MENGENAI EPISOD INI
Blake Boles joins us to talk about his recent editorial, "I Don't Want a Nuclear Family, I Want a Galactic Commune - on the pursuit of quality conversation", which is about the decline of quality conversation and his resistance to the nuclear family model.
We discuss the difference between daily logistics and real dialogue, why travel often brings deeper connections, and how temporary communities can support richer conversations. Blake shares ideas like hosting travelers, playing structured games like Hot Seat, and treating every interaction as a chance to learn something new.
Listen to our first episode together with Blake Boles | Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids To School? : https://www.theconrad.family/selfdirected48
🗓️ Recorded August 26th, 2025. 📍 Åmarken, Lille Skendsved, Denmark
🔗 Relevant links
- Website: https://www.blakeboles.com/
- Blake on Substack: https://letters.blakeboles.com/
- Podcast: https://www.blakeboles.com/dbr/
- Website: https://www.unschooladventures.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blaketotheboles/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unschooladventures/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unschool.adventures
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blake.boles
Books by Blake Boles
- Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?: https://amzn.to/3RCDi20
- The Art of Self-Directed Learning: https://amzn.to/3GEXpXe
- Better Than College: How to Build a Successful Life Without a Four-Year Degree: https://amzn.to/3RCiwzx
- College Without High School: A Teenager’s Guide to Skipping High School and Going to College: https://amzn.to/3RkZlc2
PODCAST INFO
Podcast website: http://theconrad.family/podcast
YouTube Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/theconradfamily365
Apple Podcasts: https://www.theconrad.family/apple
Spotify: https://theconrad.family/spotify
RSS: https://theconrad.family/rss
SUPPORT & CONNECT
Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Theconradfamily
Share a review: https://www.theconrad.family/review-our-podcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theconrad.family
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theconradfamily
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theconradfamily
DALAM EPISOD INI
Tunjukkan NOTA 🔗
TRANSKRIP 🔗
00:00:10.379 --> 00:00:14.431
Today we're together with Blake Bowles and it's the second time we're together.
00:00:14.431 --> 00:00:16.605
So first of all, welcome, blake.
00:00:16.605 --> 00:00:17.710
It's good to see you again.
00:00:17.710 --> 00:00:19.062
It's great to be back.
00:00:19.062 --> 00:00:19.826
I'm excited.
00:00:19.826 --> 00:00:23.086
The first time we talked a lot about your book.
00:00:23.086 --> 00:00:25.753
Why Are you Still Sending your Kids to School?
00:00:25.753 --> 00:00:29.710
And if people haven't heard that episode they should go check it out.
00:00:29.710 --> 00:00:44.047
But the reason we are here today is because you are writing a sub stack and the latest newsletter from it made me be like, oh, I really want to connect with Blake again and have a conversation about this.
00:00:44.047 --> 00:00:49.212
So let me read aloud the title and the subtitle of it.
00:00:49.212 --> 00:00:53.020
It goes I don't want a nuclear family.
00:00:53.020 --> 00:00:58.593
I want a galactic commune on the pursuit of quality conversation.
00:00:58.593 --> 00:01:00.907
I just loved it.
00:01:00.907 --> 00:01:10.734
So for the people who haven't read it, can you share the thoughts and the pursuit of conversations?
00:01:12.040 --> 00:01:32.132
It starts with me being in a restaurant, an expensive Swiss restaurant, with a friend who I'm hiking with in the Alps and this was just a week and a half ago and we are surrounded by couples, mostly men and women, who are sitting there and not really talking to each other, and the food on the menu is very expensive to my American taste.
00:01:33.081 --> 00:01:47.260
And I sort of look around and I realized that my friend and I are the only ones having what I would consider to be like a dynamic conversation, and everyone else is just like kind of staring over the shoulder of the person in front of them or maybe look at their phones.
00:01:47.260 --> 00:02:20.631
And this is a scene that I've witnessed throughout my life, but it's one that was especially present in my childhood, and I looked at this and I was like I don't want to become that, and so getting to see this again at this later moment in life I'm 42 now it inspired me to write this piece about what makes me hesitant to enter into standard long-term relationships and even to have a family, and that is the fear of the death of interesting conversation.
00:02:20.631 --> 00:02:23.205
I'll stop there.
00:02:23.205 --> 00:02:27.129
So we just celebrated our anniversary yesterday.
00:02:27.240 --> 00:02:29.699
We have a standard nuclear family.
00:02:29.699 --> 00:02:37.193
We're heteronormative, same nationality, same age, even.
00:02:37.413 --> 00:02:37.955
Grew up.
00:02:38.080 --> 00:02:39.286
Grew up in the same city.
00:02:39.286 --> 00:02:44.271
We have double the amount of children most people have.
00:02:44.271 --> 00:02:50.848
But we have children with each other, Not so much with anyone else except for one.
00:02:50.848 --> 00:02:51.610
No, definitely.
00:02:51.610 --> 00:02:53.840
Okay, I can't take it any further.
00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:55.645
A little bit standardized.
00:02:55.645 --> 00:03:00.564
We are said Master Yoda, we still talk.
00:03:02.319 --> 00:03:06.972
Yes, but I understand the fear and the rarity of it.
00:03:06.972 --> 00:03:20.647
I've been on restaurants seeing parents giving their children an iPad and then each of them looking on their phone at the same time and we as full-time travelers.
00:03:20.647 --> 00:03:46.569
That's one of the things I really, really love is just all the conversations, and sometimes I actually want to take my wife for a drive in our car, because often we have some of the best talks after we have co-lived with people or been a place and we have a two or three hours entrapped in the same room, yeah, yeah, and then we just it's because we take the time to talk when we drive.
00:03:46.979 --> 00:03:50.948
When we don't drive, we have so much to do so we don't really take the time to talk.
00:03:50.948 --> 00:03:57.782
It's a lot of passing of information and practical questions like can you do that meeting or can?
00:03:57.802 --> 00:03:59.247
you respond to that thing?
00:03:59.247 --> 00:04:01.051
Or what do you think about that child?
00:04:01.051 --> 00:04:02.182
Or should we?
00:04:02.182 --> 00:04:04.849
What are we getting grandma for her birthday?
00:04:04.849 --> 00:04:15.653
Kind of just logistics and decisions that we need to do together as a couple, which is another downside of being a couple that you lose some sort of control.
00:04:15.653 --> 00:04:21.451
You have to negotiate and align all the time.
00:04:21.451 --> 00:04:26.625
But anyways, when we do sit in a car there's not much else to do, so we chat.
00:04:27.259 --> 00:04:34.179
Anyone who reads the article will see that it's definitely not an attack on standard long-term partnership.
00:04:34.179 --> 00:04:41.827
It's more me talking about my background and hangups and why I also choose to have a traveling lifestyle.
00:04:41.827 --> 00:04:55.809
While I really enjoy participating in these temporary intense communities, like the traveling group programs I do with teenagers working at summer camps, going to visit friends for a period of two to four days, it's just the quality.
00:04:55.809 --> 00:04:56.543
And these dance weekends that I'm going to in friends for a period of, you know, two to four days, it's just the quality.
00:04:56.543 --> 00:05:14.790
And these dance weekends that I'm going to in Europe, which I'm highly addicted to, it's just the quality of the conversation and the volume that I can learn from someone in these conversations and knowing that the window of opportunity is brief, really is this motivating set of circumstances.
00:05:14.790 --> 00:05:29.149
And when I imagine a much longer term, more predictable, much more familiar set of interactions and a much smaller set of interactions, a less diverse set of interactions, that's what I become wary of.
