The Revenge of the Real with Amber Case

Brad Frost: [0:11] Amber. What has you Waking up excited today.

Amber Case: [0:15] Hello, hello and good morning. well, since I moved back home to Denver every night, I can feel my mind consolidating all of the memories that I had since I left. And it's been, I guess 20 years

Brad Frost: [0:30] Whoa.

Amber Case: [0:31] or more I've left, maybe 25 years. have every night just these dreams and, uh, it's really fun. yeah, they're all architecture based dreams. So I, uh, I have a architecture based storage mechanism, there is a version of New York that. My brain generated. And now when I was six, that is not based on the real New York at all. Like there's, it's like Hot Wheels race car type. When my, when I was little, my mom said, New York City streets are complicated. And so I had a dream that night that they were hot wheels and that we were in my mom's little geo metro, which is like a really car.

Brad Frost: [1:10] I love geo.

Amber Case: [1:11] It doesn't go above what, like 97 or something miles an hour, which she would top that out, you know, uh, uh, in, in, in a, a commute on the highway very often, uh, in Denver because you have to drive quickly,

Brad Frost: [1:27] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:27] to zoom around. But because she couldn't get it to like a hundred miles an hour in the dream, we didn't get enough acceleration to get. Up that loop and we ended up like, getting to the top and then just falling down. That was very scary. Thankfully, I woke up before we crashed, landed on top of ourselves. but last night I had this dream about this secret organization. they had basically bought this land and the land was for sale. So I was touring the land and doing a little conference on the land. And the land was listed for like $2 million, which is, which is absolutely incorrect. It was like a, a, a group zone. So there were like dormitories and bunk beds. And then there was a beautiful like, kind of chateau zone, absolutely gorgeous, and like these, these nice little gardens. And then on the plaque it was, it said, you know, Claude Shannon was part of this. And like all of these amazing people, this is where they would hang out for the summer for like one to three months to discuss. And that's why they produced so much amazing things. And then, you know, I saw Steve Case on there, which. The, the founder of a OL, which, okay, we have the same last name. There's a lot of cases. Um, but I always thought, oh, that's so cool. Like, you know, what do cases do when you look them up? It's like, introduce Aristotle and thought to Queen Elizabeth, out with Virginia Wolf and be Virginia Wolf's mentor. make a weird, CD rom laden, uh, marketing for a OL, uh, that your parents can still use because it doesn't change. and the rest are musicians. Uh, cool. it's, it's part of my brain starting to create its own dopamine again, because for a while, I, Was just not able to create it for a while. And so it's, it's kind of like the enzyme carwash that my mind goes through at night when I wake up and I've had one of these weird dreams. it's like there's enough memory consolidation. If you used to watch your computer defragmenting, there's enough

Brad Frost: [3:24] Yeah.

Amber Case: [3:24] that I wake up and it's like your memories have been organized and now you can think clearer.

Brad Frost: [3:29] Yeah.

Amber Case: [3:30] So that's something I was excited about this morning and

Brad Frost: [3:33] Yeah, that's fantastic. Oh my God. Like I think maybe like to start with, it's like the significance of place in returning to a familiar place, giving you a, a certain perspective that allows you to defrag your brain and to, and to sort of like, reflect even subconsciously on your journey over the last 20, 25 years. Can you like, speak to like the importance of. Coming back to a place that is like familiar and like what that unlocks for you

Amber Case: [4:09] I, I was hanging out, trying to find the place to live I, I had been in Portland, Oregon. I had lived in Boston. I had lived in, Wyoming. I had spent a lot of time in the Bay Area. Uh, which country should I live in? You know, what am I, what am I doing? so I, I ended up in New York City for a while, and then upstate New York at this group house where out of the top floor of the group house, you could see a beautiful view. of the mountain range out there?

Brad Frost: [4:36] Yeah. Yeah. Not, not the Rockies. But the, like the Hudson Valley, beautiful area up there.

Amber Case: [4:42] to Hudson Valley. It was the Adirondacks. It

Brad Frost: [4:45] Mm-hmm.

Amber Case: [4:46] And so I was looking out there and I was like, oh, I love the winter. You know, this is great. I love the fall. I love the spring. I didn't hang out there in summer because it's so humid

Brad Frost: [4:55] Mm-hmm.

Amber Case: [4:56] building a house in the backyard out of a, like a pool house shed, it's like 10 by 12 feet because I wanted to do like a spaceship in the backyard that I was able to see like CO2 and VOCs and like do calibrations. I was testing all these little products and I wanted, I wanted to go to architecture school. I said, for less than the price of architecture school, I can make something that's acclimatized to this environment. so I did and I realized that in the winter it's nice and dry and easy and in the summer it was like wet bulb conditions, a lot where your skin can't really respirate, it's like 80 to 90% humidity. 80, 90 degrees. it was hot and humid. Uh, the place was small and so I said, let's, let's install heat pump. So this guy comes over and installs a Mitsubishi heat pump, which is awesome. And I said, well, does it have dehumidification and does it have like air exchange? And he is like, well, you don't have a basement on this property, so it's really hard to like set up this whole HVAC system. I was like, oh, this, this climate out here is impossible. And I was like, I'm from Denver. And he's like, I'm from Denver too. I was like, oh. Oh, and then I was like, this guy's great. And, and I, I started going back to Denver for a conference every year and I realized, oh, I had just found this place in the Hudson Valley that for many seasons was basically Denver. It was dry and cold and bright, and there's some view of the mountains, but that what I really needed was to go home. And it had evolved so much that it, it was funny. It was like, well, there's plenty of the same buildings, but it was also like, oh yeah, this is, this is where I'm from. I have a very location based memory too, so every single street corner, but I remember every single memory I've had on this street corner. So in Portland, Oregon, there were too many memories. They, they would like complicate my mind. Like I'd go on a walk, I'd be like, ah, like, I

Brad Frost: [6:49] yeah.

Amber Case: [6:51] In Denver. All of the memories, they're so, it's such a stretchy giant city. Like there's no place I can go where the memories accumulate so much that I can't have a new one. So it's very convenient. It's just a big, you know, I call, I used to call it LA with snow, and there's so many places I haven't gone because when I was a kid we didn't go to that many places. So I can just go and explore and it's, it's like living in a new place again.

Brad Frost: [7:15] Holy spokes. Well, there's a bunch of stuff there. You're talking about like like memories, like literally like overlapping with a specific latitude and longitude and that, that could even feel like overwhelming. And that to just even sort of spread it out makes it feel like more That's, that's, wow, that's, that's really cool. But then there's also, there's like, 'cause like Denver is a crazy, like Denver is on the up and up and has been for a really, really long time. And all the people that I know out that way are like, oh my God. Yeah. Like everything. Just like it is bananas. Everybody's moving out here. It has grown in size, in population. There's just like a bunch of construction, there's a bunch of like whatever. So you have this like kind of memory of your upbringing.

Amber Case: [8:09] Yeah.

Brad Frost: [8:09] Then you have like this, like what it's evolved into and a return to it. So in some cases it's like, it's the same, but in other cases it's, it's, it's different.

Amber Case: [8:19] Yeah. And I used to get really mad at it. I was more mad when it happened in Portland. 'cause there's this book called, you know, the Place You Love is Gone, progress Hits home and. thought about that, you know why I moved to Portland, Chuck Pollock and Fight Club and you know, it was one of the places that Robert Moses didn't get to build the highway system. And so I got to go to this place that, you know, was more old school, European city in a sense. But

Brad Frost: [8:45] Yeah. Yep.

Amber Case: [8:46] you couldn't get these big box stores. So it was stuck in the nineties economically, and then it became the hipster place. And yeah, that, that was like, okay, great. But, um, the cloud cover Portland, Oregon, uh, you know, and, and the light rendition. The color rendition, and the idea that there, there were less requirements for trucks to come through the city and, and have, pollution abatement, um, meant that that inversion layer in the, in the city, in the wintertime was like full of some of the most toxic air in the us and. was bad. And once I learned about that, I was like, um, whereas Denver's like, yeah, you have a brown cloud, but you also have a lot of wind. And if I, you know, if I live out east, I need to live a little bit close to the airport. Um, and I, and I, you know, drive around. Um, I'm not as mad about the new stuff that's that's come in. I'm actually accepting. I mean, yeah, there's, there's this particularly bad condo development from, you know, the two thousands, the 2010s that looks like a cruise ship landed on the land. It's like a condominium, it's like a, what is it? I called it a shipping container for the soul, where you don't, you don't get to experience the actual geography. You're just the same person,

Brad Frost: [9:59] Yeah.

Amber Case: [10:00] that moved in from New York or wherever you moved in from. You're wearing the same clothes. You go and say you want to do the outdoors. You're, you know, wearing microplastics and running around and you know, and there's a lot of these like dining groups and clubs and things like that. But, there is something to be said for, and, and, you know, spirituality and, and and fraternities and groups and country clubs and all of these old school, you know, masonry and, you know, Elks lot.

Brad Frost: [10:31] Yep. Yep. Elk Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club.

Amber Case: [10:35] Any of

Brad Frost: [10:35] Yep.

Amber Case: [10:36] Or course,

Brad Frost: [10:37] Yep.

Amber Case: [10:37] club, train club,

Brad Frost: [10:39] Yes.

Amber Case: [10:39] I think I see a lot of people really searching for that. I, I lucked out in two ways when I moved to Denver. 'cause I said, okay, I know I'm gonna get along with people here. I know that almost everyone I'm going to meet is a transplant. But I'll just hang out at some, some of my favorite old places and surprise, surprise, at this intersection next to the school that I went to, there's a fantastic coffee shop and there's a group table in the back where you can sit and you get to meet everybody. And so I went in there and I was like, okay, cool. So, so like the five types of people is almost everybody Rock climbs check. That's good. I rock climb. Some people are photographers and filmmakers check. No problem. Some people make front end design, some people do back end design check. Done that. Okay, great. So it's okay. But it, it was really hard to get in a room with all of them and the coordination across the city. So I. I was following this person, Jose Brianis, who is a dumb phone influencer. So he tries to get people off of, you know, short form content and off their phones and off of screen time, and he has like a quiz, which dumb phone is good for you. He has all this really inspirational stuff. He's very, he's a very kind. Um, and you know, I, I, I said, Hey, on LinkedIn. I was like, hello. to Denver. He was like, great. so we met up and I said, can you bring all your, all your cool, minimal stuff? And he

Brad Frost: [12:05] Yeah.

