Thursday, August 13, 2020

Video Subtitles:

manufactured this thing called profit
and it's like not a real
thing it's an interesting comment it's
uh uh
commentary so what should we call it
like the concept i mean the concept or
the current understanding of what profit
is like that still exists
so like what should we call that concept
instead of calling it profit instead of
calling it creating value out of thin
air
where it didn't exist before if we were
to look to the systems of nature
you know because nature works in a
balance and a harmony type of a thing
so what could we call that you know
value creation and
value receipt you know there's basically
like
it's basically like unaccounted for
externality
that if if you look at like
the real cost of
a gallon of gas is way more than the
three or four dollars
that we pay for it yeah or or maybe the
150 that jeremy pays for it
[Laughter]
i'm 69 69
really yeah here you can get one for
169.
yeah it's not from grass-fed cows but
[Laughter]
good point but like yeah
i mean if you go back into like both mr
fuller's
writings like even like in the 60s and
70s like a gallon of gas
is more closer to like a million dollars
of cost
so this book had a really interesting
definition
for fossil tools that i had never really
even like thought of
in that way that
so fossil fuels their fossils meaning
it's super duper old energy that's
condensed over
millions of years
and we are so what's taken millions of
years
to form we're releasing
in alarming rates
it's like we're releasing it faster than
it could for
that by definition unsustainable
yeah that's unsustainable definitely no
argument there
so under understanding
fossil fuels really just from a time
scale
because they are apostles
never i never thought about like
you hear people talk about fossil fuels
i've never actually considered them as
if they were
a fossil like a dinosaur bone
when i think about it in that frame it's
like wow that's
different yeah i think
i think that's what it is though
so yeah that left me
feeling a little like well we're all
fucked
so you know the un has a department it's
i forget what it's called but
the the guy that runs it or founded it
i don't know if he's still there but the
guy that founded it his name is uh
gunther pauli and he's a really cool guy
he's developed a concept called the blue
economy
so it was the blue economy
okay the blue economy and it's basically
like a business framework
uh which emulates the processes of
nature um
so taking that idea and they don't even
use those words sustainability
you know which i think is smart because
yeah ray is right like we shouldn't even
be worrying about trying to be
sustainable like it's done we already
fucked it so
like all we can do now is just try to
um build good karma and basically the
processes of nature is karma right
it's like a balance of energies and
you know
so he wrote a book and it's got like all
these case studies of different
businesses that have employed this
successfully
yeah it's pretty cool and it's cool that
the un is supporting that
you know yep it's probably mentioned in
the books that i'm reading
yeah probably oh yeah definitely uh if
it's something on regenerative
business models yeah this guy gunter
paulie is like
the the you know biggest guy in that
in that realm
but yeah other than that nothing else
much going on
other than trying to up you know of the
game of this
i'm gonna do less of the like daily live
videos and i'm gonna do more classes
so um and it's a whole new platform now
just called
t-let virtual virtual that's new
[Laughter]
it's intriguing right
yeah this is the book that i'm looking
at
okay i feel like i've seen that before
tell me about televirtual uh it's
basically just
you know like premium content
uh you know very similar to this
like uh one reason why i'm trying to
like
increase the production quality although
today
not really seeming like that much right
um
serious business you know that
yeah i'll get it i'll get it go it's
like the last piece so i've got well
maybe if i get a mic
if i get a good mic that'll be like the
last
the last thing but um yeah it'll be like
educational content fun content uh but
pretty much it's like
it's all like the premium stuff
you know and so you know eventually
you'll probably be published on its own
platform
oh my felda and bradley say they miss us
well they should join you should join
like if they really missed us they would
be here
they would like cancel their whole work
schedule cancel everything else in their
life
and just cancel anything you just have
to take a break
it's tea time
i remember there used to be a time when
tea time and everybody stopped
doing what they were doing to create
their teeth yeah exactly
but it's nine in the morning for muslim
that might be
yeah they're probably yeah they're at
work they're primo at work right now
they've been working hard building stuff
i have something special today sam yeah
i have a nice selection of uh comfort
pork
oh nice yeah
comfort fork on the ground
yeah dude this one's really good i got
this from the mexican market
fresh fresh that's the one
it was like this big when you bought it
oh yeah the body pillow yeah
yeah yeah
yes i did get a body pillow full of
comfort pork
there should be no questions or doubts
why someone would
would procure a body pillow full of
comfort pork
although like i don't know if we should
really be eating pork right now
you know the issues with all the issues
in the supply chain
um there's a lot of problems and
actually i just saw an article going
around this morning
that the chinese are starting to refuse
chicken from brazil because it's coming
uh infected with covet
the chicken meat itself and they say
it's not supposed to be coming in our
food and such
but wait you mean it's not supposed to
be coming in with coconut i thought that
was like
not a bug
oh additives yeah
this is really cool tony loves to come
into our our tea talks and just like
leave us hanging yeah
what's up
um but the comfort port
like it's dry everything
everything gets killed off of it when
they fry it that's how i justified it
and it's dry
you know so there's no available water
activity
you know to feed anything
we opened my bag of comfort pork
yesterday
and eat like two or three very quickly
dust right up my nose did you start
sneezing
yes i wasn't choking but i
working was definitely
dry heaving through your nose
i can imagine
it'll be a strange thing to be in public
and that starts happening no no no it's
not cove but it's comfort
i'm not sick i'm not
trust me here try some for yourself
um you know i think it would be so much
more alarming if it was like
choking versus you know sneezing
yeah i think people people understand
that's allergies
that's all the forest fires hey our sky
our
sky is very hazy today here in vegas are
there fires
can you know of sam right now active
fires um
[Music]
no but it's windy and hot so my guess is
it's like
a couple miles away
at least it was a couple miles away the
other day always assume that there's a
forest fire going on i don't know let me
check paul's point to see if about
if we're in danger i haven't heard any
helicopters today
okay
yeah so the first series of classes i'm
going to do it's a series of 20
different classes so it's a long program
it's almost two months long
uh doing them two days a week they're
only gonna be like 45 minutes long
