Latest / Identity at the Center / #378 - Death and the Digital Estate (DADE)

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#378 - Death and the Digital Estate (DADE) · Identity at the Center

0:04
This is identity at the center. Welcome to the Identity at the
0:11
Center podcast. I'm Jim McDonald.
0:13
Unfortunately, Jeff Stedman couldn't make it to this
0:16
episode, but we're going to have a fantastic conversation about
0:20
death in the digital estate. It's been something that you've
0:23
probably been reading about on your LinkedIn feed, but today
0:26
we're going to jump into with the people who are advancing the
0:29
ball with this. I'm going to start out by
0:31
introducing Dean Saks. He's the principal security
0:34
engineer for identity and access management at Remit Lee.
0:38
He's also the Co chair of the Open ID Foundation, Destin's
0:42
digital state community group that we're going to talk about
0:45
today. And he's the Co chair of the
0:47
Ipsy working group. Both of those are at the Open ID
0:50
Foundation. Dean was last with us on episode
0:53
316 all the way back in November.
0:57
And Dean, welcome back to the show.
1:00
Thank you for having me, Jim. I appreciate it.
1:01
It's great to be here. And yeah, last time we recorded
1:04
together was at Authenticate last year.
1:06
I look forward to seeing you there in just a couple of weeks.
1:08
Yeah, can't wait. That's always a great location
1:11
to be for a conference, that's for sure.
1:13
What do you been up to since then?
1:16
You know, I, I, I after I last saw you there, I spent a few
1:19
more months at the startup I was at.
1:21
I left the startup back in early June, about a week or so after
1:26
Identiverse, spent the summer kind of doing other non IT, non
1:32
identity oriented things and spent a lot of time with these
1:35
two lovely people here. Mike and Heather working on the
1:39
Death and Digital State white paper that we're going to talk
1:41
about in a little bit as well as the the planning guy that we'll
1:43
also talk about and spent some time doing some interviews and
1:47
joined Remitly as the Principal Security Engineer for Identity
1:50
and Access Management just about 9 days ago.
1:53
So I am actively drinking from all of the fire hoses right now
1:57
and trying to learn about the business, our identity systems,
2:01
and trying to figure out right now which end is up.
2:05
Yeah, I know of, you know, when you join new organizations
2:07
trying to figure that out. So if you've gotten down the
2:10
elevator pitch from what Revitly does.
2:13
I've gotten some of the elevator pitch down, but Remit Lee is a
2:18
money transfer service. So we transfer funds
2:23
predominantly serving like immigrant communities who want
2:26
to transfer funds back home and operate in, I think it was 160
2:32
countries worldwide. But please don't quote me on
2:34
that. And I should note that the work
2:38
I'm doing with Open ID Foundation, Death and Digital
2:40
State Community Group is on my own time.
2:42
It's not related to my work here Remitly, but they certainly
2:45
support me me doing that, which is fantastic.
2:49
Yeah, soundly it's, it's kind of a good cause which I'm sure kind
2:52
of pleading to decision to go there.
2:55
Yeah, absolutely. You know, working at a, a, a, a
2:59
place that that really puts people first.
3:02
It was really important to me many, many years ago.
3:05
I worked at the Gates Foundation, kind of had very
3:07
similar mission, obviously nonprofit versus a for profit
3:11
company. So a little different, but yeah,
3:13
it really aligns with my own personal values.
3:15
And so I'm super happy to be here.
3:17
That sounds awesome. So Dean, we're also joined by
3:21
two other lovely people, as you said.
3:23
So that's this is going to be an exciting episode.
3:25
We also have Heather Flanagan. She's the founder of Spherical
3:29
Cal Consulting. Gosh, that's a mouthful for me
3:32
for some reason. Heather's a regular on the
3:35
podcast, I would say. So she was here back in episode
3:39
228 all the way back in August 23.
3:42
And it's important to kind of like go back to that landmark
3:45
because if you want to hear how she got into identity, that's
3:48
where you go. But she was also here in episode
3:51
344 giving us the ID Pro quarterly update.
3:54
As you know, the podcast is the official podcast of the ID Pro.
3:59
Heather, what have you been off to since the last time you were
4:02
here? Well, I've been on a lot of
4:04
airplanes. I've been collecting a whole set
4:07
of Delta trading cards because Delta Airlines has trading cards
4:10
for their airplanes. It's very exciting and I've been
4:13
doing quite a bit of research for a blog series because I'm
4:17
I'm an avid Blogger. No one pays me for that.
4:19
This is just stuff I do because it's how I learned.
4:22
I learned by writing. And what's coming out next week
4:26
is about Internet fragmentation, specifically fragmentation at
4:29
the technical level, the regulatory level, and the
4:32
commercial level, which is interesting to see how that's
4:35
changing the Internet as we know it.
4:36
But then the next one is about what's going to mitigate that
4:41
fragmentation, which is supply chain realities.
4:44
You can't build your computers, you can't advance your AI, you
4:48
can't grow your cloud without computer chips, and you can't
4:52
build computer chips locally. That's a global effort.
4:56
And then the next one is about demographics.
4:59
And then the last one is about what does all this look like in
5:01
standards development? So it was like a whole lot of
5:03
research that went into this, a lot of writing, a lot of fun.
5:07
Heather, I love how you're like really expanding your world.
5:11
I mean, identity has always been a kind of at the core of what
5:14
you do, but now it's it's growing beyond that.
5:18
What what has driven you to want to do that?
5:21
You know, it's, it's more in a way, it's the other way around,
5:24
right? The world is starting to
5:26
recognize that identity is at the core of your digital
5:31
experience. You know, all all the way
5:33
through. Identities at the center if you.
5:35
Want you could you could say that in fact and you would not
5:39
necessarily be wrong. So for me looking at all of this
5:42
it's it's very it's still all related it's still OK well, if
5:48
identity drives your your online experience, what else drives
5:52
your online experience? What else is the Internet about
5:55
and the web about and how does it all come together?
5:57
So these kinds of questions are very useful.
6:01
And honestly, there was a bit of a selfish question into it
6:03
because I can see the fragmentation happening.
6:06
I'm a globalist. At the end of the day, I want to
6:08
know what's happening in the world because I am constantly
6:12
going around the world to meet with different people to talk
6:14
about Internet standards and digital identity and everything.
6:17
Well, what does that look like? In a world where things are
6:21
becoming more fragmented and more isolationist?
6:24
What does, what does a globalist like me do for a living in a
6:28
world like that? That's that's what really got me
6:30
thinking about this, and that's where those blog posts came
6:32
from. Heather, how long have you been
6:35
traveling all over the world? 15 years.
6:39
OK, 15 years, I thought, you know, I traveled to Europe a lot
6:45
kind of I was around like O five O 6, so like 20 years ago.
6:51
And what I realized was having never left the US, you get a
6:55
very US centered view of the world.