00:05:29.751 --> 00:05:29.851
And.
00:05:29.971 --> 00:05:31.341
I've been in long-term relationships too.
00:05:31.341 --> 00:05:32.985
I'm part of a family.
00:05:32.985 --> 00:05:40.170
I've tasted the benefits of long-term friendship, romantic partnership and siblings and parents.
00:05:40.170 --> 00:05:51.726
I know that's real, but it's always just felt a bit stifling to me and that's the sentiment I was trying to get across in the article and ultimately say we need all sorts of people.
00:05:51.726 --> 00:05:55.880
We need the people who are the bricks the family units and then we need the mortar.
00:05:55.880 --> 00:05:57.728
We need, like the people who are the bricks the sort of the family units and then we need the mortar.
00:05:57.728 --> 00:06:06.308
We need the people who like drift in between and then bring people together from disparate groups, and I really consider myself a mortar person.
00:06:08.140 --> 00:06:11.709
I think we also you touched upon we need the sense of urgency.
00:06:12.512 --> 00:06:12.671
Yeah.
00:06:13.320 --> 00:06:14.123
It's one of the great.
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We are travelers as well and it's one of the greatest benefits of being a traveler.
00:06:18.459 --> 00:06:24.953
It can be really annoying and we can sometimes feel we're busy all the time.
00:06:24.953 --> 00:06:26.887
We wake up with this busy feel.
00:06:26.887 --> 00:06:33.924
But not being busy is just to fool yourself to think you have an infinite amount of time, because no one has that.
00:06:33.924 --> 00:06:35.404
You never know, right?
00:06:35.404 --> 00:06:47.064
I mean, yeah, our son-in-law just arrived yesterday with a sad face because one of his best friend's mother is has a terminal disease now and she's my age.
00:06:47.064 --> 00:06:50.972
You know, you never know and we need to know that we never know.
00:06:50.972 --> 00:07:03.768
And traveling just makes it so easy because if I want to see that art museum or have that conversation with that person, well that's going to be when I'm in the city, and that's now because I'm leaving on Friday, and we know that because we're travelers.
00:07:03.768 --> 00:07:09.166
So yeah, so I think the urgency is a big part of it as well.
00:07:09.760 --> 00:07:14.432
Yeah, where do you think the conversation got lost?
00:07:14.432 --> 00:07:30.771
I don't think it's necessarily only in everyday life, or if you end up being in everyday job, the same thing you talk about what's on the television, et cetera, et cetera.
00:07:30.771 --> 00:07:35.688
But don't we have an interest for each other any longer?
00:07:35.688 --> 00:07:36.290
I think it's.
00:07:36.290 --> 00:07:37.112
Maybe there were.
00:07:37.112 --> 00:07:52.286
When I look at our teenagers, there's a lot of dialogue in a couple of years where it's a lot of talking, talking, talking, and then it's almost like when people grow older, then some of these deep conversations disappear.
00:07:53.069 --> 00:08:17.627
I see myself as doing battle against that constant erosion of deeper, more dynamic, more meaningful conversations and what seems to be the gradual sinking into as you described earlier, this mode of parenting where you're sort of like managing a small business together and that small business is your family and it's a lot of logistics, who's going to take whom where, how much does this cost, et cetera.
00:08:17.627 --> 00:08:22.040
And listen, somebody's got to make more kids right.
00:08:22.040 --> 00:08:31.485
This is something that needs to happen, and so I don't see what I'm advocating for as inherently any better or more noble or anything like that.
00:08:31.485 --> 00:08:33.890
It's that spirit of youth.
00:08:33.890 --> 00:08:37.241
It's that spirit of adolescence and young adulthood.
00:08:37.241 --> 00:08:44.002
For me, I really bloomed when I went to college and got exposed to all these different minds.
00:08:44.002 --> 00:08:54.659
It was very different from the more conservative, suburban, middle-class agricultural area in California where I grew up, and I think that's where I started to get hooked.
00:08:54.659 --> 00:09:12.403
And then going to summer camp and getting to get surrounded by all these people who, like, really want to learn from each other, and they know that the summer is ending in just a few weeks, that was another part of it, and so somebody needs to carry this torch right Of like, let's have provocative conversations with each other.
00:09:12.905 --> 00:09:38.011
When I work with groups of teenagers, one of the favorite games that they like to play is called Hot Seat, which is just a game that creates a format where we can ask each other deeper, more interesting, more provocative questions in this structured, facilitated way, and somebody volunteers to get up on the hot seat for three minutes and then everyone else can ask them any question they want, and the person on the hot seat has to do their best to respond to it.
00:09:38.072 --> 00:09:44.302
We can't force them to answer it, of course, but there's an equal responsibility between being open and honest and vulnerable.
00:09:44.302 --> 00:10:13.884
If you're on the hot seat, and then the people asking the questions, they need to ask questions that are more interesting and deeper than ones that they would feel comfortable asking in a normal day-to-day situation, which is why I think this is an activity that needs to be pretty heavily facilitated, because if someone starts asking what's your favorite color, it just sort of drifts into this kind of boring realm, and so if I'm running a game of hot seat, I will be like nope next, deeper, more provocative, let's go.
00:10:13.884 --> 00:10:15.711
What's going to happen to you after you die?
00:10:16.822 --> 00:10:51.693
there's a question indeed, I have a friend called ronnie, who have created something called the human library, and one of the things I find fascinating about that is is basically you can rent or borrow a person instead of a book, and the person you borrow is often a stereotype it can be an obese person, it can be one of a special nationality or fate, etc.
00:10:51.693 --> 00:10:54.749
It can be an overly tattooed person.
00:10:55.919 --> 00:10:58.783
Now you say overly yes.
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I would say overly, and that is my judgment.
00:11:01.850 --> 00:11:03.520
Exactly, exactly.
00:11:04.122 --> 00:11:17.476
But one of the interesting things that facilitates is that people can sit and ask about their fears of this stereotype or a lot of of these questions and it came down to.
00:11:17.476 --> 00:11:35.048
The idea originated once when he in his early youth, facilitated a talk between a punk, young kind of criminal not too much criminal officially and a policeman and they sat and chatted and they had a wonderful conversation and they lived as friends.
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Because when you get deep down into a conversation and get to know a person, you actually end up liking them, and what we often do not like with other people is all the things we construct in our minds around them.
00:11:49.815 --> 00:11:51.182
So I like his format for it.
00:11:51.182 --> 00:11:53.004
I like his format for it and I try to.
00:11:53.004 --> 00:12:18.381
When we are in dialogue with people or in meetings sitting with people, then I try to ask some of the difficult questions about their siblings, their parents, their relationships, because one of the reasons is I would get bored just talking about nothing and the other is that it's often there there is something deeper, something we can grow from.
00:12:19.524 --> 00:12:21.568
Yeah, everyone has a rich interior life.
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It's just sort of our job to scoop it out of each other, to draw it out, and I understand that.
00:12:28.333 --> 00:12:36.153
Spending a lot of time around one person or a small group of people, that's a great way to discover the rich interior life of other people.
00:12:36.153 --> 00:12:38.963
For me, I think I just need more.
00:12:38.963 --> 00:12:46.448
I think quantity might be greater than excuse me yeah, quantity might be greater than quality in this regard, or I just want both.
00:12:46.448 --> 00:12:54.976
This is why I like the idea of having kids, but I don't like the idea of the insulated nuclear family.
