Season 9. Episode 2: Reimagining Journalism with Emergent Technology

Transcript

Hello everyone. My name's uh Eric Mack and want to talk about like the past of journalism, where we are now and where we're going and why we see decentralization as part of a solution to the media industry today. So the thing that I'm probably think is most important and where I deliver the most value, it's never what they [ __ ] want to talk about. They never want to talk about crypto. They never want to talk about trail running. They never want to talk about like other stuff that I'm like uh very passionate about. Instead of following the Kevin Kelly route where it's like I'm going to do my art and 100 people will let me do it forever. Like that might not in this world where everyone's trying to do that. Maybe that doesn't [ __ ] make sense anymore. I know 60% of um Gen Z

wants to be influencers. It's not happening. There are a lot of reasons I loved working at consensus, but one of the things that really impacted me there was I realized I could actually make more impact with our technology by putting it in the hands of folks in Africa in Latam in developers hands that can then take that technology and change the problem in their community. With technology, you can just drop it into a container and then watch it go. And I feel like that is one of the most beautiful things about our tech is is watching it just have that network effect as people begin using it in places where it is necessary.

It needs to be the context of what we want to see. There's this like quote that I heard that's sticking with me is like you end you end war not by hating war but by loving peace. It's like you're in some ways contributing to that that energy of war and uh dysfunction and polarity and separation. If that's like what you hate, it feels like you're fixing it by hating it and you're paying attention to all the people who are like dissing on people, dunking on people, and like you got your side and you're just going to take down this other side or whatever. But you can see at its core that it's really just

going to perpetuate. [Music] Hello everyone. Just want to welcome everybody back to another um episode. We are Jourodow. We're guest host this season and today we are going to rip the band-aid off and talk about our industry journalism. And um all of us on this call were journalists at one point um and spent a lot of time in the craft of journalism and but all of us started in an analog world. So that is how we learn to tell stories um with pen and paper or for me film and camera and want to show talk about like the past of journalism where we are now

and where we're going and why we see decentralization as part of a solution to the media industry today. So I'm going to let you all do brief intros on yourselves and um your journalism background. So people have context. Yeah. Uh Keith Axeline. I spent about nine years at uh Wired magazine, came in as writing intern and left later as an editor. Then went to uh Medium the blogging platform and then um became software developer um the last seven or eight years. And yeah, really happy to have found Jouroad DAO in uh my first time around in web 3. Uh, and my name's uh, Eric Mack. Uh, started in uh,

broadcast journalism 25 years ago. um in kind of the the public radio universe and then kind of gravitated from broadcasting into more traditional well not traditional online online journalism covering a lot of tech and science for uh primarily uh CNET and and Forbes uh but a whole lot of whole lot of other brands in there over the years and uh today I'm I'm still a senior contributor at Forbes but also a writer for uh Consensus so And also, yeah, kind of came into the web 3 world uh via you folks and via via Journal and and seeing like some parallels between

uh blockchain and journalism that uh not a lot of people are have caught on yet, but we're still working on it. I'm Crystal Street. I started in journalism um in 1996. So I was a staff photographer at a regional paper in southwest Virginia and then began freelancing mostly did community journalism went back to study journalism professionally after about 10 years of freelancing at University of Chapel Hill or University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and that's where I really got deep into more documentary work um more photojournalism from learned from some amazing mentors um and then after I rolled out of journalism school the

economy tanked I was I was set to go study um and work as a foreign correspondent was kind of my track and then the industry just kind of fell apart. So I ended up doing all of the things that a person who has a camera in their hands does to pay the bills which involved advertising. Um some of my clients were Whole Foods, Nissan, some of it was just ridiculous. Um did TV commercials and then was like, "All right, I'm done with this shit." and stumbled into blockchain around 2012 h because my colleagues were living in Pakistan and they kept gmailing me and I was like y'all have to stop with this. So I found um this bit bit message which was a peer-to-peer messaging platform which ended up being on a blockchain. So that's how I got into the tech. I knew of Bitcoin at that

point but didn't really have any interest in it but then I actually saw a real use case for this beyond monetization and then stumbled into crypto at a hacker space. um also joined that hacker space to learn more about protecting free speech, how journalists can use technology to, you know, protect themselves with privacy metrics and all that good stuff. Um, so yeah, that's kind of my backstory. Ended up at Consensus as well and in some weird crypto bubbles and here we are. We're still here and this is also my sidekick.

So if you see wiggling, um, he was here for the last episode. So, I threw out our show notes last night and we just decided to just dive deep into the media, all the things, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Um, we there's a good scope of optimism and pessimism in this group right here. So, we're just going to um dive in and out of conversation and hopefully we will land in solutions. Um, that is kind of our our goal here. So, we started off listening to an Edward Aruro clip and had a really good debate and realized, you know, Eric's like, "Yeah, hit record." So, why don't we start there? Um, this this conversation, I'm not going to play it.

I will put it in the show notes. Um, it's a clip from Good Night and Good Luck, which looked at how Edward Arrow took on McCarthyism and McCarthy, Senator McCarthy. Um, and the speech was in 1958. It was a an award that he received for his work and he called out the industry basically saying that if this industry doesn't figure out a way to use technology at the time radio and television to inform and instead chooses a path to just entertain, then 50 to 100 years from now we're going to be in a place where we don't want to be um as a society. And that's pretty much come true. Um, and that is without the acceleration we have with social media.

So, I'm gonna kick it to either one of y'all. Where do you want to pick up that thread that we were just playing with? Or where do you want to start? if you want to go somewhere else. I think uh we were discussing uh nostalgia for the past and I was taking issue with like uh the premise that maybe it was like truly a golden age and and these journalism principles were fully realized and and then that perfection was sullied and uh to me I mean I get romantic about that stuff too and I love it but as far as like people who don't share that that idea about that time period and just are more

about like well how is this how is this relevant to me now um I'd like to you know focus on what worked about uh that time period and what we can bring back but then also very much emphasize that just like the early internet that had a lot of great ideas that weren't fully realized um and then got sidetracked uh by the advertising model I think there's a lot of great um principles that we should definitely um adhere to uh revive from uh previous eras, but that we should uh really look to the future with more of a green field creativity and mindset and

realize that there's so much more that we can do. Um, and it's not just reinstating uh something old that people have formed all sorts of weird views about. I mean, I think we could do the uh the simple thought experiment of like what So uh so that was in like the 50s or 60s that this uh Edward Aruro clip we're referring to would have been from, right? 58. Yep. 58. Okay. So like you know we do the simple uh time travel thought experiment of uh if you had a choice would you prefer to live in 1958 or in um 2025.

