Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #33: Rethinking Justice: How Education, Empathy, & AI Can Create Abundance — Suzi Sosa + Alex Wright

Transcript

#33: Rethinking Justice: How Education, Empathy, & AI Can Create Abundance — Suzi Sosa + Alex Wright · Love Conquers Fear

• 0:00
  A lot of people are just working for survival, but I hope for a
• 0:04
  future where work is a creative expression and a fulfillment of
• 0:09
  a sense of purpose and not something that you're told you
• 0:12
  have to do to combat scarcity. I remember growing up, all of
• 0:16
  the adults mentoring me were sort of like what you need to go
• 0:19
  into these majors because then you can get a good job.
• 0:22
  And it was all from the scarcity mindset.
• 0:24
  No one was saying what do you love?
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  What do you race towards? I would love, like, a whole, you
• 0:30
  know, consciousness shift where little children are cultivated
• 0:34
  to, like, do the things that make their hearts sing.
• 0:36
  And it's not a scarcity mindset. Like you have to do something so
• 0:40
  you can barter for your survival.
• 0:45
  Welcome back everybody to the Love Conquers Fear podcast.
• 0:49
  I continue to work my way through the Telepathy Tapes.
• 0:53
  By the time you watch this or listen to it, season 2 will be
• 0:57
  done. And it absolutely does not
• 1:00
  disappoint. It is so good, so comprehensive.
• 1:03
  The two episodes I just finished are all about the power of
• 1:06
  energy work. Yet another decoding of
• 1:10
  mysteries in terms of how, you know, quantum waves and energy
• 1:15
  works and you know, we're all light and energy at our core.
• 1:19
  So it's really fascinating. There's so much decoding of
• 1:23
  consciousness going on right now.
• 1:25
  You know, I've talked about Dan Brown's new book, The Secret of
• 1:28
  Secrets. I just watched a webinar where
• 1:31
  he was on with quite a few people that I know and he was
• 1:35
  talking about, you know why he believes now consciousness is
• 1:40
  fundamental, which is another way of saying non local
• 1:43
  consciousness. If you remember episode 2 with
• 1:45
  Mark Gobert, our brains receive consciousness like an antenna
• 1:50
  and doesn't mean that the brain doesn't have a very important
• 1:53
  function in terms of interpreting consciousness.
• 1:56
  You know, if you have a damaged brain, you're going to interpret
• 1:58
  it differently. But the Secret of secrets I've
• 2:03
  really dove into and it's fun. So as I'm recording this, I'm
• 2:08
  closing out 2025. It's been an amazing year, an
• 2:12
  amazing soul quest. I've read over 55 books and I
• 2:16
  decided to read a novel. It's my third fiction book of
• 2:21
  the year. I loved reading Project Hail
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  Mary from Andy Weir. Do not watch the trailer for the
• 2:28
  movie because it spoils about 70% of the book.
• 2:31
  And also read Observer this year, which is Robert Lanza and
• 2:35
  Nancy Kress. Robert Lanza's the famous
• 2:37
  quantum physicist that covers his theory of quantum physics
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  called biocentrism. And it really takes Everett's
• 2:45
  many worlds theories to a kind of an infinite degree.
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  And also, you know, talks a lot about the observer effect.
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  And so Observer was the novel that I hope gets made into a
• 2:59
  movie in terms of what that could mean practically and in a
• 3:05
  mind blowing fashion to how it would change humanity if we were
• 3:09
  able to leverage that observer effect much more directly, which
• 3:13
  I think one day we will be able to.
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  So it's a fun, it's another fun read, but I really am enjoying
• 3:19
  The Secret of Secrets. You know, by the time you see
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  this will be into 2026. And if you want to start out the
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  year with a really fun book by one of the world's best authors,
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  Dan Brown, he wrote The Davinci Code and many other books.
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  It's a lot of fun Today. I have a really special treat
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  and I'm going to dive right into it.
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  So. Hey, Susie, it's good to see
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  you. Yeah.
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  It's. Been a while.
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  I always love seeing you. And Alex, what a pleasure to
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  meet you. Just to set up this episode,
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  Susie, you know, you thought this would be a great way to
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  close out 2025. And I know you're the board
• 4:02
  chair of Levels. So why don't you cover what
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  levels is? And Alex, of course, is the the
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  CEO. But why, why did you end up
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  getting involved in this? Yeah, yeah, well, thank you for
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  having us both here. It's fun to get to have this
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  conversation, you know, in the context of what you're creating
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  with this podcast and community. So yeah, Alex and I have been on
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  this journey since the beginning.
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  I'm his founding board chair and I'll let him share in more
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  detail exactly what level does. But, you know, we've been in an
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  inquiry around how we can, you know, serve and support people
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  who are the most marginalized in society.
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  And we have been exploring how we can use AI to, you know,
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  provide access to information and resources to people who are
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  really, really left out. And I think that was one of the
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  connection points is, you know, a lot of a conversation about AI
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  is, you know, really big topics for the mainstream.
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  And this is a small segment of society that's often overlooked.
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  So it'd be fun to talk about what's, you know, who's in the
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  all of abundance for all. Yeah, yeah.
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  Yeah, yeah. For sure.
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  Yeah, maybe it is. It is.
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  Love conquers fear. You know in action what you're
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  what you're doing with levels. And, you know, we'll talk about
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  this, but Level has started by really focusing on people who
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  are in prison, who, of course, are marginalized, but also, you
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  know, it's easy to close your heart and say, well, these are
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  people who've sort of done something wrong.
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  And so, yeah, when you think about love conquering fear, what
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  is the fear that we have about people who are on the margins of
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  our society and why they're there and all those kind of
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  underlying assumptions about that?
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  Right, right. Yeah, Well, Alex, welcome.
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  Yeah. Thank you so much.
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  It's good to get to know you here.
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  I think it's, as Susie pointed out, it's the whole conversation
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  is interesting because like a lot of things, it's a metaphor.
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  And you had asked me earlier why I had gotten into this work.
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  And I think the reason that that many of us get into the work
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  that we're in is, is not just a specific manifestation of what
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  the work is on a daily basis, but that larger why.
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  And I think what's really interesting about the metaphor
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  of, of, of why this conversation isn't, is, is relational to the
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  podcast that you have into the journey that you're on.
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  And what Susie just picked up on of what is that?
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  What is that fear about, right? What is the fear of the margins?
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  You know? And so the work that we do, it
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  does involve education and job development for people who are
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  currently incarcerated. And when you talk about it being
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  some of the people that are the most left behind, it's, it's a
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  very large population. It's not a it's not a small
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  group of people. America has 4% of the world's
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  population and 25% of the world's incarceration
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  incarcerated. Population say that again.
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  I think you should say that again, then slower.
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  We we as a country and it just speaks to our over incarceration
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  and this is really a trend that has has only been the past 20 or
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  30 years. This is not forever with
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  America, but we have 4% of the world's population and 25% of
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  the world's incarcerated population.
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  Mind blowing stuff it is. As a data guy, I appreciate.
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  That step, but it's, and so there's two million Americans
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  who are currently in incarcerated in prison to give
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  it some more context, or 6,000,000 Americans who have a
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  currently incarcerated family member that they're direct
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  family member. So that's mother, brother, son,
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  parents and, and the really amazing part of this, if you
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  want to get into the numbers of it, is that is the output of
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  this cause our, our journey is not just to make more.
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  Well, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but to make
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  more well-rounded, educated people who are in prison, we're
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  really talking about people thriving after release, right?
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  It's about a better future. There are 600,000 people come
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  out of this system every year in America.
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  So that's a population the size of of currently of Baltimore or
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  Las Vegas. So think about that as an output
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  and out stream of this and these individuals become our
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  neighbors. You, you may, you talk about
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  marginalization, what these are going to be people that are
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  going to be your neighbors. And so the question is, what
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  kind of neighbors do you want to have?
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  What kind of neighbors do we all want to have larger than that?
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  I think what, what is really interesting is the question of
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  the journey. And I think the journey.
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  There's a lot of what your work is about, Brad, and, and the
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  work of this, of this podcast. And you know, you, you, a lot of
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  the, the nature of this podcast has to do with kind of what kind
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  of future are we going to have? What kind of future is there
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  going to be a future of abundance?
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  And often you look at the past as saying, great, great things
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  have happened. There's been some darkness,
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  there's been some light, but there has been some darkness.
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  And then the present kind of is a bit of a question mark.
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  What are we, what are we doing right now?
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  There's some questions. And then the future that we
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  imagine is in a, a future of, of abundance.
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  And the reason that I got so deeply into this work is that is
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  100% of the journey of the individuals that, that we're
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  serving the, the actual people, the humans that we're serving
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  that are sitting on the inside of, of prisons across America.
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  So often have a, a past that is, is turbulent with some good
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  things and some bad things, some mistakes that they made, some
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  ways that society let them down, but clearly some ways that they
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  let other people down and hurt other people.
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  There's no doubt about that. The present is a big question
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  mark. What is going on?
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  What access to information do I have?
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  What are the resources? But the thing that that drives
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  the work And you, you had said earlier, Brett, that there's no
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  harder job in America than the than the executive director of a
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  non profit. That may be true, but it is a
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  beautiful sort of work because you get to relate to this, to
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  this journey of people, the future that these people see for
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  themselves. This is not Susie and I going
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  out and and all the other people that work on our team and saying
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  individual you had a bad past and the present is unknown and
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  you should have a bright future. It's the other way around.
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  It is the other way around. These are individuals that are
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  saying people, humans, men and women that are saying I see a
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  brighter future for myself. I see a brighter future for
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  myself that is not limited by the worst mistakes of the past.
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  Again, their mistakes and other people's mistakes.
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  And that I think is is what your show is A.
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  Lot of yeah I. Think it's really cool that
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  you're making the connection between the microcosm and the
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  macro that, you know, you have been having a conversation about
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  the journey of humanity as a collective and you're seeing in
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  the individual journey of someone incarcerated.
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  Because, you know, there's no doubt that as a collective we
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  have a lot of things to be ashamed of, right?
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  We haven't made good decisions. And it's kind of like, how are
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  we going to move forward from that?
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  And and I think that an interesting piece of this is
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  like, when you look at let's just take slavery, for example,
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  like what is the way to move forward from something like
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  slavery? Is it is it kind of punitive in
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  the opposite direction? Or how does it really come from
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  love? And I think for people who are
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  incarcerated who've done, you know, maybe they've murdered
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  somebody, what is the way forward?
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  Is it punitive and is it always like you can never right that
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  wrong? Or is there a path forward from
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  love? And one of the things I have
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  always valued about the content that level makes is it's not
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  just academically focused, it actually focuses on the whole
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  person and recognizes that like healing and abundance as you've
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  been talking about, it's internal work.
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  It's the being work as well as the technical work.
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  Like we have commercial driver education and computer
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  programming, but we are also talking about self-expression
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  and creativity and and being. Yeah, you know, I just finished
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  writing my third book. You know, love conquers fear
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  here with the subtitle Humanity, AI and the age of abundance for
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  all. So it feels really good.
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  It's off to the publisher and, and chapter 13 of the book is
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  about the inner journey. And it's essentially about the
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  hardship that humanity needs to make for us to make it to the
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  age of abundance for all. And I really want to emphasize
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  for all, we're 99.9% the same genetically across the world.
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  And of course, that very much includes the slaves that we had
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  at the beginning of capitalism in this country, you know, pre
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  industrial revolution. And, you know, that was that was
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  one of the ways that we bootstrapped our way there.
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  And and it's it's horrible. I mean, it's a horrible fact.
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  And it was prevalent all over the world at that time.
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  You know, 250 years ago, 90% of the world population didn't know
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  how to read, 80% of the world population was in abject
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  poverty. And so we've we've progressed a
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  lot already, but we have so much farther to go.
