Story As Infrastructure

In S2E5 of The Human Layer, hosts Crystal and Taylor are joined by Mason Pashia who tells stories and runs media for Getting Smart, a learning innovation organization that covers the future of education with a commitment to the idea that the system can and must change.

We explore why storytelling shapes what education values and how learners can reclaim agency by curating the narratives of their lives. We trace how myths, scarcity thinking, and tech hype distort school and how attention, lineage, and grief work can guide more regenerative systems. 

• Mason’s path from songwriting to education media and learner advocacy 
• Storytelling as a way to translate lived experience into transferable skills 
• Curation as identity work and as an act of subtraction 
• Why “redesign school” feels strangely ungenerative for many people 
• Hollywood depictions that lock school into the same script 
• Abundance as a learning mindset when systems feel defined by scarcity 
• Gift economy reciprocity as a model for learning and teaching 
• Web3 sovereignty and regenerative community experiments for education 
• How crypto’s original decentralization story gets captured and warped 
• Grief, hospicing, and forgiveness as prerequisites for system change 
• Risks of wellness theater and spiritual bypass in leadership 
• AI as a servant of one user versus a tool for the many 
• Lineage and ancient texts as guardrails for pattern recognition tools 
• Attention and taste as core educational outcomes 
• Signs of hope in analog culture coming back 

Be sure to follow The Human Layer's signals on Substack to stay in the loop! 

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Taylor 0:02

All right. Welcome to another episode of the Human Layer. Super excited about this one. Uh friend, colleague, many, many other things that we will dive into and find in real time. Mason Pashia is with us. Thank you, brother, for making time and uh intersecting. You certainly spend a lot of time in front of the mic and have your own podcast you can uh mention as we go. Um, but yeah, excited about this one. Um deeper into sort of myth and storytelling and poetry and all the things I know that are near and dear to your heart, both personally and professionally. Um so we'll we'll dive in. We've got some loose structure. As folks know, these are usually fairly loose and emergent uh by design, but also because we just like to wing it and it feels like it usually leads to a better, better conversation. Uh Crystal, anything else you want to tee up up front? Otherwise, I might just turn it over to to Mason for a quick intro.

Crystal 1:02

Yeah, just hello everybody. And I this is one of those where I just get to kind of also be a listener and also, you know, participant, but I'm gonna let y'all run with it.

Taylor 1:11

Yeah, Mason, whatever is useful from uh who you are in the world, feel free to do that and then we'll then we'll dive in.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Yeah, thanks so much for the intro. Thanks for the invitation. It's great to be here with both of you. Um, I'm Mason Pasha. It's great to meet you. I'm with Getting Smart, which is a uh learning innovation thought leader organization. I run all of our media stuff, so any storytelling you see come out of that world, podcast publications, blogs, etc. Uh, I've got kind of a thumbprint somewhere on there. And um Taylor and I had the chance to meet a little bit ago about some credentialing, badging, learner ecosystem infrastructure uh stuff, and we hit it off with that. So I'm super excited to carry on with that. As Taylor mentioned, I've got a background in the arts, poetry is kind of my current thing, but it used to be music, still kind of is. Uh, and I'm just excited to chat with you both today.

Taylor 2:01

Awesome. And maybe before we even get going, I'll make mention of Kestrel and other songs because I know you are humble and probably won't bring it up naturally. So yeah, we'll we'll have it in the notes, but yeah, recommend folks go and pick it up and take a peek. Uh I think that seems like an exciting culmination of a lot of things you've been thinking about. And I also realize I say Pashia, and I know it's Pasha because I've heard you and others say it. So I know that's not the first time.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

We have a sneaky eye in there, it gets a lot of folks.

Taylor 2:32

So sneaky eye.

Crystal 2:33

That's actually why I take the intro to you, Taylor.

Poetry As Invitation And Place

Taylor 2:38

Oh, and I I took the bait too. Um so apologies, but um uh well maybe and anything you want to say about Kestrel just since I brought it up or keep keep moving, but know that yeah, I'd love to hear your your quick quick take on that as a as a recent product and something people can pick up.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

You bet. Yeah. So for uh about the last five years, I've been running a weekly-ish Substack where I put up an original poem or song with some sort of meditations on how it might have emerged from my life that week. Uh things I've even written, like seeing something I notice in the poem upon reflection, uh, really to try and demystify the art of poetry in some ways for folks. Not as much like I think art is mysterious, and also I want to welcome people in rather than keep them at an arm's length. So at a certain point, uh I looked back at the last couple of years of poetry and was like, oh, there's actually a theme emerging here that's kind of my relationship to this place. Uh, moved up to Pacific Northwest, Seattle specifically in 2021, and it kind of rewired my brain uh environmentally. It just like the something about the environment, the the green, the water, the mountains, everything just took this formerly Kansas City boy uh and turned him into something a little bit more western and wild. So uh this book is kind of a culmination of that migration and a little bit of the ways in which it taught me to see the world differently through inanimate and uh the more than human world.