Now sometimes I think I might I might not mind rewinding like 10 years uh but uh and it's like the first time I've ever felt that way about well maybe there would be a ton just a little bit back in the past. Would I want to live in 1958 over 2025? I absolutely not. And so like I think and I so I think the argu where maybe the argument gets confused is like most things I think are better in our modern age than in 1958 with the notable exception of that the information landscape and like understanding your world um being on the same page with your neighbor having a common shared understanding of reality.

that was better in 1958. So like that is the one notable thing that um is really [ __ ] right now. And so like I think part of what Jourodow is about but there's like nothing we can do about that. That's just like the onward march of technology that like you really can't do anything about. And like I really think that the solution for bad technology is more technology. And like that's what we're interested in here. Like if the old centralized ways of establishing authority and establishing um our shared agreement on what reality is, those have broken down in the face of a faster paced and more complex and

complicated society and reality. Um, so you know, one of the things that that Keith has been building with seed protocol is perhaps we can use um new technology in blockchain to build new decentralized ways of um establishing what is what is real, what deserves authority, what deserves attention um through primitives like like at testation. So, like that's maybe that's one through line from Edward Aruro to uh what what we're working on.

Yeah, I like that. I like that through line. Um the attestations is really what kicked it off for me because you can then begin to bring back in some sort of balance of truth or accountability for things that are stated. And I feel like that is the thing from past journalism from from Muro's time where journalists had time to actually get into a story and they were resourced in a way where they could go deep and that was lost as media became consolidated and as information production and consumption sped up and again we're our theme here is acceleration in general for this season.

So as we accelerated in how we produced and presented news, we lost that slow journalism approach, which is the same with as a lot of industries like slow food is another really good movement we could look at and compare where someone had the time to go to the town council meeting to sit there and get all the all the different viewpoints, follow up and have long conversations with people involved in the story and then really get into the investigative side of what was going on in an issue and then present it to the public in a way that was logical that wasn't then bombarded by a bunch of bots or whatever [ __ ] is the, you know, the conversation of the day so that the message is then buried in garbage and conversation that's designed to polarize. And I feel

like that is the one thing that blockchain could at least help with in some capacity is to slow things down. And if you're going to put a statement on chain and then attest to it, you're putting your reputation on the line. And that opens up a different conversation, which back then that was also the case. You were putting your reputation on the line because there was one person with a microphone telling you what was going on in the world. And that one person could be held accountable. Um we we've lost that, I think. Yeah. And I think um for me the way the attestations um manifest that is that they're almost like a digital representation of that connective tissue that used to just exist interpersonally because there

wasn't a way to interface with people outside of your community. So you don't really think about it. Um but now that we've kind of scaled globally with a very like centralized digital infrastructure, I think attestations hold potential to bring back um those sort of trust mechanisms and the sort of emergent reputation where we don't have to rely on, you know, a company like Yelp or whatever the equivalent is for whatever industry of like some sort of like fivestar BS where everybody is like 4.7 seven stars because everyone's polite and there's no signal there and you don't really know if this is going to be good

and so you're back to like there might as well just not be a rating system, right? So, uh, we need something like a lot more nuanced, something that reflects, um, our own experience. And I think that can get lost in the discussion of the actual technology. But like that's what we're hoping to manifest is, um, technology that can bring um, human uh, intuition and wisdom into the digital space. you'll have to like learn like uh some esoteric UX or UI or understand like how your email gets routed through like all these different servers just to enact your will on the internet but that you can

just be yourself intuitively and the things that you expect to happen just like I mean more or less in real life I mean we'll just give real life the upper hand here and say it would be better if dig whole world more like that uh in that respect. So um I don't want to we are like technology focused but we are like much more human focused and figuring out how we can empower people to uh be their best selves and do what they want to do before being influenced by any sort of um business agenda on the internet. Um, and I think journalism is

like uh perhaps the front line and it's not one that really people are talking about because that's kind of the connective tissue to uh your community where you actually have power to do things um and nobody's really engaged in their community. So, uh, it's one of the many reasons they feel powerless and that leads to all sorts of downstream decisions that are probably not the best. So, I think I only I think I only halfway agree with the the premise that like we've we've lost the the slow journalism. I do think we've lost it on the local level like uh for sure and like I'll come back to that in a second

but like on like beyond like the you know reporting on schoolboard meetings and all that stuff that really has gone away um you know like if we go back to the Edward Morrow era those news broadcasts where you got like 15 minutes a day uh you know and so like you got your newspaper you got your 15 minutes a day like it there that actually is like a lot more right now. And like there there's this very strange bifurcation of like how we get information where like we kind of assume oh like we have no attention span now like everyone's just on TikTok and like scrolling through 15minute clips. Yeah. Except for when they're listening to three and a half hour podcasts. So like there is a there is a demand for like all kinds of stuff.

And I actually think there's like there is tons of slow journalism going on, but it's in these like weird pockets of like podcasts and documentaries and it's not in the normal channels that like we grew up with, but it is there. The problem is it's harder to find. It's not um where like particularly folks of older generations are going to go looking for it. Uh it's of insanely uneven quality I think because you've got uh documentaries that are often just act like works of activism which is fine but like you know a lot of people will not know the difference between that and like more rigorous journalism and same goes with like Joe Rogan who I don't think prepares for interviews. Um and so

like that subbing in for journalism is also a problem. I think I think attestations are again a way to kind of help solve this and make this like weird landscape more navigable. And then like on the the local journalism side where stuff really has dried up uh and and we have like news deserts like you know my hope and interest for web 3 is like oh there's this completely other different aspect of it has nothing to do with attestations where like oh well we could spin up you know community currencies that can be linked to um you know citizen journalism and there's uh you know interesting experiments that were tried like like civil and other experiments that are that are ongoing.

And it's kind of like um web 3 is this crazy thing that like every problem that journalism has, it's like I could find something in blockchain that could that could address this. It hasn't really been deployed at scale yet, but um yeah, I I I still think all the answers are there. They just have to be built and made usable. And I feel like too that's also um like an issue on the fintech side of of blockchain. It's like the collapse or the transition or just the the forced change hasn't happened yet because journalist is still journalism is still kind of hanging on by a thread.