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  And I really want to emphasize this stat of 4% of the
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  population of the world is in the United States, that we have
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  25% of those incarcerated globally.
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  And you know, people are always a mirror.
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  And so that that really hits hard because, you know, you
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  think about it, there's it's not like Americans are like way more
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  violent than all other people in the world.
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  I mean, that would be a ridiculous assumption because,
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  you know, we live in a very, a very big world of 8.2 billion
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  humans. Like people listening to this
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  have to say like, well, what would describe that 25% of all
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  of the incarcerated are in America?
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  Is it something about Americans? No, it can't be because people
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  are people. You know, the more you globally
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  travel, because we're recording this, I'm about to leave for
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  Bhutan and, and, and, and, you know, we're very well travelled.
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  We're very fortunate in that, in that way that we have both that
• 14:07
  desire to travel and see see humanity in the eyes all over
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  the world and, and be that we can do that.
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  And you know, the the more I've traveled, the more I've learned
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  we're all just people. We all want the same things.
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  We all are rooted in this place where we want love in our lives.
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  We want to be able to love ourselves and love others and we
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  want each other to win. You know, there's so much
• 14:32
  programming we receive about this scarcity and fear based and
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  0 sum mindset. And that's not the way that most
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  people are wired. It's just not.
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  It's, it's an algorithmic manifestation to make us think
• 14:47
  that that's the way things are, but it's really not the way
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  things are. Yeah, yeah.
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  What I, what I thought you were saying was we're not more
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  violent as a society, but I actually think that's an
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  interesting area of inquiry. You know, that there's a book
• 15:02
  called Nonviolent Communication. And but what he talks about in
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  that book is that any, any kind of act of judgment and, you
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  know, kind of blame is, is inherently the beginning of an
• 15:15
  act of violence. And I think we have created a
• 15:18
  society where, you know, we don't think a lot about
• 15:23
  rehabilitation. We, we sometimes don't even
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  believe it's possible. It's very punitive, right?
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  Like you've done this, you know, now you're going to get this.
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  And I think that is correlated with the number of people that
• 15:36
  we have in prison. Yeah.
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  Sure, those individuals didn't self report to prison and so
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  there is something different about Americans and that we have
• 15:42
  incarcerated those people. I agree with what you're saying
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  that it is not purely explained, explained by the the the, that
• 15:49
  there's that much more crime committing.
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  It is the response to that the underdevelopment of, of, of, of,
• 15:55
  of social equity. But look, we also have some of
• 15:59
  the the world's highest rates of addiction and of and of
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  homelessness. And I think all of these are
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  proxies for socio economic conditioning.
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  So what, what I think is beautiful about it is looking at
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  it like you were saying in both from the macro and the micro.
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  But what what really drives me and what inspires me is how much
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  on an individualized basis, a lot of people are wanting the
• 16:21
  same sort of future for abundance across all different
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  types of economic stratification, socioeconomic
• 16:27
  stratification and are and are willing to.
• 16:32
  It takes a lot to raise your hand constantly in an
• 16:35
  environment like that and say, I want a brighter future because
• 16:38
  you know how often that is being pushed down.
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  And for those individuals to continually still redo it, do it
• 16:43
  again and again and again, anyone that they can reach out
• 16:45
  to because it takes that level of persistence.
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  One of the things that's unique about your model that I think we
• 16:51
  should just highlight is that you don't go directly through
• 16:55
  the prisons. And that's partly because the
• 16:57
  culture in the prisons maybe he doesn't have always like
• 17:01
  abundance for all mindset, right?
• 17:03
  So, so you go directly to people in prison and you have direct
• 17:08
  communication with them. So they write back to you in the
• 17:11
  completion forms and you get first hand stories of people's
• 17:15
  hope and their dreams and their requests and often feel like
• 17:19
  Level is like the only organization that believes in
• 17:23
  them. Period.
• 17:25
  It is true and what you brought up before about the different
• 17:28
  types of educational content and we have modules on meditation
• 17:31
  that wasn't us saying again you. Individuals, you guys, this is
• 17:35
  it. Was the other way around.
• 17:36
  It was people reaching out to us.
• 17:37
  We go out and raise money and create content based on the
• 17:40
  requests of both people in prison and their family members
• 17:43
  on the outside, identifying from a direct individual basis what
• 17:47
  did, what does that person need for a brighter future?
• 17:50
  And then you collect that and do analysis on thousands of data
• 17:53
  points and then come back with, OK, here are the modules that
• 17:56
  we're going to go out, one of which is meditation.
• 17:59
  Of course, then the what what we do is make sure that we find
• 18:03
  people with deep lived experience in those in those
• 18:05
  areas so that we're not again, coming at it from the outside
• 18:08
  and saying this is what you should do.
• 18:10
  But instead coming in and saying, let's find people that
• 18:12
  have walked in those individual shoes, which doesn't is not, it
• 18:16
  does. It creates trust, it creates
• 18:17
  connection, which is great, but it also creates better outcomes
• 18:20
  because the the people going through programs of that type
• 18:23
  can believe and see themselves in it.
• 18:25
  And that's really necessary. And this is actually the segue
• 18:28
  to kind of how Alex is using AI, which is, you know, we're
• 18:34
  serving 2000 people a year in prison.
• 18:39
  And, you know, we have a reasonably sized content
• 18:41
  library, but we just don't have the capacity as a nonprofit to
• 18:45
  really develop a personalized development plan for each
• 18:49
  individual. But with AI, we could and we
• 18:52
  could integrate both their technical learning needs and
• 18:57
  their personal learning needs and, you know, be able to use AI
• 19:03
  to scale highly personalized education at a fraction of the
• 19:08
  cost. Right.
• 19:09
  And to do it without even the participation of the departments
• 19:13
  of Corrections, at least right now, because they talk about
• 19:16
  fear, talk about fear based and control based ecosystems.
• 19:19
  Those are are, I mean in a place that doesn't even give people
• 19:22
  Internet access, you think they're going to allow an AI
• 19:25
  access? Yeah.
• 19:25
  So what level does level actually puts all the content on
• 19:29
  8 1/2 by 11 paper that is sent through the mail to the the
• 19:35
  correctional facilities because a lot of the people we serve
• 19:39
  don't have access to the Internet.
• 19:41
  So and then Level receives back the mail in a completion form.
• 19:46
  That's another way that Level's going to be using AI is to be
• 19:51
  capturing all of that qualitative feedback that we get
• 19:54
  from people in prison. And actually we would like to be
• 19:57
  able to provide them with mentorship.
• 19:59
  So being able to respond, you know, to 2000.
• 20:04
  You know, pieces of mail per year.
• 20:05
  We don't have the budget to pay enough people.
• 20:08
  I think we we did a math simulation of the millions of
• 20:12
  dollars it would cost us to try to provide the level of
• 20:15
  personalized curriculum and mentorship that we could do with
• 20:19
  AI for the same. People, it's so cool.
• 20:21
  I mean, it really is. You know, part of the thesis
• 20:26
  here with the age of abundance for all is that AI, quantum
• 20:29
  computing, robotics, brain computer interfaces, all of
• 20:32
  these things exponentially accelerating are going to take
• 20:35
  us to a place where there's many things that are possible that
• 20:37
  weren't before. And this is such a great example
• 20:41
  because you could get that, you could get the responses back.
• 20:46
  And just, I mean, it's so easy now to just take a photo of that
• 20:50
  and ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini will just distill it all.
• 20:56
  I mean, just recently, this is just a minor example, but you
• 20:59
  know, I take this, this supplement called Green Vibrance
• 21:03
  and it has like a crazy amount of ingredients.
• 21:06
  I mean, it's just, it's something like 200°, it's. 3
• 21:09
  point font you. Know and it's the tiniest font
• 21:12
  you know this is now like at age 53 I'm like OK, there's.
• 21:15
  No way I. Can read this right?
• 21:17
  So I have to take a photo of it and zoom in, but but I sent the
• 21:23
  photo as is no zoom in to ChatGPT and just look for any
• 21:27
  interactions with any of the other things I'm taking.
• 21:31
  And it was unbelievable just to still not dull down and also in
• 21:35
  like a second versus in the past, you know, when, you know,
• 21:39
  we just passed as of this recording, the three-year
• 21:42
  anniversary of ChatGPT, that was November 30th.
• 21:45
  OK, when, when I first started using it, I was one of the first
• 21:48
  users. It would take a while to get a
• 21:51
  response back and you weren't going to be taking a photo like
• 21:54
  this and getting any response back.
• 21:57
  So it's, it's really an incredible time to enable
• 22:02
  something like this. And one of the things I've
• 22:06
  written a lot about over the years since it launched is the
• 22:10
  reinvention of the education system.
• 22:13
  Because, you know, first of all, let's just be honest, like our
• 22:16
  education system has a lot of problems.
• 22:19
  I mean, the, the, the success rates of students is really low.
• 22:24
  And, you know, compared to other countries, another, another stat
• 22:27
  comparing to other countries. And we have to figure out a way
• 22:32
  to make that much better without doing it in a inefficient way.
• 22:39
  And so AI provides an incredible opportunity to do that.
• 22:44
  You still need very much the human touch, I think, because
• 22:49
  there's just nothing like a struggling child.
• 22:52
  I remember our youngest was struggling with dyslexia and the
• 22:57
  school district was amazing at identifying it and intervening
• 23:02
  early. And that used to be a major
• 23:04
  problem in this country where dyslexics had a very high
• 23:07
  suicide rate 'cause they thought, well, my brain's broken
• 23:10
  and I'm dumb. And actually genius Ness runs
• 23:13
  very high in dyslexics. It's just their brain works
• 23:17
  differently. And you know, they were able to
• 23:20
  intervene. But now with, with AI, it's,
• 23:25
  it's really incredible. I mean, just from a personal
• 23:27
  standpoint, educationally, you know, for 20 bucks a month,
• 23:32
  which I buy a lot more models than that, but for 20 bucks a
• 23:36
  month, you could get a ChatGPT subscription.
• 23:39
  And it's the first time in human history where all content is
• 23:43
  pretty much available and anything you want to learn
• 23:46
  about, you can learn about just every single day.
• 23:50
  And so my my level of education has gone way up since its
• 23:56
  invention. And one of the things I love
• 23:59
  about Level is that, you know, there, there is all this
• 24:03
  judgement about the incarcerated and all types of things.
• 24:07
  I mean, you know, humanity loves to separate in all types of
• 24:11
  ways, Republican or Democrat, man or woman.
• 24:14
  You know, I'm from this cast, you're from that cast, you know,
• 24:17
  I'm from this socioeconomic, you're from that, you know, all
• 24:19
  these things that babies don't care about.
• 24:21
  You put two babies in a crib and they're just divine, Beautiful
• 24:24
  Creatures that just look at each other with lots of love.
• 24:27
  And that is our core nature, right?
• 24:29
  That's the mirror. But with level, they are raising
• 24:31
  their hand and they're saying, hey, I want to better myself.
• 24:36
  I need help. I need to believe in that future
• 24:41
  of abundance and I need to rehabilitate myself, level up my
• 24:45
  own education, you know, go out there and be a more productive
• 24:50
  member of society. And who would not want that?
• 24:53
  Like. Well, and that's what you're
• 24:54
  doing and that's what we're all doing it it it that is a talk
• 24:57
  about a core nature. I think that it, and I, I love
• 25:00
  when you bring that up, but it's no surprise.
• 25:02
  It's no surprise that people are raising their hand and saying, I
• 25:04
  want a brighter future. We, we, that's a very common
• 25:08
  thing to look at the, the, the, the things in the past that you
• 25:12
  wish you could move away from the uncertainties of the present
• 25:14
  and the beauties of the future. And I think all of us in this
• 25:17
  room are doing that. And so it's no surprise to me
• 25:19
  that of those 2 million people who are currently incarcerated,
• 25:24
  the, the, the, the, the same instinct holds is to say I'd
• 25:29
  like it a, a brighter future. We all want brighter futures.