Storytelling And The Learner Narrative

Taylor 4:05

So I love it. I love it, I love it. Well, yeah. Geography plays a role. It's funny. We we last saw each other in Boulder, and and for me it was like, yeah, it felt like a natural place for us both to be existing, you know, in the mountains in Colorado. Um cool. Let's let's hop in, and I think we're going to avoid going uh too far into the technical upfront, though I think we will get there, or or at least uh speaking directly about sort of technology and and AI and some of the things that are here. Um, but prior to that, uh I think we wanted to just start with like more of a kernel and your sort of origination into some of the thinking and work. Um so curious, like when did you realize that like storytelling or poetry or these, again, whether kernel is the right word, but or genesis, like when did you realize that those were important and and what I guess what does that foundation and those kernels teach us about either teaching or education and the work you're involved in? Like connect some of those like human dots first here for us, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Yeah, you bet. So I um I've always been really interested in stories. I think that I I I loved reading growing up, I loved movies, I loved anything that was in the world of story. And I think my first foray into actually crafting them myself was in through songwriting. And there was something at the core of a bunch of songs that I loved, and I couldn't quite put a finger on what it was. Uh, but I ultimately found out that it had something to do with story. It was this this arc, this kind of human journey. Uh and I think that was probably where it started for me. But then uh when I went to college, I started to do some some combination of music and literature classes, and I kept seeing this theme of story emerging. The classic place for an English literature major to go is into marketing, which like at the time was very uh trendy to think about how marketing and brand is a story and it's a story you're telling. And I was like, oh, this is like this this sounds kind of fun. So there was like some branding work that I was doing in the world of story, and then I started to think about um I guess the larger education ecosystem, specifically how I had had this very multifaceted um, I guess, experience of high school and college at that point in my life where I was like trying to be a musician on the side and did a bunch of entrepreneurial things, but they were really hard to communicate to people as like I guess now we'd say durable skills or something like that. And then at the same time, I was doing a bunch of like landscaping stuff, and then in college I had all these other interests, and I was really struggling to tell the story of myself, I guess, to people, two different audiences. I think I could, I was sort of known as like the music guy at the time. So there was like a brand that I was touting or trying to live into. But I had this wide swath of experiences that I thought were really valuable, but I didn't have the language to talk about how they were valuable or what it meant that I could actually do in like a transferable sort of way. Um, and then like I reflected back to some of my friends growing up, and I had this one friend uh in particular who like his family car broke down probably twice a week, and he figured out a way to get him and his brother to school every day. And I was like, that is an entrepreneurial pursuit. Like that is a that is an entrepreneurial mindset, way more than like the other kid who started just like raking leaves after his older brother graduated high school, and he's like running a business, so to speak. So I was like, the the stories that we tell about ourselves are super important, and we don't give learners any tools to really help craft that story. So some of this got into like the out-of school time versus in school time, some of this became a personal vendetta against transcripts and uh grades. And and I think all of that kind of culminated into where I am now professionally, which is at this kind of crux of uh thinking about the future of education and how to make all learning count and how to help learners specifically tell their story and be recognized in this conversation. Um, there's a bunch of other directions to take that with the ways that I'm still engaging with arts and poetry and trying to keep those things alive. But I think that's the the quick-ish distillation of the storytelling thread in my in my life so far.

Taylor 8:30

I love it. Yeah, when it when it's personal and you connect it, I don't know. Almost almost nothing feels worth it. I don't know, that this is maybe a it's a tangent. We we don't need to go too deep, but I I'm just like it's hard to imagine doing anything that I can't anchor to a lived experience or something that now I realize is like just the part of part of me, part of the story I thought I knew or tried to craft growing up. I don't know. This is actually a good segue into a question I wasn't sure we should hit on earlier or later, but Crystal, anything pop in if you want. Um, but then I think we've got a good launch pad here.

Crystal 9:04

I was just thinking about how horrible I am at telling my story now, still after being a journalist for years and did branding, all of it. Sometimes I'm like today I'm this. And then sometimes I'm like, eh, what do you want me to be? You know?

SPEAKER_02 9:17

So and there's some liberty in that. Like there's not, it's not all bad to be able to be a chameleon and at the same time, like you do find yourself in a corner a lot. And like, I think one of the the great early lessons that I got, especially in college when I was like putting out resumes and stuff. I think that's when I got the at someone told me about it anyway, is don't ever put something on your resume that you don't want to do again. And I was like, oh, like telling a story is actually an act of subtraction. Like it doesn't always have to be you put everything on there that you've ever done. And I think there is like there's a flywheel that you hit eventually where that becomes true. Like I think in in high school you're a little you're striving a little more for like, oh, I got this like random certificate from something, I'm gonna put that on my like that you do kind of cling to everything. But I do think that there is a way that storytelling of your own life is an act of curation. It's not just everything is me all the time. Uh and I think that's really important.

Taylor 10:14

So yeah. This is the the thing I've leaned into, which is I love I love literal and figurative hats that we all wear. And so people know I'm often seen with a hat, and it's usually pretty intentional. I love that process actually day-to-day. Who am I? What what what what little bits of myself should come through and actually be seen by others? Um, so I love that. Uh so uh um this I think will lead into this idea of like store and well, hats protocol, which would be another interesting. Maybe later you were saying you kind of wanted to dip dip into some of the web three landscape and some some of that. Uh that's an interesting project that kind of dovetails pretty well. Um, but we can we can yeah, save that and see if it it resurfaces. Um I I know I know just enough to be dangerous, Crystal.

Crystal 11:06

We can see we neither of us should be spokesperson for that protocol, but no, but I had the hat on this morning because it was cold this morning and their swag is the best. Oh my god, I'm gonna wear it one more time.

Taylor 11:15

You have the one that's just hats says hats?

Crystal 11:17

Yeah, with a little thingy on the top. Yeah, I've got I've got the summer version of the hat and then the winter version of hats.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Versatile. I love it.

