if you want to raise a great adult you don't say because I said so you don't say I'm big you're little I'm right you're wrong you raise somebody who knows how to think and respond not trying to teach them what to think if you have enough people giving up Agency for a long enough time eventually
someone will be like okay you don't want agency I'll take it from you the kids were learning they were actively learning by conversing with one another and then the adult comes in and say stop that you have to come learn and this little boy was trying to balance on it and the mom said oh get down from there
you might get hurt I'm like he's this high off the ground but let him let him fall and get hurt how hurt could he get well we're really exploring is this conflict between agency and community based on your description of the past like few decades America has shifted way over to the side of
community and one thing communities are very concerned about is safety foreign it's Jim O'Shaughnessy with another episode of infinite Loops today I am especially excited because as my guests I have the very first recipients of the first O'Shaughnessy Fellowship which is a hundred thousand bucks for a year to
pursue their project dream idea invention anything no strings attached and that's going to share with you oh you really didn't believe that and he really grilled me Martha too well you were more diplomatic about it though Martha my guest today Nat and Martha sharp who are O'Shaughnessy fellows and
who ostensibly are going to be spending their hundred thousand dollar fellowship and looking into new methods of education for children to start with and we're going to talk about why but the part that is I think going to be great and very very helpful for everyone who's playing along is you're
going to be making movies about it welcome guys yeah it's great to be here Joe yeah it's exciting so I love you guys um and uh your your application which I'm thinking I'm gonna talk to my podcast folks to see whether we can uh the video version of this we can include your application because this is [ __ ]
brilliant uh and and you knew that you would get me not especially you had had interactions with me before uh and you knew that using exploits the wall and things like that you hit everything I love but but tell us in our audience about yourselves what drove you uh to this interest uh the interest in filmmaking
let's let's develop the story of who you guys are right you understand yeah so Martha and I actually met when we were uh I just graduated Film School um it was just a one-year kind of program I was 19. and she'd always wanted to make a movie so we we ended up making a movie together uh with our friends and fell in love got
married and then we had we started having kids and and then it was a little harder to make movies so uh well you've always wanted to and uh okay so the movie we made is called the terrible tickle monster and I wrote the screenplay uh and it was based on the epic poem Beowulf and it had songs
from Fiddler on the Roof uh so it was quite quite the production it was only 20 minutes long but it was so much fun to make yeah but we did costumes we did all the stuff and then of course I got to have the fun of uh you know impressing a beautiful young woman uh yes with all my
editing's magic and all that stuff which I enjoyed editing which is the real reason you went to film school right I do I didn't realize it at the time but apparently that's uh that was why good good outcome good outcome yeah uh yes like uh unexpected but uh so basically we loved working together and we wanted to do more
together so that's where the getting married part came in we're like let's just do everything together let's just do life together how about that you know pretty much um and so the kids you know uh I don't think either of us really uh had a huge longing for for kids I've never been a baby person or different
things but but we've always wanted like people to share life with and like some kind of community friends to talk to and do stuff with you know so basically we're just raising our own friends to talk to and do stuff with um but yeah we had four kids in five years so that that was a little too a little
too uh yeah but yeah so that's I mean that it's one of those things like another analogy I've come up with is like it was like uh investing on margin so it was super risky super incredibly risky I don't recommend it necessarily but it is paying off like it is like and I think it's going to continue to paying
off as we get older and you know they develop their own lives and continue to enrich our lives right um it's going to be really really amazing but going back to like the storytelling is like so we just basically focused on Survival for you know quite a few years um and then eventually I learned to code
and we were able to like raise ourselves above the poverty line um for the first time so that was in 2018. right and then Martha learned how to code too right because he he got us above the poverty line but I wanted to go way beyond that all right which is the story of our relationship like I I've always been
perfectly well not perfectly but uh content enough with whatever circumstance you know we tend to find ourselves in yeah just a little laptop and quiet time yeah and the internet give me access to the internet yeah and I will be able to you know I'll be relatively happy yeah I'm the
one who wants to do all sorts of projects in the real world as opposed to the digital world and that takes a lot more uh yeah space and uh money um anyway but but yeah having having kids since we started having kids we've kind of been on this Quest that launches into this new Quest and exploration of how
how can we do this I mean it's hard to have kids and I think especially in our culture um it's not it's just not set up for having for having kids in general let alone more than one or two you know um and the way you know we know a lot of families in North Dakota who've been having tons of kids and there's a reason
they live in North Dakota is because it's cheaper and I there's a lot more space and Etc uh but we don't want to live in North Dakota on a like a little Farmstead in Frozen land you know so we were trying to find a different way um and in a certain sense it's like a way that could make it easier for
everyone like we're we're we tend to we like to use ourselves as guinea pigs like definitely we like we like experimenting and and taking small risks um to to see what happens uh and then adjusting from there we're willing to use ourselves and you know the kids are pretty game for it too uh as guinea pigs
um so that's what we've been doing so with this Fellowship we get to continue doing it even more without I mean yeah even more yeah and basically and film ourselves it's like even if we hadn't gotten the fellowship we would have continued on this you know crazy path that we're on but now the world is going to be
basically get get get a little more uh or yeah basically be on along for the ride I mean it's gonna be uh right and it gives us the freedom to see what other people are doing too of course because there's lots of people dealing with the same issue like how yeah the same issues that we're all facing in our
culture that's is that just World um and finding really Creative Solutions for it people are coming up with all sorts of things so yeah it's pretty great so uh so much to unpack so much I agree with there uh you know when I was having kids I was started out Young uh my wife and I got married when we
were 22 and we said well since we're crazy we might as well have kids while we're young as well and so I was 20. when my son was born but we talked a lot before his birth about how we wanted to raise our kids and like what were our objectives and what we alighted on was really pretty simple which is we want to
raise great adults and if you use that as your line right it prevents all sorts of natural tendencies that people who don't think and talk about it a lot do so for example if you want to raise a great adult you don't say because I said so you don't say because I'm the boss because I'm your dad and you're the son
or daughter you you don't say I'm big you're little I'm right you're wrong what you do is hopefully you raise somebody who knows how to think and respond not trying to teach them what to think right and so that simple uh executable command if you will just prevents all sorts of the [ __ ] that
people do just naturally and I don't listen out of frustration right is you well know Nat as you point out like the first three years of a child's life your job as the parent is essentially to stop them from killing themselves right it's like well oh what's this electricity over here but that kind of
feeds into uh the next thing I'd like your views on which is children if you want to like understand how humans learn watch a child naturally right because children are learning machines and my opinion which Vibes with yours is we have we developed a not great educational system that seemed
almost to be as one of its objectives to beat that love of learning out of them to beat that experimentation out of them to make them in quotes good citizens and and and good workers uh that are gonna you know serve Society what what do you first off what's your philosophy I I know it but I'd like you
to share it with our viewers and then and then talk a bit about the beginnings of your quest and what you're finding share what we've been talking about like today or where oh definitely yeah I mean so the short answer is our philosophy is ongoing because we have it figured it out yet right we are still learning