Like right now, Wired and Rolling Stone are some of the best long form investigative journalist journalism out there in a mainstream format. You know, until those things start to fall away, then local outlets, you know, have more of they're more resourced at that point because there's nothing that exists. And I don't know if we're going to get to the point where not all the media is gone, but we're at a point where a lot of media is not trusted. So people, like you're saying, like they turn to long form podcast, which are great, but all of that stuff is so hard to find, especially when algorithms are delivering information in a certain way.

Um, I would love to think that we're able to get to a point where we can take our technology and experiment on the local level again, which I think is the premise or I know is the premise of Derno Dow from its inception is like how can we, you know, the meme was how do we buy a newspaper and decentralize it and now I think which is kind of an interesting evolution is how do we take something like a knowledge garden or a shared digital platform that a community is contributing to and then how do we how do we put mechanisms in place to fund things so that journalists who are in those towns who are in news deserts can turn to a different format for the craft of journalism.

Yeah. And people are wondering about the scale of the opportunity here. All you need to do is look at the valuations of like Facebook and Google and all that value was essentially generated within communities and it was uh the most profitable data and information uh you know came from very niche uh specific communities and if there's a way to actually keep the value that's generated uh within your local community I think people are just kind of share shocked and conditioned over the years to view, you know, the deficits as uh and the underresourced institutions uh of their

towns, their local communities as just like a giving. And my my vision is like web 3 money but like within the community and helping people directly uh with things that are important to them and the value that they're generating actually going either staying staying in that community or coming back to them you know three-fold uh through the mechanisms that we've seen only applied to um you know meme coins or just more uh either abstract or still global and not like locally grounded um money games

and you know we haven't could happen any time but that's like I think what gets us waking up every day and working on this stuff is just a different playing field where uh it's not a financial liability to decide to uh be a journalist in your community or even just perform acts of journalism. Uh if we're going to, you know, make it a more modular process, which I think makes sense and we could talk about, but even in a traditional sense, I think there's a lot more there's a lot of value being generated that's not seen. It's not materialized. It definitely is not then given back to uh the journalist. And one of the things too that surfaced while

you were talking about that that we've talked about so much and and actively tried to be a part of is getting journalists to adopt this technology. We've gone to journalism conferences. We were the pretty much the only web 3 nerds in the room trying to tell people why this technology matters. The last one we attended two years ago was heavy into AI. And you know part of the panels that we talked on or that we presented on showed that blockchain is the counterbalance to AI if it's implemented in a certain way. The problem and just to call out our industry or our not journalism but web 3 crypto is the narrative is so [ __ ] that journalists won't even touch the technology. They

immediately check out because they've seen the stories from FTX to you know the moneyaundering coin that our current administration is using. Like it's really really hard to get a journalist to open up to technology in general, but then also to open up to a technology that is hard to understand and the only real exposure they've had to it are through the narratives that have been run throughout the mainstream media and partially because the journal the crypto industry never really owned their narratives to the point where a journalist who was logical and and has a background in investigation could come in and say, "Okay, here's how this tech can be is not the games, the the pumps and dumps and the rugps and all that.

Like all of that [ __ ] is ridiculous and it's, you know, preventing really amazing professionals from adopting our technology. So that's my soap box. I mean, I I I feel like a pretty fair amount of uh blame lays with the actual journalists for this as well. I I think that there's just a a sub a sub substantial amount of kind of laziness around like actually diving into like I I don't see like okay particularly like the Ethereum ecosystem that I I I really uh have an affection for in particular.

I don't I don't see it reflected like the Ethereum that I don't it's it's not reflected in mainstream media coverage anywhere. I've never seen it. Like there was like maybe one for like a moment in like 2021 like there were a few like interesting oh these Dows are kind of interesting. There were a couple of articles and like that that is it. And like since FTX since FTX it is like complete uh group think of like well crypto bad crypto crypto bad for climate and it's it's there was a that the Atlantic I listened to an Atlantic podcast uh where it was like it was just like a litany of like all of the um negative tropes about crypto. And this is like a like a couple weeks ago. I

couldn't believe it. was like recycling stuff from um like years ago and the Atlantic is usually pretty good. Uh so there's like there's a ton of garbage um in our eco ecosystem and there is always going to be um just like there is always going to be on the internet and um you know the internet uh has gotten better about uh filtering things out largely through web two platforms and I I do think the media is kind of coming to grips finally with the cost uh to society of uh allowing the web two

platforms to to play that role. Like so like sooner or later the the mainstream media will kind of come around to the uh actual um you know value and importance of blockchain. You would think it it's pretty obvious with uh being that counterbalance to to AI. I I see that I see that a little bit. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I just wanted to uh hold my fellow colleagues to the fire there a little bit on this one. No, that's that's a great point. And we're seeing it with AI again, too. Like they're doing that same resistance to AI to the point where I mean, we saw it when journalism transitioned from analog to digital. I saw it as digital

photography and I held on to my film as long as humanly possible and then I missed the boat when everybody switched to multimedia and I had to do a quick acceleration to get back on board and to be employable again. And we're seeing the same thing with AI and there's no way around the fact that AI is here. It's going to change everything. It is changing everything. And you can either stick your head in the sand and wish for what used to be or figure it out, make it your own and figure out a way to use it to move to make yourself employable or just to make art again, like to tell a story again. Like journalists are great at Trojan horses. That is our that is our happy place. Especially photojournalists. Like we take take something difficult like war and

conflict and try to explain it through something beautiful in an image that gets somebody interested in what the hell's going on in the world. And I feel like that's something that we can lean into more is how do you get journalists and also how do you get technologists to understand how to adopt, you know, these mechanisms to to help bring back truth and accountability through Trojan horses? I it's something we really we do that a lot here at Jourodow is trying to get journalists to at least understand the tech and what is the the green pill to to bring them into it. I think that's a great point and I I would want to I don't think the path to reform on the journalist part is you know being bered

into it but um than what is what is the path and I think that the neighbors game looks very different in web 3 like um you know Eric you're mentioning podcasts like these long form podcasts that you know mainstream media and business people in uh in journalism never thought like there's no appetite for long form like nobody cares like you're doing podcast what and then uh you know 9 years later you know they're like oh I was always behind podcasts and I'm starting one myself finally and uh and so I would like to you know look at a deeper level because even like the

most well moderately successful podcasts are not great businesses, right? It's still that hockey stick. Um, and there's the uh the battle to be like the top in the top five podcast and then everything after that is just like hopefuls to get in those top slots uh because then you'll just have to drop out. So we we do enjoy these um smaller podcasts during their honeymoon period where they're trying to get big and then they fizzle out just like um most startups uh you know anything like really cool idea there is like a fit with like a good amount of people and

it's baffling why it can't work and it's the it's the numbers game of the centralized infrastructure and so I think the promise of Web three is a journalist finding um the 100 people that care about what they're doing and then making a living off of that because of um the removal of the the centralized money suckers or whatever you want to call them. They're at this point seem parasitic because they're not really adding any value but just gatekeeping and keeping people from uh knowing the things that they want to know. Um but if it's the these direct relationships, the

numbers can be a lot smaller. Uh and journalists can uh do the things that they know need to be done and use their judgment without constantly being um funneled into these like single headlines that don't even accurately review their story. But all that people walk away with is the headline and the name and like they're like, "I got it. I got that story and that person's an idiot because they wrote that. And it's like, well, you didn't even even read. And it's like, I didn't even write that headline. You know, it's just it's not working for for anybody. And I think these direct relationships are maybe the way out of it.