6:59
And I think it's healthy for everybody to travel
7:03
internationally and just get the different perspectives that, you
7:08
know, there's not an US and them.
7:10
It's just an US, right? Pretty much.
7:13
That's kind of the way I look at it.
7:15
My first, my first international trip for business, which was
7:19
really my first international trip for anything that exposed
7:22
me to different cultures was the day I turned 40.
7:26
So, you know, it's never too late to actually start on
7:29
learning that and experiencing that.
7:30
So and. You know, and I just realized
7:34
they said there's never an us and them and them.
7:37
And here I am, wearing my New York Yankees hat.
7:40
You know, I wasn't going to say it, but.
7:43
You know, I mean, and I was at the at a big playoff game last
7:47
night and I'm going to introduce our next guest and I know he's
7:51
going to give me a hard time. So I'm just going to get it out
7:54
there. I am a Yankees fan and I've had
7:57
people say, oh, I guess you also like the Dallas Cowboys and, you
8:02
know, all the teams that win every, all the time, you know,
8:06
and that's not true. I don't like the Cowboys.
8:08
But I hope we don't get anybody unsubscribing from the Show just
8:14
because I'm wearing a New York Yankees hat.
8:17
It, you know, I feel like I'm taking a chance a little bit.
8:20
What do you think, Mike? Well, I, I think it's a choice.
8:24
I think it's a choice. I mean, it's not you got to be
8:26
true to who you are though, Jen, right?
8:28
You can't, you can't hide your affections and your passions to
8:32
your, your audience. I think they can, they can live
8:34
with that. They can learn to adapt, even,
8:36
you know, we all make mistakes. And it's, it's going to be 1 of
8:40
yours, you know? No, I, I have a friend who
8:45
follows the Cleveland Guardians, the Cleveland teams in general,
8:48
religiously. And the only reason I know as
8:51
much as I do about Cleveland sports is because of him.
8:54
He's always sending me a message saying, Hey, Can you believe
8:56
what happened? And I'm like, I and I have to go
8:59
look up what's I know it's Cleveland sports related
9:01
somehow. So I can't help but know what's
9:03
going on with the Browns and the Guardians and.
9:06
And that's kind of what friendships are made off of,
9:08
right? Affections and how we define our
9:10
identity, ha ha. And just being in relation.
9:13
So, yeah, no shame in that. No shame in that.
9:15
And you'll make up the subscriber base from New
9:18
Yorkers, right? You lose a few Boston folks, you
9:21
know that's all right. You never know, I, we want
9:24
everyone to listen. So regardless of what your team
9:27
affiliation, I, I've remembered there were different times where
9:30
I was not as into sports. I mean, it kind of comes and
9:33
goes. I remember people saying, oh,
9:35
yeah, did you see that game this weekend?
9:37
Oh, yeah, Yeah. Well, sure.
9:40
Could you believe that call? No.
9:41
Couldn't believe that call. That's terrible, terrible call.
9:45
Just got to be you, you know, journalist.
9:47
Yeah, you are Mike Kaiser, Director of Strategy Ascender
9:51
the Cell Point and Co chair of the Shared Signals working group
9:55
at OIDF. That's a lot.
9:58
And you are also a friend of the show.
10:01
You're here back on episode 318 back in November of 24.
10:07
What have you been up to since then?
10:10
Well, since that glorious episode 318, which was a lot of
10:14
fun, the normal life, which means a couple different things,
10:19
right? It means trying to yeah, that's
10:22
the shared signal standard. Obviously working on some scam,
10:26
vet based scam approaches and IETF that's nearing last call
10:33
doing our day job obviously on behalf of Sail Point, but then
10:37
also the the stuff that we worked on here, but that's from
10:41
the digital estate is kind of my wheelhouse.
10:44
I have a a degree in theology and I'm also in technology and
10:47
innovation, all that. And so it all kind of wraps up
10:50
together, right? And so I've actually been
10:53
reading a fascinating book that's going to take me forever,
10:57
but that's OK. It's called Sources of the Self
11:01
by an Oxford professor named Charles Taylor.
11:04
And it's really fascinating because he's trying to define
11:06
how we form our identities and how that change, how that
11:10
evolves into basically how we make moral choices and decide
11:15
what's important and what's valuable and all that.
11:17
And that really plays in, in my opinion, into what we're doing
11:21
because it's kind of the core of our humanity.
11:24
And so that it's really fascinating and rare to be at a
11:27
place where different streams of passion and thought and whether
11:33
it's, you know, globalism or whatever else it is like this is
11:36
such a Nexus of different avenues that meet together.
11:41
And so she's really exciting to hang out with cool people like
11:44
Dean and Heather and Eve are Co chair and they're working in the
11:48
community group to just all kind of hang out and a cast of many,
11:53
many, many, many people, all kinds from different geos and
11:57
walks of life and saying, oh, I saw this.
11:59
This is my experience. Isn't you get that with this
12:02
kind of a discussion. People just light up because
12:05
there's always some Ave. for them to share their experience.
12:09
Yeah. I'm going to record with Eve
12:11
next week and I know she's always been like a huge fan of
12:16
what you guys are working on with Dave.
12:18
So what is the role in all of this?
12:22
So Eve is one of our Co chairs last year around the summer of
12:27
last year, so after Identiverse of 2024, we we did a
12:32
presentation at Identiverse on the mainstage and it was Eve and
12:37
Mike and Kalia Young and myself. After that presentation, I kind
12:42
of left with the, the task of writing a charter to charter
12:46
the, the community group and kind of dawdled on it for a
12:50
while, didn't really get much done.
12:51
And then, and then he was like, hey, where, where is this
12:54
anyway? And I was like, Oh yeah, I got
12:55
it kind of finished that and, and sort of prompted me to, to
12:58
get it done, get it up in front of the OIDF board and, and get
13:02
the community group chartered. And once that happened, of
13:05
course, there were two natural people that I wanted to ask to,
13:07
to join me on the journey as Co chairs.
13:10
And that's Mike and Eve. And I couldn't ask for for
13:13
better Co chairs because we all come from slightly different
13:17
places, slightly different traditions to certainly
13:20
different backgrounds. I don't have the background in
13:22
theology that Mike does, but it's been really helpful to have
13:28
those different perspectives as we start having these
13:31
conversations that are not always easy.
13:35
Because believe it or not, people don't like speaking about
13:38
death. In fact, it is something I am
13:42
fundamentally and horribly uncomfortable with.
13:44
And I have had to find a way to, to build my comfort level with
13:49
being able to talk about it so that we can move this work
13:53
forward. Because, you know, one of my
13:55
values is, is protecting myself and others.
13:58
And I live by that value every day.
14:01
And in order to do that, it means that we have to move this
14:03
work forward because it is about protecting not only people that
14:08
I care about, but about providing those mechanisms to
14:11
protect anyone who wants to avail themselves of them when
14:14
they are interacting online. And all of us are eventually
14:17
going to die whether we like it or not.