ourselves life is about becoming right I I totally agree so I think that's one thing we've um seeing in terms of education is that it seems intricately connected to the community it's happening in and the society it's happening in and it asserts perhaps inextricably um if you are being raised in a tribe in
the Amazon jungle your education will basically be to become part of that tribe and to survive in the jungle and to like and if you've got transplanted from the jungle to New York City your skills are gonna not necessarily uh be transferable right yeah so that's just something
we've come up with just the last couple days is like as we've been exploring different forms of education but just realizing the purpose of education is is to raise kids like you said into adults but into adults that are going to flourish and contribute to a specific a very specific Community or Society right so
so what form that education needs to take totally depends on what community you're raising them for so basically if you're raising them for a society where most of the citizens are basically these obedient non-creative thinking you know cogs in a wheel that can be interchanged you know like interchangeable
then maybe you want to do that because I said so exactly it makes perfect sense like this is yeah I mean it's not like uh yeah it makes sense so unfortunately though it's like since we don't want our kids to be like that like we would we would rather have our kids be like you said great adults that you know the kind
of adults we want to be the kind of adults we want to relate to um we are pursuing these uh basically a approach of more freedom right and I think that's the one word it's like then what's freedom and trust it's like if it depends on environment I mean like we're we're kind of nomadic
right and a lot of people are becoming more nomadic people can fly all over the world people can drive all over the country people can work from anywhere so it's becoming more and more a global Community you know so it's like how do you educate someone for a global Community I mean yeah and not just Global
um like yeah not just like widespread but can be adapted to any any environment because our society is changing I mean this is the other thing we're noticing too it's like even if we could find the perfect curriculum to teach our kids it would be obsolete in five years like yeah this is or if they moved to a different
Community or I mean you know yeah so it's like I guess that's the thing is like even even if Martha like one reason we have basically uh done this more kind of uh I mean it's most similar probably to unschooling which is like this type of homeschooling where you basically just give your kids time and resources and
let them pursue their own interests so like you said if you watch a kid learn like like we have a one-year-old baby she's constantly learning she's constantly grabbing things hitting things pushing her limits you know she's experimenting with talking she's experimenting with walking we are not
teaching her how to walk or how to talk right and that's kind of the The Bare Bones philosophy that we're experimenting with is like kids want to survive they want to thrive they want to learn and they want to do what adults are doing and they want to do what adults are doing so I mean in our minds and a
lot of other people have tried this it's like if you let kids have that freedom they will find their own unique path that corresponds to their interests and their strengths um they will find that path even without or not I was going to say despite having you know no no uh you know teacher hammering it over them but
I would I would say it's probably because there is no teacher uh you'll say no no don't but what's like what's an example like you're with the kids and they're like playing with each other um oh the Sticks no they were like playing with each other at the co-op like we're probably like this
homeschooling Co-op thing that meets like once a week and you're talking about the boys in the hallway no well again we have so many it's so many sewers and at one point like she was like trying to like help like these younger kids and the kids just wanted to play together they were like talking and
doing stuff together and then and that teacher said it's not time to play with your friends it's not time right it's time to do story time or something right and it's like like what from Martha's perspective she basically saw the teacher interrupting the teacher we're in the learning and it's funny because
the kids or in that situation I actually witnessed the kids totally tuning out the teacher's voice I don't know if it was happening unconsciously but the chi2 was saying the kid's name over and over and it's like she didn't even hear and at first like I was just the helper and at one point the teacher was going
to do something else so she asked me to do something with the kids for a while so I like had him over here uh to do a story and and I I get bored just reading a book to kids right I want it to be interactive so I like start on the first page I'm like oh whoa look at that what's that thing and they're like oh
it's this or whatever and I start out like kids are not used to adults actually listening to them and respecting them and treating them like real people you know they're used to adults just guiding and controlling and telling them what to think like you said um But but so at first when I started out
they were just Their Eyes Were glazed over I could tell they were just kind of tuning me out like they were with the other adults but then eventually their eyes started to go towards me and their ears started to perk up wait whoa this adult is different what's going on here because I was actually
I guess I was acting more like a kid and treating them more like adults like hey this is a crazy picture what's happening here and they're like whoa maybe it's this or maybe it's that I'm like have you ever experienced this and you know just having a conversation more than just like be quiet so I can read this
book to you you know um anyway and there they just were lighting up they were starting having a conversation among themselves and sharing stories and I mean this is something that is not encouraged in schools kids were actually interacting and talking and asking questions and getting
excited you know anyway so why did we go into that I don't know we're we're going on a team a tangent I think that's good real realism then that's okay though because that's a great tangent um I uh sort of that's the way I treated my children for the most part like I would treat them like I was gonna listen
to what they said and would interact I see the way I interact with my grandkids um and you know it's my oldest grandchild is a grandson Pierce uh Patrick's son and like uh he I had been away and and uh went back we we get together often for dinner and things and so I was at their house and and he goes
Pablo will you come and listen to me practice piano I said sure I'd love to and so we walked into the other room where the piano was and he goes hey papa and I went yeah and he goes I didn't really want to practice piano I I I miss our conversations and I was like yes our conversations too Pierce is wonderful
and and he goes he goes yeah I really just love talking to you and I went well I it makes me feel so good but why and he goes because you don't treat me like a kid and and like I was like boom right and my mom used to say out of the mouths of babes you know comes some of the most profound wisdom in the world
um and so I think you hit on so many things that are just true observationally true right so my former career I was a you know algorithmic investor a Quant what what does a Quant do they look at all the evidence and then they say Okay so the evidence says that this is going to win X percent of
the time and it'll lose episode of the time but the point is if we kind of followed a similar path and we just observed the way children interact Martha as you point out like the kids were learning they were actively learning by conversing with one another and then the adult comes in and say stop
that I you have to come learn yeah and and and what what's really being said in my opinion and I have somewhat controversial opinions here but what they're really saying is stop that you have to come over here and be indoctrinated and you're going to be indoctrinated into what we want you to believe and it
gets back to your point earlier which is that might work in a in a very limited setting where you have to learn how to like the Amazon right you you're going to learn which trees are going to be medical right you're going to be learn where not to go to avoid being eaten um which is very highly specific
knowledge after all our brains the basic function of our brains is to Keep Us Alive lots of well you know the ironic thing though the ironic thing is I think a lot of like hunter-gatherer tribes like are not very dogmatic and how they no I yeah I know I agree with the kids well one thing is that the adults and
children aren't so separate right right like the kids are watching the kids are watch and we imitate that's how that's the primary we don't sit with a book and read as our primary way of learning that's our that's what's become the primary way but naturally we watch and imitate um which is why YouTube videos are I
mean this is how people learn nowadays is they're watching and imitating through YouTube but this is how kids want to learn too so if you totally separate adults and kids how are kids going to learn how to become adults you know they can't watch and imitate so yeah that that's fascinating and that
