Latest / The Naked Room / Language is POWERFUL Part 1: Mansplaining, the AI debate & Imperfectionism Is Cool AF

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Language is POWERFUL Part 1: Mansplaining, the AI debate & Imperfectionism Is Cool AF · The Naked Room

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: That was probably one of my biggest pivots.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're allowed to be imperfect.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's totally fine.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: The production of language is very hard.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: There are definitely some rules I'm not allowed to talk about my resume.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: The AI debate, I think, is really interesting because...
• 0:13
  [music]
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, roomies.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to come to you today with another episode.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: We have a guest here.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've been very excited about this one.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: It makes my English major heart go pitter-patter.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with Rebecca Wicker.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: She's the mind behind The Strategic Linguist on Substack.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Her newsletter has amassed over 4,000 subscribers.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Rebecca writes about linguistics in the workplace
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: and shows her readers how power moves through professional language.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Who gets credited?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Who gets believed?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whose words become the decision?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Rebecca, welcome.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited to have this conversation with you today. I'm so excited to be here.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me. So I did a little digging, of course, before this call,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: because I want to make sure that we can get really nerdy,
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: but then also understand a little bit more about who you are and where you come
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: from and your experiences.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And your background is so interesting.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: You've lived all over the world.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to know how some of that has informed your love of linguistics.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think a lot of people, when they first meet me,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: and some of you even listening to me and seeing me now,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: will have seen that I am English, which is not incorrect.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I am, and this is a tricky one to even say, and I've written about this,
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: I am both Sri Lankan and English.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: So my father was Sri Lankan, my mother is English.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And even talking about being both, I've often talked about it being half.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So being half a person.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Those kind of things, like being mixed race is very difficult because I look
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: a certain way, definitely sound a certain way,
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: but my experiences do not correspond with a lot of the ways people kind
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: of assume I am.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so my background has been very just difficult to explain to people
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: in general just because of, I think,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: growing up at a time when there weren't very many people who looked Like me,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: who had parents like mine.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think today it's a little bit more acceptable and you see mixed race kids all
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: the time. Like you see different types of parents, um, you know, growing up,
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: whoever I was with, whichever parent I was avec,
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: I always assumed to be adopted because I didn't look like either of them.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you kind of had to have them both together for people to kind of work it out.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I spent my life between Sri Lanka and England.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: The reason I have this accent is because I went to a boarding school in the UK,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a very different story which we can talk about.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think I wrote about that in some of my pieces.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: But the pivots I've had have been just very interesting based off of the kinds
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: of ways in which I've always wanted to.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think in the back of my head there's always been something
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: more that I could be doing.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where my pivots have come from.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I understand that.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I've not been satisfied what I've been doing, but I've always been like,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: there must be something more that I could be doing with this right now, right here.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the pivots that I've had,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: are there any
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: that you found the most interesting of my pivots?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've had some weird ones.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you've been a teacher.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: You were a runway model.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You were even contemplating going and being in Bollywood.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like there were so many things in there.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, my God, what direction do I even go in with this?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the one I think especially when you said like I've often talked
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: about like there are some there are definitely some roles I'm not allowed to talk
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: about my resume.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Teaching is definitely one of them.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've always been told not to put that on my resume.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: The modeling one is also something I've been told not to.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I did for like a couple of years, I was a full-time model,
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: which was really interesting only because it was something that I'd always wanted
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: to do. I ended up being scouted and kind of like whisked off to India to do this.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I think some of the things I haven't talked about in some of the pieces
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: that I know are out there, I think the two things that I would say going back
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: to being like mixed race, I remember going into a modeling agency in London
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: and being told that I would do well if I got a nose job.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because apparently my nose was far too South Asian.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, all right, cool.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then going to India and being really successful
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: because I looked slightly white.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And just knowing culturally...
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Just that fairer skin is a lot more, like you look at Bollywood today,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of racial undertones of dusky skin tones and all of that kind
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: of stuff. I found that so fascinating that I could be in two markets,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: be basically any sort of race,
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: but the kinds of things that I would witness there,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: it was just interesting of who I was.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up leaving because...