So, counterpoint to that um to kind of I guess steelman the uh the status quo. And this is like what I what I struggle with too is so like what the what the centralized middleman I'm thinking like in particular of like the one I use which is like Substack, right? And uh so what Substack provides that I I have yet to find um in in web 3 tools is and we talked about this is the network effects and then through the network effects um the discoverability for your content or for whatever you're you're doing like how how can we address that? Is it just like you do you have to do the leg work

to build up your community like kind of on your own? Um I mean I think it does lend itself to to kind of a local first thing where where those network effects that like a Substack is going to give you like they're not not as important if we're talking about true like local stuff. Is is that maybe more where we have to start or like how do we address the discoverability thing? No, it's a great question because we're going through this at the human layer. We're a brand new podcast and I'm like, all right, you know, we have to put a component together to to have some sort of network effect. So, I'm using Paragraph right now because I just have an existing email list there. And then Taylor and I have a pretty robust professional network that's not necessarily all web three. It's both.

It's it's a, you know, it's decades of professional work and most of it's on LinkedIn. So, then I went under the hood. I was like, "Oh, do I start a Substack or, you know, went through the whole the whole gamut in the last few weeks and landed on a web 2 community building platform?" I'm like, "How in the year of our Lord 2025 and I've been in crypto this long and there is no crypto equivalent." And then someone sent something the other day that they're like, "Hey, try this." Because I'd mentioned it on Twitter and I'm sure it's going to be a really good platform one day. But all of the features that I needed now that already exist in this web two platform they all those features were coming soon and then so I went into the to the community to see what it

looked like and I saw names of community containers that were appalling that I couldn't imagine bringing my colleague from 10 years ago into a community container and they stumbled onto something called that and I was that's so part of it for me is that for whatever reason we haven't built the apps yet in web 3 to solve these problems which is stunning being that we are this far into this journey. I think I've seen so I think I've seen some but like it's like the people aren't there like I was messing around with uh let's see so lens chain launched or migrated uh upgraded something happened with lens a couple months ago um and like new and

improved lens is is pretty neat and there's like a a handful of of apps and there's um like there's a few social apps over there like it's like ox people and hey is one and then there's there's a few others and so like you know they've got some pretty cool apps So where you can you can connect your wallet and uh you can get like a representation of your social graph uh you know based on wallet transactions uh po apps like NFTTS and like um so then you've got a social graph you can that's visualized and then that's connected to like a social feed. So like it should be easy like it's actually better infrastructure and primitives in a lot

of ways than you know like having to move to Instagram where you're you know you're starting from from zero. I just put my I connected my Ethereum wallet to the lens apps and like everything's there from like you know who I was where I was getting po apps like four years ago. So it's like it's there like the tech is there but the networks aren't there right? Yeah totally. Do so in a situation where uh the finances work out where you have like your your 100 people. Do you need or want network effects? Like perhaps it is a pathology to feel like we all want to reach like as many people as possible

where it's like do we and should we and I do think there's a bit of reflexive just compulsion there because that's just like where the carrot was for so long that like that's just where the the need is and we go there all the time. Um, but then we complain about everything that falls out of that, right? And so I think there needs to be a reckoning of what we're trying to do and what we're happy with.

And when we want this, do we want also the all the side effects of it? what we want like in the case of Substack, it's isn't that a case of like the fire department also being the arsonist because like their 30% take rate is the reason that you need network effects to make the finances work. And so it's like in in a system where you actually reach the people that you that care about what you're doing that you don't have to contort it into some sort of simplistic watered down version so that it makes like wider distribution and reaches people who don't actually care what

you're doing just so that you can get enough ad revenue just to make it worth your time to have written the thing. It's like, well, what happens when we just get rid of the whole dance and then you just do the thing that you think is important, the people who also think it's important find out about it, and then they uh pay you for it gladly because they got more value out of it than they had to pay for it. So, I I I first heard this argument like 10 years ago from uh from Eric Hold House, who's a a meteorologist and and a a climate journalist. Used to be quite prolific on social media, too. But, um he hosted co-hosted a podcast called Warm Regards

that I was producing behind the scenes and like we had a meeting and he was like, I forget the context, but like his his point was like, man, maybe we don't need to grow it anymore. We Oh, we were talking about advertising. uh like we had, you know, we were kind of like in that little zone of like 5,000 to 10,000 listeners where you could like 10 years ago at least. That's where you could kind of start to sell advertising. And we had like one advertiser that was like, you know, kind of paying the the server build or whatever and like a little bit for me and everybody else. And he was like, "Yeah, you know, maybe we don't need maybe we don't need to go out. Maybe this is this is good." like it was completely anathema to to me at the time and like everything that I had

like you know based my career around as a journalist and a writer and just like media person like his his argument did not compute in my head and it it didn't start to compute until a few years later probably around the around the time I met you Keith um which uh uh that's a compliment but um so yeah I don't know. I don't know that like today like you're kind of referencing I think like Kevin Kelly's thou thousand true fans, right? In terms of like um like anyone with a thousand true fans like you know it's willing to pay like what was like a hundred bucks a year for your

work or something. That's $100,000. Like that's uh you know that that is that's a career, that's a job. That's a that's a living. Um, I've grown a little skeptical of uh that those economics. I don't know that they hold true in 2025. And I think it has something to do with the fact of just being so absolutely a wash in content that it has devalued that to like, you know, I there's so there's so many people to pay $10 subscriptions a month to that the level of competition.