14:19
And so we all need that that set of tools that doesn't exist
14:24
today and hopefully will in the future in order to be able to
14:29
protect our identities posthumously.
14:32
That's very well put. And so the death in Digital
14:35
State community Group is about putting out what guidance for
14:41
all the things that you just talked about the guidance or is
14:45
what what is the perspective of the community group in terms of
14:48
everything you just said? How do you advise people?
14:52
Yeah. So when we founded the community
14:55
group, it was founded as a community group which does not
14:59
have the authority within the Open ID Foundation to write
15:01
specifications because we didn't even know at the time of
15:04
founding and writing the charter what kind of specifications
15:07
would be even right. We didn't know the extent of the
15:10
problems. We didn't know the extent of the
15:13
the legal challenges, the technical challenges, the social
15:17
and cultural challenges that we were going to face.
15:20
And so the community group was really founded to try and draw
15:23
some of that out and draw out an understanding of what is the
15:26
current state of play with managing one's digital estate
15:29
and trying to understand all of the interactions with law and
15:33
policy and culture and religion, etcetera.
15:36
And I, I have to say, I have learned so much about other
15:40
people and cultures through this work and the way that they think
15:43
about things. And so in collecting that data
15:48
and collecting kind of some use cases for why we need to manage
15:52
our digital estates instances. Like there was a, a gentleman in
15:57
Arizona, I believe it was Arizona.
15:58
Mike, please correct me if I'm wrong.
16:01
And he was murdered after a road rage, road rage incident.
16:06
And a few years went by and went to trial and the the person who
16:12
who murdered this gentleman was found guilty.
16:14
And during the sentencing phase of the trial, the family of the
16:18
deceased man used AI to create an AI deep fake of this person
16:24
who's now deceased using his his images and voice to be played
16:30
for the judge and the assembled audience in the courtroom during
16:34
the sentencing phase of this trial, which of course
16:37
influences how that plays out. But the reality is that it
16:41
wasn't his words. It wasn't the deceased words.
16:45
It wasn't his thoughts. It was the the thoughts in the
16:48
words of his sister who put this avatar together or this deep
16:53
fake together that got played in the court.
16:55
And for me, I, I feel horribly uncomfortable with these kinds
17:00
of things. And as technology continues to
17:03
progress, we're seeing more and more of these sorts of things
17:06
pop up in the world. And I don't think we as a
17:09
society yet know how to handle it.
17:12
And, you know, I certainly don't.
17:16
And I think both Heather and Mike would agree that these are
17:18
are challenges that we need to describe and document so that we
17:24
can then begin to work to find solutions.
17:28
You know, hopefully this isn't taking us too far off from where
17:32
you're going, but we talked about use the term community
17:35
group here, use the term working group when we talked about some
17:40
of the other things that are going on.
17:42
I'm wondering what is a community group?
17:44
Like? What are the differences there?
17:45
Why did it? Why do you call 1A community
17:47
group? Why do you call another a
17:49
working group? I'm not sure if Mike or Heather
17:51
have an answer for that. I got this one.
17:55
So this, if we were writing this down, I would now put a little
17:58
sidebar around this part of the conversation.
18:01
This little box make it even a community group is is literally
18:05
a community that can come together and less formally share
18:09
information. And that's pretty much the same
18:12
across several different standards organizations, the
18:14
Open ID Foundation, the W3C, There's still a the the level of
18:19
formality exists to say you do have to actually generally agree
18:24
to certain codes of conduct, how you're going to behave in the
18:29
group. You're going to have to accept
18:30
certain levels of Internet intellectual property rules,
18:34
things like that. But it is a place to come and
18:37
chat and share ideas and whatnot.
18:39
However, fairly consistently across all of the standards
18:44
organizations I've ever worked with, a community group, while
18:47
they can get together, they can chat, they can write papers,
18:50
they can have meetings, they can have notes.
18:52
What they cannot do is actually develop a technical standard or
18:58
a best practice document, right? That they cannot do what the W3C
19:02
would call a recommendation, they cannot do what the Open ID
19:07
Foundation would call a standard.
19:08
That's that's that is reserved for working groups.
19:12
Working groups generally have stricter participation
19:14
requirements in terms of you have generally have to be a
19:17
member of whatever organization it is.
19:21
What that membership looks like will depend from one
19:23
organization to the next to the next, and there's usually
19:26
stricter intellectual property rules going with it.
19:29
You still have to abide by the same codes of conduct in terms
19:33
of everyone's trying to make the Internet better, so don't be
19:35
mean about it kind of thing. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
19:39
Thank you, Heather. So I'm going to ask another
19:42
open-ended question that is going to get to the scope of
19:45
this whole thing. We all know what death is.
19:47
I think we don't have to have an episode describing what death
19:51
is, but what is the digital estate?
19:56
That's a great question, Mike. Why don't you take that one?
19:58
I think you've got some interesting perspectives on.
20:00
This digital estate is, I would say bigger than whatever you
20:06
previously thought it was because it's continually
20:10
growing, which is kind of a cop out obviously, right, But.
20:14
Very helpful, Mike. More detail and I'm.
20:16
Get I'm I'm going into. See, This is why I was the
20:19
editor for the paper. Yeah.
20:22
I was about to say This is why whenever I have questions about
20:24
process or definitions, I ask Heather like community group
20:27
versus working group. Heather will give you a concise
20:29
one sentence answer. I'm just going to ramble for a
20:31
while. No, I would say it's, it's a
20:35
combination of things. It is things you've produced
20:39
things you've created your audio video, biological reproductions,
20:45
all of your accounts, your posts, your comments, anything
20:48
online videos that recorded you, your documents, your papers,
20:54
your emails, your texts. So I basically every time I I
21:00
try and wrap my arms around it and say here it is a headline
21:04
hits or technology advances. Dean's example is great, right?
21:08
I would never have thought of me dying, heaven forbid, in some
21:13
kind of accident and then my loved ones recreating me to
21:16
comment on my own demise that that just feels like a dystopian
21:21
novel on some level. Obviously, I'm revealing my bias
21:24
about what I think about that. But at the same time, it's all
21:27
of that and it's it's it's increasing day by day at Denmark
21:32
in June, for instance, gave its citizens as working towards
21:35
giving its citizens the right to have their likenesses
21:39
copyrighted, for instance. But now we live in a world where
21:43
you kind of have to do that because there are AI recreations
21:47
and other things that can just, you know, pop up and recreate
21:50
you. And part of it is that that
21:52
technology advancement. So I would say the reason I'm
21:56
reading that book about how identity is defined is because
22:00
I'm trying to get a handle on what, what that actually is.