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, there must be something more to this than doing what I'm doing.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because I also wasn't Indian.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I remember having my shoes stolen from some of the other models just
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: because it was very competitive.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'd be about to go on or we'd about to start the show
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: and my shoes would go missing or my clothes would go missing and I'd have
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: to go find them because all these other women had kind of stolen them
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: or sabotaged my runway.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was kind of like a really early pivot of there must be something more
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: to what I'm doing.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: I had an undergraduate degree when I was like, yeah, what am I doing here?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think the other pivots that I've seen have been moving from teaching
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: and moving to doing my graduate degree in linguistics.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I had three jobs, as we do, right, because one isn't enough.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: You have to, yes. Right.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: To prove that I can do these things.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you teach, you do have to kind of rack up your hours as like an experience.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost a little bit like yoga training of like you have to do 200 hours.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: So in order for me to qualify and do all these other qualifications,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I had to have a certain number of hours teaching.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I remember at the language school I was teaching at,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: they used to call me the cover fairy because I was like,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have to rack up as many hours as I can.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: So if anyone's ever sick, I would cover. I see. Okay.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And they would call me and I would come in.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be like, whatever you want. I'll do whatever you want me to do.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because I wanted to rack up those hours because the more hours you had,
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: the more experience you had.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And All those kinds of things, right? So I had three jobs.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was working at this foreign language school I was teaching.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was working at a government school in Sri Lanka.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was wearing a sari every day to teach middle school English, poetry and literature.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then I also had a job
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: where I was training call centers in accent reduction
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: and business English, which saying that now,
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: knowing what I do and what I talk about, I find quite bad.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was teaching call centres in Sri Lanka how to have a neutral accent.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I was training people to sound less Sri Lankan so they would get harassed less.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I would listen to some of these really racist calls and And I would be like, ooh.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would teach them how to pronounce things differently and how
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: to change their intonation to sound a little bit more of a native speaker.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And to that point, I was doing this.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in the post that I wrote with Catherine Gallagher,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: it got to a point in Sri Lanka where my...
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Who I was and who I was going to be was going to be dictated by the man I married.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right. So I had three jokes.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I remember reading that too.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, the husband that I end up marrying will either allow me to work
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: and continue doing what I'm doing.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that wasn't really something that a lot of men would probably like me to do in Sri Lanka.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or I would have to rely on them to introduce me to business partners.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so I could do, for example, the work I was doing,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: but for banks or for multinational companies that were in the city.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: But they could introduce me to them if they wanted to, if they had the access,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: those kind of things. And I was like, I don't think I can stay here.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: There must be something more for me to do.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I did my master's in linguistics at Columbia University.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't think I'd get in. I didn't get housing.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up having to live like really far away from campus.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: But that's kind of where all of that started.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was probably one of my biggest pivots.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay. Yeah.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like the call center really informed a lot because you're hearing all of these calls.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. I can't even imagine that.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was bad.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, this is terrible.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: So in terms of like, I don't think I have always been cognizant of language. Okay.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't until,
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: and you know,
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: I do a series called Behind the Language and I interview other linguists
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: on Substack.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing I see, and I've only done like three or four of them,
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: but one thing I know of everyone I've interviewed,
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: there is a personal like coming to Jesus moment.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Where you're doing your linguistics graduate degree.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone I've interviewed so far has a PhD, so far more qualified than I am.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: But they have these epiphanies where you're in a classroom learning
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: about linguistics and you're like, what?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, so like the person I interviewed recently, Christina,
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: didn't realize that she was probably bilingual in a way
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: that she had been told she was.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until she had done all this research and she was sitting
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: in all these classes and she realized the kinds of languages
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: that she would actually be speaking at home actually made her a different type
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: of speaker than she'd been told.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And Those kind of things I think are just really interesting.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like linguistics has always just been a part of everything I've been doing.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: I just didn't know until I went to grad school to learn about it.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: What was your epiphany?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Linguistic capital was my epiphany.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Linguistic capital and linguistic identity, I'd say,
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: because obviously being mixed race identity is just super challenging,
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: particularly because I am not someone who...
