Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep. 89 - Andrew Laubacher on Why Tech Founders Send Kids to Zero-Tech Schools | Humanality Villages | Digital Detox Movement

Transcript

Ep. 89 - Andrew Laubacher on Why Tech Founders Send Kids to Zero-Tech Schools | Humanality Villages | Digital Detox Movement · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  There's a reason why Steve Jobs never gave his kids these
• 0:02
  technologies. There's a reason why every big
• 0:05
  tech founder went to what's called a Waldorf school, which
• 0:08
  are low tech, to zero tech schools.
• 0:12
  The founders themselves, Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates,
• 0:17
  yeah, Systrom, Zuckerberg, these guys went to low tech schools.
• 0:22
  So the whole idea is right. You don't get high on your own
• 0:25
  supply. This is Virtuous Leaders, the
• 0:27
  podcast for based Catholics who will speak truth, do good or die
• 0:31
  trying. Here's the show.
• 0:38
  You're the founder of Humanality, which is being
• 0:40
  featured on Hallow, so that's pretty good.
• 0:42
  Congrats on that. What what inspired you to start
• 0:46
  that organization? So I actually came on as
• 0:49
  executive director about two years ago.
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  So the founders are Hope and Justin Schneer.
• 0:56
  Justin started a company called Tractor Beverages and.
• 1:00
  And. Yeah.
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  So they're an organic, organic beverage company.
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  And yeah, he noticed that Franciscan, his alma mater in
• 1:07
  mine as well, that they wanted to help students that were just
• 1:12
  staring down at their phones. You know, even when I was on
• 1:15
  campus there 10 years ago now, it was a very special place.
• 1:20
  Like, people would talk to you and say hello and when you walk
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  by then, like they looked at each other, you know?
• 1:26
  And now people were doing that. So they decided to fund a
• 1:29
  scholarship and pay 30 students scholarship money to give up
• 1:32
  their smartphone and take a dumb phone.
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  And then humanity was born from that.
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  It kind of exploded and got a lot of attention.
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  And then I came on as executive. Now where is it now?
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  Because I said it's exploded. It looks like y'all have a
• 1:49
  waiting list for other colleges. So what's it looking like now?
• 1:52
  Yeah. So we got to about 8
• 1:55
  universities now. And yeah, we kind of realized,
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  you know, early on that this wasn't just for Franciscan.
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  This is like a need everywhere. And then I'd say the last year
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  been like really obvious that this isn't just a need for
• 2:08
  college students, it's teenagers, it's middle school.
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  And guess what? Like most adults are addicted to
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  tattoo. So it's like it's really for
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  everyone. And that's kind of what we're
• 2:18
  launching into. So this summer, we'll be
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  launching into essentially general population.
• 2:24
  And I can share with you more if you'd like, kind of what the
• 2:27
  Humanality Village experience looks like now.
• 2:30
  I'd love to hear that, yeah. So what they are now is AI call
• 2:34
  them the village. So the more I've studied this
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  topic over the years, you know, I've probably read 40 plus books
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  on on this and and my experience too is I was addicted to all
• 2:44
  these platforms as a millennial. And the more I started to
• 2:48
  realize the solution that needed to happen, it wasn't necessarily
• 2:53
  in a new app or you know, it wasn't just giving up the phone
• 2:58
  completely. I realized we needed to get back
• 3:01
  to our local environments and actually the hyper connectivity
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  of the digital realm is actually making us lonelier than ever.
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  And what we really need is like human interaction.
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  So these humanality village experience.
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  Wait, wait. What human interaction?
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  What? What is?
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  What is that? Can I?
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  If I want to Google that to understand more, what would I?
• 3:23
  That's true, yeah. We don't know.
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  I mean, it's, it's definitely something that is being lost,
• 3:30
  you know, in our society and has many physiological,
• 3:33
  psychological and spiritual benefits.
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  No, this doesn't mean that it's bad, you know, to Zoom or to,
• 3:40
  you know, FaceTime grandma. But like, what does our kind of
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  day-to-day look like? And for Gen.
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  Z specifically, it's like over 68% of Gen.
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  Z says that they feel lonely and that no one really understands
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  them. So the village experience is as
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  follows. And what we create at the
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  university level, we are going to expand to the world
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  essentially. So you join the humanity Village
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  and we started by giving students light phone.
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  So I use a light Phone by the company called the Light Phone.
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  It's simply just texting, calling.
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  It's got an alarm clock. This one, the new Light Phone 3
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  has a camera, really advanced tech.
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  I know it's got directions and a hotspot.
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  So students could join a village.
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  They would give up their smartphones.
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  Choose a light phone or a wise phone by Techless and then it,
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  you know, it's kind of a digital a a you go to a monthly, you
• 4:34
  know, meeting together where we're unpacking a lot of the
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  data, the curriculum for multiple M DS, pH DS,
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  psychologist, moms, dads like. And once you go through that
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  curriculum, you take on these phone free challenges, which we
• 4:50
  call personal real life victories and then community
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  adventures. So a personal real life victory
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  could look like just phone free meals.
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  So if you just don't look at your phone and say you're eating
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  for an hour or three times a day, that's going to get you
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  back 72 days of your year just by not looking at your phone at
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  your meals, right? So along with that, they would
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  take on community adventures. So they go on phone free hikes.
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  We have students throw humanity concerts at the end of the year
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  for the whole school. That was them going to a concert
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  without their phone and just letting the moment and listening
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  to the music. So along with that is is
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  obviously the the bread and butter of what I say, what we're
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  doing and why it's working is because people are doing this
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  together, right? This isn't an online community.