Amber Case: [12:05] So he brings all of it to a coffee shop and we hang out for about three hours. And of course we just, we just hit it off. He's, he's

Brad Frost: [12:12] Yeah.

Amber Case: [12:12] amazing person, extremely

Brad Frost: [12:14] make.

Amber Case: [12:15] very community oriented. I try all his phones and I feel like, you know, okay, great. This is, this is a good person. He says, you know, you might like, this group called the company. I was like, well, what's that? Well, a, it's a community where people get together and they do like things like PowerPoint karaoke or like tell stories and like, I'm like, oh, cool, people speaking. This feels like an old school community that I was part of Portland called Research Club, you know, that, um, or you know, any of these other little groups that, you know, in the height of Hipsterdom you would be doing this with people from all over the place, especially Michigan for some reason. and, and I was like. Okay, these people, it's, you probably got a amateur typographer and you probably got, you know, this, you know, an amazing couple probably runs it, you know, 'cause we had that with Cube Space and uh, in, in Portland and just looking at all the different things they're doing. They have a, they have a newsletter called Paperwork. You have a literal punch card machine, like a, a literal machine that you,

Brad Frost: [13:17] Yes.

Amber Case: [13:17] in that original machine that's been restored where you have your punch clock and they visualize it. do pre nostalgia where they talk about, you know, what happened this week as if it happened 20 years ago. They write a newsletter every week. They put pictures. There's a historian and it's a community of maybe like 50 people. This is not scalable, which is the whole point is just

Brad Frost: [13:38] Yes.

Amber Case: [13:39] you know. And, and Wednesday work night, which I go to when I'm in town, you do Pomodoro time things and you use this very cute thing called Time Timer, which I'm dressed up to match today. So,

Brad Frost: [13:51] Oh my God. That's beautiful. That is absolutely beautiful.

Amber Case: [13:54] yeah. So this is, you know, one of the, I, I started looking around at different products, like, how can we have products that are delightful, like products

Brad Frost: [14:04] Yes.

Amber Case: [14:04] and two thousands

Brad Frost: [14:06] Mm-hmm.

Amber Case: [14:06] can also rely on that are fun to reteach people how to make great tech. And so I made this thing, which is the very first standard about how much attention the product takes. It has attention, peripheral, uh, you know, peripheral attention, durability, light, sound, and materials. And that's how I met Jose Briana is because I'm. I'm a, I guess, not a dumb phone influencer, but a let's make good tech influencer or whatever. I don't know what that even means, but, um, a calm tech influencer. so I walk into the space and there's time timers everywhere. You know, there's different kinds of time timers. There's also this one with a whiteboard that you can write your tasks on, which is exciting. There's big ones, there's small ones, there's mini ones, there's, there's an app that you can put. Anyway, so, so I went to the work night and I just bring my most boring work. And then we have passing periods in between where we can talk to each other, and then periods where you don't, and then if you show up around 3:00 PM there's re there's recess. We go to the park and like play on the playground. And it's, it's, it's something that I wanted to do such a long time ago. I had little plans for it. It was like, we're gonna have this thing that's part office, part playground, where we can go and. So I'm really excited about that community because it's, you know, it's tongue in cheek, but you have all of these people who really caring. There's, there's

Brad Frost: [15:27] Yeah.

Amber Case: [15:28] and Oh man, everyone's background's very different, which is also

Brad Frost: [15:32] yes,

Amber Case: [15:32] You know, it's,

Brad Frost: [15:34] yes.

Amber Case: [15:34] a fraternal organization a sense. And those are supposed to be small. You can have chapters around the

Brad Frost: [15:41] Yeah. Yes.

Amber Case: [15:43] to be small. And this idea of scaling into, I don't know what these bigger things are, but like, you know, it's like, because I get these ads on Instagram, it's like, have you just moved to Denver? Well, yes, of course you can see my location has changed from my account.

Brad Frost: [15:58] Sure,

Amber Case: [15:58] the spec meetup where you paid $2,000 and then you can go to special dinners. And I was like, and they let everybody in. That's the thing. They're like, do you have

Brad Frost: [16:06] sure. Yeah. Yeah. You got the money, honey? I got the time.

Amber Case: [16:09] And, and, and they're so, you know, they're, they're run by somebody who doesn't care and they're trying to scale.

Brad Frost: [16:15] Yep.

Amber Case: [16:15] you get venture capital? Like, what?

Brad Frost: [16:18] Yep.

Amber Case: [16:19] the course theum club need venture capital? No, that's the point is that it's just supposed to be enjoyable to, to be around and it should be your voluntary community. Like I, I, my, my aunt died and we had the funeral

Brad Frost: [16:31] Yeah.

Amber Case: [16:32] church where my grandma always volunteered at the church is a volunteer and Wow. Is that church nice?

Brad Frost: [16:38] Yep.

Amber Case: [16:39] older building, but they did a renovation and there's like little shop in the basement where like the Boy Scouts hang out and how to build stuff. And there's like a little fair that they had. And talked to with the, like the, the tech guy and he's like a Like a really, really smart guy who's retired and he's like, yeah, I could just do my mechanical engineering for fun down here. You know, and, and that sort of thing. I think it doesn't need to be religious, but it does need to have kindness. And I think in a lot of more traditional and past stuff that maybe people would thumb their nose up at whole point of them is that I, they're actually quite accepting. But you, you don't, you know, a lot of people when they, when they aren't part of that, just take it from work. They say, oh, work cares about work, doesn't care about, you can fire it

Brad Frost: [17:27] Yep.

Amber Case: [17:28] But if you don't have that. you, you don't really have a, a community because you could go in and be like, I, I don't have a job, or I, I need this and this. And someone will say, well, no problem. Or like, you know, I went in there and I was like, I just moved in. I need a, a rug. And someone's like, well, guy that I used to know, uh, he died and I got all of his rugs. I'd be happy to provide rugs for you. Come over and see them. Or, you know, this person's moving to Berlin and she put all of her stuff on the free table. And I took almost all of it because it was plants, So to me, this is something I keep seeing. You know, I, I was doing some stuff in crypto for a while and everyone was trying to make these DAOs, these decentralized autonomous organizations. And I'm like,

Brad Frost: [18:13] Hmm.

Amber Case: [18:14] you're trying to make a community.

Brad Frost: [18:16] Yeah.

Amber Case: [18:16] You're trying to, to participate by representing, you know, on a blockchain, which is a cool way of doing it. Um, but the token ons mean that, you know, the price is going to go into the cool and when thing, when the resources go away, people are going to fight. So if, you know, you could have membership dues, you know, you could do toastmasters like the, the one where you practice how to speak. You could do all these things. but it's better when it's small. You know, small is beautiful, like 15 to 50 people won't get bigger than that. multiple layers of participation. Some people participate a little. They can pay and some people participate a lot and they don't have to pay as much. Right.

Brad Frost: [18:56] Yep. Yep.

Amber Case: [18:57] it's like $5 to go to the work night. So if I go to, four a month, that's $20 a month for a community.

Brad Frost: [19:05] Yes.

Amber Case: [19:05] I have, if I have a close up, you know, like the membership to have a free, every activity is, is like 20. I mean, it's just a really nice, it's a really nice thing. So, you know, I'm excited about that, uh, a lot. And that, that.

Brad Frost: [19:21] I, I, I, I freaking love it. so I wanna play some things back to you because I think that, that you're touching on. A whole bunch of things that, uh, is exactly where my head is, uh, precisely, which is namely around sort of like the design and qualities of effective communities. and one you're hitting on the need for community and this just giant hole that I think everyone feels, whether they, they know it explicitly or not, but all of those church basements, all of those moose lodges, all of those social clubs, all of those bowling, bowling leagues, all of those things have been eroded over the course of decades, certainly in America, but, but really everywhere, um, that the design of physical spaces have affordances and facilitate community or don't. And there's a lot there. There is, A counterbalance to the kind of, let's go all in on work and have work, provide all of my needs as a human being and to, in a little kind of punk rock way, do some things to reclaim some real authentic community, and that this doesn't need to be anything more than just interesting people getting together and being present with one another and being just even frankly, around one another. And that there is like this real moment to maybe reflect on that and say, what's that for? Because if it's the $2,000 a year membership, and what we're really trying to scale is like maximizing profit, while that is going to run counter to, what communities actually need and like the real needs of human beings, right? Why are people getting together for, to, to what end? there's a lot you can do when you get some interesting people together that are not trying to maximize profits for shareholders or whatever, but it's just more like, oh, let's actually like, have a creative place where people can be with one another, bounce ideas off each other. And you use the, the word explicitly. And I love this idea of recess, to, to play, to play with one another.

Amber Case: [21:58] To do, to do whatever you want. I mean, it's an interesting, it's an interesting notion where we got this idea that like there's this abstraction and we need to scale and people need to make a bunch of money where you really just need to feed your soul. So. I mean, take care of the old property that you have. And, and this is kind of that dream that I had last night. It's like, here's some land with some garden in these old bunk beds. And, and you know, I, I liked to study secret societies for a while, and some, some of my friends who were part of them was on the East Coast, so of course I knew people who went to Ivy Leagues. They, they were like, Hey, just wanna let you know, here's some photos. I would be like, oh, it's just bunk beds. Or it's just like, really, really plain, you know, twin beds and, uh, old school looking thing. And that was the point. was, you, you, you either have a membership to something really fancy and the people at the place all are away from each other. Or you have, all kind of at the same level. And it's your minds that are interesting. I mean, everybody

Brad Frost: [23:00] Yeah.

Amber Case: [23:01] way, but it's, it's like. Uh, you know, the, the problem is, you know, if you, if you don't optimize, then you know, BlackRock can't profit off of your, you know, it, it, it's, it's, yeah, it, it's hard because you could pay 2000 a year for, uh, community, but if you get sick or hurt to say, well, sorry you didn't pay your membership dues by,

Brad Frost: [23:21] Yeah.

Amber Case: [23:22] you

Brad Frost: [23:22] Yep.

