Latest / Salon Gazette / Return of the "Book" Worm: Women, Power, and the AI zeitgeist | Reckoning with the Future

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Return of the "Book" Worm: Women, Power, and the AI zeitgeist | Reckoning with the Future · Salon Gazette

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Bienvenue au salon hosted by Sarah Marielle.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's me.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in my reading bag lately, with Audible specifically, and I feel like finally I can be the bookworm that I've always been, as well as the busy baddie that I've become.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like I used to read so much.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't even remember when I fell in love with it.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was always someone who always liked coming up with stories, writing stories, having a journal in general.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I used to write little short stories, and I remember being attracted to books, but you know, when you're younger, you kind of just do things, and it's only when you get to a certain age that you start picking up on your routines and that wait, this is like a niche thing that I like, or not a niche thing, this is a specific thing about me.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're kind of figuring out your traits.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say that happened officially around middle school.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I first moved here to the United States, and I had to take, I had like a private, not a private, like I would get pulled out of class with this, she was this language, I don't really know what her official title was, but I would go to the library with her for a couple of hours, I think for two class periods, and we would just improve my English.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the ways she did that was introducing me to English literature and just more books in general, and that's when I really started to notice, or I think she pointed out to me that as a mentor would do that.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that I'm good at, and that's something she notices that I love, which I did.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I officially became a bookworm in middle school, and that's been a very important like cornerstone of my personality, my interests, etc.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say that started changing when I went to college, not because I wanted it to, but because I was just outside of my regular environment, my regular routines, like everything changed on a minutia level, like the things that I did on a day-to-day, that kind of stuff.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I became so busy, and because I was majoring in the humanities, I had a I wasn't in STEM or anything.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: My degree was in international studies, which is a broad umbrella, but it's very social sciences oriented as well as like government, etc.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so the reason I'm saying that is because in humanities degrees, we do a lot of reading, so much reading, and a lot of writing.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I kid you not, I probably wrote a couple novels by the time I was done with college, like per class, not even kidding you.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I remember the nightmare of final season and midterm season, like it was just papers after papers after papers after papers, minimum eight pages for this class, minimum eight pages for that class, minimum eight pages for this class, and you have to annotate and all of that.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to a research-focused university, so a lot of it was centered around kind of proving where you got your information from.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: You had to be very careful about your sources, they had to be cited perfectly to a T.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I think, not I think, I know that from all of that, and of course, a lot of it was material that I didn't necessarily want to be engaging in.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was burning out, I burned out, and so I didn't have any time or willpower to read for my own enjoyment because I just wanted to get away from the practice as a whole, actually, because I was just so drained from it, and honestly, ever since then, so I left college in about 2020 or 2021, and my reading habits haven't been the same, and that's because I keep getting older.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that I'm sure a lot of people realize or they're familiar with, or that's something you will find out, is that as you get older, you get busier and busier and busier, and you think that you're gonna have time at a certain point to pick back up something or to incorporate a new hobby, and maybe, maybe, but I highly doubt it because it hasn't slowed down, it's actually picked up.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: My life has picked up like as I get older, more and more things call on my attention.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's hard for me to sit down and read without, and this is not perfect, of course.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably something that I need to work on and let go of trauma, lol, but I find it difficult for me to sit down and set an allotment of time to just sit and read without getting anxiety, and anxiety because I feel like there are things that need to get done, or I'll start thinking about wait, I could be doing this right now.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I am a great multitasker, like I think a lot of women are, like naturally, and so I really value being able to habit stack.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So as I'm doing something that I'm supposed to be doing, adding other things on top of it that I can do at the same time.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe as I'm doing like my skincare in the morning, so listening to a podcast or reading something, etc.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I like habit stacking because it just knocks multiple birds with one stone, and it also saves time, which no matter how much how much busier I get, no matter how much more falls on my plate, we still all have the same 24 hours in a day.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So something that I am late to the party for, but have am now fully on the bandwagon is Audible.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I freaking love that app so freaking much.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's not fully the same as when you sit down and you're touching a book or you're holding something and you're reading it, and your attention is totally devoted to that.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say it's it's not too far off, it's pretty close, second best, especially for yeah, someone who doesn't have the time, and I think the alternative would be to not be reading at all, so I think it's better than nothing.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, with all that said, yeah, you guys, I've been in my reading bag lately.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Audible has been my best friend for like the past year, and yeah, I just feel like I am recovering parts of my personality, cornerstones of my personality, that I've really used to value and still value so much.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I've actually noticed that I've been feeling particularly satisfied, and I know some of it has been from the comfort of this new routine.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny because I was actually listening to a news podcast recently, and they highlighted a new study that they were touching on that reading in general, and especially the genre of fiction leads to increase to happiness.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Lol, that sounds so broad, right?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm deadass, I'm so serious.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: They were talking about obviously I'm guessing that they were studying the brains, not I'm guessing, that's what they were saying.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's usually how when you obviously I'm not an expert, but when you look at scientific studies, especially having to do with emotions and psychology, that kind of stuff, they'll look at your brain, they'll scan your brain, or whatever different tests that they do to monitor your brain, because that's where they'll notice chemical reactions which lead to which are basically what emotions are, it's just different parts of your brain being activated and different chemicals flooding your system.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, they were saying that it leads to increased engagement in a certain part of the brain that has to do with a certain sense of reward, which leads to happiness and just feeling satisfied and satiated in general, and it also helps, they found, in combating dementia long term, if that's a practice that you incorporate into your usual routine.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was just thinking, isn't it funny how our physicality literally tells us that it or it seems to point that us engaging with higher levels of our consciousness having to do with intellectual thought and just reading, storytelling, etc.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: The part of us that makes us like human beings, the sophisticated part of us, not the animalistic part of us, how it's good for us and imperative for us.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I felt kind of aligned and very happy when I listened to that because I was just thinking myself, like, huh, I think I know what they're talking about, and I think also part of it is just because I am a bookworm or I used to be.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just a natural satisfaction that I'm feeling because I'm reconnecting with these parts of myself, but I just felt validated, and also just a cute little reminder to you guys as well to engage more in intellectual/slash artistic endeavors that connect you to the very sophisticated human side of yourself.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, yeah, I have no shame in saying it, it's funny because some of my friends and I we were talking, and some people they were just stating what they were reading this month, interesting um, fiction novels, series, etc.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just thinking, wow, I feel so boring, but it is what it is, it's just who I am.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've like history, the social sciences, and just humanities have always been my favorite topic, hence why I went to college for it, or that's what I majored in in college.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I finally feel like the true historian that I am on the inside, because I've been able to get through like vast works of like information that has to do with certain parts of history, or people I've specifically been reading autobiographies, and I know I feel like such a grandma saying that, like such an uptight professor with the elbow patches and everything.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: The historian professors, you know.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Funny enough, the historian professors, at least the ones that I experienced in college, they actually dress in the stereotypical way that they portray in movies and TV shows.