The Myths That Shape School

Taylor 11:24

Um so uh I was gonna avoid this was like yeah, to me, kind of the crux of a lot of this that I wanted to pull out, knowing your experience and your expertise. Um so we're just gonna tee it up up front, given what you just rolled through. So if the if we all, and I think we all believe that some version of the future of what education, broadly speaking, formal, informal, what that will become or should be, I think storytelling and and and sort of myths that we build into that process are without question part of um part of that equation and and and part of the problem. I think you point to like how many times do we actually give students or learners that sort of freedom to to craft their story as part of that process? So, what stories do we need to be telling right now in 2026 um to help that future arrive well? Um, and this can kind of lead into then this idea of story as infrastructure. I think that to me is a really interesting place that we all can point to. I mean, certainly learning economy is playing a part of that. A lot of crystal and and your work I know is deep into that. This podcast in the human layer is certainly a piece of that. Um take it where you want, but yeah, I'm uh curious how you think about both stories infrastructure, but also like what stories do we need to be telling to kind of pull that future of education, you know, back into the into the present.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Yeah, I mean, I think the it's a really good question. It's one I'm spending a lot of time thinking about and honestly would love to kind of dance on it because I I don't feel like I have the the right answer right now. It changes day to day. I mean, I think the easiest answer to that question is to first ask the questions we're already the stories we're already telling ourselves. And and that's been like a recent kind of obsession of mine is to interrogate what is the current promise of school versus what is the promise that we need school to make uh specifically. And I've been riffing a lot lately about how we've been going through a lot of these projects where we're asking people to rethink school, and there is kind of like a confluence, everyone's kind of getting to a similar place in in our innovation education orbit, which is rare. That does not always happen. Um, but the second you ask someone to redesign school, it it is one of the least generative questions for people. Partially, I think there's like an economy of pain that happens where it's like parents are just like, oh, we went through it, like you can go through it. Like you just push your head down and you try. Uh, or like it is this thing that just kind of sucks. And that's like that, and that's the point. It's like a thing that sucks and you do it begrudgingly, and then you get through and you're like, Oh, look, now I'm in the real world, which we also need to debunk. I think that's one of the stories is that the real world actually starts like when you're in it, like you're just alive and you are participating in the real world. You don't have to wait for permission to be like in the world. Um, so I I think that's one of them. This is gonna be a super messy answer and if they keep emerging like that on the on the divine as I'm talking. But um I was thinking back to depictions of school. Like, what is the reason that it's so hard to imagine outside of you've got class periods, you have lunch, you have a building that you go to. Um, really resonant for me was this the fact that the Jetsons, the cartoon, in the opening sequence, school is the exact same. It just you drop a kid off at a building and the building's floating and it's a little more glass, but like it is there's there's nothing about it that is innovative. And this is there are probably more windows, but yeah. More windows, yeah, yeah. But there's still like this this core conceit through all of Hollywood and depictions of school that it is this it's the same thing always, no matter how imaginative the world. You go to like Harry Potter and you have potions class and you have tests, and you go to like these other and you go to all these other environments of school, and it's really like lockers, bullies, football team. Like it is the same thing forever. And we are and yet we're asking people to think differently about it. And it's like the people who are leading this storytelling infrastructure are not doing anything with it. They're just kind of like, oh, this is actually gonna just be always an antagonist or a setting that is like kind of something you can't adjust, or the homeschool kid is weird, or like they're there the ways that we tell these stories, they reaffirm a bunch of this stuff and make it really hard to break new ground. Um so I think that's like priming the landscape of like these are the stories we're currently telling. And in 2026, I think we need a pretty radical update for a lot of things that you've already sort of touched on briefly, which is partially obviously the AI infusion. Part of it is the ways in which the world of just being a human is going to be really different going forward. Uh part of it is to respond to a lot of the uh, I guess, insecurities or fears of modern day people. There's a lot of people who I think right now feel like they're on shaky ground in almost every aspect of their lives. And so I don't know, I don't, it's not school's responsibility to stabilize the ground under their feet, but it is their responsibility to be complicit in helping to stabilize the ground. Like it is not just the school's responsibility, but we need to cast forward what we're trying to build. So I I do still want to answer that question, but I have just talked a lot.

Taylor 16:57

So I won't no, I love I love that so much. I to me, what comes back, and I've said this before, is like schools run on invisible myths. This is meritocracy, this is um, you know, just sort of scarcity and productivity and what it means to then get a job. And like, so there's all these invisible myths that sort of already run the the physical space. You've got ed tech and other companies that then encode that in a way and and get built straight into curriculum that then is like the authorization for those myths and the stories that ultimately then perpetuate. So that's a really it's a hard cycle to break. Um, but I can point to the entire like anything that is sort of part of that machinery, all is sort of feeding back into uh yeah, a felt sense of this isn't right, but it's myth, it's stories that already exist, and I shouldn't, you know, shouldn't rock the boat. Sorry, Crystal, go for it.

Crystal 17:57

And you were there's one little point, and then I'm gonna kick it back over to y'all. My uh niece is in the third grade and she goes to an experiential school. I think there's like five, ten people in each class up through can up through um fifth grade. No screens, no technology at all. And her parents have kept that at home as well. Her ability to tell stories is stunning. And she just travels through the world singing, writing poetry, writing stories. She's writing a novel about why her aunt hasn't come to visit her in a year. I'm like, well, that's gonna suck. But sure. Like, but I know that when it comes time for her to learn the technology, especially, you know, she's still got a ways to go. AI is gonna be at scale, and whatever it's gonna look like in five or 10 years, I can teach her that in a few weekends. Or the AI can teach her how to use it. But the critical thinking and the creative process has been protected and cultivated throughout her entire early years, which I think is that gives me hope. I know that's not accessible to a lot of students, but it is nice to see.

Replacing Scarcity With Learning Abundance

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Well, and I think like that's totally true. I mean, I think I something that I've always been frustrated about by going back to the literature degree, English classes, that world is that like what you're doing is synthesis and you're doing these things that are applicable in like all of these more high-value careers, or at least formerly high value, like with in in the computer science data world, like if you you are just synthesizing words rather than numbers. You're synthesizing like a book is a bunch of data put together that you are making something out of. And so I do think that, like in that instance, your niece, what she's doing when she's telling stories is she's aggregating all of this data and these symbols, and she's essentially making them work for her toward an end that she has determined or is discovering. And I think that tools aren't that different. Like tools, you find them and you make them work toward an end that you are directed at or discovering. And so I think that that is kind of this like it's almost like a leadership skill at some level. It's kind of like delegation at various grain sizes of whether it's numbers or words or tools or people. Like you're just you're you're kind of orchestrating toward an end. And I think storytelling is actually a really good practice for that. Um, with oftentimes without having to be super dependent on a lot of resources that are expensive or people. Um, so I I think that's really interesting. But I I think Taylor, to go back to your question about the stories that we're telling, I I think the one that I really want to hit on is this right now. We are in a time of kind of defined scarcity. Like there is so much everybody's disengaged. So there's like very few moments when you're actually engaged, or you have like a scarcity of um, a scarcity of options, or you have underenrollment in schools, or you have a bus driver shortage, or a teacher shortage. Like everything is this through this lens of like there's a pie and there's not enough for us. And really, like fundamentally, and and kind of in my own background, like I think we really have to make the shift toward abundance on that mindset, specifically for learning, because it is happening all the time. Like, learning is an abundant resource, not a scarce one, because partially because we learn when we don't want to. We learn when we fail, we learn when we run into something we shouldn't have, we learn when we are in a classroom and we learn when we're not in one. So I think like that is the story. I think abundance needs to be the story that we're telling. And that's kind of been a politicized term lately, as far as like getting rid of bureaucracy, building faster. And I tend to prep to agree with a lot of those ideas around just like getting rid of the friction that makes things possible. And uh, but I do think it's a really effective word in this moment, especially in the education system where leaders are faced every direction they look with scarcity. And it takes thinking outside of the box and creativity to get to that abundance zone. But I actually think that's how we deliver meaningful experiences to learners and recognize them for.