and uh I think I think in our there's other countries I think where you see kids just around more um but in America it really is like kids belong here at this time and this is adults only and like we take our kids around everywhere because they homeschool and we you know and people ask like do you have a day off from
school or what what why aren't you in school I was just like we are in school like this is this is it's cool you know um I think that um you know I I was one of the first classes um in Montessori when it came to America my father was really into Montessori and helped facilitate the first school where
I grew up in Saint Paul Minnesota and I was the guinea pig um awesome yeah great it was awesome like I I was at a friend's house and I foolishly uh thought that I could push a door that was actually glass open at full running speed and I went right through the class weird um and so anyway I was bleeding like how
you could still it's one of the few scars that I actually have you can still see it um but so my mom wrapped it up and brought me down and I don't really remember this but my mom told me this story so many times that I remember it that way um and so apparently the nurse was
trying to you know I was bleeding quite copiously and and and so the nurse is trying to you know be calm and ask me questions and and she goes so what are you studying and I said well I'm studying the plants and about xylem and phloem and geometry and all these things I was six and wow and so my mom telling
the story and my mom said the nurse looks at me I looks at my mom and says is this kid pulling my leg the whole purpose of Montessori is based on putting kids of various ages together right because Martha you're right there's again there's loads of evidence for why we learn mimetically we even
have things called mirror neurons to facilitate that right you know Mr Gerald got his memetic theory because that's one of the main ways we learn things we copy other people and it's a really efficient way of learning right very very efficient and so if you're thinking about the world we're going into which
sounds like both of you guys are what do you want your kids to learn well you want them to be agile you want them to be adaptable you want them to be learning machines right and I love the fact of unschooling right because we're going into a world where knowing how to think how to interact with others is going to
be of the highest utility I think to most people and and we are going up against the cultural stasis of having done education this particular way right Robert Anton Wilson would say that most education people are trying to install a correct answer machine in your brain and we all know there is no correct well I
mean I've thought about one thing I've reflected on is how ironic it is that in school the children are the ones who are expected to give the answers they should be the ones asking the questions right now yes right I mean like it's just what I mean it's crazy yep yeah yeah it's so funny we we I end up
learning from my kids they keep me up to speed with what's happening in the world definitely you know because they are we've pretty much given them pretty much unlimited use of uh computers and screens you know and they've learned so much through it you know there's a lot of fear surrounding
screens because there's tons of really nasty stuff out there all mixed in with the good stuff so far they haven't come across they've come across shows that I think are stupid but nothing really terrible you know um but they're always sharing facts with me and and wanting to do experiments
because they saw it on a YouTube video or or different things like that and they they discovered like Roblox and Minecraft for themselves I've I didn't introduce them to it and and one thing like as we were traveling and we'd bring the kids to playgrounds they would make immediate friends on the playgrounds
because all they have to say is they play Roblox or Minecraft or Among Us and they have immediately they'd have a whole group of friends a whole group of kids that want to play real life Minecraft or real life among us or whatever and versus like a lot of the more traditional homeschool families that
we've related to who restrict screens a lot they don't have any idea how to relate to anyone outside their group you know um like so so like we talked about at the beginning education is to raise kids in for a specific Community or group right so if they want their kids to stay in that group the rest of their lives
then that's fine they're doing a great job uh but if if they want their kids to be able to relate outside the group they might have a challenge ahead of them or or form their own group and I think that that's the kind of statistically what's happened with a lot of like you know people that are raised
with kind of this unschooling or self-directed education kind of approach a lot of them end up becoming entrepreneurs like like they actually they don't fit in with the pot I'll just say yes because they don't fit in with things yeah it's like it's good to admit that there
it does come with a certain disadvantage where like I think you use the term unemployable like it sounds like a lot of times like these kids will like try a nine to five and they'll just be like screw this like I'm not gonna like what and they'll go off and like do their own thing or so so I mean it does
like if you if if you basically you want your kids to have like a stable conventional job then maybe this isn't the right path for you that's yeah that yeah that's for really uh a good insight and I'm delighted to hear you're thinking about it that way because that's right you're absolutely right
the you know one of my objections was to be unemployable right I I employed myself um and you know I only work for another Corporation for five years in my life and that was about Assurance um and even there I was you know always on the edge of being fired as a discipline problem but the a couple of things you know the
whole screen time thing I I think that that's a really good example of a poorly designed study because rather than looking at what are the children or adults for that matter what are the people looking at through those screens this could be what we are looking at we shouldn't be saying screen
time as a screen it's like window time oh yeah you spent five hours uh staring out the window that was a misuse and misallocation of your time on what what the [ __ ] was I staring at I mean was just nothing then maybe but if was there like some fascinating thing in nature going on out there maybe then it was a
good use of time and so the way those studies get refined yeah I think is very poorly designed study like it's not the screen it's what the screen is revealing and what the the student is look or person is looking at right and I think if you looked at that then all of the screen time stuff becomes a lot less
scary Martha as you point out I am not an anarchist I am not saying hey do whatever you want yeah you're right there is a there is a lot of bad stuff through those screens but there's also a lot of really great stuff through those things so rather than to make it a question about screens making a question
about content behind the screens and then I think better a better place that to your your point about in group out group yeah of course right like if you're trying to raise somebody who you um I have a lot of friends who and colleagues who are either still in India or of Indian uh origin and like the the
jokes are always about their mom and dad right and and how their mom and dad are bitterly disappointed in them if they're not a doctor or a lawyer or at least a PhD and and so you know if that's your goal then you're right then you're gonna Advocate a very different kind of educational system I think that the way the world is
unfolding we're covering it in our great reshuffle series is the future is going to be very bright for entrepreneurs for people who are agile and don't fit in so much with the classic old old take tell me a little bit about the adventure so far tell me about the blue bus which I think is very cool tell me uh why what
what uh what led you to decide you needed a blue bus um and then and then your early forays uh into um into some of the uh different ways of educating kids and and kind of what your thoughts were about that yeah the I mean the the bus thing is it's still kind of a mystery to me too
and it's a very expensive prop that that's that's there you go we just figured it was symbolic it's a school bus yeah I cannibalism that's right um um more and more Through The Years we're discovering the power of following your interest which is a lot of what like the kind of education we're looking at like
kids follow their interests and what happens because a lot of times our subconscious can tell that there's something we need to do something necessary for survival or something we really need to learn that our conscious mind just isn't aware of our conscious mind is like why you
know why do I need to know that that's silly and expensive and weird you know I I'm the conscious mind in this relationship [Laughter] my my conscious I was in turmoil for like weeks I was obsessed with getting a school bus I'm like why am I obsessed it doesn't seem to contribute to anything we're doing why why do I need a school
bus you know um but if it was not an obsession that was going to go away like I I just knew it so I'm just like I'm just gonna do it I'm gonna trust I'm gonna follow my interest and see where it goes um and and I think well this is something that she's been interested in doing this since like she