It it reminds me of like the literary world where like there's so many people that want to be writers and and want to write the great American novel. There's so much competition for so little uh attention to go around in terms of like the market for novel readers that like the the the supply is so over you're so overs supplied with writers that the value of that work is vanishes to zero. And it feels like we're kind of reaching that with journalism now where like everyone calls themselves a journalist even though we're journalists are now c competing with every content creator. So to me like I I worry a little bit that this like kind of like thousand true fans like strong

community. It's it's become much harder to pull off in the last five years. Yeah, those are all great points. Actually Keith to that point that's actually what we're experimenting with with with human layer is that can we create a community container in I use mighty networks is what we're setting up. This is a complete experiment. I might be totally wrong. Can it be done in the gift economy with a very small community that comes into a container that is completely open and everything is public and you you still kind of have to be invited in. It's not going to be like a free-for-all, but can there be enough at the core, at the heart of this community that starts interested in a podcast and then reads some other

content that has been spun up from that podcast or interacts with myself and Taylor through some sort of human facetoface connection so that there is a connection that's made and can they come into a comm community container and get enough value either from communicating with each other or content we put in that container which is maybe educational or maybe just artistic And then is there enough network effect in that community to then support in the gift economy? And I don't know, but it's an extremely like curious experiment that I want to go into because I feel like as capitalism goes through whatever transformation it's going through and hopefully at some point we get away from surveillance capitalism that these types of community containers be them in a

platform or in a knowledge garden or in whatever that we are able to sustain ourselves from a handful of people that actually engage with whatever you're producing and however you're producing it. I don't know if that's going to be the case. I think there's going to have to be also some sponsors and some patrons. Like I'd love to bring back patrons from from back in the day and be like, "Yes, this the value you're putting out is strong enough and there's enough people engaging with it that we just want to support this thing for the next so many months so that more people can engage with it." And I hope the optimistic side of me likes to think that there are enough people that value that type of human engagement with information that we can get there. I don't know it it'll be interesting.

Yeah. And I will you know put out the caveat that uh I don't expect this to work as just a bolt-on to the existing system like this is um require some vision and I think it's useful to articulate the end state. Um, but I I'd like to say like some simple true things of like it should work this way and it can work this way rather than it'll never work this way and here's why because this is how things are now. And we we've found and we know that that's a terrible way to predict the future, right? is like extrapolating out the current state of like right now like

yeah nothing innovative was ever foresaw by extrapolating out like current circumstances. So we're already in like the innovation space and you can go back like any idea that you have right now for some sort of technology, some sort of product, whatever is probably was like a startup like 5 8 20 years ago and never could get off the ground. Not because it wasn't a good idea but just because of the financial ecosystem what it took to the stakes that had to be applied to every idea as like potentially billion dollar has kept us from like so many like value delivering

just small businesses right-sized businesses and I think uh journalism and the businesses surrounding it could never really make that promise to be a billion ion dollar unicorn payout for investors, nor should it have, nor should it have had to just to get the financing to uh to operate in the way that it used to. And I think um you know it was rotten from the beginning when it took on advertising. Um but it took on advertising because there wasn't a good model for making money then either. So we are like you know square one with how do we get journalists value

uh for the work that they do and like the the value they provide and uh unfortunately people are having to actually see the value of it by it disappearing from their lives. Uh and so like that's what we had to go through. I think um a lot of people who are paying attention can see that just like don't don't attach your old ideas of what journalism used to be or what it is or what people are telling you it is but the act of just uh commu communal emergent truth being delivered to you in a succinct way that is useful to you and allows you to make better decisions towards the goals that

you set. not uh the the venue where you're actually consuming that information and that's trying to constantly nudge you into behavior that they think uh works for them. I think uh like true pure empowerment of communities and individuals based in the uh in the local focus of where it gives you the power to change things in your everyday life. not just like argue about uh people you'll never meet meet with your friends instead of like talking about meaningful things between you.

It's just uh we've we're so distracted from anything approaching signal that it it seems like obvious and necessary and doable to just apply some of these technologies to more direct uh empowering information gathering and dissemination within communities. And I mean you can take a I think scarcity is a huge a huge driver of value like it's not just the 100 people paying whatever. It's like uh not everyone's going to be a lifetime uh fan of yours, but if you have a 100 seats and then you have uh some resale

market, I think is a great um a great tool of digital scarcity currencies is like, okay, there's a 100 seats for this subscription and then people get to uh buy in early. It's an investment vehicle. So when they are no longer interested in it, they can sell it for an outside value because along the way like that that creator has like created a bunch of value, created this thing that people want to be a part of. Uh and so they have to buy into it at a premium and that premium value gets uh fed back to the creator through like the contract of royalties or whatever the

the dynamics are for that resale. and the the early adopter gets gets paid out and the person who is like really into it and wants in, they get to get what they want at like a market price. And it's that sort of and that's that's only like one of many mechanics that are now available to us um through like cryptography and just like the the lab that we're in of just uh how we interact, how we capture value and what expresses the will of like a group of people around like a a shared endeavor. And uh I mean I in that way I'm very optimistic

but it has been quite the kick in the balls every day for the last like 20 years up to now. You you both said uh a word repeatedly there that now makes me want to uh argue with myself and my earlier pessimism which is you you both said the word value um quite a bit which is which I think is is the most important thing here and uh because like I I think when I'm thinking of like the yeah the 100 true fans or thousand true fans thing um and I think you know when that idea first started to circulate The idea was whatever you do, whatever your thing is, like you can find the

people out there that want to like pay you to do your thing and make your art. And like I don't know that that's true anymore because like now everyone's doing it and some people's art sucks and like what you're doing like the number one thing that you're doing might not actually have uh that kind of permanent audience. But there are places for you to create value where it is like desperately needed. And I think the one that we all agree on is like on the local level, like local news and like just local sources of information. I don't care if you're a journalist or not, but just like there are these these huge voids locally and in all sorts of communities. They don't necessarily have

to be geographic communities, but like community level news is a place where you can provide value. uh like time and time again like you know for the longest time I thought like the most value I could deliver in the world was like as a journalist and uh signal I got signals that told me that and maybe that's not quite as as true as you thought. I I still personally think the place for me to deliver the most value right now is the stuff that we're talking about right now and like decentralized technologies are like important and they're like the thing that we need most and I'm still like dug into that even though like the signals when I like go to like talk to