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  And I would kind of share along with Sherry Turkle that we have
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  to kind of reclaim that word. I don't think online communities
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  are real. I don't think that word, I don't
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  think that's it. That's I think it's a
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  redefinition of of what community is, which she shares
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  kind of four ingredients, which are like proximity, share,
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  concern, responsibility and like being, you know, consistent with
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  one another, which in these humanity villages, students get
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  to experience that. And I mean, the stories are
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  incredible, like students literally healing from
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  self-image issues. Obviously pornography, a lot of,
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  you know, decrease in anxiety and depression, which we know
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  there is a real causal link now between exposure to social media
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  platforms and poor mental health outcomes, right.
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  So students learning that they want to decide to learn to play
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  an instrument, you know, And yeah, so the, the, the real
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  capital, I'd say, of, of what is so valuable about what we're
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  doing is it's just kind of helping people be human again.
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  I got AI have a lot of questions on what you just said.
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  This is this is really interesting.
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  So what when you said you have you have a curriculum based on a
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  lot of different experts and opinion.
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  Can people access that curriculum?
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  How do people access that curriculum?
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  Yeah. So this is all at the university
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  level. We are now about to launch this
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  to the general population. So now you you are about to.
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  Launch it to the general population.
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  So now anyone can start a humanity village.
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  Teenagers, young adults, adults, grandma and grandpa, you get
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  access to the curriculum, multidisciplinary fields, all in
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  addiction science of the digital.
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  But also, again, I mean, we're getting into the health and
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  Wellness realm of sleep and human connection and
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  relationships. And I essentially studying all
• 7:39
  the literature I have in this space, I formulated these 11
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  humanality ways to be more human.
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  And so each episode unpacks, you know, problems and solutions
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  that technology are causing. So you know, Neil Postman said
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  technology doesn't just change this or that, it changes
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  everything. So I'd say with the dawn of the
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  iPhone, social media, gaming, porn, all of these technologies,
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  just even e-mail, I mean, everything is changing.
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  So we're kind of unpacking everything and these 11 humanity
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  ways do that and then give you the kind of solution.
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  So for example, first episode is B Lite.
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  We go into all of the light science, how as human beings
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  today, you know, 93% of our time is indoors.
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  Children are spending more time inside than some maximum
• 8:28
  security prisons. And this isn't human like we
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  actually need sunlight. The sunlight actually for most
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  people isn't going to cause cancer.
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  Out of the 3 million people that die a year in the United States,
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  it's about 12,000 that die from some type of skin cancer.
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  It's a very small percentage and actually, like one of the
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  greatest healing modalities we have in our lives is actually
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  the sun. So like for example, in the
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  evenings, you know, because of our poor light environment, and
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  this again is a technology, the light bulb was a technology
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  that, you know, affected the way that we are living.
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  So now today when most of our evenings for most people are
• 9:07
  spent on screen scrolling, that blue light is affecting your
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  melatonin production, which isn't just your sleep hormone.
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  It's actually your prime antioxidant of the body and your
• 9:17
  average American is losing about 30 minutes of sleep at night
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  just due to our screens, right? So on the B Lite episode, we
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  unpack how we need to be in the sunlight more and then in the
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  evenings how we have to have, you know, better lighting
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  environments for proper circadian rhythm.
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  So we go pretty deep on the science of circadian rhythm.
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  So that's just an example of 1 episode that is unpacking how
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  technology is. Screens specifically are
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  affecting our human Physiology, relationships, sleep, movement,
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  the whole everything you know. If someone wants to start a
• 9:51
  village, how do they do that? So I can't give an exact date of
• 9:55
  when this is going to be available, but you'll
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  essentially just go to our website,
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  humanalityhumanality.org, and you will be able to launch a
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  village. You can get friends together,
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  everyone buys, you know, into the curriculum and then you meet
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  at your home. You can paste it at a three
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  month experience, six months or a year and essentially everyone
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  will come together at a home or wherever friend's house, watch
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  an episode. We have a humanity workbook
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  journal that you will accompany you through the experience and
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  you start taking on these these real life victories and these
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  community adventures and really start this whole detox kind of
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  protocol for you and your family.
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  So what's great is that these are universal principles, right?
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  Like doesn't matter if you're 90 years old, if you're living in a
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  poor lighting environment or scrolling yourself to sleep,
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  that's going to affect your mental health.
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  You know? So it's really what's amazing is
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  that everyone's experiencing at some level, some negative
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  trade-offs from our digital landscape, right?
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  So what's, what's great is like this is kind of for everyone and
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  everyone will get something out of it.
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  It's going to look different because not everyone's addicted
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  to Instagram, not everyone's addicted to pornography, even
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  though, you know, 30% of all Internet traffic is for
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  pornography. And every month pornographic
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  sites get more visits than TikTok, Instagram, Zoom, Open AI
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  and Amazon combined, you know, so we're hitting some pretty
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  big, you know, issues. But again, what I'm excited
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  about is that what I've seen at the university level is that
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  this is working like students are having life transforming
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  experiences. And again, your average American
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  is screen time is about 7 hours a day for kids, teenagers, it's
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  about 8 hours and 39 minutes for low income communities.
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  Black and Hispanic teenagers are about 10 hours a day screen
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  time. So we found after Year 1, going
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  through a humanity village experience at a university
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  level, the average student got about 144 hours back in their
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  day or sorry in their life. So like, there's so much you can
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  do with that time back that is going to make you so much
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  happier and healthier and more resilient, you know?
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  So it's a pretty comprehensive solution that yeah, we're
• 12:21
  excited to get to everyone. Yeah, OK.