was in high school yeah like like basically remodeling a school bus and living in a traveling around right and are you're living in an RV two years ago we were full-time artists of 2021 we spent all year in an RV going all over the country and that was basically a huge learning experience and like an
experiment because I think this has always been my desire and goal is the whole life converted School Bus you know and uh if you had to ask my conscious mind right now why I might say that I'm still seeking Community I'm still seeking people who are I'm seeking people who are more like
us and exploring the way that we are uh yeah I mean there is like this very interesting dispersed community of people I mean there's like nomadic kind of uh like families and stuff but there's also specifically schooly families they're called yeah who who live in these converted school buses travel around the country and like meet
up in different areas um where there's like they're huge gaps sometimes there's huge Gatherings of like hundreds of school buses thousand I think like schooly palooza had like a thousand rigs there uh that's just in the middle of the Arizona desert in January and all these schooly I mean anyway
in a certain sense it's kind of like the adaptability thing you know uh being nomadic our culture is not set up for being nomadic you know you have a neighborhood you have a school when we whenever you look for a place to live what is what's the selling point like oh they have a really good school there I'm
like thanks for telling us we're not good yeah so like we we have been we have been geographically um basically independent in terms of schooling since the beginning and in terms of jobs and now since like 2009 or since the pandemic when my job went remote we have been completely
geographically independent in terms of jobs so it's like we are basically doing this experiment of this 21st century experiment of a family who does not have like any like local ties to a school or local ties to a job which I would say the like those two are like the majority of like where people
get their sense of community where they get their sense of I mean it's like so yeah and and talking about screens right screens is what's allowing this exactly the internet and it's connecting I mean we can have our jobs we can do school we can learn we can relate to other people and have friendships all through the internet
um so people are kind of going two different directions with this newfound ability to just be anywhere one is to be more nomadic and just go everywhere and the other thing that we've seen people doing is actually buying like land and starting to farm and do more of that kind of thing so this is like two different
things people are going going towards is becoming Nomads or having like a Farmstead and living off the land kind of thing um but it's the internet that's enabling people to do this um yeah so I think I mean so part of like how the bus like fits into like our you know this this journey of the
fellowship is like we've we've actually visited like a couple different schools now like we visited a school in Asheville North Carolina that it's part of this um there's actually they're all over the country now but they're called agile Learning Centers where they basically have kids from like
was it like five or six to fourteen about is that it depends on the school because yeah some of them go all the way up 18 uh schools and they basically let the kids like just um School themselves like they give them you know those resources there's like classes that aren't conditional or aren't like uh mandatory yeah and but
the kids offer things too um so we've been visiting like some of those places partly I mean we've been filming a ton like interviewing people interviewing kids showing the kids but we're also letting our own kids like like experience that and like try that out um and so like that's like I see that
potentially happening like with the school bus if we get a thing that we can actually live in we're gonna be able to be able I mean that'll be part of this journey is traveling around being able to visit basically basically I mean think of races I mean just visually it's gonna be like here this is family
putting their kids in a school bus going to school like even if we're not visiting schools just driving down the road into a new state that is it's like the Magic School Bus Jim like this this is literally like this is a future of Education whether you're doing it like physically or online like I don't know
yeah so it'll be uh it's fascinating so we are our own family like we're seeing these schools with a thought because maybe that's what our kids need uh but I've also thought like maybe if we were just nomadic and had friends all over the country and got together with them every now and then that would be
just what we need so it's exploring for our own family too I know what what's been the most um surprising thing on your early interviews you mentioned you've been filming a lot already uh what what has surprised you the most from the people you've been talking to what surprises me the most is that there
are actually other people out there that are like us I'm like whoa I'm like getting their background stories I'm like whoa they're basically saying the same story we have like they've been exploring the same things and I don't know why we've never lived around lived in a place that had other people who
had the same kind of story that we did oh interesting um what about what's yeah I mean I I can definitely uh yeah I guess yeah most surprising but I mean I guess I I I find it very cool that there's I guess it's not really surprising because it's like we've already been doing it but just seeing the the variety
like the the two main schools we visited one was in Asheville where they had like a huge backyard and like a stream and trees and all this stuff all this all these resources then the second one I just visited was in Williamsburg New York downtown like no backyard um but they're still doing a very
similar kind of thing and then like they have parks nearby they go on field trips they go on they just they've adapted it to that environment they're more nomadic they don't rely on having all the resources in their schools they go out because they're in a place that has a lot of other resources and like a lot of
the kids are uh like they have permission for the parents just to go to the park by themselves like it's it's fascinating I think I think that's surprising to me which is just like seeing like how many different ways this kind of philosophy could be implemented yeah I was talking yesterday with a friend about
um the uh my upper right so I'm 62 I was born and came of age in the early 1970s uh and literally it was just like see your mom dad going out with my friends you get on your bike you they wouldn't have any idea where you were there were no cell phones there were no any of those things you you did a lot of
dangerous things quite frankly and retrospectively uh you know the things we climbed on we used to make insane ice slides in the winter I grew up in Minnesota where it's all but literally we would we would bring water out pour it down a hill this Steep and then get on one of those little slips of plastic
and go down as fast as we possibly could and and I wonder if like what do you think caused the whole helicopter parent and and is is that like is is there a cure for that that was that was one of the first things that we kind of did a shift away from before our kids were even school
age well like we weren't even thinking about schooling at this point but we're just like what what would happen if we were just much more hands off you know so you talked about like up to the age of three your job is just to keep them alive but you know just barely you know I mean it's not to keep them safe it's
to keep them alive right yeah and basically if they're never getting hurt they're never learning right it means they're never put finding those limits I mean even our our little babies crawling around now like it would be much safer if we just carried her around all the time and we didn't let her just crawl
around and explore you know um and and I went to I remember going to a playground once and there was there was this little ledge that surrounded the playground like a little railroad tie or something that was like this high off the ground and this little boy was trying to balance on it
and the mom said oh get down from there you might get hurt I'm like he's this high off the ground but let him let him fall and get hurt how hurt could he get you know and then he'd get better and he'd learn like oh yeah I could get hurt if I do this without his mom having to tell him that you know
um and and so anyway you're preventing the helicopter parent thing prevents kids from learning and prevents kids from a lot of what we talk about is developing a sense of agency you know developing a sense of agency uh I would say preserving a sense of agency preserving I think you're born with a sense of agency
it kind of It kind of fluctuates slightly you think so that's where the terrible twos come in like it goes up and down you know like at the age of one they're all excited because they have all this new agency but then by the age of two like it's not enough for them they and they feel the lack of their agency
is I mean that's more like internal sense like you get there the reason they get frustrated is because they have agency I mean agencies like the the drive like the the independence right I mean Oh I thought it was the ability to actually act I don't know what would you say would you say agency is funny I was