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Literally had the biggest, most square, thick framed glasses with his brown jacket and elbow patches.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So crazy to me.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, is this a do you guys like have a base that you reference?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is this a group?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: You guys agree on an aesthetic.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just joking, but only kind of not really.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I've been reading books like well.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, I'm reading Isabella, which is a works by I actually don't remember who the author is.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at I'm looking that up like right now, but it's called Isabella the Warrior Creep Queen, and it's by Kristen Downey, and it's just an autobiography about Isabella, one of the Catholic monarchs.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: She reigned in the 15th century.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I always get confused.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I don't really get confused, but I just have to be careful before saying it automatically because um the century that we talk about is usually like hundred years ahead of the time that we're actually talking about.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sure you know, or those of you who don't know, by 15th century, that's the 1400s.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: But she was still alive too at the beginning of the 16th century, which was at the beginning of the 1500s, but she died earlier in that century.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I was just fascinated by her story, and that was because I've been kind of on a quest to read more about powerful uh figures from the past that are women, because I feel like though they are talked about and celebrated, obviously, I've just noticed that as world societies we tend to fixate more on the achievements of very prestigious male figures, which is which is fine, it's a good thing because some of those men, I mean, every every human being is complicated, you know.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: They a lot of these men and women committed atrocities, there was injustice, and as well as great achievements and real change in the world and just innovation, so nobody's like perfect, but I just feel like or not feel like it is the truth if you're studying history, there's a whole roster and just vast research on male historical figures like to go around.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: People never run out, you can never run out of material.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's like an exhaustive amount of information about them out there, which I'm I'm happy for them, and I I enjoy it as well.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're a woman and you want to hear stories that you can kind of relate to in terms of like the figure's sensibility or their aesthetic, etc., then it can be kind of hard, honestly, to find exhaustive keyword exhaustive.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: There might be some works out there, but they can be kind of vague or not really go into depth or etc.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like just not that many.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been kind of on a quest to be kind of like a a sense of girl code, just because if if me as a woman, if I don't highlight this, or if I don't make sure I educate myself on this or absorb it and and bring it to other people, etc., or just have more conversations around it, then nobody else is gonna talk about it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, as a woman, I even though I am interested in history that and the history of men in the world and male figures, I find myself gravitating more towards female figures, and I think that's normal because I myself am a woman and people tend to gravitate towards energies that they can relate to, so it's not anything malicious.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm saying that because if we the women are not doing that ourselves and focusing on these figures ourselves, then nobody else is going to.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because as men, I would I would think that their natural inclination is to focus or to move towards energies that they themselves can relate to, which is other male figures, and so I can't fault them for that.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I've been reading that book.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have, and I'm kind of proud of myself actually, because this audiobook was I think 25 hours long.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not familiar with Audible, obviously every book on there or every audiobook on there has an amount of hours that they'll tell you it takes for you to get through the book or the work, and yeah, this one was like 24 or 25 hours or something, and I think the longest up to that point I had read on Audible, anyways, was like 17 hours, and that was a book I was I got through before this one, um, which was about Queen Elizabeth First of England.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let me actually go to my library and see what the exact title of this book is.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Elizabeth The Forgotten Years, and it's by John Guy.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I oh that one was actually 19 hours long.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was 17 hours, even better.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Great, but yeah, I really that book was so good, you guys.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: So so so so so so good.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just feel as if the historian in me is truly coming out.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I feel so validated by the fact that it's so interesting.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure if you're someone who's a history lover as well, you're kind of aware of the fact that the material you're engaging in could be perceived as being very boring by other people, and I think to a certain extent it is, but because we love history, it's easy to get through.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I've just felt really proud of myself because I that's how I know I really do this, like this history thing, this social sciences thing, I really be doing it because here I am getting through all these materials that are they're so interesting to me.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: But because of the tone of the reader, of course, and perhaps if you're someone who's really finds history or the social sciences kind of boring, especially if you're more STEM focused, which obviously I understand, because as someone who's more humanities focused, I do find the STEM subjects to be really boring and tedious as well, so I get it, but so that's how I know I really do this because this book was just so engaging and so good, and an amazing reference point.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that I struggle with with getting my information from YouTube University LOOL, which is what I called it, because I've learned so much from that place.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: My literal favorite social media app is that they kind of don't really go in depth about the personal lives or the personal convictions of the people that they're talking about, or they might for a couple of minutes, but there's something different about a book that's just like it really goes in depth, and I think obviously in the world that we live in today with social media and shortening attention spans, and don't get me wrong, I love the landscape or the idea of social media and what the benefits that we've been able to reap from it.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, there's pros and cons in everything, and I've noticed myself kind of feeling a relief at engaging with long-form content because I think my attention is starved for it, and so it was just interesting to realize that in myself, and just finally get something.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so fascinated by Queen Elizabeth I, honestly.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so fascinated by her story and just how badass she was.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this woman was such a badass, and obviously she wasn't perfect, like there's a lot of problematic traits that she had, and problematic things that she sanctioned or she herself did, etc.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: But again, no human being is wholly good or wholly evil, so she's nuanced, like I would say, all human beings, but she was such a badass, like she lived in the 16th century in the 1500s, she started ruling in 1558, I think that's when the she rose to the throne, and just at the time when she was really surrounded by ideals of the patriarchy of women being lesser and just not able to rule in their own right, and the norm was that you would get married and that you would look to your husband or to the male figure to as a form of authority, as a source of authority to kind of tell you what to do or to really take over the reins of directing your life and your decision, etc.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like at a time where she was surrounded, like she didn't have women ministers, like obviously, she had court ladies, people who attended to her personal household, but in terms of people that are in government, etc., they were all men.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So her ministers and her advisors, etc., they were all men, and they all held these really indoctrinated views about the patriarchy, which is problematic in itself, but obviously you can't fault them because that's just the world.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can, but not fully, because it's that's just the world that they themselves knew and were raised in, and so they were just continuing the status quo as most people tend to do.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think that it's crazy, like because they pushed her for sure, but she had such a sense of standing her ground, and she was so charming and savvy.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just think that Queen Elizabeth I.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is a perfect example of a woman using not seeing her feminine traits as a weakness, but using it, using them actually as a strength to dumbfound all the men around her because they themselves they're not women.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we all have our skills as different genders, right?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I think ideally is to be balanced in your modalities and your energies, even whether you're a woman or a man or whatever gender you identify with, it's good to be balanced in your feminine and your masculine modalities so that when challenges come which require either parts of the modality, you're not totally like dumbfounded or clueless.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that said, I just find it so fascinating, dude, and so empowering that she would use things like charm and being able to be a peacemaker, being somebody who listens and just using her feminine charm to kind of hold her ministers at bay and make all of them think that they were like the only men in the world.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's just like crazy to think about because there's so many of them, but she's able to meet make each and every one of them feel like they have her utmost attention and that they're utterly validated, etc.