00:12:54.976 --> 00:12:57.802
I want there to really be this village.
00:12:57.802 --> 00:13:00.769
I really want there to be people coming and going.
00:13:01.250 --> 00:13:05.324
I just hosted a cyclist who's going across Europe for three months.
00:13:05.324 --> 00:13:08.471
He's an American, but he's from the South.
00:13:08.471 --> 00:13:20.249
He was a Marine, he owned a CrossFit gym for a while and now he's cycling from Ljubljana to Bilbao and he had a pretty interesting story, quite different from mine.
00:13:20.249 --> 00:13:21.552
I love that.
00:13:21.552 --> 00:13:27.132
He was here for two nights and this was just my ability to just like dip into a whole different world.
00:13:27.132 --> 00:13:28.925
I have long-term friends.
00:13:28.925 --> 00:13:30.559
We have long histories together.
00:13:30.559 --> 00:13:41.653
That's very meaningful to me, but without this like full, full spectrum of new people coming in and revisiting conversations with old people, I fear for the quality of my mental experience.
00:13:42.519 --> 00:13:58.304
Well, I would fear for it as well, and I think I just wanted to point that a logical fallacy, but maybe also a point of interesting exploration for this conversation, which is, you know, the limitations of a nuclear family isolation.
00:13:58.304 --> 00:14:04.824
I think you used the word isolated nuclear family, and I mean the nuclear family is not necessarily isolated.
00:14:07.411 --> 00:14:15.110
Anything is possible, I would say infrastructure within countries can push a family towards isolation or towards more communalism.
00:14:24.439 --> 00:14:25.842
So that's what I'm saying.
00:14:25.842 --> 00:14:30.230
Maybe we could explore what drives people to look over the shoulder of their partner while sitting wherever at a restaurant.
00:14:30.230 --> 00:14:52.168
We've just been driving from the Lake District in England back to Copenhagen, so this was a four-day road trip, and so I sit and I knit and I chat with my husband and I look into all the other cars and I see a lot of passengers on the shotgun seat with their phone, and so I suppose they're not having a meaningful conversation with the driver.
00:14:52.168 --> 00:14:53.793
It's the same thing.
00:14:53.793 --> 00:14:55.824
It's not about the expensive restaurant.
00:14:55.824 --> 00:15:05.047
That just somehow exaggerates it, because do we expect people to have a meaningful conversation because they're eating something that costs more money?
00:15:05.047 --> 00:15:11.536
The problem perseveres through all kinds of situations where you could have had a meaningful conversation.
00:15:11.536 --> 00:15:19.270
You flip out the phone or you look over someone's shoulder or you talk about the weather or something infinitely not interesting.
00:15:19.270 --> 00:15:20.472
So what happens?
00:15:20.953 --> 00:15:29.343
I think I have an answer for that because I think I'm the one of us three who have lived the most normal life going to an office for 20 years.
00:15:30.064 --> 00:16:22.592
Things become a routine and things become every day, and sometimes when I talk with people about why did we start this podcast, one of the reasons was that I went from being this guy who went to work and had my work life and came home and had home life and then we started our full-time traveling and after some time on that, it was not that there was nothing new in our life, because there was a lot of new stuff, but I couldn't ask Cecilia how her day was because I had been there, I had seen it and I like this outside inspiration that you get when you travel and I really love having this one weekly conversation with someone and hearing their external perspective on a subject, which make us then walk and talk and ponder about it.
00:16:22.592 --> 00:17:21.839
But maybe it is the everyday circle of routine and what I think that you also hit the nail on the head, cecilia, is that you said it is the we make a self-belief that life is infinite, that we have to dialogue at a later point.
00:17:21.839 --> 00:17:25.780
So scarcity is important for dialogue.
00:17:27.192 --> 00:17:44.621
Yeah, I think the end date, the expiration date, is incredibly powerful because we all have expiration dates, right, and you're just either going to recognize that and live like there's an expiration date or you're going to create this delusion that it goes on and on.
00:17:44.621 --> 00:17:45.815
There's always another chance.
00:17:45.815 --> 00:17:57.114
I'll just sort of scroll on my phone because there's probably some funny stuff to see there, instead of try to have what could possibly be an awkward conversation with someone or a difficult conversation with someone in front of me.
00:17:57.755 --> 00:18:06.393
Or something else that you're passionate about, and read that very, very complicated book you always wanted to read or learn to play that instrument.
00:18:06.393 --> 00:18:09.009
It doesn't have to, as such, be, that's it?
00:18:12.304 --> 00:18:18.115
No, but I'm trying to challenge ourselves here by asking what is a good conversation?
00:18:18.115 --> 00:18:24.650
What do we get out of a good conversation, versus sitting next to each other and watching Netflix?
00:18:24.790 --> 00:18:30.768
Well, a good conversation to begin with is a conversation, not a not conversation.
00:18:31.582 --> 00:18:34.625
I think we got to define it Like talking about the weather.
00:18:34.625 --> 00:18:35.489
Is that a conversation?
00:18:36.080 --> 00:18:37.846
Can be, can be.
00:18:37.846 --> 00:18:46.230
I think talking about the weather is being frowned upon a lot, because talking about the weather is a very good place to start.
00:18:46.230 --> 00:19:00.229
Often we rarely disagree about the weather, and then if you make a few comments about the weather with someone, you're waiting for the bus or waiting in line at the airport and you're going to be there for 25 minutes.
00:19:00.229 --> 00:19:04.886
If you comment on the weather and the person responds, then you have a conversation.
00:19:05.279 --> 00:19:06.987
This is a person who wants to talk to me.
00:19:06.987 --> 00:19:08.120
You're talking about an opener with a stranger.
00:19:09.040 --> 00:19:10.747
Then you can go where are you going?
00:19:10.747 --> 00:19:20.576
Within a few minutes you can have a meaningful conversation, or they just need to unload, which apparently was my job that day, to listen to that story, which is fine.
00:19:20.576 --> 00:19:27.971
I don't want to talk about the weather all day long, and I'm very rarely talking about the weather with my best friends, but we just did yesterday.
00:19:27.971 --> 00:19:30.042
We did talk about the weather with our best friends.
00:19:30.042 --> 00:19:33.230
We came here, just come to Denmark and we're cold.
00:19:33.230 --> 00:19:35.903
Why am I putting on woolen clothes in August?
00:19:35.903 --> 00:19:37.047
That doesn't make any sense.
00:19:37.047 --> 00:19:38.872
So we talked a little bit about the weather.
00:19:38.872 --> 00:19:39.581
It's not too bad.
00:19:39.581 --> 00:19:46.133
It's a way to touch, it's a way to connect, it's a way to feel each other's vibe.
00:19:46.133 --> 00:19:48.663
And how much do you want to chat right now?
00:19:48.663 --> 00:19:52.100
I don't want to talk about it for more than maybe two and a half minutes and I'm done.
00:19:52.902 --> 00:20:20.881
Here's where I feel like I'm a bit weird and an outsider, which is like talking about weather, talking about food, talking about TV shows, talking about cultural icons, like my tolerance for this it's not zero, but it's pretty darn low and to me like a capital C conversation, the kind that I'm advocating for in that article, are ones where I guess you have like a heightened emotional state, Like you feel something.
00:20:20.881 --> 00:20:26.592
You feel like, ooh, this could go someplace, I don't know.
00:20:26.592 --> 00:20:32.088
Maybe a little bit of fear, sadness, maybe excitement, maybe a little bit of anxiety.
00:20:32.088 --> 00:20:35.682
I think that that's what I'm going for here.