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  So how? How come if they want to serve a
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  village, how can people get an update to know when it's going
• 12:29
  to launch? So you can just go to our
• 12:30
  website and just sign up to the newsletter, just put in your
• 12:35
  e-mail and we'll give you a blast when the thing's ready to
• 12:38
  rock'n'roll. I think by the summer we'll be
• 12:41
  ready to go. And then we're going to continue
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  to grow at the university level. You know, we're going to be
• 12:46
  launching in the high schools as well.
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  So we kind of just run the experiment and and I will call
• 12:51
  it the counter experiment. I'd say we are all in the
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  biggest sociological experiment in the history of the world, you
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  know, which is, you know, really our phones and, and, and tech
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  and social media and these are completely new inputs and
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  experiences that the human person is in, you know, and so
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  we're kind of unpacking what's happening.
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  I don't think people really understand how bad it is on so
• 13:20
  many different levels. And so we're kind of here to
• 13:23
  help give the solutions. Yeah, man, How come I?
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  How come people haven't heard about this at year we Bergen
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  humanality. I mean, I hope this explodes.
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  I hope this spreads across the. The world like 5.
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  Yeah, my hope is too. I mean, so we're not on any
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  social media platforms. And yeah, I mean, it's been a
• 13:42
  lot of building, you know, but I'm pretty specifically, I'm
• 13:45
  happy to go on podcasts. I think that's a medium that
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  obviously we can have a little bit more interaction.
• 13:52
  There's more nuance. But you know, we're staying off
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  of having any accounts on, on social media.
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  So I'm playing the long game with this.
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  You know, I think virality is, is really over.
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  I don't know, I, I don't, I don't want to move viral.
• 14:11
  I want to create an organization and, and a movement for like the
• 14:16
  next 40 years that maybe I'm alive, you know, so this is, you
• 14:20
  know, we're in year 2. So yeah, we're young, we're
• 14:22
  building. I'm going about this very
• 14:25
  differently. Yeah.
• 14:27
  It's part of my story. You know, I was a touring
• 14:29
  musician. I'm still touring now a little
• 14:33
  bit with my band in the Christian music world.
• 14:35
  And I was addicted to Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, my
• 14:40
  smartphone e-mail, I mean, you name it.
• 14:42
  YouTube, struggle with pornography all through high
• 14:45
  school, even though at that time it was, you know, I was told it
• 14:49
  was healthy and normal, you know?
• 14:50
  But yeah, I mean, so I deleted all my social media and went to
• 14:54
  a flip phone in 2018, kind of at the height of my touring as an
• 14:58
  artist. And you know, my record label at
• 15:02
  the time was like, this is a really bad idea.
• 15:04
  And I just knew it was ultimately what God was calling
• 15:07
  me to do because it was just, there's so many ways that it was
• 15:12
  negatively impacting my day-to-day and I was just tired
• 15:14
  of it. So after I deleted everything,
• 15:17
  went to a flip phone, I mean, my ministry kind of exploded.
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  Like I went all over. I was already travelling all
• 15:24
  over the the states, but North America, South America, Europe,
• 15:26
  Israel, all a flip phone and a social media.
• 15:31
  My friendships improved, my purity improved my prayer
• 15:33
  improved my sleep improves my productivity.
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  I mean, almost everything got better and I had no idea what
• 15:43
  what God is going to do with that, right?
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  Like, and then this opportunity came about, you know, a couple
• 15:49
  years ago, it was just super aligned with my, my experience.
• 15:53
  And again, as an artist, travelling, playing music around
• 15:55
  the world, I actually saw the mental health crisis kind of
• 15:58
  unfold before my eyes amongst young people.
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  So I had a real passion for wanting to help people and help
• 16:05
  people be healthy. And this, you know, humanity
• 16:08
  kind of encompassed all of my loves for healing into one
• 16:13
  movement. So yeah, I think we're, it's
• 16:16
  going to be a slow, a slow dealer, but I'm more interested
• 16:20
  in longevity than virality. And so, yeah, I hope it, I hope
• 16:25
  though, it does serve a lot of people.
• 16:27
  I, I kind of call us the Dave Ramsey of the digital world.
• 16:30
  So like Dave has been helping people with money for 35 years,
• 16:33
  right? There's always going to be
• 16:35
  money. There's always going to be a
• 16:36
  need to learn how to use it. And sadly, your average American
• 16:39
  is in $37,000 worth of debt. So not that Dave's doing a bad
• 16:43
  job, but that I, I just think that the credit card companies
• 16:47
  are just doing a better job, right?
• 16:49
  Same with technology. There's always going to be
• 16:51
  technology, there's always going to be a need to learn to to know
• 16:54
  how to use it. And sadly, because these
• 16:57
  companies create their products with addictive mechanisms built
• 17:00
  into them, there's sadly always going to be people addicted to
• 17:03
  tech that we're going to need help.
• 17:05
  So that's really the kind of model we're moving forward with.
• 17:09
  So yeah, I'm really excited to to see how kind of the world
• 17:15
  experiences what we're doing. Yeah, well, this may contradict
• 17:20
  everything you just said, but it'd be cool if Alex Jones
• 17:24
  introduces you to Tucker. You get, you get on that
• 17:27
  platform. Yeah, I think I'll eventually
• 17:30
  make the rounds on a lot of those, you know, I hope so, yeah
• 17:36
  'cause I do think a lot of the podcast world is an incredible
• 17:39
  way to get information out. The fine thing was like, I kind
• 17:43
  of share like I over consume podcast, my car rides, my walks,
• 17:47
  my workouts. I mean, I was addicted to
• 17:49
  information, you know, So I do think there is a yeah there
• 17:55
  there's strategies that you can put in place to to use the
• 17:58
  benefits of what tech gives us today without the trade-offs.
