeah, and it'll get even even more Yeah, I mean we've pushed it a lot in the last six years. It's I mean I've been doing this since 2010 So I came up or no, I came up with this concept for the Holocaust survivors in 2010 Skype wasn't a thing ARS Wasn't it they you know speech recognition wasn't a thing but you could see The trajectory and where things were going we had a use case these people were dying They impact society in such a significant way because for 60 years. They've been talking about their experience so Why not try to replicate that was your family a survivor or like why why that problem? I was an immersive exhibition designer and for some reason I I fell into doing a lot of Holocaust and genocide Exhibitions I was so inspired by these people and I was learning so much from them and One day it occurred to me my grandchildren will never be able to have the same conversations. I'm having You know, and I thought that was a shame Especially a lot people don't even think it happened right which is even crazy. That's crazy, but you know I went to one organization the USC show foundation and They're the leader in Audiovisual testimony, they have the largest archive in the world of anything and I said, okay, it has to sit with you. You guys have to take this on because If it's gonna have a life Afterwards, I could I could have done it for a couple museums. Maybe I mean it was awfully expensive too But if it was gonna have a life, it had to sit with them So my partner with them and then we found happened to find another USC Institute Which I didn't know was a USC Institute and I found them then the three of us partnered on that and then When I was out in the public what we were what we had to do was get people to talk to these and those Holocaust survivors and have those conversations because we needed data So you needed to train the AI AI just doesn't happen It's it's a pretty manual process actually and so at the time I was getting questions from the public like this is amazing. Can I do this with my grandfather? Can I do this with my aunt who's just diagnosed with cancer? Can I do this for my parents? Can I do this with the founder of our company? You know and I kept getting that question over and over and over and finally you just say, okay What would it look like if I made this ubiquitous? You know, I had teachers that would come up to me and say I teach autistic children And I would love to use this so that they can practice socializing. They can practice having conversations Languages, how much would you like to practice having a real conversation with someone who actually speaks the language and ask whatever you Want to ask make sure that you talk to women on a date Well, Dave in today's world dating all these But get to know this person before you actually go on a first date and waste three hours or four hours of your life And you can get a lot the reason that we never went with audio and it trust me It would have been a lot easier to do we stuck to it for with video because You need to look into someone's eyes when you're talking to them. You need to read that you need the human human being can tell So much from an individual just by looking through into their eyes They know if they're lying they know if there's something strange or just know they know if something's off And there needed to be the body language because even in your voice and your intonation most of communication is body language and That includes your voice and intonation which you would get with the audio, but you wouldn't get the visual You wouldn't get the body language so hence why we Kept with video and kept doing you know Instead of saying, okay, we'll do the easy route Just the audio and was the path to that so at the beginning you're trying to solve this problem But I can imagine so like the the my grandma there was just diagnosed with something I'd like a video that's touching but it doesn't make money in the sense of okay Okay, a person that just explained the sad story to me. Are you willing to pay X to make this happen? The answer that's probably no and so now they are they are oh, yeah And what what is that? It's think about all of the the people there are 90 million people on Heritage comm what is heritage comm? It's like an ancestry comm. Okay Ancestry comm has probably 40 Are you concluding that they're on there to find out who their grandparents are? They want to know who their family what they want to know as much as they want to know where they're from Yeah, they want to know where they're from, but they want to know the story Yeah, so my wife Natalia capolini capolini, okay, they're whole family forever since I've known them. Oh, we're Italian. No, I'm like oh interesting Okay, I'm from Peru. There's not a hair of me that thinks I'm a hundred percent Peruvian because you know You know yeah, just look at history book. I don't know like it's isn't that hard but okay, I love the pride thing like the Irish and Italian thing in Boston makes no made no sense to me ever.  She's more Scottish than Nick She's Welsh of some variety French and then a touch of Italian which I'm like, which is fine It just means your family had sex in Italy took a last name Learned how to make pasta that her grandfather still talks about today. Mm-hmm and move to America.  