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think being mixed race, you normally, at least the people I've met,
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: you tend to be in one country for most of the time.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't really know the other side of you very well or you experience it
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: in short bursts of time with relatives that you go visit
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: during your summer vacations.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Purely being biracial and living in two countries and really having both
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: of those experiences I found very hard.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: But linguistic identity was just really interesting for me because identity just
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: in general is very hard.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: That I was like, what do you mean linguistic identity? Like, what is that?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it, you know, the research shows that it is as much an identity as the kinds
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: of things that we always talk about with identity of like race and gender
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: and the ways in which we experience the world.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until I was Really looking at like even my accent
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: and where my accent has come from and what it means and how it's seen
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: and the privilege that I have with the accent I have.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh my God, this is where it comes from.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then even looking at, like growing up during the Civil War in Sri Lanka,
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: my thesis was on linguistic identity in post-Civil War Sri Lanka.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: When you take somebody's language away from them, they get really upset.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it can start a civil war.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think those kind of things were just my kind of epiphany of like, wow,
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: language is this powerful.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: You said something in one of your pieces.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's a quote that's language is never neutral.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to dive into that a little bit more because I do nerd out quite a bit
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: about the fact that the word man is in a lot of words.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So like Ottoman, mailman, there's so many like that.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's deeply embedded into our psyches and we don't even realize that it is like
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: that a lot of the time.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd love for you to speak on your take as far as language not being neutral
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: and kind of how that's influenced us as humans.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I think when I think about language not being neutral,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think of all of the ways in which I as a female minority,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: the words that come out my mouth are not as powerful as the ones that come out
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: of other people's mouths.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can say the same thing in a meeting and a white male colleague can say
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: the same thing and it get taken up and moved and applauded and all of the ways
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: in which I've seen that happen.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I think for me that's one part of it of we kind
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: of think that if I say
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: the same thing as somebody else it's going to be in exactly the same way.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be taken and received in exactly the same way and that's not the case.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's also like the language never being neutral.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've also written about like linguistic colonialism of even
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: the English proficiency tests that we make students take
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: of and I've made this argument where because I've been This teacher,
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: and I have been an examiner, so I have been part of the problem.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fully aware of this.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think for me, when I think of the English language testing
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: that we make foreign students do to kind of gain entry
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: into native speaker countries, we tend to teach to the test. Now, that's not new.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's not something that we don't just do in general.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we teach to the test for even the, you know,
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think of like my A-levels and my GCSEs, like, That's kind of what we were doing,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: right? And you weren't just teaching everything around it.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're teaching to the test because you have to take a test.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so the language that we teach people during...
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to use IELTS as the example because I was an IELTS examiner and I was
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: an IELTS trainer.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: We teach them a very specific type of English.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're training people to take a test.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that standard of language has been defined by the people that made that test.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the kinds of grammar, the kinds of use cases...
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've even heard people, particularly as you said,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: language is everything kind of around you and how you're informed and the ways
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: in which you speak.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: When students used to come in and already come
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: with an already formed slang of words
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: because they'd been watching television,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: like social media wasn't around when I was doing this,
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: in the ways that it's so prevalent today.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: I knew in an IELTS test they wouldn't be marked well because that's not the rubric.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's not how you're taught to speak.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, the slang is a very natural way in which native speakers speak,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: and that does serve you really well when you get to the country.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: But in order to take that test, it has to be a very certain rigid form.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to show the different types of tenses, that you can do requests,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: that you can perform all of these tasks.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And even as an IELTS examiner, you are listening for that.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: You have to demonstrate a proficiency in the tenses that you use.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I don't hear all the tenses, I can't give you the grade.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean you can't speak the language.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: It just means that during that time that you were in front of me, you didn't show it to me.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: And those are the kinds of ways that I think I've seen the linguistic colonialism
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: of language not being neutral, of we're teaching people A certain form of English,
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: as well as all the things we're seeing from AI of people saying, oh,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: that sounds like AI.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: You as an English major, the ways in which, and you know,
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: I used to teach English literature and poetry.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: You start your paragraphs with things like additionally, moreover, right?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's how you cognitively go through large amounts of text.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And today that is...