I have a new chief of staff and he and I were just talking about that yesterday it's one of the litmus tests I use when I'm looking at companies whether I want to invest in them or not how much agency do the principals have how much how much can I observe and I look at agency as a sense of it's on me right I I think you
know there there might to your point Nat there might be an inter it might be just a natural sense of a human being agency but it seems to me that culture can either encourage or discourage agency definitely and I think that we've had a culture over the last say 30 or 40 years that has been discouraging agency
but I think that that was an improvement over the cultures of the last 300 years that were about forbidding agency and requiring compliance right uh with with Doctrine and uh with you know uh no you have to believe in this supernatural being not that one um and so I think we're hopefully moving
in the right direction but people with agency I think you can tell the minute you you interact with them right somebody it's like the thing I cherish the most is having agency but agency is not just a free ride right if you if you pay agency it's your fault right exactly you can't blame someone else someone
else so so I think that's going back to your question about how this all changed with parenting um that'd be my guess a lot of it is like it's actually comforting as a parent to think that it's not your fault or I mean so it's like if you bring someone else to play so basically letting your kids
be agentic like if something happens to your kid other parents and the government aren't going to blame the kid for being too agenda they're gonna blame the parent they're gonna blame me um so that's a helicopter parent thing yeah they're really protecting self-preservation it's not serving the
child it's absolutely interesting it's it's like and that's that's what we've that's the risk that we've been willing to take I feel like we've been risking not our children but ourselves of course you know by letting our kids by allowing our kids to do these things that are more risky we are risking the Judgment
of other parents and even like having the cops called on us or something you know um and but we think that that's a risk we're willing to take for the sake of our children you know like people could see it people might judge us as being negligent but we're actually doing this for the sake of our children
yeah so so that's what it sort of answer the question of how that changed like I'm not sure where the where exactly I mean you were you were alive like you you should you should have insight into this uh more than we do uh in a certain sense like what what happened what happened between your generation and our
generation like you you were raised with more freedom I mean did schools get blamed for things like was it lost was it like what did parents like sue the schools for things or I mean how how is it that that uh I mean I can see that like in the medical industry right like people blame
the doctors and blame them because they're giving all responsibility over to them right right uh so that means they have to take more responsibility so basically you just have to do whatever the doctor says or you have to actually like sign a waiver that you're rejecting his advice so that you can't sue them
right I'd assume something like that probably happened to make it more like if if someone was blaming someone else or kids getting hurt or something and so whoever that someone else was decided to impose more rules and regulations because they were going to Bear the responsibility for it you know it's like
who's bearing the responsibility the question right yeah so if nobody basically like I said if agency really it comes out to like it's on me and nobody wants to claim that then uh I mean parents I've heard terrible stories of parents taking their injured child to the hospital and immediately
they're being investigated by Social Services you know like the fact that parents have to be the fact that parents are afraid to take their injured child to the hospital it's a bad thing like yes I should be free I shouldn't have to be afraid to take my injured child to the hospital um because you know they need help this
is a sign of a good parent that I'm taking him to the hospital um yeah so anyway yeah it's just the agency thing probably it's like parents are afraid of getting in trouble if their child gets hurt I think so they become helicopter parents yeah I I think that's super insightful about the
um the Martha your comment earlier uh about um you know uh I guess it was both of you but the maybe maybe it's Parents try to protect themselves uh because of this creep of the loss and and prescriptions right uh what were you you asked that you know what was the difference like I this is one of my favorite hobby horses
like I'll walk around Manhattan and I'll point at all these great things like the New York Public Library in the Empire State Building and and and I'll go on my rant this is when America was a great [ __ ] country because we're allowed to do [ __ ] like read bill Bryson's book America One
Summer I think 1921 is what he focuses and like that world was not was just a completely different world what what America was was uh the freedom of speech the rule of law and then [ __ ] off like go do whatever you want to do and so Rushmore uh cool Rich was president when the guy was doing Mount Rushmore there
were no permits there were there was no there was no study that took 12 years to determine whether he should be able to pursue this or not and like they told cool Rich about it and he goes oh cool where is this let's go see it and and and so the country was filled with naturally risk-seeking people why well
who else gets on a ship and leaves the country of origin their family everything they know and and goes to a foreign land people who are a little more risk seeking than other people so America has like a different DNA structure oh good it for a while and a lot of people were brought here against their will too so
we have to make sure about right that they but like talk about the Underground Railroad talk about the people who like even when they were taking hair against their will they were like okay let's fight let's go let's uh let's mix it up but the country was a very different place I think in many
respects the country's gotten a lot better in terms of universal rights for people in terms of uh of uh of not discriminating against people because of their or sexual preference or or religion or all of those things I think all of those are to be celebrated and great but one of the things that we lost
that I think we should fight against is this allowing ourselves to be dominated by like massive rule books then a friend Philip Howard Who as a uh organization uh common sense and basically what he talks about is do you know the New York City the the average New York City school teacher public school teacher the
compliance manual for them and for people who are watching me I'm holding up two football uh two books remember what phone books were about this thick yeah and like I went to a board meeting because I'm on his board and like he starts reading these regulations you guys wouldn't believe it
like for example it is highly prescribed what a teacher can do when a child is in obvious physical or emotional distress do not include hugging that child they do not include soothing that child in any way that's forbidden and that's because of some lawsuit from 10 years ago and exactly yeah and and so we let
these rules accumulate and we forget why they got put into place in the first place and then we just have all of these rules prohibiting right and so we we have created a system I don't think intentionally by the way we have created a system where we are stripping agency away from people and maybe the reason
Martha that you mentioned maybe it was because people got so goddamn tired of having everyone say oh oh it's your fault your fault you're the one right I mean basically if you have enough people giving up Agency for a long enough time eventually someone will be like okay you don't want agency I'll
take it away that's I'll take it from you but you have to do what I say but you have to do what I say it so the okay so this is the thing Jim and this is like I think hopefully our documentary or like we still haven't narrowed it down completely it might be like a series of like you know episodes um
but basically what we want to explore is not just education okay because I think that's just if you just talk about education it's like you're not really getting to the the nitty-gritty what we're really exploring is this conflict between agency and Community Ah that's great and I think that and so many
people I know even ones that don't have kids are dealing with the same thing of like how can we on the one hand have the sense of community and on the other hand have this preserve our sense of agency and I think that's so I would say based on your description of the past like few decades America has
shifted way over to the side of community and focus and one thing communities are very concerned about is safety I mean communities are very I mean that's uh conformance safety of just preserving what you have not trying why would you take a risk right I mean it's just not worth it it's not worth the
so I think that's that's what we're really going to explore and I I don't have an answer I don't know anybody that has an answer that satisfies me so I think that's a don't you think that's I mean that's part of our personal exploration too is like we're very kind of agentic people but one consequence is that we're very
