Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / Raising Free Humans: The Worldschooling Journey of Lainie Liberti | Ep 22 Live Free Ride Free Podcast

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Raising Free Humans: The Worldschooling Journey of Lainie Liberti | Ep 22 Live Free Ride Free Podcast · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
• 0:05
  The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
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  Before I jump in with today's guest, I want to say a huge thank you to you, our
• 0:11
  audience, for helping to make this happen.
• 0:13
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  If you like what we do here, please give it a thumbs up,
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  like, subscribe, tell a friend.
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  To find out about our certification courses, online video libraries,
• 0:28
  books, and other courses, please go to rupertisakson.
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  com.
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  So now let's jump in.
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  Today on Live Free Ride Free, I've got Lainey Liberty.
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  Lainey has lived, is still living with her son Miro an extraordinary life.
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  She hit the road some years ago with him as a child, if you like, world
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  homeschooling and never stopped.
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  Has now built a whole sort of universe of Mental health services for teens
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  and tweens working with the brain, working with the endocrine system,
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  working with all of these things, and has turned this grand adventure into
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  something really of benefit to everybody, including a lot of teens and tweens
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  back in the USA, where she started from.
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  So joining me from Guanajuato in Mexico.
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  Very colorful on the other end of my zoom is Lainey Liberty.
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  Lainey, thanks for coming on.
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  Tell us why the bleep did you do what you did?
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  Lainie Libeti: Yikes.
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  I mean, that's such a great way to open up this conversation.
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  Why did I do what I did?
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  I suppose, I mean, there were like all these external reasons why we Took the
• 1:48
  leap into this lifestyle, but there are also these internal ones and like,
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  I'll, I'll sort of talk a little bit about both of those worlds throughout
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  our conversation, because they're both really, really important to this story
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  and the story of supporting others.
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  I guess from a real, you know, sort of narrative perspective,
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  2008, I'm living in California.
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  I'm a single parent to a nine, nine year old child at that time and always wanted
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  to be a mom always, you know, that was the dream, you know, to be a parent.
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  And I did everything that I could.
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  To provide, you know, a wonderful life for my child, I worked in
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  advertising for almost 18 years and the last eight of those years I owned
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  my own agency and I was overworked.
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  I was making great money.
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  I was overworked.
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  I spent most of my time working, but in my mind it was so I could provide.
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  Everything for my child for my family.
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  I was the provider and to me, some things were out of whack
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  because my son would always say to me, Mom, you're always working.
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  You never spend any time with me and the heartbreak from those.
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  Words were deep and so I didn't have this internal balance of why I was
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  doing what I was doing and kind of being able to be present in my own life.
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  And in 2008, the economy crashed.
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  So that was 1 of the 1st external reason.
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  Well, the 1st external reason really was the voice of my child saying.
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  You know, you're always working.
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  You never spend any time with me.
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  But the 2nd was having an economy of crash in California.
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  And my agency was primarily focused on serving Green Eagle companies
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  and nonprofits, and I started to see them go away 1 by 1 by 1.
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  And I knew by the end of 2008, I was not You know, after I, after I say goodbye
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  to my staff for the, the holidays, I knew I wasn't bringing them back.
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  I just couldn't, I didn't have the, the business to support them.
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  And one night late in the office, you know, my nine year old child in the
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  office with me somewhere around 9 PM.
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  And I, I just remember stopping whatever I was working on.
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  And I turned to him and I said, Miro, what do you think if we just got rid of all
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  this stuff and went and had an adventure?
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  And he was playing a video game at the time, and I remember he stopped and he
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  looked at me and he said, seriously?
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  I said, yeah.
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  He's like, do I have to go to school?
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  And I said, no.
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  They said, I'm in.
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  And that was really it.
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  And that became, we suddenly had a like a vision purpose, something,
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  you know, a reason for all of this.
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  And there was, you know, I wasn't going to mourn the loss of my business.
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  I was, It's just going to make a whole new trajectory for us.
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  And when you're living a conventional life, one year
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  adventure sounds tremendous.
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  It sounds like a really long time, like, Oh my gosh, you know, planning
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  out a whole year seems initially
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  Rupert Isaacson: it was just going to be a year.
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  Lainie Libeti: That's it.
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  And we decided to plan.
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  Okay, we're here on this continent.
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  Let's just head south.
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  Let's go.
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  You know, we're in L.
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  A.,
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  California.
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  Let's go to Mexico and then head down through Central America all the way down.
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  And end up in Ushuaia which is the tip of Argentina.
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  Let's do that.
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  And he's like, yeah, that sounds like a cool adventure.
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  And I figured we could do that in a year.
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  So we had a plan.
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  We had a direction, but we really wanted to be able to.
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  Make decisions together.
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  And we spoke, you know, took us six months to prepare and plan.
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  And the whole thing was about this partnership.
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  This wasn't going to be about me pulling him or him pushing me one way.
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  We were going to do this side by side.
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  And that was the thing that he was really craving.
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  He wanted me to spend time with him and partnership look really different
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  to me when we were on the road.
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  Like we could create this thing that we both wanted.
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  We both could research.
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  We could both deal with the budgets.
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  We both could make decisions about where we were going and when we
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  were going and how long we stayed.
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  We both could, you know, come up with What we wanted to do.
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  We didn't have those restrictions.
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  This was going to be our side by side journey together and that we agreed
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  on way before we left and that became one of the foundations of our journey
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  and much into the work that I do now.
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  It was this side by side journey we call partnership.
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  A lot of that.
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  Was driven from like the work that I did in branding and marketing.
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  I worked with companies where I'd go in and help them define their brand
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  and do these brand discoveries and positioning and all these things.
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  And I thought, well, one of the tools that I had in my tool belt was.
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  Teaching, sorry, teaching companies how and facilitating how to really define
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  what their core values are by looking at things that they're, you know, what their
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  brand personality is, the services, the, their relationship to their customers.
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  And I decided to use that tool with my son.
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  So.
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  Okay, let's just Scott discover and define what our core values are.
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  And that way we didn't have to have rules.
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  Core values for the thing that we're going to guide us.
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  So once we define what each individual core values where we can define what
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  our family core values were, and that allowed us to be free to say yes,
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  when things were in alignment and no, when they were not, it wasn't a rule.
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  It was a partnership where we were both.
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  Looking out for each other in that way.
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  And so a lot of that stuff, the internal sort of processing and looking at the
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  external sort of situations allowed us to have a guidance system that worked.
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  And it required a lot of conversation, a lot of negotiation, a lot of emotional
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  intelligence, a lot of trial and error.
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  So that became a good part, you know, the foundation of our
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  travels when we first started out.
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  And I do want to mention this story of our plan sitting out for
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  1 year with our project, right?
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  Sorry, trajectory to Argentina.
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  Well, it's been 16 years, and we still haven't made it to Argentina, but we
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  have been around the world several times and so many adventures since.
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  So I don't know where you want to take it from there.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Well, okay.
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  First obvious question.
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  There you are, young, single mother young woman with a child therefore
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  quite vulnerable, but heading down into.
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  You know, parts of the world that can be tricky.
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  You know, you've got a good head on your shoulder, so you must
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  have been aware of the risks.
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  What was your plan and how did you negotiate those waters?
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  That's the first thing.
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  And how did you actually physically travel?
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  How were you doing it?
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  Did you, were you in a vehicle?
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  Were you doing it on buses and trains?
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  How did you go?
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  But then the, the other question really is At what point did you decide,
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  actually no, this is not possible?
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  A year.
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  This is a life.
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  Lainie Libeti: Yeah.
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  Well, let me answer the last question first.
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  Okay.
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  Lainie Libeti: And then I'll go back to the mode of travel and
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  and my relationship to fear.
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  Okay.
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  Yeah.
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  So fast forward, eight and a half months into our travels.
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  One of one of the agreements that my son and I made before we set out
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  was let's say yes to everything.
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  Let's just say yes.
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  As long as of course the caveat, it was in alignment with our, our
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  core values and it was safe, right?
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  Let's just say yes, because I had spent the first nine years of my son's life
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  not saying yes, because I had to work.
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  I saw a lot of no's.
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  And I remember the day we were in Guatemala.
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  We had rented this house and we decided we wanted to stay there for a while.
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  And I remember very clearly Miró saying to me.
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  Mom, you know, we're supposed to go home in four months.
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  Can't we just do this forever?
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  He sort of tricked me.
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  But we had this deal and, you know, there was really no reason to say no there.
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  We were really enjoying our life, and it was eight months in, and
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  we were only as far as Guatemala.
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  We decided that slow travel was a little better than fast travel,
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  so of course I said yes, yes.
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  And so we figured out a way to make that happen.
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  But I do want, so that answers your question of why it remained sort of
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  You know, a lifelong journey versus the one year that we planned, but going
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  back to your question about mode of travel and our relationship to fear.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, just straight up security, you know, traveled in
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  a lot of dodgy areas myself in the world, you know, you know, that 90
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  percent of the time it's fine, but occasionally it's not, you know, and yeah,
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  Lainie Libeti: yeah.
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  I do agree.
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  Look, I traveled, I hitchhiked all over Europe when I was in my twenties.
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  Like I, you know, had this experience of trusting the world.
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  And so, you know, when I started this journey 20 years later
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  with my child I knew that.
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  The fear is
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  it's, it comes from within, but it's not always, you know, grounded in, in reality.
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  Sometimes it is, but there's also a big difference when
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  you're traveling with a child.
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  Oh, and to answer your question, actually going back.
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  Yeah, we, we had backpacks and we traveled on bus and trains and yeah, that's it.
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  We didn't have a vehicle.
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  So we decided where we wanted to go.
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  We looked at the, you know, maps and said, okay, and this bus will go to this town.
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  Do we want to go here?
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  Okay, let's research it.
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  Let's do it.
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  And thank God the internet, when I traveled, you know, now it's.
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  40 years ago, when I was in Europe or 35 years ago, when I was in Europe, like,
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  there was no Internet, but at least there was Internet when my son and I set
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  out and there was a lot of information.
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  We had our laptops and such, but fear was one of those huge.
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  Sort of the 1st year, it was 1 of those things that was a big part of my journey.
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  It was my relationship to fear.
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  It was really my relationship to making sure that that.
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  We felt safe and really because
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  Rupert Isaacson: you had to keep him safe, right?
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  I mean, yeah, it's one thing to keep yourself safe But it's a whole
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  other thing to keep a kid safe.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Lainie Libeti: Well, I mean, you know that if
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  Rupert Isaacson: you fail That's the end of him, right?
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  So and
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  Lainie Libeti: that's it and that's it.
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  But what we found Well, first of all, you know, I didn't do the same things I did
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  when I was in my twenties hitchhiking.
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  I didn't go to bars.
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  I didn't like, like, it wasn't the same sort of journey.
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  Like, we didn't go out late at night.
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  You know, we, we researched and talk to people and read up on places.
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  We were going to make sure that it, it felt fairly secure, but.
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  We received before we left on our journey, we received a lot of fear based
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  messaging from our friends and family.
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  Like, you need to
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  get
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  Lainie Libeti: insurance like that whole sort of train of
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  thought, which was kind of crazy.
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  That didn't make sense to me.
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  And people were afraid for us because look, I'm blonde
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  and you're a single woman.
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  And I know that's what you were alluding to.
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  And you have a child with you.
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  What if somebody's, you know, grabs you.
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  But what we found was each country we went to is filled with people.
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  And parents and children and parents and children, we'd meet them at
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  parks and they just wanted it.
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  I'd sit before I spoke any Spanish on benches next to the mothers
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  watching their children play.
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  And we'd look at each other and giggle and point.
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  And that was the basis of our communication.
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  But I never felt threatened.
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  I felt like I was threatened.
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  You know, I was surrounded by people like me, they just spoke different
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  languages and had different skin colors and different traditions and cultures.
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  And that's okay.
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  How lovely, how absolutely lovely.
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  So I didn't feel that kind of, you know, fear.
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  I mean, I could tell you a very Very funny, fierce story.
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  If you want to hear it,
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  Rupert Isaacson: tell me
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  Lainie Libeti: we were, that was my dog.
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  We were a city called Cartago.
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  I wanted to go to the coffee region when we were in Costa Rica and
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  some people had said, don't go.
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  It's scary there.
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  You know, it's dangerous, you know, it could be dangerous in certain
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  areas, just as any place could be.
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  And I was like, okay.
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  And this was still within the first six months or seven months of our travel, or
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  maybe it was, maybe it was just after, no, I think it was just after Guatemala.
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  So it was maybe nine months, 10 months in.
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  So I'm still kind of in this, like, there's fear.
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  You know, I don't speak the language yet.
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  You know, my Spanish is nothing at this point.
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  And I remember, okay, but I want to go to Cartago and Miró was up for the,
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  the journey and I wanted to see the coffee region and we get there, we
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  get there somewhere in the evening.
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  And we're looking for our hostel or hotel.
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  I remember where we were staying at the time and we're trying to follow
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  this map to find the location.
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  And it's now getting dark and the map.
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  Said, go down this 1 street and it was very, very narrow and it was in
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  between these 2 buildings kind of alley like, and I remember being kind
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  of, you know, on alert, really on alert and, you know, hyper vigilant
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  at this point, you know, not really.
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  Kind of feeling secure for some reason, just because these people
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  said, Oh, Cartago scary place.
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  And I remember coming towards us at the end of the kind of alley or street.
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  Here comes a man walking towards us.
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  And immediately I turned to Miro and I said, Miro, give me your hand.
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  And he goes, why?
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  And I said, that man has big pants.
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  And I don't even know what the hell that means.
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  I don't know why that freaked me out.
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  I don't know what the fear was.
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  He passed us.
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  We started cracking up and we just started talking about what fear is.
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  You know, we got to finally found our hotel and got to our
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  room and, you know, we had this conversation, but there was like this.
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  Exhale from me when I realized how this fear was making me like very
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  hypervigilant, very like non, just thinking there's, there's corn, like
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  danger at the turn of the corner.
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  And a lot of that hypervigilance, by the way, it comes from my own, you
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  know, growing up and my own healing and all of that stuff, somebody who
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  grew up in a household that You know, I was always yelled at every single
• 18:33
  day, like the, the screaming and, you know, that, that messed with my nervous
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  system and, and I remain hypervigilant for much of my early adult life.
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  So that kind of accessing that memory, you know, maybe it kept us safe, but
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  it also like that experience of the ridiculousness of being afraid of
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  a man's big pants and thinking that my son, you know, Give me your hand.
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  Like, like, like this whole thing was kind of a story.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Natural reactions.
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  I mean, yeah, that
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  is yes.
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  And I mean, you know, obviously I've been all over the world and traveled
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  in dangerous places and this and that.
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  But what I do know is that the dangers are real.
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  It's a little bit like when you're walking in the bush.
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  I mean, there are lines and an elephant out there and they're just,
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  oh, and you kind of need to know.
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  If you don't know the area, then you kind of want a guide, you know, and
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  as you say, you take local advice and all of that, but nonetheless, a big,
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  big leap to do something like that.
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  And was, did you, the other, the other thing, of course, is when you travel
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  like that in developing countries, sometimes you get sick, right?
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  Sometimes you go down with a stomach bug or something like that that can
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  knock you out for quite a few days.