• 25:32
  And especially when you are really forced to reckon with the
• 25:37
  worst mistakes in the past, I think a lot of other people
• 25:40
  don't have to always reckon with the mistakes that they've made
• 25:43
  in the past. And so this is a situation where
• 25:45
  those individuals are, and many rightly so are, are in a
• 25:49
  position where they really need to to reckon with this.
• 25:51
  I'm, I'm curious, what was the moment for you, Alex, where you
• 25:56
  were like, I've got to do this because, because it's a big
• 25:58
  commitment to say, I'm going to be a nonprofit leader.
• 26:01
  Like there had to be a moment that hit you in the heart hard
• 26:05
  where you said I'm going to answer the call.
• 26:07
  Yeah, so I moved to Austin 16 years ago and wanted to get more
• 26:11
  involved in the community here. And I didn't know a lot of
• 26:14
  people here. And I literally stumbled into a
• 26:18
  Community Center where I was a little early for an event.
• 26:21
  And so I was wandering around in this Community Center and in the
• 26:23
  back was a was a closed off community library.
• 26:27
  And it, it was very clearly not a, it was a not a Dewey Decimal
• 26:31
  System based library. It's like a library that people
• 26:33
  had set up and there were shells that were kind of, it was tucked
• 26:36
  away. And I just was wandering around
• 26:39
  and really interested like you and that sort of data person.
• 26:42
  And I was trying to figure out the taxonomy of how it was all
• 26:44
  set up. And there were these notes all
• 26:47
  around that said packages, all packages must be between all
• 26:50
  book. All book sets of books must be
• 26:52
  between 1 LB ten oz and 1 LB fourteen oz.
• 26:54
  And I said, what is this? This is crazy.
• 26:56
  You know, why would you go? There's no money signs anywhere.
• 26:59
  And so I did what what people at the time do is I took a picture
• 27:03
  of it and said, I'm going to figure this out later.
• 27:04
  And I came to understand that it was a community library for a
• 27:09
  prison book book program where community members would donate
• 27:12
  used books. This is the only organization in
• 27:15
  the state of Texas and still is now 155,000 people in prison.
• 27:19
  It's in just in the state of Texas.
• 27:20
  This is the only mechanism to get a non new book to any one of
• 27:23
  those individuals. They serve 12,000 people a year
• 27:27
  with no staff. And so I, I started volunteering
• 27:29
  there. I volunteered there for seven
• 27:32
  years and it really changed my life.
• 27:34
  During that time, I corresponded with thousands and thousands of
• 27:37
  people in prison across Texas. And, and you talk about that one
• 27:40
  moment, there definitely are some physical manifestation
• 27:44
  moments. I can so clearly remember
• 27:46
  reading the letters that people would write in to say what what
• 27:49
  kind of content the books that they were looking for.
• 27:51
  And you could really feel the paper imprint on the back of the
• 27:55
  paper that the pen had made on the front.
• 27:56
  And it sounds like such a minimal thing, but it really
• 27:58
  isn't because you know that there is another human on the
• 28:01
  other end that had pushed that paper through the back and it
• 28:04
  was almost like a Braille. And I could always remember
• 28:06
  feeling the the back of the paper with the ballpoint pen
• 28:09
  pushing through. So you can feel like how hard
• 28:12
  they were writing. It's almost like pleading,
• 28:14
  right? Exactly.
• 28:15
  And so when that happened, when you do that thousands of times,
• 28:18
  or at least I shouldn't say when you, when I did that thousands
• 28:20
  of times, it made a real impression on me and the moment
• 28:23
  where it really clicked because because like, like you both, I'm
• 28:26
  a, I'm an entrepreneur and I have done entrepreneurial
• 28:28
  adventures before. I'd started businesses before
• 28:31
  and I saw and, and uncovered this tremendous need because
• 28:34
  while that organization and, and there's a dozen other across the
• 28:37
  country that do similar work where they're, they're donating
• 28:40
  used books into the prison system.
• 28:43
  It's a really, it's a really great service.
• 28:47
  It altered more needs than that because these individuals would
• 28:50
  be writing it and they would say things like, for example, they
• 28:53
  people, I remember one person wrote and said, look, I'm, I'm
• 28:55
  really looking to start a landscaping business when I get
• 28:57
  out to support myself and my family.
• 28:59
  So they're looking for entrepreneurship books, how to
• 29:01
  run a business books and then landscaping books.
• 29:03
  Well, there's personally, there's just not a lot of books
• 29:06
  at all written that. Are about.
• 29:07
  That for low and. To mention not in the community
• 29:10
  like they're. Not going to be donated.
• 29:11
  OK, because what are the chances of that?
• 29:15
  Not created at all because people aren't writing support
• 29:17
  content for that, for not incarcerated, just lower income
• 29:20
  individuals doing that kind of work.
• 29:22
  What are the chances that we would have it?
• 29:24
  And then talk about 0 sum it was if we did have that and if that
• 29:28
  did go to that individual, it would not go to the 218 other
• 29:31
  people that would write in next week asking for the exact same
• 29:33
  thing. So I said this is really a, a
• 29:37
  publishing and scalability issue.
• 29:39
  We need to do 2 things. We need to create it all. 80% of
• 29:44
  people are asking for 20% of content, right?
• 29:46
  It's, it's repeatable stuff that you can make and to say #1 is
• 29:52
  what? Custom creating content for this
• 29:54
  audience and then #2 mass distributing it so that if one
• 29:57
  person's asking for it and another person says, well, we
• 29:59
  got you because here we're a publisher.
• 30:01
  So it became very clear to me that what this took was just
• 30:05
  willpower and getting to know the problem really well, making
• 30:10
  sure that you're rooting that that problem investigation and
• 30:13
  actual human needs. Not in a you should do, but a
• 30:16
  what do you need type of framework.
• 30:19
  And then the second thing was just the, the willpower that
• 30:21
  goes into entrepreneurship is saying, here's a problem to
• 30:24
  solve. And so I started exploring that
• 30:26
  problem more in Texas and I started talking to other people
• 30:29
  in other states. And I realized this is not just
• 30:32
  a Texas problem with 150,000 people incarcerated.
• 30:35
  This is an America problem with, with 2 million people
• 30:38
  incarcerated. And then you, me, and a few
• 30:42
  other people. Yeah, I'm, I'm curious what the
• 30:44
  moment was for you, Susie. I mean, because, because, you
• 30:47
  know, we didn't really talk about your background, but you
• 30:50
  know, you're amazing person, amazing entrepreneur.
• 30:52
  I've been friends with you for a long time.
• 30:55
  You hold in my mind the favorite episode of mine on Rachel's
• 31:01
  podcast, our our oldest daughter, which called radiant
• 31:05
  resilience. Like you really just opened up
• 31:08
  your heart. You were.
• 31:08
  So, you know, I hate I hate this word because that but you were
• 31:13
  vulnerable on that episode. I love that word.
• 31:17
  You know why? You know why I hate the word?
• 31:18
  Because really you were just being authentic.
• 31:22
  You know, you're just being authentically you and the more
• 31:24
  that humanity would just be authentic.
• 31:27
  I mean, you know, in this podcast, you know, people have
• 31:32
  been really worried about me. Sometimes they're like Brett,
• 31:34
  you know, you're talking about things that you've done that are
• 31:37
  like taboo, like psychedelics. And I'm like, I'm just being
• 31:41
  authentic. Like I'm gonna be authentic
• 31:44
  about what I think about our reality, tools that I've used,
• 31:49
  etc. Because I really received a very
• 31:53
  important vision that humanity has 10 to 15 years to make this
• 32:01
  heart shift and that God's working through us to get us to
• 32:05
  reconcile with the fact that we're almost genetically
• 32:08
  identical around the world. We need to deprogram, and that
• 32:12
  technology is going to force us to make that choice.
• 32:15
  I mean, you know, we talked about slavery earlier.
• 32:19
  You know, yes, that was a horrible, horrible thing.
• 32:23
  There's no justification for treating a human being like
• 32:28
  that. When the industrial revolution
• 32:31
  came along and automation, how could people even hold on to
• 32:36
  that? Because technology was forcing
• 32:38
  them to look more in the mirror and say, well, now you've got
• 32:41
  machines to do this. You know, And that's, that's
• 32:45
  part of the narrative people have around robotics is that
• 32:48
  there are all these dangerous jobs done throughout the world
• 32:52
  that humanity needs to graduate from and not go out and do these
• 32:58
  dangerous kind of mining jobs, et cetera.
• 33:01
  And no offense to any miners listening to this, 'cause
• 33:04
  they're doing great work, but it's just, you know, there's an
• 33:08
  evolutionary shift that we continue to have societally.
• 33:14
  I would love to get us to do more meaningful work.
• 33:16
  Yeah, I would love to push it further.
• 33:17
  Like I think a lot about right now, I think work, a lot of
• 33:22
  people are just working for survival.
• 33:25
  Yeah. And I do believe just personally
• 33:29
  that, you know, everybody wants a sense of purpose.
• 33:32
  And I think people like to create and build.
• 33:36
  That can be just creating your family.
• 33:39
  And you know, it doesn't have to be starting companies, but I
• 33:43
  hope for a future where work is a creative expression and a
• 33:48
  fulfillment of a sense of purpose and not something that
• 33:52
  you're told you have to do to combat scarcity.
• 33:55
  You know, like I think most, I have two teenagers, I have a 14
• 33:59
  year old and a 16 year old. So we're talking about grades
• 34:02
  and college and you know what to do.
• 34:04
  And I remember growing up, all of the adults mentoring, we're
• 34:07
  sort of like, well, you need to go into these majors because
• 34:10
  then you can get a good job, right?
• 34:12
  And then you'll be able to pay your bills and you won't end up,
• 34:15
  you know, homeless and poor. And it was all from a scarcity
• 34:19
  mindset. No one was saying, what do you
• 34:21
  love? What makes your heart say you
• 34:23
  know you know What are your biggest gifts to.
• 34:26
  Give What do you race towards exactly?
• 34:28
  So that's what I hope is not just that robots are doing the
• 34:31
  most dangerous things, but I would love like a whole, you
• 34:35
  know, consciousness shift where, you know, little children are
• 34:39
  cultivated to, like, do the things that make their hearts
• 34:42
  sing, where they feel they're the biggest contribution.
• 34:45
  And it's not a scarcity mindset. Like you have to do something to
• 34:48
  get so you can barter for your survival.
• 34:51
  Right, right. Well, that's actually that to me
• 34:55
  goes to spirituality because I personally believe and what I've
• 35:01
  seen is that we all have a divine calling.
• 35:03
  We all chose to be incarnated in this lifetime for a reason and
• 35:09
  books like Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankel, where
• 35:12
  he survived the most horrific, you know, 4 concentration camps
• 35:15
  during the Holocaust. What kept him going through is
• 35:20
  that he knew his meaning and it wasn't, you know, an overtly
• 35:25
  spiritual book, but it was deeply spiritual at its core.
• 35:29
  You know, he wasn't he wasn't using words like God and et
• 35:32
  cetera that I openly use on this podcast.
• 35:34
  And I always tell people like, you can call it consciousness.
• 35:38
  You can call it, you know, the universe, whatever you want to
• 35:41
  call it is fine. I'm just going to call it what,
• 35:44
  what, what I think that forces that created this reality we're
• 35:49
  in and The Big Bang that, you know, who who knows how that
• 35:53
  happened? Like why was the entire universe
• 35:56
  at a point of, you know, that would fit on less than the size
• 36:00
  of a big pen and had no entropy and then boom, everything
• 36:05
  explodes out. And as far as we know, it's
• 36:08
  completely infinite. If it has a border, that would
• 36:12
  really be a game changer, you know, if we found out and.