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And just being able to charm them, kind of not ruling with just sheer force and willpower.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: She definitely had force and willpower, like she's known to have a temper like of a man, like just like her father.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny because she was naturally redheaded, just like I think her King Henry VIII was a natural redhead, which came from his mother, Elizabeth of York.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let me not go down that rabbit hole, but I just find her so fascinating, dude, and such a badass.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like she was so great at being able to kind of know what the situation required.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: She had amazing people skills, like interpersonal skills, so she could read someone, know what they want, make them feel like she's giving them what they want while actually she's getting what she wants, and being able to surround herself or to recognize in people because of her great interpersonal skills, being able to recognize who she could trust, and just that delicate balance of being strong but not too strong, and being accommodating but not too accommodating, and most badass move of all, not marrying, dude, not freaking marrying, and saying, like, no, I'm not going to give my it's not I definitely think that she wanted to get married, I think that's just a natural human desire.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: But because of all of the repercussions that came with it, especially a woman of her status, she's literally the queen, and because she's a woman, like, and because of her past, her mother famously was murdered by her father, and her father treated her like for a good portion of her life, as if she was a replaceable, just not really important to him, like she was just a pawn on his chessboard that he could discard his emotions for her at or his care for her at any minute if she didn't totally surrender to him and what he wanted from her.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I can understand, or anyone can understand, her kind of just disgust with the institution, and yeah, I'm flabbergasted and just so fascinated by her.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I also do have criticisms of her, but I like I said, I think that's just normal because she was a human being.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: She like something that I discovered through this book is that she famously kind of had a she was kind of two-faced when it came to her soldiers and the people who fought for her.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: She would, which I find so effed up, like she would kind of wait until when soldiers would go into battle for her, or like there's a war campaign, etc.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have soldiers and you pay them, and those soldiers usually take that income, like anyone, and send it back to their families, or etc.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And she time and time again would kind of wait until after the soldiers would fight the battles, and then the people who didn't make it, the soldiers who died in battle, like she saw it as a kind of like free pass to not pay their families because it's like, well, they're dead anyways, so you're kind of just wasting money.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's how she saw it.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times I think she was kind of two-faced about really trying to inspire people to fight for her and just getting them riled up and and proud to be Englishmen and fighting for their country, their people, and their queen, etc.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then not paying them.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's just really fucked up.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, those soldiers, like, they have mixed, they probably have mixed motivations.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably just the only job that they could find, etc.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just all about glory and patriotism, all of that, but still, no, no matter where you are as an employer, like paying your employees, like that's a really sticky situation.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: All right, if you're not doing it, like that's you're literally denying someone's livelihood, and not only your employees, but these are people who are fighting for you, they're putting their lives on the line, and some of them literally died, many of them died for you, and you're just gonna leave their families, lost maybe your husband, a brother, a father, a son, etc.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you're just not gonna pay them.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: So she did that a lot.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: She was famously, or maybe not famously, but again, because like this is long, long form content.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: I saw in the book that she was kind of not kind of, she was very greedy, very money, like Mrs.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Krabs, very much so, Mrs.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Krabs, and I part of me understands because she did have a country to run, and a country that was like England is a small island, and when it comes to like natural resources and their trade, etc., like they famously were constantly like out of money.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even now, nations, even though they're rich as as hell, they're still kind of poor as hell because all the money that they have is already kind of spent in their mind.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's like you have money in your bank account, but it's not really your money because in your mind you already know where the money's going.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's going to bills, maybe it's going to groceries, it's going to this, it's going to that.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't really have that money.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I get it.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: She ran a tight budget, which I think is smart, but I think that also pushed her.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: I also saw that it pushed her towards a propensity for greed.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this was the still during the time, the age of exploration, the time of the conquistadors, etc.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: This was famously during the time of Francis Drake, or Francis Drake, is that his first name?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: The navigator, the the the sailor, the you know, the guy who fought against the Spanish and raided them, like the time of the the stuff that you see from the pirates of the Caribbean, like this was during this time, and so those men who would put their lives on on the line, and of course, a lot of them were doing it for their own self, their own self-serving goals as well, but still, they're the ones doing the work.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: She would just be greedy about wanting to kind of carve out a big piece of the loot that they would take for herself and not really wanting to pay the people who did the work, not wanting to pay people at all, being mad, or just getting like really giving way to rage when she feel like she didn't get the amount that she wanted.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, anyways, anyways, she was a complicated person, and I I admire that about her because every human being is complicated, but she's such a badass dude.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Really, really like her life was her revenge for just all of the bull shit that she went through.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: She was frequently placed in danger before she came to the throne, and it was just like such a surprise that she even made it there because her life was under threat so many freaking times.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, she was not loved by her father.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, neither was her siblings.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was like the it was just the time, especially with royals, where they sent their kids away to be raised by governesses and to have their own household away from where they live, etc.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: But still, like her father beheaded her mother.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't even I mean she met her mother, but she her mother died when she was like three, I think, or four years old, so she doesn't even remember her, etc.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this was all because of his his like obsession over continuing his dynasty, like the name Tudor, and of course that pressure was put on him, but still, still, we none of us are born out of a vacuum, we all inherit a lot of bullshit and things that we have to deal with, and things that color our reality, but we still have our free will, and even if things are hard, like making a hard decision is possible, and so in a lot of ways, I think he took the easy way out, or that I think he definitely took the easy way out, or he followed his temper, he followed his willpower, he followed his ruthlessness, and that came at a cost to the love and the well-being of his children.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just think it's the her life is the best revenge.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as she well, no, no, no.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, she had to grow into her power and learn how to wield it and become confident in it.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And she did rely on a lot of her advisors, obviously.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: No ruler is just their own genius, often, like great rulers are also in a an accumulation of the people they surround themselves with, and she was very much so of that sect, like, but that's that's that was also part of her genius.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: She knew how to surround herself with people who were really good at what they did, and people who filled the spots where she herself was vulnerable or where she didn't have the best expertise, but yeah, power move just choosing not to marry, choosing in in that world, especially as a royal, with all the pressure placed on her as a woman to hold her ground 10 toes down.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And not only did she do that, she didn't like say it out loud, like outright, that that's what she's doing.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout she she was one of the longest reigning monarchs of her time up until that point.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, now it's Queen Elizabeth II, but still, like up until her time, she like up until the end of her life, she was the longest reigning monarch in England, and throughout that whole time, for like a uh a big chunk of that time, she didn't explicitly say she's not going to get married.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: She was able, through charm and balance and conversation and her feminine skills, able to kind of dumbfound her advisors and and you know, inching and negotiating that, like, yeah, she's it's not out of her mind completely.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: She's considering marrying, etc.