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  Did that ever happen?
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  And then you're sort of having to tell Miro, okay, here's what you do.
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  This is where to go buy food.
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  This is, you know, cause you just can't move.
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  Were you lucky with that?
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  Were you just cast iron stomach and nothing like that ever happened?
• 20:08
  Lainie Libeti: Surprisingly, that didn't happen to me.
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  I do remember Miro getting struck with some bug and I
• 20:17
  don't remember what country.
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  I think it might have been Ecuador or Columbia, but I do remember me taking care
• 20:25
  of him and taking him to, they, they have wonderful clinics and, and like doctors.
• 20:33
  Attached to pharmacies, you know, and it's, I mean, healthcare is
• 20:37
  really affordable for those sorts of things in these countries, but
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  I'm nothing like that ever happened to me as far as I can remember.
• 20:47
  I, I, you look, I've scanned 16 years.
• 20:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I mean, in all my years of travel, it's only
• 20:54
  happened to me once or twice, but yeah.
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  Once in India, you know, but it sure can happen if it happens.
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  It can happen, sure.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And then, you know, if you're responsible for a kid.
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  I guess what I'm doing is I'm just trying to answer all the
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  questions which would come up in the mind of anyone listening because what
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  you did is something I would totally do.
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  But I would also go through all of that trepidation and I would expect to
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  have to answer all of those questions.
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  Because we
• 21:22
  Lainie Libeti: had an emergency plan.
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  I mean, we did.
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  We had, you know, he knew that he knew where our passports were.
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  He knew our bank card.
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  He had full access to our bank card.
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  It was our money.
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  He had emergency numbers.
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  He knew we always knew where the consulate was in each new country, especially
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  when he was younger, much younger.
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  We did take those sorts of emergency precautions.
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  You know, should something happen to me?
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  He knew what to do.
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  There was a plan.
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  He knew to call one of my parents and he knew to get to a consulate.
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  He knew to, you know, ask for police or whatever, but none of that ever happened.
• 22:07
  Rupert Isaacson: So.
• 22:08
  While you're on the road I presume the first year you were probably, you probably
• 22:12
  just set some money aside and you were living off those savings or whatever.
• 22:15
  Were you also, but I know because I followed your story a little bit at the
• 22:19
  beginning, I know that you were also working and freelancing as you went.
• 22:23
  What?
• 22:24
  Tell me about that.
• 22:25
  Like at what point did you realize, you know, actually I can make
• 22:28
  a living on the road like this.
• 22:29
  I could, I can live this way.
• 22:31
  This is, I can economically support this.
• 22:34
  That's interesting because I think for a lot of people, it's natural to think,
• 22:37
  well, you're either at home working or you're on vacation or you're traveling.
• 22:40
  If you're traveling, you've made the money to go and travel.
• 22:44
  And then at a certain point you'll need to go home and refill the coffers.
• 22:47
  And so, so tell me how that began to happen where you started to realize, Oh,
• 22:51
  this actually could be my livelihood.
• 22:53
  Lainie Libeti: Well, I told you this, this story of eight months into the travels
• 22:58
  when Miro said, can we do this forever?
• 23:00
  That's when I had to look at two very important aspects of our journey.
• 23:04
  I figured one year of travel.
• 23:06
  We had savings.
• 23:07
  We were fine.
• 23:08
  We were on a budget.
• 23:10
  The budget was bigger than, you know, then somebody who was no living
• 23:15
  nomadically because I wanted us to be able to go do things and have,
• 23:21
  you know, go zip lining and do some You know, really fun adventure stuff.
• 23:27
  The other thing I had to look at was, was education.
• 23:30
  And we could talk about that afterwards if you want, but I knew if you're of
• 23:34
  travel, that would be educational enough.
• 23:37
  I just knew that.
• 23:38
  So when we decided eight months in to actually continue it, I had
• 23:44
  to then start freelancing again.
• 23:47
  And I, from eight months.
• 23:49
  It took me about four months to build up my clientele again.
• 23:53
  So I'd have work and I could work on the road and do, you know, I, I just,
• 23:58
  as I said, I came from advertising, marketing, branding, design, all that,
• 24:04
  that they were all skills that I had.
• 24:06
  I had a computer.
• 24:07
  So the first eight months and really until about a year, I didn't work, but
• 24:14
  eight months to about, You know, for those, the, the final months of the,
• 24:19
  the first year I started to reach out to my contacts and, you know, put up
• 24:24
  sites doing freelance and, and things like that, trying to find clients.
• 24:28
  And so, yeah, I could work on the road.
• 24:31
  I also started to blog.
• 24:34
  And part of that was crazy, you know, we started to, like,
• 24:39
  people started to read it.
• 24:40
  Like, that's how you, how we connected, I think.
• 24:43
  Yeah, I
• 24:43
  Rupert Isaacson: found it.
• 24:44
  I was like, this is fascinating.
• 24:45
  I started to read your blog.
• 24:46
  Yeah.
• 24:46
  I
• 24:46
  Lainie Libeti: can't believe this woman
• 24:47
  Rupert Isaacson: is doing this.
• 24:48
  This is amazing.
• 24:49
  Yeah.
• 24:49
  Lainie Libeti: And my son and I were doing a podcast at the time
• 24:52
  and his cute little voice, you know, we would get to a country and we'd.
• 24:58
  Research a topic together and we'd write it together.
• 25:01
  Sometimes we do interviews with other people and you know, this,
• 25:05
  this cute, you know, little voice of Miro, you heard his voice earlier.
• 25:11
  Yeah, he's, he's, he's a man now, you know, he's not this little kid anymore.
• 25:17
  And so people started listening to our podcast and people started following
• 25:21
  our journey and that was crazy.
• 25:23
  And so I was doing a little bit of design work and a little bit of consulting
• 25:27
  and marketing, but frankly, I hated it.
• 25:31
  I was done.
• 25:32
  I was like, so done with that.
• 25:34
  I was burnt out and it just felt like it was so contrary to who I
• 25:40
  was becoming through this journey.
• 25:43
  And eventually I gave that up and at one point our blog became
• 25:50
  the source of supporting us.
• 25:53
  We were selling advertisements.
• 25:55
  We were getting sponsorships.
• 25:56
  It was like super crazy.
• 25:58
  It was like the wild west of travel blogging back then.
• 26:02
  Again, you know, this is, we're talking 16 years ago and travel blogging
• 26:06
  now it's, it's this whole industry, but I was one of the first without
• 26:11
  Rupert Isaacson: realizing it, you were being an influencer.
• 26:13
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah, I guess so.
• 26:14
  Sure.
• 26:16
  Yeah.
• 26:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so this begins to happen.
• 26:17
  One, one last logistical question.
• 26:20
  You go down there without Spanish, yet you're renting
• 26:22
  houses and things like that.
• 26:23
  How are you managing to do that without speaking the language?
• 26:28
  How did we end up doing that?
• 26:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Unless you were renting from expats.
• 26:37
  Lainie Libeti: I think many, I remember landing in this, this town,
• 26:42
  this Really, you know, dirt road kind of town on the beach in Peru.
• 26:48
  And I remember we got off the bus and we're like, okay,
• 26:51
  we're going to stay here.
• 26:52
  This is where we're going to go.
• 26:53
  And we're going to stay here for either a month or a couple, you like, cause
• 26:56
  we like, like to immerse ourselves.
• 26:59
  And I remember we went to a cafe
• 27:04
  and we met somebody.
• 27:07
  This, this surfer dude who was on a bike and he spoke English and
• 27:11
  he's like, yeah, I'll help you.
• 27:13
  I'll, I'll, I'll ride around the town and I'll see who's renting
• 27:17
  and I'll come back and get you.
• 27:18
  And that was really cool.
• 27:21
  A lot of times we went to hostels.
• 27:25
  And I think from there, we were able to reach out to locals, my
• 27:29
  Rupert Isaacson: contact network from there.
• 27:32
  Yeah,
• 27:33
  Lainie Libeti: but my son learned, he was able to pick up on Spanish quite quickly.
• 27:38
  I mean, he's a fluent speaker now.
• 27:40
  He's a native fluent speaker.
• 27:41
  My Spanish is still kind of embarrassing 16 years later, but
• 27:45
  we do own a cafe now, you know, and I speak Spanish all the time, but.
• 27:51
  You know, it's my Spanish is not great.
• 27:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, I'm sure you're being very modest.
• 27:57
  Okay.
• 27:58
  So the year turns into years, you move away from freelancing, you
• 28:07
  become an internet personality without ever having intended to, and.
• 28:12
  Realize that what your journey is doing is, of course, inspiring all
• 28:19
  sorts of people around the world to take leaps of faith and freedom.
• 28:26
  Tell us what you do now and what was the evolution?
• 28:30
  I don't want, I sort of know what you do, but I don't want
• 28:32
  to spoil that for the listeners.
• 28:33
  I want it from your mouth because it's extraordinary the work you're doing now.
• 28:37
  How did that evolve?
• 28:39
  So start with where you're at now.
• 28:42
  And then how did you get that?
• 28:45
  Lainie Libeti: Well, it's a story.
• 28:46
  Well, one of the things that I mentioned, I said, we can go back to
• 28:49
  that was the whole education point.
• 28:52
  Oh, yes.
• 28:53
  Lainie Libeti: So I knew intuitively that a year of travel, as I said,
• 28:58
  would be more educational than fifth grade for my son that I knew.
• 29:02
  But as we decided to continue our travels as an responsible adult, as a parent,
• 29:10
  I needed to Wrap my head around what education would look like for my child.
• 29:16
  I'm responsible for his education.
• 29:18
  Would we homeschool?
• 29:20
  Would I enroll him in some sort of online school?
• 29:22
  Would I enroll him in a local school?
• 29:24
  What would that look like?
• 29:26
  And I started to research all these different kinds
• 29:29
  of modalities of education.
• 29:32
  And I learned about something called unschooling.
• 29:36
  It really has been rebranded.
• 29:39
  Pretty much in the last 15 years, because a lot of people don't have
• 29:44
  a strong connection with the word unschooling because it's, what's it
• 29:47
  Rupert Isaacson: rebranded as now?
• 29:49
  Lainie Libeti: Self directed learning.
• 29:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 29:52
  Lainie Libeti: Self directed learning.
• 29:53
  So at the time, yeah, I still, a lot of people call it unschooling, but you
• 29:58
  know, I dove deep into this world and I started to research what that looked
• 30:02
  like and what the role of the parent was and how facilitation looked like.
• 30:08
  And how how the parent became a learner alongside the learner,
• 30:14
  and actually, we're all learners.
• 30:16
  We're all learning all the time.
• 30:18
  So it kind of challenged my idea of, well, wait a minute, just
• 30:23
  because I'm not school age anymore.
• 30:24
  Does that mean I can't learn?
• 30:26
  You know, so yeah, I want to learn.
• 30:28
  I want to learn.
• 30:29
  So lifelong learner next to a self directed learner that
• 30:33
  really lit me up in so many ways.
• 30:36
  And as soon as I discovered this philosophy, I read
• 30:41
  everything I could about it.
• 30:43
  I read.
• 30:44
  You know, books and I read about that, about it from the political aspect.
• 30:48
  I read about it from the, you know, the learning aspect, the
• 30:52
  autodidactic, you know, world like that was this whole new world for me.
• 30:57
  And we really became conscious about our learning and yeah,
• 31:03
  this became a learning journey.
• 31:05
  And instead of homeschooling or unschooling, we called it world schooling.
• 31:09
  And to me, that really talked about The journey that we were on at any time.
• 31:16
  Look, I, and I'm, I'm obnoxiously curious, obnoxiously, you know,
• 31:21
  I ask questions about everything.
• 31:22
  I never grew out of that two year old stage.
• 31:24
  Like why, why, why?
• 31:26
  Like, I want to know everything.
• 31:27
  And with the invent of the internet, I can learn as much
• 31:31
  as I want based on my curiosity.
• 31:33
  And that was the thing that I started modeling to my son is we were traveling.
• 31:38
  I remember being at the, The Panama Canal and asking question after question
• 31:44
  after question to the tour guide.
• 31:45
  And we were, I was like, Mom, we can look this stuff up.
• 31:48
  You're, you're totally annoying him.
• 31:50
  He's like, but let's look it up when we get back.
• 31:53
  And those, those are the kinds of, you know, that, that transformed our journey
• 31:59
  into like this whole learning journey.
• 32:02
  And.
• 32:03
  Because we were working on this project together, our blog and our podcast
• 32:08
  to document our journey, it did, it transformed into this like, and we're
• 32:12
  learning this and we're learning that and these people are interesting and
• 32:16
  people do things like this culturally and the history is that, you know, we
• 32:20
  tell these stories on our podcast and learning to us was just like, As natural
• 32:27
  as living, and a lot of people started writing to me going, you know, well,
• 32:35
  how can I educate my child this way?
• 32:38
  How can I do this thing?
• 32:39
  And where can I go in this place, you know, in this country and with
• 32:44
  five people, what should we do?
• 32:45
  And suddenly I was getting these questions that I wrote.
• 32:48
  Wasn't really qualified to answer because I was a single person.
• 32:52
  I wasn't in Europe.
• 32:53
  I wasn't in Asia.
• 32:54
  I wasn't with a large family.
• 32:55
  I didn't know how to answer these questions.
• 32:58
  And I said, okay, let's start this Facebook group because I'm sure we
• 33:03
  can come up with these ideas together.
• 33:06
  And there are people that are in different parts of the world that have this piece of
• 33:10
  the that, you know, this questions answer and We could all share information and
• 33:16
  that really became the beginning or the launch of the world schooling movement.
• 33:22
  So, you know, I didn't mean to, but I started through this and, you know,
• 33:28
  I had a Facebook group that grew to 60, 000 people and, you know, all this
• 33:32
  stuff happened, but just it's kind of.
• 33:37
  Accidentally, I started a movement and accidentally, you know, there's,
• 33:42
  there's so many families doing this now.
• 33:45
  So, yeah, now I got sidetracked.
• 33:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, I'm actually, I'm busy on my phone as
• 33:51
  you speak, looking up, okay, world school, like, what's world school?
• 33:53
  Just to see, boom, all this stuff comes up.
• 33:56
  Lainie Libeti: But it wasn't a thing before, it just wasn't a thing.
• 33:59
  So, yeah.
• 34:02
  Rupert Isaacson: It's, it's very interesting.
• 34:04
  What is world schooling?
• 34:05
  Everything you need to know.
• 34:06
  People often ask.
• 34:07
  I don't know.
• 34:07
  Here's,
• 34:08
  Lainie Libeti: yep,
• 34:09
  But it wasn't a thing until we made it a thing.
• 34:11
  And, and now everybody can make it their own.
• 34:14
  That's fine.
• 34:14
  Okay.
• 34:15
  Rupert Isaacson: So a couple of things, as you know, I homeschooled for many years
• 34:19
  because my son, Rowan, was, you know.
• 34:21
  Yeah,
• 34:22
  Rupert Isaacson: it's in a way that the local schools in Texas, rural
• 34:25
  Texas, they just couldn't handle.
• 34:27
  So I was sort of forced into it.
• 34:29
  I just said he didn't want to cause I thought it was way too
• 34:31
  much work, but I ended up doing it.