lonely in a certain sense isolated yeah very isolated like we don't we try to relate to these other people in our little Suburban neighborhood it's there's like no there's we have barely any way we can connect with them like yeah right so yeah but you know one of the reasons why I did the fellowship the
way I did right and that you you were funny when when we were visiting in person uh in New York uh you're like I really had a hard time believing that there were like no strings but one of the reasons why is because of what you just said I wanted to empower people like yourself who are super creative
super thoughtful like guess what plans change and I I love that you've you've evolved this into yeah it'll be about educating kids and and that's important and I agree and that's why you got the grant but what a great idea to make it like well maybe it might be between this tension between community
and and people with a full sense and and obligation of their own agency I love that because that is the you know that's that's digging a lot deeper and you know I'm I'm a huge systems thinker in other words I believe if you understand the underlying system of anything right a business a government a society a group
well you know whatever if you can understand the underlying foundational system you're going to be much better at forecasting what's going to happen like what's going to come out of that system and so I love that sounds to me kind of like what you're doing in other words okay so we start with the way we're
educating kids we're not happy with this traditional way we want to look at these other ways huh why aren't we happy with this traditional way and then oh maybe maybe there's this tension between our attitude which is we want to retain all of our personal agency be unemployable right to use my turn
um but hey we also understand uh like we're not anarchist here we don't want Mad Max we understand the community aspect too so I think that that's going to be a great uh a great Evolution if you will of uh the film that is is going to emerge from this another thing you guys have done which I find very clever
is your mini grants how's that going how are the mini grants going we uh we didn't get enough applicants we yeah so apparently it can be hard to give people money it can be like we're trying to get money away and like we advertised in all of these like Facebook groups we sent emails to all these
schools and we were looking for like six uh graduates or six people that were basically graduating from this kind of you know Democratic or agile Learning Center or unschooling type of education and we only got two people to to submit applications so and then it was great and they were pretty interesting
um but we were hoping that we could basically be able to have them film themselves as they went along you know the next like six months um and what that like applying to colleges and all that so what we and we were going to give them a thousand dollars each um so so we decided to kind of like you
know once again being adaptable we decided to kind of just a shift course and uh so we gave each of the two applicants five hundred dollars just for reply you're like you know what guys you hear somebody just go you know whatever and we'll we'll probably still use their application videos in our documentary so
like that that will be great you know uh on the ground kind of footage um but yeah so right now the the mini Fellowship thing is we've shifted course uh from that in the meantime it that means we have more funds for the the school bus and for traveling right so yeah it's definitely it's definitely not
wasted yeah that is great um what have been the reactions to the the school bus it's very cool looking and we'll try to have a picture of it in the show notes uh yeah but like what what are the reactions you're getting when from people who see it wow everyone everyone loves it
especially kids like kids never get to just explore and play with an actual School Bus you know you know they they have to just get on go to their assigned seat or whatever or or some other kids have never even been on a school bus like our kids or you know so like we invite the neighbor kids wanted to come
over and see it we popped the engine compartment open because he's interested in engine yeah no this is like a little like let's try the door eight-year-old boy and he was asking us like is it is it is it a V8 engine is it like he's like obsessed with engines yeah like this is not school he's not learning
this in school like so it's like he's learned and then he loves that he loves opening the the door mechanism like jumping out the emergency exit and different things that just anyone who sees it I mean people have this get this big smile on their face like what like but I think most adults just think we're
crazy because like like once again like Martha and I like we we have we've been following people are have been doing this for years so this just feels normal that okay of course you can take a school bus and turn it into a camper right of course you can do that yeah um but it's like for most people it's
just like why did you buy a school bus right number one it was three thousand dollars okay yeah like nothing the engine itself is probably worth more than that like what the headache like this is like right from but we basically got it like right from like a wholesale auction of like a Georgia Public School
um and so it's like number one like just the fact that you can do that is crazy um so I think that that's where it's like it really is gonna make it's gonna make the documentary so much more interesting too because it's like like just in general right the whole point of like what we're trying to
convey okay and then I talk about this on Twitter a lot this is kind of like if I have a bile you know tagline this is my tagline this is you can do stuff just do stuff right right I mean so it's like one of the biggest things we've learned about learning is that by doing stuff that you've never done before you will
gain information that you could not have achieved any other way all right I am learning tons of stuff oh my goodness just this whole process I'm like okay so one thing I learned I've never I've never dealt with circuit boards or soldering before in my life and I never wanted to just like that
stuff is way complicated well you know it's an international uh school bus and they're known for the the control panel just kind of dying you know so I found a few YouTube videos and they all have the same solution you take it apart you take the circuit board and you just re-solder those those points that the electricity
connects to and voila it works like okay here's a new thing I'm doing now so I'm taking I'm taking it apart getting out the circuit board borrowing my dad's soldering iron and supposedly I just melt these things again and that should fix the hairline fractures and it works
so that's one example of me learning through this whole and that's just one thing there's tons of stuff I've been listening she's learning about propane connect she's doing propane uh oh there's so many different connections for propane oh gosh I mean the last one yeah but I know there were so many different
sizes well I guess I guess this is the thing Jim and I'm sure you've seen this in your own life too okay but the way we've discovered that we learn at least and I think this is what my kids learn too okay is the it starts with what they want to do it starts with like the end thing nobody
sits down says like oh I want to spend today learning like that's not how human brains work we don't give a [ __ ] about learning yeah learning it sucks okay what did you learn today you say what did you do do you know and I'm for I mean so this is the thing it's like when I have had a goal in mind like this like
with Martha like she doesn't get she doesn't care about soldering she doesn't care about propane she doesn't care about all the stuff okay she just wants to have the school bus that we can you know take the whole family and explore and meet these other families go to these schools and in order to achieve that
there's all of the stuff she has to learn if I have to learn about diesel engines I'll learn about diesel engines I never wanted to learn about diesel engines I never ever wanted to learn about them but here I am yeah and so I think but so this is I think this is one of the fundamental things is that
um the normal education system is set up to be like just in case type of learning it's like well I don't know what you're going to be when you grow up kid so I'm just gonna teach you a big broad swath of everything like every subject every like and then and you'll forget everything but yeah I'm just like but
unfortunately most most kids forget a lot of what they learn but it's it's just in case just in case just in case like someday down the road you might need to know uh uh calculus as opposed to in-demand learning I like in demand learning so what Martha's doing and what our kids do is in demand
learning or on demand it's like it starts with the desire and the objective and then you're like okay how do I get there yep and that's the that's the what's the first question you think people ask when they find out about self-directed learning and unschooling and and such what do you think they ask almost immediately
um I would guess that they ask like how do you ever how do you even start what is there a guide is there something that I can uh is there some sort of instruction manual people love to be instructed well well here's here's a question what is one subject that people assume kids will never voluntarily learn