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, like I think she always knew that like she was just yeah, she's a woman in a man's world, and she's going and she's been given great power, and she's gonna use that and she's gonna live it up as well as be responsible and take care of her country, and she really did give her all for her country and for her own happiness.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it wasn't perfect, but nobody's is.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just really, really admire this woman as a queen, and it was such a great book, and so that led me to wanting to kind of continue in that whole thread that I told you guys about, wanting to focus more on female historical figures that have had great impact on history, and that's where I am right now with Isabella, and so far it's great, and I think she might be my favorite so far because Isabella, she her conviction as a Christian woman, and not only like I don't know, I think some people might roll their eyes, like, oh my god, she was like a devoted Christian, but actually the the positive tenets of her faith, like she really held to that, and of course, I'm already thinking of all the controversies of her reign, like like any ruler, like any human being, she was problematic as well, and there were actions that she took that wasn't the best at all, that were atrocious.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she wasn't perfect, nobody is, no leader is, and I think it is important to talk about where she did go wrong and her mistakes, etc.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think even while I'm reading all of that, even while I'm able to recognize that, the overwhelming picture in my mind is that this woman was extraordinary.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like she lost, well, her mother, she didn't lose her mom.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Her mom died when she was like kind of middle age, like later into her reign.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: But she wasn't really like I would say she kind of lost her mother at a young age because her mom, she wasn't totally, it's not like she had well, who knows, with with the science and medicine of the time.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're talking about mental health, that kind of stuff, that's not even a discussion on the table since that's something that's just now getting to be talked about and acknowledged as a real part of human health and holistic health.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: But her mom, I think, kind of had a mental breakdown from all the pressures of just her mom was the queen of Castile.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, her her father was the regnant, like he was the ruler, and her mom was his queen, and there was just a lot of upheaval, a lot of change in the court, they were placed in danger and just financial struggles, all of that.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think her mom kind of caved a little from the pressures of that, which is understandable.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: She had two kids that she had to take care of, which one of her kids was the heir to the throne, and there's a lot of dangers that come with that, etc.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was her brother, by the way.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: But with that, Isabella she felt and experienced herself as being kind of an orphan because she wasn't really I don't know, she wasn't really nurtured or protected or taken care of.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: She was very much so aware that yes, she had her mother, and her mother was a source of obviously familiarity and protection to a certain extent, but from a young age, I think she very much so realized that she had to be on her own guard and learn how to take care of herself and how to be vigilant and how to make her own way into the world.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the ways that she was able to find strength in doing that was through her faith, and I just find such a conviction and inspiration from that because while she wasn't perfect, of course, you can just see how much she strove to really be a true Christian, like not just the the not at all, I would say honestly, the self-righteous, kind of lording it over people, holier than thou, like sin standing on your sitting on your high horse, type of attitude that a lot of Christians have and have had and do have still, but really like the difficulties and the sacrifice of being a Christian, like giving up worldly desires and denying oneself certain things for the greater good, or just really being humble and just following the things, following the narrow path.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Such an amazing woman, so smart, such a badass, truly a warrior queen.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like she was so active, and by active I mean like physically, she frequently rode out on horseback, going places, like throughout her whole reign, they would move because at the time, Spain wasn't the Spain that we know today, it wasn't unified, she was she inherited or this this was obviously the her storyline began before she went to the throne, and that was a whole journey of its own.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the kingdom that she was a princess of was of Castile, which is the a big part of the Spain that we know now, and there was other kingdoms like Aragon and Castile itself, had been kind of a unification of it and the other kingdom of Leon, which was still kind of recent in memory, and so it was this whole shebang.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then on top of it, when she came to marry her husband, which was Ferdinand, who was the heir to another kingdom, which is of Aragon, which is a region of nowadays, like the capital was Barcelona, and that whole region of Catalan, etc.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: So when they got married, that's when the kingdom kind of became unified, but even like it wasn't just like okay, we're Spain now, and we're all just jiving and everything.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like they still had their own customs, like they had to gradually come under a homogenous administration, quote unquote homogenous, like over many, many decades.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so the reason I'm saying that is because I was saying that she was such an active queen, like her whole court, honestly, was very active because of the lifestyle that they lived.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: So they would frequently move their court from city to city because obviously they had to kind of oversee them on a very ground-level manner in order to kind of hold the kingdom together because there were frequent rebellions, there was also the Reconquista, which was the Muslim influence or the Muslim Emirate that was still in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, which was Granada, and it was just like threats of the spread of Islam, and of course, that's like controversial in its own.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I also think about how even in the Islamic world, it was also very there's a lot of controversy and atrocities because this expansion wasn't done peacefully, and in certain ways it was when towns or cities or states, etc., they surrendered peacefully, but a lot of them didn't, and when they didn't, these caliphs or rulers they would conquer through violent means, and that's just was the order of the day, and so I'm saying that because this was a real threat in that was really, really close to her kingdom, to her state, and of course, as a devout Christian, she's also thinking about her moral obligations, etc.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: This woman is so fascinating and so intelligent, like obviously, as you're moving so much and as you're active, as you have your boots on the ground seeing how the war machine manifests itself.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, she became very she had a lot of street smart, is basically what I'm saying.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, she wasn't just like I give an order and I don't know how it's getting carried out.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, she really saw the lives of soldiers and the administration and the campaigns of war, etc.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: So she became very savvy in knowing how to unlike Elizabeth, actually, she was really good about paying her soldiers, making sure that they're fed, making sure that they're clothed, making sure that their families are taken care of, caring about the their souls, so caring about their faith, caring about that they have, and she was actually it's interesting because when you look at her from the outsider, you if you're just engaging with the surface level kind of broad overview of this figure, you'd see her as being very cold and kind of like condescending and authoritarian in terms of her religion, and I think in a lot of ways she was, but also personally, I see that she was actually very tender and very forgiving and very what's the word?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the word that I'm thinking of when rulers they kind of she was tolerant.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: She obviously she cared about people's souls and she wanted them to be Christians, but she never liked the idea of forced conversions because she knew that people like she didn't care if you seemed like a Christian.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, that's important to I.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know cultural homogeny, etc., which can be a threat of its own if there's a lot of dissension and differences, etc.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: But she would give people the choice of like okay, you can stay, you can kind of keep doing what you're doing, and you just have to maybe pay these taxes, like, and I know that sounds like well, you know, that's the bare minimum, but not at the time in the time that she lived in, especially as a monarch, especially thinking about the male streak of just like absolutely bulldozing everything out of their path.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, she was very she would not be alone in the world in being a ruler who kind of just massacred people that she feel like didn't agree with her, or using that as a means to an end.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: She was often, like as I'm reading this book, you see that she was very sensitive to the costs of war, specifically human lives.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: If she could avoid bloodshed in any way, she really, really did the hard work in making sure that it wasn't it wasn't easy for her to just be like, let's just kill these people and get rid of them.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: She was very much she always thought about well, maybe not always, but often she thought about the lives of her of her enemies and her opponents.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't want to just slaughter them, she wanted them to be real converts, not just pretending to be, and she didn't want to just kill people mercilessly because of what her faith was she believed from her faith.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: This woman is extraordinary, she's so intelligent, she is such a mediator, like she was very, very, very savvy at being able to bring two sides together and coming to a compromise in just holding the peace.