people or like introduce myself to people or like they kind of find out like what I'm about the the thing that I'm probably think is most important and where I deliver the most I it's never what they [ __ ] want to talk about. They never want to talk about crypto and they never want to talk about trail running. They never want to talk about like other stuff that I'm like uh very passionate about. Like time and time again they're like, "Wait, you have solar power?" And if so, so like so like as a result, we have this the Substack is is dedicated to like off offrid uh life. So, it's like you should maybe listen to the instead of instead of following the Kevin Kelly route where it's like I'm going to do my art and 100

people will let me do it forever. Like that might not in this world where everyone's trying to do that. Maybe that doesn't [ __ ] make sense anymore. I know 60% of um Gen Z wants to be influencers. It's not going to happen. So like maybe listen to the signals a little bit more like I'm trying to and like find where the value where you can contribute value and Keith is going to build the tools for you to actually receive that value from your audience. Maybe that's what we're doing. Oh, I love that. That was There's like five things I want to follow up with and I I wrote a few down, but one So one thing that really and this is more of a personal thing. One of the reasons that I loved working um there are a lot of

reasons I loved working at consensus but one of the things that really impacted me there was I realized I could actually make more impact with our technology by putting it in the hands of folks in Africa in Latam in developers hands that can then take that technology and change the problem in their community with it and that was something I tried to do with photography by showing the the problems in a community through visuals it just never landed. With technology, you can just drop it into a container and then watch it go. And I feel like that is one of the most beautiful things about our tech is is watching it just have that network effect as people begin using it in places where it is necessary. We're not there yet in the

West, but we're not far from it. So, I think that is going to be really, really interesting. And I love that we get together as a family here so often and try to figure these things out and that Keith's over there building all kinds of cool [ __ ] Um, the other point and I'm going to kick it back to Keith for to talk about that cool [ __ ] One thing that you brought up with Gen Z, um, that I think is going to be really interesting and I don't have an answer to this, but I'm just going to float it out there. You know, we all came through we we learned journalism under seasoned veteran journalists. Like my mentors, okay, well, I got lucky enough because I went back to school. I'm like, "All right, give me all the smart people."

Um, and at J school, the one that I went to was actual people that were professionals, so they weren't academic. And like my photojournalism professor was a he won a Pulitzer for the coverage, his team for the coverage of Coline shooting. And I got to study under this brilliant old man. He was old at the time that I met him, but created media agenda setting theory in the 70s based on the Kennedy Nixon elections. And then another newswriting professor was a community journalist. And so he wrote the textbooks for community journalism. So I got to see the craft from them and then make it my own for the time that I was living in and then apply it. Where are you journalists that have that? Like Jenzi, I love Jenz's idealism. I love their emotional, you

know, connection to what's going on around them. How are they going to learn the craft of journalism if there aren't outlets for them to learn at? Even at the local paper where I used to freelance. I mean, you had crusty old guys on the desk that would tell you their two cents all day long, good or bad, but they knew some of the fundamentals of taking a notebook and a pen out into the street and how to find a source and how to follow the source and how to go there. Are we going to have like is this younger generation going to have that? cuz what I've some of what I've seen um just at events or or whatever the past few years is a lot of cosplaying with the younger generation trying to be a journalist and saying they're a journalist but then dropping the ball and how they talk to a

human or how they document an event and they make the story about them which I get at a younger you know that younger generation all of us have young egos when we're that age like I get it but the whole point is that somebody above you cracks that ego go a bit and then shows you a way through it. You know, same with like bartending. You know, all the older guys used to tell you, "You [ __ ] this up. Five ways to Sunday. Here's how you do it differently." Anyway, my long tangent here. Is that still going to be a thing? Look, I mean, the journalism education system and the system that you're talking about of like apprenticeship and like working your way up, it's like so broken. It's it's sad. But like the other the other side of that is like as a result there's like so many

opportunities. It's crazy. There's like go to just just please [ __ ] leave New York and like just like go go go anywhere. Just leave Southern California and leave New York and go anywhere and write and find a story. You cannot you can also find them in New York and LA actually, but like just go somewhere where there isn't already 10,000 reporters and media people and like you will find a niche and you will be able to create and deliver that value that were we're talking about cuz no there's no competition. Um so like the opportunities for like anyone with even the slightest amount of curiosity which

by the way curiosity is like the key to happiness. I don't know if like maybe you'll figure that out at some some point if you haven't yet, but like getting outside yourself and like exploring the world and other people is actually the key to a more fulfilling life. That's a great career and you can do it [ __ ] anywhere. Just go do it. My curiosity is completely satisfied by uh YouTube autoplay though. Like I never see where I'm curious. I I just feel curious and then I get the thing and then I Yeah. What's the problem? I don't have to go anywhere.

That's the point I was going to make. Like I know with a lot of the Gen Z's that I mentor, some of it it's really hard like to even make eye contact because they've grown up with algorithms and having content fed to them. So I would tell like just at Nuropa, these are not journalists like just drive to the next town or something like in eastern Colorado is the polar opposite view of you. Sit in a diner, drink coffee all day and listen to the conversation around you and then you'll have a different perspective. But I know that terrifies the Gen Z's that I that I know and love. Like that is just not something that that they can gro. Now I have not worked with a lot of young journalist Gen Z's.

So maybe I'm wrong there. Well, I'd like to take the the market perspective of both of those things. I think there was the market was driving uh it rewarded journalistic principles as we know them for that generation that like you were taught by and I was lucky to work with some people from that generation and uh and so it makes sense. It's not like they were like more principled and more like morally strong. Uh it was like that was what got you the edge over your competitor is like actually having a better source, having better information and that was rewarded by the market and the consumer b

consumer base valued that they made their decisions based on that. And so it's I don't think it's Gen Z. It's not like the humans involved. it is that now what is rewarded is like the the YouTube uh experience and how well you fit into that or like Tik Tok or whatever. And so we're we're trying to like roast some like generation for just like adapting to the market that they that they are in. If you want to change the behavior, you change the market. And I think that's some of our hope with the attestations is like you can build your own filter. You can only buy uh news stories or however you pay or

express value or subscribe or whatever. Uh you can only get the stuff that has like three sources. uh a market can develop that only rewards like the best stuff. But right now uh it's a purely advertising attention economy and I think a lot of us would love to have the option to choose from a lot of different like investigative pieces, long form stuff. We want to reward people. Like even if I don't read something, if I assess quality, I will definitely like throw some resources that person's way.