• 36:15
  What's on the other side? Right, exactly right.
• 36:18
  But but I'm curious like what the heart moment for you was
• 36:21
  where you met Alex and you're just like, Oh my gosh, I got to
• 36:24
  do this. You know, like being the
• 36:26
  founding chair is no small feat too to say, because I know how
• 36:30
  much work it takes. Yeah.
• 36:32
  And still here. Yeah, and still here, right,
• 36:35
  exactly right. And I've had a couple of times
• 36:37
  when I'm like, oh, you know, why don't why do I want to be doing
• 36:40
  this? But.
• 36:41
  Every entrepreneurial venture anybody has ever started it, you
• 36:44
  know, nonprofit or for profit. Yeah.
• 36:46
  You know, I'm just incredibly moved by people who do hard
• 36:53
  things like this, you know, and that is part of my purpose is to
• 36:58
  be wind in the sails for entrepreneurs and social
• 37:03
  activists who are, I mean, Alex, I know a lot of detail about the
• 37:08
  personal sacrifices that he's making to do this work.
• 37:13
  And so I, I feel it's an honor to partner with you.
• 37:18
  And I think when you set out your vision for me, you know, I
• 37:21
  was in the middle at that time. I had a software social
• 37:25
  enterprise, you know, that had been on a roller coaster.
• 37:29
  And I think I tried to talk you out of it.
• 37:31
  I was like, don't do this. It's so hard.
• 37:35
  Which is important. Yes, you know, I was trying to
• 37:38
  really set straight for you like because I remember you know, we
• 37:42
  were talking about how long would it take to get product
• 37:45
  market fit, how long would it take to get to financial
• 37:48
  stability and you? Were like.
• 37:50
  Yeah. You know, and I think at the
• 37:52
  time you were like, well, I'm sure it'll just be like two or
• 37:54
  three years. We'll get a little start up
• 37:56
  capital. And I was like, Alex, I think
• 37:59
  this is going to take, you know, more like 5 to 10 years.
• 38:01
  I, I remember telling you about another Austin nonprofit that,
• 38:06
  you know, that's fantastic called Eco Rise.
• 38:09
  And Gina Lamott, the founder was a friend of mine and it took her
• 38:12
  like a decade to get it to sustainability.
• 38:15
  And so I'd, I'd seen many other successful Austin executive
• 38:19
  directors, you know, Susan McDowell.
• 38:22
  Susan McDowell asked. Me directly in my eyes.
• 38:25
  Why? I mean, are you crazy?
• 38:26
  Yeah, because it takes, it takes, you know, over a decade
• 38:30
  to get to sustainability. And Alex just was like, I, I
• 38:33
  can't not do this. So I'm like, OK buddy, I'm going
• 38:38
  in with. You.
• 38:39
  You know, and, and I think like you have to like we're not this
• 38:44
  10 to 15 year window to get the kind of, you know,
• 38:49
  transformational change that you're envisioning is going to
• 38:52
  take many people for sure who are completely absurd in what
• 38:57
  they think is possible. And I think for those of us that
• 39:01
  can support them and amplify them, like that's us doing our
• 39:05
  part to try to make that moment happen.
• 39:08
  So, George Bernard Shaw, all progress depends on the
• 39:12
  unreasonable man or woman. But it's so interesting that you
• 39:16
  say that about me. And first of all, thank you for
• 39:18
  saying and thank you for the support.
• 39:20
  It's so interesting that you say that about me, because that's
• 39:21
  the way that I feel about the people that we're serving.
• 39:25
  Like I feel that way about other people.
• 39:27
  What you just said to me is what I feel about the people that
• 39:29
  we're working with. I feel like they're absurd.
• 39:33
  And I feel like what I'm doing is, is playing support role, you
• 39:36
  know, And so it's interesting because it, I, I guess one man's
• 39:42
  work is another person's or one person's work is another
• 39:45
  person's support. And it and it depends on the the
• 39:48
  community lens that you're looking at it through.
• 39:51
  One of the things I'm I'm curious about is there there's
• 39:55
  entrepreneurship is so hard and I'm curious about the letters
• 40:01
  that you've received that have. That really stand out in your
• 40:05
  mind 'cause I, I can just imagine you, you know, with your
• 40:08
  family like saying, Oh my gosh, look at what I received and this
• 40:14
  moves me to tears yeah. Because you know, one of the
• 40:17
  things that's so beautiful about what you're doing is that the
• 40:21
  number one thing that kids think about, I can say this as a
• 40:26
  parent, is they really, they really want to see that you're
• 40:31
  doing something that's right for you and is really aligned with
• 40:36
  your mission and meaning. And that's one of the greatest
• 40:41
  things, maybe the greatest thing you can pass along to them.
• 40:45
  And you know, my dad had that. And I remember my dad always
• 40:52
  trying to embarrass me and he was very good at it because they
• 40:56
  had he, he invented the first halogen fishing light.
• 40:59
  He, they had furniture stores and he would drive up to my
• 41:03
  school sometimes yelling out the window junk for sale.
• 41:08
  And just like to everybody on my playground looking and just be
• 41:11
  like, and, and you know, my friends would tell me back then
• 41:18
  they'd be like, I love your dad. And I'd be like, he's just my
• 41:22
  dad, right? Because I'd be like, well,
• 41:24
  really why? And they'd be like, well, my dad
• 41:27
  comes home and tells me all the time how much he hates his job.
• 41:31
  And your dad is just like a like always with joy, always having
• 41:35
  fun. And that's how he lived his
• 41:38
  whole life. He, you know, when he passed
• 41:41
  away at age 63, we knew that he had lived a life like he was on
• 41:46
  vacation the entire time. You know, that he was like
• 41:48
  flowing in the, in the ocean like a dolphin.
• 41:51
  I'm just curious for you those moments where you've received
• 41:56
  correspondence from these, these people that are incarcerated
• 42:00
  that just just blew you away. I think a lot of it comes to
• 42:05
  what you were saying about the the response that you get from
• 42:07
  traveling and, and seeing that all people are inherently the
• 42:10
  same. And in my line of work, there's
• 42:12
  always a couple of dominant narratives that that I look at
• 42:15
  them, I wish we were a little bit different.
• 42:16
  And one of them is some people say, oh, someone in prison, you
• 42:19
  know, reading Dostoevsky. Can you imagine?
• 42:21
  And it's like, why? Why wouldn't they?
• 42:22
  It's a, it's a book and they're smart.
• 42:24
  Like they read it and everyone, I mean, lots of people read
• 42:27
  Dostoevsky. Lots of people don't, but that
• 42:29
  are you surprised that that person did that?
• 42:32
  I think what blows me away is when people can see what level
• 42:37
  it's doing, like the long term plan, like when people see
• 42:39
  through the work that we're doing, the, the number of, you
• 42:44
  know, outreach, the number of interactions that they've had
• 42:47
  with us. And they've seen it change over
• 42:49
  time. And they've seen new staff come
• 42:51
  on and they've seen automation, They've seen the barcodes show
• 42:54
  up on the, on the other things. They've seen all these different
• 42:56
  ways. And people are like, I see what
• 42:58
  you're doing. And I, and I think that this is
• 42:59
  really cool. And if I could suggest kind of
• 43:02
  coming over here and doing that because I, I love what you're
• 43:04
  doing and it's really going to help a lot of people.
• 43:07
  And you have no idea how impactful this is.
• 43:10
  And I get it. It's when people are kind of
• 43:12
  like on the journey and they treat me like a human instead of
• 43:15
  there being this big stratification and they don't
• 43:18
  look at them as down here and me as up here or me as our whole
• 43:21
  organization. What really floors me is when
• 43:24
  there are more indications of what you were just saying,
• 43:26
  Brett, of that equality and equanimity among people in
• 43:30
  different circumstances and that these individuals, these these
• 43:33
  people, these men and women are saying, I see, I see what you're
• 43:35
  doing. Please do more of this.
• 43:38
  And if you can do that. And anyway, you know, thank you
• 43:40
  so much. This is the impact it's having.
• 43:43
  And that that that there is this equality of you're over here
• 43:46
  doing this thing. We're doing this thing.
• 43:48
  I get it. I see you.
• 43:49
  When people say to me I see you, that's when it blows me away.
• 43:53
  Because it's a spark of like, it challenges the notion that
• 43:56
  they're some kind of broken beating down, you know, with
• 44:00
  nothing to give. They're like, hey, Alex, I have
• 44:04
  a few ideas for you and I'm writing it on this feedback
• 44:07
  form. I remember.
• 44:09
  So I've brought my my work team in to volunteer at level and I
• 44:13
  brought my kids in to volunteer. And, you know, one of the things
• 44:16
  we did now before we had AI was transcribe the letters into the
• 44:21
  platform that Alex built. And so you're sitting there
• 44:25
  typing in the response forms and the open answer fields from all
• 44:29
  these people. And I just remembered the
• 44:32
  goosebumps of like, oh, these are real people.
• 44:37
  Like you felt, 'cause it's, it's written in pencil.
• 44:39
  It's written in pen. You're trying to decipher the
• 44:43
  chicken scroll. Some people are not writing in
• 44:45
  very proper grammar, you know, and you're like, oh, this is a
• 44:50
  person, this is a human being that is living in a box in
• 44:55
  confinement. You know, it's shocking it
• 44:59
  seeing that handwriting, seeing that there's an intimacy there
• 45:05
  that's so different than, you know, people in prison and
• 45:09
  incarcerated people that I remember I was just like, whoa,
• 45:15
  you know, And I think for my daughter when she was doing it
• 45:18
  was like, Oh my, like mom, you know, these are people, you
• 45:23
  know, it's not just a number, it's not just two million, it's
• 45:27
  not just 25%. It's the letters on the paper.
• 45:30
  It's the actual. You know, there there's a on
• 45:33
  episode 24, I had a JD messenger who wrote one of my favorite
• 45:38
  books that I read this year. I've read it twice.
• 45:41
  It's called 11 Days in May and he calls those goosebumps truth
• 45:46
  bumps. It's your soul actually telling
• 45:49
  you, yes, yes, yes, you know, and that you're on the right
• 45:53
  path. And when you get good at reading
• 45:56
  your own energy, it helps guide you in decision making because
• 46:00
  you can kind of feel like, am I in alignment?
• 46:02
  This is what I meant to do. And you know, another book that
• 46:08
  I absolutely love this year I've recommended so many times is
• 46:11
  Awareness by Anthony D'mello. And it's all about waking up.
• 46:15
  And he's like the George Carlin of spiritual teachers, a great
• 46:18
  one on Audible. Amazing.
• 46:20
  But one of the things he talks about is how flattening
• 46:24
  languages and how it just kind of flattens everything to these
• 46:30
  are the incarcerated. No, these are human beings.
• 46:34
  You know, every single person on this earth is a human being.
• 46:37
  And it doesn't mean that every single human being is someone
• 46:43
  that wants to be saved in terms of turning their life around.
• 46:49
  Some people are in pretty bad situations, you know, they're
• 46:53
  terrorist, et cetera, and they haven't yet turned towards the
• 46:56
  light. Their soul wants them to.
• 46:58
  But whether or not their physical form can get there in
• 47:01
  this lifetime is a different question.
• 47:04
  But their soul, if you look at a soul level, they all want to be
• 47:06
  awakened and they're all divine at their core.