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's evident for me in that because as soon as this woman died, dude, as soon as this woman died, she had started kind of going south within her own family, like her scheming husband.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think they were I think they were a good match, they were a love match, but I think they were also you know the order of the day.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was just what you did for business, and it was just a pragmatic marriage.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think they made good partners, like good business partners in terms of ruling a kingdom together.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm saying that because obviously he had his own convictions and motivations, and I think their strength really came in being a unit.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: So as soon as they weren't a unit anymore, you could just see like things started falling apart, more wars started breaking out, and this was also she was famously the monarch who sponsored the voyage of Christopher Columbus, and she was very much so like I could just cry talking about this because she personally personally felt the conviction of treating, and obviously, it's it's a conversation of its own with people having a problem with the spread of Christianity, like at all, which I understand that that's a conversation to be had, but not but and there's ways of spreading religion through peaceful means through actually caring about the souls of the people that you're engaging in, versus just slaughtering people and forcing them into conversion and and dominating them.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she was very much so against that, like I said.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: So she really stressed about caring for the native people, she was against the idea of enslaving them rather than like actually doing the hard work of caring for their souls and doing the hard work of winning them over, not just dominating them.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, and you can see that because obviously it's really hard because communication was very slow, they didn't have tell telephones, they didn't have uh what's that what's that thing that they invented before telephones?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm just thinking about like Morse code or whatever.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: What is that?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking of a telegraph.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think a telegraph is is that what it is?
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think it might be a telegraph, like where they could send messages to one another.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how it works specifically, but they didn't have that.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: All they had was you got on a horse or you got in a boat and you went to the destination of the person that you wanted to relay the message to, and and that's how you got messages and sent messages, and that took a long time.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, it's hard to administer or to impose bureaucracy in a world that you don't really have immediate access to.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm saying that because a lot of these explorers or colonists, people at the very beginning who were like while Christopher Columbus was still alive, and even like a couple decades after him, it was really hard to like they basically had free will, basically, over how they were administering over the lands that they were conquering in the name of the monarchs.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, there were guidelines, and some of them, a lot of them did follow the rules that were set upon them, but still, like there wasn't really like the justice was kind of iffy because nobody's around to enforce it.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, while yes, there we're gonna be responsible, and there's people who are appointed to make sure that the laws are being followed and that the what the monarch says actually goes, it was still like you know, and she's a woman living in a man's world, so people did kind of what they wanted, and again, it's not excusing what happened or kind of taking the responsibility off of her.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was just stating a fact, honestly, and I'm seeing that because I'm thinking about the legacy that she wanted to establish with the treatment of the natives and actually caring for their souls and seeing them as equal members of society, not just people to be subjugated and dominated and wiped out from the face of the earth, like she wanted them to be functioning productive members of Spanish society.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of makes me sad because obviously people will be people, and in life and in history, you take two steps forward and five steps back, and with that, I think that's exactly what happened after she died, and she really was obviously she was just a human being, something like she was a god or a saint or anything like that, but she really was the moral kind of heart of her family and of her kingdom.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: She really made sure that people were responsible to the hard work but humane work of ruling and of administering and of just being human beings in society.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's evident, that's evident to me because as soon as she died, her husband started acting shady, tried to take the inheritance of her kingdom away from the kids that they had together, tried to remarry and have a whole new family, tried to take over the country, like all of that.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can also see it in the real legacy of the conquistadors and the atrocities that they committed in the New World, which I think was always going to be committed because people are people, humans are humans, men are men, and just ruthless and evil in a lot of ways, and greedy and callous, and all these things, but even more so after she died, there wasn't that moral kind of heart and authority to hold them accountable to their atrocious actions.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: It just kind of went downhill in terms of just really eating people alive, and I mean that figuratively, of course, but just just ravaging through people and just countless atrocities and injustice and oppression and domination, etc.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I have like three more hours to go for that book, but I love it so so so so much, and I feel so lucky to really feel like it's like duh.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's it's duh, of course.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get deeper into the material and deeper into learning about these people, you you have to read about them and like really engage in long-form content, but it's it's really like clicking for me.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of the first time in my life, I think, in my bookworm reading journey that I'm engaging more so with historical works because I used to read a lot more fiction and yeah, fiction, like uh period dramas, fictional period dramas, etc.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: That that was that was my love, but reading like autobiographies and just uh I'm so satisfied, I love it, so amazing, such a good book.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, like I said, that's by Kristen Downey, and it's called Isabella the Warrior Queen, and what a warrior queen she really was.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: She was such a badass, such a badass.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I just wanted to I honestly just wanted to share what I've been engaging in for the past couple of weeks, and just kind of a reminder to myself as to why the social sciences and the humanities in terms of like a subject that's focused on in society is so important and not just STEM.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of value is placed on STEM, like the sciences, math, etc.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the humanities are devalued, even more so nowadays, especially in the current site guys that we live in.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: I just think it's so important because I'm also learning a lot about world orders that used to be very prominent, which people have kind of forgotten or never knew about.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I'm thinking about the spread of Islam, and as well as the spread of Islam is very complicated because the religion itself really is kind of anchored in this idea of conquest and ruling in the real world that we live in now.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because even the even Muhammad, he was a conqueror, he was like from the very early days of Islam, he was very much so on the agenda of like conquering and spreading Islam.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, that comes with a lot of bloodshed and a lot of like warfare, etc.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think it's so interesting because that's still very much so alive to this day.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm just thinking about the fears that they had at the time about the rise of the Ottomans and the spread of the Ottomans, which also means the spread of Islam, and how they were hell-bent on conquering the entire world and making Islam the dominant religion of the world.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, they're not new in that because a lot of Christians and a lot of other religions have wanted to do that as well.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was just it's just interesting to me because when you look at modern day and some of the ideals that certain countries have, I'm just thinking of like Iran and just like what a lot of not all obviously, I'm not saying all Muslims are violent, etc.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying that there are idea or ideals in the religion of Islam about like that's what jihad is all about, like conquering and slaughtering what people what they call the infidels, people who don't believe, or people who won't submit to who they believe is the supreme god.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's very interesting to me because while some people may have forgotten this history or don't know about it, that's still very much so in the mind of people to this day, agents of chaos to this day, who very much so believe in the tenets of jihad and exterminating people who don't believe in the religion and wanting to conquer.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just thinking about so I'm sure you guys know about this, or maybe you don't know.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's this whole thing that happened in Seyuta.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a territory off of the coast of Spain that's like it's kind of near, or maybe it is in Morocco, or what close to Morocco, but there's this like whole thing that happened where a bunch of people from a lot of Moroccans they flooded the border region in Seyuta, which is a territory of Spain, so they were trying to get into Spain, and like it was just a whole lot of people.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was like 70 or maybe close to like a hundred, maybe it's not that much.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was like 70,000 people.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine 70 a population of 70,000 people all of a sudden coming into your country.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's like I'm not against um what's the word?