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're told that that's an AI trait.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, that's a sign of good writing.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to hear what your thoughts are about that.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I actually don't use AI at all for outsourcing any of my thoughts.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't go into a chat bot.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think I used chat GPT once to make like a German, I have a German Shepherd Husky.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I made a German Shepherd Husky image.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then I just deleted it.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm not going to use this anymore.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I have seen what you're talking about take shape a lot on LinkedIn specifically,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: and I haven't been on there very much because it's exhausting.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's exhausting to see people who actually are good writers being called out
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: for something that they've been doing all along.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And now AI comes along in the last couple of years and makes it...
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: These are all words and things.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you use the word so, apparently,
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: these are markers of how you change and cognitively change through writing.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I kind of struggle with, with language not being neutral, right?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because we also talk about that being...
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: A neutral thing of going around calling people a bot, that's not neutral language.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's not you being neutral.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's you being very divisive.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm happy you brought up.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: I actually didn't write down AI on my notes,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: but I was like, might as well talk about it.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is the elephant in the room, isn't it?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess I would mostly call myself anti-AI at this point,
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: and I think that Great AI tools. Great AI tools.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: That. I like it for automating things, but that's about it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we do this recording and then it makes clips for me.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: That stuff is great, yes.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: But as far as outsourcing any of my thoughts, I'm not going to do it.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: It might take me twice as long to write something,
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: but at least it's my integrity and it's coming from myself and I'm not going
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: to lose myself in a tool.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you contend as a linguist,
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: as someone who is writing this really wonderful newsletter about linguistics,
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: what are your thoughts?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like you just asked. Yes, on AI. Sorry.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts in general about the
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: whole world?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Just on the thing that you're talking
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: about with it feeling like people are getting called out for something
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: that they've already been doing for such a long time in their language.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's that time of year again, folks.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Flu and cold season.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ew, we hate it.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do we do?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: We take vitamin C and zinc to protect ourselves
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: against these disgusting little creatures called viruses. And you know what?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Last year, in September, I got COVID.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: I got a really bad case of COVID fever, all of the things.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Chills.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And right after that, I had already been taking vitamin C, but right after that,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I started taking zinc.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I have not gotten six cents.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I kid you not.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the only brand that I use for any of these things is Solarae.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And lucky for you all, there is a 20% discount code.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: When you go to checkout and use The Naked Room, you get a discount.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: So go and stock up on all the things that you need to protect yourself
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: against those icky viruses.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: The AI debate, I think, is really interesting because I think there are...
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, I think what I've really struggled with is large language models.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's in the name and nobody thinks about language.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what I find quite disturbing.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've had a lot of people tell me and call me out and say that I don't know anything
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: about the technical aspects.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: I have built...
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: And developed AI machine learning platforms,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: like the fact that I don't go into my entire life history, as you've seen,
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: is very complicated.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean I can't talk about it.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that I find interesting of that people forget that it's language, right?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes. I think even when I and then some of the arguments
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: that I've made have been even just looking at the supply chain.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Every supply chain that we think about of where things come from,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: do I know where this microphone, every single piece of this microphone was sourced,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: where it was sent to, how much plastic it was wrapped in?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where any of this stuff comes from.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: It just comes here and I use it, right?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: You think about where this thing has come from. Yeah, you don't second guess it.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: If this thing broke, I wouldn't know how to fix it.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: But...
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: The supply chain of language is very different to something like this
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: where there are no fingerprints on this.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't tell you who made this.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: The language supply chain is really fascinating because everything from the words
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: that have been taken from the large scale kind of like either internet scraping
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: or all the novels that we know are burnt out.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Where all that language came from, I think number one is just really interesting.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: The internet is made up mostly of English, mostly of male speakers,
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: people that don't hedge, people that are very confident.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Reddit, for example, is a really great source of where all this stuff has come from.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so think about all the things you read on Reddit.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you upvote.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: People don't get upvoted because they...
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Hedge or because they think, or I don't know,
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: or maybe it's all of the confidence that comes through of some of the male writers
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: that we've seen, right? So that I think is even one part of it.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't even got into the training of how these things are trained.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so even with that, I think there's just an interesting piece of How
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: the linguistic footprint has moved through the supply chain in a way
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: that I don't think people necessarily recognize.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so we say like, oh, AI has a voice.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: To me, AI has many voices hidden inside it because there's data labeling in South Asia.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's...