• 47:10
  But you know, most people do, like most people don't want to
• 47:14
  be stuck in a circumstance where they had something, either they
• 47:20
  did something horrific or something horrific happened to
• 47:22
  them. They're wrongfully incarcerated,
• 47:24
  or maybe they're rightfully incarcerated, whatever the case
• 47:27
  may be. But you know, people, people
• 47:31
  deserve a chance, and they deserve.
• 47:34
  An opportunity like little book segments that made a big impact
• 47:37
  on me was from Sam Harris, his free will.
• 47:40
  And it opens with a vignette of two men committing A horrific
• 47:43
  crime. And he goes into like a lot of
• 47:46
  detail about the crime. They they kill a family.
• 47:51
  And then at the end of the vignette, which I had to stop
• 47:55
  reading the book for a minute to just process that, he says, you
• 48:00
  know, a lot of people want to claim I never, I would never do
• 48:03
  that. He's like, but if you had been
• 48:05
  born the same way those people have been born, raised the way
• 48:08
  those people have been raised, had the life of those people
• 48:11
  that had, you would have made those decisions, right?
• 48:14
  And I think that's the thing that is, you know, challenging
• 48:18
  because we all want to like cast our judgement and cast, you
• 48:22
  know, like, well, I would never do such a thing, but you got to
• 48:26
  like unwind the string all the way back to the beginning, you
• 48:29
  know, before you can say I would never do that.
• 48:32
  And I think that's a really big consciousness shifting practice
• 48:37
  is to be able to have compassion, right?
• 48:40
  And to really not just put your arm out and be cold and make
• 48:44
  someone else the other. And, you know, you're saying
• 48:47
  like, hey, even in a terrorist, I see the goodness, I see the
• 48:51
  glow. I see the fundamental, you know,
• 48:54
  human possibility. And I think if more of us could
• 48:59
  do that more often, like even in the grocery store, you see
• 49:05
  people speaking so harshly to one another and not even coming
• 49:08
  from that place so. Robert Sapolsky is determined to
• 49:11
  follow us up on that line of Sam Harrison Really going from one
• 49:17
  second before that you think that decision was made to 100 to
• 49:21
  to hours to days to months, and then even to 50 and 100 years
• 49:25
  back to really chart the, the direction of how that every
• 49:30
  decision gets made. And it really changed the the
• 49:33
  way I, I look at things. And I think the notion of free,
• 49:39
  the justification of free will is a, is a social artifact so
• 49:43
  that we can justify what we have done and judge other people what
• 49:47
  they have done and taught. I mean, that is one of the
• 49:50
  biggest places where I feel, and it's super challenging.
• 49:52
  It's super challenging because what kind of world is there
• 49:54
  going to be if we say the things that I made the great that I did
• 49:58
  wasn't really mean. You have what if you, what if
• 50:00
  you have to, to, to separate yourself from that?
• 50:03
  Because if, if, if you're not, if you're going to change the
• 50:07
  attitude of, of judgment and free will on bad things, you
• 50:10
  also have to change that on, on the, on the great things that
• 50:13
  you did too. So to to fully divest yourself
• 50:16
  from that is it is hugely challenging and it takes a lot
• 50:18
  of. Love, I mean, I, you know, I try
• 50:21
  to practice it in the tiniest little microcosm at work.
• 50:24
  One of my mottos as ACEO is that I take credit for nothing and I
• 50:29
  take responsibility for everything, right.
• 50:32
  And I and I find that like it's a practice for me of having my
• 50:37
  leadership as a CEO not be ego driven.
• 50:41
  And I think that's a central tenant to this whole, you know,
• 50:45
  evolution of humanity is we've got to move out of the age of
• 50:49
  ego that we are like in the peak of it right now, right.
• 50:53
  Everything about social media, everything is all just feeding
• 50:56
  the ego, feeding the ego. But it's the ego that wants to
• 51:00
  take the credit, point the finger and say.
• 51:04
  I made that. Decision.
• 51:05
  Yes, and I'm better than you. You lower person what you know
• 51:09
  however you wanted to. Find the other.
• 51:10
  Yeah, you know, John Mackey is is a mutual friend of ours.
• 51:14
  And he was on this podcast a few episodes ago.
• 51:18
  And one of the things he told me that I'll never forget is he
• 51:24
  said, just go in and look at every single team member or
• 51:28
  every single human being that you encounter and say they're,
• 51:34
  they have a level of wisdom and so much to teach me.
• 51:38
  What am I going to learn? And like, have that type of
• 51:40
  curiosity. And he said, you'll find that
• 51:42
  everybody is so wise, you know, that there's so much to learn.
• 51:46
  And, and, and, you know, I mean, think about, you know, like one
• 51:51
  of the things I am an entrepreneur.
• 51:52
  So one of the things I envision with level is I envision these
• 51:57
  people that are incarcerated getting leveled up, you know,
• 52:01
  pun intended, right? And they get leveled up with
• 52:04
  their education. They come out now with the type
• 52:08
  of life circumstance that they've had to get them to the
• 52:13
  point where they're in prison in the 1st place and then have that
• 52:16
  shift where they really want to better themselves and break out
• 52:21
  of that, that prison of the mind, if you will.
• 52:25
  You know, the programming they received, you know, being told
• 52:27
  like, hey, you're always going to be this or you're always
• 52:30
  going to be that. You know, a lot of a lot of a
• 52:32
  lot of kids that grew up in very difficult situations or like
• 52:36
  told they're not going to amount to anything.
• 52:38
  So they've broken out of the prison of their own mind.
• 52:41
  They've deprogrammed, they've leveled up, and I think about
• 52:45
  like what kind of force they would be out there in society.
• 52:49
  A great story about this is 1 of people.
• 52:52
  I'm not going to name the person's name because this is a
• 52:54
  slightly personal story, but a leader who came out of
• 52:57
  incarceration and and has gone on to to do tremendous things.
• 53:01
  Just what you're saying to to build a whole new ecosystems.
• 53:04
  A tremendous leader in the field told the story that when when he
• 53:08
  was let out of prison the last day, a guard came up to him and
• 53:12
  said because of you, you paid for my boat.
• 53:15
  You paid for my boat through my salary.
• 53:19
  Yeah. And your kids are going to pay
• 53:21
  for my kids boats, talk about programming and talk about what
• 53:25
  you have to walk out of. And yet that person said
• 53:28
  absolutely not and went and changed.
• 53:31
  I think that person already was a completely different framework
• 53:34
  and said, no, we're going to go out this completely differently.
• 53:38
  And it it, you're right, it's a, it's a deprogramming.
• 53:42
  There's a. Lot of deprogramming and.
• 53:43
  That person probably built a a different type of boat that they
• 53:47
  included a lot of much larger boat to help to teach them all.
• 53:50
  I'll tell you this, one of the two of them are a lot more
• 53:52
  successful, right, Right. And it's not the guard.
• 53:54
  Yeah, yeah. No, I, I This conversation makes
• 53:57
  me think of Pema Chodron's book When Things Fall Apart.
• 54:00
  She's a Buddhist nun and she talks about how real despair and
• 54:06
  anguish in our lives softens us and and actually increases your
• 54:12
  capacity for empathy and connection.
• 54:14
  So could we even think about people in prison as being,
• 54:18
  having a gift that if they've truly, you know, processed and
• 54:23
  worked through whatever, you know, trauma had them be in
• 54:26
  there in the 1st place, that they might actually have a
• 54:29
  capacity for empathy or for forgiveness or for compassion
• 54:33
  that's even greater than someone who hadn't been through that?
• 54:36
  Like, I would love to not think of them as just, oh, how do we
• 54:40
  get them to muddle along and fit in society, But what would it
• 54:44
  even look like to see that that their experience could be a gift
• 54:49
  for this expanded consciousness? Pay it forward is a is a word
• 54:52
  that is a phrase, a term that is used so frequently of people
• 54:56
  coming out to pay it forward, to pay it to.
• 54:59
  It's sort of a bat to take care of the people that are behind
• 55:01
  them that they view that they have made it here, they've gone
• 55:04
  out, they're going to go on to great things.
• 55:07
  And there is such an ingrained tendency to say, now that I am
• 55:10
  here, I'm going to help. I'm going to help those who are
• 55:12
  who are behind me and pay and pay it forward.
• 55:15
  And so you're exactly right. And, and I think that that
• 55:17
  already exists. And look, there's some selection
• 55:19
  bias here. We're working with individuals
• 55:20
  that have raised their hand and say, I want a better future.
• 55:23
  And not everyone in the incarcerated population and not
• 55:26
  everyone in the in the free world is like that.
• 55:28
  So we are talking about individuals that have raised
• 55:30
  their hand and say, I want better things for myself.
• 55:32
  And those individuals generally are going to be the kind of
• 55:35
  people that would then say, if I take one step up, I'm going to
• 55:38
  make sure that I reach a hand out to those that are behind.
• 55:40
  But it's interesting you bring that up because it, it is a we,
• 55:44
  I, we see that a lot in the, in the outreach to, in the
• 55:47
  community outreach that we. Have Yeah.
• 55:48
  And, and the way that it works right now, you know, certainly
• 55:51
  if you have a felony, it makes it incredibly difficult to get a
• 55:54
  job, you know, or a house or anything.
• 55:58
  And, you know, there's no recognition whatsoever of like
• 56:03
  the, the, the transformation in being that a person would have
• 56:07
  had to have to, you know, get to the other side.
• 56:10
  So yeah. It's fascinating and it's a real
• 56:14
  fascinating manifestation of how our culture abuse, judgement and
• 56:18
  punishment. And the opportunity that I see
• 56:21
  and, and you bring this up a lot, Brett, is the opportunity
• 56:24
  for how are we moving towards a new age and a new age of, of
• 56:27
  unlocking different modalities of thinking.
• 56:31
  And I don't feel like I have the answer to this.
• 56:33
  The inspiration that I take is, is from the community that we
• 56:36
  work in, because I think a lot of those individuals, those
• 56:38
  people like you were saying with what John Mackey said, there is
• 56:42
  a, a, a beauty in, in their vision of what this brighter
• 56:46
  future would be, not just for themselves, but for culture as a
• 56:48
  whole. And so as you can try to work
• 56:50
  and capture and manifest and extend a helping hand in ways
• 56:56
  that you can it that isn't is my contribution and, and I'm lucky
• 57:01
  to be able to have the opportunity to do it.
• 57:03
  Of exactly what this podcast is about.
• 57:05
  Of, of getting towards that age of abundance for all is about
• 57:08
  consciousness shift of thinking a different way about.
• 57:11
  And certainly it is challenging. It is challenging.
• 57:14
  I don't do it anymore. We have staff that does it, but
• 57:16
  every intake person that we take, often times you see
• 57:19
  people's rap sheets. I mean, it's public information
• 57:21
  and you're looking a person up to know where they are and to
• 57:24
  make sure that you have them properly put in our system.
• 57:27
  And it is challenging. You have to see the, the harm
• 57:29
  and the chaos and the mistakes that people made.
• 57:31
  And I'm not at all wanting to, to, to diminish that.
• 57:34
  I mean, and they're not people have really hurt other people.
• 57:37
  I do know that in the free world, a lot of people have hurt
• 57:39
  other people. So they're they're not unique
• 57:41
  for that. However, there is the
• 57:45
  opportunity of, of having love conquer that fear of saying, I
• 57:49
  cannot work with that person because of this.
• 57:51
  And you say, well, what if you had to?
• 57:52
  What? There's just like a level of
• 57:55
  truth that this calls forth. And, you know, you were saying a
• 58:00
  few minutes ago that some people have questioned how authentic
• 58:03
  and vulnerable you've been on this podcast.
• 58:06
  And I think we're in a social reckoning right now in the
• 58:09
  United States where our current leadership is saying we don't
• 58:12
  want to talk about slavery. We don't want to, you know, shed
• 58:15
  a negative light on the American brand.