Taylor 22:01

Yeah, I think I think it's how to take back control of even that word alone when I hear it is like it's Diamandus and like the moonshots reality and like this whole and I just it's hard and again who knows uh it's always hopeful hearing you know the reality for younger kids. Crystal, we we each have like one small version of that. I wish I had more kids in my life, actually, because I think it's usually like a pretty hopeful layer to just hear them more. They don't care about, you know, Peter Diamantis in most cases. But anyway, like how do we um I don't know, I don't know how to actually own that narrative in a way that doesn't become not to say they're out for any ill intent, but you you know, you read like the solve everything posts that that they recently pushed out or book or whatever there. But all of that is so far separated from like what it means for a school, for 90% of schools probably, to like r be reinvigorated by capturing the abundance narrative in a way that actually feels hopeful and helpful and mapped to their their lived reality. So yeah, what how do we how do we like, yes, it seems like the right word, but it also seems like it's coming with this whole kind of tech bro narrative that I don't know. It's it's hard to feel like I don't know the path to to win it back, you know?

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Right. I mean, there's pros and cons to it. If you can the part of the way that it's been accept adopted at a policy agenda level means that that might bode well for education if we use that term. Like it could be good to be on the abundance agenda as education if particularly the Democrats, but some of the Democrats and more moderates like get some can control in certain places. Uh, but I I mean I I think you are doing some of this already, you being Taylor and Learning Economy Foundation. Like what you are building is an infrastructure of abundance. You are building a thing that recognizes learning and experience everywhere. And whether or not that's a word that you're necessarily grabbing onto, I I think you can operate with a spirit of and not necessarily be like, oh yes, I am an abundance warrior. Like, I don't know if you necessarily need to take on the mantle uh individually. But I I think that I think that's one way is like we have to figure out the actual technology to recognize more learning experiences, which I've already said like five times, but I'm going to keep continuing to say because it's driving me crazy that it's beat the drum.

Taylor 24:27

Nothing changes if yeah, you gotta have conviction.

Web3 Sovereignty And Regenerative Systems

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Yeah. So that that's a big one. I mean, I think that it's um I I think a lot about these ideas of like a gift economy and and some of the the mentality around that. So for if anybody, if listeners aren't familiar, it's essentially this idea of like reciprocity. I think that there's this I uh I I think there's some of the earliest depictions of it or the ones that we talk about the most are kind of like the peace pipe, like native population sitting around a fire passing a pipe, and it just kind of keeps going and you pass it to your neighbor. And the point is that it doesn't live anywhere, it's just kind of like this fluid thing. Um, and we I I think that that in some ways captures the spirit of abundance and in the way that I'm thinking of it. Like my my personal passion is really the arts and thinking about an arts community and uh grumming up in music, like music is one of the most technologically affected art forms because it every time markets change, it just breaks music again, and musicians can't figure out how to make money, and platforms change everything. And and really, like fundamentally, the reason it's so hard to value art is because like the best way to pay someone for art is to then make art. Like it is this kind of thing that is just perpetual, perpetuating this idea. And so in a learning context, that that was a big departure, but I'm I'm sowing a seed for later in the conversation to come back and talk more about that. Um, but in a learning context, that's kind of this like if you learn something, then you go teach it. That's like that is how you uh get agency. And it's not about preserving learning for the select few, like maybe a higher education or like an elite like private academy or something like that. It's really about how do you take something and then just like let it bloom everywhere and give them permission to be like, now you know this, go do it again. And that I don't feel like is ever messaged in school. Like you learn something so that you can own it and then so you can like use it to your benefit again, which has value, but it it isn't really about this idea of like holistic flourishing that I think is really important and lives out some of those abundance principles, I think, in a more spiritual and philosophical way, rather than just being uh tech pro.

Taylor 26:48

Yeah, yeah. This is maybe a good bridge into some of the world of web three. I think like, you know, regeneration, the whole regen community is is that, but that conversation certainly doesn't find its way back into um not explicitly back into like formal education. Yeah, I don't know, Crystal. And and and maybe this is also a good bridge into like AI and some of the stuff you've been working on recently. Like, what does it mean to actually leverage the latest and greatest in a way that does map towards regeneration and these like virtuous, you know, um, yeah, virtuous cycles. And I think learning and knowledge, that's what I was captured by with learning economy, is to think about it in those terms. And I think you're exactly right. Like, but now we've got machines that are intelligent, which complicates things a little bit, but also, you know, if pointed in the right direction, can you know bring bring on this just wild reality of abundance, potentially?

Crystal 27:46

I feel like on the systemic, there's like there's a systemic conversation, and it goes back to scarcity. And scarcity, because of the way capitalism was structured and all that, um, you know, scarcity is a control mechanism. And so, in order for that to be unraveled and to give people more sovereignty, which is what we focus on in the decentralized world, is sovereignty breaking systems and creating regenerative systems in place of what you know was extracting our value and our goodness. And I think that applies to education as well. Like, how can we unravel the education system in a way that removes that scarcity that's baked into the system? So that when students come through, they are empowered, like what you're describing earlier, Mason. Like they are empowered to just go learn in the real world and learn in ways that allows them to be part of the real real world as a student. And then with learning credentials, I mean, then then that gives something tangible that says, yes, I learned XYZ, and then bring it into a container that has systemic change baked into it, like in the Web3 world. And then that kind of feels like that is how you can move an engine of change forward with multiple different arms in motion, and just reverse the scarcity narrative. Because I feel like that is one of the things AI is doing right now at scale is it's just destroying the old systems in many, many ways. And as a Gen Xer, I can see this every conversation I have with a colleague is like, oh shit, I gotta go learn this thing now because this thing just took my job and I don't want to be homeless. And it's kind of exhausting to be at this age and have spent that much time learning something and then question it. So, how can you take the good parts that you've learned and put them into another system that doesn't even exist yet? And that's one of the things that I love about the impact world that we function in in decentralization land, um, is because it's constantly trying to fit testing how to create a new structure and break the old one, but not in a way that creates destruction. Like we don't want to just burn everything down and have nothing coming up behind it. It's how can you stand up the experiment while the main thing is collapsing so that we can actually begin to iterate in real time together as a community and stand up things like mutual aid and salons and things that would support artists and learners and all these things. That was my that's my TED talk. Thanks for coming.