• 18:01
  And that's really kind of what we're helping navigate for
• 18:03
  people. I think people here like digital
• 18:05
  detox and humanality and they're like, oh, we got to go live with
• 18:08
  the Amish and, you know, get rid of our smartphones.
• 18:11
  And I personally think your life will be substantially better
• 18:14
  without a smartphone. But you don't need to get rid of
• 18:18
  all these things. You know, like I, I'm on a
• 18:21
  laptop working, emailing people, doing Zoom calls and stuff
• 18:25
  everyday. I'm not, we're not anti tech,
• 18:27
  We're not even anti smartphone, but we're all about
• 18:30
  intentionality. So The thing is when people talk
• 18:34
  about moderation, I think it's misguided.
• 18:37
  It's like Abigail Shire says, at least with this conversation
• 18:41
  with moderation, the teenagers, it's like nurses going to high
• 18:44
  school is asking students to moderate ecstasy.
• 18:48
  You know, it's the wrong conversation.
• 18:49
  Like, you can't give a kid a smartphone with Instagram or
• 18:53
  Tiktok and ask them to moderate it and expect for their brains
• 18:57
  to be able to handle, like, trillions worth of dollars of
• 19:01
  investment to people who know how to exploit vulnerabilities
• 19:06
  in human psychology and keep you addicted to that.
• 19:09
  Yeah, I know we can't. We can't be expecting young kids
• 19:12
  to do that, you know? Yes, yes, that is, that is
• 19:17
  exactly right. And I, I would add video games
• 19:21
  to that list too. So OK, So what, what, what
• 19:25
  strikes me about you strikes me about you is, I mean, you're a
• 19:28
  cool dude, but and you, you, you have an excellent grasp of facts
• 19:34
  and the ability to articulate them.
• 19:37
  How did, where did that come from?
• 19:39
  I mean, you've read, you've read a lot.
• 19:40
  How do you, what's your secret? How do?
• 19:41
  You. Yeah, Well, that's, I appreciate
• 19:44
  that. I mean, we're just scratching
• 19:45
  the surface, to be honest. I'd say honestly, my lack of
• 19:51
  engagement with the online world is kind of become a secret
• 19:55
  sauce, you know, like in the evenings I reach I'm, I'm, you
• 20:00
  know, I'm single. I don't have wine for kids yet.
• 20:02
  So I do have more time. And The funny thing is, the time
• 20:05
  I do have, I'm investing in this business, this organization, you
• 20:09
  know? But I'm very, and I'm very
• 20:12
  interested in the subjects, but I've always loved the
• 20:14
  intellectual life. You know, I was, I raged partied
• 20:18
  in high school drugs and rock'n'roll and had my kind of
• 20:21
  reversion to faith at 19. And I just went hardcore.
• 20:25
  Like I wanted to know the truth, you know, So I didn't read it
• 20:31
  all in high school. I read SparkNotes.
• 20:33
  This is before AI, right? You could cheat with AII read
• 20:35
  SparkNotes to get through high school, which I barely did, but
• 20:40
  you know, I became very fascinated with the idea of, of
• 20:44
  reality and God and truth and how do we know all this is real?
• 20:47
  You know, so I, I've always kind of said I've been wired for why
• 20:53
  I have a really high level of curiosity.
• 20:55
  I question everything. I'm incredibly skeptical.
• 20:58
  So I remember one day, like I ended up getting some
• 21:01
  certifications in the health and Wellness space, but I remember
• 21:05
  one day just questioning like, OK, vegans are saying, like with
• 21:09
  pH DS, M DS saying don't eat meat, meat's going to kill you.
• 21:12
  And then there's M DS and pH DS that are saying eat meat, plants
• 21:16
  are going to kill you. And I was like just simple
• 21:18
  philosophical idea of a lot of non contradiction.
• 21:22
  These both can't be true and not true at the same time.
• 21:25
  So like one of these guys got to be right.
• 21:27
  And I just remember like thinking like this, the shark
• 21:31
  doesn't wake up and just decide to go vegan.
• 21:34
  Like the shark wakes up and eats what it was intended to eat.
• 21:37
  Like the human person was intended to eat certain types of
• 21:40
  foods and boom, go down that rabbit hole.
• 21:43
  You know, So I, I just, I get very interested in topics and
• 21:46
  then I just take deep dives. And obviously this dive with
• 21:50
  technology, it's going to take years to unpack what's
• 21:54
  happening. What's crazy is all the,
• 21:56
  everything I've read on the subject is like, I mean, we're
• 21:59
  kind of just 15 years into this. This is really new, you know, so
• 22:04
  secret is I'm not on any social media platforms and I utilize my
• 22:08
  time to study and learn. Out of all those resources that
• 22:14
  you have consumed, what's a starting point that you'd
• 22:17
  recommend to to my listeners? Totally.
• 22:20
  So obviously Jonathan Heights book The Anxious Generation
• 22:23
  really blew up. That's a great read.
• 22:26
  Along with that, Doctor Nicholas Carderas is on our team.
• 22:29
  He wrote two books called Glow Kids and Digital Madness.
• 22:35
  I highly recommend those. Those are probably my top
• 22:39
  choices. And he's a clinician.