• 58:18
  So we're going to kind of cover up all these things.
• 58:21
  And I feel like that's going the opposite way, right?
• 58:24
  Like, we need to have hard conversations, whether that's at
• 58:27
  a societal level about slavery and structural racism and things
• 58:33
  like that, or whether it's at the individual level of like,
• 58:36
  OK, you know, you did something really horrible.
• 58:39
  Like we're going to have to have a conversation about that.
• 58:42
  You know, it feels like we just don't have a lot of capacity at
• 58:47
  either level. You know, people are telling you
• 58:50
  don't say those things, Brett, Pretend that's not true.
• 58:53
  Well, they they're, they're saying it out of.
• 58:55
  Protection. Problem well, they are saying it
• 58:57
  out of fear, but they're they're what they're worried about is is
• 59:00
  that I was going to lose a lot of friends and what I've told
• 59:03
  them is I've gained so many more friends this year.
• 59:07
  You can't even imagine. I've heard 10 friends now open
• 59:11
  up to me about their near death experiences, which last year and
• 59:16
  every year before that I had zero that had ever opened up
• 59:19
  about that. And literally 10 friends, some
• 59:22
  of them been friends for 10 to 20 years.
• 59:24
  Think about how sad that is the most important transformational
• 59:29
  experience of their life. They couldn't tell you about.
• 59:32
  They were afraid to tell me about because they were afraid
• 59:35
  that I would write them off as some kind of crazy person or
• 59:39
  woo. And that's that's where it's
• 59:42
  really cool that things like, you know, Dan Brown's new book
• 59:46
  and the till up the tapes are getting these out in the open,
• 59:52
  you know, are there? Is there true to every story?
• 59:56
  No, I mean that, you know, but but I mean, I would have to be a
• 1:00:00
  pretty crass person to think that 10 really close friends are
• 1:00:05
  looking at me in the eyes and telling me something.
• 1:00:07
  I mean, a lot of times they tear up, they start crying when
• 1:00:10
  they're telling me these stories and say, Oh, they were just, you
• 1:00:14
  know, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, that's, that's
• 1:00:18
  that's no way to be a friend to anybody.
• 1:00:20
  And so, so it's it is a time I think where.
• 1:00:25
  We have to get over our fears and just be authentic.
• 1:00:30
  Doesn't mean we're always going to be right, but let's at.
• 1:00:32
  Least. And it doesn't mean it's going
• 1:00:34
  to be easy. Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  Doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
• 1:00:36
  I'm in a class right now that's on polarity, and one of the
• 1:00:42
  topics that's come up is, you know, recognizing that there's
• 1:00:45
  both light and dark energy in all of us.
• 1:00:49
  And I think that, you know, we want to pretend like we're like
• 1:00:53
  90% light and 10% dark or maybe even 95% light and 5% dark.
• 1:00:59
  But what we miss in that is that like our dark energy is part of
• 1:01:02
  our power as well, you know, and I think that that's a part of
• 1:01:06
  this conversation of why we've made people, you know,
• 1:01:10
  incarcerated people like the other is there's a lot of dark
• 1:01:14
  energy, There's a lot of darkness.
• 1:01:16
  And, you know, I think like we can't fully find our greatest
• 1:01:21
  light, our greatest abundance without integrating darkness as
• 1:01:27
  well. And the shadow side, right?
• 1:01:29
  As long as we try to put it in a box, pretend it doesn't exist,
• 1:01:32
  never talk about it literally, you know, barred away.
• 1:01:37
  We are not an they're not integrated as beings and we are
• 1:01:40
  not going to transcend to like this greater way.
• 1:01:44
  So I think that feels counterintuitive to a lot of
• 1:01:47
  people that like the path towards like even greater Love
• 1:01:51
  Actually means you have to come to some acceptance and truth of
• 1:01:55
  your shadow parts. You know, as we're recording
• 1:01:58
  this, you haven't yet seen the John Mackey episode because it
• 1:02:01
  hasn't gone live. You literally are channeling him
• 1:02:03
  right now. This is a, this is a big, big
• 1:02:06
  point that he made is that humanity, the collective human
• 1:02:10
  psyche needs to have a great reconciliation and also embrace
• 1:02:16
  the power of forgiveness. You know, he turned me on to
• 1:02:20
  this book called Love is Letting Go of Fear by Jerry Jim Polsky.
• 1:02:25
  And it's a derivative work from A Course in Miracles, which he's
• 1:02:28
  really into. And I've got a number of friends
• 1:02:30
  that are into that and, and, and spend a lot of time and study
• 1:02:35
  groups. He's he spent years in that and
• 1:02:39
  it gives you very practical tips on how to let go of fear and
• 1:02:48
  allow love to conquer it. You know, you talked about a
• 1:02:53
  grocery store. A good example is you go into a
• 1:02:55
  grocery store and let's say that the person that is checking you
• 1:02:59
  out is someone that is just a total and complete jerk to you.
• 1:03:04
  Well, the quote UN quote natural human reaction would be to be a
• 1:03:09
  jerk back. But instead, if you act with
• 1:03:12
  curiosity, well, maybe their mom just passed away.
• 1:03:15
  Maybe something really horrible just happened in their lives.
• 1:03:18
  Maybe the customer before was just total jerk to them and now
• 1:03:23
  they're just, they're just thinking that the whole way.
• 1:03:26
  And he gives this great example of a lawyer that was acting that
• 1:03:30
  way to him. And he reacted and stood with
• 1:03:33
  complete and total love. And the next day, the lawyer was
• 1:03:38
  in the third row of his seminar, like, went and looked him up.
• 1:03:41
  And they're lifelong friends today because he said you were
• 1:03:44
  the first person, you know, he felt his power was just
• 1:03:47
  constantly treating people like that, you know, as a lawyer.
• 1:03:52
  And he was like, you were the first person that ever reacted
• 1:03:54
  differently. And so I wanted to see what
• 1:03:56
  you're all about. He was like curious, like almost
• 1:03:58
  like a science experiment and it created a heart shift in that
• 1:04:02
  lawyer. So let's go into AIA little bit
• 1:04:06
  deeper because I'm super fascinated.
• 1:04:09
  I mean, I'm spending almost all of my time on that these days.
• 1:04:14
  How do you really look at it practically in terms of
• 1:04:19
  embedding it in your solution and and leveling up level
• 1:04:24
  itself? The opportunity that we see is
• 1:04:29
  for what what Susie was alluding to earlier is more opportunities
• 1:04:32
  for localized and personalized information.
• 1:04:36
  And the the 8020 rule goes to show that 80% of of our content
• 1:04:41
  requests are for 20% of of content.
• 1:04:44
  They're just programming type orientation and that's normal.
• 1:04:47
  That's how all general curves go.
• 1:04:50
  But you you can make a lot of action in the long tail, right,
• 1:04:53
  with all of the individual items that people are looking for
• 1:04:57
  individual specific tailored experiences.
• 1:05:01
  And that is the way that you were talking about earlier bred
• 1:05:04
  about the the potential for AI to really help with education is
• 1:05:08
  giving individualized experiences.
• 1:05:10
  So we're really looking at the opportunity there and the, the,
• 1:05:14
  the problem is a couple fold. One, we can't go into these
• 1:05:16
  facilities and we're certainly not going to bring, they're not
• 1:05:19
  going to let us bring computers and Internet access.
• 1:05:21
  We're not going to bring tech bots into there.
• 1:05:23
  So we need to think about the input is going to be handwriting
• 1:05:27
  and through the mail, the output is going to be printed material
• 1:05:31
  sent out to individuals in prison and and to their family
• 1:05:34
  members on the outside. So we have that output.
• 1:05:37
  And then the, so the question is kind of what is in between what
• 1:05:39
  can we do and what technology is there that, that is within the,
• 1:05:45
  the realm of our, of our accomplishment.
• 1:05:47
  And so the, the first area that we're looking to go into before
• 1:05:50
  fully personalized educational curriculum development, which is
• 1:05:55
  that's probably a bit of a heavy swing for us right now.
• 1:05:58
  The, the first thing that we're looking for is personalized
• 1:06:01
  career mentorship solutions. So that this is something that a
• 1:06:04
  lot of people are really looking for is what is the work that I
• 1:06:07
  did before? What is the everybody works
• 1:06:09
  inside and they're, they're working all kinds of different
• 1:06:11
  jobs that they may not think could make, could, could, could
• 1:06:16
  be valuable on the on the other side, where am I getting out to?
• 1:06:20
  Where am I going home to? What employment is actually out
• 1:06:24
  there in that area? And and how to connect those
• 1:06:26
  dots? How to connect the dots from
• 1:06:28
  where I am right now to where I could be 2-2 years and then if
• 1:06:32
  and then a future beyond that? A person sends in the form, it
• 1:06:35
  goes into Carmen, right? And then Carmen is pulling
• 1:06:38
  information from what kinds of databases?
• 1:06:41
  And then what is Carmen spitting out?
• 1:06:42
  I think people would be. Interested in here?
• 1:06:44
  Well, so interesting. We already know a lot about
• 1:06:47
  these learners before they ever have to contact us again.
• 1:06:49
  We know what educational modules they've already been through.
• 1:06:52
  We know their test scores so far.
• 1:06:54
  So that can help us out with a lot of kind of where they're
• 1:06:56
  where they are academically with their with this experience
• 1:07:01
  they're going through. You can take writing level as a
• 1:07:04
  proxy for reading level. And this is the case for for a
• 1:07:06
  lot of us. We write with with what we with
• 1:07:09
  similarly to how we would read. So we know that the information
• 1:07:12
  already, we would need a lot of new information as things like
• 1:07:14
  where, where people are going home to, when they're going
• 1:07:18
  home, what jobs they had before, what jobs they've had on the
• 1:07:21
  inside. You, you talked about this
• 1:07:24
  earlier, Susie. What kind of work would you love
• 1:07:26
  to do, right? I mean, people are most likely
• 1:07:29
  going to need what they call in this, in this land, a life, a
• 1:07:31
  lifeboat job, which is that first job that you're going to
• 1:07:34
  get in month one to carry you to maybe even upwards of two years
• 1:07:38
  out to stabilize your economic situation.
• 1:07:42
  But what would you love to do after that, right?
• 1:07:44
  Because everybody wants to lead with purpose.
• 1:07:47
  So getting that information, then we have a process returning
• 1:07:50
  all that from handwriting and and bubble letters into machine
• 1:07:53
  readable text using AI and it does a fantastic job.
• 1:07:57
  It is all API, meaning it runs in the background.
• 1:08:00
  It's all computers talking to computers.
• 1:08:02
  So staff doesn't have to do anything like that.
• 1:08:05
  And then we have data partnership agreements with some
• 1:08:07
  really fantastic organizations. One of them is a is the largest
• 1:08:12
  jobs board for people with criminal records in America.
• 1:08:15
  They've called honest jobs, they've served 200,000 people
• 1:08:18
  and we're indeed and indeed does great work in this too.
• 1:08:21
  And they're a local Austin company and they are, they have
• 1:08:25
  call outs for for employers that were that were that are open to
• 1:08:29
  hiring people with records, which is called fair chance or
• 1:08:32
  second chance hiring. But that is up to the employer
• 1:08:35
  to say whether they're going to do it.
• 1:08:37
  There's organizations out there that are really even tracking
• 1:08:39
  who actually has gotten hired, right.
• 1:08:41
  So they're getting this data in to not just say, did the
• 1:08:44
  employer say that they would, but did they actually who got
• 1:08:47
  what job, where and on what criminal records.
• 1:08:49
  So we can get that data piped in.
• 1:08:51
  There's a lot of really amazing data from from the from the
• 1:08:55
  federal government about training opportunities that are
• 1:08:57
  available. And so we can use all that and,
• 1:09:00
  and build what's called a rag AI system, retrieval, augmented
• 1:09:04
  generation AI system to not just troll the open web and say, let
• 1:09:08
  me make some stabs at what Jeremy could do.