22:03
If my if my identity and my my life in the physical world means
22:08
one thing, how does that translate or not translate to a
22:11
digital environment? I think it's incredibly well
22:16
said, Mike, and, and one of the things I think we forget about
22:18
when we talk about digital estates and, and Eve is really
22:22
good at thinking about this and talking about this is all of the
22:25
sort of digital exhaust that follows us around the web.
22:30
So you know, the, the various ways that we're, we're tracked
22:34
and our, our, our, our metadata is, is collected and, and, and
22:40
used to track target advertising and other things for us.
22:43
All of that is part of our digital estate too.
22:45
It's probably the hardest part of it to think about, but that I
22:48
think we have to consider as part and parcel of what that
22:53
estate entails. It's.
22:56
Kind of exhausting to think about, I would say.
23:01
I need a card being right about now.
23:04
One of the things I would want to emphasize just to to like
23:06
really bring it to something questions that people have asked
23:10
me about this whole topic. It's not just your passwords,
23:13
right? It's not just if you, if you
23:15
have to have a password for it, that's your digital estate.
23:18
Well, it's bigger than that. And making sure that the
23:22
passwords are safely recorded and a password manager is always
23:26
good practice. Yay.
23:28
But even setting up the opportunity to make sure that
23:32
your loved ones can get to those is not sufficient going forward
23:38
for for how do you manage the the entire Duchess of Digital
23:44
stuff that makes up your your lives from day-to-day?
23:49
I'll talk about another question I had in my in my mind is what
23:54
are the roles and responsibilities?
23:56
So in other words, is it my responsibility to make sure that
24:00
my digital estate is something that goes to the people that I
24:07
wanted to go to? Does that question making sense?
24:11
So like you talked about the password file or the password
24:14
manager, that's something I have to do.
24:17
So is that kind of where the the accountability lies is like on
24:24
the owner of that estate? Only in part, I would say, and
24:29
that that gets to some of the things that we has as
24:31
recommendations. I mean, you as the poor soul
24:35
who's kick in the bucket certainly has a role in making
24:38
sure that this is accounted for in the same way that you have a
24:41
role that you it's, it is kind of up to you to get a will
24:45
written out to, to get a power of attorney sorted out.
24:49
All those things. You know, that is that is kind
24:50
of on you, but it's not only on you because there's so much that
24:54
needs to change in laws around the world, in technology around
24:59
the world to enable the kind of choices that you might want to
25:02
make to enable those to actually be implementable.
25:06
Yeah. And I would, I would say that if
25:07
they're I got there first thing, just kidding.
25:10
If there's, there's one thing that comes from the paper and
25:14
the planning guide and the work of the community group, it's,
25:17
it's to shine a light that this is a thing.
25:21
There are lots of people that are in this situation and they
25:27
think that it'll all work out or oh, so and so is into
25:30
technology. So they've no, everyone I've
25:33
talked to just about was like, oh, I need to go have that
25:35
conversation and to lay out this plan for my loved ones.
25:38
First and foremost, I need to just the discussion in the 1st
25:43
place about any and all of this. What's fascinating, there's a
25:46
high level and a low level that happened both at the same time.
25:50
The high level is, you know, what does it mean for my
25:53
identity and philosophically and what's ethically and morally
25:56
humane and right and all that kind of stuff.
25:58
And then there's, well, what about next Wednesday?
26:02
And you can take action on both fronts at the same time.
26:04
And that's there's a practical side and a deeper side to this
26:08
thing. Yeah, I think, I think you
26:11
you've kind of nailed it there. And as far as responsibility
26:15
goes, we can't give this responsibility to individuals if
26:20
they don't know that they even have to think about it, right?
26:23
And so in estate planning, it is not particularly common.
26:28
Yet in estate planning, from at least the conversations I've had
26:30
with estate planning lawyers and orgs that work in estate
26:33
planning, it is not necessarily a common practice to manage the
26:38
digital part of somebody's estate.
26:41
Yes, we want to manage the the house and the cars and the money
26:44
and all of these things. But when it comes to your
26:48
digital photos, your, your audio recordings, software licenses,
26:54
all of this stuff is part of your digital estate.
26:57
And there aren't necessarily consistent ways to manage this.
27:03
You know, if we look at say a tool like Facebook, Facebook has
27:07
a legacy contact that you can assign and that legacy contact
27:10
is able to do things like memorialize your account.
27:15
But you have to take action and do that with Facebook.
27:17
And the way that works at Google is a little bit different and
27:20
the way that it works at Apple is a little bit different still.
27:23
And then you get to some services want you to do things
27:28
like have your, your, the executor of your estate or
27:33
whomever you're assigning these privileges to log into your
27:36
account to collect all the data and then close down the account.
27:39
And that's literally in their terms of service.
27:42
Yet others in the terms of service don't want anyone else
27:45
to log into your account because that is effectively
27:47
impersonation. And that has its own challenges
27:51
and risks. So it, it, it winds up being a
27:54
very complex topic that is really hard for individuals to
27:57
unwind. It's hard for us as identity
28:00
professionals to unwind the complexity of this right now.
28:04
And so this really calls for a rethinking from identity
28:08
professionals like ourselves from large platforms, the
28:12
Meadows, the Googles, apples, etcetera of the world, LinkedIn
28:17
to enable mechanisms for individuals to proactively make
28:22
decisions about what happens to those digital assets when they
28:25
pass away. And we talked about it in terms
28:28
of death quite often because it's kind of baked into the
28:31
name. But this also applies to cases
28:34
where you become incapacitated and that incapacitation may be
28:38
permanent, it may be temporal. And we have to be able to to
28:43
work through all of those different, different parts of,
28:48
of how we deal with delegating authority to these digital
28:52
assets when these state changes for lack of a better term occur.
28:59
Yeah, it seems that the the digital asset is not just
29:07
monetary assets and not just private keys to your crypto
29:10
account, right? It can be things like photos.
29:14
You brought that up which could get it become interesting,
29:18
right? If the photos have monetary
29:21
value or emotional value, let's say that, you know, like we
29:26
talked about, you don't get to pick when you die, if you die in
29:29
like you're in the middle of a divorce or things like that, you
29:33
may not want the photos to go to certain people or if you had no
29:37
strange relationship. So I kind of you can just
29:41
imagine this scenario like it's almost got to be self-directed,
29:46
right? You have to have to kind of set
29:49
up a the guidance or the advisement, I would think so
29:54
that people could take that and apply it to their situation,
29:58
decide what they want to do. So many questions about this
30:02
one. I was wondering, is there a
30:04
cultural aspect to this? I mean, are we kind of looking
30:08
at this from the Western world perspective?
30:10
I guess that's where a lot of the digital assets lie today,
30:14
but is there a cultural aspect to it?
30:16
Does that question apply? Yeah, I mean, obviously, right.