they're gonna be like shorter and
sweeter you know like the last series i
did they were two hours long which
people liked them
but that's a commitment you know two
hours
even 45 minutes like let's say
let's say you're going into it and
you're like shoot i can only do 30
minutes like you're not going to feel
like you lost out you missed out but
like if it's a two hour long class
and you can only be there for 30 minutes
then you know you feel like maybe you're
missing out on the value or something
so i want to make them shorter and just
like one tea per class so what i'm going
to do
is maybe like casual i'll give a
presentation on the t in its origin
maybe only 15 minutes or so and then
we'll do
like 15 minutes of tasting
and then the rest of the time and while
tasting
um you know i'll just be like sharing
like more like personal anecdotes
about you know how i met the people
behind that tea
and and what i think of the tea and you
know just trying to make it kind of like
fun and entertaining because i find that
that's what people like resonate with
most
more than just i mean the community and
connections
that you make over t are what people
resonate with most
i mean yeah
people ask like wait what are you doing
what are you doing a tea party like we
sit around
and talk shit like
that that's 90 of our tea parties at
this point and
they're always fun we hold space for
each other's
feelings come on sam there's more to it
than just that
i mean holding space is basically just
hippie for doing nothing
i feel like i feel like there's at least
a couple of people whose ears are
burning right now
that's the clock i love that joke and
that joke that joke was told to me by a
purple dinosaur so
you know it's gold
it was told to me by a purple dinosaur
at three o'clock in the morning at a
music festival
like that's the best joke ever
well it was particularly funny because
at this particular festival which
actually should be happening right now
so that's kind of sad um
at that year the term holding space i
was hearing it like
every second sentence um it was almost
getting annoying
um but once the purple dragon told me
that joke i got it and i'm like you know
what
this is my word forever now i'm holding
space i'm not doing shit
um yeah even like even like within our
team
uh you know i was serving tea in the tea
temple and the management you know like
the the the guys that were like kind of
leadering the team
they came up with this term space
holders on the team the space holders
were the ones that
would um
just make sure everybody was on time and
make sure the culture and the tea space
was right
and just like watching over so um
i was a space holder at certain i did a
couple shifts holding space
but not maybe not in the sense that you
would think you know sitting at the tea
table point he was like holding space
like boss
boston yeah it sounds like uh that
sounds like um
with with their managers yeah yeah yeah
it's like that
oh and by the way omg like friended me
on facebook and reached out to me so we
had a
we had a nice little interaction nice i
i had virtual tea with him a few times
nice
cool was that your first time to meet
him yeah
you should tell him to come here
i've invited him he's probably working
i haven't like plugged this space
anywhere in a while
yeah we got to do that
uh so teenage people.com
that's my website yeah you found me
um a lot of appreciation for the retail
site it's super detailed
but not overwhelming thank you
that's like a rare combination well it's
just a bunch of pictures that's all
well no the the way you included basic
details
it's appreciated because i don't know i
don't know funk about tea i mean i i've
brewed tea i know temperatures i know
like
bass like bass stuff but i'm already
absorbing cool
yeah there's there's a lot to learn and
experience and that's actually why
i'd rather say there's a lot to
experience than learning
because that's what the learning is you
know so like last week i got a call
from somebody i met a team enthusiast i
met at a tea festival in chicago
she lives in la actually oh sam i gotta
introduce you to her she's great you
love her
um elizabeth she called me
wait kind of frustrated because pandemic
has kind of limited her abilities
of exploring her tea business she wanted
to launch
and um and then finding jobs she's like
wanting to work in tea and she can't
find any jobs with her expertise and
skills
so um she's been doing a lot of t
education like you know doing courses
online
and she was just kind of communicating
some frustration she was having with
the quality of the education i think
she's done like three different teachers
now so she's like they're fun i always
learn
something but it's not like really
she's feeling like it's not really
giving her the the knowledge and the
experience she feels like she needs to
have to be super confident with uh
creating this tea business or creating
blends or introducing tea to people
so i told her i said elizabeth i'll make
some education
just so you can take my classes so i
think this could be cool too you know
like targeting it towards
tea professionals like not that it's
like any kind of set
curriculum like oh this day we're going
to look at tea processing and we're
going to look at green tea on this day
we're going to look at
on this date i think it's more useful to
just say hey we're just going to drink a
bunch of tea together and we're just
going to experience
a lot together and ask a lot of
questions to each other and
someone like me could be there to fill
in all the blanks you know what i mean
like as far as the technical or whatever
the curriculum would need to be
i could just fill that in into that
casual
experiential space if you know what i
mean yeah
yeah i always tell i always tell people
one simple thing t
is play mm-hmm
and he said don't overthink it make it
your own it's your experience
some people like their tea brewed extra
bitter
some people like their tea you know it's
it's
kind of make it your own yeah have fun
with it t is play
yeah it's all a textbook
who likes textbooks anyway you know
yeah i prefer
you prefer textbooks i said picture
books oh pictures
okay pop-up books pop-up books with like
hang tabs that like cause like creatures
to go like yeah
i remember when i first started t-let
like the first few customers that i got
i was so excited to pack their orders
and it was like during the holidays
and uh i like made these pop-up greeting
cards for them they were so cute and i
came across a photo on instagram of one
yesterday i was like i can't believe i
did that i spent like three hours on
each of them
um like using like pipe cleaners i like
shaped pipe cleaners to make it into the
shape of like a tea farmer
holding up like his plucked tea leaf and
the tea field and the key fields like
moved like this yeah
i'm surprised i'm not a billionaire by
now
[Laughter]
i was so disappointed when i sent that
package out and i didn't even get like
an email or anything you know like had i
received a package like that with a
pop-up card
greeting card like that i would have
like written a blog about it and post
about all the internet and put it on
reddit but
um i didn't hear anything back so that
that really discouraged me from from
doing that again
bitcoin is super adorable oh you found
bitcoin
yeah totally trolling like all of your
stuff cool please
super getting very like very good
[Music]