00:20:35.701 --> 00:20:36.745
I want to feel something.
00:20:36.745 --> 00:20:43.652
I don't want to have a sense of like okay, we've just entered these rutted tracks and now I kind of know where this is going to go.
00:20:43.652 --> 00:20:50.106
I mean, yes, Jesper, this applies to my feelings about work, my feelings about education.
00:20:50.106 --> 00:20:52.533
This crosses many disciplines.
00:20:52.533 --> 00:21:01.387
You can call it novelty seeking, you can call it ADHD, you can call it something else, but I want this stimulation.
00:21:01.387 --> 00:21:06.983
I want to actually feel it inside of me, and the unpredictability is a very important element for me.
00:21:08.245 --> 00:21:22.775
It made me think about one of the issues I have with a week as a construct and a day as a construct, because part of me liked the circularity of life.
00:21:22.775 --> 00:21:28.141
We live on a planet that spins, we have different seasons, all these things I like.
00:21:28.141 --> 00:21:41.170
And I like that you can live in a mood where you go into winter mode maybe and you have more downtime and you live in a more uptime thing.
00:21:41.170 --> 00:21:47.701
I like the cyclosis of these things, uptime thing.
00:21:47.701 --> 00:21:48.481
I like the cyclosis of these things.
00:21:48.502 --> 00:21:50.526
But at the same time I think that working with weeks is cheating ourselves.
00:21:50.526 --> 00:22:08.692
I know when I have kind of been on a diet or tried to lose weight, for example, some days I can start the morning as the calories I ate yesterday didn't exist and when I went to work every day it was kind of a new week started on Monday.
00:22:08.692 --> 00:22:15.974
That it resets somehow, instead of having this direction that life also has.
00:22:15.974 --> 00:22:35.463
And I find that is a difficult thing with the cyclists we have used in our wording of time and weeks and years, because life is going forward, but yes, there is some cycle movements in it, so I'm in doubt, but part of it.
00:22:35.463 --> 00:22:42.388
What I don't like is cheating myself, the reset of a new day, a new week, a new year, et cetera.
00:22:44.322 --> 00:22:45.346
I appreciate new days.
00:22:45.346 --> 00:22:47.287
That's a nice natural reset for me.
00:22:47.287 --> 00:23:04.546
But weeks like if it's a sunny Monday, like it was yesterday, I am going to go out for a trail run, if it's at all within my power, and if it's a weekend and nothing else is going on or it's kind of crappy weather, I will sit down in front of the laptop and do laptop stuff.
00:23:04.546 --> 00:23:08.983
Yeah, I'm with you on that one.
00:23:09.003 --> 00:23:10.967
I'm not with anyone on the weekday thing.
00:23:10.967 --> 00:23:13.913
It's a running joke that I never know.
00:23:13.913 --> 00:23:16.345
And the funny thing, I never know what weekday it is.
00:23:16.345 --> 00:23:23.507
And the worst part is I think I know and this has been, this is years, and my family members.
00:23:23.507 --> 00:23:25.852
They just laugh if I say something about what we.
00:23:25.852 --> 00:23:39.109
So I'll just say out loud as it's Sunday today, we will have three days until we have to go and people are like it's Thursday, you know, and what even makes you say you think you know what day, but I never.
00:23:39.371 --> 00:23:39.996
It's Tuesday.
00:23:39.996 --> 00:23:42.622
It's Tuesday, I know, because we have science class tonight.
00:23:43.022 --> 00:23:49.168
I actually know that, but I did start mixing it up with tomorrow, where they have bouldering, so it kind of merged with Wednesday.
00:23:49.168 --> 00:24:18.983
I rarely know what day of the week it is, yet if we are discussing that, I do think I know I've read somewhere that in most human societies that grew big enough for a calendar to be needed, there has been some version of the week, as if humans like to organize their times in chunks that are understandable and under the number of 10 days as some sort of rhythm.
00:24:18.983 --> 00:24:32.821
You go through things, people do their weekly shopping, maybe you wash your clothes once a week, and it has some sort of rhythm that like the new day that attaches to the spinning of the planet but the new week.
00:24:32.821 --> 00:24:44.676
There are some routines that come with living a life that somewhat has made sense for humans across cultures throughout the ages.
00:24:44.676 --> 00:24:46.688
So I mean we can be against that.
00:24:46.688 --> 00:24:48.908
We can also just not care too much about it.
00:24:49.602 --> 00:24:51.749
My challenge is that I?
00:24:52.029 --> 00:24:59.989
come to this cheating myself to believe that, oh, I can just start over or that can wait till next week.
00:24:59.989 --> 00:25:03.410
The whole postponing that can be in it.
00:25:03.410 --> 00:25:04.826
That's what I dislike.
00:25:04.826 --> 00:25:07.287
I actually want to ask you guys a question.
00:25:07.588 --> 00:25:26.210
Yes, the second half of the article, the title, is I want to live in a galactic commune, and by that I mean I want to be a member of this big, wide universe where there's little communities that I'm a part of everywhere and I can sort of sail through like a comet.
00:25:26.210 --> 00:25:42.531
And it's a mutual dependence thing because I need other people to be rooted in order to be able to plan and go visit them and hopefully they enjoy me coming and visiting and bringing stories, taking their kids on adventures, whatever it might be.
00:25:42.531 --> 00:25:53.548
And you two are active in creating communities and bringing people together from disparate places and other people like yourselves who are full-time or semi-full-time travelers.
00:25:53.548 --> 00:26:47.058
So I'm kind of curious what you've experienced with bringing together maybe more isolated nuclear units into these temporary communities.
00:26:47.298 --> 00:26:48.079
I've never done that.
00:26:48.079 --> 00:26:50.402
I've never taken whole families and brought them communities.
00:26:50.402 --> 00:26:50.882
I've never done that.
00:26:50.882 --> 00:26:52.964
I've never taken whole families and brought them together.
00:26:52.964 --> 00:26:55.527
I've only taken teenagers and brought them together.
00:26:55.527 --> 00:27:00.665
Does it work and does it seem like it could work in this longer term?
00:27:00.665 --> 00:27:01.694
I use the word commune tongue in cheek.
00:27:01.694 --> 00:27:15.894
I don't actually want to live in a formal commune where you don't have any real agency and everyone's resources are pooled no you're on that one, yeah, but like my resources are not off reps, yeah, yeah.
00:27:15.914 --> 00:27:16.736
Yeah, how has it gone for you?
00:27:16.736 --> 00:27:26.776
And like how, how big or how, how long do you think that sort of temporary bringing together of nuclear families can work or should work?
00:27:28.999 --> 00:27:33.645
So our longest experience is with co-living.
00:27:33.645 --> 00:27:43.757
Where we are now in this office is some of our friends, where we always end up visiting and staying for a long time with them while we visit Denmark.
00:27:43.757 --> 00:27:47.040
This is such a good community.
00:27:47.040 --> 00:27:49.401
It works really really well.
00:27:49.401 --> 00:27:58.834
We love and respect each other and have, over the span of many years, maybe lived together for a whole year if we count all the months, maybe two.
00:27:59.235 --> 00:28:02.863
Maybe longer, yeah, so it works really really well.
00:28:02.863 --> 00:28:11.344
There is definitely something about the scarcity and knowing that it is a limited time.
00:28:11.344 --> 00:28:25.846
One of the things I enjoy most is that the conversations stretched, that you can have a conversation in the morning that continues the next day because you are living together for a piece of time.