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not against immigration and migrating, especially if you're looking for a better life, etc.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that intimately.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: I just obviously you also have to recognize the the difficulties that that brings onto the territory that is acquiring you, but in that investigation and kind of figuring out like why did this influx of people all of a sudden made a run for the border, they found that this was actually promoted by the Moroccan government in terms of I think there's territory disputes with Ceyuta, and I think a motivation of that was to kind of send people to the territory because a lot of things that what people or rulers will kind of use as a means to say, like, well, yeah, this is our territory, and it's valid that it's our territory or that it belongs to us.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because look at how many people of our nationalities live there.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of something that, for example, Putin uses and to justify his war on Ukraine, is saying that there's a lot of Russians that live in that region and that they're just there to kind of protect them or they historically it belongs to them.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll use that, they'll use ancestry and and current peoples of their demographic living there, and and kind of using the excuse of we're their protectors, so therefore that's our territory.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just thinking about obviously with the Catholic monarchs with Isabella, she a big part of her story and of her reign was the Reconquista against the Muslims of Granada, and that in itself is nuanced, whether you are for it or against it.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's there's conversations or arguments to be made for both sides.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's just interesting to me to kind of see the correlation of like, oh, that's still in the minds of people, there are still Muslims who live in certain parts of North Africa or in the Middle East who still want to continue the works of their ancestors in terms of spreading their dominion, whether that's through co um conquest or violence.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that's really interesting to me.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because while we might want to be humane people and be oriented towards peace, it doesn't change that there's agents of chaos out there who are after your lives and who would literally kill you because you don't fit what it is that they see as the vision for the world.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's really interesting to me, and just a reminder to me as to why history will always be will always be important.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can't forget or you can't ignore where you've come from because a lot of people don't.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people are very a lot of people are hell-bent on continuing the stories or the legacies of their ancestors, and in order for you to be informed in a well-rounded manner, you have to engage with those stories.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have to know where these people come from, what are their ideals, who are their ancestors, what were the ideals of their ancestors?
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: And people are very sensitive to the to their ancestors and their ideals and their aesthetics, etc.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, most likely they will want to continue that, and continuing that might mean danger for you and for the people that you care about and for your way of life, etc.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I just wanted to share.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very interesting rabbit hole that I've been kind of undergoing, and not to mention, according to that study, that I am investing in my own long-term happiness and longevity, and hopefully staging off any risks of dementia in the future.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God, right?
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank god.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: But with that said, something that I wanted to kind of hard pivot on you guys, something else that I've kind of been engaging with a lot is and wanted to talk to you guys about, or just kind of breach a conversation, is just the whole discussion on AI right now.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: AI in relations to a lot of things, but where I started thinking about this was AI in relations to art.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know I can hear the alarm bells going off.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that obviously, okay, not I think there's a lot of discussion and anger and apprehension, I think rightfully right now, about AI, its capabilities, the threats of AI, as well as a lot of people being afraid when we're talking about things like art and human skills and how AI can replace that.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've seen a lot of tension or hostility when creators will use AI in their artistic process or their content, etc.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just thinking about human creativity and AI, and so the the reason I started thinking about this is because I was on Pinterest.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love Pinterest, I'm sure a lot of people do, but I'm sure I know a lot of people do, and that's one of my ways, like I love looking at people's freelancers' art on Pinterest.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that I always used to love.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do I don't look at it or engage with it as much as I used to because obviously as you get older you just get busier and you have less time to do the things that you want to do, but anyways, I yeah, that's always been something that I've always loved and I feel like has added to the kind of growth and expansion of my creative imagination, like which has nourished me a lot because a lot of art is not born out of out of a vacuum.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: People are usually inspired by something, and then they go and create based.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's always a continuing conversation.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's literally just the story of humanity itself, honestly.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I found myself being inspired by a lot of art and just feeling so inspired in my soul and just wanting to give birth to something.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: And by give birth, I mean go and create something.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times I would see this and I'm like, wait, they used not like fully AI to make this work, but they used certain aspects of AI to do this, and I find myself thinking about, I don't know, I just it's a broad topic, obviously, because AI touches so many parts of our lives, or and it's going to, it's continuing to, and it will grow to even more like unimaginable scale.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I was just thinking about like, okay, obviously, I don't want to listen to like a song, and turns out it's just like this AI agent who just made it using like somebody's voice.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like okay, I'm coming to listen to a song because I'm trying to connect to like human emotion, so I don't want to listen to a song made by a robot because I don't trust that this robot knows the very human and complex depths of emotion.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: But why am I finding myself feeling inspired and feeling my artistic imagination grow as I'm engaging with this art, whether it's AI or not?
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's very interesting, and it just made me kind of ask like, okay, I think if we're being honest, there's a lot of tools that artists use now that people in the past over centuries didn't have access to.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so Do you think those people from the past could say that this is not real art because you're using these tools that kind of remove you from the raw human experience?
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, what is that experience?