• 1:09:11
  But to say no, I'm gonna first go to these sources of truth for
• 1:09:15
  this data, which is real information from real
• 1:09:18
  organizations that put out. And it's localized to.
• 1:09:21
  Where Jeremy is going to highly. Locally.
• 1:09:24
  To come back and then say all that data coming in and to build
• 1:09:27
  a model that then can output and say here's a 20 page career
• 1:09:31
  development plan starting with today and going into all the
• 1:09:34
  things that could pathways to again to connect those dots.
• 1:09:38
  And that really to your point, that would not have been
• 1:09:41
  possible a year ago. The technology has gotten that
• 1:09:44
  good that quickly to be able to do that at scale.
• 1:09:48
  And the other very fun thing about it, I will say is that the
• 1:09:51
  the funder community is really open to these ideas.
• 1:09:54
  There's a lot of interest in the ways and the what they call the
• 1:09:57
  intersection of of AI and future of work, which is this idea of
• 1:10:00
  how do we build the the future of employment in America that we
• 1:10:04
  really want. And like you were saying, not
• 1:10:06
  just from a work working to put food on the table, which is
• 1:10:11
  quite important, but is there opportunities for?
• 1:10:14
  For one thing that as well that will be very exciting for you in
• 1:10:18
  terms of this cause is it not only have the capabilities
• 1:10:21
  gotten that good in three years, you know, humanity has never
• 1:10:27
  prioritized anything with as much money, time and energy.
• 1:10:32
  When President Trump announced Stargate on January 21st, 2025
• 1:10:39
  at 500 billion of funding alongside Larry Ellis and Sam
• 1:10:43
  Altman and Mayorsi son, that was already more inflation adjusted
• 1:10:48
  than we spent on the space race versus the Russians.
• 1:10:51
  It was more inflation adjusted than we spent on the Manhattan
• 1:10:54
  Project versus the Nazis and and Japanese to win World War Two.
• 1:10:59
  Since then, there's been about $7 trillion of announcements
• 1:11:05
  around the world to prioritize AGI.
• 1:11:08
  And so another three years in an exponential of the exponentials
• 1:11:14
  curve. I mean, it's going to be
• 1:11:17
  incredible what levels going to be able to do.
• 1:11:20
  So it's it's probably the single best time for people to invest
• 1:11:24
  in your cause and, you know, ride that curve up in terms of
• 1:11:30
  the capabilities. And, and that, that's one of the
• 1:11:32
  things that makes me the most excited about this opportunity
• 1:11:38
  for us to enter into abundance for everyone is that, you know,
• 1:11:43
  there's a lot of fear about loss of jobs and all of these things
• 1:11:48
  that, that make sense that there's fears about them.
• 1:11:51
  And there's always been these fears in, in various points in
• 1:11:54
  history where there's been a massive technological shift for
• 1:11:59
  good reason. You know, change is hard.
• 1:12:01
  You know, who, who might choose one of the most infamous books
• 1:12:04
  out there, right? It's, it's, it's not easy.
• 1:12:08
  But on the other side of that is abundance that is unimaginable
• 1:12:13
  today and abundance for, you know, really helping the
• 1:12:19
  incarcerated become beautiful, productive, amazing members of
• 1:12:26
  society. I mean, we should want that for
• 1:12:29
  every human being, period, whether they've ever been
• 1:12:32
  incarcerated or whether they haven't been.
• 1:12:35
  And, you know, every child, you know, giving every child the
• 1:12:39
  ability. There's genius is very
• 1:12:41
  distributed there. There's all this false sense of
• 1:12:45
  geniusness. It's very distributed across
• 1:12:49
  humanity. It's just really the cards that
• 1:12:54
  that you were dealt with when you when you were born.
• 1:12:59
  And there's some you know, there.
• 1:13:01
  I could go very spiritual on that where where journey of
• 1:13:04
  Souls, you know, by Michael Newton, you know, talks about
• 1:13:09
  why people would Incarnate into a completely impoverished
• 1:13:12
  country, into a war zone. Like, because if you think about
• 1:13:17
  it in this lifetime, you know, we're sitting here in America
• 1:13:20
  where, you know, we have a lot of abundance that would be
• 1:13:24
  unimaginable 250 years ago with $85,800 GDP per person.
• 1:13:32
  But the soul is divine energy. The soul is in a Kingdom of
• 1:13:38
  light and love. And so the soul actually doesn't
• 1:13:41
  have any material desire and wants to constantly expand its
• 1:13:46
  ability to grow. So it actually wants to
• 1:13:48
  Incarnate in different lifetimes in different challenging
• 1:13:53
  situations as well as not so challenging situations to see
• 1:13:57
  like what is it like to be an entrepreneur?
• 1:13:59
  What is it like to be in a war-torn country, etcetera.
• 1:14:03
  And it's, it's hard for us to even imagine that because we're
• 1:14:07
  in this world of form. But anyways, it's a bit of a
• 1:14:12
  spiritual diversion. We're in a world where we have a
• 1:14:15
  lot of judgments about what's a better life, right?
• 1:14:19
  Like we think being wealthy in the West, right?
• 1:14:23
  We're in the better life. That's program and being, you
• 1:14:26
  know, less wealthy in another part of the world is a lesser
• 1:14:31
  existence, right? Yeah.
• 1:14:32
  So I think that's already a little bit of yeah, the
• 1:14:35
  programming that somehow we all won the lottery.
• 1:14:39
  Well, if you look at our obesity rates, our mental health issue
• 1:14:44
  rates, maybe we didn't. Right, right, right.
• 1:14:47
  Yeah. I mean, it is.
• 1:14:47
  It is true that that the only path to lasting happiness is the
• 1:14:53
  inner journey. You know, I remember during the
• 1:14:56
  financial downturn of 2008, 2009, there was a German
• 1:15:02
  billionaire who was worth $3 billion who ran out and killed
• 1:15:06
  himself in front of a train because his wealth had gone from
• 1:15:11
  3:00 to 2:00. And that was like too much to
• 1:15:15
  look at other people in the eyes and that little enclave, the
• 1:15:19
  billionaires, and say, yeah, you know, I, I went down to 2
• 1:15:23
  billion. I lost 30% of my wealth.
• 1:15:26
  I'm so embarrassed. Right, right.
• 1:15:27
  But but it but it's sad, you know, I'm not like I'm not
• 1:15:30
  trying to make light of that like that, that that's a serious
• 1:15:34
  like level of programming and suffering that person had put
• 1:15:38
  themselves through. But it's just exemplary of that,
• 1:15:42
  you know, it There is no path to happiness that way.
• 1:15:48
  Now, certainly you need money as a utility to have experiences
• 1:15:52
  and Eid and everything else. And the hardest working people
• 1:15:56
  in America, I would actually say are the people working multiple
• 1:16:00
  manual labor jobs just to make ends meet.
• 1:16:03
  That that's a that's a different level of, of, of work.
• 1:16:09
  And, you know, let's hope that in this age of abundance for
• 1:16:12
  all, they can all actually do the work that they wanted to do
• 1:16:16
  because there's going to be such a deflationary aspect once we
• 1:16:21
  enter into abundance. Like, I think, I think the next
• 1:16:24
  10 years are going to be the most amazing capitalistic years.
• 1:16:29
  But I think that the Crest is that we'll hit this deflationary
• 1:16:34
  curve where all of a sudden, you know, let's take energy, for
• 1:16:38
  example, if we took 18 seconds of the sun's rays that fall on
• 1:16:44
  the earth and we could capture it.
• 1:16:46
  We just need the material science breakthrough.
• 1:16:48
  We would be able to power the world's energy needs for over a
• 1:16:51
  year, 18 seconds. And it's inevitable that we're
• 1:16:56
  going to figure that out. Just like alpha fold led to the
• 1:17:00
  breakthrough in protein folding, we're going to have a
• 1:17:03
  breakthrough in energy through material science that is
• 1:17:07
  unimaginable. And you know, it's going to be
• 1:17:11
  like 99.9% of Homo sapiens that did not experience electricity.
• 1:17:17
  We're in the top .1% of Homo sapiens that have because we've
• 1:17:23
  been around for 300,300 thousand years on this earth.
• 1:17:28
  And so that is a very modern invention that, you know, just
• 1:17:33
  imagine Susie growing up with no electricity, right?
• 1:17:36
  There's countries like that today that have.
• 1:17:39
  Asked you a question related to that.
• 1:17:40
  So, you know, I think of you as one of the most successful
• 1:17:44
  entrepreneurs I've ever known. And, you know, do you think that
• 1:17:49
  you would have been motivated to push the innovation threshold,
• 1:17:54
  to take the risks you took if money wasn't part of it and if
• 1:17:58
  it wasn't in part ego? Driven.
• 1:18:00
  Yeah, Yeah, I'm so glad you asked me that.
• 1:18:04
  The short answer is yes, I still would have done it.
• 1:18:07
  And the reason why is that growing up I had the
• 1:18:12
  unconditional love of my mom. May.
• 1:18:16
  I may not have done it if I did not have that unconditional
• 1:18:19
  love, but my soul for sure wanted me to.
• 1:18:24
  This is my divine calling to create a better world through
• 1:18:28
  technology. And I've known that since I was
• 1:18:31
  young. I wouldn't have put it in the
• 1:18:33
  words of the divine because I didn't know how to talk about
• 1:18:38
  it. That I had these voices in my
• 1:18:40
  head since I was very young telling me this is what I was
• 1:18:45
  meant to do and I didn't know how to process that.
• 1:18:49
  That I I knew when my mom gave me my first computer and learn
• 1:18:54
  how to program with me, that that's all I want to do from age
• 1:18:57
  7 on. So yes, I would have because I
• 1:19:00
  faced a ton of discrimination growing up in Texas.
• 1:19:03
  Like people were trying to beat me up all the time, calling me a
• 1:19:06
  nerd, etcetera. And I don't have any hatred for
• 1:19:11
  them in my heart at all. But pushing through that was not
• 1:19:15
  about capitalism because I was just a kid and I wasn't thinking
• 1:19:21
  like, wow, this is going to make me rich.
• 1:19:22
  And I'll show them I was. I was thinking, this is what I'm
• 1:19:26
  meant to do. I'm meant to create a better
• 1:19:28
  world through technology. I'm because I love the the image
• 1:19:32
  that you created of like the next 10 years being this peak of
• 1:19:35
  capitalism and innovation. And my fear is that it cup gets
• 1:19:40
  coupled with even more inequality.
• 1:19:43
  You know, when we look at Elon Musk and how far out of an
• 1:19:47
  outlier he is. So I, I find myself wondering
• 1:19:50
  like, is there a way for us to benefit from all that innovation
• 1:19:55
  without it being coupled with so much any, you know, wealthy?
• 1:20:00
  I think it would be fine on that front.
• 1:20:03
  And that what gives me a lot of hope on that front is if you've
• 1:20:07
  never read the chapter on inequality and enlightenment now
• 1:20:12
  by Steven Pinker, it's phenomenal.
• 1:20:14
  It'll it'll redefine the way you think about that.
• 1:20:17
  And that doesn't mean there's not inequality right now.
• 1:20:19
  There is for sure. But what's going to happen in my
• 1:20:25
  opinion, is we're going to Crest to this point where we can see
• 1:20:30
  abundance for everybody. And we're going to have
• 1:20:33
  unprecedented power with these tools you, you're already
• 1:20:36
  talking about with level, you have unprecedented power now to
• 1:20:39
  level up level, right? And, and help and help the
• 1:20:42
  incarcerated. And we're going to hit this
• 1:20:45
  Crest where we can see it. We can see like, do we want to
• 1:20:48
  end all disease? Do we want unlimited energy?