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: All kinds of kind of like work that happens in the US to train models and like
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: the kinds of rubrics and the instructions and like your version of what trust means
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: and what my version of trustworthy means, your version of what confidence is,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: my version.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, there are times when you sit in front of it and you're like,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: hang on, this doesn't, I don't think you need to understand what I'm talking
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: about because you don't understand who I am.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that I think is interesting.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: I do think Because I've been an editor as well.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the things I really struggle with is there is
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: a reason why it's very hard to edit your own work.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is a nice, clean delineation of having a writer and an editor.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason why the writer is not the editor and the editor is not also writing.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is some...
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Use of having a third party that understands words to be able to give you feedback
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: as an editorial guide.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is some value and some merit in that.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: But does it know exactly what it's talking about? No. So can you trust it?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that I think is kind of part of the process of like iterativeness,
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: of not thinking that it's going to be a human editorial guide.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: But more a second set of eyes that's going to be able to see something
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: that maybe you don't, maybe there is a clear enough argument or whatever.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes when you write, you're like, what the fuck was I talking about?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, that sentence didn't make sense. You were right. Thank you.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's some of that.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other piece of this, which is why I find this really complicated,
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really have an answer of yes or no, but...
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I also think it gives a voice to the voiceless.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if I think of all of the people that, and second language learners in particular,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: just because that's the kind of segment that I talk about the most,
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: is it's really hard to express yourself in a language that's not your own.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Please, use AI.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to hold your feet to the fire and tell you
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: that you've done something wrong because you're trying to express yourself.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that goes for other types of people that, like, don't feel like they have a voice.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because the other thing is, I think, I don't know about you particularly because of,
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: like, you have a writing background.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like when you are in the humanities and you've had to write
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: and you've been writing for a while, you have found your voice.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: I know that, like, Our voices change over time and who I am today is not going to be
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: who I'm going to be in 20 years, for example.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I think of all the people who have not found their voice,
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: who have not been able to find their voice in whatever way that has come
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: across in their life.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not here to judge you on using a tool that can help you express yourself.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to be here to tell you that the words you're using or whatever it is,
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: because at the end of the day, all we're trying to do is be understood. Right? Yeah.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that really hard of like some people need to have a little bit of help
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: with their voice. And that's not there's nothing wrong with that. Right.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really interesting perspective that I had not thought about very much.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for bringing that up.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Just that it's like it is hard to express ourselves in our own language sometimes,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: let alone if it's your second or third language.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Writing is the hardest part of learning any language. Yeah. Yes.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: The production of language is very hard.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And English is such a weird language too.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the fact that we have all of these homonyms and all of these words
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: that sound the same or they're spelled the same, but they mean something different.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty ridiculous. We don't have any accents.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of cuckoo sometimes that we understand it as well as we do.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I really like that you brought that perspective because it's always important
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: for me to be able to expand my mind and realize like, oh, yeah,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: there are people who are approaching things very differently than I am
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: and who do need a little bit of help.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like for my personal use,
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have chosen not to utilize it as far as like supporting my writing.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: I do have a writing background and that has helped immensely for me to be able...