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: What who dictates what you can be inspired by and what touches you, like in your soul, which is what I think truly, truly is a big cornerstone of what makes us human.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, of course, I don't know.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of saying of course, I think it's very nuanced because I think that obviously there's so many, I can't even think of the infinite amount of dangers and just brain drain that is coming and will continue to come from as repercussions of this AI revolution that like is developing and that we will experience in the future.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: And pain, and just atrocities, and just disappointments.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can use like maybe you have a vision in your head, and you might use certain tools to bring that vision to existence, and because we're used to the modern or postmodern world that we live in, we'll say, Oh, yeah, that's artistic.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's artistic because we use these tools that are designated as like qualifying tools to bring art into the world that we have accepted, but maybe in the past it wouldn't have been expected.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: Things like like I'm just thinking about Picasso and Monet, like Impressionism, Cubism, Realism, Romanticism, all of these things, art forms that literally would not have been accepted or were literally rejected, and because of that, these artists were known as revolutionary because even though established societies of artists and people who consider themselves experts, therefore having a right to kind of designate what is real art, etc., there was a time when only classic works, like in the style of like Da Vinci, Caravaggio, all of these masters, only those forms were considered as real art.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when things like Impressionism or Cubism, things like Picasso or Surrealism, photography, all of these things, they would not consider them as art.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: They would say, Oh, that's fake.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're not, and who's dictating that?
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's only because we've accepted it now that we're like, Oh yeah, that's art.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just think it's so interesting because obviously we're we're at the very tip of the surface of what AI is capable of, and then it's developing in real time, and we're engaging with it in real time, it's still a taboo, it's still revolutionary, we're not used to it.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, when people use it as a tool to bring their artistic imagination and create um what's the word?
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: Imagination, yeah.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: Their artistic imagination to life, people are saying, Oh, you're not a real artist, this isn't real art because you used AI to make it, and I think in a lot of ways that can be true.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you just like again, this is just me saying, doesn't mean it's a given, but personally, my standard is if you just go to like chat GBT and say, Hey chat, create me this, and here are the guidelines, and chat creates it for you, it's like okay, yes, you did use AI to make that, and to a certain extent, like it's like I'm not really impressed by it, but if we're sticking to or if I'm sticking to the theme of what I'm to what I'm basically saying in this discussion, I'm just thinking, well, you still had the original idea, you're still the one who prompted chat to create it for you.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like chat was just like, Hey, let me make this picture for you, and here it is, and it's art.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you still had the idea of this is what you want, this is what you want it to look like.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is these are the colors you want chat to incorporate in it.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I just think it's a very nuanced conversation, and the reason I'm saying that is because I'm seeing so many people on social media just completely throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and what that means is that they're completely just against anything having to do with AI, and I think that's a disservice because for a lot of reasons.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a what I wrote in my notes, and which is like very much so true, is obviously as you're engaging with history, something you'll see that's very, very much so like in your face is that humans never in in history, like in the 300,000 or even longer, like half a million years that humans have been on this earth, nowhere in history have we been able to stop the advancement of technology, and that it's not because there's not dissension or people are not against it, it's because there will always be free, there's too many free agents out there, there's too many people who are invested in innovation and their own power.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's either we join the narrative and have, and because you make a a space or you pull up a seat for yourself at the table, you're able to have conversations and engage in conversations around building up safety measures around these very much so real threats of danger, or we get left behind in the past vulnerable to new savvy technologies because they will come.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We there's no like human world government, and even if there was, every single human being on earth has free will.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So even if even if there's a global government, which sounds terrifying actually, very terrifying, even if there is a global consensus over the halt of a technology, there are still people who operate under the radar.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's things like the black market, there's people who who they're who break the law, there's criminals, there's people are way too invested in innovation and in their own empowerment to especially with with AI to give it up.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, it's just not happening.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I see a lot of people like on social media, especially people saying to creators, like, oh, you used AI to make this.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I was just I saw this collaboration between Huda Beauty and Fenty Beauty.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_00: They created this, it was like this 10 to 20 second reel, and it's these um I think it's like skincare, maybe it's makeup, I'm not sure.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like these skincare um containers that have legs, and you know, it's kind of it's animated, it's like a cartoon, and the cartoon characters are like they're the skincare bottles, etc.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they're just like wearing high heels and it's advertising something, and so many people in the comments were like, Oh my god, you use AI.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love this ad, but I hate that you use AI, and people were just shaming them for using AI.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not necessarily coming at people for being upset, I think there was a lot of valid discussion.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some people were saying, like, okay, where are they gonna get actual bottles of skincare or makeup that have legs and who are sentient and can actually like film a commercial?
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_00: People were saying, like, oh, you guys don't want to pay people instead of paying people to create these, you'd rather use AI to make them.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I don't want to invalidate people's feelings, but I think a lot of people are just jumping on the bandwagon because it's it's just the cool new thing to do, or people are honestly just like to make blanket statements without seeing recognizing the fact that most aspects of human life is extremely nuanced when it comes to technology, government, bureaucracy, all these things, it's not black or white, it's very much so gray.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have to get in the minutiae and solve everything, which is exhausting, which is kind of impossible.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just think I don't know, I'm not trying to alienate anyone, but I felt like people are kind of so entitled to being paid by other people, especially on social media, like in real honesty, like this is just real world, real life, just human motivations.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Most people have a certain sense of like selfishness and looking out for yourself because that's just a part of human nature.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you're born alone, even if you're born with a twin, like you're the only soul in your body inhabiting your body, like, unless you're possessed by a demon, which is not normal, you know, it's still not good.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I just think people they like people don't want to pay you if they don't have to.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, you might give to charity, and if somebody's in need, you're gonna be moved to like give to them, and that feels good, etc.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're like at the store or you're getting something or you're buying something, or let's say you have to get your car service taken care of, or you have to go to the grocery store and get groceries, etc., whatever activity you're engaging in, if you could get it for free, wouldn't you do so?
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you could pay less for something, even if it's the same quality, wouldn't you do so?
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Most people would do so because most people are counting their pennies, most people are counting their dollars, even rich people do that.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's a different discussion in its own, but that's just how humans operate.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not other people's jobs to give you income.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if they don't have to, they won't do it.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's just how, for lack of a better term, selfish or self-oriented people are.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna pay you if they don't have to.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is not utopia.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_00: We don't live in paradise.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_00: As much as like we would love people to care about us and want everybody to be provided for it, that's just not the world we live in.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's our responsibility to do our homework about our income, about your income and your future, our future, our individual futures.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I just found myself asking like, how can you bring value to the landscape where your skills are like becoming less valuable?
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have to do our own homework about our own income and our future, and not be lazy about it.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_00: You you, we us, we have to think about these things.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I just think about honing in on new skills, like it's our job to do that, it's our job to keep up with innovation and realize that the world, the only constant in this world is change, and so it's our homework, our job to make sure that we're staying informed, honing in on new skills, making sure that we keep growing and carve out the piece of the pie for ourselves.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: So nobody's gonna do the homework for you, nobody's gonna be.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some people might be, but really, how how many people are like are truly spending a crazy amount of time thinking about how they can give you more money?