00:28:25.846 --> 00:28:29.670
You are living together for a piece of time.
00:28:29.670 --> 00:28:35.135
I also love that you see each other without the facades on, because you cannot.
00:28:35.135 --> 00:28:39.969
If you live together in the same house, in the same proximity for so long time, you cannot keep the facades in the other.
00:28:39.969 --> 00:28:41.313
That is.
00:28:41.690 --> 00:28:43.055
I don't know where I've put mine.
00:28:43.537 --> 00:28:43.618
No.
00:28:44.791 --> 00:28:47.159
Sorry, I don't think they're available.
00:28:47.570 --> 00:28:58.406
No, but often when I talk about this I reflect on that when I lived in Denmark, I actually never stayed together with my parents, for example.
00:28:58.406 --> 00:29:09.844
I only visited them, and at some point we lived so far apart that the birthday visit was shorter than the commute back and forth to it.
00:29:09.844 --> 00:29:16.431
And when you are only visiting, then there's almost like a structure, like a whole set of rules.
00:29:16.431 --> 00:29:22.372
Then we come, then we say hi, then we have a little chat about this, then we sit down and eat, then we go for a walk.
00:29:22.372 --> 00:29:34.357
It's so structured that it makes me having difficulties breathing sometimes when I think about these kind of meetups.
00:29:34.670 --> 00:29:42.385
Then we have attended, through the World School Pop-Up Hubs that our friend Rachel Carlson have created.
00:29:42.385 --> 00:29:44.997
We have attended a lot of her small hubs.
00:29:44.997 --> 00:29:49.230
That is only a week, but it was too little for us and many others.
00:29:49.230 --> 00:29:56.892
So many others started to organizing hey, let's use this week as a focal point, but shouldn't we stay in that city for a whole month?
00:29:56.892 --> 00:30:01.541
And the whole month was the the enjoyment.
00:30:01.541 --> 00:30:12.077
But then we lived in separate apartments but just met up on the street but for us actually it started out with actual co-living at the castle in france two and a half years ago.
00:30:12.759 --> 00:30:15.031
How long every time it was two and a half years, I think.
00:30:15.031 --> 00:30:26.839
So we're creating it now with the world school villages and we we made a better village in june in denmark and we're doing the first actual village in October.
00:30:26.839 --> 00:30:30.885
Now we're up around 30 families coming to the same village in Spain.
00:30:30.885 --> 00:30:33.356
They will not know what hit them.
00:30:33.938 --> 00:30:37.450
No, not the village, a lot of people coming from everywhere.
00:30:37.490 --> 00:30:40.250
I think it's a brilliant idea and really making use of the moments.
00:30:40.310 --> 00:30:46.590
I think it's going to be a lot of fun and we have two more lined up in the spring in Prague and Copenhagen.
00:30:46.811 --> 00:30:48.296
And they look very affordable too.
00:30:48.296 --> 00:30:49.680
That's great, oh they're so cheap.
00:30:50.572 --> 00:31:01.280
I think the balance between how much work we put into them and how much money comes out in the other end is not really compensating for the carrots we need to buy.
00:31:02.630 --> 00:31:09.170
But anyways, we're doing it and we're doing it because we think it's needed in the community ways.
00:31:09.170 --> 00:31:13.077
We're doing it and we're doing it because we think it's needed in the community and, as you said, you kind of need some.
00:31:13.077 --> 00:31:24.583
I want to go back to what you said about needing someone to be rooted, to have places so that you can satellite between these places and come visit.
00:31:24.583 --> 00:31:34.634
If everyone was moving like that, there would be no place for you to come back to, just like if our friends didn't have this big organic farm in Denmark, we wouldn't have this community to come back to.
00:31:34.634 --> 00:31:41.677
And I think there has always been travelers right, there's always been adventurers.
00:31:41.677 --> 00:31:51.516
There's always been stable communities of people doing their thing, living in one place or maybe a few places during their life, and other people traveling.
00:31:51.516 --> 00:32:00.762
And those who travel, they bring something to the shared table of humanity and those who stay in one place bring other things to that table.
00:32:00.762 --> 00:32:05.819
And I don't think that I am any better for traveling than my friend is for being here.
00:32:06.441 --> 00:32:23.221
And I think the bringing the nuclear families together for the months-long stays that we are making for the villages right now we're playing with the months as a concept because we as travelers think that a week is a very short time.
00:32:23.221 --> 00:32:24.873
Especially.
00:32:24.873 --> 00:32:26.618
Well, for the adults.
00:32:26.618 --> 00:32:30.090
A lot of it is for practical reasons, for financial reasons.
00:32:30.090 --> 00:32:31.976
It's a lot to move every week.
00:32:31.976 --> 00:32:37.993
For the teenagers it's a very short time to make a new friend, let alone a girlfriend.
00:32:39.196 --> 00:32:52.281
So we just need more time for all the systems to work, the working and the studying and the working out and the practicalities of everyday life and the relations on all levels.
00:32:52.281 --> 00:32:54.685
They need more time than a week to unfold.
00:32:54.685 --> 00:32:55.874
So we work with a month.
00:32:55.874 --> 00:32:58.656
It might change, it might come up to three months at some point.
00:32:58.656 --> 00:32:59.038
I don't know.
00:32:59.038 --> 00:33:01.018
I think a month at this point is a good.
00:33:01.018 --> 00:33:08.078
We had actually six weeks in the beta village but people came and went in different.
00:33:08.078 --> 00:33:14.968
Actually six weeks in the beta village but people came and went in different somewhere only for two and a half week and some were for five weeks and one family stayed for six weeks.
00:33:14.989 --> 00:33:17.013
So I'm curious about the the time aspect here.
00:33:17.013 --> 00:33:23.212
If you're bringing 30 families together, how long would be too long just for you two?
00:33:23.212 --> 00:33:33.438
Like if you think like, oh, like, if we had everyone commit to stay a year in the same small city in Spain, oh, that would be a bit too much for us.
00:33:33.438 --> 00:33:42.104
We actually want the freedom to go off and to go other places and see other people and not necessarily be bound to this one group.
00:33:42.991 --> 00:33:55.241
I think we have to take that question and tear it a little bit apart, because there is what would I want, and then there is what would work, and what would work is what would work for everyone involved, right?
00:33:55.241 --> 00:33:59.161
So I personally am not ready for a year.
00:34:00.192 --> 00:34:03.021
I could maybe do two months before I need to move.
00:34:03.090 --> 00:34:04.358
I could possibly do three.
00:34:04.358 --> 00:34:06.096
I had to be a good city though.
00:34:07.976 --> 00:34:10.537
When you think about going above two or three months.
00:34:10.537 --> 00:34:12.679
What are the feelings attached to that?
00:34:12.679 --> 00:34:14.349
I want to see where we overlap here.
00:34:14.349 --> 00:34:17.474
It's a fear of just.
00:34:18.713 --> 00:34:21.094
I just feel trapped, Super trapped.
00:34:21.173 --> 00:34:23.240
I get anxiety just talking about it.
00:34:23.451 --> 00:34:28.536
This is also if we're talking about the village concept, then we are the hosts of the village.
00:34:28.536 --> 00:34:56.161
So this means if I put out a village proposition for the community of travelers and say we will be in, let's say, madrid for six months and we will host a village for six months, we will make sure that there is parties and conferences and shared art walks and all the things you know, and let's say, it worked out financially for me as well, so that I could actually keep my head above water.