• 22:42
  He's a PHDI mean, both these guys are obviously genius, but
• 22:48
  Digital Madness, I'd say is the most contemporary up to date,
• 22:52
  really unpacking the sociological psychological
• 22:57
  impacts of really just how we're living as human beings.
• 23:01
  But you know, also the the minds behind these technologies.
• 23:04
  Like there's a reason why Steve Jobs never gave his kids these
• 23:07
  technologies. There's a reason why every big
• 23:09
  tech founder went to what's called a Waldorf school, which
• 23:13
  are low tech to zero tech schools.
• 23:16
  The. Founders themselves, not just.
• 23:17
  Their founders themselves, Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates,
• 23:21
  Yeah, Systrom, Zuckerberg, These guys went to low tech schools.
• 23:27
  So the whole idea is right. You don't get high on your own
• 23:29
  supply. And even Shamath, you know,
• 23:32
  who's one of the first founders at Facebook has literally come
• 23:35
  out and said along with Sean Parker, the first, you know,
• 23:38
  president of Facebook like that. We did this intentionally.
• 23:42
  We knew exactly what we were doing.
• 23:44
  It was a social valid issue feedback loop something like a
• 23:46
  hacker like myself would create. They all knew it.
• 23:50
  And there's history, you know, to the science of addicting
• 23:54
  people to tech BJ Fogg, you know, is one of the main
• 23:58
  founders of this idea. Stanford is persuasive Design
• 24:02
  Lab is really where all these ideas of exploiting humans with
• 24:07
  machines started. And pretty much once all these
• 24:11
  guys started implementing them and your Googles and your social
• 24:14
  medias and your gaming revenue just exploded, you know, So
• 24:18
  these books go into details of how this isn't by chance, which
• 24:22
  I think is encouraging that you shouldn't feel shame that you
• 24:24
  can't stop scrolling. You know, it's actually not your
• 24:28
  fault. And it's not that you lack
• 24:30
  virtue either. It's actually that they know
• 24:33
  that we have an affinity for the social.
• 24:36
  They are using intermittent positive feedback, just like in
• 24:39
  Skinner cages. They are using multiple tactics
• 24:45
  that are creating engagement that make them money, right?
• 24:47
  So if you want to get your time back and your happiness back and
• 24:52
  actually be more successful, The funny thing is there was a test
• 24:56
  by this guy named Paul Torrance, the Torrance Tolerance Test,
• 25:00
  which actually followed a group of people out of Minnesota
• 25:04
  through their whole life and actually showed that creativity
• 25:07
  was the best predictor of success, actually above IQ.
• 25:12
  So we're actually in what I'm hearing is called a creativity
• 25:16
  crisis actually, because these technologies are dulling our
• 25:21
  sensitive, our cognitive abilities are atrophying.
• 25:25
  We're actually in a creativity crisis.
• 25:26
  And one of the things I love about humanality is that we're
• 25:29
  helping people get their creativity back, which is going
• 25:32
  to help them in the workplace. It's going to help them in their
• 25:34
  personal lives. And, and that really matters,
• 25:38
  you know, So those are two major books.
• 25:40
  There's more on our website you can check out.
• 25:42
  We have some resources there for a whole list of books.
• 25:46
  Yeah. Well, you're, you're really well
• 25:48
  spoken as as you were going on, that's excellent speech.
• 25:53
  It occurred to me that man, this guy's going to get assassinated
• 25:56
  by the tech companies. But then I realized, no, they're
• 26:00
  just too powerful. There's there's no way that we
• 26:02
  can overcome the the enormous typhoon tsunami of addiction,
• 26:09
  although we'll do, we'll do the best we can.
• 26:10
  No, not so I can say it's like, I think we'll help millions of
• 26:13
  people, but there's 6 billion people on phones, smartphones
• 26:18
  specifically, then yeah, these are multi trillion dollar
• 26:21
  companies. There's a lot of people in this
• 26:23
  space. They have to kill a lot of
• 26:24
  people, to be honest that are aware of this data and I don't
• 26:29
  I'm not really afraid of of them and and any sense, you know,
• 26:34
  like for a lot of reasons. But I think ultimately we are
• 26:39
  getting tired of the junk food and junk media.
• 26:41
  And I do think this is incredible time to be doing what
• 26:43
  we're doing because, you know, less people are listening to the
• 26:46
  news. I think people are waking up
• 26:48
  with Jonathan Heitz's book of the dangers slash causal link
• 26:52
  between the stuff. So I feel actually pretty
• 26:55
  optimistic. I think humans are incredibly
• 26:57
  resilient. And I do think there is going to
• 27:00
  be a certain amount of population that goes into the
• 27:03
  metaverse and AI and VR goggles and chooses to live in that
• 27:06
  world. Sadly, they're going to get
• 27:09
  sick. Like 6 out of 10 Americans have
• 27:12
  at least one or more chronic diseases. 40.9% of Americans are
• 27:15
  going to get cancer. I mean, 7070% of our population
• 27:20
  is obese or overweight. So I think if you continue to go
• 27:25
  down that tech side, like Doctor Cardara says, we weren't
• 27:28
  designed to be sedentary, screen staring, meaning devoid
• 27:31
  creatures. Like there's a reason when you
• 27:34
  stop scrolling on Facebook. Like there's a there's a reason
• 27:37
  when you stop scrolling on Facebook that you're like that.
• 27:41
  That didn't, That was meaningless.
• 27:44
  So. So I do think people are
• 27:47
  rebelling. I would like to be kind of the
• 27:49
  hub of the rebellion. I love that.
• 27:53
  And that's kind of the plan. OK, so so who are actually I'm
• 27:58
  not going to even say that joke something there too far, you
• 28:01
  know, has to be pretty bad if I were.