on their own uh Matt ah you got it that's the question what about math what about Matt that's one of the number one questions the number one question like everyone assumes that math is a subject no one will voluntarily learn right uh and therefore they never will learn it unless they're forced to
but the thing is if you don't actually need math why are you gonna Force kids to learn it anyway and if you do need it our assumption is if you do need it you're going to learn it you know which our kids are learning they're learning the math that they need to know because they need it to do the
stuff they want to do yeah like the biggest thing like one thing we do is that we will we don't really have like mandatory chores we basically just like have optional jobs that they can be paid for um sign ups baby you got it yeah um so so that's what they do is like basically they'll have things they want
to buy and they'll find like we'll they'll basically work with us or the best would be externally too like money coming in externally but basically they work in order to you know buy these things they're saving up for and and in order to like calculate like they're using math to calculate the like
the money and like the and the change and the and so so I guess that's the thing in our mind it's just like yeah like in terms of math or these things that like I would love my kids to be amazing at Mass yeah but it's possible in their life they won't need more than like yeah and what about college like we actually
our kids aren't to that point yet right but there are I've seen interviews or different things with kids who have been unschooled their whole Lives who want to go to college for some specific degree and they are behind and in math like but then a few months later they just cram for a few months and they
learn everything they need to know because that's how they've they're just used to operating that way it's just like learning what they need to know uh so instead of having it force fed to them for 12 years or however long they just cram for a few months and they they're already caught up you know
um and they haven't developed that distaste and hatred for math all right see that's the thing yeah you develop if you're forced Donuts all your life you're gonna hate Donuts you know bummer Simpson right then then oh right Homer Simpson right the the math thing is fascinating to me because like it's
what I did right in my career was that we were algorithmic quantitative investors a lot of math uh but it's not hard math it's really simple math and like I I I I'm struck by uh that being brought up as as the number one question because like so I I got a bug about wanting to learn about quantum physics
back when I was a kid and it was a brand new field and everything it's read all of the books that were written for the popular audience and I still was like but people wanted to know more so I bought like the books that physicists were writing and I'm like it's all mad no clue what any of this is and so
fascinating my interest in quantum physics that I thought well I can learn I can learn this I don't really want to but I want I want to learn about the quantum physics exactly exactly right and then and then when I what what changed for me and made it a lot easier was essentially my understanding that
math was just another language right yeah and in my opinion now math is the language of the universe so I'm like really happy that that happened to me but it only happened to me because I had to do it because I was interested in something else I think you're bang on about like the kids who are unschooled
and they they want to get a degree for some particular and by the way people say to me why are you so anti-college well I'm not anti-colm College can be a great experience and if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or one of those things then yeah clearly you gotta go to college for sure and I'm
I'm what I'm opposed to is people who just naturally assume oh I have to get a degree because that's what I got to do right yeah and to me and it this kind of Vibes with what you were saying like you're gonna hate math if you're force fed math for 12 years you're gonna really really hate it and so sometimes I
think when people say oh you're so anti-college no I'm anti getting people to hate learning learning fun learning should be something that you want to do and it's like why do we strip it away from the way that we naturally do it right stories fun exploration adventure right like all of those things are really fun
and what do all of those things lead to learning right right so it's a bit like the force feeding of math right you want to get somebody that I really hate something with a passion that way and and strip away the fun strip away the adventure strip away all of that and then say but you still got to do it
yeah right and disconnecting it from everything else too that's another interesting thing like in the school system is separating subjects into totally separate subjects instead of the holistic interconnected like everything's connected with everything yeah and just completely separated from
their own life I mean that's the other thing that blows my mind is like the classic like you know asking the teacher like why do I need to learn learn this and then the only reasonable answer is like well maybe hypothetically sometime in the future you might use this like it's so like like yeah as I said so yeah that's you
know that's even worse that's the easiest the best professors I ever had college and in high school uh were to your point Martha uh the one I still remember Mr turby uh uh ancient civilizations uh modern Europe history he always told stories and he related it to our like he was my high school guy
right so I was what 17 when I took his class his class was optional I guess they call him AP classes now right but like the way like I I looked forward to that class because like literally you never knew what great story he was going to tell you and always made sure that he made it relevant to I guess it was 1977
so 1977 America right and I still remember one time him saying hey you guys have you any of you kids seen this movie Saturday Night Live uh and we're like of course like everyone saw that movie with John Travolta and the dancing right and so Saturday Night Fever the Beavers Saturday Night Fever and and like super
popular movie and like all of a sudden he's using it to explain the customs of dance and how they were super important to like the the astro-hungarian Empire and why the waltz was so important and the formal and like all of a sudden you're like learning all this stuff but he's made it entirely relevant
why is that like hard I I would think like one idea that I would love to fund is I think like the best teachers out there they should be making millions of dollars and like how can we monetize like the best teachers in the world because as you both point out there's a platform YouTube exactly I was thinking
about YouTube there'll be another one right like what do you think of that do you think that's possible do you think that's something that like could become a reality a platform for the best teachers in the world um yeah there's a lot of solutions people are coming out with obviously if
they're I mean YouTube is a great place but making YouTube videos is not something everyone can do you know there's the filming and the editing and all that stuff so even if they're great teachers they might not be great YouTubers right um uh there's out School uh and those are online classes that just anyone can do
and schedule right you know so one that we just tried recently and this is you have a connection to them as well um synthesis uh which is a very interesting it's not like a full-time school but they do offer these like online classes and so like our eldest daughter Elsa just tried
one of those classes was that just yesterday or just yesterday okay so she's like she's 10. um and that was it was it was so cool like I got some great footage of it because basically it was like they had like 10 10 or so kids and then like a few different adults there and they were playing this like video game thing where
they were supposed to like they were like in the solar system and they were like connecting these dots and trying to like create these like networks and they had like four teams but the point of the game was that there was a rogue AI that was like one of the one of the teams and there was like three different
AIS that had like like a bunch of like different characteristics of how they basically how they operated like one of them did had one strategy another one had another strategy and based on just those few characteristics you're supposed to play the game and then decide which AI that was
um and that was it was so it was like watching like Ender's Game or something or like I mean I saw like my daughter she loved it she really she like she got sucked into it she was playing with the people they were like going back and forth arguing being like okay well this one's like acting like this AI but no
it's like this AI um so yeah so whatever they're doing they are definitely on to something um in terms of that uh that that approach yeah because all those kids were they were super articulate super engaged it was amazing so we uh O'Shaughnessy Ventures is an investor in synthesis school and one of
the reasons we are is because of what you just described uh we we saw it as a super interesting platform for engaging children right uh but also in in teaching them how to think about what to think and we liked we liked their the process and it sounds like Elsa enjoyed it as well so I'm glad to hear that uh I