• 34:33
  And like you, I ended up, you know, formulating a method So it's become
• 34:39
  a thing and it's called movement method and it's all over the world.
• 34:42
  It's neuroscience, basically applied neuroscience, blah, blah, blah.
• 34:45
  And then at a certain point after I'd been doing that for about a decade
• 34:50
  Rowan decided he actually wanted to.
• 34:52
  give the last two years of high school a try.
• 34:56
  And he did.
• 34:57
  And he went and he graduated.
• 35:00
  One of the, so it was interesting that he then went back into the system.
• 35:04
  But for sure, and he said this himself, he wouldn't have been able to do that
• 35:10
  if he hadn't been able to grow his brain effectively in the environment that He
• 35:15
  needed, and that was completely directed.
• 35:17
  I remember the first day he came back from school.
• 35:20
  He tried to even tried to find the most hippie school we possibly could.
• 35:23
  And it just, he wasn't having it.
• 35:25
  And he took all his clothes off and rolled in the dirt.
• 35:28
  I want to be a countryside boy.
• 35:29
  And I was like, I hear you.
• 35:32
  And that's what we'll do.
• 35:33
  And then there was this point where, so then I was sort of homeschooling,
• 35:36
  homeschooling and using these different movements that I had realized on
• 35:40
  the horse opened up the learning receptors and opened up communication.
• 35:44
  So then I'd gone to neuroscientists and found out why.
• 35:46
  I said, okay, well, great.
• 35:47
  So I could do this without a horse now and I can use various types of play
• 35:51
  equipment and so on, feed in information.
• 35:52
  And so this is good.
• 35:54
  And then he starts saying to me, as we like cracked it and I'm feeding
• 35:57
  in like national curriculum stuff.
• 35:59
  And he says to me, I'm sick of learning.
• 36:00
  I don't want to learn anymore.
• 36:02
  Lainie Libeti: Oh no.
• 36:04
  Rupert Isaacson: And that's where I discovered unschooling and, and I sort
• 36:07
  of looked at him and went, all right.
• 36:10
  Like I wasn't going to fight him over it.
• 36:12
  Like I was going to, all right.
• 36:13
  And then I sort of went and told him, I think I could do that.
• 36:16
  I think I could, I think I could go right on doing what I'm doing just by stealth.
• 36:21
  And that turned out to be absolutely the case because for him it was
• 36:25
  about, you know, stress and anxiety.
• 36:28
  So.
• 36:30
  I know that process of falling into something.
• 36:35
  One of the criticisms, which of course people always leveled, one of the many
• 36:38
  criticisms people always leveled at us, was oh, well, if you homeschool
• 36:42
  like that out on a ranch in Texas, what about his, you know, socialization?
• 36:46
  And I was like, what?
• 36:47
  So socialization, if I send him into that rural school, though,
• 36:50
  he's going to get massively bullied.
• 36:51
  Yeah, that's negative socialization.
• 36:53
  Is that what you're saying I should do?
• 36:55
  Or, but I hear you.
• 36:56
  So, of course, the life that we were living on that ranch
• 37:00
  was very international.
• 37:01
  Once horseboy method and movement method became kind of a thing, there were all
• 37:05
  sorts of people coming all the time.
• 37:06
  So he was constantly surrounded by all sorts of interesting people,
• 37:10
  many of whom stayed for years in his life and are still in his life.
• 37:14
  However with autism, a lot of many, many kids actually Don't so much crave
• 37:22
  a peer group when they're younger.
• 37:24
  That seems to come later.
• 37:26
  They often kind of know they're not that safe around.
• 37:29
  Other kids and so they tend to look to adults, but Miro.
• 37:34
  I don't know if you would say he was neurodiverse or what?
• 37:38
  Obviously he would be more a type of a child that would want to Have some sort
• 37:44
  of a peer group and so on if you're moving from country to country you're
• 37:48
  speaking a foreign language and so on How did you navigate around that?
• 37:52
  How did or how did that?
• 37:53
  How did that evolve?
• 37:55
  To work for him.
• 37:57
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah.
• 37:57
  Well, that that's a really pivotal part of our story.
• 38:02
  Actually as we started to continue our journey, you know, he was now moving
• 38:09
  into his early adolescence and because people were reading our blog and, and
• 38:14
  they were really fascinated with this form of education, we were invited to speak
• 38:19
  at conferences in the, in the States.
• 38:22
  So, One time we flew back from Peru, and we went to our first unschooling
• 38:28
  conference, and we were presenting, both he and I, about our life and our learning.
• 38:33
  And that wasn't the amazing part, the presenting part.
• 38:38
  What the amazing part was, there were all of these.
• 38:42
  Free range, 13 year olds and 12 year olds and 15 year olds and 14 year olds.
• 38:46
  And they were all running around together and they were all being hyper creative
• 38:50
  and, you know, doing theater and music and creating games and all of this stuff.
• 38:56
  And that was really his first sort of entrance into An
• 39:04
  adolescent peer group, right?
• 39:07
  Because from 10 to 13, he was social, you know, it was getting quote unquote,
• 39:12
  I hate the terms of socialization as,
• 39:15
  Rupert Isaacson: you
• 39:16
  Lainie Libeti: know, socialization could only happen,
• 39:19
  Rupert Isaacson: but he wasn't craving to have a group of mates.
• 39:21
  Lainie Libeti: He
• 39:22
  Rupert Isaacson: was nine to 12.
• 39:25
  Not, not so much.
• 39:27
  Not
• 39:27
  Lainie Libeti: so much because we were doing adventures and we were meeting
• 39:30
  interesting people and sometimes there were kids and sometimes there weren't
• 39:33
  and there was always, you know, an adventure and we, we learn how to
• 39:36
  surf and we learn how to do this and we like all these different things.
• 39:40
  Yeah,
• 39:41
  Lainie Libeti: he wasn't really missing because remember he was really craving me.
• 39:45
  And the connection that he was needing to feel, which prompted the whole trip.
• 39:52
  But at 13, things changed and that became salute.
• 39:59
  That became kind of like, Oh, okay.
• 40:03
  So now.
• 40:05
  Something else is happening.
• 40:07
  Okay.
• 40:08
  And I remember flying back to Peru.
• 40:10
  We had this like really deep heart to heart.
• 40:14
  He was feeling the loss of this thing that he wanted, which was community.
• 40:20
  And we talked, and we talked, and we, like, should we move back to the states?
• 40:25
  Do you want community?
• 40:26
  You know, these kids that are unschooling kids, these are your people.
• 40:30
  They're not the people that are in schools now.
• 40:33
  No, he didn't want to go back to school.
• 40:35
  He didn't want a traditional education.
• 40:37
  He wanted Those people.
• 40:39
  He wanted the, you know, the people that were free , you know, that,
• 40:44
  that were doing the same sort of learning that he was do doing.
• 40:47
  There was some sort of camaraderie, camaraderie or
• 40:50
  connection with those people.
• 40:52
  But they all didn't live in one place.
• 40:54
  They all came together for our conference.
• 40:56
  So we, you know, we were, we talked and talked and he was having what, what I like
• 41:03
  to call situational depression, right?
• 41:06
  He,
• 41:06
  Rupert Isaacson: what does that mean?
• 41:09
  Lainie Libeti: Affected by the situation there, there was a, a great depression.
• 41:13
  I don't think ever had this diagnosis of clinical depression,
• 41:19
  but there it was really, it became a part of our everyday life.
• 41:24
  Now, he was so sad.
• 41:25
  There were no.
• 41:26
  You know, he didn't want to, he, he had no connection to like the potato farmers
• 41:31
  in, in the Andes where we were living.
• 41:34
  He just didn't connect with these boys, his age, right?
• 41:37
  He wanted his people, but he didn't want to be in the States.
• 41:41
  So there was this, this big.
• 41:44
  Rupert Isaacson: So what was the solution?
• 41:45
  How did you, how did you solve that?
• 41:47
  Lainie Libeti: Well, That became this, this brainstorm.
• 41:52
  I said, well, why don't we bring kids to us?
• 41:55
  Right.
• 41:56
  Lainie Libeti: That was the birth of our, our business that we launched
• 42:00
  together called Project World School.
• 42:02
  Okay.
• 42:04
  Lainie Libeti: That really became the reason why we created this
• 42:08
  business and Miro was saying, nah, this is never going to work.
• 42:12
  This is your mom.
• 42:13
  You're, you're, you're dreaming.
• 42:15
  This isn't going to work.
• 42:16
  And it took about a year, actually, and we got our first group to
• 42:22
  come now, the preparation to
• 42:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Peru.
• 42:26
  They came to the
• 42:26
  Lainie Libeti: room.
• 42:27
  We sold a teen retreat.
• 42:29
  So the preparation that I needed to do, and this, so launch you into
• 42:34
  answering the question that I never answered, which is what I'm doing now.
• 42:39
  But this launched me into, okay, we're bringing teens here.
• 42:43
  I need to know everything about facilitating teens.
• 42:47
  I need to know about the team brain.
• 42:49
  I needed to know about neurobiology.
• 42:51
  I needed to know about.
• 42:52
  How to hold space.
• 42:54
  I need to know about learning communities.
• 42:56
  I needed to know about conflict resolution.
• 42:59
  I needed to know about.
• 43:02
  The travel logistics, I am creating a company out of need, but I
• 43:06
  need to be aware of these things.
• 43:08
  And that sent me into this deep dive of self directed learning.
• 43:14
  You know, I'm in autodidactic and always have been my whole life.
• 43:18
  So I learned everything I could about this.
• 43:21
  And there was a, You know, sort of side story that we can talk about
• 43:25
  later, but there was a convergence of information that I was learning
• 43:30
  about the team brain and about psychology and neurobiology and hormone
• 43:35
  development and all this stuff that.
• 43:39
  Really kind of sparked some of the sort of inner unsettledness inside of
• 43:49
  me about my adolescence and the abuse that I felt growing up and, and the
• 43:55
  way that my brain was programmed, you know, and I, you know, I started to
• 43:59
  realize that this hyper independence was a trauma response inside of me.
• 44:05
  And you, you know, all of the tools that I thought were my superpowers
• 44:10
  really came from my pro my childhood programming, which was rooted in abuse.
• 44:18
  And as I started to work with teens, It
• 44:26
  really helped me to start self healing so that like there were all these
• 44:30
  things going on at the same time.
• 44:32
  My son moving into his own adolescence, me revisiting my adolescence, and then, you
• 44:41
  know, learning the, the, the information, the academic information to help guide
• 44:49
  me and create those sort of foundations to be able to hold space for other teens.
• 44:55
  It was powerful.
• 44:56
  Like that really was what drove me into the work that I'm doing now.
• 45:00
  Rupert Isaacson: As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm
• 45:03
  an autism dad and we have a whole career before this podcast in helping
• 45:10
  people with neurodivergence, either who are professionals in the field.
• 45:15
  Are you a therapist?
• 45:16
  Are you a caregiver?
• 45:18
  Are you a parent?
• 45:19
  Or are you somebody with neurodivergence?
• 45:23
  When my son, Rowan, was diagnosed with autism in 2004,
• 45:28
  I really didn't know what to do.
• 45:30
  So I reached out for mentorship, and I found it through an amazing adult
• 45:35
  autistic woman who's very famous, Dr.
• 45:38
  Temple Grandin.
• 45:39
  And she told me what to do.
• 45:41
  And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
• 45:45
  That not only is my son basically independent, but we've helped
• 45:50
  countless, countless thousands of others reach the same goal.
• 45:54
  Working in schools, working at home, working in therapy settings.
• 45:59
  If you would like to learn this cutting edge, neuroscience backed
• 46:04
  approach, it's called Movement Method.
• 46:06
  You can learn it online, you can learn it very, very simply.
• 46:10
  It's almost laughably simple.
• 46:13
  The important thing is to begin.
• 46:17
  Let yourself be mentored as I was by Dr.
• 46:20
  Grandin and see what results can follow.
• 46:24
  Go to this website, newtrailslearning.
• 46:29
  com Sign up as a gold member.
• 46:32
  Take the online movement method course.
• 46:36
  It's in 40 countries.
• 46:38
  Let us know how it goes for you.
• 46:40
  We really want to know.
• 46:41
  We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
• 46:46
  live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
• 46:50
  Okay.
• 46:52
  Just before we get into that, there's a lot,
• 46:55
  Lainie Libeti: right?
• 46:56
  Rupert Isaacson: I want to know how those conferences or those retreats
• 47:01
  then ended up being structured.
• 47:04
  Also, how did you, there's some logistics there like insurance and you're
• 47:07
  suddenly responsible for all these kids.
• 47:09
  That's right.
• 47:10
  Whoa, that's a tall order.
• 47:12
  And are they still going?
• 47:14
  And if, and, and what did you do?
• 47:16
  What, what, what, what was the format?
• 47:19
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah.
• 47:19
  So, Project World School is still operating.
• 47:22
  We are still running retreats, believe it or not.
• 47:25
  The first retreat was a smaller retreat and we did a lot of learning.
• 47:30
  It was.
• 47:30
  It's a little too long.
• 47:32
  We did a six week retreat for four teens.
• 47:36
  The logistics, luckily I have a lawyer in my family that helped
• 47:41
  me create, you know, yeah, because
• 47:43
  Rupert Isaacson: that, that, that's a lot of, there's a lot of moving
• 47:45
  parts to something like that.
• 47:46
  Yeah.
• 47:47
  Lainie Libeti: And and guess what?
• 47:48
  I'm an amazing producer, so I can do multiple things at once.
• 47:53
  I now produce conferences as well as well.
• 47:56
  So I've produced 10 conferences and I love lots of moving parts and putting
• 48:00
  things together to create this big.
• 48:03
  Vision.
• 48:04
  And I've got a mind that will allow me to do that.
• 48:08
  But yeah, so the structure really was based on adventures based on, first of
• 48:17
  all, there has to be, um, consent, right?
• 48:21
  So each teen really needed to consent to the things that we
• 48:26
  were doing each and every day.
• 48:28
  And consent is huge because I think sovereignty and in human beings,
• 48:33
  bodily autonomy and sovereignty and all of those things are a big
• 48:36
  part of my, my personal philosophy.
• 48:40
  And I really want to make sure that that's a part of every event.
• 48:45
  That I've ever hosted or and we'll host in the future.
• 48:49
  So, the consent of here's, here's the guidelines that we must live by in order
• 48:54
  for you to be a part of this retreat.
• 48:57
  Do you consent to these guidelines?
• 48:59
  The guidelines are things like no drugs.
• 49:02
  We need to be within the community structure.
• 49:05
  No, no, you know, leaving the community, no drinking, you know,
• 49:10
  no, you know, Honoring each other's bodily, bodily sovereignty, autonomy
• 49:17
  respect for things, that sort of thing.
• 49:20
  So there's, there's this consent going in.
• 49:23
  It's not rules.
• 49:25
  Rules are very different than, than opting in to something.
• 49:29
  And that, that creates a, an agreement, right?
• 49:33
  So every, so Approaching it from that perspective from the, from the
• 49:38
  get go means that we have to have a sense of community and communication.
• 49:44
  There has to be each team has to have the ability to be able to either self
• 49:50
  advocate for themselves within the group or with me, the facilitator.