Amber Case: [23:22] to call them up. You know, some guy based in Atlanta, Georgia who's running the whole thing and say, Hey, uh, I'm really having trouble with X. And they'll be like, okay, you know, you can just see, like when I called up, 'cause of course I'm gonna try calling these places up. It's like, this person was reading the script

Brad Frost: [23:37] Yep. Yep.

Amber Case: [23:38] and, and it was like, how do you do that? Where do you get your soul from? Or

Brad Frost: [23:43] Yeah.

Amber Case: [23:44] soul a substitute? And

Brad Frost: [23:46] Yeah.

Amber Case: [23:47] you know, you can have it. The, the other thing is like, how do you behave in these spaces? And I would call it, you know, tolerance and joy.

Brad Frost: [23:57] Yes.

Amber Case: [23:58] company is like, people hug each other when they come in. They go, yeah. When you complete a

Brad Frost: [24:03] Yeah.

Amber Case: [24:03] it, there's a celebration of each other that it's just positive. It's

Brad Frost: [24:08] Yes.

Amber Case: [24:09] positivity. It's, it's actually just like we're excited and

Brad Frost: [24:13] Genuine. Yeah. It's genuine.

Amber Case: [24:15] it's a

Brad Frost: [24:16] Yep.

Amber Case: [24:17] way of this, I think, but I think

Brad Frost: [24:20] And it's cheap. That doesn't cost anything.

Amber Case: [24:23] doesn't

Brad Frost: [24:23] does not cost anything. And that, and that is like the bedrock of healthy community is, is just that attitude.

Amber Case: [24:33] Yeah, we're not, you know, and, and if there's hard stuff, there's a room where you can talk about it. But it's, it's not, you know, there, there, and also they have a discord, which is, which is so much fun in the Discord. There's like a channel called making, there's a channel for like, requesting support where you're just like, I'm feeling down because of X. And they're like, it's okay, blah, blah, blah. You know? it's very nice. Um, but I was a part of a community like this in, in Portland called Cube Space. And it was, you know, a rabbi and his wife, these wonderful people running an event space where you could have an event. And I got

Brad Frost: [25:07] Yeah.

Amber Case: [25:07] into, you know, local Portland tech

Brad Frost: [25:10] I.

Amber Case: [25:10] of that. And that was above like a US bank. And it was, was a very plain looking space. It doesn't really matter, you know, but,

Brad Frost: [25:17] Yeah. Yeah.

Amber Case: [25:17] the thing. It's like, I do think that when you move to a place. You might get hit with a bunch of ads that say community, they know that you want community and you might pay for it. It's really hard to meet. And so, you know, starting something makes sense, but then how do you keep it going? You have some places where it's not set up properly and people fight, you know? Um, and I'm really interested in, you know, just studying the history of this, organizations have been around 40 or a hundred or 500 years, and how do they work? Because

Brad Frost: [25:51] Yeah.

Amber Case: [25:52] people who are like, Ooh, governance and dah, dah, dah, dah. And I'm like, have you studied communities that have been around for a while and how they work and how, you know, it's not, it's not just some book club with five people. It's, you know, and we created a model train set for the past 40 years, and we have an open house every year with popcorn. I was like, what? Like, so. often, you know, it's a common goal or,

Brad Frost: [26:17] Yep.

Amber Case: [26:17] mean, so, so these, these are important because when somebody says, we're gonna make a new thing, and I'm like, is there really anything new? Can you study what came before? And, and I was told this when, you know, there's an opportunity back in 2009 where, where, um, there were a bunch of science fiction authors and they said, you know, you'd probably be a pretty good science fiction author. decide at this, at this juncture. Do you wanna be a science fiction author or do you wanna be a speaker? And I thought, oh boy, I don't come from a, a demographic that would allow me to spend the next 10 years without making any money to do the work that needs to be a science fiction author. I'll probably have to do speaking. That's a shame. The person that's giving me this advice will definitely be a Hugo Award winner. And they did become one several years later, but they were telling me that you go to the Science Fiction writing workshop, um, and there's this one person that, that you learn it from and you read these four volumes in order to get into the workshop called, you know, the Road to Science Fiction, where science fiction is all about telling the next part of the story. But you need to know the history in order to write the next chapter. I think a lot of these, you know, successful schools on the East coast, that's what they're teaching you. They're teaching you history you know, social science and all these things like, you know, a lawyer often is a history undergrad so that you can do things better. And I think that's, that's this thing that people miss in tech and communities and things like that, is that

Brad Frost: [27:46] yeah, yeah.

Amber Case: [27:46] the past and you don't understand. What you could do. So, you know,

Brad Frost: [27:50] Yes.

Amber Case: [27:50] people that started the, the company did come from a religious background and they, they, they applied a lot of the best things that they learned to make this one.

Brad Frost: [28:01] Yeah.

Amber Case: [28:01] with, you know, cube space with, um, this couple that, that we're Jewish. You know, it's, it's, it's about having a very long in the past that you can really rely on and that the people in

Brad Frost: [28:14] Yeah.

Amber Case: [28:15] don't need to follow that specific thing. You just need to enjoy the space. And because I think because the space is not always beautiful or exclusive or anything, you have voluntary contribution. You don't have people saying, I wanna be at this very fancy space to look good, but I'm not gonna make any connections because no one, everyone's here just to look

Brad Frost: [28:39] Yeah.

Amber Case: [28:40] Big expensive clubs that are very about what they are. they, they're, people are joining them not for the correct reason. So oftentimes, you know, with some of the conferences that are run, it's like, like Cyborg Camp for instance, it's, we don't try to make it fancy. We try to put it in February, so that people aren't trying to get in and they're still like a big wait list and it sells out very fast. And, but they're never more than like 20 people. They used to be like a hundred, we didn't want to make it super fancy because we wanted to have the right people

Brad Frost: [29:12] Yeah.

Amber Case: [29:13] And I think

Brad Frost: [29:13] Yeah.

Amber Case: [29:14] hard part is some people can't look through that. and that's a, that's a hard thing, you know, I don't, I don't wanna have to have people a lot to, to be a part of a thing.

Brad Frost: [29:23] man, there, there's, there's so much here you know, you've said it a, a number of times where there's like the nothing fancy being a feature, not a bug. Right? That there's like something like charming and organic and real about it. And that's actually like the design of the simplicity is, is kind of. Like helps underscore the authenticity and the, and the genuine nature of why are we getting together? Like it doesn't need to be total like, here's your, warm water and plain bread and we're gonna sit on a plank floor. It's like, not necessarily like monastic in nature, but it is like, it is the. All of that other stuff, the conference swag as just crap, that just like ends up sort of accumulating as, you know, you, you know, been on the conferences and stuff for a long time. It's like I got drawers full of it. You know what I mean? And it's like, is that really, is that really like what we're doing here? Picking at the history for a bit, and I think a lot of, whenever I hear you talk about history and studying history about groups and communities that have been around for a long time, and that there's a lot of things to learn from them, I think that that's just like very, very astute. you tie it into, when you look at the longevity of those communities, what you're really doing is getting is, is, is saying what are these durable ideas, these enduring ideas or these things that best align with our human nature. Right? Which is, uh, we are designed, you know, we, we have evolved to be group in, you know, group creatures, group animals. we are designed to have ways of. Dealing with, conflict and dealing with like, that we're too, we're too big. We gotta split into multiple groups now and stuff like that. So it's like you, you kind of like, these things and the things that you're sort of describing in your community, which are like more like secular in nature, right? Are kind of like maybe sort of like stripping off maybe that, that kind of like supernatural aspect of it and just kind of getting to the donuts after, after, after mass, uh, kind of a approach to it. and it's, it's not a knock on, on religion, but it's like when you see like sort of, you know, the statistics around church in decline in religious communities in decline, it's not being replaced by anything. And I think that that's like a little bit of like what you're, you're sort of picking at here and something that I'm. You know, sort of seeing myself as well. We need that community. But at the same time, I think that a lot of people, I've been sort of asking this quite a bit, which is just like, what is preventing a lot of people from, from getting in that door, right? Like, you, you moved to a new place, you're kind of are like, you were like sort of seeking it, right? And you also had some other, some past experiences and good experiences in some other communities. So you kind of like had like a. A hunch of like, I gotta do that. And you're willing to kind of like do that stuff. Right. the regular person who's living in that cruise ship community, uh, in Denver or, or just like anybody that is like, might not have that same awareness that they need that community or like, do you have any thoughts on like, yeah. Like what's, what's preventing or blocking people from seeking these things out?

Amber Case: [33:00] To, to be honest, le let, let's segment, you know, uh, people in the four different types for this just to be, just to be overt. are the people that don't, they're, they're in such a tight situation where their value is associated with making money, um, and it's prestige based. And they, they can't stop to think because it would, would have to sit there with themselves, uh,

Brad Frost: [33:28] Yeah.

Amber Case: [33:28] other than that.

Brad Frost: [33:29] Yeah.

Amber Case: [33:30] invested a lot in that. So it's a, it's about looking good. It's about being seen. Um, and so they're, they're gonna be in those nice condos. They're gonna be on the dating apps. They're gonna try to, match. And then there's the kind of artist type people that inherently have the community because they're artists and so they already know how to make these systems. Um, and those systems are extremely exclusive because either, like you need to have very strong aesthetics or a certain way of acting. And, and then you, you, you have, you know, the more class kind of trust fund kid communities, which overlap with a bit of the artist communities where there are, are a lot of tiny little signals that you can tell whether somebody's in the same social class and those are

Brad Frost: [34:12] Yeah.

Amber Case: [34:13] Um, so there's all community there.

Brad Frost: [34:16] Mm-hmm.

Amber Case: [34:16] then you have people who work a lot, but they want something more and they're alone they're, you know, watching some show they, they don't. Quite know what to do, but they keep getting hit with these ads and now they're like, no, that's, that's not it. But they want a genuine love, right? So there's some people, you know, you think of like a, a queen bee and a bunch of little soldier bees or, you know, ants. It's like, that's how a lot of people see someone. Like if their family owns a, a, a huge apartment complex, the people in that apartment complex are, are spreadsheet creatures, right? Like they're a spreadsheet. Um, and then there's a bunch of people who, who wanna have. Community. and there's different levels of that community. So it's, you know, you have a professional community of nomads and not nomads, and I'm, I'm seeing a lot of these pop up all over the world that I like to visit them. So, you know, either they're in some chateau that's, that's falling apart or being restored or, you know, in Vienna or France or, you know, or you know, in some old, uh, you know, office space that's gonna be torn down at some point and sold, you know, that sort of thing. And it's really special. Um, and, you know, it's just, you know, you have to have a space, you have to have your third space because you do see people working at fancy work, uh, coffee shops and you're like, there could actually be a group where you could work together. if it's too nice, people won't talk to each other.