would have been uh less happy to hear uh but it would have been instructive uh it was like no that sucked everyone understands like the normal school model right so if you're trying something new it is a large part of it is just the communication of like what what that even looks like right so yeah I mean the
the probably the best form of education is just a private tutor like Aristotle or so I mean like just having an adult just like I was talking about with the class I just having a conversation with them and exploring things like well you sell that like send your kids to me and I will have a conversation
with them that's what the best teachers scooters is going to be a huge thing because like already like Martha and I on our projects even for this Fellowship we were already using like chatgpt to like to like learn like we're already doing it we'd be insane not to yep and that's that's even how I described chat
DBT when I was still in my software job is is imagine having the most senior engineer you've ever met have nothing better to do than sit right next to you and answer your questions and pair program with you yeah who's also slightly drunk yeah like so you can't you can't take it you can't you
can't trust him completely he's a little drunk oh okay yeah well apart from that super smart love that explanation it's one of the reasons why I made such an invest big investment in stability AI because the use case that I got most excited by or two actually uh one was the AI tutor I
think AI is going to revolutionize education not just for kids but for everybody because the AI is you you are going to be the Theta the AI learns on and the AI is going to take your unique style of learning and begin to present lessons to you that fit and Vibe with your style of learning it's like I don't
know how you can get much better than that right Aristotle being Alexander the Great's tutor great story but even even him like even like back then sure one guy could pretty much know everything that you know an educate educated person would that's impossible today right no single person understands everything
that's right like we we left that that realm like you know decades or centuries ago right yep it's like an AI is like it's insane that that like the breadth of knowledge and and I I'm gonna steal this metaphor thank you very much you're absolutely right you're absolutely right back when Aristotle was
tutoring Alexander the Great one man like Aristotle one person could know everything that can't that stopped happening maybe in the middle of the 19th or 19th century right uh maybe even earlier um AI back to Aristotle it can not only know everything even though slightly drunk and hallucinating
um but it also can be like Aristotle it can tutor those kids in everything and even better than Aristotle it's an upgrade because Aristotle might have really [ __ ] it up with some other student he vibed with Alexander right right right maybe he wouldn't Vibe with you know uh you know Cato the younger uh who was you
know a rap scallion so um the AI on the other hand doesn't care it trains on you and so that's AI has a completely different style than Martha's AI which is completely different different than Jim's AI That's the unlock that I think is so cool and adding into the fact the idea you just gave me that I'm going to steal
um is it's like Aristotle but who gets along with everybody and can present in everybody's style I love it yeah oh this has been absolutely look at this yeah well we're already an hour and a half this is awesome so um what's what's next on the adventure uh where are you setting off to next uh
do you have a plan as is that no known yet or are you gonna wing it we we have a few things a few options uh we're not quite at the point of uh executing them yet um I really want to get the schooly ready so we can just blast off uh so that's that's the next that's the next couple weeks for me is focusing on
getting it ready to to go uh and then we will be unstoppable in my mind and just a quick question about that I I assume you're filming getting the schooly ready yeah yeah so definitely own notification because I don't know anything about this um like how many hours of film will be
shot getting the schooly ready and then what will that be compressed into the in the edited version we were just talking about that yeah I I think it makes great like YouTube videos so I might make just my own YouTube videos like just stand alone we might stand alone progress but in the film itself I would see it as
like one little 30 second Montage or something like we bought a school bus Get Ready Get Ready Get ready ready to go yeah so you know condensing at least maybe like 15 15 hours into 30 seconds people who are really interested can watch the Youtube videos but people watching the documentary just want I
mean they don't want the whole grueling process you know okay so but yeah yeah I think that's one of the that's one of the future unlocks of like Reinventing books right um audiobooks are going to be the easiest to reinvent um but books can and should be living things and then your comment some people
are going to be super interested in all the backstory uh so they should have access to the if it's a biography or an autobiography they should have access to the tapes that the author made with the subject yeah well you don't be fascinating like I don't I've never really seen it happen but be fascinating
to watch a movie and like have like visual like footnotes where you could basically click on like if you if you're interested in like the schooly process you click on the thing and it pops up another video and you can watch that you gotta be careful because your goal is to be unemployable and you
sound like somebody who could work for osv's infinite media so oh no a job the shame the shame well that that sounds like one of the the the least of meant many worst evils so all right but yeah so yeah so that's our plan is to uh I mean get the schooling ready and then we still we we've
interviewed a bunch of different schools filmed a lot of that but I'd still like to meet some like people that are adults that have uh gone through this kind of upbringing and and film their lives and get to know them a little more and I think people will find really interesting so totally agree so this is
this has been uh you've only underlined why I'm happy you guys got the first Fellowship I think this is awesome I think it's going to be incredibly uh educational uh so I am super eager to follow along as on your adventure as you guys know at the end of each of our podcasts we wave we say we're gonna make you the empress
in the emperor of the world you each get to um and uh you can't kill anyone you can't put anyone in a re-education isn't that right re-educate re-education no no education has no part in what goes on in those camps anyway uh what you can do is you can incept two ideas into the entire population of
the Earth we're going to give you magic microphone you're going to speak two lines into it and whenever all the other humans or sentient beings let's not limit it to humans all the other sentient beings that that wake up whenever their morning is they're going to think I just had the two best ideas
in the world and I'm gonna do both of these things you get each get two Martha I'm going to start with you no two ideas obsessed in every brain in the world yeah so you're asking the wrong people Jim we we intentionally I was really looking forward to this just for that so the one
thing I would uh I feel comfortable incepting is you can just do stuff I love that that's that's a something I firmly believe um and then for the second one I would say um you can just stop doing stuff oh that's good too so so basically if you're if you're playing it if you're playing a game that you don't like yeah
if you're playing a game that you don't like you can quit I I I'm a huge believer in that I like it I like that a lot Martha pressure's on yeah um how about that you were made for perfect joy and it is possible um that's that's one and two would be uh love and freedom uh are um love requires freedom
how about that is that is that communicating something oh yeah uh demelo that's one of his big deals he said that you can't truly love another person and seek to control them or seek dominion over them and that if you want to know whether you actually love somebody you got to be able to say to
them without any guile or any dishonesty that I leave you free to be yourself and to pursue what you want and what you love and if that means sometimes that it's going to be things away from me that's okay so Tony was already switched on guy uh who became enlightened uh after a long long talk with the terminally ill
Rickshaw driver um he used to be a a Jesuit priest and he became so enlightened that the Catholics excommunicated him they rehabilitated him later uh that's kind of a trend in the Catholic Church isn't it like no you're too extreme oh wait you were on to something probably did you believe that then we
probably shouldn't have burned all those people at this state we're sorry how can people follow along Twitter I know um your channel you have a YouTube channel mm-hmm yeah the it's just at Nat and Martha I think isn't it yeah yeah the tag is Nat and Martha sharp the best way to find us or
find our uh information and stuff is Nat and martha.com so that that has links to everything that has our intro video it has a pitch video it has links So Perfect all right guys I am delighted to be along for this adventure and I know with the two of you it is going to be a fun one thank you for coming on all right thank you