• 28:03
  Pretty, Yeah, you can, you can share with me.
• 28:05
  After yeah, yeah, I'll see that. I'll do that.
• 28:09
  It's always the best part of the podcast anyways, So OK, last
• 28:14
  segment here. I'm, I'm very interested as an
• 28:19
  entrepreneur or want to be entrepreneur.
• 28:22
  However you see it, how how do you, how do you lead this
• 28:26
  organization? Like what?
• 28:28
  What are the practical aspects? Yeah, in one sense, like amongst
• 28:33
  like art Team I. Think there's, yeah, I think
• 28:36
  there's a couple, couple considerations.
• 28:38
  So one is vision, which I think, I think you, you've, you've
• 28:42
  touched upon that for sure. Maybe if there's something
• 28:44
  that's you haven't explicitly said, be happy to hear.
• 28:47
  But then also, yeah, then another aspect is leading the
• 28:50
  team. Then another aspect is how do
• 28:53
  you use your time? Are there like particular tools
• 28:57
  or hacks that have been very helpful for you?
• 28:59
  Yeah. Yeah, I'd say so.
• 29:01
  Vision, I mean, that's naturally my skill set.
• 29:03
  So I do find, you know, getting to know myself over the years,
• 29:09
  being with myself has been the most like painful, difficult,
• 29:14
  amazing and like fruitful journey, right?
• 29:16
  So, and I'd say a lot of our digital technologies are riding
• 29:21
  our capacity of knowing myself. That's just that's to be pretty
• 29:24
  obvious. And because it's kind of
• 29:26
  terrifying to allow your own thoughts to come up to allow the
• 29:31
  crap, you know, in your life or maybe that those places of
• 29:35
  duplicity in your own heart and life.
• 29:38
  And I mean, in order to have vision, I think you have to know
• 29:41
  your skill sets and you have to be able to, you know, where,
• 29:46
  where, where you can impact, you know.
• 29:49
  So for me, I think that journey of getting to know myself and,
• 29:53
  and doing, you know, work to unpack.
• 30:00
  Yeah. I don't know if you're familiar
• 30:01
  with like IFS and internal family systems.
• 30:04
  Yeah, like getting to know my parts, you know, and why they're
• 30:07
  speaking and saying things. Like to me, that's totally
• 30:10
  connected to vision, because it's really hard to have vision
• 30:13
  for what you want or where you want an organization to go if
• 30:15
  you actually don't know yourself and know what your skill sets
• 30:18
  are. So like strength finders, you
• 30:21
  know, super helpful for me. Obviously the Myers Brakes stuff
• 30:25
  I know is in some perfect analysis and has a lot of
• 30:28
  discrepancies, but that's been very helpful to get to know
• 30:32
  vision and then amongst, you know, our team's small.
• 30:39
  So as right now, I mean, we're you know, we're still in startup
• 30:41
  kind of madness life. So what's actually been really
• 30:44
  helpful as a team, I found in this weird space that we're in
• 30:51
  at the moment, you know, as a small organization, you know,
• 30:55
  growing from literally square one.
• 30:57
  I mean, right, this is this is a new problem.
• 30:59
  This isn't like there was an industry in place, right?
• 31:02
  Like this is a totally new solution that we're trying to
• 31:05
  solve for, sorry problem we're trying to solve for.
• 31:08
  So I think Stemia is working team wise right now is just, you
• 31:13
  know, really, really getting behind the mission.
• 31:19
  I think a lot of organization, like if you're just in this to
• 31:22
  make money, which I would say again, the our digital landscape
• 31:27
  really exacerbates these four kind of ancestral or ancient
• 31:31
  ideas of, of, of ideas. We think that will make us
• 31:35
  happy, fame, power, pleasure and money, right?
• 31:38
  Like these, these media platforms are just praying upon
• 31:42
  these more primal desires that acquaintance and Aristotle spoke
• 31:45
  about. But I've just found right now,
• 31:48
  like really sticking to the mission of helping people be
• 31:52
  more human, get their time back, get their lives back.
• 31:55
  I can tell like once you wake up, the problem, I mean, people
• 31:59
  are on board. So I think getting behind the
• 32:02
  mission is really crucial. And then my time, yeah, I do a
• 32:06
  lot of, I do some block scheduling.
• 32:09
  I mean, I'm, I'm writing a book. I mean, for Hallow that
• 32:13
  essentially was 150 pages of content.
• 32:15
  So I already kind of wrote a book, you know, on the 11
• 32:19
  episodes of curriculum or 20 to 50 minute episodes that I
• 32:22
  created, you know, as well. So I've, yeah, I have been able
• 32:27
  to pump out an incredible amount of productivity.
• 32:30
  And I do think honestly, it is much, it is my time blocking,
• 32:34
  but it's also my lack of engagement with the digital
• 32:36
  world that's kind of the greatest hack right now.
• 32:41
  And again, like, I am purposely setting up this organization.
• 32:46
  Really think word of mouth is the most powerful thing on the
• 32:48
  planet. Like when my music career went
• 32:51
  from like, OK, I had all the social media, you saw the crowds
• 32:53
  I was in front of, blah, blah, blah.
• 32:56
  I still get calls today just because people know me and they
• 32:59
  see me, you know, because word of mouth to me again, it's still
• 33:03
  the most powerful thing on the planet.
• 33:05
  And that takes time. So to me that's like that's a
• 33:09
  hack that I don't think people are leveraging enough.
• 33:12
  Is like your human connection with people, your human capital.