Like we would we would be empowered to express ourselves and our desires in so many different ways where right now it's all filtered through uh like surveillance capitalism advertising which is not only like distorted but it's a very like very small tube of preference or very low fidelity preference. uh that is being expressed and I think like there's just nothing but opportunity there and I I don't think we should uh read into any sort of like behavior pattern or personality pattern um into the people who are just kind of like the substrate of this you know consumption

pattern that we have. It's like, of course, that's how it's going to be. And if we change that, people will they'll do it even better than it used to be done, you know, because people just want to uh deliver value. They want to be recognized. And the way we're doing that now is just like we're rewarding all the the worst stuff. Yeah, you're right. I don't I don't I don't actually want to throw shade at uh at Gen Z despite uh citing that uh there's there is survey data about uh the amount of people that want to be an influencer influencers. Uh I do think that is misguided. However, it is actually a pet peeve of mine. The uh the kind of like generational shade throwing

drives me a little nuts. I I participate sometimes for fun. Uh, I'm really not a not a fan of the the Hey Boomer thing or of the like throwing shade at at Gen Z and um uh sword too hard. Like it is misguided. It is terrible. Like it it shouldn't be this way, but it's not the individual person's Yeah. Right. Or desire, right? And a point I was going to make is like there is there is a lot to actually learn from younger journalists about um you know cuz you know the the medium is the message and the medium is changing and the medium typically is changed by the the younger generation.

the the like combination of like the shorter content and then the longer form content like that's the reality and like you we can't really say like oh they're doing it wrong because that's not how it's always been done like no they're how it's done now that's correct because that's how it's done now. Uh and you just can't really uh you can't really fight that. Um but like I I get actually uh I'm not portraying my actual feelings very well. I I I also get pretty mad about a lot of the the the anti-jerontocracy stuff I also think is really dangerous and and and and bad and like uh when I hear people talking about

uh an upper limit for running for office I actually think that's a terrible idea but that is another podcast. Yeah. Well, I think what we're talking about too is institutional knowledge. And I feel like, you know, those older generations, whatever container you're talking about, politics, journalism, anything, you need co-generational spaces. And that's what I loved about some of the events that have been in recently, and we talked about this a lot at Nuropa as well when I was there, is that if you're in a container that has co-generation and you're learning what let's say GEL, that was a good one in Boulder. You've got I think Gen X is probably the oldest representation there. You've got Gen X in the room, you've got Gen Z in the room, you've got the middle, and then you can have cross collaboration conversations because you're in person. So like a Gen Z could

be like, "Oh, hey, this is what I think about this. I think you got this wrong." And then you can be like, "Well, here's why I did XYZ based on my lived experience. How can we shoot down the middle so that that younger generation can take that wisdom, not make the same fuckups that we made, and then make something more beautiful that connects on their level because their generation does communicate differently." recently shared that thing in our our group chat about uh I think it was a millennial linguistic that did a talk at a high school and yeah it was good converted a language to Jed alpha and it was hilarious and then I was mortified because I use some of that language because it is in crypto some of that is just part of our conver our our language I'm like oh my god I must look like a

complete idiot at my age to be saying [ __ ] like that and Eric got a young one in the house you're just accelerating how uh the how soon that language will see its demise from from use. Oh my god. Well, I mean too much friendly fire in all directions. I mean, the more we can understand we're all, you know, being forced into this octagon and then the people who put us in there are like shouting things that we should fight over and like that guy called you an [ __ ] Like go get him. like every time we're like waiting and then we go over and start something like we got to get out of that that habit. But I um I

think one macro uh metaphor that came to me, you know, why all this is is happening is uh do you all know Cyclops from the X-Men? He has like the laser laser eyes or whatever. So every time he opens his eyes, whatever, it just like blasts out and destroys whatever he looks at. And I feel like that is like a metaphor for our like collective attention that was like turned on with the internet. And we didn't know necessarily on a collective level that like whatever we like turned our attention on just like manifested and destroyed everything in its path, you know. But eventually he gets the

glasses, he gets some control over it or whatever. And we need to figure out how to collectively focus our attention on things that we care about and the things that we actually like at a deep level want to have happen. Not just like because we want to be entertained for 5 seconds. Even if it like blows up a small city and like some other part of the country that we don't care about, but like it's a pretty funny name. So like send me more of that please. Right. Like we're not anytime you like disconnect somebody from like how things are made, they're just going to like make shitty decisions over like the production of that thing. So I would like to encourage like everyone on the individual level to just not pay

attention to what you don't like about what's happening, but pay attention to what you do like because that is the stuff that ends up sticking around and manifesting. And that's like a basic just, you know, a lot of the stuff we're talking about can't be fixed on the individual level. But I think if we choose where we put our attention and we make those choices, we just let the let the trivial [ __ ] go and it will go away, right? If we focus on meaningful stuff, then meaningful stuff will stick around and it will be uh rewarded. And that's something that like we can all do. And we we don't even feel good paying

attention to the shitty stuff either. So it's like we need some sort of virtuous cycle instead of this like corrosion cycle that we're in where just like, oh, I feel worse. Let me just like see something that makes me feel even worse. Like it's it's bad. But I think like we can turn it around if we understand that it is our attention. We do have a responsibility. Attention has power even on the individual level. And if you think of it as like whatever you pay attention to is what is manifested. Then just try that experiment for the day like okay whatever I pay attention to there's going to be more of it. And if

you actually feel that you would make different choices throughout the day and I think that's like what the internet is doing is like I mean that's if you're upset with the political situation that is what we paid attention to and we it just is going to the extreme just and I know it's hard for journalists in particular. They're like we got to surface all of the bad [ __ ] right? It needs to be the context of what we want to see. There's this like quote that I heard that's sticking with me is like you end you end war not by hating war but by loving peace. It's like you're in some ways contributing to that

that energy of war and uh dysfunction and polarity and separation. If that's like what you hate. It feels like you're fixing it by hating it and you're paying attention to all the people who are like dissing on people, dunking on people, and like you got your side and you're just going to take down this other side or whatever. But you can see at its core that it's really just going to perpetuate. And uh I think that's what technology is interesting uh or what it does that people really are drawn to is it's like envisioning what how you want things to be like okay I can build something I can build the

world that I want to be and you're you're focused on the positive rather than what you don't like. You're like no I want this and you're not thinking about I don't want that. Right. No that was a great point. I feel like Oh, it's time to start wrapping it up. Although, I could just stay here and talk about journalism all day, but we do have lives to go live. And I feel like Keith just kind of gave us the closer right there. Eric, do you want to take us anywhere else before we say goodbye and move on for the day? I I guess to build on what uh Keith was saying because I'm kind of listening to you and uh thinking yes, but the point of journalism is to like also shine a light on the shitty