i've tried to get myself back into my
coffee regimen but my heart isn't
in in the coffee i don't think
i think i'm better for the poppy to not
be in your heart also
all the sterols and stuff that they say
and i get it and plus i think like i
like coffee when i was
immersed in i.t and just a way more
bitter in general
like large enterprise always go over
serious stuff
i don't want that favorite profile
i think i want more options for flavor
profile
so here's bitcoin live
[Laughter]
what a cutie he's such a cuties i am not
ready for my close-up instrumental
yeah he's a cutie he's a cheagle um
chihuahua beagle mix that's why he got
these like you know floppy ears
that's what he prefers to be called i
like
it i like it i like it a lot
comes from the chihuahua right yeah
probably
everybody's you're just like bitcoin
attitude
yeah that's just a little attitude
ain't nobody mean bugs like bitcoin
he yeah he'll just like be in the car
with his head out the window mean
mugging everybody
just like
we used to do when i worked
international development
i had a big hand
okay i'll give myself that i had a big
hand
before everyone had created apps for
everything
our international development firm was
one of the first ones giving
farmers in remote areas access to mobile
technology
to coordinate pricing across small scale
and subsistence farmers so they weren't
getting taken advantage of
by the regional aggregators and people
taking their wares to market so they can
all actually like
do good stuff yeah i'm back to all of
that
all those encounters and all those lives
changed from scrolling through your uh
grower list yeah who did you work for
we were all over the place did a lot of
good stuff and i missed that feeling who
did you work for tony
uh catholic relief services okay
the international development arm of the
catholic church okay
interesting yeah which explains you know
i went from
politics and got disillusioned and then
international development
in a fairly fraught socio-political
social religious space yeah and so of
course further disinclusion
amazing amazing amazing word
but the challenge i had is when the
ideology impacts uh the practicality of
good capacity building like come on just
please distribute condoms in africa i
get it catholicism but
just you're the chief recipient of
money from the president's emergency
program for aids relief and you're
denying
congress oh seriously wow that's
interesting
i'm sorry i said that's interesting yes
condoms in africa is not easy though
have you ever tried it
actually
yeah supply chain logistics and all that
stuff the world over was was one of my
pet pet fascinations for a little while
and then working with our program off
to get everything from vsat equipment to
basic
subsistence stuff from sub-saharan
region
to the horn to the middle of
literally the middle of india but you
you effectively gave people condoms and
you feel confident that they
you use them or we're going to use them
oh oh oh no
no no
i thought you meant just the logistics
of it never mind the cultural challenges
yeah yeah yeah yeah because that's i did
i did that for a couple of years and
that was a huge challenge i was a peace
corps volunteer in niger
and we did a lot of age aid
sensiblizations
and it was just such a nightmare we did
this like really cool aids bike ride
every year we
ride like 300 miles up um
from the nigerian border you know to uh
to the capital
of niger and we'd stop in every village
along the way and we had like this
group of like actors that would do all
these like
um you know hiv aids education
uh plays and musicals so that's how they
can do it
that's how they could communicate and we
would come in like
with a whole parade and there was like
freaking 200 white kids
just like pedaling you know in and we'd
like make a big circle and dance and
clap with music and then these actors
would teach about how he looks in book
of mormon
i have not seen that no i'm aware of it
i can see where you're going with what
she was saying and then were you
referencing
yeah i wish i knew the reference i i
i've heard it's great i just yeah that's
just one thing i haven't
um experienced in my life yet but
um yeah like this very simple education
about um the virus was like so
difficult to communicate and um you know
giving
condoms to them would actually like
lead to like people getting beat up and
stuff you know
like my neighbor i took her to go get an
aids test after her husband
took in a second wife who was obviously
a prostitute
um shameful you know and he wouldn't let
her go get tested
or use condoms or anything and so she
like begged me to secretly take her to
get tested and thank goodness she was
negative
and the the second wife prostitute
she left the village after like four
days she was like fuck this shit
i'd rather you know hang out at the bar
all day and make money and
sit in the bush when i
um so we did a we did farm book we did a
farm again uh crop prices for uh remote
water temptation spaces where crs is
really super active
and where i first learned that
communicating across cultural boundaries
is really
freaking hard uh like you say condoms
okay sure bring them comments but how do
you get the culture around it well
okay water sanitation put a toilet
in a village that for generations has
not using
central sanitation like that and you
have this
huge huge sphere of tradition and
culture to overcome
to bring sanitation education into the
fold
and make it a habit and show the value
generationally
that it can have it's a really hard
narrative to make culturally relevant
um and it's really depressing when you
don't see it take root
little bits that take root and it gets
to be like the thing that sustains you
um we didn't book we did water a lot of
water presentation work
um prenatal care giving like those
indestructible nokia phones
to expected mothers in rural really far
out their places so they could
get their little vitamin reminders get
their checkup finders text
symptoms to their providers and get like
good care and even then all of those
things
you can uh a horse to water
doesn't always drink if the horse
doesn't know
like how to drink from the crazy sippy
straw you've given it right like
it's it's a progress and that pathway
isn't always clear
economically socially politically and
it's something that i've
i've wanted to go back to that space but
in a way that's sustainable
for me emotionally because a lot of that
disillusionment
when you talk about that feeling of like
this this woman who wants to get tested
and be safe and have autonomy over her
own
body so many cultural constructs that
prevent that
and actively work against her autonomy
and her dignity and
like that feeling i know you know that
feeling i
that was a hard one for her one to carry
um
in fact uh before uh when i met my
husband uh three months in he got a navy
change of station orders
uh it was about two weeks away had i not
left my job from going to those
uh abuja akra uh doing like a whole
central um tour to facilitate
the seed fair that we had just uh
started sponsoring
where we would uh uh see fair give away
seeds for crops but they would be like
an iphone track and allotments were
so we knew who was getting what was
going to support that in the field
i'm not sure whether i'm
or happy or sad to
go on a on a african
tour through central and west but i
don't know
it's a scary world out there and it's
tough to know how to help yeah