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: From a writing perspective, that's like a real privilege because there's
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: a really
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: great article because I actually have on my Substack,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: I have a list of evergreen articles. Okay.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Just articles I come back to a lot just because they just sit with me
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: because they're just really inspiring.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: One of them is written by an account called Jade the Human.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's H-O-O-M-A-N, so human.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: But she talks about how the AI writing conversation is very elitist
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: in that there are people who haven't been given a good writing education.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: If I think about education, particularly in this country,
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: because I have a background in education in the US,
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: even though I haven't spent my entire education here anywhere in the world, right?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Education is so different depending on who you are, what you have access to,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: the schooling, the system, etc.,
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: That even just being able to judge somebody based on their writing and saying, oh,
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: well, you're not a good enough writer because you had to use AI is
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit like, well, were they taught how to write?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've been privileged enough to be able to learn how to write.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have had the privilege to teach people how to write.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: All of those things to me is, and I don't use this word enough in my work,
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: and I think I do on purpose.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't talk about privilege, even though I talk about power.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that piece really sat very hard on me because I was like, yeah,
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: this is a class issue to me.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, how dare you use something to help you write?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was just like, well, some people don't have great teachers.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Some people are sitting in remedial English
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: because they speak African-American vernacular English and people look down on that.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's the kind of stuff where I'm just like, ooh, this is like,
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: that's what it makes me feel like when I, again, going back to the piece of like,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: language is never neutral.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about AI like from an environmental standpoint and the data centers and all.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I'm like, I know.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, we don't need any of that.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: We existed before it just fine.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just fine.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: But we've existed without it.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I know we're going to laugh about that, but.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're bringing up a really good point because this is something
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: that I've been thinking about a lot is when you look at the statistics
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: of the people using AI in this country. Yes.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Very small. Yes.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: The consumer.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people have paid subscriptions to a lot of these LLMs, right?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're basically just using it like a souped up Google.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us, right?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: The problem that I have there is that the people that are creating this need
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: for data centers and the environmental impact is corporate.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: It is language at scale.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: It is agentic workflows in corporate that are moving the needle.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And yet it is the consumer that is made
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: to be feeling like they are doing something wrong, right?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: So when you see those headlines of data centers, you're like, oh,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: maybe I won't ask ChatGPT how to cook my dinner tonight.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, no, no.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what's happening here.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's the corporate level.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's the scale at which all of this is done. Right. It's the same.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's the same thing with CO2 emissions.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's any of these like bigger environmental issues.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Try and trace that shit back. Yeah, exactly.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you and I can compost individually.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: We can do all of these things in our own life to try to make it better.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's not coming down from the corporations...
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or the governments, the needle is not going to move very much.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like the segue here,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: most of the people who are leading the charge
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: with AI are billionaires who are men at the top.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so you wrote you wrote an article
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: about mansplaining and pretty much all
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: of us women have been on the receiving end of it.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to dive into that a little bit more and kind
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: of how that affects all of us
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: as women and maybe how men can do a little bit better. Possibly.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you spoke to Mike, right?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: God, if I were to be Mike, that'd be great.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: I love Mike. I know.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Can every man just be Mike?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the man's painting article, I was very concerned about writing that.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to write it for a while.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's funny because I was talking about it for a while and people were like,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: why aren't you writing it? I was like, because I'm really scared.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you wrote it.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because it highlighted a few things to me that I hadn't really bargained for.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's something that I think has formed over a period of time,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: even when I've been looking at gendered feedback, for example,
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: is the mansplaining piece of it is, first of all,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: it is not a man explaining something to you.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: As much as I would love to,
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know, really make it Well, actually,
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: when a man explains something to you, like, don't get me wrong,
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to be able to call that out as much as I can.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's what it is.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: To me, when I think linguistically, at least,
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: like when I think about Because the thing that I keep coming back to is the roles
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: in which people play in a speaker, like listener conversation, right?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you and I are speaking and you and I are switching out of roles.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: So one time I'm a speaker, next time you're a listener and we kind of interplay,
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: we will also interrupt each other because of a thought, because of whatever it is.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Mansplaining to me Goes back to the role of the epistemic role.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I talk about epistemic roles and markers quite a lot in my work
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: because essentially epistemic markers are Words that we use to show our relationship
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: to the knowledge that we have.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, I believe, as far as I know from what the data says,
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: you have a sense of like, okay, Rebecca is thinking that.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Rebecca is, she has seen the data.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: That is where the knowledge is coming from.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so by using those words, I am telling you, listener, where my knowledge has come from.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what I have a huge problem with is that people, communication coaches,
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: all of these wonderful people have told us to remove them
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: because we will sound more confident that way.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: It will make you sound confident.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: But where has that knowledge come from if I'm certain about everything?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Who on this planet is certain about anything?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: We live in a world that is very unstable.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so that I think to me is when we're getting rid of those epistemic markers, yes,
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: you are removing your level of where is that knowledge come from now?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can no longer tell.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that to me is the epistemic role of I am able to have the knowledge that I have.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now, For me, when I looked at mansplaining, yes, it normally starts with a well,
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: actually, which is a nice marker that people always say.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it goes a lot deeper in that it is
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: the fundamental belief that you,
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Kenny, do not have the epistemic right to talk about what you're talking about.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have to come in and tell you what it is, right?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because I am the one that has...