Okay, if you don't know where you came from Yeah, how do you know where you go? How do you know who you are? But I think the point I'm touching on is I don't think everyone anyone really knows and what's interesting is that there's an Assumption that they know and I think these these websites, but there's there's an assumption, but okay, so Yes, the 23 me can help that and then the other the flip side of that is then you start finding out all the stories And then you start finding out who these people were Wouldn't it be great if I learned that like the grandfather that came over to this country and data What if I could actually talk to him and know his story that he know who he was as a person? Like get to know him really get to know him in five ten years. Everybody on this planet like we're going to have a story file in 50 years Anybody that finds out about or wants to know anybody can get to know them I can get to know you in Peru I can get to know your whole entire family if I wanted to if it was public. That's amazing Is that what you're solving for? Yeah, like that So when you go to bed at night when you're talking to your board when you're raising capital Is that it because it's interesting, right? Where you so we call it a we call it an archive of humanity Okay, but it's not that's not the Walmart stuff is just not making Yeah, interestingly enough the enterprise use case Although it took years to develop the SAS platform the use case is easier to Build a business on the other use case the archive of humanity that will come Here's the catch 20 to you know, you've got to have people That understand that you can talk to video. So how do you do that? The easiest way is to get people Using it at work being forced to use it being forced to talk to these and Clut, you know new students come into a class and the professor has a story file because they don't want to have office hours This is a really good story. Okay, so then those kids start using it Mm-hmm, then you learn okay. I can do this for myself train the human because otherwise it's too difficult to start With the general public and change behavior. It takes longer So hence if it takes longer, it's gonna take more much more funding if you start with the business case But it's tied to you build a company and then you move you slowly Branch out and you slowly this is controversial Why not then do porn? I didn't think about I didn't say the I did I ever say that we wouldn't do porn I don't know. I haven't said that public it would be anyone can anyone can Anyone can license anyone can license the technology and they can talk if you can license the technology You can do a story file with any of your your stars your your people like whoever you want whoever Yeah, how many times have you walked out of a movie and you've had a question For the director for the set designer for the for the visual effects For this is why I don't watch movies actually because I'm just left with questions that I can't have answers to right And then you go down you you might some people most people go down Google You know type it in her question and go down a rabbit hole the eight hours later. They haven't found the answer So what are you you know you've wasted that? Why can't you just ask the person? Why can't I stop the documentary in the middle of the documentary and just like I Can do the the the history of the person and what their name is and their whole yeah I want to just ask them a question right then and there you can do that because your your voice your your TV Yeah, your remote controls voice activated now, right? So you could do that. Yeah, okay So then there's another part of that where your AI would know what question to ask also as you train as it gets more intelligent There's a part of you that so if there's 2,000 questions for an onboarding person, right? And so that would mean like let's say we're doing this interview right now And there's somebody listening and your AI was in the background running. There'd be a part of that AI that would say Susie in taxes or human acts somebody is thinking this is the question to ask We're working on AI right now that can is Generative so you can generate questions based on the transcript and you can do it in pretty much real time But for the most part human beings are pretty predictable There are a lot of questions that are said that's why I asked a porn question By the way because I know everyone watching this listening to this is gonna be like I have an interesting thought It's probably around porn. Is DAO gonna ask the question and then if I don't Okay, you really want to get into it. How many? Porn I don't even know what you got videos Have you watched and you've afterwards wanted to ask the individuals that were in the video questions Or had a conversation with them or gotten to know them in a personal so if you're asking me directly Yeah, so the answer is almost all the time because to me it's interesting It's like there you go like I want to know like like for example someone watching this video might say right who else is in the room They can't see other people in the room. I can't see the lighting great question Right they can't and so when I think about porn It's almost like there's probably you know an inlexi in that room How much how much of it is really are there drugs and alcohol or is there a liquor cabinet? That's now empty, you know, and so I think there's like this It comes from a place of concern feel about what you're doing. How do you feel about what you're doing? Like what do you do after this? Well you asking that question brought up an interesting point of I've never had that thought I've never had that that like the end of the video and I have questions Because Not a porn set, but I've had a lot of other sets And but the reason I think the reason why I've never had that is because what something you touched on earlier Is that I've never been introduced to the idea? So I didn't know That you could do it and so like once I think once you are introduced to the idea then all of a sudden you're gonna be asking that of everything and For me, it's like yeah now that I have that in my head now that I've been introduced to that concept Now maybe I will go out throughout my life Like I'm gonna go see Book of Mormon later tonight to play and it's like you're gonna love it And I'm well I'm sure I'm gonna have questions or like follow. Yeah, or oh so many questions about the Mormon If like you have either Matt and Trey who wrote it answering questions or Actual Mormons answering questions like okay. Well, this was right. This was not you know This could be just the start of a much bigger