• 49:54
  So I can advocate for them, but there has to be a level
• 49:58
  of of emotional intelligence.
• 50:01
  You have other
• 50:01
  Rupert Isaacson: facilitators as well.
• 50:02
  I presume you have.
• 50:04
  Because if you went to blue in the middle of it was always
• 50:07
  Lainie Libeti: to always to adults and.
• 50:10
  Most of the, the retreats always, you know, have have been like,
• 50:17
  we haven't had any problems.
• 50:19
  There's been a few because people, you know, change their minds and things
• 50:24
  happen and we have to negotiate that.
• 50:27
  But going in.
• 50:29
  That really is, is the spirit of our team retreats.
• 50:34
  It's your autonomous, your, your, your words, your point of view matters.
• 50:40
  And we created this structure of a nightly circle.
• 50:44
  So every night we review the day, what worked, what didn't work.
• 50:48
  We ask questions based on like a, a worldview perspective,
• 50:53
  but it was always a way of.
• 50:56
  Of using the internal worlds as a way of expressing the external
• 51:03
  world, whatever was happening.
• 51:04
  So the external world became a reflection of our internal worlds, you know, as well.
• 51:11
  So the internal worlds were a big part of our, our journeys and the
• 51:15
  project world school structure.
• 51:18
  Yeah.
• 51:18
  Go
• 51:18
  Rupert Isaacson: ahead.
• 51:19
  What goes on on a retreat though?
• 51:20
  What's, what's like, give me an idea of a typical day.
• 51:23
  Lainie Libeti: Sure.
• 51:24
  So I'll give you an example of a Peru retreat.
• 51:26
  You know, today we're going to explore, you know, these set of ruins and we're
• 51:32
  going to speak with a historian at who talks about alternative history.
• 51:38
  And now we're going to we're going to do a comparison between the academic history
• 51:42
  of this ruin, and we're going to look and observe what we see, and then listen to
• 51:46
  the story of the alternative researcher.
• 51:48
  Where do we think?
• 51:50
  You know, the, the, the truth lies using that kind of critical exploration.
• 51:55
  And you know, if we were in Peru, we're going to explore the story of the Incas.
• 52:00
  We're going to also go to the the, what is that?
• 52:03
  The planetarium, the outdoor planetarium and learn about the, the myth of
• 52:10
  the creatures that lived in, in.
• 52:13
  the stars and how that informed the traditions that we, we saw in the ruins.
• 52:21
  We're going to explore it from all these different perspectives.
• 52:24
  We're going to go to the farm now.
• 52:25
  You'd bring
• 52:26
  Rupert Isaacson: in local historians locally or you'd go to them.
• 52:28
  Lainie Libeti: All locals, all locals, but we also, and then, but, but it wasn't
• 52:34
  just about listening to a historian.
• 52:36
  Everything was experiential learning.
• 52:39
  There were no tests.
• 52:40
  There were no, you know, It was, it was a lot of of putting the
• 52:46
  pieces together through all of the experiences to learn about this culture.
• 52:52
  And then we'd look at the modern day culture and and have some
• 52:56
  really big examination of that.
• 52:58
  Or we'd go stay on a farm and learn how.
• 53:02
  To cook the traditional foods and actually do it and where are the traditional
• 53:08
  clothes and milk a cow or, you know, eat a guinea pig or whatever the
• 53:14
  thing was of that particular country.
• 53:17
  And it was about cultural immersion.
• 53:20
  So experiential learning through cultural immersion and a lot
• 53:24
  of feedback and a lot of.
• 53:27
  Internal processing
• 53:29
  Rupert Isaacson: and the kids who came or still come on these are all from world
• 53:34
  school slash unschooling backgrounds Or are they now from every background?
• 53:37
  Are these also high schoolers who just want to?
• 53:40
  Experience something different.
• 53:42
  Lainie Libeti: I'd say 90 95 percent of our clients are Some sort of
• 53:49
  alternative alternatively educated.
• 53:52
  We've had kids from like Sudbury schools or democratic schools.
• 53:57
  On occasions, we've had kids from traditional schools.
• 54:01
  Believe it or not, those are the percentage of times
• 54:05
  that we've had problems.
• 54:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Well,
• 54:07
  Lainie Libeti: it's
• 54:07
  Rupert Isaacson: no doubt.
• 54:07
  Yeah.
• 54:08
  Because if people are used to being organized and told what to do, it's
• 54:12
  very tricky if they find themselves in a
• 54:17
  Lainie Libeti: They have freedom for the first time and it's about
• 54:20
  who do you push boundaries against?
• 54:22
  Well, quote unquote, the perceived authority and we're not authority.
• 54:26
  We're in partnership again.
• 54:28
  That partnership that my son and I set out on continued through our business.
• 54:33
  Right?
• 54:34
  So that's how we.
• 54:35
  Function in that most
• 54:37
  Rupert Isaacson: kids are not taught any kind of partnership,
• 54:39
  Lainie Libeti: right?
• 54:40
  They're like, wait, this does not compute does not make sense.
• 54:43
  I have
• 54:44
  Rupert Isaacson: that's a skill set that yeah, intelligence and
• 54:47
  evolution that you're not going to get that at a regular school.
• 54:51
  Lainie Libeti: Exactly.
• 54:53
  Rupert Isaacson: But here's a, here's another question then devil's advocate.
• 54:55
  Okay.
• 54:56
  So the, someone like Miro comes at the end of that education, as you
• 54:59
  say, he's 26 now can those kids then go on to university if they want to?
• 55:04
  And if so, how, like, would they then just go back and take a GED and sit in
• 55:10
  whatever exams they want to, what they're told that they need to sit in order
• 55:14
  to go and get the university entrance that they need, or what's the mechanism
• 55:19
  by which someone from the world school background would then enter higher,
• 55:23
  sort of, mainstream higher education?
• 55:26
  Lainie Libeti: Well, we haven't moved into what I do now, but
• 55:30
  Rupert Isaacson: so is, is that the tr is it part Okay.
• 55:32
  Lainie Libeti: It can be part of the work that I do.
• 55:34
  I work with teens now directly with tools for mental health, but I tend
• 55:40
  to work with a lot of teens that obviously come from the unschooling
• 55:44
  world, schooling, homeschooling world.
• 55:47
  And part of what I do is help them to organize their
• 55:52
  experience into a transcript.
• 55:56
  Transcripts can be created from anybody because we could create it from a parent.
• 56:00
  It could be created from, from an outside source, but I work from the
• 56:05
  perspective of mental health and also educational background, right?
• 56:12
  Rupert Isaacson: So.
• 56:12
  Multiple transcripts, exactly.
• 56:14
  Lainie Libeti: Well, in the United States, and to answer your question
• 56:17
  from the perspective of the United States, and it may be different in
• 56:21
  different countries in the in Europe and South America and the rest of
• 56:26
  the world transcripts are from your.
• 56:31
  School, your high school experience and it records what you
• 56:36
  studied and what your grade is.
• 56:38
  And really that's all it is.
• 56:41
  As an unschooler and an unschooling coach, one of the things that I help
• 56:46
  students do is really translate their experience into a trans scriptable
• 56:56
  language that a college will accept.
• 56:59
  There's.
• 57:00
  In the United States, there's private schools.
• 57:02
  There's a there's also state schools in every state, and each one has a different
• 57:08
  format of what they're looking for.
• 57:10
  And in addition to just a line item, I help on schoolers, teens, you know.
• 57:19
  Create portfolios that show their work that that are not just,
• 57:28
  you know, art based portfolio.
• 57:30
  When we say portfolio, we think of an artist showing a portfolio.
• 57:34
  This is a scope and breadth of work that they've created, and
• 57:39
  it may not be a physical thing.
• 57:41
  It may be a description of the experience and an outline of the.
• 57:47
  Learning that took place, you know, and it may be you know, a journey
• 57:53
  into volunteering at an animal sanctuary for several months.
• 57:58
  And we could pull that into biology civics, you know, civics.
• 58:02
  Civics and service and humanities and all these other areas that become relevant,
• 58:08
  a relevant part of their experience.
• 58:11
  And I'll tell you, I, there's an, there's an unschooling mother of five,
• 58:17
  who was the Dean at a private school in Dubai, who got all of her kids
• 58:25
  into whatever university they wanted.
• 58:30
  Because she was able to distill their information into, you know, this
• 58:38
  very unique package, educational package that they were able to present
• 58:43
  to the college of their choice.
• 58:47
  And she taught me many things as I do this for my clients.
• 58:52
  You know.
• 58:54
  Colleges, especially in the United States, universities in the United
• 58:58
  States, which is where the majority of my clients come from, are looking for
• 59:03
  those unique applications that stand out.
• 59:06
  They'll take the top 1 percent of those or 2 percent of those
• 59:12
  versus the same transcript with the same GPA and the same grades.
• 59:18
  that they see over and over and over and over again.
• 59:20
  Don't they
• 59:21
  Rupert Isaacson: require, don't they also require by law,
• 59:23
  a sort of GPA thing or not?
• 59:24
  Grade point average thing.
• 59:26
  Do they not require, like in England, or that you've taken, you know, your
• 59:30
  SATs, or in England it would be your GCSEs and your A levels or whatever.
• 59:35
  Are these now actually not necessary to get into college, or you have to
• 59:39
  find a way of doing an equivalent?
• 59:41
  Lainie Libeti: Well, you see by law and you're, you're making it seem as if
• 59:46
  there is a legal precedence dictating who gets into college and who doesn't.
• 59:52
  Colleges determine via their own system, whether it's a
• 59:56
  Cal State College, you know.
• 59:59
  And, and that system itself will have its own set of regulations,
• 1:00:03
  or the private universities will take whatever they're private.
• 1:00:07
  They'll take whatever they want,
• 1:00:09
  so there's
• 1:00:09
  Lainie Libeti: no law.
• 1:00:11
  I'm not so certain about the UK and if they accept these types of students.
• 1:00:17
  I don't know.
• 1:00:18
  I think I need to, I
• 1:00:19
  Rupert Isaacson: think I need to research it.
• 1:00:20
  Yeah, because I'm sort of, I'm interviewing you from Germany.
• 1:00:24
  And
• 1:00:24
  Germany is very different.
• 1:00:26
  Also, there's a stricter.
• 1:00:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, there also is no homeschooling in Germany.
• 1:00:31
  No,
• 1:00:31
  there isn't.
• 1:00:32
  There isn't.
• 1:00:34
  Rupert Isaacson: So, for example, if I were to take my kids out of the country
• 1:00:38
  and homeschool them and want them to get into a German university, they'd have
• 1:00:42
  to go and take some exams at some point.
• 1:00:46
  But one of the things I found with Rowan, my son, there was, I remember
• 1:00:51
  at this one point I was driving him in to sit a three hour math exam.
• 1:00:57
  And you've got to understand, this is a kid who was non
• 1:00:59
  verbal, you know, incontinent.
• 1:01:03
  Massive tantrums, harming himself, and then there I am, ten years later, driving
• 1:01:09
  him into this three hour math exam, and I said to him, are you really gonna do that?
• 1:01:16
  And he went, yeah, I'm totally gonna do that, but, like I said before, if I hadn't
• 1:01:20
  done all those years of movement method, I wouldn't have been able to get that.
• 1:01:24
  But I guess my question is that if, if, if I'm, I'm, I'm trying to anticipate
• 1:01:31
  what a listener might need to know if they like, they're listening to
• 1:01:34
  go, Oh, I quite like to do that.
• 1:01:36
  But maybe I'm not American or maybe I, you know, what are the various systems now?
• 1:01:45
  Okay.
• 1:01:45
  You're working mostly with kids from the USA.
• 1:01:48
  Do you also work fairly directly with colleges?
• 1:01:52
  And do you reach out to colleges and say, Hey, I do this, you know, what are your
• 1:01:57
  parameters, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:01:58
  Or is it really.
• 1:02:00
  You just help the teen and then they go from there.
• 1:02:03
  Lainie Libeti: I just help the teen.
• 1:02:05
  Yeah, I'm hands on with the teen So my clients that I've worked with for
• 1:02:12
  the educational piece That's that's only like maybe 10 percent of the
• 1:02:16
  work I do the majority of the work I do is in the field of mental health,
• 1:02:21
  Rupert Isaacson: which we'll get into in a second Yeah, yeah
• 1:02:23
  Lainie Libeti: I
• 1:02:24
  Rupert Isaacson: exhaust this mind that I'm, that I'm, yeah
• 1:02:26
  Lainie Libeti: that piece is primarily for, for students in the us and I, I,
• 1:02:31
  you know, again, I just don't know, I just don't know the requirements for
• 1:02:36
  colleges in other countries, but there are advocates that I'm networked with
• 1:02:42
  that are doing this work around the world, but I just can't speak to it.
• 1:02:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:02:46
  I'd be really interested to find out because I think it's, it's
• 1:02:49
  something which a lot of parents would really love to look at.
• 1:02:52
  And maybe assume that they can't.
• 1:02:53
  So I think I might go off and do a little bit of research.
• 1:02:56
  Okay.
• 1:02:58
  Rupert Isaacson: What I come up with too.
• 1:02:59
  All right.
• 1:03:00
  So let's go into now to the mental health side of what you do.
• 1:03:02
  How and why did you end up in mental health?
• 1:03:04
  Because obviously what you did was very good for mental health.
• 1:03:10
  You didn't necessarily have a particular mental health crisis with
• 1:03:14
  you and Almost rather the opposite.
• 1:03:17
  You learned how to create good mental health.
• 1:03:20
  So talk us how You ended up helping people who are maybe not quite so fortunate
• 1:03:30
  Lainie Libeti: Well again, you know coming from a background where there was a lot
• 1:03:35
  of Programming that I really wanted to
• 1:03:38
  reprogram.
• 1:03:38
  Right.
• 1:03:39
  You
• 1:03:39
  Lainie Libeti: know, I, I really didn't like the, the belief that I
• 1:03:43
  had that something was wrong with me, that I was bad, that I was too much.
• 1:03:49
  Oh, I had those beliefs.
• 1:03:51
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:03:52
  When some scale
• 1:03:53
  Rupert Isaacson: back, let's hear about you.
• 1:03:54
  Then we need to know a bit about your, your, well,
• 1:03:59
  Lainie Libeti: you know, basically, you know, I grew up in a household where,
• 1:04:03
  you know, my mother was very controlling and she yelled at me all the time.
• 1:04:09
  And I know kids were yelled at.
• 1:04:12
  You know, it was just normal.
• 1:04:15
  It was just a normal part of growing up, but it also had enough has an
• 1:04:20
  effect on on a person's internal worlds.
• 1:04:24
  It really does.
• 1:04:25
  We create beliefs about ourselves based on the upbringing that we have.
• 1:04:32
  And like I said, the hypervigilance was a result of, of, you know,
• 1:04:37
  always being frightened, right?
• 1:04:39
  So I was frightened a lot.
• 1:04:41
  I, you know, I still have episodes where if I hear people screaming, my
• 1:04:45
  nervous system is dysregulated and, and I find my body physically crying.
• 1:04:51
  You know, I may not be like, Oh, I'm going to start crying.