yeah it's endless
so you know either you get lost in that
and lose
a hope and lose energy or
you know you just focus on the little
things starting with ourselves right
and then when it gets hard you remember
that one
of many that at least that one moment of
dignity that you brought to this other
individual where you said i see you and
recognize your need i help come let's go
and
even if that's a drop in in the desert
literally it um
it i know that
those bits of love when i was in a place
in my life that felt very loveless
are what helped me blossom into who i am
today
and i like to think that those little
bits of love that you leave
even when they're in the middle of a
desert they still help people
sprout somewhat more fertile than they
would have otherwise
just helps make you feel a little less
hopeless i guess
interesting to
consider we talk a lot about like
colonization
and all of this work
this is great everything you guys have
described is
great humanitarian aid
well there's a line somewhere where kind
of colonization
and like shoving culture onto
people yeah i'm not saying that it's
trying to get people to go to the
bathroom and toilets
and that's crossed that line
but that doesn't mean that there's not a
line
and that it's kind of fuzzy and people
aren't in agreement of where that line
is
that white people coming over
[Music]
to the us and shoving their culture onto
the indigenous here thought they were
helping
yeah yep and when that toilet
comes with the bible is that
who like what's the like where's the
uh in a community that's known to not be
aware
or or not not aware but known to not
recognize the bible in the same way as
the folk spring in the toilet and then
the folks that bring the toilet say
here's a bible
that that makes things a lot harder um
in the toilet space
it's is super complicated uh
super complicated realm is where do you
draw the line between capacity building
and colonization
especially when you look at loan
programs like what china
is doing all over africa um
they're putting these countries that are
already
just fresh out of european colonization
under immense debt to build
infrastructure
under the umbrella of another
colonial empire you know it's like it's
just you're setting up so
many oppressive structures
and it's hard to know which ones are
potentially oppressive structures it's
hard to know which ones are sustainable
and actually
building something for these communities
creating
long-term additional value for these
communities rather than just
trying to shift them into something
that's more directly beneficial to us
yes i would say there's a big difference
between battling
countries with debt over infrastructure
and like a bible coming
with like christian groups going and
spreading their message
in as part of these good words
that i think
i see that much more targeted towards
the people than the governments
and the targeting the government's
the way china does that's kind of more
to me that's more of a colonial problem
than like that spreading of religious
belief
my personal like frame of reference
is like most of what i know about
africa is about two countries that i'm
passionate about
congo but my great aunt recommissioner
midwife in africa for 35 years and
delivered 30
000 babies and
raised countless kids and had to run for
her life three times
when they were the priests and the nuns
and the missionaries and
the locals were getting massacred and
like having that references yes it was
he got to be there because of belgium
when it was developing congo but
and she but she more talked about like
when people asked why are you doing that
is when she would bring up that it was
because
she was there because she loved babies
because she raised thousands of babies
who were orphans
but like being aware of the history
specifically
in the congo and when it was
belgium congo and then now like
how china's really screwing it up
on in addition to how they're currently
screwing
it up themselves and like i get
from billy's new news feed on my phone
this is not so good for my heart but um
knowing like i know a bit more of the
personal side
because she said like that like
she um was essentially my grandma and
he never had any never gotten married
she's like why should i get married
why should i have kids i have 30 000 of
them
specifically her like when she passed
away
people lined up across the
founding her name and to have that like
know that the only reason why she did it
was out of love
not to put anything beyond anybody's
face like
the fact that she knows four foot happy
against the rebels to save babies and
like
restoring crazy but like
doing it from that side i know that she
was able to go
over there because the belgian role but
i know that like
my version of her missionary journey was
very very different than the typical
journey because like she
went over there because she was a nurse
because she was a midwife because she
wanted to help the places
but not necessarily i'm going to go to
congress
but like i'm called by my faith to help
others so i'm going to help others
but
uh idris elba in um
not no country for old men no
um denzel um
the movie about child soldiers i think
was
i think was just
based on a true story out of north
africa oh gosh what was that movie
called
uh beasts of nomination
donation yeah that was
phenomenal i watched it with my
husband's parents um
and it was just it
you get a lot of feelings um attached to
the communities
um when you work with them and uh like
it's really good
attention being paid in some way
to these issues because it helps take
that burden that like when you
are out in those spaces and i don't mean
to speak for you at least
or anybody when you're in those spaces
you take away a lot of it with you
and when you see other people getting
excited about it
and passionate about it and like holy
shit it's in hollywood now intercell but
he was on like gq or something
and now he's in a movie about weather's
attention people are caring
it makes all of that stuff a little bit
and all of those things that like
keep you awake at night you're just like
all right maybe it won't be like that
forever
because uh it's it's
it's hard sitting here bankers hill san
diego
you know i've got i can't imagine what
else i want out of life
you know like and he
just
sorry a little bit of a little bit of
nostalgia right there um
but uh i guess nostalgia is probably the
wrong word
i'm so excited to hear people talking
about telling
stories more stories of transformational
healing
across cultures so that trauma suffered
from before
doesn't move forward but revival skills
learned from that trauma are passed on
and when you when you approach
communities
that are divergent from your own and you
sort of remove your own cultural message
from it and try to find ways to pass on
that survival message
in a resonant fashion it does exactly
what you were talking about it helps the
communities without imposing
your own cultural uh prerogative
on non-folks which who knows who's
cultural program is right
i think we're all getting better at that
like uh dri
and other folks that have sprung up
around a lot of the disasters that
um popped up around the the first
decade in the millennium folks are
getting better at bringing relief
and yes uh direct relief international
show
okay um
there's organizations that are getting
really good at the logistics