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: The relationship to the knowledge that you don't.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, that is fundamentally what happens with mansplaining.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's less about somebody explaining something to you or somebody.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because women do that. And that's the other thing.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: I actually don't believe that this is very gendered.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is more of a subordinate role in which we all have to play like women,
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: women explain dumb shit to me all
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: the time just like alright calm down like you know something I also know something
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: isn't that fun?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: That to me is
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: where my man's painting piece really took me was down this deep rabbit hole of it is
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: that fundamental principle of there is no way this person in front
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: of me man woman whatever Doesn't have access.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Could never have access to the knowledge that they claim to have.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, I am going to tell you, even if I don't.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: That to me is like you get to grab a role from somebody else.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's, yes.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are a couple of things that I want to unpack here.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about the concept of saying like, I think or I believe.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm, it feels like you just gave me permission back to say I think.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're allowed to say that.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've been feeling like I have to remove that from my vernacular.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because it shows that I'm not confident enough about it.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is my opinion that I'm coming with.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I've learned this information from somewhere. Yeah.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's valuable.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it really, it truly bothers me when people say, like, I've been,
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: and you've been told this as well, like, as women...
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're told to remove those things all the time because hesitation,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: dare you have to pause before you think.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes. The ums, the ahs, the fillers,
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: the ways in which you allow your brain to catch up with everything that's going
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: on around you. We are not machines. Right.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, honestly, when we think going back to the AI conversation,
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: AI is always going to sound super confident.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because it doesn't have those markers built in. Because it doesn't think.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't believe. It doesn't have access.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Technically, it has epistemic relationship to a lot of knowledge. Right.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: But to me, what makes you human is the fact that you have the ability to think,
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: the ability to actually not have a response immediately,
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: the fact that you can go back and repair the conversation that you just had of like,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: oh, sorry, you know, I did say it was an epistemic marker,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: but actually what I mean to say is this.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: That to me is the human aspect of who we are.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And taking that away just seems very performative.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: What are we performing for here?
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I find so much power in the pauses too.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like, actually, I pause a lot and I think about the next thing I'm going to say.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been feeling a lot of self- Feeling very self-conscious about that at times
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: because when I'm on social media,
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: I see these people who are speaking so quickly and not taking a pause
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: in between one thought to another.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because this has been ingrained in us from social media.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to catch people's attention and have this good hook.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Something that I feel is really cool
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: about myself is the pacing in the way that I talk.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I feel like I need to conceal it because this isn't what society says is okay.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really empowering to hear it from this perspective.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: I do think there is a turning of the tide.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be slow.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, it's going to be slow.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think even on Substack,
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: because I actually don't have TikTok because I would spend all day on TikTok.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: If I had it, it was bad enough.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's very addictive, yes.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, I think what I've now started to see,
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: particularly because of the work that I'm doing, but I've always kind of known this,
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: is like, I don't want to hear from somebody that doesn't pause
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: between their thinking.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really want to hear from somebody that always has an answer
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: because I don't think that's natural.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, that's also the kind of,
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think actually for me what I'm also thinking of is in this world with AI and all
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: the things that we've already just talked about is people are going to pay a premium
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: to hear the pauses between your thoughts on social media.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because if everyone is like a railroad
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: and everyone else is – I'm not saying everyone else on social media is AI,
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: but if everyone else has all of these things to say at every given moment
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: and don't really take – You're actually going to be paying a premium for somebody
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: who says, I think, I believe, as far as I've seen, taking a pause.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like that to me signals human and that to me signals like premium.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of faith that that is the direction that we're going in as well.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Fingers crossed. But no, that's what my gut instinct has been telling me too.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: My intuition is saying just continue on the path,
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: like just be authentically you and things will kind of fall into place.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone has become I've been I am on TikTok quite a bit,
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: just kind of studying what's happening with the algorithm,
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: what I'm getting in my feed.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot of the same things being said over and over again.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: People are kind of becoming clones of each other.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if I didn't have the wherewithal to stop and pause and think about the fact
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: that I'm hearing this over and over again,
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: I would think that All of these people are telling me that my life is going
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: to change in two seconds and everyone's a clairvoyant.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the one vice I will allow myself is Instagram, which is also a problem,
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: which is why TikTok would be dangerous for me.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: The kinds of things that I've seen that I'm really enjoying is,
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: do you remember there was a time when everything was perfect? Mm-hmm. Yes.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: And had all these influences in these beautiful kitchens or these beautiful living rooms.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd be like, show me where you put all your shit because I don't know where it is right now.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's in another cupboard in another room.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: How is nothing on any surface?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: And they would be in these beautifully lit rooms and they would have...