00:34:56.161 --> 00:35:11.119
I would have to stay because I just sold tickets for people to come and do it, whereas if someone else proposed a four-month stay, I could come and say, okay, we might stay four months, but I might feel I'm suffocating after six weeks and I'll leave.
00:35:11.119 --> 00:35:14.090
So that's two very, very different situations.
00:35:14.289 --> 00:35:17.318
And all of the people who bought a ticket to my event, our event.
00:35:17.318 --> 00:35:20.251
They're free to come and go as they like.
00:35:20.251 --> 00:35:23.713
I mean they can just leave if they only want to stay for three days.
00:35:23.713 --> 00:35:27.556
By all means, for three days, by all means, just do whatever makes sense.
00:35:27.556 --> 00:35:34.742
So it's very dependent on the individual traveler, and we are working with travelers here.
00:35:34.742 --> 00:35:42.187
It's all travelers, so this is also a very narrow subgroup of nuclear families.
00:35:48.250 --> 00:35:53.783
I think the reason we have chosen that price point just to mention it is actually to clearly say where the difference is in responsibility.
00:35:53.783 --> 00:35:59.603
If you go and have a high price point, then people expect you to arrange everything.
00:35:59.603 --> 00:36:11.093
What we are facilitating is the focal point, the meeting, and then we have a weekly walk, the meeting and then we have a weekly walk.
00:36:11.093 --> 00:36:17.773
We do some arrangements and cultural stuff during the weeks, but we keep it as a minimum where we are like hey, it is your family, it is your responsibility.
00:36:17.773 --> 00:36:19.637
It is not a teen retreat.
00:36:19.637 --> 00:36:22.144
There's no food, there's no accommodation.
00:36:22.144 --> 00:36:24.596
It is people meeting together.
00:36:24.596 --> 00:36:43.260
And the interesting part is that we arranged this because we had some really good friends in Tarragona and they are from the States and they had been living there for many years and I'm like, oh, we really love staying together with you for a week and we would love there was more teenagers and we was like so how many teenagers do you want?
00:36:43.260 --> 00:36:45.532
Let's create the first village here.
00:36:45.532 --> 00:37:03.496
And they are really happy because they have lived in the same place but as travelers then they got caught up in covid and all that and really like the city and they have a job, that where they're tied to that place and then you just need to bring people if you need this experience or people coming in.
00:37:04.437 --> 00:37:15.001
As the said, there has always been people traveling and other people staying, and I came to think about the old role of having a bard.
00:37:15.001 --> 00:38:00.635
That was the person traveling between cities and telling tales of the king and the queen and it was kind of a, you can say, musical newsletter of what happened in the country.
00:38:00.635 --> 00:38:07.940
And I think there's kind of this exchange when you open your doors to people, you get something back.
00:38:07.940 --> 00:38:09.744
There's an exchange of energy.
00:38:09.744 --> 00:38:28.937
When we lived in Copenhagen before we could travel full-time, we opened our doors to workaways, which meant that we had young people coming and staying with us and it felt like traveling because we got so much stories in, we got so many people in and it was really wonderful.
00:38:29.170 --> 00:38:36.158
Now we have that job, you can say, or that part of the exchange when we come, what do we bring to the table?
00:38:36.158 --> 00:38:46.825
And we have become more not focused on it, but we have opened our eyes to when we come to people, we bring something to the table.
00:38:46.825 --> 00:38:53.563
It can be that Cecilia do art, a lot of art stuff with the kids.
00:38:53.563 --> 00:38:59.295
We have just spent two wonderful weeks with a family in UK and they were doing arts and crafts every day, and they were doing arts and crafts every day.
00:39:00.456 --> 00:39:23.021
One of the things that is fun that you bring as a traveler is actually the love of the local area of the host family, because they get to want to show where they live and often some of them we talk with them say, oh, I haven't taken this walk for years, I only take it when I walk with someone new here.
00:39:23.021 --> 00:39:35.212
They say oh, I haven't taken this walk for years, I only take it when I walk with someone new here, and so it's a gift to come and visit also because people go on trips together and share stuff together with you and with you.
00:39:35.232 --> 00:39:36.193
Yeah, symbiotic relationship.
00:39:37.053 --> 00:39:37.673
Absolutely.
00:39:37.673 --> 00:39:52.740
And to go back to the question about what works, what doesn't work, about bringing people together, then I like the idea of a village square, a village square where you can meet up.
00:39:52.740 --> 00:40:01.825
We are neither we are also like you're not into living in a communal living where people share everything.
00:40:01.825 --> 00:40:06.347
It would feel, yeah, I'm not ready, maybe one day.
00:40:06.347 --> 00:40:09.748
Right now, when I think about it, it would feel kind of suffocating.
00:40:15.690 --> 00:40:41.242
But I think also one of the problems with communities, and especially trying to create projects like our World School Village as a community, like a temporary community, is we have to take into account that all all these people are different people and all these families are different families that work in different ways and doing it based out on a city somewhere on the planet.
00:40:41.242 --> 00:40:46.147
Everyone can make it work the way they want to.
00:40:46.147 --> 00:40:49.199
Some are coming in vans and just living in their vans.
00:40:49.199 --> 00:40:55.123
Some are coming in vans but parking up at an official campsite.
00:40:55.123 --> 00:40:59.061
Some are volunteering nearby because that's their way of travel.
00:40:59.061 --> 00:41:03.161
Some are renting big houses with pool and the view of the Mediterranean.
00:41:03.161 --> 00:41:28.942
Some will have to keep going with their structured home education from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon every day, because that's how they work, and then they will join every day after three o'clock, which is perfectly fine, and I think if I am to, or anyone was to come up with this, is how we do it exactly all day long summer camp style for families.
00:41:28.942 --> 00:41:38.299
That would just be pushing it too much, that would be asking too many people to adapt too much in order to have community, because this is basically about community.
00:41:38.299 --> 00:41:52.716
It's because we want and need to share our life with other people and being travelers it can be one of the harder parts to find community being travelers with teenagers.
00:41:52.716 --> 00:42:01.259
They have specific needs for their friendship life, how it can unfold, and with whom they can't just play soccer with anyone on the beach.
00:42:01.259 --> 00:42:23.139
They need to unfold more complicated relationships and pick their friends in a different way, and so we cannot just come up with a one-size-fits-all kind of life and install that Like, let's say, we rent a campsite for a month and everyone share their breakfast and we do it like summer camps.
00:42:23.139 --> 00:42:26.713
Lots of people would not function in that.
00:42:27.814 --> 00:42:44.410
So, yeah, bringing people together this way allows for a lot of flexibility, flexibility that we know we personally need, and we have now been living with so many different people and traveling with so many different people in so many different ways and contexts.
00:42:44.410 --> 00:42:48.806
It's very clear that people need their freedom.
00:42:48.806 --> 00:42:59.930
Basically, they need to be able to organize it the way that they want to and that makes want to and that makes them happy.
00:42:59.930 --> 00:43:12.113
So this is the most flexible way we were able to set up some sort of community living that would be moving around, that would, at the same time, be cheap.
00:43:12.113 --> 00:43:21.388
The entry point is cheap and that would allow for all kinds of people to come and join in all kinds of different ways.
00:43:21.388 --> 00:43:23.341
I'm saying the same thing over and over.
00:43:23.341 --> 00:43:24.424
I'll shut up now.
00:43:24.695 --> 00:43:36.624
We talked with Charles Eisenstein on an earlier podcast where Cecilia and I offloaded our dislike of ecovillages, which is basically that we have visited one or two.