When Decentralization Turns Into Hype

SPEAKER_02 30:13

I've given about four now, so all good. I I I think that's really, really smart. I mean, on uh the decentralization front is interesting. So, like for a bunch of reasons, but just right now, as we're thinking about stories and myth, right? Like, I I feel like decentralization, specifically something like a cryptocurrency or that technology is a really interesting example of something that started from like a very spiritually good, interesting philosophical place and has become pretty radically detached from that. Like we are we are no longer if you're talking crypto now, you're not really talking about decentralization. You're talking about kind of centralization and corruption and greed and capitalism. And so I like people you've you've both been in that world for a while. I'm curious like how it's felt to watch that story become something else. And also if you like have thoughts about how to reclaim it or redirect it, because I'm I'm personally worried about that with education, where like every time we do something, sometimes sometimes we're saved by just changing the word again, like and so something nothing ever gets momentum because we change the word every five years, and maybe that's useful for making our stories never a runaway train. But like I could if you take the AI agent tutor thing narrative all the way to the end, like what I think happens there is there's just an unschooling movement that happens where it's just like, oh, we actually don't need school anymore, and I'm just gonna like learn from my phone forever. And like that that's interesting, but also gets rid of a lot of like third spaces, community, social time, like all the stuff that I think we just as people on a podcast called the human layer really care about and think about. Um, but I I so I want to be I'm wary of a story that you start telling having an ending you don't want, right? And I think that's like the distillation. But I'm curious how that's felt and how you all would approach trying to put something like that back on the rails as people who've been in this for so long.

Crystal 32:13

Taylor, you go first. I got like a thousand off. How much time do we have?

Taylor 32:19

No, I've I've I've said it. I have a pretty clear take now, you know, that wasn't the case even probably a year ago. Um you know, which is in on one hand uh so obvious, and like of course we'd land here, given you know, any number of sort of power cycles and what humans typically do over time. And you know, sure it's like felt pretty abbreviated and and fast, but um, so it is a it's a very strange tension to to know that the underlying principles are all still there, and there are certainly communities and events and all the things that we know we can go to that still absolutely embrace all of that, um uh alongside what we would have pointed to as you know this technology and what's possible and the industry at large, you know, quote unquote winning, is basically getting here where it's like, oh, we've got like policy and like you know, nation-state adoption and like you know, stable coins potentially like actually being you know the sort of currency that that sort of flips the you know historical fiat model. So it's a very strange space to have you know have have seen that all play out and and kind of know that this is what was inevitable, and having kind of tricked ourselves in believing this is like the the the positive end state, and then like step back and be like, oh, but it's actually like all running on the same corrupt bullshit that humans have always kind of kind of rolled through when we get to these places. So yeah, I don't know. Um, I'm certainly not in love with crypto the way I used to be. Uh I will say that very explicitly. Um, but I do think there is something very interesting and real about you know what can still be built to Crystal's point in this experimentation alongside the transition, you know, and we're gonna go through this with AI, no question. We're like, it's just time being compressed, and we've gone we've gone through cycles that I, you know, we we've learned some things and and seem to learn nothing in other cases and repeat a lot of the same mistakes. Um so I don't know. I'm conflicted, I guess is the best way to put it, but uh yeah. Not but also know that there's a lot of good stuff happening and just pointing to those. The regenerative storytelling tech is an interesting frame that I hadn't quite thought about, but I like more and more, and certainly all the work we're doing in this podcast is just in that lane, which feels like the most important. We're going way upstream, you know, by doing that. And that, you know, humans gonna human, as I like to say, and like tech's gonna evolve, and this is these phase changes will take place. But we've yeah, got to get the the stories right and the myths right.

Crystal 35:15

Yeah, I have I agree with all of that. Um, I have a love-hate with crypto. It's it's the tension that Taylor was talking about. Like I first time I found it was right after um Occupy Wall Street. So I've been there for the ARC. I became active in it when I was in a hackerspace in like 2015, 2016, and then started working professionally in 2017. So it was taught to me by InfoSec researchers and cyberpunks. So I got to learn it for what it and what I saw before them. Like that, you know, this is an alternative economic system that can challenge the nation state system. Unfortunately, now that we are at mass adoption scale and now that we're at regulatory conversations and corporate centralized capture, we've just recreated the same system of corrupt fiat. And a lot of that comes down to the VC money that's on the infrastructure side. These VCs are putting the crypto VCs put money into startups. They perpetuate the system that forces technologists to skip product market fit, skip making something useful, stick to the money laundering and the shitty abuses of crypto, because that's the fastest way to get the ROI back to the VC when you do a token launch. And it's the system that has been perpetuated over and over again. And the only reason I do still have hope is because of the regenerative communities we're in. And, you know, Journal Dow is one of the things that we were founders of. That's using blockchain technology to help preserve the storytelling abilities of journalists. And what does that look like? No one knows what that looks like. It's an experiment. And journalists don't want to have anything to do with crypto, and not that I blame them. So it's I do still have hope though, like at the end of the day, if the system completely burns tomorrow because some tech bro said, hey, let's do XYZ, I can whip out my wallet, and so could Taylor, and we could swap coins for tomatoes or whatever, you know?