interaction That you have with everything in your life think about if if Wikipedia was was verbal like you could just ask a question and Then you really get to know those individuals instead of having to go through and read their whole thing And it's more expedient right. It's more efficient But it's also it's meaningful because it's they're real human beings that you're talking to For example, have either of you got forbid ever had either you have been diagnosed with something or a loved one Has been diagnosed with something. Yeah disease. Yeah, okay when you found out. Yeah, what was one of the first things you did? So I was different for me. I don't know. I don't know what that normal answer is but for me it was more of um I Flew home and I wanted to understand it so I was like you wanted to understand it went to the doctor with her Right. Yeah, you wanted to understand you wanted answers. I Wanted it. Well, you wanted to talk to somebody more deeply than that. I wanted answers that weren't Covered so I knew like if you're the one getting the bad news you go to an emotional place right away And so I wanted an answer that didn't have the layer of yeah I might die tomorrow and it's going through my filter words are coming out and those words are being told to my children So I just needed like I needed the un unedited right raw details of what it is Right, so I can make my own assumption That's if you could have talked to someone who had gone through exactly what she was diagnosed with would that have helped you? No, not necessarily. No because I think this is where I'm an outlier in this and so I don't want to derail a conversation I think for me personally Like you said the human being is predictable And so most human beings are predictably emotional And so for me to talk to someone who's particularly emotional is of no value If if I could have talked to a doctor and the doctor could have said this is the diagnosis And this is the thing and this is what the lab result said and this is what it means in English That I'd have been like cool and then from that conversation I would have called four of my friends who are doctors and I would have said here are the PDFs Okay, so it's a little bit different, but those doctors haven't actually experienced what your mom is going through No, or I've been diagnosed with that personally correct if you had been able to talk to someone who maybe was diagnosed 10 15 years ago with the same situation it helps people for example, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis One of the first things aside from my first reaction, which was oh that makes sense You know and then my second was What am I gonna experience? What what's gonna happen? What do I what can I expect? Now a doctor couldn't tell me that because I'm sitting there talking to this doctor And I know that they've never gone through that. I don't they don't have multiple sclerosis They might have seen a lot of patients. They might be able to tell me some things, but I don't know that Because I'm not talking to somebody who's actually lived it. I want to talk to someone who's lived it I want to know how did you tell your children? How did you wake up every morning? Thinking that the worst was gonna happen, you know, what how do you cope with that? How do you ten years on you're fine? How did you what what did you do? You know so many questions. Yeah, that's a really good use case that you're bringing up We all need to ask more questions in our lives and learn from each other It's that why this company makes more sense for you too in some way is that's why this company makes yeah, like you do this every day Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I want people to get answers. I want people to be able to get to know people I want people to be able to get to know family members co-workers Possible dates, you know thinking if think about it if you could talk to somebody Five individuals before you chose who you would want to actually go on a first date with I Almost 99% could tell you that that person will be very different than the first person You would have chosen had you not talked to each one of those individuals because you're basing it on what you're basing On the pictures that they took or like your bio or like a video that they did vanity metrics You know an intro video to them that they did on their thing to me that that almost falls into a different category When we're going on dates, we're trying to build a connection and a connection is both ways Whereas I view this is like a one-way so like you can have on your dating profile like your story file And the person viewing it will have that information Whereas I might I won't have any part of that conversation. So you don't know that though What if I chose out of what if I talked to five Individuals and I talked to their story about and I chose you and then I pinged you and The app told me oh this person's interested whatever then you would go on and you'd talk to my story file If you were interested at that point, then you could choose So then it's just like a springboard into into like now don't get me wrong I don't personally think that is gonna take the place of whether or not I meet you in person and we have chemistry or not I'm just saying give yourself a little bit more information Going into a situation a better chance maybe a Finding someone that really is not gonna waste your time or really, you know, you might not be interested in because you Pretty much would know that if you asked somebody a few questions Do you ever talk to any of these tech giants about how they view? Sort of the future of video and is there like a shared vision? Because in a sense of what you're saying is like like in Google first came out It was put just put words into web and what you're saying in some way is Words are cool, but the human wants to interact and so now let's I don't want to say web 3 this But it's almost like let's level up a bit. Oh, it is