• 33:17
  You know that book Bowling alone or alone together or alone
• 33:21
  together. Sherry chuckle.
• 33:22
  Bowling alone by Putnam. You know, he talks about the the
• 33:25
  social capital of like bowling league and like, you know, your
• 33:30
  Boy Scouts or like whatever the extracurricular activity is,
• 33:34
  like wherever you're meeting people, like if you're an
• 33:37
  entrepreneur, like share them, share with them what you're
• 33:40
  doing, you know, create those in person contacts.
• 33:43
  That's what people are starving for.
• 33:45
  I think the businesses that prioritize in person experiences
• 33:48
  are going to win. And we're kind of leveraging
• 33:51
  both, right? We're using tech, we're using
• 33:54
  videos. That's the medium.
• 33:57
  And then people are watching those together at a home, so
• 34:01
  they don't even realize. But I'm giving them all of these
• 34:04
  benefits just by them meeting together at someone's home.
• 34:07
  You know, that's just already going to be part of this
• 34:11
  solution. So I don't know if that answers
• 34:13
  all three of those questions, but that's kind of my initial
• 34:15
  thoughts. This is really making me
• 34:19
  reconsider my own path. I recently decided to divest
• 34:23
  from Facebook, Instagram, basically every social media
• 34:26
  except for X and LinkedIn. And I'm talking about
• 34:30
  professionally. I mean, personally, I don't use
• 34:32
  social media at all. I mean, I kind of hate it
• 34:34
  honestly, but for professional purposes using X and LinkedIn.
• 34:40
  But I've been thinking about, well, what's what was my
• 34:43
  product, you know, and I was thinking of like online
• 34:45
  community, maybe possibly courses for parents.
• 34:48
  But yeah, I'm just less and less attracted to the idea of
• 34:53
  so-called online community, which, as he said, is it may not
• 34:56
  even be community at all. I think courses are great.
• 34:59
  I mean, that's essentially what we're doing.
• 35:00
  I mean, the way that you can share information now, if it's
• 35:03
  packaged properly and in a medium that respects the user, I
• 35:08
  think it's incredible. So like, again, all the
• 35:10
  Instagram content, I couldn't tell you one thing from all the
• 35:14
  people I followed and all the gurus and all the health experts
• 35:17
  and you name it. Like if I were to think right
• 35:19
  now, I'd probably going to tell you like one thing that I, you
• 35:25
  know, learned from it. And I consumed and I consumed
• 35:29
  like so much content, you know what I mean?
• 35:33
  So it's like the medium itself is creating this lack of
• 35:38
  understanding, really deep understanding, you know, SoCal,
• 35:41
  Newport's, Cal Newport's work has been huge for me too.
• 35:44
  Digital Minimalism is a great book.
• 35:46
  And then deep, deep work. But you know, he's on podcasts.
• 35:50
  I don't know if he's on any social media, but like, yeah,
• 35:53
  that's why I'm investing a lot in my book.
• 35:55
  Like, I want a lot of people to read my book because it's going
• 35:57
  to be, it's a medium again, like that actually respects you and
• 36:02
  you can really stitch through and takes time.
• 36:05
  And reading is kind of a lost art today.
• 36:07
  But, you know, in your case, I get LinkedIn.
• 36:10
  I haven't gone on LinkedIn yet. I am definitely getting
• 36:12
  recommendations to do so. I already see, though, how
• 36:15
  they've kind of gamified it. And now that I just, I just kind
• 36:19
  of know too much how all this stuff works now.
• 36:22
  So I'm like, I don't know if I want to.
• 36:24
  Like we haven't even touched the privacy issues, what's happening
• 36:28
  with tech. I'm just not as willing to give
• 36:31
  away my data anymore. Wow, so why courses versus just
• 36:40
  a book? In the sense that which one
• 36:42
  would be more optimal? Yeah, yeah, because part of part
• 36:49
  of me thinks that courses are kind of like a scam.
• 36:52
  Like they you can just charge so much more because people are
• 36:56
  used to overpaying for American anniversary.
• 37:00
  And it's not even as the content is not even as nearly as deep as
• 37:04
  you would get in a book for. Sure.
• 37:06
  Right, so it's almost like people who are too dumb to read
• 37:08
  a book, you pay a lot more money.
• 37:10
  You pay literally 10 times as much money, get 110th of the
• 37:13
  content for a course. So no, that's a great, that's a
• 37:17
  really good question. I'd say that differentiator or
• 37:20
  like value SKU for humanality is again like the course is a piece
• 37:25
  of the it's like 1 ingredient. So like part of the other
• 37:29
  ingredients are like we have these humanality water bottles.
• 37:31
  I don't have it with me, but it has all the personal real life
• 37:35
  victory stickers and then community adventure stickers.
• 37:38
  So like you have this water bottle and when you accomplish
• 37:41
  phone tree meals or one of the other ones is called focused
• 37:45
  fitness. So like you go and work out at a
• 37:47
  gym without your bods in you accomplished that.
• 37:50
  You put that on your water bottle.
• 37:52
  There is this progressive, you know, encouragement that like
• 37:57
  you, you are taking on these difficult.
• 38:02
  These are difficult for people now, right?
• 38:04
  Like we have foam free washroom. So like I know you're not going
• 38:08
  to the bathroom for 45 minutes like you're scrolling while
• 38:10
  you're dropping a deuce. You know what I mean?
• 38:12
  So it's like you can actually take some time now and just use
• 38:15
  the restroom and then when you accomplish that, you put the
• 38:18
  sticker on it. So again.