but the capacity building and culture
building is so
hard in the face of globalization
colonialism
um uh
gosh um yeah i get i get i get scared
that i don't know what to do to help
anymore
and that sometimes my own self-serving
uh
pat's on the back but i'm doing my
little bit
should i be doing more like oh gosh
we like to go through organizations that
were
local communities like that are already
there
already on the ground that they're
locals so it's like i'm gonna give
people the supplies and they can
use it where it need be and like we
sponsor five girls in tampa
and we
give gifts to the family and we're the
kids but
the families are the ones that we try to
get
decide how to use it if not like the
organization
or me or anybody
right now especially with those it's
like
okay and like we'll send us pictures of
the kids if you spend 20
50 bucks whatever it is and it's like
you bought insulation your tin roof
house like
there's nothing better but i could have
given this to anybody
like you bought fabric and insulation
and a 20 pound bag of rice
and like that was her birthday present
so cool that you're like there's nothing
that anybody could have done except for
the parents
or the um like whenever girls is in our
offense and her
older sisters her guardian and like so
they are the ones to decide and it works
schools
like the local partners the local people
or
ideally not the government especially in
the countries that i'm
passionate about never necessarily
the best things
um really
really how we've been
especially with groups that are like
let's give locals
the supplies and they can figure they
can see what they need
and they can say where they need support
that was the the the
great thing about a lot of catholic
police services work as much as i'll
talk about some of the things that i i
did have problems with they primarily
worked
through programs in the localities in
the communities that they served
they would raise up people through
and it's the church's community and
colonialism and religion okay but at
least aside
from that for a second they would raise
up people
in the community and teach them to run
these programs train them
on computers where viable um uh
catherine
oh gosh everyone catherine catherine
catherine i found her last name we we
worked on a gis project
together i deployed arcgis for our
global like the whole like all
every program office anywhere and she
was the one that went to these
communities
taught them how to use esri's platform
to do everything from like
water resource mapping to whatever you
could imagine using
gis software for
giving the funny thing is
you look at um
like you hear from what's going on like
with these church plants
and listen to the messages and like the
way that they're
speaking and it's actually like closer
to the teachings
than you hear in the music searches
[Laughter]
amongst all the white people yeah
yeah um it's
ideas and the exploitation of people's
fondness for comforting ideas is
something that's going to happen in any
milieu
with any with anything
and sometimes that that exploitation or
parasitism
isn't even parasitism sometimes it's
just symbiotic
some sometimes it's just the way of the
market right or the way of the
the natural ebb and flow of the tribe
whatever whether it's going to be an
eastern religion a western religion
a local culture there's still going to
be some
form of extractive practice that
will prevail because in
less connected societies i believe
anecdotally it's easier for
machiavellian personality types to
prevail
and sort of kind of take the reigns
and usurp or game whatever systems are
in place to
to um
try to create more equitable societies
just for the sake of them getting a win
right and
as you get more connected you have
different risks
but you mitigate that local risk to an
extent
but then is that good would you rather
have the devil you know or the devil you
don't
like that's there's that's the never
ending
yeah there's a lot there
i will go out and teach people to
[Music]
one another also same i didn't introduce
myself to uh
her name escapes me anna hannah
hi hannah a little bit late okay
you can introduce yourself again in fact
you've got the afternoon off
great for phil holding space for that
dialogue um
that's i mean we really didn't do
anything
it's something i don't get to cry about
often
not in a positive way and i'm i'm
learning that as a part of
therapy for a lot of that stuff is it
you got to let yourself really feel
through it because if you put a cork in
it it just
doesn't
i i would love to get back out in the
field
i think i don't know you should join the
peace corps that's the only way to do it
okay i said you should join the peace
corps it's the only way to do it
really i'm very anti-ngo anti-charity
anti-non-profit um very much
for a good reason but i'm sorry um you
know and the peace corps is interesting
like all the things that we've been
talking about uh you know kennedy had
that in mind when he started the program
was that like first and foremost this is
like a diplomatic
program for our country so um
that's okay you know uh to be a part of
that system
but like they thought about all those
things that like
this should be a very low funded project
any of the funding as far as like
housing the volunteers
um that that must be paid for by
the community that's hosting the
volunteer not by the us government
um and uh the
the like education and resources that we
are given
by the the state department
is just like you know depending on
what your area of
uh focus is either agriculture resource
management
education business i.t they give you
you know pointed projects to activate
with the community and they teach you a
lot of them
and they say you're not going to be able
to do all of them and not all of these
are appropriate for your community
go to your community for the next
actually they force you to go to your
community
for at least one month when you go and
you can't leave
and you're not supposed to be like
interacting with any other americans
um because they really want you to like
integrate with the
community and like listen to them first
uh before you decide which projects
you're going to
you know try to activate in the
community um
and you know i learned my lesson hard my
first year i tried you know i'm an
overachiever
i just have to work a lot and do a lot i
can do everything i'm gonna do because
my
heart will power me through it yeah yeah
i did that and
um it every one of those projects failed
and you know was really heartbreaking
because it's like you put so much work
into it and then just to see
the project failed not because of my
failure but because the people
didn't actually want it or need it you
know i was just kind of forcing it
in and so then i spent my second year
just kind of chilling out
and more focused on learning language
more focused on making friends and
and doing that versus go go go project
project project
um and through that ended up like a
project naturally manifested and that
turned into a very successful thing and
so like
from that experience on you know i've
been really focused on
uh not acting too fast you know sitting
back first and listening to what is
actually needed
before acting and kind of forcing
my own paradigm on to
the community so
yeah and in relation to what we were
talking about or what you guys were
talking about maybe like
five ten minutes ago about like what is