• 1:20:50
  Do we want to have abundance for everybody on this earth?
• 1:20:54
  Do we want to realize that we're 99.9% the same?
• 1:20:57
  Or are we going to continue to play the 0 sum game and this is
• 1:21:03
  a forcing function moment for humanity.
• 1:21:06
  You know what I what I talked about it in the lattice, my
• 1:21:09
  science fiction novella I gave gave you both today is it's
• 1:21:13
  God's final exam. And I don't mean that in such a
• 1:21:18
  heavy way to be terrifying because I don't look at whatever
• 1:21:23
  the force is that created this universe to be that I, I see I
• 1:21:27
  see that force being rooted in love.
• 1:21:29
  That's certainly what I've directly experienced and what
• 1:21:33
  people experience through meditation or near death
• 1:21:35
  experience or other other modalities.
• 1:21:40
  It's, it's it, it is, it is rooted in love.
• 1:21:43
  And so it wants us to survive and it wants us to transcend.
• 1:21:49
  And the way I look at it both mystically and metaphorically is
• 1:21:53
  it's that is the merger of heaven and earth.
• 1:21:56
  Like, just imagine a world where Chad has the abundance that we
• 1:22:02
  have today in 2025. Like, just imagine what that
• 1:22:06
  would do societally. Because Africa is where the
• 1:22:09
  future of humanity is. That's where almost all of the
• 1:22:12
  children are. So what are we going to do with
• 1:22:15
  those? And don't ever underestimate the
• 1:22:18
  power of bottoms up. Meaning that yes, there are
• 1:22:23
  leaders right now who are playing the zero sum game, but
• 1:22:28
  Gandhi, Mandela and others showed that through non
• 1:22:33
  violence, you can get the masses to rise up and humanity is going
• 1:22:38
  to demand abundance. They're not going to they're not
• 1:22:41
  going to be, they're not going to allow for inequality.
• 1:22:46
  That's that leads to massive suffering.
• 1:22:49
  There's not, you know, the the amazing forcing function of this
• 1:22:54
  period is we're going to invent AGI.
• 1:22:57
  That's going to lead to artificial superintelligence.
• 1:22:59
  That's going to lead to what I call God like intelligence in
• 1:23:03
  the novella. And it's too good to not have
• 1:23:08
  meaning. When we discovered fire, we
• 1:23:11
  weren't able to play the game to be like, sorry, Susie, you know
• 1:23:16
  your tribe can't have fire. Like it's only going to be my
• 1:23:19
  tribe. And because because your tribe
• 1:23:22
  would have been like, we're taking over that tribe.
• 1:23:25
  We're going to get fire. I mean, because it's too good
• 1:23:29
  not to have like, you need to warm homes and you need to cook
• 1:23:32
  your food. And that AI is going to be like
• 1:23:36
  electricity. It already is for the people
• 1:23:39
  that have it. And it's going to be
• 1:23:42
  increasingly more. So we're going to be like Mickey
• 1:23:44
  Mouse and Fantasia being able to manifest, you know, things.
• 1:23:48
  If we could, if you and I and you know, Alex could, could just
• 1:23:52
  jump into a time machine and go 100 years from now.
• 1:23:56
  And I think we'll make it. I'm 95% certain we make it to
• 1:23:58
  this age of abundance for all. We would look at the people 100
• 1:24:03
  years from now and we would be like, those people are like gods
• 1:24:07
  to us today. Like they would be able to
• 1:24:09
  create things from, you know, in their hands and we wouldn't know
• 1:24:14
  what's going on, but it would be some kind of nano, you know,
• 1:24:17
  construction device that's invisible, that just creates the
• 1:24:22
  food they want or creates, you know.
• 1:24:24
  Well, and I hope similarly when you say they would be like God's
• 1:24:27
  to us, I hope you would see in them love and compassion and
• 1:24:31
  forgiveness and inclusion that right now we attribute to God
• 1:24:36
  and we don't even think humans are capable.
• 1:24:38
  Of there's, in my opinion, there's no other way for us to
• 1:24:42
  make it because with great power comes great responsibility.
• 1:24:47
  So if, if they were not wired that way, they wouldn't have
• 1:24:51
  made it. And that's, that's what the
• 1:24:54
  lattice talks about is throughout space and time.
• 1:24:57
  There's a point where any, you know, race of beings, you know,
• 1:25:02
  we're, we're the human race gets to a point where it has to make
• 1:25:06
  that fateful choice because they get to this evolutionary point
• 1:25:12
  where they can manifest technology, where the
• 1:25:15
  destructive capability is so vast.
• 1:25:18
  I mean, you know, this is this is a bit of a downer, but but
• 1:25:22
  I'll, I'll just ask both of you this question.
• 1:25:25
  So to talk about how pronounced the fear centres of a brain are
• 1:25:31
  amygdala. Today humanity has 13,000
• 1:25:36
  nuclear weapons. OK, that's that's what is ready
• 1:25:40
  for deployment right now. What percentage of those do you
• 1:25:44
  think it would take to destroy all medium to large sized cities
• 1:25:48
  in the entire world and send the globe into a nuclear Holocaust
• 1:25:53
  for a decade? Just what?
• 1:25:55
  What would be your guess? 5%.
• 1:25:59
  OK, what's your guess, Alex? .25.
• 1:26:03
  OK, wow, OK. Nobody's gets that low, but it's
• 1:26:08
  2%, OK? So today we have 50 times the
• 1:26:12
  amount, OK. And then if you and I just came
• 1:26:17
  to this Earth, like we would say, well, what does humanity
• 1:26:19
  call that? Do you know what the humanity
• 1:26:20
  calls this? There's a term for it.
• 1:26:23
  Mutually assured destruction. What's the acronym for that?
• 1:26:25
  Mad yeah. OK, so we have an insanity,
• 1:26:28
  yeah, right. But and we're playing
• 1:26:30
  psychological tricks on each other with very real weapons.
• 1:26:34
  They're not Tory weapons. So we have to make the choice.
• 1:26:38
  I, I don't see any other way or we will destroy ourselves.
• 1:26:41
  And, and, and I think that there are lots of things that will get
• 1:26:48
  us to make that choice. I do think there's a
• 1:26:49
  consciousness awakening going on right now that's getting us to
• 1:26:54
  realize the divinity within ourselves, whether you're
• 1:26:59
  spiritual or not, like you can get to this path through
• 1:27:02
  Stoicism, You can get there through Vedanta, you know, which
• 1:27:05
  is more of a philosophical path, which I've studied for years
• 1:27:08
  that came out of India. But one way or another, we have
• 1:27:12
  to get there or it's over. And so, so it's, it's going to,
• 1:27:17
  it's going to force us to make that choice because we are
• 1:27:20
  manifesting it with more money, time and energy than anything
• 1:27:25
  we've ever done. So where, where do you, where do
• 1:27:28
  you 2 stand in terms of your, your confidence in terms of US
• 1:27:32
  making it? I'm curious.
• 1:27:34
  It's hard for me to separate my confidence from my hope.
• 1:27:39
  Yeah, I know, I know. You know.
• 1:27:41
  I understand that guilty as charged on.
• 1:27:44
  That front too, I, I, I know that it's possible.
• 1:27:47
  I've seen people transform and I guess you know one one of the
• 1:27:52
  questions in my mind is how do I think about it non linearly?
• 1:27:57
  Because there's not enough time in 10 years for one by one
• 1:28:02
  linearly everyone to have the consciousness expansion.
• 1:28:06
  So what are the kinds of mechanisms that can create non
• 1:28:10
  linear expansion? And I don't know the answer to
• 1:28:13
  that, but I believe it's possible.
• 1:28:15
  Yeah, yeah. How about?
• 1:28:16
  How about you? I believe pretty deeply that
• 1:28:20
  the, the future isn't predicted. It's, it's designed.
• 1:28:23
  And I like to think about what we're doing right now.
• 1:28:26
  And I understand and, and believe in the hope that you put
• 1:28:30
  forward there. I heard a lot of we're going to
• 1:28:32
  and it's going to, I think we're getting called on it right now.
• 1:28:35
  I think we're getting called on it today.
• 1:28:37
  And the choices of what we do today and the, the desire for
• 1:28:42
  abundance for all can can be manifested today.
• 1:28:45
  So I, I really frame my thinking on not predicting the future,
• 1:28:50
  but but designing it and doing it on a daily basis and being
• 1:28:55
  aware of both the, the pluses and minuses that are that are
• 1:28:59
  happening and with the opportunities and the, and the,
• 1:29:02
  and the, and the mistakes, to be frank.
• 1:29:04
  So that that's where that's where I put my time and energy.
• 1:29:08
  Well, we, we better wrap this up because I know that I know you
• 1:29:13
  have an appointment and I just want to say, you know, love our
• 1:29:18
  friendship. I mean, thank you so much.
• 1:29:20
  Thanks. Thanks.
• 1:29:20
  Thanks by the way, for helping Rachel so much over the years
• 1:29:24
  and for helping me and, and you know, for helping Alex.
• 1:29:27
  It's so cool. And Alex, I love your heart.
• 1:29:30
  I mean, it's, it's incredible what you're doing.
• 1:29:32
  And I just envision, you know, the incarcerated people you're
• 1:29:38
  already helping. Just want to give you a big hug,
• 1:29:40
  you know, and your whole team. I hope people support this
• 1:29:43
  cause. And it really deserves to be
• 1:29:45
  supported. And it's never been a better
• 1:29:47
  time to support it because now you got the leverage point with
• 1:29:50
  AI to create abundance for all. And that includes, you know,
• 1:29:54
  people who are who are incarcerated.
• 1:29:57
  They're people too. It's a good mirror for this
• 1:30:00
  conversation or maybe like a good accountability check, like
• 1:30:03
  we also have to stay like in action to Alex's point.
• 1:30:07
  I really enjoyed this. Yeah, thanks so much for having.
• 1:30:10
  Us. Thank you.
• 1:30:11
  Yeah. So thanks again, everybody for
• 1:30:13
  tuning in to another episode of Love Conquers Fear.
• 1:30:16
  I absolutely loved that episode with Alex and Susie.
• 1:30:21
  If you're watching this on video, you can see that I'm
• 1:30:23
  wearing a different shirt. And normally for a retake of an
• 1:30:28
  outro, I would put the same shirt I had on, but I thought I
• 1:30:32
  would just tell a funny story. So the reason that I'm taking
• 1:30:36
  this retake is that during that outro, the light in here was
• 1:30:41
  just going completely nuts and just flashing, flashing,
• 1:30:44
  flashing. And afterwards Susie showed me a
• 1:30:48
  tattoo that she has and her tattoo says lightning on it.
• 1:30:54
  And we both had a really good laugh.
• 1:30:55
  And I've referenced the Celestine prophecy, and there it
• 1:31:00
  was once again, the divine was poking in, making us realize
• 1:31:04
  that there was something that we hadn't covered, which was, you
• 1:31:08
  know, her real spirit, force of nature.
• 1:31:12
  And Susie definitely is a force of nature.
• 1:31:15
  I've known her for a long time, and what she's been able to
• 1:31:19
  accomplish in her life and the level of passion that she's
• 1:31:23
  exuded has just been off the charts.
• 1:31:26
  I'm super proud to know her as a friend and so I thought I would
• 1:31:30
  record this atro with with just being honest about what happened
• 1:31:36
  in the room. This light was going crazy and
• 1:31:39
  we found out that there was a reason that it was.
• 1:31:43
  I hope all of your new year is off to a great start and stay
• 1:31:48
  tuned for many more exciting episodes of Love Conquers Fear.
• 1:31:52
  Really appreciate all of your support.