00:43:36.624 --> 00:43:38.723
I like the concept Absolutely.
00:43:38.723 --> 00:43:43.547
I've worked for Global Ecovillage Network or together with them on a project called Gaia Education.
00:43:43.547 --> 00:43:45.361
I love so much about it.
00:43:45.361 --> 00:44:02.177
The amount of rules I do not like and many of these communities have super many rules and we talked about that and our take on it is we wouldn't like to live a place where there were small rules than in society and it feels like it sometimes.
00:44:02.418 --> 00:44:03.120
Well, there will be.
00:44:03.120 --> 00:44:08.055
Because the society hosting the community, those rules still apply.
00:44:08.236 --> 00:44:08.436
Yes.
00:44:09.157 --> 00:44:11.279
So in the community you just have more rules.
00:44:11.479 --> 00:44:11.639
Yeah.
00:44:11.739 --> 00:44:12.880
And that's when I bounced.
00:44:13.061 --> 00:44:32.166
Yeah, and Charles said something interesting, which was that people don't necessarily have the same moral codex or they haven't lived together with many people, so therefore they need the rules in the start as a kind of crutch to community as they have never really tried it, community as they have never really tried it.
00:44:32.166 --> 00:44:45.842
And I found that very interesting that we as a society, due to the nuclear families becoming smaller and smaller, actually maybe have difficulties living together.
00:44:45.842 --> 00:44:48.046
What do you do when you travel?
00:44:48.046 --> 00:44:52.440
Do you co-live with people, or do you rent a place, or do you couch surf?
00:44:53.582 --> 00:45:04.017
All of the above, yeah, I definitely like, and I have a very high battery level for going and visiting friends anywhere from a few days up to a week.
00:45:04.377 --> 00:45:14.561
Friends and family and sometimes, if I'm in like bike travel mode, then that will include more staying with strangers, couch surfing or or warm showers.
00:45:14.561 --> 00:45:23.783
Every now and then I really enjoy just paying money to have a temporary private, furnished place to call my own and to potentially host other people.
00:45:23.783 --> 00:45:31.482
It's just that the balance of all that tips way in the direction of.
00:45:31.482 --> 00:45:38.963
I want to be bouncing around in these short-term situations much more than having a long-term situation.
00:45:38.963 --> 00:45:52.559
I just don't have this deep desire that I witness in other people to have the right kind of sofa or to know exactly where everything is in the kitchen and what's in the spice cabinet.
00:45:52.559 --> 00:45:55.727
I appreciate that, but I can adapt to new kitchens very quickly.
00:45:55.727 --> 00:46:09.447
I love showing up at a friend's place and being like I'm going to cook us dinner and then I need like five minutes to orient myself to how the burners work and what the spice situation is and where the rice might be, and then go to the grocery store and whip something up for everyone.
00:46:09.447 --> 00:46:10.669
I love that challenge.
00:46:12.577 --> 00:46:15.527
I will share one of my panic attacks.
00:46:15.527 --> 00:46:25.107
It wasn't a real panic attack, it was more a oh my God, I need to get out of here mode.
00:46:25.107 --> 00:46:40.381
I was in a Bauhaus one of these big chains where you can buy a lot of stuff for the house and the garden and I went down an aisle and I kept going there and first I was thinking, oh, that's a lot of handles going on here.
00:46:40.381 --> 00:46:44.449
It was like door handles and knobs for drawers etc.
00:46:44.449 --> 00:46:50.079
But what made me almost panic was in the start I was thinking that is crazy.
00:46:50.079 --> 00:46:51.541
How many can there be thinking that is crazy?
00:46:51.541 --> 00:46:53.042
How many can there be?
00:46:54.503 --> 00:47:10.599
But in the end, after I have walked like 50, 60 meters down an aisle with more and more of these handles, I actually took myself in thinking oh wait, we actually have different handles on our doors.
00:47:10.599 --> 00:47:11.562
Maybe it would be prettier if we had the same.
00:47:11.562 --> 00:47:13.068
And then I go oh, no, that's when you need to sell the house.
00:47:13.068 --> 00:47:14.151
No, that's when you need to sell the house.
00:47:14.151 --> 00:47:15.616
That's when you need to sell the house.
00:47:15.616 --> 00:47:16.738
That gave me the panic.
00:47:16.738 --> 00:47:21.007
I'm like imagine that it can be important for you.
00:47:21.007 --> 00:47:23.719
So which door handle you have on your doors?
00:47:24.160 --> 00:47:25.604
and you didn't even think it was important.
00:47:25.604 --> 00:47:30.639
Until you went to the store I didn't realize I'm missing out my door handles could be better.
00:47:30.639 --> 00:47:32.642
Yeah, I am not living my best life.
00:47:32.642 --> 00:47:33.543
I'm not.
00:47:33.843 --> 00:47:40.651
I was disrespectful to humanity by having a mix of different door handles.
00:47:40.651 --> 00:47:41.512
It was terrible.
00:47:42.476 --> 00:47:43.541
Can I ask you something?
00:47:43.541 --> 00:47:45.643
I've heard this story obviously a few times.
00:47:45.643 --> 00:47:48.221
Do you remember why you were in that shop?
00:47:49.124 --> 00:47:49.826
Absolutely not.
00:47:51.136 --> 00:48:00.266
Because I'm actually thinking maybe you were there for something that we would, now that we do not have a house and haven't had one for seven years, also think was ridiculous.
00:48:00.266 --> 00:48:07.668
Absolutely, I actually think so it's actually not ridiculous if you're passionate about having fancy doors.
00:48:07.668 --> 00:48:10.835
No, I respect other people's passions.
00:48:10.835 --> 00:48:18.760
It is the jewelry of the door, it's the inside flowers you know what If that makes you happy, but just stop and wonder will it actually make you happy?
00:48:18.780 --> 00:48:20.421
It is the jewelry of the door, it's the inside flowers.
00:48:20.421 --> 00:48:21.322
You know what If that makes you happy.
00:48:21.322 --> 00:48:22.943
But just stop and wonder, will it actually make you happy?
00:48:22.943 --> 00:48:26.866
I have a question for you, blake, which is how do you go about having interesting conversation?
00:48:26.866 --> 00:48:32.771
What do you do in your personal life to get more out of being together with people?
00:48:32.771 --> 00:48:35.453
Do you have some way you open a dialogue?
00:48:35.453 --> 00:48:42.255
Because I actually think for some people it's just a question of not being used to having deeper conversations.
00:48:42.255 --> 00:48:43.501
So where to start?
00:48:44.636 --> 00:48:46.904
I think having a sense of humor is a great place to start.
00:48:46.904 --> 00:48:53.546
I think you can go deep pretty quickly while also not getting too serious or too attached.
00:48:53.546 --> 00:48:56.717
I think that's a lovely tight rope to try to walk.
00:48:56.717 --> 00:49:05.466
One of my favorite questions that I'll ask of people who I've known for years, but also ask of people who I've only recently met, is you know, how's your love life?
00:49:06.368 --> 00:49:27.908
And I think that when you start to unpack it and go beyond just like how's your romantic relationship or how's your dating, but you unpack it to like what are you in love with these days, like what really motivates you, what moves you, I think that that's a great question that can just you can unfold for hours potentially.
00:49:27.908 --> 00:49:49.921
I think it's fun to imagine yourself to be like a cultural anthropologist with anyone who you might be with and just imagine that this other person is some sort of alien and it's your mission to figure out why they're doing what they're doing, what's going on inside their head, even if this is someone you've known for quite a long time.