• 1:04:55
  But those are the sorts of nervous nervous system responses that
• 1:04:59
  my body is programmed to do.
• 1:05:02
  And that comes along with belief systems.
• 1:05:04
  And I noticed in my early twenties, a lot of history of, you know, being in
• 1:05:10
  relationships with the wrong people.
• 1:05:12
  Who did you think was
• 1:05:13
  Rupert Isaacson: wrong with you?
• 1:05:14
  What do, what do you, would you say by the time you hit, say being married
• 1:05:18
  pregnancy or Early parent years.
• 1:05:20
  If you could, if someone had sat you down on the psychiatrist's couch
• 1:05:23
  and said, What's wrong with you?
• 1:05:25
  What would have been like the three things you'd have said?
• 1:05:28
  Lainie Libeti: Well, it would actually be before that because I was already into
• 1:05:32
  my path of healing before Miro was born.
• 1:05:34
  I was 32 when he was born, but my 20s is when I really started this
• 1:05:38
  path and I I believed I was a bad person always trying to do good.
• 1:05:45
  I believe that I was faulty.
• 1:05:47
  I believed I was too much for people.
• 1:05:51
  And then a lot of time I believed I was not enough.
• 1:05:55
  You know, it was just like this, this really deep mental, you know, I don't
• 1:06:02
  know if you swear on your, your podcast.
• 1:06:05
  Do you swear?
• 1:06:06
  Swear
• 1:06:06
  Rupert Isaacson: away, my love.
• 1:06:07
  Lainie Libeti: It was this deep mental fuckery constantly happening
• 1:06:10
  in my head where the messages, my, my internal voice was really
• 1:06:16
  mean, you know, she was a bitch.
• 1:06:19
  She was horrible.
• 1:06:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:06:21
  Yeah.
• 1:06:21
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah.
• 1:06:21
  Yeah.
• 1:06:22
  You can't do this.
• 1:06:23
  You're not good enough.
• 1:06:24
  You're not this.
• 1:06:25
  You're not that you're not capable of doing this and hearing
• 1:06:29
  those things and not knowing what to do with those messages.
• 1:06:34
  Really, you know, again, my, my hyper independence, again, trauma response,
• 1:06:40
  it, it kept me very, you know, on.
• 1:06:44
  On my path when something, you know, had a red flag, which
• 1:06:48
  really the red flag was me.
• 1:06:50
  I'd leave, you know, my relationships.
• 1:06:52
  I was always the one to leave or I'd pull him close and I'd push him away.
• 1:06:57
  I pull him close.
• 1:06:58
  I push him away right before they're ready to leave me.
• 1:07:00
  I'd leave.
• 1:07:01
  So like this, this.
• 1:07:03
  Relationship dynamic that I was having in my 20s was not working and the
• 1:07:08
  fuckery in my head was not really conducive of being a healthy person.
• 1:07:14
  And I wanted to change that.
• 1:07:16
  I wanted that.
• 1:07:17
  I wanted to reprogram that.
• 1:07:19
  I wanted it to, to, to be something else.
• 1:07:23
  And so I don't deep, you know, and in those years, And I learned quite a bit
• 1:07:31
  about how to heal some of, you know, I had attachment wounds and how to create a
• 1:07:39
  healthy attachments and all of that stuff.
• 1:07:42
  So I had some background in using tools.
• 1:07:45
  But when I became a, and I did this because I wanted to be a parent,
• 1:07:49
  I wanted to be a parent who didn't parent the way I was parented.
• 1:07:53
  I did this because it was really important to me to have these things healed.
• 1:07:59
  And when I finally became a parent at 32, Like I was aware of my internal dialogue.
• 1:08:05
  I was in, I was aware of the voice and I was able to turn the volume down.
• 1:08:10
  I use tools to turn that volume down.
• 1:08:13
  I use tools.
• 1:08:13
  Rupert Isaacson: If you use, tell us about this.
• 1:08:14
  Well,
• 1:08:15
  Lainie Libeti: just by like one very, very simple tool is by putting
• 1:08:21
  your attention towards that voice and saying to that voice, instead of
• 1:08:25
  antagonizing it, I hear you and there must be a wonderful message that you're
• 1:08:30
  trying to give to me to keep me safe.
• 1:08:33
  But I'm going to use this knob, and I'm going to turn the volume down.
• 1:08:39
  So instead of antagonizing the voice in my head, taming it.
• 1:08:44
  And then, through shadow work, I was able to determine where those,
• 1:08:48
  those messages were coming from.
• 1:08:50
  Tell us what
• 1:08:51
  Rupert Isaacson: shadow work is.
• 1:08:52
  Lainie Libeti: Shadow work is dealing with the parts of yourself that you've
• 1:08:56
  disowned, the parts of yourself that were programmed and put into the shadow
• 1:09:01
  that are usually shrouded in shame.
• 1:09:04
  A lot of shame is given to you, right?
• 1:09:08
  It, you know, the, the, you're not good enough and I'm not good enough.
• 1:09:14
  I'm too much for people that came from my, my.
• 1:09:21
  Psychological development at the time I was hearing the messages transformed
• 1:09:26
  into messages that made sense to me.
• 1:09:28
  So as a 3 year old or a 5 year old, if I'm told to shut up, the only thing
• 1:09:34
  that that makes sense to me as a message is I'm not worthy of being heard.
• 1:09:40
  Right, you know, I, I can't rationalize beyond my emotional or psychological
• 1:09:47
  development because I am 5 years old.
• 1:09:50
  Right?
• 1:09:51
  So the message that that.
• 1:09:53
  gave me was I'm not good enough to be heard, or I'm too much.
• 1:09:59
  And I take those identity pieces and I put them into the shadows,
• 1:10:04
  the parts of myself, and I disown them and I don't look at them.
• 1:10:09
  Yet, the voice of those shadows come up.
• 1:10:13
  You know, as part of my subconscious voice, and that's what I was hearing.
• 1:10:17
  So I needed to go deeper and not just quiet the voice.
• 1:10:22
  I needed to learn where those those messages came from and heal
• 1:10:28
  some of those wounds that were part of my childhood programming.
• 1:10:33
  And that became a big journey.
• 1:10:35
  That I embarked on and still look, nobody's done.
• 1:10:39
  You're never done with your own internal work.
• 1:10:42
  Rupert Isaacson: That's effectively Jungian psychoanalysis.
• 1:10:43
  Yeah, that,
• 1:10:44
  Lainie Libeti: that, that particular is yeah.
• 1:10:46
  Shadow work is all Jungian.
• 1:10:49
  Yeah.
• 1:10:51
  But I also used other tools, you know, like the turning the voice down,
• 1:10:57
  I
• 1:10:57
  Lainie Libeti: used Byron Katie's, the work, which I think is so powerful,
• 1:11:02
  which is just a way of separating the thought, which becomes a belief.
• 1:11:08
  If you believe if, if you think of thought enough times, that actually becomes a
• 1:11:14
  Rupert Isaacson: repetition will make a belief.
• 1:11:15
  Absolutely.
• 1:11:16
  And
• 1:11:17
  Lainie Libeti: When you use Byron Katie's work, you're separating the
• 1:11:21
  thought from the belief and you're giving it space to question it and
• 1:11:27
  create new possible ways of thinking.
• 1:11:30
  So it creates new neural pathways around that particular belief and
• 1:11:35
  it helps to loosen the strength or the power of that limiting belief.
• 1:11:41
  So
• 1:11:42
  Rupert Isaacson: people might, people might know who Jung was, Carl Jung.
• 1:11:45
  But who's, but tell us, people might not know who Byron Katie was or is.
• 1:11:48
  Lainie Libeti: She's, she's you know, somebody who has written self help books
• 1:11:52
  and she created this this tool called, you know, quote unquote, the work.
• 1:11:57
  If you look Byron Katie up on the internet, you'll find the work.
• 1:12:01
  It's four simple questions and then you turn it around.
• 1:12:05
  So let's say I had the belief I'm not good enough.
• 1:12:08
  You find ways to turn it around.
• 1:12:12
  And you start speaking the words like, I am good enough.
• 1:12:15
  Okay.
• 1:12:16
  Well, that's pretty simple.
• 1:12:17
  That's a simple turnaround.
• 1:12:18
  Or how about nobody's good enough?
• 1:12:21
  Or, you know, good enough is not good enough or good enough actually means
• 1:12:27
  being better or, you know, finding ways.
• 1:12:32
  To create new neural pathways around the same thought, whether
• 1:12:37
  it's true or not doesn't matter.
• 1:12:39
  You're creating new neural pathways by speaking an alternate
• 1:12:43
  way of that particular thought.
• 1:12:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Again, I'm just looking this up as, as, as you speak.
• 1:12:49
  I've got, I love
• 1:12:50
  Lainie Libeti: her stuff.
• 1:12:51
  It
• 1:12:52
  Rupert Isaacson: is free
• 1:12:54
  Lainie Libeti: questions.
• 1:12:55
  Is it true?
• 1:12:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Thought is not a factor.
• 1:12:57
  Is it?
• 1:12:58
  One, is it true?
• 1:13:00
  Lainie Libeti: Is, are you sure it's true?
• 1:13:01
  Is
• 1:13:01
  Rupert Isaacson: it absolutely true?
• 1:13:03
  Lainie Libeti: Right.
• 1:13:03
  Is
• 1:13:03
  Rupert Isaacson: it 100 percent true?
• 1:13:05
  Lainie Libeti: Three,
• 1:13:06
  Rupert Isaacson: how does this thought make me feel?
• 1:13:08
  Lainie Libeti: Right.
• 1:13:10
  And the feeling, when, before you get to the last one, the
• 1:13:15
  feeling is where the charge is.
• 1:13:17
  And when you have the combination of a repetition in thought,
• 1:13:22
  which is a belief and a charged emotion, there's power in that.
• 1:13:27
  And sometimes it takes over your, your rationality.
• 1:13:32
  And then the last question, go ahead.
• 1:13:34
  Rupert Isaacson: What would things be like if I didn't feel
• 1:13:37
  if I didn't hold this belief?
• 1:13:40
  Lainie Libeti: Wow.
• 1:13:41
  And then you turn it around.
• 1:13:42
  So like all this together, it's so incredibly powerful.
• 1:13:47
  That's another tool that I use.
• 1:13:49
  Obviously, I didn't create it, but it's it's one of those tools that
• 1:13:52
  is mind blowing in mind changing.
• 1:13:55
  It's it can change your you don't have to do a whole ton of research.
• 1:14:00
  You just need to do this one tool and that alone is enough.
• 1:14:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so
• 1:14:08
  go ahead.
• 1:14:10
  Lainie Libeti: Tools to me are one of the most magical gifts, right?
• 1:14:16
  Rupert Isaacson: One hundred percent.
• 1:14:18
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:14:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, this, this begs another question, which is you, okay,
• 1:14:25
  you did all this work on yourself.
• 1:14:26
  You became a parent, and then you use these tools to help you
• 1:14:33
  as a parent as well as yourself.
• 1:14:37
  And now you want to, there was another parent involved.
• 1:14:41
  When you went with Miro, did you have to justify that to his dad and, asked
• 1:14:48
  for permission to take him out of the country and so on and so forth.
• 1:14:51
  And how did you, how did you navigate that?
• 1:14:54
  Cause that also must've been somewhat tricky.
• 1:14:58
  Lainie Libeti: Well, believe it or not, Miro's father and I, we were
• 1:15:03
  best friends after we divorced, we became co parents and we had
• 1:15:07
  a really wonderful relationship.
• 1:15:09
  He had been battling many, many.
• 1:15:12
  physical ailments.
• 1:15:13
  He had, you know, he had, he had things from like cancer and he had he had so
• 1:15:19
  many struggles from, from his physical wellbeing that he was always facing.
• 1:15:24
  And when we were married, he, he had these things.
• 1:15:28
  And when we split, we split before Miro was born.
• 1:15:33
  And part of that was, you know, I was, I was Miro's father's primary caretaker,
• 1:15:41
  and he had healed and gotten better, but I didn't want to be a parent and resent
• 1:15:47
  him and still be in the mode of parenting him, and we split and it was amicable,
• 1:15:52
  and we remained best friends co parents.
• 1:15:57
  And when I had this idea to leave, and he had, he had moved to another
• 1:16:02
  state, when I had this idea to leave.
• 1:16:05
  He was he's like, yeah, you go for it.
• 1:16:07
  This is what a great opportunity.
• 1:16:09
  You can do it.
• 1:16:09
  I'm I'm sick.
• 1:16:11
  I can't do this.
• 1:16:12
  I have to be here.
• 1:16:13
  Go do it.
• 1:16:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Thank God.
• 1:16:14
  Thank God.
• 1:16:15
  He wasn't somebody who was, you know, controlling like nowhere.
• 1:16:17
  You taking my son, you know, down to that dangerous place full of, you know,
• 1:16:21
  Lainie Libeti: no, no, he was bless his heart.
• 1:16:24
  He was he was so supportive and really saw the benefits that Miro was getting
• 1:16:31
  and He was a little trepidatious when we wanted to, you know, continue the
• 1:16:37
  journey and he flew down to Guatemala and stayed with us and saw our life and
• 1:16:42
  really felt better, but did go back.
• 1:16:44
  He was living in Arizona at the time.
• 1:16:48
  And just a few, few laters, a few years later, a few years
• 1:16:54
  later, he did pass away.
• 1:16:55
  So, you know, it's, it's, it's a sad story.
• 1:17:00
  We were actually on a teen retreat with a group of teens in Peru
• 1:17:04
  when he passed away and it was.
• 1:17:07
  You know, it was emotional and sad and, you know, it
• 1:17:11
  was, yeah, what an experience.
• 1:17:15
  And every time we go back to Peru and go back to that same place, Miro
• 1:17:19
  had a visitation from his father there, which was really amazing.
• 1:17:23
  But that was, gosh, eight, nine years ago now.
• 1:17:31
  Rupert Isaacson: So, okay.
• 1:17:32
  So the complexity and healing and caregiving and all of this, you know,
• 1:17:41
  tied up in this story you managed to create a son who's mentally pretty cool
• 1:17:50
  because he's grown up in this optimal way.
• 1:17:56
  So.
• 1:17:57
  At what point do you fall into looking after the mental health of teens and
• 1:18:04
  tweens who are not doing so well?
• 1:18:06
  How does that manifest?
• 1:18:08
  Because I would imagine that a lot of them who are coming out of the world
• 1:18:13
  schooling environment are fairly happy.
• 1:18:16
  I would, I should imagine that they're not being bullied at high school,
• 1:18:19
  they're not subject to those kinds of peer pressures that, you know, so, yeah,
• 1:18:25
  talk, talk to us about mental health.
• 1:18:29
  Lainie Libeti: Well, I get all those tools that I discovered in my 20s were
• 1:18:34
  a part of my sort of toolbox when I was.
• 1:18:38
  Facilitating teens at the Project World School retreats.
• 1:18:43
  So I knew that tools could because I'd used to my used among myself and
• 1:18:46
  I knew that tools were a powerful way to work through anxiety of, you know,
• 1:18:53
  being homesick being outside of your, your comfort zone for a period of time
• 1:18:58
  and in an environment that was really, You know, challenging and new, right?