30:22
How you view even the process of the concept of death and how
30:27
your culture expresses that has massive implications as to what
30:32
you think is justified or not. If you believe they continue to
30:36
exist after that point in time from our perspective, then what
30:41
that means something different than some cultures who might
30:44
want to for various reasons, and some of these are in the paper,
30:48
just kind of walk away from or distance yourself from that
30:52
relationship or that existence or, or, or commemorate that that
30:56
person while they existed doesn't anymore.
30:59
So their LinkedIn profile or whatever else it is, they don't
31:03
really want that to to quote UN quote, live on in a digital
31:07
form, right? And various cultures handle this
31:11
differently. Some cultures fascinatingly
31:13
guide people through various stages of old age and honor them
31:18
and prepare them for what they see is just another transition.
31:22
And so I only have these applications and these processes
31:26
set up going to look very different.
31:28
And even in Australia versus the states versus Africa, levels of
31:33
adoption of technology and what those cultural beliefs are
31:38
translate into how the cultural thinks, how the culture
31:41
expresses itself, and ultimately into the legal frameworks that
31:46
drive what you can and can't do and what you need or don't need
31:50
within that culture because it reflects their values.
31:53
And so that's really fascinating, right?
31:56
Because it, it interacts with with everything that's in a
32:00
culture. This is where we value.
32:02
So here's how we express that in light of dissident for our our
32:06
people. And I think what, what Mike says
32:08
about culture is really important because as we think
32:11
about writing protocols, which we're not doing yet because we
32:15
don't have the, the, the remit to do that, no pun intended with
32:18
my new job. But as we think about writing
32:22
protocols, we have to think about it from a way that is
32:25
culturally neutral or, or maybe a better way to put it is not
32:29
culturally neutral, but in a way that supports different cultures
32:33
and their beliefs sets and the actions that they take upon
32:36
somebody's death. So it is not up to those of us
32:41
in the definition like community group or those of us working on
32:44
future protocols at some point to say this is the one true way
32:48
in which you must handle this. What we need to do is we need to
32:51
enable structures or mechanisms that allow your digital estate
32:58
to be managed within the context of the cultural framework that
33:03
you live within or the legal framework that you you, you live
33:06
within, because you live in a country or, or in a state and it
33:09
has different laws. And so it's really important for
33:13
us to all expose ourselves to as much of the the world as
33:17
possible. Travel's a great way to do that,
33:20
but also through through research, understanding and
33:22
talking to people and trying to understand how different parts
33:25
of the world handle these events so that we can eventually build
33:29
the right tools that meet the need and meet people where they
33:32
are instead of enforcing a particular Western worldview.
33:36
So one of the things that back in the early, early days of my
33:41
technical career, my job was to ask what could possibly go
33:44
wrong. And as much as you know, Dean
33:48
has pointed out that this is this is thinking about definite
33:51
digital estate requires that identity and access management
33:55
practitioners really approach how they're thinking about
33:58
digital identity differently. For that matter, requires
34:01
lawyers to approach it differently and regulators to
34:03
approach it differently. Cultures are already approaching
34:06
it differently, which is going to have implications.
34:10
But it gets more complicated than that because you also
34:13
literally have to be thinking about how can this be abused,
34:16
right? What if someone is in, you know,
34:20
elder care? Abuse is a really big problem
34:22
and a really big deal. And that could easily wrap into
34:25
this as well. Where someone is being pressured
34:28
to give away their digital estate in the same ways that
34:32
they might be pressured to give away their bank account
34:34
information or partner in domestic abuse is another
34:38
situation where if they don't actually have control, how can
34:43
they reasonably protect their assets when they they no longer
34:48
have the capability to do so. So that would, that's actually
34:52
in the paper as well, areas that we can't just in a way, as much
34:57
as it's an odd thing to say, we can't just think about the happy
34:59
path of people having control, standard writers knowing what to
35:04
do, regulators, lawyers following the rules.
35:08
There is still even more to think about to protect people
35:12
when this stuff is is used incorrectly.
35:14
So Heather, you mentioned that white paper you guys recently
35:19
released and it's a planning guide for public review, I
35:24
believe. So the name of it was the
35:26
unfinished Digital State Culture, Law and technology
35:31
after death and digital state planning Guide.
35:35
Hopefully I got that right. Please correct me if I got it
35:38
wrong being kind of, I mean with everything that we've been
35:42
talking about, what's in that that white paper?
35:47
I mean, what are you, how are you communicating?
35:51
Is this kind of like the go to now or is it just where things
35:55
are at currently? You know, first of all, I guess
35:58
give us an overview of the paper and then tell us like how, how
36:02
to interpret it. You know, I, I think the way to
36:07
think of the paper is we came at this from the perspective of
36:12
change needs to happen. But unless people understand
36:15
the, the scope of the problem, the scale of the problem, the
36:18
technical, legal, cultural problems, then we can't make
36:21
change happen. And so when we started talking
36:26
about this back in the winter time with GAIL at Open ID
36:29
Foundation and then started writing a proposal to write this
36:33
paper. What we wanted to do is we
36:35
wanted to write a paper that would influence the large
36:39
platforms, influence politicians, influence lawyers
36:43
and, and, and, and, and other like the the Bar Association or,
36:48
or other groups that would have an impact in how we eventually
36:52
transform digital estate planning and management to
36:57
enable the technical components that are necessary in order to
37:03
be able to successfully manage your digital estate.
37:06
Because again, right now it's still kind of the wild, Wild
37:08
West and we don't know exactly what it's going to take.
37:12
It depends on every individual set of terms of service.
37:15
So broadly, this was written to explore the space and influence
37:22
influence others. That is the white paper.
37:25
The planning guide is something separate.
37:27
So the planning guide is about human As an individual, what do
37:31
I have to think about when planning my digital estate?
37:33
What are the things that I should consider?
37:34
What are the things I need to include?
37:37
What kinds of best practices are there for documenting?
37:41
You know what services I use where the credentials live,
37:47
where other documents or data live that might need to be
37:51
collected because you might have photos say on hard drives at
37:54
your house, maybe they have, maybe they're encrypted.
37:56
They there's an encryption key for it.
37:57
Where does that encryption key live?
37:58
How do I unlock this drive to unlock all of that data?
38:02
And so while the planning guide is is is for individuals, the
38:06
white paper again, is, is more targeted industry and influence.
38:11
But I think to the audience of this podcast, at least, both are
38:15
probably quite interesting. And I'm sure Mike and Heather
38:18
have have things to add about the, the paper and and the the
38:21
the portion, the different portions that we all wrote.
38:24
I just had this team like I started.
38:26
Reading the the guide and to your earlier point, I, I felt
38:33
uncomfortable. I started like reading it and
38:35
I'm like, like, yeah, I don't want to think about that.
38:38
I'll think about that later. And it's one of those things
38:41
like writing your, your will, you've got to do something.