the
the line between
you know colonization and not
colonization
um think that line is like
is pretty fine but there's like a wide
range
of harm that can be done you know not
all colonization is evil
and terrible a lot of it is um
it's it's violence in its nature yes
like uh
taking over a power dynamic over
somebody else is an act of violence even
if you don't cause physical harm to them
um so yeah i think like talking about
this we got to take it very seriously
and uh even identify the nuances
and you know these like um
charities are part of that nuance that
you know like they make people feel good
they're extremely inefficient i mean
that was that was my main
um observation i'm sure tony you
probably made those observations about
how inefficiently these organizations
are run
um and i think
and and that's where my my i don't
know how to balance my i guess uh
techno elitism with my desire for like
i i don't know because peace corps peace
corps does
amazing work in the immediacy
though in my exposure to to the
literature in the development space
the capacity building impacts of peace
corps
have been um uh
not as much of a force multiplier over
time
as as one would
i guess hope in the communities they
serve um
and that's also a good thing
how is that measured as well what's that
how is that measured
well exactly that's like that's one of
the hardest things too like there's no
there's so few good metrics to track for
so much of this stuff because like
really the really important capacity
building that we need to focus on is
like stuff that's like
under the roots you know that that
you can't measure you know uh somebody's
really like this is this is the main
thing that peace corps does outside of
its development work like
the first two goals of peace corps is
for
the first one is for americans to be
exposed to a different culture and then
come home and expose that culture to
their friends
right and then the second one is for
americans to share american culture with
these um
you know foreign cultures and there's a
lot of power in that
and how is that measurable you know like
every time i tell somebody one of these
stories i'm supposed to call the peace
corps and say hey you know put a little
tick next to my name
i did it got one dollar system
you know so i think yeah there's there's
a lot of things that are immeasurable
and they're subtle they're super subtle
but they're very important like
increasing someone's capacity to have
empathy
in someone else's perspective is huge
and for a lot of these communities they
would never ever have that because
they never get exposed to a different
culture and
you know not to say that oh that value
is going to come because then they can
immigrate to
europe and they can assimilate there no
no that's not right that's not the value
the value is for them to become more
critical thinkers for them to
increase their ability uh
you know to increase their perspective
which increases information
increases knowledge increases um
you know opportunity but you can't
measure
it i'm sorry what sam
towering individual yes
but maybe it's not directly empowering
it's just yeah it's a it's
subtly empowering it's so subtle it's
just like how these conversations we
have
are subtle like these conversations
we're having we're not changing
anybody's lives or changing anybody's
mind
but just that little bit someone you
know got introduced to a new perspective
that could be world changing for them
you know
i i think that in the big scale it's
hard to make
huge changes but like again
i come from the perspective of our girls
and like we specifically pick girls who
are
older who are more at risk exploitation
who are more at risk with hiv and aids
and like they start with a second or
third grade level education
and two of them are in college right now
one of them is going to be
so like i think on the next
change people's lives but
it's been incredible to see
that these girls in their 20s are not
married
because they don't want to be yet and
they want to give an education and they
don't
have to get married and like that they
can
one of our girls graduated from the
program because she
is a manager at a hotel and can support
her
family on what she has and like
my dad is like it must be a girl because
they're the most at risk and so like
even though you don't feel like you can
make a huge difference in all of the
congo work for us and the tanzanian it's
like
well to see a girl who was 16 who had
maybe a second grade level education
it was at the university of georgia long
there's two of them there
and like if they want to become a
teacher and go back to their
communities and give back and teach
girls and like that we have
five or six years of letters saying you
are strong you are beautiful
this is how you show evie
no matter what
to be that little voice in their ears
and to be able to be a doctor who's
female
and be an example to them and
like to me that is life-changing
and like to have a girl
and a small community be able to provide
her entire family who's an orphan
like i
understand on the big scale and i
completely agree with you on the big
scale but i also
very biased opinion because like
i am so
i need to hear that biased opinion
more and more and more like that's such
a wonderful way to be biased
like that's just phenomenal i i
am probably as proud as their
birth family is like yeah you know
you're going to be in politics you are
going to be a teacher you
are going to support your whole family
one of the
two of them are in their 20s and they're
not married
and they haven't like
they're not even talking about it
like that gives them control over their
features and it takes away the control
of their futures
like yes the parents get to decide like
how stuff gets done
but it also takes away control of their
futures from their families
because they're not you know right
they're not
domestic violence victims they're not
exploited they're not
prostitutes and they are not they have
autonomy to choose to be
in the role that they want to occupy in
that family space
and they're at the top role because
they're the ones doing the providing
and that's where we're the hard part for
me
so in the it space
scalability is kind of one of the things
that i do best make things run anywhere
and for everyone on
sorry excuse me scalability
make things run anywhere at good speed
and the message of
building that you're talking about is
hard for me to reconcile because i just
want to to
click a mouse button and then deploy a
new commandlet to everybody's brain and
say hey be just inevitable and fair and
love everyone
yeah of course people don't work like
that and then
hearing you it's just this dialogue is
really
really good just refocusing it and
saying like yeah no three generations
from now her
job that fed her
young sister young sister now has
nutrition
and access to education so not only is
she getting education she's learning
better because she's
got food in her and that's the force
multiplier for the local it's just that
it it level sets the why is everything
wrong and say
it says oh no things are still going
right it's a very
everything's not wrong metrics are hard
and i agree with that but the metrics
that i look at is that
children and sponsor kids don't need
sponsors
like they'll essentially break the cycle
of poverty for that entire family
so it's not big scale and it's only