• 1:19:04
  You know, a lot of the teens that I work with on the trips had never
• 1:19:07
  been outside of their home country.
• 1:19:10
  They weren't always world schoolers.
• 1:19:12
  Some of them were homeschoolers that left for the 1st time for our trips.
• 1:19:16
  And so using these tools was really like, I felt like I could facilitate
• 1:19:21
  anything because I had tools on my side.
• 1:19:24
  It wasn't me psychologist because I'm not a psychologist.
• 1:19:27
  It was me facilitating tools in partnership, and I've used the
• 1:19:31
  tools and I've overcome many of these challenges in my own journey.
• 1:19:36
  And like I said, Working with adolescents, working with teens
• 1:19:40
  helped me to sort of heal my inner teen one, every, every single time.
• 1:19:46
  Like it was just so fulfilling to the, the teen that lived inside of me that was
• 1:19:50
  never seen or heard or really understood.
• 1:19:55
  And when 2020 hit, boy, they're, they're, you know, isolating teens,
• 1:20:02
  teens that This is an age group that really needed social connection.
• 1:20:08
  The isolation really affected not only the world schoolers, but the
• 1:20:12
  homeschoolers and all the other teens that were in a sort of orbit that
• 1:20:17
  I, I worked in and I said, okay.
• 1:20:22
  We're not traveling.
• 1:20:23
  Let's meet online.
• 1:20:25
  And the meeting, I, I started these free online sort of meetups and I would
• 1:20:33
  meet with them two hours every week and we play games the first hour we
• 1:20:38
  talk philosophy or internal worlds.
• 1:20:40
  I call it philosophy because it sort of takes it outside
• 1:20:44
  of the, the attention of them.
• 1:20:47
  It's something they can talk about and be heard, but it usually always went back
• 1:20:52
  into, you know, what's going on inside of them and what they say really matters.
• 1:20:57
  And then the 2nd hour, we'd play a game of some sort.
• 1:21:00
  So it was this joyful connection that they look forward to every week.
• 1:21:04
  And from that.
• 1:21:06
  Teens were messaging me because I had, you know, 40, 50 teens joining every week
• 1:21:12
  and I'd facilitate this big online thing.
• 1:21:14
  And they'd messaged me privately, Laney, what can I do about this?
• 1:21:19
  You know, I'm feeling this because I was, I'm not their parent.
• 1:21:22
  I am a parent, but I'm not their parent and I'm somebody that their parents
• 1:21:26
  trusted and it became like, oh, here's this other adult that will give me this
• 1:21:31
  outside, you know, perspective and.
• 1:21:34
  So I, in essence, became a mentor to them.
• 1:21:38
  And then I started thinking, well, wait a minute.
• 1:21:41
  Why don't I put together some courses to empower them using these tools and I'll
• 1:21:46
  find more tools and get them this massive tool kit that they can empower themselves
• 1:21:53
  and they can have another partner.
• 1:21:54
  Me and other teens, and we could do this in community.
• 1:21:58
  And I started to put together this tool kit and I started producing courses.
• 1:22:03
  So I got certified as a, you know, life coach, a confidence coach.
• 1:22:09
  And then I, I opened up transformative mentoring for teens and started
• 1:22:14
  teaching them these tools.
• 1:22:17
  So, It was needed in, in a time of, you know, the world was shut down
• 1:22:24
  and in 2021, I actually wrote a book about parenting kids in partnership,
• 1:22:31
  parenting teens in partnership.
• 1:22:34
  And I included the title of
• 1:22:36
  Rupert Isaacson: the book.
• 1:22:38
  Lainie Libeti: The book is called Seen, Heard and Understood
• 1:22:41
  Parenting and Partnering with Teens for Greater Mental Health.
• 1:22:46
  And many of the tools that I have been talking about or that I teach
• 1:22:50
  in my courses are in that book to empower parents to facilitate
• 1:22:55
  these tools with their teens and to understand the You know, the
• 1:23:02
  psychological and neurobiological development of teens while they're
• 1:23:07
  parenting, if they have no background.
• 1:23:09
  And it's written from, from my perspective, but in academic perspective
• 1:23:15
  from a non academic, I'm, I don't have a degree in any of this stuff.
• 1:23:19
  I'm a self directed learner.
• 1:23:21
  But it's also from the perspective of a parent who really wanted to support their
• 1:23:28
  teen and all the other teens that I've been working with so that people reading
• 1:23:33
  the book can support their community and their families and in the same way.
• 1:23:39
  Rupert Isaacson: What's the most important thing that parents of teens
• 1:23:43
  need to understand on the neurobiology?
• 1:23:47
  Everyone knows about hormones, but
• 1:23:49
  Sure, yeah, I know right about hormones too.
• 1:23:51
  Rupert Isaacson: But beyond that there are hormones, what, yeah, what, what
• 1:23:56
  do people not know that they, if they knew it would be easier and better?
• 1:24:02
  Lainie Libeti: Well, there's a couple of things.
• 1:24:03
  First of all, the, the hormonal, you know, the, the receptors in the brain
• 1:24:11
  that recept, not adrenaline endorphins are the, they're, they have the most receptors
• 1:24:19
  than any other time in a human's life.
• 1:24:21
  And so the high of endorphins.
• 1:24:24
  Emotions are something that's really, really important to teens.
• 1:24:28
  And then the neurobiological side, the part that is really in, in in, in
• 1:24:37
  the forefront that regulates emotions is also hyperdeveloped where the
• 1:24:44
  other parts of the brain are not.
• 1:24:47
  So the
• 1:24:48
  Rupert Isaacson: amygdala is, is, is, is like your nose gets a bit big
• 1:24:52
  before the rest of your face It does.
• 1:24:55
  It does.
• 1:24:56
  It does.
• 1:24:56
  I mean.
• 1:24:57
  Big before the rest of your brain catches up.
• 1:24:59
  Yeah.
• 1:25:00
  Lainie Libeti: Exactly.
• 1:25:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:25:01
  Lainie Libeti: And the reason, so you've got.
• 1:25:04
  Same thing
• 1:25:04
  Rupert Isaacson: happens when you're a toddler, by the way.
• 1:25:06
  Lainie Libeti: Exactly.
• 1:25:08
  And so you've got these things happening at the same time.
• 1:25:10
  And so teens don't have the ability to project as well consequences and the
• 1:25:18
  thrill of, of receiving an endorphin rush or an emotional high about something.
• 1:25:25
  And all of these things are happening from a neurobiological
• 1:25:30
  perspective while they're starting to psychologically Exactly.
• 1:25:33
  Individuate.
• 1:25:34
  That means their friend groups are a bigger influence on them.
• 1:25:40
  And, and if you can imagine not being able to perceive consequences of their actions
• 1:25:45
  or for forecast, what could happen.
• 1:25:51
  As a result, which is, of course, a consequence, but like what the
• 1:25:55
  forecast could be and how that could ripple into their lives.
• 1:26:00
  If they don't have that biological ability, then we need to help
• 1:26:07
  supplement and support them by helping them reflect in a way that's not
• 1:26:13
  authoritarian, but in partnership of.
• 1:26:16
  Exactly where they are.
• 1:26:17
  We know that they're individuating.
• 1:26:19
  We know how important their friend groups are.
• 1:26:22
  We know about peer pressures.
• 1:26:25
  We know about all of these, you know, drugs and, and sex and,
• 1:26:30
  and all of the other, you know,
• 1:26:32
  Rupert Isaacson: producers.
• 1:26:33
  Yeah, basically.
• 1:26:34
  Yeah.
• 1:26:34
  Lainie Libeti: All of these things are an important part of a teen's life.
• 1:26:38
  Well, it's part of them is we navigate these journeys.
• 1:26:42
  Yeah, knowing those biological, you know, not deficiencies, they're
• 1:26:49
  also superpowers in many ways.
• 1:26:51
  They are.
• 1:26:51
  Well, they also have
• 1:26:52
  Rupert Isaacson: a biological imperative, right?
• 1:26:53
  I mean, it's, it's, the risk is necessary, you know, because you have to go test
• 1:26:58
  yourself and say, can you go with your spear into the bush and come back
• 1:27:04
  with a wildebeest and dodge the lions.
• 1:27:06
  And, you are gonna have to get ready to reproduce the species.
• 1:27:09
  And all of these things are ramping up.
• 1:27:12
  They're not, they're all there for a reason of course.
• 1:27:15
  But of course, modern, modern life can get in the way.
• 1:27:18
  But what get Yeah.
• 1:27:21
  When parents find themselves on the in conflict with this Yeah.
• 1:27:27
  What can they do to not be in conflict with it?
• 1:27:30
  Lainie Libeti: Well, what I was gonna say is we also have.
• 1:27:33
  The pressures of cultural fears and especially coming from 2020 and, and
• 1:27:40
  all of the changes the planet is in right now, there are, there are these
• 1:27:45
  cultural memes of, of, you know, fears around how people need to be
• 1:27:54
  and fear people control out of fear.
• 1:27:58
  And if you control, we're not.
• 1:28:01
  Going to the, our teens are not going to be able to take healthy risks.
• 1:28:06
  Yeah.
• 1:28:07
  Lainie Libeti: So it's going up against what can parents do first.
• 1:28:11
  They have to be aware of all that's going around, all that's happening
• 1:28:16
  in their teens development.
• 1:28:17
  They have to have an understanding of it.
• 1:28:22
  If they don't, they alienate the teen and say, you're irrational, you know, don't
• 1:28:27
  slam the door when, when you walk in the room, you know, and there's no connection.
• 1:28:32
  My book is all about connection.
• 1:28:35
  Action is the only way to support a team through all of
• 1:28:39
  these, these changes, right?
• 1:28:42
  And also being aware of the societal messaging and fears.
• 1:28:47
  That are a part of our reality.
• 1:28:49
  We can't escape them.
• 1:28:51
  We can't escape them.
• 1:28:52
  How do we process those things in a healthy way?
• 1:28:56
  How do we process them in a way?
• 1:28:58
  That's in alignment with our own values.
• 1:29:01
  We don't want to be controlled.
• 1:29:03
  We want to make decisions.
• 1:29:06
  And take healthy risks and part of the societal messaging right now
• 1:29:13
  is also preventing those healthy risks and, and, you know, making
• 1:29:20
  our, our species evolve, right?
• 1:29:24
  We need each generation to evolve.
• 1:29:29
  Rupert Isaacson: If you made it this far into the podcast, then I'm
• 1:29:32
  guessing you're somebody that, like me, loves to read books about not
• 1:29:37
  just how people have achieved self actualization, but particularly
• 1:29:41
  about the relationship with nature.
• 1:29:45
  Spirituality, life, the universe, and everything.
• 1:29:49
  And I'd like to draw your attention to my books.
• 1:29:52
  If you would like to read the story of how we even arrived here, perhaps
• 1:29:57
  you'd like to check out the two New York Times bestsellers, The Horseboy
• 1:30:02
  and The Long Ride Home, and come on an adventure with us and see what engendered,
• 1:30:07
  what started Live Free Ride Free.
• 1:30:09
  And before we go back to the podcast, also check out The Healing
• 1:30:13
  Land, which tells the story of.
• 1:30:16
  My years spent in the Kalahari with the Sun, Bushmen, hunter gatherer people
• 1:30:21
  there, and all that they taught me, and mentored me in, and all that I learned.
• 1:30:26
  Come on that adventure with me.
• 1:30:27
  Where in your view does nature come into this?
• 1:30:31
  Lainie Libeti: I'm sorry, say that again?
• 1:30:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Where in your view does nature come into this?
• 1:30:35
  Lainie Libeti: I mean, we're talking about biological development, that is nature.
• 1:30:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, but people are not living, for the most part, in
• 1:30:43
  the environment that their biology is.
• 1:30:45
  Lainie Libeti: I thought you meant nature versus nurture.
• 1:30:47
  Okay, okay, okay, nature.
• 1:30:50
  Oh, such a huge part of this.
• 1:30:52
  Yeah, it's, it's an untouched, um, what's the word I'm looking for?
• 1:31:03
  System that can teach us.
• 1:31:07
  To, if we can adapt to become more in alignment with nature, with animals, with,
• 1:31:15
  with, with the, the, with the system of, of, you know, birth, death growth, you
• 1:31:23
  know, all, all the, all of the ecology of nature, that if we can, once again, be.
• 1:31:33
  Mirroring those systems versus some of the artificial systems that our
• 1:31:38
  teens have been, you know, thrust to in front of, like, we're talking
• 1:31:43
  about the computer where you and, you know, it's a tool, a tool.
• 1:31:47
  Tools are great.
• 1:31:48
  Video games are great.
• 1:31:49
  I'm not an anti video game person, but if that is a person's only world,
• 1:31:53
  that becomes their entire biosphere.
• 1:31:56
  Right?
• 1:31:57
  We need to be able to balance nature, who is the biggest gift and the biggest
• 1:32:03
  teacher to all of this, you know, but it's not just team go out in nature.
• 1:32:10
  It's family.
• 1:32:12
  What can we do as a family, as a unit, as a culture, as even society to be
• 1:32:18
  able to, to integrate nature as part of.
• 1:32:23
  our soul, our, our being, our, our very essence, our presence.
• 1:32:28
  Yeah.
• 1:32:29
  I'm,
• 1:32:29
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm, I'm, I'm with you a hundred percent.
• 1:32:31
  I feel that one's best.
• 1:32:35
  Shots of family really is to do stuff in nature together.
• 1:32:39
  That does involve some risk because nature always inevitably does.
• 1:32:44
  But where you learn to navigate those because that's what our biology.
• 1:32:51
  I do know though that, you know, the vast majority of people are not
• 1:32:55
  living that way whether, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.
• 1:32:59
  If people are not able to
• 1:33:04
  go swim with dolphins, dodge elephants and train horses as part of their
• 1:33:10
  family culture, what's your formula for?
• 1:33:17
  Using nature like this with teens and tweens in a way that is more
• 1:33:22
  accessible to people who don't have a family culture of this.
• 1:33:27
  Lainie Libeti: Well, I mean, that is one of the reasons why
• 1:33:28
  we created Project World School.
• 1:33:30
  You know, a lot of it is in nature.
• 1:33:33
  A lot of that is the cultural connection to, to nature, human
• 1:33:39
  connection to the environment.
• 1:33:41
  But this is going to be a little, this answer is going to be a
• 1:33:45
  little sort of outside of what you think I'm going to answer.
• 1:33:48
  So, you know, get to nature, make plans, do it, go have an adventure.
• 1:33:54
  Adventures are so important, but the other thing is, if you are stuck in a rural
• 1:34:00
  city and you really can't access nature.
• 1:34:05
  You're not going to believe this answer.
• 1:34:07
  Play board games together.
• 1:34:10
  Okay, go
• 1:34:10
  on.
• 1:34:11
  Lainie Libeti: Because the, the playfulness
• 1:34:15
  If we can access our playfulness as a family, and you can even find
• 1:34:20
  board games that are based on nature.
• 1:34:22
  And if you want to go down that path, that's fine.
• 1:34:25
  But what I'm saying is cultivate a culture within your family where
• 1:34:30
  playfulness is one of the foundations because through playfulness.
• 1:34:35
  You can access imagination.
• 1:34:38
  You can access creativity, and you can access problem solving.