Brad Frost: [35:44] Yeah.

Amber Case: [35:45] about, and, and Pixar talked about this, you know, early on when they had their old office, I used to work outta the old Pixar office. Um, when it became a different company, you could see the, the, the the, the scratch all over the place. And like, you know, I'd look at my, my desk and I'd be like, oh yeah, uh, check out that drawing from, you know, and I looked at the little town in Point, Richmond, California, like, this is the Pixar town. And they went from being able to not make everything and work with constraints, be able to make anything. And then was a lot of tours that came through and everything looked really good. And they had to have like a secret room in the back where it was disheveled. disheveled, it's not like a total disaster pit. It's about being

Brad Frost: [36:25] Yeah.

Amber Case: [36:26] So

Brad Frost: [36:26] Yes.

Amber Case: [36:27] has to be designed by the members and it can't be done by. Somebody else, you know?

Brad Frost: [36:35] Yeah.

Amber Case: [36:35] And that's what I also like about, like Toastmasters, like random spots. And of course they have donuts after them at some of them. The really successful one I heard the one at 7:00 AM they have, they have snacks, you know, at Cherry Creek. So exclusive community. Um, but you know, you're, you're sitting there and you're like, cool. I wanna see how politicians think, what's their behind the scenes room because I, I have some friends who are, um, and beat boxers and things like that, and they will always book some place with 20 people. To rehearse all their stuff. And so for me, these communities are rehearsals. You don't have to be perfect. No one's gonna judge you

Brad Frost: [37:13] Yep.

Amber Case: [37:13] perfect. There's a lot of

Brad Frost: [37:14] Yep.

Amber Case: [37:15] unfinished. And then by the time you've rehearsed with that, you can go out and you're quite good. But no one sees that behind the scenes.

Brad Frost: [37:22] Yeah. Yeah.

Amber Case: [37:23] wanna see the behind the scenes. And so there's a lot of ways of going about it, but, but you can't say like, hi, I want to make a community. It takes a couple more people, you know? It's quite, you know, it's, it's, it's, um, you know, and, and, and I've, I've done this before and it's, I'm okay at it, I suppose, you know? Um, usually when I try to run something, everybody starts a company together, um, you know, it's, it's, it's really, it's a thing that's overlooked because, you know, we, we cannot roll our eyes at the past. We're only, you know, this not be, I think this is like the most temporary generation right now, and we don't need to be temporary. and, and so the durability that you talked about, it's like an airplane wing that by default balances itself. The equations behind the scene are partial of financial equations. They're very, very complex. But you can learn how to make a system that has enough buffer and enough resiliency it survives Jos. Whereas some people will make something that everything has to be perfect. And if

Brad Frost: [38:29] Yep.

Amber Case: [38:30] goes away, it's bad. It's like, no, no, no. You need to have, you know, gradients, buffer, gumminess, robustness, all these little things. You know, suspension. You need to have suspension so you can go over some speed bumps. Now you can't go off a cliff, although I've been studying cars and some of them you can, um, very expensive. But there's, there's so many different ways of considering. How to do this. That, you know, it's the, you know, the love buffer is very good. What does that mean? It's care.

Brad Frost: [38:59] Yes,

Amber Case: [38:59] really buy that, um,

Brad Frost: [39:01] yes,

Amber Case: [39:02] in, in the same way, you can't someone volunteer their time. It's kind of like a teacher that's volunteering their time to buy their own, uh, supplies for their students because they wanna have their students be better. Or, you know, one of my favorite teachers, Kevin, Linda, or like, worked at a wealthy school and a low income school at the same time so that he could teach us he

Brad Frost: [39:23] yes,

Amber Case: [39:24] And he was very smart, you

Brad Frost: [39:26] yes.

Amber Case: [39:26] he made a big impact on our lives. Um, and so, you know, there's so many options, I think, for how to do this well, without stopping and considering why do I want to do this thing? Um, it, you know, it, it, it doesn't work as as much. And maybe I wanna do that a little bit with, with Calm Tech Institute, like maybe I want this group of people to have community around making products that aren't the thing with the bells and whistles that are durable

Brad Frost: [39:56] Yeah,

Amber Case: [39:56] term, are in a sense middle class, this buffer system between

Brad Frost: [40:01] yeah.

Amber Case: [40:02] and, and, and extreme wealth so that it, it's more resilient, right? So for

Brad Frost: [40:07] Yes,

Amber Case: [40:08] is like, you have a wetland at the edge of Florida and when a hurricane comes in, it doesn't hurt stuff as much, but

Brad Frost: [40:15] yes.

Amber Case: [40:15] a bunch of concrete up when the hurricane comes, it hurts a lot more. So how do you apply these gradient softeners all over the place so that um, the waves coming in, uh, get diffused in a way that people can handle them? And this is something, you know, I would like to write about it and just go around the world and find all these, these systems because in the past when people were in small tribes, you would die out if you. Didn't figure this stuff out. And a lot of

Brad Frost: [40:44] Yeah.

Amber Case: [40:44] thousand

Brad Frost: [40:45] Yeah,

Amber Case: [40:45] history where they're like, yeah, this worked. Like my favorite was just going around the, the American Southwest with my parents. And we would stop at these random places on reservations and just listen to people. And I remember sitting there for two hours and the sky was telling us about these things, and then we got like a little tape at the gift shop about, you know, coyote, the coyote trickster, and I, and I was reading it and I was also reading all the Greek thought at the same time with like the gods and the goddesses.

Brad Frost: [41:13] yeah,

Amber Case: [41:13] okay, gods and goddesses are like, the Kardashians got it. Um, you know, they're very fancy. but then you had like coyote and rabbit and bear and I was like, aha, this is like youngian archetypes, like 72 youngian archetypes or horoscopes or anything like that. It's, know, when you get bore and you figure out. As you grow up, what type of character are you? You've got a thousand years of history of understanding how that character works with the system and you understand all the stopgaps and safeties so that all of

Brad Frost: [41:43] Yep.

Amber Case: [41:44] characters can work in harmony or disharmony. And you know, that coyote

Brad Frost: [41:48] Yes.

Amber Case: [41:48] with things. So, you know, and bear's gonna be like this, you know, and, and that it, it is pretty much the same types of things over time. And if you start to

Brad Frost: [41:58] Yeah. Yep,

Amber Case: [41:58] that they're gonna be a little bit more like that in the future, but you, you end up having a history of like, remember when Bear did this? Oh, ha ha. You know? it's interesting. And then it's, you know, very climate based too. Like what are people doing carving totem poles up in, up in the Pacific Northwest and what's

Brad Frost: [42:15] Yeah.

Amber Case: [42:15] Because, you know, I went on a business trip with my dad. Whoa. That was, uh, that, that was, um, extremely influential on me. I was always really interested in, you know, what original people have done, or, you know. The people with a thousand or 2000 year history,

Brad Frost: [42:34] Yep.

Amber Case: [42:34] need to be written down. You don't need to read a research paper to understand the pH of the soil or have a special pH meter. You can plant an indicator plant at H five and know exactly whether the soil is ready to plant something. it, it's a very efficient compression.

Brad Frost: [42:51] Yeah.

Amber Case: [42:52] helpful. And you know, even in the dark ages when things went more verbal because, you know, written thought might have been erased. Um, tradition when you pass it down in stories and all these things is interesting. And, and you know, I was talking with one group and they said, you know, the, the reason how we get kids to pay attention, they don't wanna listen to the story from the elders, but there's a river. So have the kids swim across the river and back. And they're so exhausted when they come back that they're sitting down and they're ready to listen.

Brad Frost: [43:23] Yeah.

Amber Case: [43:23] you know, we don't necessarily do that. We have to have recess, we have to have these things. And it's not about learning how to use, you know, Google Docs. It's about understanding what we're using it for. And so you do get a bunch of people that are, you know, basically workers that are learning how to use, not even really a tool, like a printing press or something. Um, so they don't get the history of it. Like when we say you gotta learn digital tools, like do you know that Adobe Photoshop came from John Warnock and Charles Jetski and that, you know, one of their dads was a print shop guy, and that's why it's called Photoshop. It's a print shop. That's where all your little tools come from. But if you learn that from scratch, you'll understand why you have specific typo, graphic sizes and why you have

Brad Frost: [44:08] Yeah.

Amber Case: [44:09] And you're very. Very particular when you put things together because you have to handset them. And if you take

Brad Frost: [44:14] Mm-hmm.

Amber Case: [44:15] and you take those principles over, you're going to have a really good experience online you're

Brad Frost: [44:21] Yeah.

Amber Case: [44:22] So I think a lot of these, these issues is that we have this discontinuity from digital to analog and digital is inherently compressive,

Brad Frost: [44:30] Yes.

Amber Case: [44:30] think of it as a spectrum and everybody learns analog 3D before they go to 2D, because 3D is 2D, it's

Brad Frost: [44:38] Yeah.

Amber Case: [44:39] of 3D. And you

Brad Frost: [44:40] Yeah.

Amber Case: [44:41] house lessons. You know where, where this one teacher would come in and say, is, that's it. The students had to consider. That means. He didn't say anything for the rest of the class, you know, um, where, where you're stuck, you know, and, and you have to consider the things that are formerly invisible. A lot of that stuff that we take for granted, like light switches and rugs and all of that, brilliance behind that, to make something durable to, to weave a story into a, a Persian rug, for instance, or to make electricity in a way that anybody can touch the light switch and not die, you need to have a, a regulation to be able to, to, to, to pick it apart is really special. And these things are

Brad Frost: [45:27] Yeah.