38:46
You ought to at least there ought to be like a $99 death and
38:51
digital estate will. It's kind of the way I felt
38:54
about it. You know, just a very simple
38:56
question. Where should people be putting
38:59
their digital will? We are not lawyers.
39:05
This is. Not legal advice.
39:08
That is the best answer I've heard all day.
39:10
Yeah, but I think, I think you're hitting it on the head.
39:12
Right, Jim, like it's, it's the forcing function of let's let's
39:18
think about what happens if the worst happened like Heather
39:23
said, right? Or something bad happens, right?
39:25
And I think I love the planning guide and I love that certain
39:28
people have volunteered to try it out.
39:32
If they want to talk about that, they can, but that it forces
39:37
that that question and it's only going to get more complicated.
39:41
It's easier to do that now than it will be in a year or two
39:46
because way technology is advancing.
39:48
It's not just going to be your accounts and stuff to Flotsam
39:53
and Jetson you've left online, but it's going to be your your
39:57
minions, your digital minions that are out there doing things
40:01
for you. What about that's a whole
40:04
nother, nother ball of wax. So yeah, that's going to be the
40:08
next release, right? It's.
40:09
Like how do you deal with your AI agents and all the data that
40:13
they have about you? It all feels intertwined.
40:17
Right. It's really fascinating that
40:18
there's so many moving parts within the identity industry
40:21
that are coming at a similar problem from a different
40:24
direction. And that's I think in the paper
40:25
as well. And Paul, right?
40:28
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, Mike, you, you
40:30
talked about actually trying this out.
40:32
So in a couple of weeks with authenticate.
40:34
And I'm not sure when this is going to air before or after
40:36
authenticate. But at authenticate, I'm
40:38
actually presenting a talk called Breaking Glass restoring
40:42
my restoring my digital life. And it was kind of inspired by
40:46
this work, but I've been doing around death and digital estate,
40:48
but also by, you know, the, the, the flooding in Spain last year,
40:53
the horrible fires in LA earlier this year.
40:56
And thinking about there are lots of ways which people lose
40:59
access to all of their digital stuff and how do you get it
41:02
back? So for years I have maintained
41:06
MY1 password emergency kit. I have a copy of it sitting in
41:10
my safe deposit box with all the data you need to be able to get
41:14
into one password, get all of the credentials out of 1
41:17
password and help discover the scope of what my digital state
41:20
is. And so it works in both in case
41:23
of death and in case of, you know, I live in Seattle.
41:27
We have volcanoes and tsunamis and all sorts of fun, fun kinds
41:32
of phenomena that happened here that could potentially cause me
41:35
to lose access to everything. And so I went through the
41:38
process of recovery and I'm not going to give you the punchline
41:41
here, but we'll talk about it after authenticate.
41:44
But it's, it's actually more difficult than you think.
41:49
And I, I learned some good lessons out of doing the
41:51
recovery and what worked well and what didn't work well.
41:54
And I'll share more about that on stage in a couple weeks.
41:58
Think you're breaking? Ground with some of the stuff.
42:00
Dean and I was, I wanted to ask like who just was being written
42:04
for because I started to think about some of the topics that
42:08
we've talked about so far. And the one that keeps playing
42:11
in my head over and over is this idea of like, OK, the person
42:15
passes it away. I don't even want to say like, I
42:18
passed away, right? But you know, say I passed away.
42:21
I noticed Jeff isn't on the call.
42:25
Oh, Heather. Heather.
42:29
OK, dark. I went dark, Jeff is.
42:31
Fine, I texted with them earlier.
42:32
Today, folks, don't panic, Jeff. We'll be back to the next
42:36
episode. No, in all seriousness.
42:39
So talking about keeping someone's Facebook page alive or
42:44
I don't know, maybe creating one for them like.
42:49
Do I want somebody to keep? My LinkedIn profile alive.
42:55
How do you even deal with that? Right?
42:56
Because. Like how many LinkedIn profiles
43:00
exist today? Most people aren't going to have
43:02
the digital will do. Spouses have the right.
43:07
To keep those alive or other next of kin and other questions
43:11
right like which? Family do I want to have my
43:14
digital life? The one in Arizona, the one in
43:16
Texas don't No, just kidding. I only have one family but yeah
43:21
and. And not only that, but also how
43:24
technologically savvy are the are my survivors are the people
43:29
I'm passing this to. That's a huge thing, right?
43:31
There's not going to be a you ABCDENF and you're done.
43:36
And this is the right option for everybody because it's it's not
43:40
going to be right. I have, from the time I take
43:43
over one of my family's laptops or phones, I have about 17
43:47
seconds to have everything installed and up and running and
43:51
working before they take it back from me.
43:54
It's a very narrow window for me to get things done like pass
43:57
from any of that stuff. And so, so I think it's going to
44:00
be hearing of who the recipient is, who you are, what they can
44:07
handle, what they can't handle. You know, it's like, yeah, I
44:10
think you're, you're right to call that out.
44:11
Sure. There's it's also the question
44:14
of, you know, do you? Do you have like a, a technical
44:16
advisor in your family that you can go to who can help unwind
44:19
all this? So even if I am am giving access
44:23
to my digital estate to somebody in my family say, say my wife,
44:28
do I actually leverage my daughter as the more technical
44:34
advisor to help her do all the things?
44:37
And, and so this is something we all have to kind of consider
44:41
because not everybody is comfortable with the tools that
44:43
we all use. I use GitHub a lot and I, I know
44:47
for a fact that I have no pathway to give to hand over
44:51
access to my GitHub repos to my wife because she doesn't have a
44:54
GitHub account. So I have to think carefully
44:57
about who I want that to go to and how I want them to manage
45:00
it. And then make sure I've written
45:02
down that instruction or a document that instruction in
45:04
some manner. So he brought up a.
45:07
Couple interesting topics as we kind of wind down this
45:10
conversation. One was this is not legal
45:13
advice. So if it's not legal advice,
45:15
then what do people do with it? What should I as an individual?
45:19
This is making it very actionable for the listeners.
45:22
What should I as an individual do from here?
45:27
You know, I think from here. You, you read the planning
45:31
guide, you do the things that you can do on your own.
45:34
You're a smart guy. I am quite sure you are using
45:37
some kind of a password manager or credential manager.
45:40
If, if you're not Jim, then we're going to have an
45:41
intervention and authenticate in a couple of weeks.
45:44
But you know, get everything put into your credential manager,
45:49
understand how you can gain access to that in the emergency
45:53
and how others gain access to it in the emergency.
45:55
Get a top secret password binder like Heather is showing off
45:59
here, because that's maybe a an appropriate technical solution
46:04
for some people. Doesn't work very well with pass
46:06
keys, but it does work well with passwords and, and start the
46:11
process of the documentation, the data collection, etcetera.
46:14
But it is up to each and every one of us to figure out within
46:18
the laws of our country, our state, etcetera, what it is that
46:22
we need to do. And that means finding an
46:26
appropriate lawyer who can help you with that legal advice.