Grief Work For System Transitions

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Yeah. So right. I know I think that's yeah, like uh I sort of teased this earlier, but I'm I'm trying to think right now a lot about regenerative arts communities. And I think that that is similar to journalists, artists oftentimes are pretty, pretty resistant, especially now to crypto and to these technologies, when like the the promise that kind of the center of the technology is actually like really democratizing and decentralizing, and like it's a beautiful promise of shared ownership, this kind of a way to move along with a person rather than have it all be kind of I made it happen for myself, and also to have a record of it and to have a little more uh buy-in. So I think that's uh I think it's a beautiful vision. Um one thing you said that I just want to build on, because these have been random thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain for a while, but are currently coalescing in real time. So I'm going to try and articulate something meaningful. I I so at Getting Smart, I'm I like I said, I do a bunch of our media stuff. So a lot of that is people sending stories to me and then me trying to do and my best pass at editing their idea and do a blog post. Um and lately we've been getting a lot of content from education leaders, so superintendents, principals, district administrators, talking about uh essentially the grief work necessary in change. So some of that is like how do you forgive yourself for being wrong for two decades about what or or not even being wrong, but for like put uh getting incentivized and being okay with that to just like keep moving. And then now you get at this tough crossroads where you actually have to kind of grieve that thing and move forward to actually deliver change. Um, I think about this all the time with like random stuff in my neighborhood, where it's like as the as a as an environmentalist person, there's a bunch of times where I'm like, that is a beautiful tree. Like it would be a shame to lose it. But what they're proposing is putting in a train. And like a train is pretty beautiful infrastructure for humans. And if we actually just had the space to grieve the passing of that tree, like maybe it wouldn't actually be so hard. But I feel like as a species, we are actually really bad at that grief work. I'm I'm bad at that grief work as well. But like I actually think that that is what's necessary to go from one system to another. And there's like this two curves model. I can't remember who talks about it, but the the first curve ends with hospicing, and from that is where something blooms again. And so it's like you end it with care. That is what grieving is, and what hospicing is. So maybe like in this instance, the old economic system is something that we would have needed to like meaningfully grieve and hospice as we were burging a new one. Because otherwise, they're just gonna stack on each other and become this like gross mutation that's kind of neither either thing, but they both still suck. Um, and so I I don't know that all three of those things connected just now in a way that felt resonant. But I'm curious if that resonates with you guys at all as uh looking at this work.

Crystal 40:16

Yeah, definitely. We did a lot of grief ceremonies at Naropa and we did one at a recently, or not recently, a couple years ago, at a MAPS psychedelic conference, a big one. Um, there were hundreds of people there. And it was fascinating. There was, I can't remember specifically what we were, what was grieving. I think it was just a general, like what you just described. It was for the transitioning of systems. And I think that requires vulnerability. And I know in our tech spaces, it's mostly driven by toxic masculinity masculinity. And we don't create spaces for shocker. We don't create those containers. I mean, we're starting to, like ETH Boulder, this event we just had, um, it had some of that in it. And I can see where we need more grieving ceremonies and then to make it acceptable so that people can come together and mourn and then transition together.

Taylor 41:07

Yeah. The hard part is I just, you know, I think about those that are in this like strange space of seeing this big power dynamic shift. And I I hadn't connected it really until you were just talking about it either, Mason, which is just the parallels with crypto and education and journalism. And we're seeing this institutionally across the board. You know, I'm sure there's a version of it in like, you know, healthcare and some of the systems we're probably not as close to. Like, um, but I also know how this is comes off. Not that a lot of the people that probably need to hear it will hear it, is like you lefties that just think you go and put time into grieving and like all will be well. No one that I know that is part of the problem, and we've seen it, I saw it very directly recently, like in crypto, there is no like single atom in their body that is going to put that effort in, even though it's very much obvious how broken some of the nervous systems are then and how much they need it. So that's the that's probably the work at hand is like to assemble across these, you know, these lines um and and figure out spaces and communities to do that in. Because they're, you know, they will, I think the right people will slowly fold into realizing that that is like a part of what's needed. But man, when it's like that against no go launch another token and make another million, they're not going to start grieving. They don't give a shit.

Crystal 42:35

And along those lines, too, I just want to, you know, take that back up. Um as these systems collapse so dramatically, and some of them are right now in real time, that opens the door for grieving ceremony. Because then that narcissist that Taylor's just describing, either they can just not participate at all, or they are just slammed in the face with massive collapse. And unfortunately, that is where a lot of these systems are headed because we're not hitting the brakes and saying, hey, let's have a ceremony here, or hey, let's have an alternative system here, or hey, we see it's breaking, but we have been conditioned and we can see it now in real time. It's fascinating. We were talking about this on Sunday. Like we've been preparing for this transition, collapse, whatever, for like a decade or more. And so even though we know and have prepared, it's still at times you're like, oh shit, we're in it. Where most people do not have the capacity to understand they're in it and are just going to be slammed by it. And that does open the door for things to regenerate in that space, but that's the messy version.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

And I think it's easier to feel to seem holier than thou in these conversations and not actually do the meaningful work of like making that a caring process. Like I think about the environmental transition all the lot, like energy, clean energy. And like to actually hospice the old system means to care for, say thank you, and express gratitude. Two people who were like mining coal. It's like you got us to where we are. And also it's time for you to like we don't need this anymore. And we need, and we need to have like the pathway to get you into another place. It's not like a severing of the you were wrong, punish you, which I think again, the people on the left love to do. But it is like it is actually this kind of forgiveness work. It's this care work. Like I think that those all tie together and it does make it like system change is a fundamentally human act, even if we're so zoomed out that it's really hard to see the fact that systems are comprised of humans. Uh and so I don't know. I think that that's uh really hard to do, but also important because the the lefties aren't off the hook on this one either.

Taylor 44:44

No, I think the the the wise elders, wherever they might exist, and in some cases, those are just like folks that have been in an industry for you know two or three decades that just have this like knowledge of you know where we've landed. Certainly, you know, I think environment that's an easy one, like very clear points to like you know, fossil fuels all the way through to like these transitions, telecom. There's versions of these things that I think are very easy to point to. But those people, and and now we're increasingly as we get older, in a weird space of feeling like maybe we need to represent that elder or aspiring elder that can do some of that. You're a little younger than Crystal and I, but um, but yeah, I think those are actually the most important people on earth right now. Um and they need to step up. We need we need to step up if if we identify as being a part of that.

Crystal 45:38

Yeah. And there's a thread to pull on here too. I'm pulling on it at night because I'm trying to unpack something I see in the yoga world a lot. And it dovetails into leadership, it also dovetails into what you're talking about, Mason, like having these ceremonies for transition and then having the practitioners that do the ceremonies need to hold a certain type of lineage, not all of them, and depends on what the ceremony is. But there's a lot of ceremonies in wellness theater right now that hit the surface level. And what that does is A, the person holding the container doesn't have the lineage in case the container goes off the rails, which is quite likely, or they don't know how to teach the people in the space how to embody the message and then take it back to their community. That's one of the missing pieces. And if we don't have that, then it gives people cover in leadership positions to say, oh, well, I did the meditation retreat, or I do my yoga on the weekends, I'm a good leader. No, sweetie, you're bypassing. And that at scale is a very big problem because if we don't have enough practitioners and wisdom and elders to hold spaces for these types of very necessary ceremonies, that's gonna be a big problem. So yeah.