we're on ours we've done this for six
kids now
from us but like as a family we've been
doing this since i was six
and my parents have six kids and we have
six kids and it's like okay well that's
six cycles of families that drive
the cycle six girls that are exploited
it's not huge but it's my way of not
feeling healthy
[Music]
and maybe she'll teach her siblings and
her kids
and maybe she'll not get married so
she's 27 either
until after she has the college degree
and
i had a long conversation with the
professor uh tj talley
at usd here uh they're a professor of
african american
studies uh integrative cultural i heard
the exact title of the department but
we were talking about exactly that how
even my desire for scaled
change is in and of itself
fraught with problematic pretexts and
contexts in a lot of the ways that we've
talked about here
and how giving that individual autonomy
can in many ways be that
that black swan event that changes the
entire dynamic
of of a local social
uh dynamic or any social local local
social ecosystem
what have you so don't fall into my uh
bitter cynicism that that isn't a
massive change because you are right
that is
a massive massive change when you look
at the cultural forces they're
stacked against folks and and to have
those success stories
it's important to feel grandiose about
those successes as long as it's not like
self-graduatory
yeah not that you were or anything just
like
just saying like i don't want to feel
like i'm like oh yeah we didn't know i
didn't mean that like i have the proud
aunt to like
has their pictures on our fridge
not even my knees has a picture on it
thank you all thank you all so much
tony you brought something good that's
that's an interesting concept the
concept that even forcing our idea of
scale prosperity could be a conflict of
culture a conflict of
what is actually you know autonomously
and authentically needed
um yeah
i you know it's about yeah that could be
considered colonialism
just as sponsoring kids could be
considered colonialism and that's why i
prefaced everything saying that there's
a range not all
colonialism is harmful it could be very
beneficial
um but you know what i want to focus on
is like you know if we do want to
decolonize our thoughts and our
you know intentions and energies around
the world how do we do that
and like looking at the system like how
can we make
systemic changes so that
um the benefits that the sponsorship
is giving to you know these uh fortunate
you know girls in the program how can
that be scaled
to the entire population of people that
consent to that you know
because then that's that's how you would
decolonize that idea like they would
consent and they would actively engage
with it they would actually actively
engage with the work
to empower themselves
interesting concepts uh capacity
building consent
like colonial consent uh
just throwing those words together and
thinking about
that i don't know how to articulate why
that's interesting to me but i like
where that
takes the brain juices no that was all
you tony man you're the one that brought
that up like
i had never even really thought about
that like yeah like our
desire like my personal desire like even
my work so like i
you know i'm trying my best not to force
it i listen to the people i work with
before i make decision on what i need to
do
as far as like the business model and
the frameworks and such
uh but even you know like i'm going
around the world
you know saying that sustainability of
the tea industry is going to be
dependent on
the market appreciation of tea going up
and
you know the business opportunity for
tea farmers to go up
but like um
is that authentically what
you know these communities um consents
to wanting to build and to need is that
am i forcing my
um my ideology on on this system
it's yeah it's always to keep that in
check i forget
where i read it there was an article
about pets
um you know panama hats like the the
woven
uh the straw uh central american style
hats which
uh are titled panama hats but aren't
made commonly in panama i think el
salvador or honduras i forget exactly
where the
like traditionally like made made
and you have a specific region in that
country
that is that's where that's just the
trade that's been passed down and that's
where they produced
you have one village in that region that
produces
just churns out you know basic quality
go go go go go
and you have the local and national
governments trying to convince
their village in that same region that
turns out like the artisanal
like five thousand dollar
but they make one every six months hats
super
that kind of stuff not even not
articulated
and it makes less in terms of revenue
but it's
their art it's their passion and they
are refusing to buckle
in the face of the national government
saying we need to just make more like
stop making it pretty well just thinking
we love them
no we like making our pretty ones this
is what we do let us do our thing stop
it's kind of like you know do you bring
people into
quote unquote economic prosperity
because it's
just deregular nowadays like hey you
increase your gdp that's what we all do
metrics what's that
entries to make them play i got guys
couldn't
use blurby we invade countries
you you have to be as free as we are
oh goodness exactly yep that's it
you need to be as you know economically
developed as us
you need to be a consumer like us no
or else we'll light the freedom
sparklers
what a world what a world
no that was uh something that the the
professor tally really drove home in me
is that so many of these attempts at
equality drive us further away from
equitability
um and drive us further away from a
world where people
have the blank canvas to articulate
their lives and societies as they see
fit
because of a pursuit of ideals that are
aligned with
an entirely different society's
worldview you know there's certain
fundamentals like okay getting good
sanitation and
reason we have to eat and don't don't
ruin people's stuff
you know like but even then
relativism is a funky thing subjectivity
is a funky thing
it was to say that i'm no
i'm no fixer
yeah jeremy let's hear what you got to
say
i'm just i'm just listening i know every
time i call on you in these situations
you drop
the knowledge bob
[Laughter]
you shouldn't say that now there's too
much pressure on me
you know you know the one thing that
kept running through my head was a quote
um it's actually a quote from mother
teresa who said
um not all of us are capable of doing
great things but we are all capable of
doing small things with great love
yes
and you don't need to change the whole
world you can just change a person one
at a time that's enough
yeah small things with great love i like
that a lot
yeah really great framework
we did the veritas forum at fresno state
and she is one of the speakers and
i read her month afterwards
yeah one baby step at a time is good and
hannah i
you know i'm not meaning any offense um
you know on
on your actions and your passions it's
good
obviously it's good um you know i just
like to be you know asking deeper
questions about the systems
yeah how do we scale how do you scale
these opportunities
because it's not that much money you
think about it it's like wow the
sponsorship really makes a big
difference
it's not that much money how could we
create systems where
these individuals can autonomously
create value
to support themselves