stuff. But I think like uh the you know the thing to remember is like as a journalist you do get to to choose what angle you you shine that light on the shitty stuff from and to maybe like always try to remember the uh human side of it and like the the human impact of it. what you're covering versus just the uh yeah the what's going to go viral. Um what's gonna what's going to send it send it trending and uh just to like I was saying earlier just to maybe follow to follow to follow the curiosity of the

thing. Um, and that and that will typically lead you to the the more positive place, I think, versus just uh you know, following the crowd, following the trend. Um, following what's already hot, you know, just uh I think the a journalist uh think it was Amy Goodman said, you know, you go you go to where the silences are. That's a great one. Yeah, the silences. I feel like one of the things about a journalist sometimes I compare it to technologists that I work with. When they see a bug in a in code, they have to keep going until they find hackers as well. They have to keep going until they find the anomaly that triggered that cycle in their brain

that saw the problem and had to go through to find the solution. And and journalists have that same wiring of the brain. Like we see an anomaly in human behavior and then we have to figure out what is that anomaly? is causing that? What is causing this person in this situation to lash out this way or to act this way? And usually as we begin to unwind the story and the external factors that are pressuring and causing this reaction, we see the entire system has flaws in it or kinks in the system. Whatever societal system that this person or this entity has relied upon are are fracturing. And we're seeing more of that now. And I really struggle with not seeing it,

trying to look away and just staying in the positive. It's one of the reasons I went study yoga at Nuropa the way that I did because I did not I had a skill set to understand the world through journalism. I did not have a skill set to process the world. And I feel like that is the next part is like how can our nervous system consume all of this information that's going on in the world around us assimulate it compost it in a way that allows us to make something positive to tell a positive story to look at that situation that has all of that externality is causing this really horrible situation and extract something good or at least something neutral or something that someone can connect with that isn't in that war zone or that isn't in that extreme poverty situation.

How can we find those bridges or even use those Trojan horses that we're really good at to bring those situations to light in a world that they are now amplified everywhere? Or do we bring them to light? I mean, everybody knows things are going on. Wars are happening and there's not much we can do about it in this situation here. So, what do we do to counterbalance the collective? Is it meditation? Is it some sacred wisdom? Or is it telling a story a different way? or is it just going down to your local farmers market and telling a good human story to counterbalance the other realities that we're in? So, I don't have the answer that. Well, I would I wouldn't recommend feeling the pressure to turn every like one of the many

negatives into a positive, but I think they're taking an extra step to then think of not like, wow, how how crappy does this world have to be for this to happen? And then bring in the narrative of like all the other crappy stuff that you know is happening and how it all just like is confirming each other in itself and it's just validating this like very dark perception of the world where before you do that if you see the the crappy thing and then try and picture what would the world have to be like for that not to happen. And that's kind of like the

technology mindset is like let's not at all minimize this and say that it is let's not just be compulsively silver lining like let's but then let's just take an extra step and envision a better world where this like doesn't happen and try and get inspiration from that because it is a choice that I think we're all capable of of making it once we see it as like we can either like go back and we can like feel the pull down into like all the other stuff and like just confirm our worst our worst feelings about that event of which there are many. Um, and that's like what has

led us here. And I would just suggest the counterintuitive and perhaps the how we get out of this is taking the step up and being like, okay, let's not minimize. let's not change that initial reaction that is like valid but how we respond to it is um towards the solution and and not necessarily even like how do we solve this but like what what would have to happen in the world for that not to be the case or for that to have been avoided and then we're we're putting our attention on uh on a more positive thing like if everybody does that then that will that

circumstance will uh disappear from from the world if we're all picturing that. Yeah. So I I see my life's work and I think I'm see if this drives what you're saying Keith. So I see my life's work as a writer. So journalism and then other kinds of writing. But my life's work as a writer primarily focused on technology is writing about the story of technology which is an iterative process of using tools to adjust the balance of the dark side of human nature to compensate for the dark side of human nature and to push the scales toward the the better

side of our our nature. and using technology technology iteratively like we we we did it with the the internet. The internet is the best like invention of of our lifetimes but like we we didn't get the balance right. I think it was it was a net improvement, but like some things got [ __ ] up along the way. And so now we're in the iterative cycle where we're correcting for what went wrong with the internet, with blockchain and AI and other things. And um I think we're already correcting for mistakes with blockchain. We will very soon be correcting for mistakes with AI. And so it's this iterative process that that

never stops, but you're like like MLK said, you're like it's always kind of bending towards justice and towards adjusting for and overindexing on the better side of of human nature. That's my theory. Oh, that's that's interesting. Like one thing that popped up when you said Keith, what you were just saying is bypassing. And we can't bypass what we're witnessing because then it just comes up in some other place in in a really weird way. And along the lines of what you just said, Eric, like my work started when I when I was doing photojournalism, it was after a period of like grief and sorrow that in my personal life. And then what I found

which was really weird about seven or eight years later is that I could sit with someone else's sorrow and just be present with it and document it. And I was like, "Oh, that's a [ __ ] weird skill set." And also it allowed me to craft my journalism career to witness in in situations that were extremely difficult. Like there are pictures I didn't take because I knew it would shatter that person's life if I clicked the shutter. Like there's just no way I could be that person. And so like that to me taking those skills and then using them now because I don't really photograph anymore. So, what do I do when that rage surfaces so I don't bypass it and then have to deal with it later or just ignore it and pretend that

everything's great, but then also not get consumed by it and still be able to function in the world. And it's through rage writing. I'll just get pissed and like write some [ __ ] and half of it doesn't end up on the internet, but sometimes it ends up on my Twitter at midnight. So, that's that's fun to watch. But that's another way to not bypass because bypassing is is really really dangerous and as journalists, we're just not wired to do it. And it is entertaining to watch at midnight on your Twitter feed. Yeah, that's where you're going to find your hundred true fans there for sure. Like you got to find a way grab them. Thank you everybody for joining us. If you're still with us, this is what we do. We turn on the mic and just talk at your own. Um so thank you all for

letting us um you know host the mic for this. And Keith and Eric, thank you all for Thank you all for this wild journey. We didn't even get into journal origin story. All right, we're gonna have to put that in our because we didn't need to talk about how this whole thing started, but how amazing it is to work with y'all on these wild ass issues in this world. Yeah, it's been awesome. Thanks Crystal for Thanks for [Music]