definitely web 3 and we see voice being activated right so we know voice is moving in a direction and everyone has an Alexa blah blah blah And so now the whole thing is just make Alexa look like somebody And then do that universally actually be a human be a human have Siri be a human, right? Have you got any insight from these companies around how they view it? Even though I've been in this world for 10 years 12 years It's still so new. Yeah, so many people. I think that over the last six eight years We've all been told for example, okay You can use avatars and you can use photo real avatars and they're just as good and you can replace the human so I think a lot of companies and a lot of enterprises really bought into that and They still take work. They're not as easy as most people think they are to to really do well Which is the same for conversational video modules. It is a bit of setup But it's fine. It's not any more than you would do if you were doing a chat bot So it's just getting people to realize you don't need to do that avatar There are places for avatars like let's say I want to know where to find a three-quarter inch bolt in Home Depot. I can have a conversation with an avatar in that case Completely emotional. Yeah, I don't need a human being to tell me where it is or whether or not this Home Depot has it It's Harry the Home Depot wizard. Yeah, just that can be an avatar But if you want to have a conversation or get to know someone and you want it to be you want to get to know them You want it to be personal you want people to connect with it Then you need to use a human being so yes, I think that we have to educate companies and Enterprise and move them to say there are certain use cases that that's great for But then there's another option and in some cases you might want to use this option in other cases You might when you when you say this to these companies, is there like an aha moment or a moment where they're like Oh, yeah, why are we using an avatar? Or do they get it? I think the one thing that they think that they can't do with conversational video With our our system is update it on a regular basis and and really quickly. Okay, which is Is not true you can because it's an input Yeah, you can but it's just as easy for me to turn on a camera in front of my desk Yeah, and say it to you Right as it is to find the find it in the program type it in and then enter it Let's wrap on this so I don't want to give the training version, but let's pretend like Let's say Nick here. We're gonna go ahead and Nick signs up Nick What's what's the process right of of all of Nick's family members want to remember Nick when he's this young man and You're talking about the consumer Yeah, yeah, and so what's required of him you just sign up You know you decide kind of how many questions you want to start with There are different packages. That's all you choose your questions that you want to answer There's starter scripts.  You can embed that link or share it with your family you can invite members and invite us like what we call a family family circle to Log in and actually interact with you So that actually ties into a question I had about the actual process of recording it because I saw a photo of when you were Interviewing the Holocaust survivors and the rig that you had was as big as this room Like 6,000 LED lights like you don't even need to do that anymore actually I can capture the same amount of data with minimum seven cameras and Five depth sensors now. Okay. The lighting is key. The lighting is key. It's gotten so much I mean the data you can capture is ridiculous Detailed, but that's only if you really want to future-proof that image Yeah, if I might want eventually museums do this because you know 25 years from now They don't know what their museum is gonna look like they don't know what you know display technology is gonna come about they Are gonna have to compete and you'll never have an opportunity to get that data again So you might as well future-proof it as much as you can or really working hard to Advance the processing of that data so that you can actually in real-time Produce maybe an AR version like you could produce an AR version and You could literally project me on the end of the table and have a conversation with me It's a lot to process. That's why they take massive computing power But it's getting better and it's getting easier Yeah cam on there like I'm just so yeah, so most people I like personally like to suggest that a different generation interview a different generation and Well, I just curious why is that because that that that what about that works? because First of all, it's great for you because you get to learn about that person you bond with that person you get to know Them in a completely different way Then you would expect the things you thought you you can go in saying I know everything about my mom I guarantee you you will hear stories that you have never heard. I mean, it's fascinating It's really interesting and then you can ask also Input follow-up questions if you want if you're doing the interview Like things you want you're like whoa, wait a minute. I've never heard that story. It tell me more You can add that whereas if you're just interviewing yourself and doing it yourself That might not be something you'd think about It's just an amazing Experience and it's an amazing experience for you to go through Because you think about things and you think about your life in a different way when you go through it and you're answering all these questions about your life and thoughts and decisions that you made and It's a really Unbelievable experience to have to go through it. Do you ever give them prompts on Questions to ask because there are some questions that are inherently more interesting than others.  No, no So we have people that are interviewing their their children at different points Like they'll do the same script with them like every five years and then every 10 years. That's cool Yeah, and then their children at 16 or 18 or 24 it will be able to go and talk to them at 16 It'd be really cool.  