Amber Case: [45:27] and meaningful and, and very impressive. And a lot of these other things that, you know, not only do you have to be an expert or go to bootcamp to understand a piece of code and a modern browser, that you need to, to, to have done that recently in the past two years. And that knowledge can go away really fast if you don't

Brad Frost: [45:47] Yeah. Yeah. No, I, yeah, that, I, I think you're hitting on something that's, that's like really important is that, and, and this has been kind of my experience as well as, as someone who's been kind of like. Increasingly teaching about sort of things like technology and stuff where it's like, starting to spell out that history and help connect the dots and stuff between, uh, a lot of these different worlds and concepts and yeah, that transition over from the analog world. it seems to be that the present moment is over dialing on tools, how to, um, this kind of convenience, this temporary nature of things that it's like, it's all fleeting. It's just, you know, the algorithmic feed or like the whatever. And it's just like that. Our world increasingly just kind of feels very unmoored from anything that is like. Again, that, that durability or that whatever, and that, no wonder people feel adrift. a lot of people seem to be like running through the motions and like, even like the, the processes for, for making, uh, software for instance, it's like we're chopped up into these like tiny little boxes and, you know, move things from the to-do column over into like the done column. But again, it's like, what's missing is the, what the hell is it all for? And like, like what are we actually like doing? What are we actually like building? What are, like, moral foundations of all of this stuff? there's no time, there's no space, there's no, value in analyzing any of that stuff. So a lot of people just, I think are, are feeling like they're like, it does get into the whole kind of fight club stuff where they, where it's like, yeah, you're in the apartment with like the, the catalog like superimposed with like the prices of all, like, the things. And, and a lot of people are just like, I guess that this, this is life. I'm like running through,

Amber Case: [47:43] Yeah.

Brad Frost: [47:43] going through the motions. I'm building some stuff. I'm like doing stuff. I'm, we got the cold shower, we got the, the real look in the mirror for a while, and then all of a sudden now it's like, it's, it, it feels like the pendulum's like swinging back or like the, the zeitgeist right now. It's like back to this kind of like, let's talk about efficiency, let's talk about scale, let's talk about like, whatever, and let's talk about this stuff. And through this very, very, very myopic lens.

Amber Case: [48:11] Yeah, there's, there's a lot in there. I think there's a law of conservation of effort. No matter what, you need to use the same amount. So if you're using AI, for instance, you need to use the same amount you end up doing more work, you know, unless you really understand what you're doing. And so if you're

Brad Frost: [48:27] yeah.

Amber Case: [48:28] like you've, you know, then you need to edit or prep it or whatever. But because it's kind of a companion, you can. Feel like you're not alone when you're doing it. So it's very helpful for an empty page. It

Brad Frost: [48:40] Yeah.

Amber Case: [48:40] depends how, how you approach it. But I also think it's interesting to think, you know, because we're more efficient, we have more time, it feels like because we're more efficient, we have less time. But it really just means that that stuff like a gas expanse to fill every available crevice. Whereas I like to go on road trips where, you know, three hours out of town, I realized I didn't need to do any of those things. It didn't really matter.

Brad Frost: [49:05] Yep.

Amber Case: [49:05] of the things that I was trying to make myself busy with, it's like. There aren't that many things that I need to do. And you know, and, and for me, I miss, you know, working at a burrito shop because immediately I got to see the feedback. Did I make a burrito? Well or not? It was very clearly defined. I was doing a lot of repetitive tasks, but then I had time to think. and after, after work, I would always go to, you know, Barnes and Noble because and I would go and read books and, you know, it was cheap enough that I had enough time and it was a good life, you know? And in some countries you get enough as a food service person and you get really good at it. I've also noticed on planes, you know, there are some flight staff that make everything pretty silly, you know, and they've been working there for 30 years. And

Brad Frost: [49:52] Yeah.

Amber Case: [49:53] you know, it's like they make it silly because it makes it easier for

Brad Frost: [49:57] Yes.

Amber Case: [49:58] So not only that, but we're like losing all of this color and texture. You know, our cars are getting boring. Everything looks the same, everything's compressed 'cause it's easier to sell. it doesn't seem like things are actually efficient. It seems that they're temporary. And I'm hoping we'll

Brad Frost: [50:11] Yeah.

Amber Case: [50:12] revenge of the real because it's not, it's not reasonable. Like one of my friends was telling me, he was taking me to the airport one day. He was saying, you know, if you look at a, at a, a loop, an electrical loop on a circuit board, and you need, you know, electricity go through and complete the loop, but you keep adding an amount that you need to push through the loop, you, you have more and more that you need. E eventually you need more and more energy to complete that loop, each revolution that you go through. So I was thinking like, oh no, you know, if you're working within unlimited constraints, people are way more clever. Well, how we got a lot of interesting video games in the eighties, but if we

Brad Frost: [50:53] Yeah.

Amber Case: [50:53] much, we never finished the game. You know, it's the same with Pixar. You know,

Brad Frost: [50:58] Mm-hmm.

Amber Case: [50:58] we can do anything. So these constraint based systems are, you know, we have all this choice, we have all this stuff, but are people really happy? know, people were apparently very happy making bread and during the pandemic because it was non-abstract. And so

Brad Frost: [51:15] Yeah.

Amber Case: [51:15] I think that abstraction is, is hard. So what I've been doing, I'm, I'm on the science advisory board at Remarkable, which is a company in Norway.

Brad Frost: [51:23] Oh, beautiful. Yeah.

Amber Case: [51:24] It's great. There's three neuroscientists on the board. And me and one of the neuroscientists has, has shown that handwriting. Whether on tablet or on paper allows you to take five times less notes, but you remember them computer. what it

Brad Frost: [51:40] Yep,

Amber Case: [51:41] the shape that you are drawing, triggers your mind better than every key on the keyboard, which looks the same and feels the same to your

Brad Frost: [51:49] yep,

Amber Case: [51:50] Because

Brad Frost: [51:50] yep,

Amber Case: [51:51] you touch, of course, I've got this little thing of wax here. Um, what you touch is, is affecting how you think. And so your cognition

Brad Frost: [51:59] yep.

Amber Case: [52:00] tactile. And so your cognition being tactile means if you're a woodworker or an upholsterer or a jewelry maker, your, or ceramics, you know, or riding a bike is going to be very interesting. Whereas if you're on a computer, you need to take breaks to have that tactility, which is why so many people are like, I want to retire to a farm.

Brad Frost: [52:20] Yes, yes.

Amber Case: [52:21] they want the real, real, real. And in a

Brad Frost: [52:23] Yes.

Amber Case: [52:24] having something outside yourself that isn't, you know. Facebook reels waking you up in the morning with all the stuff. There's a

Brad Frost: [52:30] Yes.

Amber Case: [52:30] explode if you don't milk it.

Brad Frost: [52:32] doesn't get any more real than, than bursting utters.

Amber Case: [52:35] You want to see your animals in pain. Of course not. The vet bill is very expensive because

Brad Frost: [52:41] Yeah.

Amber Case: [52:41] a farm. Oh, you wanna do an alpaca farm? Good luck. They can die for no good reason. You know, maybe you should intern on an hacka farm for four years before you decide to take that on. You know, it's like 20 5K to get a female alpaca. Do you know anything about animal husbandry? No. You know, everyone's like, oh, I wanna do a farm. I'm like, well, you're gonna do chickens, Richard's chickens or ducks. When are you gonna collect this? What about issues of that will automate it? What does that mean? What sensors are you going to have? You know, you need to actually interact with these creatures. Um, and some people do a, a really good job, but Many of my family members, um, either live alone or live a very small life on some land that they got in the sixties or seventies when it was nothing. You know, they'll have like 25 or 50 acres and they'll have a herd of cattle they'll have, and the nonverbal communication that you get to have with the animals, it's, it's a very different situation. I mean, you know, my, my mom's cousin has five dogs and you have a dog.

Brad Frost: [53:43] Yeah.

Amber Case: [53:44] Is it a frenchie?

Brad Frost: [53:45] He is. Yeah. Yeah.

Amber Case: [53:46] I could tell

Brad Frost: [53:47] Um,

Amber Case: [53:47] ears.

Brad Frost: [53:48] big old bunny rabbit ears. Yeah.

Amber Case: [53:51] designer dog. It's the studio dog. You wanna have this cute shape hanging out with

Brad Frost: [53:55] Yeah.

Amber Case: [53:56] and the, and the, and the work that it provides is being adorable and very strange. but yeah, you know, like, this guy will play the fiddle in the morning and there'll be a dog that really likes to hang out with that, you know, and, and, and everything has a different character. And the goat, oh my gosh, one of them's like, yay. There's

Brad Frost: [54:13] Yeah,

Amber Case: [54:14] another one's like, ah, you've separated me from my kid so I can get milk E, you know?

Brad Frost: [54:19] yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amber Case: [54:20] but, but it's, it's so, cyclical. You know, every morning you've gotta do this stuff and you get tired. You're not sitting there. In the same way. And, and that's not to romanticize it, like farming itself is getting consolidated. So you, you can't really do that But, and that was the norm of everybody and it was really hard. I'm not, but, but I

Brad Frost: [54:41] Yeah,

Amber Case: [54:41] people like, I know maybe you should practice first. Maybe you should ease into it. You know, you really need like $20 million now to get a farm. It's not like,

Brad Frost: [54:51] yeah,

Amber Case: [54:52] because it's, it's you, you're gonna have to figure out and like, if you want to make it profitable, either you need to make, you know, organic biodynamic wine part of the time. And then you need to have that be a, a, a wedding venue for the other part of the time, subsidize the ability to make

Brad Frost: [55:07] yeah, yeah,

Amber Case: [55:08] it's not

Brad Frost: [55:08] yeah.