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: But now there's this kind of backlash of just like, fuck that.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be in my kitchen.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be in the T-shirt I wore that day.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to have plates on the, like,
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: that I think to me is like the aesthetic of everything has to be perfect.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: I love the fact that I now start to see like influencers who are just like, you know what?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is sorry. I didn't have time to clean up today.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to have this beautifully manicured nothing.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I kind of feel like that to me, like that rough and readiness of like,
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: even with, I've seen this a little bit on Substack of like,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: I put out posts sometimes that have glaringly obvious spelling mistakes,
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: which is really embarrassing.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: You'll go to copy and paste it and you'll be like, oh shit, there's a huge spelling mistake.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's like when you present to a really important client
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: and then you suddenly realise because it's now full screen
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: that you've misaligned something and you're like, oh my god,
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: it did not look like that when I didn't see it.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Yeah.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, fuck it. Do you know what?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: I make mistakes.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are times when I type too fast or my fingers are too fat or whatever is happening.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or there's an autocorrect, right?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: My S's and Z's swirl in my head so much that I sometimes put a Z
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: in where I'm supposed to put an S because it doesn't do the squiggly line depending
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: on what computer I'm using because I have to have it in American mode at work
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: and I have it in English mode on my personal. So...
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: To me, I think there's also that, like, you're allowed to be imperfect.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's totally fine.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I hate,
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: really hate that we have got to a point where we have to be perfect.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, you don't. Who said that? Like, no.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't want to follow perfect people.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: What? Who are you?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: That tide is changing, too.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, people actually love seeing typos now.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because it shows that that person is human.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because AI does not make typos.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make typos. It'll make an odd word choice, but so does a human.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: But the spelling mistakes, I think, are also...
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you think pre-AI,
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: that was seen as sloppy. Yes. Right? Now it's seen as human.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's like, good for you to keep that in because... Yeah.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's like...
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: So all of these things, I think the ways in which we like index what that means,
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think is also really interesting how those things change.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Okay.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: You said something about perfectionism.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: You wrote in one of your articles
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: that humans only think in this black and white thinking. Yes. Like, do you remember?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that you wrote this?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: My words always come back to haunt me when you write them down, you know?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it really resonated with me because I do have a perfectionism issue.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like everything has to be pristine and it has to be like I have to be ready
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: before I start.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been breaking that down a lot in the last handful of years.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized that it's actually kind of a la mode now to not be perfect.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you were saying that right and wrong are the only options
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: and how we have this attachment
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: to saying something in a perfect way.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love for you to speak about that a little bit more
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: and maybe what you've witnessed with yourself as far as letting some of that go,
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: too.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right, y'all. That's where we're going to end it for this week.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: But we'll be back here for part two.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Same place, same time.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: See y'all then.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Roomies, thank you so much for listening to this show.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously, this is a labor of love.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's self-produced and self-funded for now.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see what happens. I'm not going to stop.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to keep going because women's voices are really important.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that you are listening to the show shows
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: that you support women's stories, women's voices,
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: and you appreciate listening to women experts.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: So go you. Pat yourself on the back.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also like to thank my husband, Curtis Kieber, for doing the intro song.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: He had such a good time doing it,
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: and it was amazing to see his joy and his contribution to my feminist podcast.
• 45:38
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• 45:41
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• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: So Spotify, you can just give five stars.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Apple, you can give five stars, and you can write a review.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't done it yet, please, please, please, please. I would love it.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be forever grateful.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any feedback or you have ideas for guests or you have a topic
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: that you want me to discuss or you, I don't know,
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: just are curious and want to know a little bit more about stuff,
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: give me some direction. Let me know.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: Nakedroompodcast at gmail.com. You can email.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can send in your feedback.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: I will take it into consideration and I care very deeply about what you all think.
• 46:20
  [music]