Yeah. Yeah, that's such a It'd be cool to see how you've evolved to yeah as a person over the years There's it's so funny you say that there's this happened recently So my wife went to a school and I think like every fifth grade or something they have they write a letter to themselves when they turn Yeah, and so Natalia my wife gets a letter in the mail 30 and so And it's like the five-year-old version of her. Oh, she's just reading Like the fifth grade version of her. Yeah, and it is so funny. It's like, you know, she would have been like 11 or 12 It was like the cutest thing. Yeah, and she talks about her future and what's crazy about it She's not she was kind of right She's like I'm gonna go to school in Boston Mm-hmm, and I don't particularly want to pay attention to the boys like I'm just interested in creating Mm-hmm, and I just hope people are nice to me And like I don't need many friends. I love this crazy thing and it's like that's kind of what happened I love it.  Yeah, but it's like shocking But it's in letter form She was foreseeing something right so she was almost it makes sense if you happen to believe in kind of manifesting Yeah, then what you're always told you you have to see that and who you're gonna be and what's gonna happen And then you just you kind of it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You just make it happen, right? You have that way. Yeah, it's a perfect way to rap. So where do you see this ending? Her story file or Heather First of all a conversational video in some capacity is gonna be something that people interact with on a daily basis Everyone that's the new world. Yeah, what's funny is that as you say that I can almost think about This time in today's world where people are on video, right? So we're on Instagram We're kind of creating it already. Mm-hmm, but we're not piecing it together correctly I guess or in the way that you see the future not in a not in a conversational, but also this is about the real you and Mm-hmm, and it's getting to know that person again Rather than you know, we have personas on Instagram might not be really really are So it's who you really are and who people really are either. Thank you. I'm sure I'm on your part Yeah, I appreciate sharing your story. Thank you. It's beautiful. Thank you If you made it this far, I bet you loved the episode So you should join our YouTube channel membership for only two ninety and a month This gets you access to one the whole on a bridge conversation to you get the episodes on Monday one day earlier Three you get two additional entries to our giveaways check out our Instagram to see we've given away and four You get access to seasons one through three. That's over a hundred episodes of wisdom and life-changing advice What are you waiting for join?


My name is Jonathan. This, that's Noodle. He's part of Guana. Did you see all the stuff come out of his nose? Tempe, like, oh my god, Tempe. Tempe. So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna rotate the pug, set it to 375 and rotate every 15 minutes until golden brown. Like grocery stores, I'm showing you, bam. And she needs to love himself. Yeah, his hearing's totally gone. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for watching this week's episode of Tools of the Trade. My name is Jonathan. This, that's Noodle. And this is Tools of the Trade, the show where we find out what everyday items our everyday entrepreneurs need to get through their day. So this week we are featuring the Sarah Small Box. Sarah Small of Wicker Goddess works every single day to bring the best of Bohemian lifestyle and vintage goods to your home. So she does everything from making cards to making some beautiful prints for your wall to repurposing vintage materials that you find. So everything from mugs to ceramics to one of her signature items, Wicker. She's local to one of Godaddy's main campuses in Tempe, Arizona. So we sort of partnered with her, helping her on her journey.  But as far as helping to get her set up online and to help get her, you know, her email marketing set up and her SEO essentially all the tools in Godaddy's kit, we worked to build into Sarah's business. And we actually just posted last week a 14 minute documentary that we filmed with her about entrepreneurship and essentially what one year of building a business has done to her. I'm so excited to be able to show this box to you guys. So we're gonna open the box. Okay, so the first item we have in the Wicker Goddess box is a hydro flask. So this I can imagine is in this box for a ton of reasons. First of all, hydration. You guys, every day you gotta get water wasted. It's good for your mind, body and soul. It helps with your skin. It helps with your blood.  Her business is based in Arizona. So I understand the need to have water, especially if you're working in a desert, right? If you're somewhere like Tempe, Arizona. So this holds a ton of water. It's one of those water bottles that helps to keep hot water hot and cold water cold. I know I make this joke all the time, like, oh, it's a water bottle. Fill it with tequila and call it a day. Have you ever filled a hydro flask or a water bottle with like a nice cocktail and taken it to the park with you? Or the movie? I'm sorry, I saw Birds of Prey last weekend in like at like 11 in the morning and we had a cocktail kind of going between the two of us. It was fabulous and I'm fine. Hydration is key. Another thing that I learned, so this is another thing that I wanna stress everyone do, and I learned this from my friend, Madelena, water before coffee. So coffee is never the first thing you're supposed to put in your stomach in the morning. You're always supposed to drink a glass of water right when you wake up in the morning before you put coffee in there. So I love this, I'm very glad this is here. The next item we have in the Sarah Smallbox is simple. These, I know what these are. These are reusable tote bags. And what I think is cool about this is whether you're going to a farmer's market or you're headed to a grocery store.  