Amber Case: [55:09] that the industry competes with. Um, it's just practical. Right. But then it's like. I don't know. I, I keep seeing this sort of thing where, you know, you, you have, you have people that are very physical in their jobs and they wanna watch a screen at night. You have people that are very screen in their jobs and they wanna rock climb, you know, and, and it makes a lot of sense that we really just need a mix and, um,

Brad Frost: [55:32] Yeah. Yes,

Amber Case: [55:34] and

Brad Frost: [55:35] of course. But, but like, it, that, that shouldn't be super revolutionary, but at the same time. But it is. But it absolutely is. I think that that's like what's, what has been really fa fascinating about, uh, you know, now these generations of people ha who have grown up with screens, who have grown up with this being not just like, I had the Apple two computers and organ trail or whatever in my school, and it was like one, one class, you know, or like one, one time a week or something like that. Right. For, for a while. And now it's just like, yeah, like these things are, are here all the time and they're designed for. To, to be interacted with and engaged with at all times. And a lot of us, it's just that that's the current, and, and that means that the, the time on screens and the time like dealing in these very kind of abstracted things, including the people who create the stuff, right? Like you were saying earlier about like country punching on the, the, the keyboard. It's like that's a, that's a, a proxy, that's an abstraction to like the act like yeah. Milking a cow or milk in a goat or whatever. And it's like, there, there is something really interesting at like what happens in what atrophies when we sort of spend more time in those worlds and that that desire, whether people are like actually going to bake a farm or not, but the desire to do that and that instinct and that want to sort of have something tangible and tactical. Like something, something real and direct, uh, to counter those abstractions, like makes perfect sense. And there's, there's something else you said that I think is really fascinating because my wife, uh, wa was a jewelry, maker, uh, and is now, almost through her arts therapy, uh, degree. there's the, The mechanical or this kind of multisensory sort of thing and how that, that basically like, kind of like approach to learning and understanding and expressing and stuff like that is at the very base of like arts therapy, right? Like this is, like, what this stuff is, is that it's very, very difficult to just be like, I feel sad. And you can say that and like, we could believe you and, but it's like, that's like simply like one dimension, right? But whenever you're able to like embody that, whether that's through music, through clay, through, through drawing, through whatever, especially for it's like, or I feel mad, there's different artistic mediums that have different affordances that are good for getting that stuff out. You feel mad, here's a big old ball of clay. Beat the shit out of this thing. You know what I mean? But, but again, and through that, all of the, the sort of brain work and stuff is happening that is like helping people process and kind of come to terms with it and ultimately like work, work through stuff. did you say the revenge of the real? That's freaking beautiful. Like, did that come from somewhere or did you just say that?

Amber Case: [58:56] that's like a thing that I came up with. I mean, there is a, a book called that, but it doesn't have anything to do with this. It was, just

Brad Frost: [59:02] I mean that Like this sums up our whole conversation. It is like, it is like, it's like this is, this is the title of the movie.

Amber Case: [59:09] yeah, yeah. It, it's, uh, it's a whole situation. Um, and then of course I put it on LinkedIn and there was some like trend reporter, so they made a big important report called the Renaissance of the Real, and I

Brad Frost: [59:22] No,

Amber Case: [59:22] not a renaissance.

Brad Frost: [59:23] it's not the revenge. Yeah. Yeah.

Amber Case: [59:25] thank you for not directly using that and not quoting me, I suppose who owns anything anyway? It doesn't matter. But the most

Brad Frost: [59:32] right.

Amber Case: [59:33] just to think like, you know, it's interesting 'cause some people are like, well, that's soft. So we need to have Chromebooks in kindergarten, um, and I, and we're gonna replace the art. And if you look at how the mind, the, the brain is actually stimulated by hands, you need to have a multisensory education you can go to one sense. And I argue that a computer is only one sense. It's your eyes and you play

Brad Frost: [59:57] Yeah.

Amber Case: [59:57] to tolerate that visual tiny box that you're in. And it

Brad Frost: [1:00:02] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:00:02] But when you're doing something with clay or art or whatever, it doesn't matter about, the output process is using your hands and there's way

Brad Frost: [1:00:12] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:00:12] more senses in your hands.

Brad Frost: [1:00:15] Yes.

Amber Case: [1:00:15] is much higher. I think of humans as having bad eyes, bad ears, and bad noses, and extremely sensitive hands. Because we're makers, we're the most makey

Brad Frost: [1:00:24] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:00:25] of most species. That's who we are in our souls. And we love inventing weird stuff, and we love making art, decoration, baskets, whatever. People talk about underwater basket weaving as like a thing. And it's like, that's actually pretty complicated.

Brad Frost: [1:00:41] Yeah. Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:00:42] one of it, it's, it's not law. It's a, that law also is extremely inventive because you're, you're having a simulation environment in your head in which you can understand what to put on paper and you're, you're playing chess, you know, and

Brad Frost: [1:00:55] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:00:55] the different implications. So we've got that. Huge simulation environment in our minds that you're training as your own LLM to understand all these different turbulence scenarios and making resiliency and thinking ahead of the fact you're, you're doing upholstery that says, how can someone sit on this 50,000 times and it becomes better with time? You're talking about farming. You're like, okay, I am thinking at least three years at a time to the field yield and the phosphates in the soil and like, we we're gonna plant this to dah, dah, dah. You know, it is all about long-term thinking. Um, whereas oddly, with publicly traded companies, you need to think quarterly. Can you imagine planting a tree in the ground and next quarter saying, you haven't done anything? I'm gonna cut you. W

Brad Frost: [1:01:35] Yep,

Amber Case: [1:01:36] least three years for it to even show up. And then how many

Brad Frost: [1:01:38] yep.

Amber Case: [1:01:39] take to build a house out of it? So I

Brad Frost: [1:01:41] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:01:42] old school family run privately held companies. That provide a middle class, and that's like a plumber, an electrician, you know? Um, there's a middle class in Germany that pro that produces very meaningful objects where you pass that down from generation. Generation. so for me it's, this is very important to remember, because this is, you know, this is the way to make that electrical, that that circuit go around, uh, and, and have enough energy to go to the next revolution. Um, but this is, this is the issue is like this, this temporary society is very confusing. There's also like fast fashion and all this stuff that's

Brad Frost: [1:02:20] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:02:21] polluting water supplies. Like we don't, didn't have this many clothes and they respected them more. And they repaired

Brad Frost: [1:02:28] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:02:28] and we could say, well, those people were poor and we should be able to have something new every year. And it's like, we don't need to pretend that we're the upper class from the 15 hundreds. just, it's not about that. It's, it's about. But, but that's the thing. It's like we've gotten to a sense where we have this low impulse control and that's getting eroded so that stuff can make money.

Brad Frost: [1:02:48] Mm-hmm.

Amber Case: [1:02:49] these things weren't super publicly held and, not everything was that, you know, we'd, we'd have a different situation. We wouldn't have ad-based social networks. That inter intermediate our experience of reality. You

Brad Frost: [1:03:02] Yes.

Amber Case: [1:03:02] when

Brad Frost: [1:03:03] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:03:03] is published, it's gonna be on a platform where you're encouraged to watch the next thing or listen to the next thing right after, and what, where would it be located that didn't have that, you know, the

Brad Frost: [1:03:14] Mm-hmm.

Amber Case: [1:03:15] and then there still ads on the radio, but at least they're kind of funny, you know, a lot of 'em are local in the, in the past

Brad Frost: [1:03:20] Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. The local, local radio ads are, are chef's kiss of, of that. it's beautiful. Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:03:28] to global, you know, and, and globalization for a while. Really interesting. In the nineties, you know. but I, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen, but I think, you know, the revenge of the reel is interesting and we'll see it at the edges and it won't draw a lot of tension to itself 'cause it doesn't need to.

Brad Frost: [1:03:44] yeah.

Amber Case: [1:03:45] and

Brad Frost: [1:03:46] That, that's antithetical

Amber Case: [1:03:47] yeah,

Brad Frost: [1:03:48] and, and in a lot of ways it's, it's, it's, that's kind of by design I think that what I do get fascinated by is that encouraging, realness, authenticity Our abundance, whether that's capital, whether that's technology, whether that's whatever, at promoting real. And I think that there is a way to design it in such a way that, that you're, you're able to encourage that and to just like, you know, it's, it's, yep. Here's the space. So I'm in Pittsburgh, right? There's a lot of old churches. There's a lot of old buildings, right? We used to be a city of a million people. I think we're down to like 250, 300,000 people, right? So there's like a lot of, you know, spaces that are, that have been sitting and underutilized for, for a long time and whatever. And so when you think about, you know, the potential for that stuff, a lot of it really is just that sweat equity or that like whatever, to sort of get. Something operational once again. And I think there's a digital corollary to that there. I think that there are like a lot of things that you can do to facilitate better spaces and to use this amazing technology that we're using to talk right now to facilitate that stuff, right? Again, it, it all boils down to again, like what's it all for? And I think that you're a hundred percent right that like a, a quarterly, you know, attitude and talking about, you know, return on investment and sort of that stuff is, you know, runs counter to what the world needs. 'cause again, it all comes out to, well what's all that for? Right? Like, 'cause, 'cause there is a need. To have businesses, there is a need to have like this, this stuff isn't necessarily like fundamentally messed up, it's just that like we've lost the plot and kinda like what we're actually like building towards, because at some point we hit this idea of, of enough, right? And a lot of us have gotten to that point of enough and a lot of like, companies can get to that point of enough and it's just like, well how do you create just a sustainable thing that when you need a new pair of pants, here's the place that makes the good pants that's gonna like do that. And those people need to be able to make those pants. But it's not to, to get them out of the game of, if you liked one pair of our pants, you're going to love 35 pairs of our pants. It's like, it's like we have to get out of that.

Amber Case: [1:06:38] real stuff, though. It's going to be really expensive. That's, that's

Brad Frost: [1:06:42] Right.

Amber Case: [1:06:43] the horror is that, you know, I, I, I, uh, I wrote this article for a design magazine called The $500,000 Leather Jacket. It was how much it actually cost to produce a single jacket in terms of environmental degradation for the dying process and the river and the cross synergen and the

Brad Frost: [1:07:00] yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amber Case: [1:07:01] Anyway, it

Brad Frost: [1:07:02] The, the externalities. Yeah. All, all of those externalities. Right, right,

Amber Case: [1:07:06] donut economics, it's like what if you had very few clothes but you repaired them? What would that do for the economy? Well, it would mean that you would have a local economy that would be, here's the guy,

Brad Frost: [1:07:17] right.

Amber Case: [1:07:18] guy girl that repairs your pants, trousers for those of you abroad. Sorry,

Brad Frost: [1:07:23] Trousers.

Amber Case: [1:07:24] can't say

Brad Frost: [1:07:24] It's slacks.