46:30
And there are some services out there that can help you that are
46:34
often targeted at lawyers. Full disclosure, I was an
46:38
advisor prior to taking this job.
46:39
I was an advisor for a company called Eternal Me, which
46:42
provides a platform for a state planning for lawyers that
46:45
handles digital assets. There are other lawyers out
46:48
there that are really focused on this.
46:50
And there's a, a, a podcast by Jennifer Zagle about digital
46:54
estate management. So some people are thinking
46:57
about this, but you got to find an estate planning lawyer who
47:00
can help you and actually understands the space and can
47:03
work with you in this space. Yeah, if I could just add.
47:07
To that I'm going to throw. My thoughts out there and you
47:10
guys tell me if it's I'm way off, but we we started the
47:13
conversation around what is the scope or what is a digital
47:17
asset? And it's like it could be a lot
47:19
of different things. I think people have to kind of
47:23
figure out what it is for them. Like what is it that, you know,
47:26
like, do I care about, like you've have access to my cookies
47:29
and stuff like that? Or do I just want you to have
47:34
family photos and access to my Gmail and XY and, you know, be
47:40
able to get into the Bank of America account, whatever topics
47:44
are important to you. And then I think there's like
47:49
the idea of a will and there's the idea of a living will,
47:52
right? The living will is you're
47:54
incapacitated. But I think the, the, the kind
48:01
of the same idea here would be that you from a living will
48:07
perspective it it's again, trying to tell people what you
48:10
want to happen in this event. It's not necessarily passwords
48:15
or how to get the pictures. It's, you know, if I die, I
48:19
don't want my Facebook page to go on forever.
48:23
Or if you want to keep it up for three months, I don't want to
48:26
have, you know, a GoFundMe page or or whatever to kind of start
48:32
thinking about like how do you want the world to treat your
48:37
like memory or your LinkedIn page or things like that?
48:40
Maybe you do want those things. Maybe you do want your LinkedIn
48:43
page to stay up for a few years just so if you can go and like
48:47
remember you. But I think those are personal
48:50
decisions that you should communicate to your loved ones
48:54
so they know how to treat you in those situations.
48:57
What do you think? Absolutely.
49:00
And if you ask me, have I? Done that.
49:03
The answer honestly is no, I haven't because it it it's still
49:09
fundamentally difficult to think about my own death.
49:13
And so, you know, while I sit here and can talk about this and
49:17
can talk about an abstract terms and all the things that we as
49:20
humans should do. I haven't updated my will in
49:23
five or six years. I certainly haven't updated to
49:26
include my digital assets, so probably need to, to add that to
49:31
my To Do List. And if I'm like most humans,
49:34
it'll probably fall to the bottom of that To Do List
49:36
because it's a really, really difficult thing to think about.
49:40
But it is also important because my, my family came together in a
49:45
time, I got married in a time when digital photography was
49:47
just taking off, had my kids at a time when digital photography
49:50
was really readily available. And it means that I have a huge
49:56
archive of digital memories that I want to make sure persist
50:00
beyond me and are available to my family when I die.
50:06
I think that's probably the one. That that's that's probably the
50:09
one that applies to the most of us because I don't know if you
50:13
remember, but our parents had these things called photo books
50:15
or photo albums. I'm sorry, photo albums.
50:18
And you can put the thoughts on the bed, right?
50:20
Yeah. And and who?
50:21
Who has the photo album? Anymore, it's like, you know, if
50:24
you get those made, it's kind of the special thing.
50:26
But you don't have like 800 photo albums that, you know,
50:29
generations can look back. Oh, that's what your great
50:31
grandmother looked like. Like we have a potential to lose
50:35
the photos for decades for people if this doesn't get taken
50:40
on. It's important.
50:43
I'm just kind of wondering, and this is kind of like tails on to
50:46
what I was asking you. I think the space is evolving.
50:50
What does this look like in 10 years?
50:53
What does it look like when, you know, we get to that AI world
50:59
and you know, people are starting to have the ability to
51:03
create like posthumous, like, hey, I'm so sad that Jim died.
51:08
I'm going to create a Jim bot and that way I can just talk to
51:12
him everyday. You know what, you know, that
51:15
was just one thought that I had. But Mike, what, what kind of
51:19
thoughts of you in terms of where this can be?
51:23
People are already doing that. Today.
51:25
You know, I told the story last authenticate about a young man
51:30
who lost his what he considered his fiance and he wasn't ready
51:34
for her to go. And so it created early days of
51:36
ChatGPT created a chat chat bot with her emails and tweets and
51:42
all that and talk to her about her own death.
51:45
And so people are doing that already.
51:49
People are saying that bots for their family to talk to them
51:53
after they're gone as an option. People are setting up bots to,
51:57
to, to for companionship. Really all this gets back to the
52:02
kind of core of humanity, right? I think we're going to rush in
52:06
and do things and then contemplate the consequences
52:10
afterwards. If the if the past is is much of
52:14
an an indication if digital life.
52:16
Here's an interesting thought that I literally just occurred
52:19
to me about 10 minutes ago as we were all talking to this, how
52:21
this community group works. If we're talking about digital
52:25
life and digital estates, do memorial places of remembrance,
52:31
cemeteries, memorial parks, whatever else, does that shift
52:35
into a digital format because people may be distributed or may
52:40
be dislocated or displaced? And now this is the website you
52:44
go to remember, Mike or whatever else, feel free to register a
52:50
public domain on my behalf and keep it up forever.
52:52
If you, you know, with a hat or something.
52:54
I'm just joking. But but that's that's also an
52:57
interesting question, Heather. So this, you know we're.
53:02
We're talking about this now as an urgent problem, which it is,
53:07
but it's not a new problem. And for all of you science
53:12
fiction readers out there, Anne McCaffrey has had a book of
53:16
short stories. It it might be about 50 years
53:19
old at this point called Get Off the Unicorn.
53:22
And one of those short stories features a young woman who part
53:28
of her job as her essentially graduate studies is to clear out
53:33
old records from the their version of the Internet.
53:38
And it was fascinating because she didn't approach it as a
53:41
technical problem. She approached it as a
53:43
sociological problem, looking at how people's engagement with
53:48
technology changed over the centuries.
53:51
I would really recommend people read that book just as as
53:54
another way to look at, well, what's our future going to look
53:57
like? Because we're kind of living the
54:01
creation of that material right now.
54:03
And so if you want to know what's going to happen in the
54:05
future, this is 1 path that it might very well go down.
54:10
Hey, this has been such a cool conversation.
54:13
I told you guys when we hit record right, we're going to go
54:16
for about 45 minutes. I didn't check the time until
54:19
about 5 minutes ago. We've been going over 50 minutes
54:22
already. So what I wanted to do is kind
54:26
of get final thoughts. I'm going to start with Dean,
54:28
the go to Mike, then Heather and then we'll do our later note at
54:31
the end. All right, Thanks, Jim.