Or are you just gonna stare at me?  You can stare at me more. There you go, look at that. He was like, come on, babe. It's really nice to have a reusable bag, especially because I know a lot of grocery stores are starting to bend. It's treat time.  Okay, I will. There you go. I think this kind of speaks really directly to the kind of business that she operates and the kind of person that she is. Like if she's gonna run a business that's exclusively about repurposing items and helping people to make beautiful spaces, how great that she also repurposes even her bags, her grocery bags, the thing that she uses to carry things around in. The next item we've got in this box, I'm gonna do this one, whatever this is. Oh, it's another solar charger. Seen a couple of these in boxes before. So this is an incredible item for anyone to have, whether again, whether you're an entrepreneur or you're just someone who exists in today's society. It looks like this and it charges all your little boops and it runs on solar power. So especially if you're in Tempe, Arizona, you can imagine that you are never, you know, without the opportunity to charge. But essentially what you do is you just kind of leave this out in the sun and then you can use it, it's a portable charger. You can charge your phone, anything that's got a USB attachment to it and it's the kind of thing that you want, it's the kind of thing that you just wanna have nearby. So a portable charger, this is a really great addition of this box. The next item we have in the Wicker Goddess box is, are these rose quartz. And rose quartz is for protection? Okay, that's really cool. So these are the sort of a bulk bag of rose quartz and we've had a couple of these on previous episodes but these crystals are, they all symbolize something different and they all sort of bring a different kind of energy to whatever room you're in if you keep them on them. And rose quartz is about self love. So what's really cool about this is she as someone who just over a year ago left a secure corporate job to go off on her own and build her own business, that's an act of self love. So to have an item like this is a really staunch reminder, not only to have that actual like energy of self love around you but also to just, to remind her that she, and I think these are her words, is that she deserves a place in this world and she is allowed to be happy and she's allowed to go after the things that she loves and she needs to love itself. Yeah, his hearing's totally gone. We've known for a long time, we've known that it's really bad but we just had proof on camera that that dog's hearing is gone. I'm so glad these are in here. And you've got a bulk, right? There's a lot of love to go around in this bag, that's for sure. The next item we have in the Wicker Goddess box is, I love merch, I love merch. It's a little Wicker Goddess sticker, it's a little sticker. So you can, you know, this is something you can put, right, come on, come on. I love this, I love that this is an item because I think this just speaks to the pride she has for the business that she created, right? She designed this, this little design, this is all her and I think this kind of ties back into self love, that idea of really wanting to celebrate your success and also get the name of your business out there. The final item we have is the Moon Deck. They are Oracle cards. This healing Oracle set shares insights on growth, purpose, intuition, practice and creativity. Okay, great. So this is a, and I've never, you know, I've never done these myself, but I know that these cards are something that a lot of people use to help them make decisions or to help them understand sort of the situations that they're in right now. Anyone who's going off on their own and is trying to start their own business and really pursue their own thing, you know, might need that extra boost of confidence or might need, you know, those small opportunities of guidance like, is this the deal I go for? Is this the one I post on my page? Is this, you know, is this the business idea that I need to pursue? Is this, is it right to quit my job? Right, and there are a lot of factors that go into making that decision, but I do know a lot of people, you know, trust in these cards and trust in sort of the energy that's brought through them. It says right here, may this deck empower and inspire you to walk your path with self love, trust and purpose. Sarah actually, so she's a daily practitioner of this and what she does is she starts every morning by pulling a card and that card, you know, whatever the meaning behind that card is, helps her to set an intention for the day. That is everything in the Wicker Goddess box. We are beyond excited that she took the time to curate this for us. All of those items speak so truly to who she is as a person and who she is as a business owner. And if you liked this video and you wanna see more videos like it, please like and subscribe and ring the bell to our YouTube channel to be up to date with all of the videos that we've got coming your way each week.


Hey, what's going on? This is Teddy Jaspie about to do a recap for a break that we did tonight on fanatics live today Was Sunday, August 20th here goes the break sheet. This was a six box half a case of chrome baseball hobby RT number five These are the names of everybody that got involved. Thank you so much guys Let's look at the hits first. We're gonna go through the color Riley green there Here come the autos Freddy Furman for KC Max Meyer and Nice orange wave for the Red Sox Tristan Casas out of 25 Boston was just Mike Just Mike got the Red Sox again. That was RT number five from fanatics live Sunday night August 20th It was a six box half case of chrome hobby. Thank you