Amber Case: [1:07:26] Yes, LAX trousers. Not long chunks, not underwear. but yeah, and you would have it be made out of real materials. would use it for 20 years, you know, and it

Brad Frost: [1:07:37] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:07:37] But, but that's

Brad Frost: [1:07:38] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:07:38] is like the, it would be about more local stuff. You know? You, you'd have your trusted person for 40 years, you know, kind of like, I, I used to go to, to this place in, in, uh, Denver called Sura Square. Uh, I still go, but as, as a kid, that's where we would get like our rice cooker and our rice and like all of our Japanese stuff, because my parents' friends were from Japan. So we needed to make, we needed to have a Japanese supplier direct from Japan. And it, and the

Brad Frost: [1:08:02] Amazing.

Amber Case: [1:08:03] for 40 years. And when it was new, they had a dentist upstairs, you know, Japanese dentist. I went there the whole time until he retired. And to rely on that. Is really important to, you know, I, I was at my friend's house. We were, um, we were writing a, a book together in Germany, and his 8-year-old kid could just run around the neighborhood because everybody knew the kid. All the, the, the stores had been there forever, mom and PA shops, but also the, the rent for those stores was quite low and everything was quite walking distance. So you didn't have

Brad Frost: [1:08:37] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:08:37] about renting your $5,000 a month space in a new condo development that's going to last for a, a short period of time. Because the only things you can put there are a laser es esthetician, la uh, you know, lounge.

Brad Frost: [1:08:50] Yep. Yep.

Amber Case: [1:08:51] Um, your new tropics, you can put in a high-end coffee or definitely a bubble tea 'cause that has a really good return on investment. And you might be able to temporarily put a dog wash or a veterinarian,

Brad Frost: [1:09:03] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:09:04] not what people need. They need a bodega.

Brad Frost: [1:09:06] Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Amber Case: [1:09:07] you know, they need your leather repair shop, you know, so, so I used to live outside of Troy, New York, and so if I needed stuff repaired, I would take it to this, this guy who'd been there for like 80 years,

Brad Frost: [1:09:18] Yeah. Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:09:19] and it was great.

Brad Frost: [1:09:20] you're gonna have the best conversation with them and, and there's just like a, a wealth of, of knowledge in, in intellect and craftsmanship in mastery to all of this, where it's like, not everything is like, it's like they're doing a service, but you could just like tell that they're like this just treasure trove of like, of like depth and in their, in their craft and, and beyond.

Amber Case: [1:09:47] But the default was to be a treasure trove. We didn't consider a treasure trove that was just the norm.

Brad Frost: [1:09:51] Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:09:53] and, and when we say, you know, uh, this entry level position requires 10 years of experience. Well, when you're five years old, helping out your parents, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't mean that that was great. You know, a lot of people are like, I don't

Brad Frost: [1:10:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Amber Case: [1:10:05] wanna be a dj. And,

Brad Frost: [1:10:07] yeah, yeah.

Amber Case: [1:10:07] know, but you still see multi-generational in, in, in, um, in Japan for sure. So again, it's really important not to glorify these things,

Brad Frost: [1:10:17] Yes. Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:10:19] idea that you could do something for the rest of your life. I, I know that, you know, Andrew McClean, uh, Marshall McClean's grandson is an upholster, I got to go visit his place in Ottawa, you know, and it was really interesting seeing that, you know, it's, you can be good at a thing and you can be good at it for life. I, I think that with code and design, you can't be good at it for life. But I'm really interested in what are the principles that are, that are same throughout. Throughout history, right? Like

Brad Frost: [1:10:49] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:10:49] time timer, like, this is gonna work no matter what. Like, this is great.

Brad Frost: [1:10:53] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:10:54] or, you know, and, and to try and see that over time I think is very important to say are the universals of tech and design that don't change no matter what.

Brad Frost: [1:11:04] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:11:05] any generation, any teacher, any professor, you can learn those and then you can apply them to whatever. And I, and I think you know, that the people that started Figma in the Golden Days of Figma, you know, and, and a couple of these other people at, I think it was RISD or Brown, there's a professor of graphic history, graphic design, history.

Brad Frost: [1:11:23] Okay.

Amber Case: [1:11:24] through that class gets to learn all of the arrows of history and then they can choose what they want to, to invoke when they design their designs.

Brad Frost: [1:11:32] Yep,

Amber Case: [1:11:33] And

Brad Frost: [1:11:33] yep, yep, yep.

Amber Case: [1:11:34] the whole point. That's a

Brad Frost: [1:11:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:11:38] right? And so if we can learn that in all these shapes, that would be great.

Brad Frost: [1:11:42] you're, you're onto something there. Because, because it's like the, this world is quite new, right? The, the digital realm, and yet it, it seems like it, it's so incestuous and like inward looking where it's just like, you know, we're the, we're the, we work for whatever, or we're the, we're the Instagram for whatever, we're the Pinterest for this thing or whatever. And it's just like, it's, there's this like total like lack of imagination where it's just all, like, all, all people are doing it. Like looking at the adjacent company or service or, or digital thing. That's, that's whatever. But like, like what's needed is again that, that history and that ability to sort of like look across arts, architecture, theater, you know, like, and you name it any creative endeavor, right? Anybody doing things, bunch of people, uh. Getting together as a, as a group to make something new. So I have an idea. I'm gonna, I you, you're the first person I think that it, like, kind of publicly like kind of pitching it to, I wanna do a conference that is about creative collaboration where it is just like, okay, uh, the first act is, improv comedy group, and they're going to do a little thing, and then we're gonna talk about, and that they're gonna sort of talk about how they collaborate and how they know it's working and, and when they get stuck and, and what they do about it. And then the next one is, say, an architecture firm. you get all the different disciplines involved to that. And then they do a little sort of show and tell, and then they talk about their collaborative process and what works and what doesn't. And the next one you get a, you know, the jazz, uh, you know, the jazz group in there, the jazz quartet to do their thing and talk about collaboration and when it's working and when, when it's not. And basically over the course of, you know, a day or two or whatever, you get this like kind of cross section of the world's, uh, creative disciplines, kind of swapping notes on how they. Get things done together.

Amber Case: [1:13:53] Cool. That sounds great. And

Brad Frost: [1:13:55] Yeah,

Amber Case: [1:13:55] should be a third day where people actually make stuff together.

Brad Frost: [1:13:58] there it is. And then, and it is like, all right, let's do some shit. Right.

Amber Case: [1:14:02] and then you have to show it. I, a lot of these creative communities that I've been hanging out with, it's like putting on a talent show or a pageant, or we're all doing Monty Python together. What? And then by the end of the day, it's like, wait, everybody memorized their lines? How is that? And it's really

Brad Frost: [1:14:17] Did you do?

Amber Case: [1:14:18] but, um, and in a sense it's kind of like what you would see it, you know, in school if you were the popular kids or, or you were the nerd kids, right? Like, we're doing theater, it goes from being an individual to being a collective.

Brad Frost: [1:14:31] Yes.

Amber Case: [1:14:31] that transitions really nice. because yeah, this, this super individualism stuff to me is like really quite annoying. like the main character energy stuff I mean, it's nice, but it's also like you're turning the world into a video game plus one aura, plus one, this, you know, minus aura. Like, and, and it becomes very difficult to see long term when video games are only programmed to last for, you know, 40 to 60 hours before, uh, runtime in real life. Like, or,

Brad Frost: [1:15:01] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:15:02] of them are, are huge, massive multiplayer games where you're thinking about how you're leveling up everything, but you're not leveling up your blacksmithing tools. You are leveling up your armor, you know, and

Brad Frost: [1:15:14] Yeah,

Amber Case: [1:15:14] clothing is armor and this is this and like followers is this. where,

Brad Frost: [1:15:18] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:15:18] a very early presentation, I used to call it like we're just spreadsheet animals and spreadsheet games, you know, plus one follower, minus follower, you know, and you have a different ranking game.

Brad Frost: [1:15:28] It gets into that, like that, that performative stuff versus like the, the actual, uh, which, which, which gets in the way of the real kind of connection, which is what, what we're really hungry for.

Amber Case: [1:15:40] Which

Brad Frost: [1:15:40] And I think that that's,

Amber Case: [1:15:41] you know?

Brad Frost: [1:15:42] yeah. Yeah. You don't, you don't need to quantify that. You just need to, to feel it. You need to live it. And it's, it's whenever you, you come away from, from a meal or from a show or from any activity, and you go, man, that was good. It's like, that was like satisfying. Like, I'm like, I'm glad I hung out with my friend. Like we had like a great time. It's, it's that satisfaction at a very soul level that you can only feel like you can't, you can't properly put that into words, but you know it when you feel it. There is really something to this, this kind of revenge of the real, to kind of get people back to that outcome, which is wildly more, I think, sort of satisfying and healthy compared to the, the, the weird treadmills that we've been discussing here. So

Amber Case: [1:16:37] Yeah. Well, yeah, that's the thing is, you know, maybe she call this podcast episode the revenge of the real. Oh.

Brad Frost: [1:16:43] the river, I love it. I love it. We got, we got it right there in the, right there in the, uh. In, in the, in the episode we'll make the, the, the, the highlight reel for it and, and spray it out into like, that's the other, that's the other funny thing and, uh, we kind of talked about this before we started recording, is just like, it's, it's like this really is about just like having these conversations. It's like the whole mechanics of like, you know, productizing this or like, don't get me wrong, I love a good, like, a lot of times like branding and like identity and like doing like that stuff is like a great way, you know, calm technology and like, I, like you need the buzz words and that stuff can kind of like carry these ideas like out into the world. And I, so, so I think that there is like real value in it, but at the same time it is just like weird to have to do, you know, anything that like closely resembles if you like, you know, if I have to do a YouTube still of be.

Amber Case: [1:17:44] Yeah, I, I think, I think the issue that was the YouTube still

Brad Frost: [1:17:48] It is like, geez. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We could just screen cap that.

Amber Case: [1:17:51] the thing is that we have to have some meme and then it has to be, it's very easy to take that word revenge of the rail and turn it into something else. Like it already got commodified into a trend report like that was

Brad Frost: [1:18:02] Yep,

Amber Case: [1:18:03] right?

Brad Frost: [1:18:03] yep, yep, yep.