Taylor 46:53

Yeah. How many, you know, 20-year-olds right now that are knee deep in building their AI swarm are thinking about who that elder should be that's coming along for the ride? That scares me. Probably not too many.

AI That Serves One Or Many

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Well, and this makes me want to go in three different directions. I'm I'm gonna pick one. I don't know if it's the right one. Um, so you you brought AI into the conversation, shame on you. Um, but also there there's so many I have a thought that I've been grappling with, which is this idea that like AI is inherently a servant of one at a time in which essentially we need a servant of many, someone who represents like sort of the best interests of the planet, humanity, whatever your many is. But I I I actually think it's pretty hard to make that tool something that ever will serve something other than the person directly interfacing it. I think we see this all the time with the kind of like saccharine responses to you when you submit something like, I've never seen anything like that. You are brilliant. Um and and so I I do just wonder like, what is that what is that thing that like that because that becomes the human layer's responsibility is to kind of be the voice of the many. It is like to represent the many and have this like Lorax ish standing on a stump representing speaking for the trees, which I think some people have been doing, but I do think that when AI comes now that it's entered the picture, it makes that really, really urgent. And as you're talking about these 20-year-olds with their fleet of AIs that they're deploying, like I I don't blame them for not having that defined for themselves because they're 20. But like I think that is the work. Like we have to figure out how to package that message, give it to them, let them move on and move forward. Because I think that is going to be our role in this, is to keep stepping back and being like, how is this actually serving me, the people around me, and the planet, and not just like this kind of theoretical user. Uh so I don't know if there's anything there, but I've I've been grappling with that one lately.

Taylor 49:05

I think we're all I think we're all grappling with that one in some respect. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. We we my my sense is is that um I'm more hopeful now than I actually thought I would be, given what what AI looked to be like a year or maybe a little you know, a year and a half ago. Uh, because there does seem to be some plurality that's starting to emerge and the like large language, small language, like even some of the stories, even though they're largely being driven by you know some of the big bigger tech companies, like for me at least, or maybe I'm just trying not to lean into the nihilistic side that I know like I know can like surface once in a while, but uh it's kind of gotta be both, but at least my sense is that there is a um a hopeful version of uh many many Loraks potentially, uh at least that can like speak to those, can textually speak to you know very unique communities. Uh I don't know though.

SPEAKER_02 50:15

Do you go ahead, Crystal?

Crystal 50:17

I was gonna say I it's a great question because we're kind of playing with this and it kind of ties into the lineage thing too. Like one of the bots that I've trained in my cloud projects is a Tantra bot, but it's classical Tantra. These texts are written thousands of years ago. And I'll look at patterns that I'm seeing in leadership or in communities or in just in the coffee shop, or something that I've done that's I'm like, well, let's unpack that shit right there because that was a ridiculous behavior. So I'll start unpacking it and then I'll run it through that when I get to a place where I'm like, okay, that just identified a pattern that I wasn't seeing in these in these interactions. And then I'll run it through the tantra bot, and it is trained on I think four different classical texts that go back thousands of years, and it shows me where those passages are in the book. And then I can go in the book, pull out the passage, and then we put it into the podcast as part of the conversation, drop that conversation into where the 20-year-old agent swarms are happening, and then it begins to at least put a seed in there that was grounded in an ancient lineage that can then be taken into their own context. So that definitely has needs guardrails on it that could also go very badly. But if someone is trained in a lineage, any lineage, and is comfortable holding that space, then I think that is one positive use of both the pattern recognition of AI and then its amplification.

Taylor 51:37

Yeah, maybe it's more the age of I I can like more and more I lean into just we need Trojan horses. And maybe as opposed to assuming that a super motivated young kid that wants to just go build an AI swarm needs some elder that is going to be inevitably disconnected from what that even means to be building out that sort of with good intentions in most cases, I think. Like uh maybe that's more what you're describing, which is the Trojan horse that actually plants the right seed that gets us through what is clearly going to be a pretty wild phase that we're just in collectively. And then they become potentially like whatever emerges on the other side, then they have the right, the right sort of models and literal like biology, the way that's going to evolve to be that support mechanism and say when it's time to grieve and and be a part of that. So maybe there's just this Trojan horse era that we need to all be a part of figuring out where those seeds need to be planted. I don't know. Does that map to anything you're thinking about? How to help get it? Comes back to story and myth, which is why I always appreciate almost yeah, everything I see that ends up on a page that I read that Mason was a part of. It's like this all feels right.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

That's very kind. I mean, I think that that totally lines up. I I do think that what I mean, lineage is just story. I I like you you all probably know this because it seems like we uh are probably drawn to slightly similar thinkers. But I was listening to um the uh I think his name, last name, I think his last name is Cats. Uh, but he's like uh one of the like fermentation gurus for like making you know pickled things, kombuchas, whatever. But he he was talking about uh how the definition of culture is anything that is stored like outside of genes. Because like if you're if you have like a fermented juice, like like a like a kombucha, it's a kombucha culture, it has all these like antibodies moving in it, but they're actually outside of the kind of like the mother or like the genetic makeup of the thing. And I do really think about like stories are that thing, like they are not, they are in some ways like no less corporeal than we are. They are sort of this like amoebic genetic code that just exists alongside us as we move forward. And I think that's kind of what you're getting at with lineage, is it's like, how do you keep a culture recognizing what came before moving forward, almost like a seven generations thinking type of lens. Um but I I think that that is really important and maybe what is needed to be kept in these conversations so we don't just have kind of the the check the box wellness or meditation retreat or any of these things. Um it reminds me of their the farmer poet, philosopher, novelist Wendell Berry, uh in out of Kentucky has this great line that says, um, you exploit what you value, you you save what you love. Um and I think it actually is making that transition, which like this is this is like the most woo I think I've ever sounded on a podcast, but like it is just this whole conversation. But it is really about moving from value to love. Like I'm sure that that leader who went to the wellness retreat is like, I value the quiet and the way that it makes my body feel. But like you actually have to love the act of returning to some source or like being in this kind of space with these people. And I think that's really hard. It's kind of like the it is very necessary in the grief work. It's like you have to move from value to love to grieve. And I think that that is uh a really important part of the culture that we're building and the stories that we're ultimately shaping and telling.