that's what i like to ask i think we're
going to get
really really
accelerated pace of change in the
covered era
uh unless we get a new vaccine everyone
just forgets about it it goes back to
sneezing on each other
but we have a
big all stop placed on this analog value
extraction
of people or your person any value from
you extract
through transactions well that doesn't
work when people
can't be when you have us here saying
well
we have 50 of the country now that we
can't extract value from
well what do we do well they're all
connected to the internet so
let's extract value digitally wait a
second
we're finding that it's better to do
transformational value creation and
exchange
because it's more sustainable than just
extraction so i think as we bring
ourselves to the point where we're
actually
i guess practicing what we preach of a
fashion i think it'll be much
more exportable because i believe it'll
become much more desirable
when we start talking about uh universal
sustainment incomes for individuals so
they can pursue
a life of of passion service creation
whatever
wealth gathering uh anything they want
to do because we have the economy to
give them an underpinning and then the
restore looks that says
oh that's a way better model than the
industrial revolution gave us let's try
that
and then it's consent then it's
it's organic it's chosen uh sort of like
why what i can't say that sort of like
our current we know whether our current
model wasn't chosen
it was definitely pushed on folks but
i don't know that's the hope because
we'll figure something
for ourselves out and then other folks
will take examples from that and then
figure something else for themselves out
and we'll all start
very rapidly iterating on this new hyper
digital era
assuming it lasts
i'm actually torn as to whether i'm
i don't know well so what's a world that
continues undercover restrictions
or or covet like
like existential criteria what's the
world that goes back to the way it was
before i don't know if either of them
are
so um i have a friend that's running for
president
um this is a new thing he announced his
campaign exactly the same time that
kanye announced him but this guy's
actually like legit he's
you know a self-made billionaire himself
he's self-funding his campaign
um he's a bitcoin influencer so that's
how i know him he's one of the first
bitcoin influencers
um and he did his first town hall
yesterday and
uh just talking about his campaign his
campaign's gonna be cool is his platform
is gonna be like an
open source platform where people can
like read what's already been written
and then comment and add and rewrite and
uh there's gonna be like discussion
forums around tables on the platform
itself
uh i'm really excited i mean this is
like a super high tech guy doing it but
anyway
yesterday in his town hall somebody
asked about ubi you know because that's
something that's like
hot topic people really into that and he
says that he doesn't
uh he doesn't like cohen at ubi he's
calling it universal
earned income uef
big it's different
yeah i i it's a really important shift
yeah one word but it changes the whole
concept of it it's like no this is not a
handout
like uh and so that goes back to this
idea of like how could we create these
systems within these like charity
networks
of like self-sufficiency
like you know um closed systems for each
autonomous closed system for each
individual
with as minimal outside um
you know uh coming in as possible
um autonomy as much as possible so you
know like
so how do we create value and how can
the government
facilitate that exchange of creating
value and earning income for that value
you've created i had a one-hour
conference call this morning that turned
into a three-hour conference call about
the exact same topic
um yeah
that's and and clearly enough it took us
two cryptocurrency
smart contracts and things of that sort
um
brock pierce brock pierce yep that's my
friend
yeah you should check him out vote for
him if you can i think if he's he's
getting himself on as many state ballots
as he can
um but um you might be able to write him
in
but i mean i'm sorry
even if if you don't vote for him or he
doesn't win i don't think he'll win but
like this
the platform that he's gonna be
launching itself could be extremely
powerful and like
especially activating younger people um
to have these round tables and
um you know the constitution he's
educated on the constitution i love it
he was he was educating on the political
party system yesterday he was like it's
so bogus that we're working within
this two-party system when it's a
completely fabricated thing and even our
forefathers
and george washington himself declared
that we shouldn't have
majority factions that we need to keep
things
um you know without these labels and
then that took me on a rabbit hole
to research the history of the political
parties
and like the republicans used to be the
progressives
and then they flip-flopped you know in
the 80s and
so it's like you know even this whole
concept of the parties is just a
completely fabricated thing
i i think george will in my opinion
put it in a way that resonated with me
when he said
that it's a necessary organization of
our animosities
because we're we're an
incredibly diverse country and if you
look at a lot of let's say
let's take a lot of different areas in
europe east and west
when you have these multi-party systems
even in
spaces that are way more culturally
homogeneous than us
these multi-party systems are still
incredibly challenging to build
consensus in
and i'm trying to imagine in our system
multi-party
with our degree of diversity and our
inability to come to terms with it
as it stands must be terrified to see
in the old way how we would handle
multi-party
i think in the new way when you start
factoring in stuff
like let's just drop the word blockchain
in there and other novel technologies
that give people differing amounts of
agency and buy-in to different elements
of
our sociopolitical cultural ecosystem
you have ways to tap into
that animosity organization
that are less
binary without creating the
crossfire of contention that the
multi-party systems do i don't think
we've really
clearly articulated a way to
work value exchange in our society
outside of
through exchanges of animosity like it's
just kind of the
push and pull and everything but i think
the idea with the local party systems
in order to build consensus they require
meetings
and they they may not require meeting in
the exact middle but they require
meeting in the middle
between multiple parties
which is closer to the exact middle
than our
polar system where
[Music]
essentially we have the power so we're
going to do anything we want
and the other people are like we're
going to do everything we can to stand
in your way
there's no incentive to meet in the
middle in a in a binary system
there's just fighting time until you can
get the talking stuff um i
completely forgot that i have a four
o'clock you guys oh
yeah i think you guys are no i
i gotta jump into yeah as well thank you
for calling that out
thank you all for for the space this is
i feel like bitch had left and hath away
les mis
ugly cry moment of just like just like
started feeling afterwards like that's
probably from the sweat of the
[Music]
yeah i'm gonna go sing i dream to dream
and
get inside the meeting
have a great weekend