• 38:20
  Dude, if you if you're not free when you're using the bathroom,
• 38:22
  you're never free, man. That's, I mean, I think that is
• 38:25
  that is a great litmus test for. Sure.
• 38:27
  I was in the airport. I fly like every other day.
• 38:29
  I've been flying my whole life. It feels.
• 38:32
  So most of my life is spent in airports, which, if you're in
• 38:35
  the space that I'm in, it's like the most depressing environment
• 38:38
  ever because everyone is just like this.
• 38:42
  But anyway, there's a yeah. It's kind of nice in a way,
• 38:44
  because then you, you kind of feel like you're on a retreat,
• 38:47
  like you're all, you're all by yourself.
• 38:49
  You're not even alone together. You're just alone totally.
• 38:52
  It's like it's. Contemplating it is, yeah, you
• 38:53
  definitely probably need to shift that mindset.
• 38:55
  I see it. I'm like, oh, we're all already
• 38:57
  zombies. Like this is horrible.
• 39:00
  Well, we live in a dystopia. I mean, I, I think we've lived
• 39:02
  in a dystopia sense of all of mankind, but it's just so much
• 39:05
  more obvious. Now.
• 39:07
  Anyway, anyways, I got a little psyched.
• 39:08
  No, no, no, that's all. That's all true.
• 39:10
  So yeah, I do think books are optimal.
• 39:12
  I say our value SKU is that there's a lot that accompanies
• 39:17
  our course. It's not just you sitting alone
• 39:19
  in a room and watching a video. And it's just, that's just not
• 39:23
  how how we're running that so. Yeah.
• 39:28
  I do think there is something to be said.
• 39:31
  Books have changed my life. I mean, books have for sure
• 39:34
  changed the trajectory of my actions and time and attention,
• 39:38
  you know? Yeah, I think with the, I mean,
• 39:41
  I may end up offering a course just to take advantage of the
• 39:45
  new dark Age. I mean, might as well if you
• 39:46
  can't change it, might as. Well, and again, there is good
• 39:48
  in it, there is good in it. It's not.
• 39:50
  Maybe just because it's not optimal doesn't mean we
• 39:52
  shouldn't use it. Yeah, I, I think the advantage
• 39:55
  of it is it can be more interactive and you're just
• 39:59
  going to appeal to more people. It's going to be an easier lower
• 40:03
  bar for people. So anyways.
• 40:06
  Cool. Well this was amazing.
• 40:07
  Any do you have any last words for Andrew?
• 40:09
  Yeah, and maybe just some words of encouragement.
• 40:12
  I, I think it's so many families, parents, spouses are
• 40:18
  being affected by this. And it's funny, anytime I
• 40:20
  started to talk about this, one spouse looks to another and
• 40:22
  gives them the eyeballs because they're scrolling too much, but
• 40:25
  they're on their phone all the time, like so.
• 40:27
  So we need to just start with a lot of compassion and again,
• 40:30
  understand that this is on purpose.
• 40:32
  This wasn't our fault. There are companies behind this
• 40:36
  and I don't want to speak to the people in the companies, but I
• 40:39
  could say very clearly that their their organizational
• 40:43
  business model incentives are set up for addiction.
• 40:47
  And there is a way out of this. And it's going to be some really
• 40:51
  hard steps. But we give you the strategies,
• 40:54
  we give you the the community to deal with the in person village
• 40:57
  experience. So I would just encourage people
• 41:00
  like when we're you're listening to this and you want to start a
• 41:05
  human out of your village. And again, we're getting steps
• 41:08
  in. We're helping you eat better
• 41:09
  food. We're hoping you get better
• 41:11
  sleep. There's so many ways that we can
• 41:16
  be living better. And, and again, this is the most
• 41:18
  incredible time to be alive actually, like planes, trains,
• 41:22
  cars. You know, I do have some issues
• 41:25
  with our medical system is set up, but we do have an incredible
• 41:28
  medical, you know, system. Like, we have access to food and
• 41:32
  water and none of these things are perfect.
• 41:35
  But this is the best time to be alive still, I think.
• 41:39
  And now we just have to kind of start to recalibrate.
• 41:42
  OK, this experiment has gone wrong.
• 41:45
  How can we maybe rewind a little bit?
• 41:48
  The whole idea that we need our kids and our students to like,
• 41:51
  be ready for the technology age is a complete fallacy.
• 41:54
  The more that you can get off of technology, the better your life
• 41:59
  will be. So I really believe that's the
• 42:02
  case. But I want to, I want to leave
• 42:04
  people with hope. Like there are ways out of this,
• 42:06
  there are solutions and we're kind of compiling that all in
• 42:09
  one place. So you don't have to go
• 42:11
  6,000,000 places to find it. So I would just encourage people
• 42:15
  to to be willing to take some difficult steps and do it
• 42:20
  together and you're going to experience like incredible
• 42:23
  freedom. Love it.
• 42:26
  So to the virtuous leaders listening to this Andrews giving
• 42:29
  us a message of hope despite the OR perhaps because of the great
• 42:32
  challenges that we face. So one thing that Andrew
• 42:35
  highlighted is word of mouth. So I think if you if you have
• 42:40
  something good inside of you, share it with your friends and
• 42:43
  and family, have those real life experiences with them.
• 42:46
  Let's build real community. And if you think that this
• 42:50
  episode was good, then please share it as well.
• 42:52
  And make sure to check out humanality.org And let's let's
• 42:55
  start these villages. Thanks, Andy.
• 42:57
  Thanks, talk. Appreciate it.
• 42:59
  Thanks for listening. Please like, subscribe and share
• 43:02
  with your friends. See you next time.