• 1:34:43
  And all of those things can be, you know, part of a really extraordinary experience.
• 1:34:50
  And let me tell you, if you're a family that plays board games together, when
• 1:34:55
  you get out into nature, it becomes this adventure like experience, right?
• 1:35:03
  You have the training.
• 1:35:05
  If you're stuck in a rural area, you have the training to take risks, to
• 1:35:10
  push your luck, to, you know, create a strategic make a strategic choice.
• 1:35:16
  I love board games, you know, for that.
• 1:35:19
  Were you always into
• 1:35:20
  Rupert Isaacson: board games?
• 1:35:21
  Or was that a later in life thing?
• 1:35:22
  Lainie Libeti: Always, always.
• 1:35:24
  And in fact, part of the family culture of Miro and I, we traveled with a game bag.
• 1:35:29
  Like, they were such an important part of our family culture that, yeah,
• 1:35:35
  it's always been a big part of it.
• 1:35:37
  Rupert Isaacson: What's your game of choice?
• 1:35:39
  Lainie Libeti: Right now?
• 1:35:42
  Right now and
• 1:35:43
  Rupert Isaacson: over time.
• 1:35:44
  And like, and, and, or do you have games of choice for
• 1:35:46
  particular psychological seasons?
• 1:35:50
  Lainie Libeti: I mean, I probably do.
• 1:35:54
  I'm really immersed in the board game culture right now
• 1:35:58
  because we own a board game cafe.
• 1:36:00
  Believe it or not.
• 1:36:01
  Yeah.
• 1:36:02
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah.
• 1:36:02
  Wait, my son and I.
• 1:36:04
  I love it.
• 1:36:05
  So six months ago, we opened one here and in Guanajuato, Mexico, and
• 1:36:09
  it's the only board game cafe and the central part of of the city and state.
• 1:36:16
  And it's wonderful.
• 1:36:17
  So I'm diving into all these new board games and different types of strategy.
• 1:36:21
  And my son is making games, which is It's so amazing to but what is my favorite?
• 1:36:26
  I mean, there's so many, I love social deduction games like werewolf and, and
• 1:36:33
  secret Hitler and things like that.
• 1:36:36
  I know what a funny,
• 1:36:37
  Rupert Isaacson: but yeah, I'll go find out.
• 1:36:40
  Lainie Libeti: There's such a secret.
• 1:36:42
  Secret Hitler is a lot of fun and it's, it's funny.
• 1:36:46
  And you're in Germany right now.
• 1:36:49
  It's, it's
• 1:36:50
  Rupert Isaacson: under the bed.
• 1:36:51
  Lainie Libeti: No, it's you, everybody creates a role.
• 1:36:55
  You're either a liberal or, or a fascist and you have to pass.
• 1:36:58
  You know, the game is you go through the order and there's a president and
• 1:37:02
  a chancellor and you have to vote.
• 1:37:04
  And if the chancellor is the secret role of Hitler, then, of course, the game is
• 1:37:09
  over and you have all these discussions and you pass these different you know,
• 1:37:15
  It's a lot of fun, but Werewolf is kind of like Mafia, and you can play with big
• 1:37:19
  groups of people, and I play these with teens a lot, and those are wonderful
• 1:37:24
  games, but I also love strategy games, you know, I love, there is a nature
• 1:37:29
  game that I love it's called Cascadia, and it's one of my favorite board games
• 1:37:34
  now, Cascadia but I like Cascadia,
• 1:37:38
  Rupert Isaacson: what is that, tell us about that one?
• 1:37:40
  Lainie Libeti: It's, it's a sort of like an abstract puzzle game
• 1:37:45
  that you're playing your own board.
• 1:37:47
  You're building environments that connect different animals,
• 1:37:52
  attract different animals on it.
• 1:37:54
  You know, you've got water areas and you've got, mountains and savannas and
• 1:38:00
  Rupert Isaacson: ecological management type thing.
• 1:38:02
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
• 1:38:03
  And you put different animals on them.
• 1:38:05
  So there's hawks and, and salmon and in the water and
• 1:38:11
  bears and, and foxes and stuff.
• 1:38:13
  So yeah, it's, it's a puzzle game, but it is ecological management.
• 1:38:17
  So I love that.
• 1:38:18
  It's really
• 1:38:18
  Rupert Isaacson: interesting what you say about game playing, because I'm,
• 1:38:21
  I'm a great believer in tracking.
• 1:38:24
  You know, a lot of time growing up hunting and then having lived
• 1:38:28
  with hunting gathering tribes, and that's always been a big part of
• 1:38:31
  my life and the idea of tracking.
• 1:38:33
  You don't have to be hunting in order to track tracking
• 1:38:37
  informs hunting, but tracking.
• 1:38:39
  In and of itself is an amazing thing.
• 1:38:42
  But what really, I think as a human, we are always tracking cause we're,
• 1:38:46
  we're a hunter gatherer species.
• 1:38:48
  So we're also tracking plants.
• 1:38:50
  We're also tracking the weather.
• 1:38:51
  We're also tracking ideas.
• 1:38:52
  We're also tracking the spirit world.
• 1:38:54
  We're also tracking emotions.
• 1:38:58
  We're not just tracking that animal track right there, but that animal
• 1:39:01
  track right there is where it begins.
• 1:39:03
  And.
• 1:39:04
  I feel that games actually are an extension of that.
• 1:39:07
  I always have felt that they're an extension of that.
• 1:39:10
  And they're to some degree an altered state of consciousness,
• 1:39:12
  because you roleplay, you go into it, and then you build your empathy.
• 1:39:18
  Which is exactly what you have to do with hunting and gathering.
• 1:39:19
  You have to become Kudu, or you have to become Ayahuasca, or
• 1:39:22
  whatever, to know how to handle it.
• 1:39:25
  I was in Austin, Texas about a year ago.
• 1:39:29
  And I wandered into this cafe.
• 1:39:33
  There were all these people playing board games.
• 1:39:37
  Love it.
• 1:39:37
  And I
• 1:39:37
  Rupert Isaacson: looked around and you could order a pizza and you could have
• 1:39:40
  a beer and I was like, this is genius.
• 1:39:43
  And I had it in the back of my mind and I could just see the community
• 1:39:47
  and I could feel the happiness.
• 1:39:48
  You talked about endorphins and dopamine, you know, but you're also getting oxytocin
• 1:39:53
  with that because it's, you know, and serotonin because it's, it's social and
• 1:39:57
  you could, you could like eat the good hormones as you walked into that place.
• 1:40:01
  It was like.
• 1:40:02
  Wow.
• 1:40:03
  And like, I looked around because I'm always on, you know, psychological
• 1:40:06
  safari because I'm an autism dad.
• 1:40:07
  And I'm like, Oh yeah, like a good 60 percent of the people in here
• 1:40:11
  are on the spectrum and da da da.
• 1:40:12
  And it's community.
• 1:40:15
  I've seen this in other places, like in the Ren Faire community and the LARPing
• 1:40:18
  community, the live action role play community and things like this, which are.
• 1:40:24
  Really the same thing.
• 1:40:25
  But the idea of sitting together in this way, and so it's really interesting
• 1:40:30
  to me that before we hit record, you're saying, Oh, yeah, my latest
• 1:40:34
  thing, we're got a ballgame cafe.
• 1:40:36
  And of course, of course, Lainey has a ballgame because she does that curve.
• 1:40:40
  Yeah, of course, she'll then have like a chain of them, you know, through
• 1:40:43
  the world, you know, by the time we do our next podcast, probably well, it's
• 1:40:49
  inevitable with you, I think, what gave you the idea to open a board game cafe?
• 1:40:55
  It's a great idea
• 1:40:57
  Lainie Libeti: Well, because every time we get to a new country or a new city,
• 1:41:02
  my son and I would always like, look up.
• 1:41:04
  Is there a board game cafe here?
• 1:41:06
  And we've been to board
• 1:41:08
  Rupert Isaacson: game cafes.
• 1:41:08
  How long have they been a thing?
• 1:41:10
  Lainie Libeti: Oh, they've been around for ages.
• 1:41:12
  Our favorite was in Thailand in Chiang Mai.
• 1:41:16
  And I'm, we're, 10 years ago, we found this wonderful board game cafe.
• 1:41:21
  And before we opened up our own board game cafe, I reached out to the
• 1:41:26
  owner who became a friend of ours.
• 1:41:27
  And he, you know, we had these wonderful conversations about.
• 1:41:31
  What to do and how to do it.
• 1:41:33
  But yeah, it was just our thing.
• 1:41:37
  We love board games.
• 1:41:38
  So we would always just look up, you know, we've been to 40 something countries.
• 1:41:43
  You know, we've been around the world.
• 1:41:45
  We didn't just stay in Latin America.
• 1:41:47
  So we've been in Southeast Asia through Europe into Africa as well.
• 1:41:53
  So, you 16 years has taken us many, many places.
• 1:41:57
  And well, board game cafes was like, okay.
• 1:42:00
  Japan, board game cafe, cat board game, wherever we went, it didn't matter.
• 1:42:05
  Rupert Isaacson: And when you go to them, and it's just the two of you,
• 1:42:08
  would you then automatically fall in with other people to play with?
• 1:42:12
  Lainie Libeti: Sometimes, yeah, sometimes because there's,
• 1:42:15
  there are some of them require
• 1:42:17
  Rupert Isaacson: quite a lot of people to play, right?
• 1:42:19
  Lainie Libeti: Exactly.
• 1:42:21
  One of my son's favorite game is Cosmic Encounters and it's, we played that
• 1:42:26
  all around the world and you need at least four people to play that game.
• 1:42:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:42:32
  Okay.
• 1:42:33
  So how, when you walk into.
• 1:42:37
  A board game cafe in Casablanca and you don't know anyone and the guy
• 1:42:42
  says, of all the board game cafes in all the towns in all the world,
• 1:42:45
  you had to walk into this one.
• 1:42:46
  I had to get that in there.
• 1:42:48
  How do you then break the ice with the locals, and particularly if there's a
• 1:42:52
  language barrier, to then start playing?
• 1:42:55
  Lainie Libeti: I mean, it's different every time.
• 1:42:57
  Sometimes there's a table with people, you know, or you ask the board game.
• 1:43:04
  Cafe, you know, the, the, the person behind the desk or, or the waitress
• 1:43:09
  or whatever the, the game master.
• 1:43:12
  Yes, them.
• 1:43:14
  You just.
• 1:43:15
  Yeah,
• 1:43:16
  Lainie Libeti: everyone is different.
• 1:43:17
  It's just in our board game cafe.
• 1:43:19
  We have a singles night and we also run different board game games.
• 1:43:27
  So, you know, like people want to play Catan and there's only 1 person we've got,
• 1:43:32
  you know, come it's Catan night and we'll put you together with a group of people.
• 1:43:36
  And then we also, in our board game cafe, we do a language exchange.
• 1:43:41
  So intercambio, so we play, you know, Pictionary and all these different
• 1:43:46
  games in both English and Spanish.
• 1:43:48
  So people learning English can practice and people learning Spanish
• 1:43:52
  can practice with native speakers.
• 1:43:55
  And so, yeah, it's, it's.
• 1:43:58
  It's a lot of fun.
• 1:43:59
  Rupert Isaacson: And who makes the coffee?
• 1:44:00
  Who serves the drinks?
• 1:44:00
  Who makes the food?
• 1:44:01
  Is that all you and Miro?
• 1:44:02
  Just the two of you?
• 1:44:03
  Lainie Libeti: Well, we do have two employees, but yeah, I
• 1:44:06
  actually cook for the entire cafe.
• 1:44:10
  We have American food.
• 1:44:12
  Yeah.
• 1:44:13
  So yeah, I cook mac and cheese, chili con carne.
• 1:44:17
  How do
• 1:44:17
  Rupert Isaacson: you have the time to sit here and talk to me?
• 1:44:18
  And why are you not down at the cafe?
• 1:44:21
  Because we have, we
• 1:44:22
  Lainie Libeti: have employees to do that.
• 1:44:26
  Rupert Isaacson: But it's it must be also quite a lot of work it what
• 1:44:30
  do you think is the Correlation between ballgames and mental health
• 1:44:36
  Lainie Libeti: again What I said about the family culture of being able
• 1:44:39
  to play together the accessing the playfulness and and I'd say adults
• 1:44:46
  that lose their Instinct to play.
• 1:44:51
  Those are the ones that get sick.
• 1:44:53
  So, from a parent's perspective and an adult's perspective, it's
• 1:44:57
  important to continue to cultivate your ability to be playful.
• 1:45:03
  I so
• 1:45:03
  Rupert Isaacson: agree.
• 1:45:04
  I so agree.
• 1:45:05
  What is it they say?
• 1:45:06
  You don't get, you don't stop playing because you get old, you
• 1:45:08
  get old because you stop playing.
• 1:45:10
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah.
• 1:45:10
  And from the child's perspective, it's that it's another point of connection.
• 1:45:14
  And then, like I said, all of the things like imagination, access to
• 1:45:19
  your imagination, access to risk taking problem solving, creativity, all that
• 1:45:24
  is tied into the play, the gameplay.
• 1:45:29
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm sold.
• 1:45:29
  Yeah.
• 1:45:30
  Okay.
• 1:45:30
  I'm going to go start a board game.
• 1:45:34
  I bet
• 1:45:34
  Lainie Libeti: there's one there.
• 1:45:35
  Yeah, probably.
• 1:45:36
  I'm going to look
• 1:45:36
  Rupert Isaacson: it up, actually.
• 1:45:37
  My local town is Beastbarden.
• 1:45:39
  Let me see.
• 1:45:42
  It's probably hiding in plain sight somewhere.
• 1:45:44
  It's probably there.
• 1:45:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Board, game, cafe, Wiesbaden.
• 1:45:55
  There's a hobby store.
• 1:45:57
  Lainie Libeti: Okay.
• 1:45:57
  Does it have a cafe?
• 1:45:58
  Oh,
• 1:45:58
  Rupert Isaacson: no, there is.
• 1:45:59
  Bretspielka.
• 1:46:01
  Lainie Libeti: Go play Cascadia.
• 1:46:03
  Rupert Isaacson: I would love to go play Cascadia.
• 1:46:05
  I think I'm going to take my kids too.
• 1:46:09
  You should.
• 1:46:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, actually, this is, this is This is, it's
• 1:46:14
  not, it's not a board game cafe.
• 1:46:16
  It's a group of people who meet in cafes.
• 1:46:19
  Interesting.
• 1:46:19
  I don't think anyone's actually,
• 1:46:29
  interesting.
• 1:46:31
  Okay.
• 1:46:31
  I'm going to,
• 1:46:32
  it'll be
• 1:46:33
  Rupert Isaacson: very German.
• 1:46:34
  It'll be very, very rule based.
• 1:46:36
  I'm sure.
• 1:46:38
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah.
• 1:46:38
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:46:39
  Yeah.
• 1:46:39
  And there's some games that really are, you know, very,
• 1:46:42
  very strict and rule based.
• 1:46:45
  And we have some of those there.
• 1:46:47
  There's a whole a grouping of games called Euro games.
• 1:46:51
  And so there's certain types of games that are probably more popular there.
• 1:46:57
  We.