Crystal 55:32

Yeah, no, that's a great point. We um right before Eve Boulder, I wrote an article called um, I think it was something, it was some long ass title, like community building in the age of monsters. And basically it was about love as a verb. And if you are going to be in a community, build a community or participate in a community, it kind of needs to come from that space of love as a verb instead of just saying like a romantic Western version. This is from Bell Hooks, um, of love is is the passion and the the flames and all that. But what it actually is is just showing up and taking action that comes from a place of love. And if enough people do that in a community container, it allows emergence to happen in that space and it allows people to connect and hopefully find what has been lost in in just modern society and no one acting from a place of love as a verb.

Taylor 56:24

So mission achieved, if if this feels like the most woo Mason has gone on a podcast, because that's what this space is for.

SPEAKER_02 56:32

I love it. And that is not a negative, negative knock on woo. I think it's I usually stray from it in my podcasts.

Taylor 56:39

So uh woo. Again, let's let's rec reclaim the value of of woo in the same way we're gonna do it with abundance. Like there's doesn't need to be the the the depoch perverted version of it. And again, not that any like even even woob often probably starts from a good place. True, but careful, careful when when woo gets you know combined with with power and crypto and who knows what else.

Crystal 57:05

Yeah, it's it's the language, and this is this is why I'm pulling at that thread I was talking about earlier. It's like, how can you have somebody like a depoch in the Epstein files? I mean, that is just basically bypassing at scale and then using the language of spirituality that most people are don't know how to use, don't know how to connect with, come to someone who's a spiritual leader for that. And then that's and we've seen this in stone. I mean, even Europa has this problem. We've seen it so many places. And once that power is concentrated, it becomes corrupt. And so, even in our spiritual containers, that that concentrated power and the ego, the ego that hasn't been really processed properly, that leads us into these spaces where so many vulnerable people, vulnerable people go to ceremonies or go to books or leaders and then find out oh, this person didn't mean any of it. They were hanging out with Epstein or whatever. Choose your own adventure there.

SPEAKER_02 58:02

Choose your own adventure.

Taylor 58:04

Well, I I love the I I love the uh kind of the slow present version of like what culture ultimately is and what it means to infuse that. I also was recently diving down this idea of the immovable objects. I read something of somebody that was like sitting on their porch contemplating AI and what it represented, sipping on a whiskey. Everything other than what the contemplation was about was all about slow culture building, whether it's a spirit that was distilled over many decades, or literally this mountain that you know had taken millennia to become what it was. So I like that as a maybe final anchor, is like, what does it mean to hold both those things in real time, I guess, given that we all feel this insane exponential pace and reality of modern tech and AI, but it it cannot, they can't be separated. You know, the minute they start separating is when we see all the all the worst things that humans are capable of. It's all happening in real time. No need to open a new uh that's a whole new rabbit hole given that there's a war going on overseas. Anyway, but thank you for that. Uh that actually is a really nice. I hadn't now I want to dig in, dig in further into cats and some of that. This is this is what these podcasts usually become. That's a thread that now we'll we'll have to go and uh dive into the exponential, which is yeah, well-grounded AI, hopefully. Uh smaller model AI in community with good people. Um, so any anything else you want to tie a bow on this in some ways, and folks pick up Kestrel and certainly follow Mason's work, but yeah, anything else you want to land us with?

SPEAKER_02 59:59

I mean, I think that a couple threads from the conversation. One, I I really do think is this importance of curation as a tool. I think we're just going to see that more and more. I there's been a lot of people in the kind of aside AI conversation. Like, it's never been more important to develop your own taste, is like one version of it, because otherwise it's just going to be this homogenized version. Or like, whether it's curating the story you tell about yourself or curating the story that you're you're trying to tell about something else. I think that that is that is an act that curation is an act of constant interfacing with grieving. You're cut, you're killing your darlings, as Ginsberg and a bunch of others have been attributed to saying. Um, and and that that takes uh a lot of effort and love to do. So I I think that that would be one key takeaway. And and then I really do just think that like there is such a necessary push right now on this larger idea of attention. Like so many people have written about it. But I really do think like if you go through the act of distilling this sort of spiritual philosophical culture that we've created over time as humans to like one point, it really is just about how you spend attention and where you spend attention. And and I think that that has to be something that we really bring in at the this educational level. It is like you as a point of view, as a person with a point of view, your only job in life is to control how your attention is spent. Like I really think that that is a a pretty fundamental thing to a lot of what we're talking about. Um and and I think that is both permission giving, you get agency, you get a lot of other things. It's also a little scary. It means that you have to kind of be on all the time, which is exhausting, uh, especially when things are trying to co-opt that from you. But um it's not the not the finest point to end this with, but I do think that those two things of uh of attention and curation continue to be themes in my work, some of the most important stuff in education and stuff we under-index on all the time.

Taylor 1:02:05

I think I think it's a really good full circle thinking about the myths, the invisible myths and the things that shaped education. It's just about taking back control and not assuming that those are, you know, uh immovable and and that we don't have agency and control over. So I don't know. To me, that was a a good full circle. I forgot that was how long ago? That was like four hours ago that we were talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:31

But it was a long time ago. It was great.

Taylor 1:02:33

No, no, that's part of what we aim for. I do this was one of those that I did feel like time melted a little bit in a good way. Um so this is good, this was attention well spent, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:45

Totally.

Crystal 1:02:46

Yeah. I think I'm just gonna close this out too. What you were saying, Mason. This is what popped up. Like, I I love seeing that Gen Alpha and a little bit of um Gen Z is turning back to analog. And I feel like that's a beautiful thing. And then I feel like that's where art gets to come back, is because our attention is being so fractured. The younger generation is like, no, I don't want to play that game. Let's, you know, if I need to be attached to technology, it'll be over here, but let's keep this container over here free from technology and go back to. I mean, I think they're even buying like CD players. I'm like, that's great. So, like, lean in. I think that's amazing. I feel like that that gives me hope. Like, I think that is gonna emerge from a lot of this.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

Awesome. So it's a hope at the end there. Thanks, Chris.

Taylor 1:03:31

Yeah, okay. Good place to wrap. Thank you, Mason. Appreciate it. I know we'll be in touch. Um, and yeah, we'll we'll have a whole uh wild mix of things built into the knowledge garden that comes along with this. So please send along things that you want to share and we'll make sure it lands there.

Crystal 1:03:48

Awesome. I'm gonna stop it. Thank you, everyone.