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's thinking about that, nobody wants to pay you if they don't have to.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's your like you're the one, unfortunately, that falls on you, that falls on us, on each individual.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just think it's so pointless for people to be out here shaming other people for looking out for their own interests in terms of not hiring if they can outsource it to AI.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's just a given, it's gonna happen, and of course, I think not I think I know there's a lot of conversation.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very nuanced topic, like most, if not all, aspects of human life.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of conversations to be had around guardrails, and very much so real threats to human safety and human civilization as a whole, in terms of the conversation of AI.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_00: When talking about like weapons, warfare, etc., information out there, like, yes, we need to be sitting down and having these conversations and setting guardrails and preparing for incoming dangers.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that some people are just kind of lazy and they just want to throw it all out together, just throw out AI, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's not happening.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's just people are already too invested.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm invested in this, I love innovation, I love technology.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just thinking about like another thing that's been on my mind, honestly.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about intergalactic travel.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know so random.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was younger, I loved, I mean, I still love astronomy, but I seriously wanted to work for NASA and hopefully become an astronaut one day.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And something that I'm kind of sad about, I hope and pray that it's in my lifetime, but I doubt it, is just more intergalactic travel, being able to travel within our galaxy, exploring the Milky Way, exploring the vast amount of planets and solar systems in our galaxies, and potentially, not potentially, finally being able to find the inevitable life that's out there in the universe, because the universe is just too vast for there not to be other life out there.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something that I'm like, oh, I wish like we knew how to travel at the speed of light, if not faster.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that we had the lifespan or at least machines that had the lifespan of being able to travel, like things that would take us maybe like a thousand years to get from one solar system to another can be shrunken down to like a week because of technological advancement.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is excites the heck out of me.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_00: AI excites the hell out of me.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking about the possibilities and the growth and the things that we'll be able to do, and don't even get me started with medicine and cures for different diseases and lengthening of lifespans.
• 1:21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, very I can very much so see AI helping us to I I can see in the future humans living to like 200 years, 250 years, 300 years, and of course, with all of that, with everything that I just said intergalactic travel, medicine, etc.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things come with very real dangers, and of course, wherever there's good, there will always be agents of chaos that are out there just salivating and unable to wait for how they can use these tools to exploit and kill and subjugate and dominate and oppress people.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_00: That will just always be the truth because humans are human beings, no matter what.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys want to get rid of the dangers of AI, I'm sorry to say the only way to do that is to get rid of humanity, and maybe that's what we're doing, you know, with the creation of humanoid robots.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we will go extinct at some point, and that's our own damn fault.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think humans can help it.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I think it's pointless to try to fight it because there's too many agents of chaos, free agents out there.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So stop just throw trying to throw out the conversation in general.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like that's lazy.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it's easy to just say, hi, AI is evil, just throw it out.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, no, no, let's not engage in this.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, no, no.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_00: We need to actually do the hard work and sit down and have the conversations around the specifics of it, and just be realistic and honest.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we we so many people love to talk about just capitalism, and I'm I'm not here to talk it about to talk about the the good or the bad of capitalism.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is what it is, it's a human tool.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's good in it, and there's atrocities in it.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's ways in which it brings real prosperity and changes the lives of people, and there's other ways in which it really rolls over people and bulldozes over the humanity of people and just turns us robotic.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm just thinking, there's so many people who talk about capitalism and the ruthlessness of it, and how everything is about industry and money and money and money and paying and all that stuff, which is valid.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's that's a very real conversation.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_00: But here we are shaming people for not wanting to pay you when they can outsource something to AI.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, we all want to keep our money, nobody wants to be out here paying for things that they don't have to, and unfortunately, that also means not wanting to pay you.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And while, of course, that sucks for us, it sucks for you who needs an income.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's our responsibility as individuals to make sure we're looking out for ourselves in terms of where that's gonna come from.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think shaming other people for not wanting to take care of us is pointless because that's just human nature, and so it's necessary for us to join the table and make a seat at the table for ourselves and join in the conversation.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm officially at that point where I feel like I want to talk more, but I feel like this this salon is long enough.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're at like an hour and 20 minutes right now, so I need to start winding down, but I don't know.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just getting so annoyed with people everywhere, it just seems like it's so fake.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like it's such a trend, it's such like a the new cool thing to do.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh my god, you're using AI, shame on you.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what?
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Huh?
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_00: What about you?
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you're just sitting shaming other people, but not you're not really contributing, or we're not really contributing to the conversation, we're not really coming up with solutions.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_00: What if a some someone's just out here wanting to make their brand successful and they don't have the income to pay people like me, for example?
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to have a whole team of experts and people who are good at what they do, like creating websites, coding, etc., who are just experts at what they do and be able to pay them, but I just don't have that kind of money, and so I am so grateful for AI tools that can help me to create content because without them I wouldn't be able to.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we're just gonna throw out the whole baby with the bathwater.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, I want to keep the baby, I want I want to protect the baby, and I want to protect myself as well, and then throw out the bathwater.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think it's up to us to have more productive conversations around this because just throwing the idea of it out the window completely is not happening.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you might do it, but you'll find yourself in 20 years being completely isolated, or who knows 20 years, maybe in the next five years, being completely isolated in a world that that's inevitably moved on without you because it's going to, so might as well keep moving along with it.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's all I wanted to say.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that this didn't piss you off, and even if it did, you know, it's okay, it's not possible to have pleasant conversations all the time.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people we need to talk about the real shit and hold ourselves accountable and realize that the work is difficult, and we're gonna have to get down into the trenches and do the dirty work and do the tedious work of figuring because that's how human societies are built and developed through time and throughout history.
• 1:27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect full circle moment, anyways.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I really really really really really really yeah actually, I was saying most of the time I feel like I have more to say, but I feel satisfied with this conversation, and I hope you guys do too.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that this was eye-opening or at least made you think, made you curious about different things like history.
• 1:27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely if you're if you're like a bookworm and you haven't checked out Audible, like duh, it really is like I understand, like I see I see the hype.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_00: I understand the hype.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like duh.
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't see the hype, go ahead and check it out, check out the hype and give it a chance.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I really, really want us to have more productive conversations around AI and how it can serve us, and how we can also keep protect ourselves from it, how we can extract maximum use out of it because that's all it is, is just a tool while protecting ourselves from it as well.
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I hope that this salon was satisfying for you as well, and made you think and made you want to have productive conversations around this, and inspiring you to have productive conversations with people in your community or in your locale about this.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, thank you guys for joining me in the salon session and for listening to me.
• 1:28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yao, I always appreciate it.
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I love you guys, and I will see you guys in the next episode.
• 1:28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, goodbye.