54:34
So final. Thoughts.
54:35
You know the the white paper and the planning guide are out there
54:40
in public preview openid.net, if you I believe right now as I'm
54:46
talking it's on the home page of openid.net, but there is a link
54:49
and hopefully you can include that in the show notes.
54:50
Jim, to download both documents, please read them.
54:55
Please provide us feedback. This was a a labor of love for
55:01
the three of us and, and a lot of work went into this by the
55:04
three of us on the white paper. The planning guide was written
55:07
collected collectively by the Deaf and Digital State community
55:10
group. There were lots and lots of
55:11
people who committed time, energy to getting that put
55:14
together. And we want to hear your
55:16
feedback so that we can take that, make some final edits and
55:19
then publish these final documents end of this year,
55:22
early next year. We'll see kind of based on how
55:24
much feedback we get, how long that process takes.
55:28
And if you're interested in this as a topic overall, you know,
55:32
find me at the next conference. I'll be at authenticate.
55:35
Like I said, I'm always at Identiverse and usually at IW in
55:38
other places. Find me, let's talk.
55:41
Look me up on ID Pro Slack. You can talk there or come and
55:44
join us with the Death and Digital State Community Group.
55:46
We alternate meetings between Wednesday afternoon Pacific Time
55:50
and Friday morning Pacific Time so that we can try and capture
55:54
both people in the APAC region as well as AMIA in addition to
55:58
North America, and we'd love to have your participation.
56:04
Yeah. And as we.
56:06
Noted at the beginning, right? This is one of those things
56:10
that's not not unusual, not unique to a few of us.
56:15
Death is not an edge case for any of us, right?
56:18
Which means two things. One, the more people we have
56:21
contributing to the community group and whatever results
56:24
afterwards is super helpful. I and I think the whole group
56:29
are, are concerned about missing viewpoints or missing cultural
56:34
lenses or missing how how we can get all the voices we can
56:40
possibly do and put it into the content and then put it into the
56:44
community group and the working group so that no one gets left
56:47
out of the discussion. It's really easy for us to be
56:50
Western in states centric with this kind of stuff.
56:53
And then secondly, because it's not an edge case.
56:57
If you take one thing away, start having conversations with
57:00
your people you care about, older, younger, in between just
57:04
I'm not saying any talk about death all day.
57:07
I just mean maybe it's time to sit down and and just start into
57:11
those conversations because as uncomfortable as they may be,
57:15
those are the pathways into setting things up that will work
57:20
in case things happen. So and I think my wrap up would
57:25
be if. And when you do read it, even if
57:29
you don't have anything that you want changed about it, a little
57:32
note saying, hey, I read it, it was good, or hey, I read it just
57:37
didn't work for me. But thanks for trying.
57:39
You know, any kind of feedback is actually really helpful.
57:41
Knowing that people are looking at it helps us a lot to feel
57:45
like, you know, we did a good thing.
57:50
Thank you guys. We spent an hour.
57:52
Talking about death, as you know with our podcast, we'd like to
57:57
end on a lighter note. So no better lighter note.
58:00
I think I just came back from New York and I think here's
58:05
another third rail statement from Jim.
58:07
As we can all agree, New York pizza is the best, right?
58:12
Right. Without even a question.
58:14
I mean, I can't eat. Pizza anymore, But I'm from
58:15
Queens and I'm just going to go right out there and say well
58:18
duh, I agree. But you know, there is Chicago,
58:23
there is like, yeah, California pizza.
58:27
I don't know. For me, it's New York pizza, but
58:30
here's the question for each person.
58:32
We'll start with Dean, Mike, Heather.
58:35
I actually ordered plain slices of pizza and everybody got on my
58:40
case. Like who gets plain cheese
58:42
pizza? I was like, that's what I was in
58:45
the mood for. I changed it up sometimes, but
58:48
what is your go to topping for pizza?
58:51
Start with Dean. Go to Toppings.
58:55
Usually a pepperoni or or some kind of sausage.
58:59
And I do like my pizza spicy, so if I can put some jalapenos on
59:03
there, great. Otherwise I'm kind of Calabrian
59:07
chili or something. Heartburn special baby.
59:10
Yep, 100%. I'm going to disagree with.
59:15
You on the New York thing, First off, that's that's just
59:18
fundamental to what I would want.
59:21
I want like a Neapolitan kind of, I don't know what you call
59:25
it, but like, you know, the little Italian high, high heat
59:31
topping wise, it's going to be this one place in Fort Worth
59:36
from all places called San Danielle.
59:39
It's going to be a prosciutto and it's going to be arugula on
59:43
top of just cheese and fresh tomatoes.
59:45
And that's and the arugula goes on afterwards, right?
59:48
Don't put that mess in the oven. That's just nasty.
59:52
All right? Nobody wants hot lettuce.
59:54
Come on. Sure, I'm sure someone.
59:57
Does I don't like yuck? Anybody's young Yum.
1:00:00
Yuck. Anyone's Yum that's on the
1:00:01
podcast. You can hate the Yankees, but
1:00:03
yeah, hot salad is not not great.
1:00:07
OK. So Mike?
1:00:09
I'm I'm afraid we can't be friends anymore, but it was
1:00:11
really nice while it lasted, back when I could still have a
1:00:18
proper New York style pizza. I see nothing wrong with cheese
1:00:22
pizza because that was great, except it would have to be
1:00:24
cheesy enough that you had to fold it in half and then the end
1:00:27
would still like bend down a little bit and the oil would
1:00:30
drip from it. Those were the best pizzas ever.
1:00:32
I craved those for years after I after I couldn't have them
1:00:35
anymore. So I support your cheese.
1:00:39
Pizza life choices? Exactly.
1:00:40
The pizza I. Had and it was wonderful.
1:00:44
It was probably just as good as the last time you had it.
1:00:48
Hey, later note, of course, it it ends friendships.
1:00:53
It's kind of like the Yankees and the Red Sox go Yankees.
1:00:56
I'll say it again. Oh, don't hit the unsubscribe
1:00:59
button. In fact, if you're not already
1:01:02
subscribed, subscribe to the podcast, tell a friend, get them
1:01:07
to subscribe. We are also on YouTube at
1:01:11
idacpodcast.tv. Our website isidacpodcast.com.
1:01:18
Thanks everyone. Thanks.
1:01:19
Dean, thanks, Mike. Thanks, Heather.
1:01:22
And we'll be looking forward to an update in probably another
1:01:25
year, would you say? Sounds great.
1:01:28
Looking forward to it, Jim. Thanks for your time today.
1:01:31
Thank you all. You've been listening to
1:01:36
Identity at. The Center.
1:01:38
We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and
1:01:42
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1:01:46
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1:01:50
See you next time on Identity at the Center.