Amber Case: [1:18:04] like calm tech is like, the misunderstandings of it, you know, are really annoying. It's, it's your having a

Brad Frost: [1:18:11] I've, I've got, I've got atomic design and I've seen that thing show up in so many Bizaro PowerPoint presentations and just like all sorts of stuff. I've seen, you know, atomic design in the, in the blockchain, and I'm like, like, it, it wars my mind. But it's like, it's, it is very fascinating because like it's, there, there is really sort of something to, that, that sort of. Social delivery and interpretation and game of telephone at, at the end of the day, it's like, oh yeah, like you have the original meaning of what calm technology is. And then it's like, but at the end of the day, kind of like art, right? There's the initial intention of creating a song or, or a painting or whatever, but it's like really at the end of the day, it's, it is not up to any the, the creator to say like, no, this is how you should interpret it, is people are going to interpret it and, and, you know, use it, but also perhaps even like weaponize it, right? So there's, there's something there that has been kind of fascinating. I, I feel like since we last saw each other in person, we've kind of had our own buzzword journeys.

Amber Case: [1:19:23] Yeah. And, and I ended up, um, I ended up having to trademark mine, because, uh, there, there was a company that, that used it incorrectly and made a whole global campaign with it. I was like, just because you bought one of the companies listed on the calm tech website doesn't mean you're entire company is calm, or you know what it is. Because as Cory Doc Toro says, you know, in ification, right? Like things

Brad Frost: [1:19:43] yeah, yeah, yeah,

Amber Case: [1:19:45] in some, in some sense. but yeah, so now, because there were so many people that are like, I'm, I'm calm tech and I do this, and I'm like, could you at least go through the training first to understand what it really is? Like? It's about

Brad Frost: [1:19:55] yeah, yeah, yeah,

Amber Case: [1:19:56] about raise dots on buttons so that you can use them in the dark. It's about material design. It's about not putting blue lights everywhere.

Brad Frost: [1:20:03] yeah.

Amber Case: [1:20:03] so then it was like, okay, you need to be a certification program to quantify this, to show

Brad Frost: [1:20:09] That's amazing. Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:20:11] this is protect and this is trademarked. And, and people, and some people are like, I hate that word. It's not calm, you know, what's that word? I'm like, is there a better word for it? Because I can't figure out why it doesn't really matter. It's that, you know, or CTI certified. I don't care what it is. We need to have something that advocates for people to say, here's a product that you might

Brad Frost: [1:20:30] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:20:31] on for more than. Two years. But finding

Brad Frost: [1:20:34] Yep,

Amber Case: [1:20:35] that, that allow, that, that are privately held is really hard. You know,

Brad Frost: [1:20:38] yep.

Amber Case: [1:20:39] resist the, the siren call of going public and, and getting a big chunk of cash out of the thing that you did as a founder? It's really hard, you know,

Brad Frost: [1:20:46] yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Amber Case: [1:20:47] banker as a friend, you know, it's like, I'll take it public for you. Which is why like, you know, it was like, I like these little Midwest companies like Time Timer. I love some of these emerging companies in, in, in Norway. As long as they don't go public or they don't raise too much money, um, it's almost impossible at this point. It's like scale very slowly. Well, who has the patience for that anymore?

Brad Frost: [1:21:09] Mm-hmm.

Amber Case: [1:21:10] when I was looking at business models for standards bodies, it's like. Okay, good housekeeping seal of approval that can last a hundred years. What about Underwriter Laboratories, which started as at the Chicago World's Fair as, uh, you know, in what, 1895 as a way to make sure that people installing stuff with the new thing called electricity wouldn't burn each

Brad Frost: [1:21:29] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:21:29] because they're in a compact space. Yeah, that's cool. At that point, I feel like it's like lion the witch in the wardrobe, like the very first book, it's like there's the fog and nobody knows what anything is, but, but if you read the whole series, you get happened in the beginning becomes really big in, in the end. And it's, it's like, you know, just thinking about people who do, make little small towns and cities is like, well what do we name this street? You know? And that, that becomes the big street later, you know, and, and so it's about, you know, these little tiny decisions that you can make And, and you have to make them somewhere. And I don't think any other kid that I've ever met would say, I want to make this, you know, certification of quality stamp on the bottom of the product. But that's what I wanted as a kid. I would be playing with Sculpty Clay and say, I want AP non-toxic certification. I wanna make that. and no one's going to fund that. No one's going to say, I mean, I had someone that said, I'll give you a hundred K if you can automate it. And I said, you want me to make a clone of humans? A a huge multisensory robot like that would cost a hundred million. And really we just need to have a dog who can smell for the, you know, or you have an x-ray spectrometer. I mean, so the robot's gonna sleep, uh, in a, in a controlled environment and tell you whether it's, it's tact, tactfully satisfying to use this product, or we could just have a human. But it was, it was odd where it was like. What, what trend did you care about 10 years ago when AI wasn't a thing? Do you even remember the crash from 1987? Not that I remember it, I was one, but, um, that, that, that it stumbles over its own ambitions and fails. It's, it's not that it's inherently bad or good, it's that there's this idea that, you know, a human is bad. Like when people say bio break, and you have said that before, it was like, so

Brad Frost: [1:23:19] Did.

Amber Case: [1:23:20] you are going to take a break to be a human. How terrible that you might need to pee before we have this call for an hour and a

Brad Frost: [1:23:27] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:23:28] Like, no, like, what are you a

Brad Frost: [1:23:32] This is,

Amber Case: [1:23:32] Right?

Brad Frost: [1:23:33] I, I am, that, that is the, the one thing, you know, you, when you do enough work in, uh, as a consultant with, uh, kind of bigger companies, you, you end up internalizing some things. There's many things I've refused to let in, but I'm just like, Been like, okay, you're all a little bit more buttoned up than me. I'm not gonna just talk about bodily functions as openly. That's like people

Amber Case: [1:23:59] they aren't buttoned up behind the scenes. No one

Brad Frost: [1:24:02] Oh, totally, totally, totally, totally. I, it's, it's my look. Like I

Amber Case: [1:24:08] on the play, but, but I'm like, I'll be back in five minutes. Like, like

Brad Frost: [1:24:13] Sure, sure.

Amber Case: [1:24:14] you know, I don't say bio break. I say, I need to get some coffee.

Brad Frost: [1:24:17] I need to get some coffee. That's good.

Amber Case: [1:24:19] It's gonna be five

Brad Frost: [1:24:20] I like that.

Amber Case: [1:24:21] You know, because

Brad Frost: [1:24:22] I like that.

Amber Case: [1:24:22] don't have to. gosh. It's just, it's these things where we're already at a reduction of complexity when, when we have this flat screen that we're trying to bring ourselves to life through. But

Brad Frost: [1:24:34] Yep.

Amber Case: [1:24:35] if we have a phone call, there's actually more texture in that because it's, it's, it's, it's auditory.

Brad Frost: [1:24:40] Yeah. There's a, there's a, there's like a focusing effect almost. Yeah. It's, it is a

Amber Case: [1:24:45] you know, and focus

Brad Frost: [1:24:46] yes.

Amber Case: [1:24:47] I mean, you've

Brad Frost: [1:24:47] Yes, yes. Yes.

Amber Case: [1:24:49] that my eyes are all over the place. Like it's really

Brad Frost: [1:24:51] Yep, yep, yep.

Amber Case: [1:24:52] even though thankfully behind you there's a lot of interesting stuff to look at and you have a cool sweater, you know, but like. Oh, like I, you know, I'm trying to just look around because my eyes need something else to look at because I wanna focus on your words. Anyway, I digress. But

Brad Frost: [1:25:08] Yes.

Amber Case: [1:25:09] in, in wrap up of this podcast episode, we covered the revenge of the real. We covered the ability and the, the sadness that happens when you don't study the history of things, what people really want, when they want community, the sadness that happens when we're abstract, the shipping container for the soul on how to reconnect with your local community, why things don't scale, and care doesn't scale either. What it means to be a human today and bio breaks. Thanks for being here.

Brad Frost: [1:25:40] Oh man. Can you just do that for all of these? that's, that's the mic drop. Let's, let's do it. So, uh, so last question though. Before, before, before we peel off. 'cause I, that's beautiful. Like the only other structured question for this podcast is, is what music would do you want more people to know about?

Amber Case: [1:26:01] My friend Crystal Cortez, Q-U-A-R-T-E-Z, uh, now works at Meow Wolf, is designer, experimental sound designer, um, underground musician, has several albums, which you can listen to on Spotify or Band Camp, I think is really cool to listen to.

Brad Frost: [1:26:20] Be beautiful.

Amber Case: [1:26:20] very articulate, very interesting music also for, um, one of her shows. did this altar of sound where if you lit a candle it would trigger a different soundscape. And if you, she also did one with mirrors where you got close or far away from the sensor and that would trigger different sounds. for the capstone course in the sound design program at PCC in Portland where a lot of incredible sound designers came out of, um, you would go and get, make your own circuit board a little purple PCB company and you would learn how to make circuits. I mean, I'm always just looking at the curriculum, like two degrees worth of, so yeah, you

Brad Frost: [1:27:02] Wow.

Amber Case: [1:27:02] board design and then you could make your own, you know, sonic interactions. And she also did a lot of work with the, um, 60 channels surround, uh, surround sound arrays. So 60 with max MSP. So you could, um, have this residency program where people would come in and bring their own soundscapes. So. would record completely different things and you could experience that with the 60 channels, um, and feel like you were there. So Crystal Cortez amazing, amazing human being, um, really one to watch. Um,

Brad Frost: [1:27:34] I love it. I love it. That is phenomenal. Yeah, there, there's, there's a lot to pick out there and I'm going to do some research, but yeah, I have her, uh, band camp pulled up now and, uh, but feels like I need to, hopefully there's some other good some, some videos to watch or some other things there too, so That's awesome.

Amber Case: [1:27:55] Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I filmed some of those, which were, which were fun.

Brad Frost: [1:27:59] Amazing. Well, well, thank you so much for, for this has been fantastic. Like, I, it's been a long time since we've like seen each other in person. We've kind of followed, like hung out ambiently on social media kind of over the last decade or so. And so it's been like really cool to just kinda see what your journey's been and, and hear about where your mind's at and, uh, amazing. Amazing. So keep keep, keep up the weird dreams.

Amber Case: [1:28:30] Yeah, don't get demoralized just because the of the state of things

Brad Frost: [1:28:34] Yeah.

Amber Case: [1:28:35] more compression and, and less of a less of a car color situation than when we would

Brad Frost: [1:28:40] Take revenge, venge.

Amber Case: [1:28:41] yeah.

Brad Frost: [1:28:42] All right. See ya.