• 1:46:57
  We don't get a lot of call for the Euro games because we, we in
• 1:47:02
  our cafe usually end up giving and teaching more of the casual games
• 1:47:09
  to our, our audience, but who knows?
• 1:47:11
  Hopefully they'll get into the Euro games.
• 1:47:13
  What's a
• 1:47:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Euro game exactly?
• 1:47:16
  Lainie Libeti: Well, they take two or three hours and there's lots
• 1:47:18
  of setup and there's lots of rules and, and, you know, some of them
• 1:47:23
  are, are worker placement games.
• 1:47:26
  Some of them are, are resource management games.
• 1:47:29
  They're, they're all different types of games, but they tend to be quote,
• 1:47:34
  unquote, air quote, serious games.
• 1:47:36
  So I love, I love, I love some of them, actually, not all
• 1:47:41
  of them, but there's so many.
• 1:47:45
  And you know what?
• 1:47:46
  The biggest board game conference is in Germany, the Essen.
• 1:47:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, ah, is that right?
• 1:47:51
  Lainie Libeti: So it's the, the center of the board game culture is in your country.
• 1:47:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Good lord.
• 1:47:57
  And have you been to that one?
• 1:47:59
  Lainie Libeti: No.
• 1:48:01
  One day I will.
• 1:48:03
  Rupert Isaacson: Interestingly, Essen is also where Equitana is, which is
• 1:48:06
  the it'd be in exactly the same place, I'm sure, which is the, it's probably
• 1:48:10
  the world's biggest equestrian.
• 1:48:12
  Trade fair and i'm off in there.
• 1:48:15
  Yeah.
• 1:48:15
  So, okay.
• 1:48:16
  I'll go play games instead.
• 1:48:17
  Why not?
• 1:48:18
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah Well, if we end up going to eston, I will
• 1:48:22
  message you and we'll get together
• 1:48:25
  Rupert Isaacson: It may by then not be too late because it's what time of year is it?
• 1:48:31
  Lainie Libeti: I Don't remember.
• 1:48:34
  Hold on.
• 1:48:35
  I can look it up real fast
• 1:48:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Why are you looking it up then?
• 1:48:41
  So listeners to get together with your kids apart from going into the
• 1:48:45
  forest and on safari and do things like that Go to a Board game cafe.
• 1:48:51
  I like the idea of doing that to not just sit at home and play board games
• 1:48:54
  because it Gets you out into the city.
• 1:48:56
  It gets you meeting people.
• 1:48:57
  It gets you exposed to different games.
• 1:49:00
  It gets you into a more social Context I think I'm gonna
• 1:49:05
  start doing this with my kids.
• 1:49:07
  Lainie Libeti: You should it's called spiel essence and it's in October
• 1:49:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, the reason I ask is this October.
• 1:49:15
  We'll be moving to Spain But
• 1:49:16
  Lainie Libeti: we'll just have
• 1:49:17
  Rupert Isaacson: to come, we'll just have to play board games in Andalusia.
• 1:49:19
  Yeah.
• 1:49:22
  Lainie Libeti: Fantastic.
• 1:49:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Ah, okay.
• 1:49:24
  So now you're doing this and you, you're also, tell me, you've got
• 1:49:30
  the World Schooling Retreats.
• 1:49:33
  Tell me the name of your company and your project with teens and mental health.
• 1:49:39
  Lainie Libeti: Sure.
• 1:49:40
  So the World Schooling Retreats are Project World School and
• 1:49:45
  I work with teens online.
• 1:49:47
  I do private coaching and I teach courses and that's through
• 1:49:52
  transformative Mentoring for teens.
• 1:49:56
  com.
• 1:49:57
  And I actually have a course coming up where I'm teaching teens to tap
• 1:50:02
  into their passions and purpose.
• 1:50:04
  I'm also teaching mindset and how to launch a business
• 1:50:10
  that's coming up in February.
• 1:50:12
  So I don't know when this is going to air, but if people are
• 1:50:16
  interested, please go to my website.
• 1:50:18
  I'm enrolling that.
• 1:50:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Transformativementoringforteens.
• 1:50:24
  com Project World School And just tell me the February
• 1:50:30
  February deadline for enrollment.
• 1:50:32
  I haven't
• 1:50:33
  Lainie Libeti: been updated.
• 1:50:34
  It'll probably be somewhere around the 15th to start the to
• 1:50:38
  launch the the entrepreneur class.
• 1:50:41
  But it's
• 1:50:41
  Lainie Libeti: half mindset, half half actual hands on launching a project
• 1:50:47
  based on your passions and purpose.
• 1:50:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, that to me actually is one of the most interesting
• 1:50:51
  points because I'm a great believer that One of the things that has kind
• 1:50:55
  of destroyed the modern family is the destruction of the family business.
• 1:50:59
  Where is the family farm or the family or whatever if the family business
• 1:51:02
  is because a family business like a family restaurant or a family shop
• 1:51:06
  or whatever it Everyone is involved every you know, it's education.
• 1:51:13
  It's socialization, it's bonding, it's
• 1:51:17
  Business.
• 1:51:18
  Business, it's
• 1:51:18
  Rupert Isaacson: tribal life together, it's everything, and everyone's
• 1:51:21
  got the sort of joint endeavour.
• 1:51:24
  Yeah.
• 1:51:24
  For the
• 1:51:25
  Rupert Isaacson: greater project, all working together, and I'm a great
• 1:51:27
  believer in trying to have businesses with your family and with your kids, but
• 1:51:32
  I don't think it's something which is on most people's radars, I think that
• 1:51:36
  there's this idea, you know, you've got to make the money, you send your kid
• 1:51:39
  to school so that your kid can go on and get a better job than you got, and
• 1:51:42
  blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah, and it's all rather isolating, Why not
• 1:51:47
  have a family economic unit, which you could then branch out from, but it's
• 1:51:51
  always there for you if you want it.
• 1:51:54
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah.
• 1:51:54
  My son and I own two businesses together.
• 1:51:56
  So project world school is our business as well as Chango's
• 1:52:01
  trace, which means tell me about
• 1:52:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Chango's trace.
• 1:52:04
  Lainie Libeti: That's, that's the board game cafe.
• 1:52:06
  Okay.
• 1:52:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Chongo's monkey, right?
• 1:52:10
  Monkeys?
• 1:52:11
  Trace.
• 1:52:13
  Oh, three monkeys.
• 1:52:15
  Three monkeys.
• 1:52:15
  Three monkeys.
• 1:52:16
  Got it.
• 1:52:17
  Okay.
• 1:52:17
  Why three monkeys?
• 1:52:19
  Lainie Libeti: Well, we wanted, we wanted a brand that embodied
• 1:52:23
  playfulness and monkeys do.
• 1:52:26
  And also the term, so Mono is monkey in Spanish, but Chongo is how you say
• 1:52:32
  Monkey in Spanish, as well as you say, dude, or like, ah, that thing happened.
• 1:52:40
  So it's kind of an expression as well.
• 1:52:43
  And at first our brand was, but then we just started calling it.
• 1:52:49
  I
• 1:52:49
  Rupert Isaacson: got it.
• 1:52:51
  Amazing.
• 1:52:52
  This has been really inspirational.
• 1:52:54
  I would say that, you know, a thing there that really is perhaps not
• 1:53:01
  been made explicit in this podcast.
• 1:53:03
  And so I'd like to bring it sort of into the clear forefront.
• 1:53:09
  Is this business of why not create a business with your team?
• 1:53:14
  Why not create a business with your kid?
• 1:53:17
  Because it so many things fall into perspective around that, right?
• 1:53:21
  You know, when emotions and all of those other things start
• 1:53:26
  exploding all over the place.
• 1:53:28
  But yet you've still got to open the cafe and serve the customer.
• 1:53:34
  It's good to have that focus, you know, or what the crop does need to
• 1:53:38
  go in the ground regardless, or we've still got to feed the horses right now.
• 1:53:42
  Let's argue about it while we feed the horses, but we got to go feed the horses.
• 1:53:47
  And these things take you out of yourself.
• 1:53:49
  To some degree.
• 1:53:52
  So it provides perspective taking and you were talking about emotional intelligence.
• 1:53:59
  It's so interesting how emotional intelligence is so often tied
• 1:54:02
  up with economic intelligence.
• 1:54:04
  Because of course, bad emotional intelligence makes for bad
• 1:54:07
  economic outcomes, right?
• 1:54:09
  And
• 1:54:10
  the
• 1:54:10
  Rupert Isaacson: opposite is true in the good way.
• 1:54:12
  Where's it going next for you?
• 1:54:14
  Or what's the next project do you think?
• 1:54:17
  Lainie Libeti: I don't know.
• 1:54:18
  They always find me and things, I don't know, things unfold.
• 1:54:23
  I'd like to write a second book about, Oh, tell me the name
• 1:54:27
  Rupert Isaacson: of your book again so people can, yes.
• 1:54:30
  Lainie Libeti: It's Seen, Heard and Understood.
• 1:54:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Seen, Heard and Understood.
• 1:54:36
  Lainie Libeti: Parenting and Partnering with Teens for Greater Mental Health.
• 1:54:41
  Rupert Isaacson: And Partnering with Teens.
• 1:54:44
  What's the last bit
• 1:54:47
  Lainie Libeti: for greater mental health
• 1:54:49
  Rupert Isaacson: for greater mental health
• 1:54:51
  Lainie Libeti: and also my son wrote the foreword to the book It's it's wonderful.
• 1:54:55
  It's so so touching what he wrote.
• 1:54:58
  It's so lovely
• 1:55:01
  Rupert Isaacson: and where's where's he at?
• 1:55:02
  Okay, you you are running the business together the businesses together
• 1:55:09
  Has he got other things he wants to go off and do at this point or
• 1:55:11
  is he actually pretty content right now running this Or both or what?
• 1:55:16
  Lainie Libeti: Well, he's also a writer, but he also just started
• 1:55:20
  developing his own board games.
• 1:55:22
  So he's really into that right now.
• 1:55:25
  I mean, it's and I think we just played two of his games in the cafe with.
• 1:55:32
  Other customers.
• 1:55:34
  And I really think he could publish this.
• 1:55:36
  They're, they're so strong.
• 1:55:38
  He really has a grasp on game theory and playability and weight of game, you know,
• 1:55:43
  weight of pieces and cards and such.
• 1:55:47
  He's, he's got it.
• 1:55:49
  Somebody's got to develop these games.
• 1:55:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:55:52
  Okay.
• 1:55:52
  So the next business is gaming.
• 1:55:54
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah, he's so, I mean, he, you know, he's 25, 20
• 1:55:58
  to be 26 in just a couple months.
• 1:56:01
  He doesn't have to have a business with his mother.
• 1:56:03
  He doesn't have to be in partnership with me, but the fact that he chooses
• 1:56:08
  to really says something about this kind of partnership, parenting
• 1:56:12
  and, and the joy of connection,
• 1:56:15
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 1:56:16
  Partnership parenting.
• 1:56:17
  Lainie Libeti: Yeah.
• 1:56:18
  So that's, oh, that was going to be my next book will be
• 1:56:21
  on partnership parenting.
• 1:56:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Partnership parenting.
• 1:56:25
  Wonderful.
• 1:56:26
  Now, people can find you through your websites, transformativementoringforteens.
• 1:56:30
  com and project world school.
• 1:56:32
  Can people also reach out to you on an email?
• 1:56:34
  I'm sure lots of people listening to this will have questions for you.
• 1:56:38
  Lainie Libeti: Sure, sure.
• 1:56:39
  How can they
• 1:56:39
  Rupert Isaacson: reach you?
• 1:56:40
  Lainie Libeti: Either of those sites have contact forms.
• 1:56:43
  I also, you can find me on Facebook.
• 1:56:45
  Just look me up.
• 1:56:46
  You can find me lots of places.
• 1:56:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:56:49
  Project World School on Facebook.
• 1:56:51
  All right.
• 1:56:52
  Perfect.
• 1:56:54
  Well, we've hit just past the two hour mark.
• 1:56:57
  This has been amazing.
• 1:56:58
  I'm so glad I got to, I got to learn a lot.
• 1:57:01
  It's great.
• 1:57:01
  It's a wonderful thing about doing the podcast.
• 1:57:03
  It's like, I get to ask everybody everything I want to ask.
• 1:57:05
  And I go away, oh, that was a good idea.
• 1:57:07
  Oh, I think I'm going to do that.
• 1:57:09
  That's a good idea.
• 1:57:10
  I'm going to do that as well.
• 1:57:11
  So thank you so much.
• 1:57:13
  I mean, this has been massively enlightening.
• 1:57:15
  And yeah, for people who are just wondering how to break out of these
• 1:57:20
  negative patterns that I think they're so easy to fall into in familial
• 1:57:26
  environments, but they don't have to be, I think, I think a story like yours
• 1:57:33
  is, it's What's so inspiring about it is you probably run into a little bit
• 1:57:39
  of the same problems that I used to run into where people would say, Oh, you
• 1:57:42
  saying that you're like, you're going to cure, you know, autism by going to
• 1:57:46
  see shamans in Mongolia and ride horses.
• 1:57:47
  Like, no, of course I'm not saying that.
• 1:57:49
  But what I am saying is when the adventure in front of you comes up to do whatever
• 1:57:54
  that adventure is, if that's what your kid really wants to do, follow your kid.
• 1:58:01
  And I've always found that if I do that, everything else will sort of fall
• 1:58:05
  into place around it as, but as long as it's my agenda, things get complicated.
• 1:58:11
  And I think what you've really done is you've really shone a light on that.
• 1:58:15
  So you don't need to bugger off to Peru, you know, and give up your job.
• 1:58:21
  It could be.
• 1:58:23
  As simple as going and playing games with your kid and starting a bit of
• 1:58:29
  a business together or something.
• 1:58:31
  It could be a grand adventure.
• 1:58:33
  It could be a small adventure, but it's still an adventure.
• 1:58:36
  I think that's and as you said, you're talking about playfulness
• 1:58:39
  and the importance of that.
• 1:58:40
  What is adventure and curiosity, but play very
• 1:58:45
  Lainie Libeti: much.
• 1:58:46
  Yeah, well said.
• 1:58:49
  Thank you.
• 1:58:49
  I'm
• 1:58:49
  Rupert Isaacson: inspired.
• 1:58:50
  I think we need to work together.
• 1:58:51
  I think I think that's the next thing.
• 1:58:52
  I think I'll be emailing you.
• 1:58:56
  Lainie Libeti: We'll do something.
• 1:58:58
  We've always been threatening of doing something since we met.
• 1:59:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes, indeed.
• 1:59:02
  Indeed.
• 1:59:03
  It's time.
• 1:59:03
  It's time.
• 1:59:04
  Thank you so much, Lanius.
• 1:59:05
  It's been absolutely brilliant.
• 1:59:07
  It was fun.
• 1:59:08
  Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
• 1:59:12
  If you did, please help us to make more.
• 1:59:15
  Please like, subscribe, tell a friend, give us a thumbs up.
• 1:59:20
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• 1:59:25
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• 1:59:26
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• 1:59:30
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• 1:59:34
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• 1:59:36
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• 1:59:41
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• 2:00:12
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• 2:00:17
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• 2:00:21
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