00:49:49.921 --> 00:49:58.820
And that involves asking sort of like basic or so-called dumb questions, and I'm trying to think of a recent example here.
00:50:00.604 --> 00:50:02.027
Yeah, someone who Go ahead.
00:50:02.027 --> 00:50:02.789
No, no, please go ahead.
00:50:03.816 --> 00:50:22.405
Someone who I've known for 20 years I met through summer camp in California we were just catching up the other day and our conversation often revolves around the question of long-term romantic partnership and whether that can lead whether we want that to lead to something like a family and the ups and downs of that.
00:50:22.806 --> 00:50:27.543
And I feel like he and I had the conversation that we also had 15 years ago.
00:50:27.543 --> 00:50:32.998
But it's with this new wealth of experience and the new situation that he's in that I'm in.
00:50:32.998 --> 00:50:39.436
And so I think, just going back to the basics of like, what gets people like, what do we really care about?
00:50:39.436 --> 00:50:44.028
And often that's like our relationships, whether it's, you know, friendship or romantic.
00:50:44.028 --> 00:50:53.167
It's about, like, the quality of how we spend our day-to-day time, the work that we're doing, whether we think the work is actually meaningful, whether we're sabotaging ourselves.
00:50:53.167 --> 00:51:09.681
I think everything that goes under the umbrella of mental health, without talking about it in a way that's, you know, like one person actively being a therapist or a doctor to someone else, I think just talking about the inner workings of the mind, that's endless.
00:51:09.681 --> 00:51:14.862
Give me anyone we can talk for hours just on those subjects.
00:51:16.196 --> 00:51:17.362
Blake, why do you travel?
00:51:17.362 --> 00:51:19.122
I will put you in the red seat.
00:51:19.122 --> 00:51:23.034
I will start it as a provocative question what are you fleeing, Blake?
00:51:23.034 --> 00:51:23.696
Fleeing?
00:51:24.238 --> 00:51:34.189
boredom, monotony, too much cultural homogeneity, fleeing people who I believe I can't have great conversations with.
00:51:34.189 --> 00:51:40.444
I think I'm fleeing having to sit too long in one place and stare out the same window.
00:51:40.444 --> 00:51:42.308
This is all connected, right?
00:51:42.308 --> 00:51:49.922
It's too much familiarity and I was poisoned at a young age with the knowledge that the world is a big place and there's many interesting people out there.
00:51:49.922 --> 00:51:58.084
And then since then, it's just been this mission to go find those places and those people, and I can never undo that knowledge.
00:51:58.124 --> 00:52:10.727
I've eaten from the tree and now I am suffering the consequences I think we actually we just talked about that maybe it wasn't with you, maybe it was one of the kids I talked to about that, the there's no going back.
00:52:10.727 --> 00:52:12.378
We can't.
00:52:12.378 --> 00:52:20.841
For us, it's the seven year mark, this year, of full-time traveling as a family, and it's just could we settle down?
00:52:20.841 --> 00:52:22.285
No.
00:52:22.486 --> 00:52:22.566
No.
00:52:24.976 --> 00:52:28.204
It's not like I would just get bored so quickly.
00:52:28.204 --> 00:52:29.447
And the kids say the same.
00:52:29.447 --> 00:52:46.364
You can think about all the benefits of living in one place and having your own room and maybe a bicycle and all the things you can't have when you travel full time, and then their conclusion still is no.
00:52:46.364 --> 00:52:53.803
So I think there is a level of I really understand the eating from the tree thing.
00:52:53.803 --> 00:52:54.325
It's just this.
00:52:54.325 --> 00:52:57.877
We definitely passed the point of no return.
00:52:57.877 --> 00:53:03.972
Also, now our friends, our social life is spread out all over.
00:53:03.972 --> 00:53:08.303
I want to see my friends and they happen to not live in the same city I.
00:53:08.684 --> 00:53:10.167
This is what I tell people all the time.
00:53:10.167 --> 00:53:13.502
When they say, if you had to settle down in one place, where would it be?
00:53:13.502 --> 00:53:23.509
I'd say there's many places I'd love to spend more time, but if I really had to stay in one place for most of the year, that would mean cutting out the face-to-face contact with most people who I care about.
00:53:23.509 --> 00:53:29.928
So it's actually kind of a tragic situation, no matter how beautiful or amazing any one place might be.
00:53:30.855 --> 00:53:35.607
That's a science fiction book and I unfortunately don't remember the name or the author.
00:53:35.607 --> 00:53:48.901
I will look it up, but it is based around the idea that you can have like what's it called, like the holes you can move through in space time Wormholes, wormhole doors.
00:53:48.901 --> 00:53:57.543
So you're in your living room, can open it, and then you walk out to the jungle and so you have wormhole doors installed in your house.
00:53:57.543 --> 00:54:06.972
So maybe your bedroom is in the cool Nordic Arctic and I mean a life like that I could settle down in, with doors to my different friends.
00:54:06.972 --> 00:54:12.995
That could be nice.
00:54:17.235 --> 00:54:27.188
To leave the people who have listened here some thoughts on conversations then what should they do if they want more real, deep dialogue and conversations in their life?
00:54:27.188 --> 00:54:30.225
How to throw themselves into it?
00:54:30.225 --> 00:54:33.665
What kind of safe spaces do you think there are?
00:54:33.665 --> 00:54:53.445
Because it can be a little fearful and if you go to everyday work at the same office, then just taking a conversation with someone you have seen in the office for 20 years or 10 years or five and haven't talked with, really that might feel like crossing a border you're not ready to.
00:54:53.445 --> 00:54:55.749
So I don't know how people.
00:54:55.749 --> 00:54:57.518
What would you suggest?
00:54:57.638 --> 00:54:58.320
What should they do?
00:54:58.320 --> 00:55:05.428
I'd say, unless you really live in the middle of nowhere, the first thing and the safest thing you could do is just open your door to travelers.
00:55:05.428 --> 00:55:16.590
So that could mean getting on couch, surfing or warm showers or work away, or another one of these hospitality network websites.
00:55:16.590 --> 00:55:24.159
It could just be putting out a post on social media and being like hey, we'd love for people to come stay with us and you can set parameters around it.
00:55:24.159 --> 00:55:50.340
Like we have a guest room or an in-law suite that we just put in the backyard and we or this summer we'd be happy to pitch some tents in the backyard and if you want to come stay with us for up to a week, like you're welcome, you know, and that I think kind of you get to create your laboratory, then you get the, the mice to come to you and then you can try out your methods that you've read about in books or on on websites.
00:55:50.421 --> 00:55:52.664
Just go ask chat, gpt how do I talk to people?
00:55:52.664 --> 00:55:56.870
I forgot, and then and then they come to you.
00:55:56.870 --> 00:56:00.103
You're in your safe space, you have some shared meals together.
00:56:00.103 --> 00:56:09.379
Maybe you get to show them your home area through a new lens, but then that's your, that's your practice, that's your dojo for conversation right there.
00:56:09.379 --> 00:56:19.276
Just let's see what kind of interesting conversations we can get into with these people, whether we've known them for years or we just met them five minutes ago yeah well, I couldn't agree more.
00:56:19.296 --> 00:56:34.720
We did exactly that and it very much worked yeah yeah, it's a great way to do it yeah, I know, I personally love potlucks also, where people get and meet in a park and everyone brings something and it's a good way to.
00:56:34.720 --> 00:56:35.743
I mean there.
00:56:35.743 --> 00:56:40.104
You then start with the opener of oh, that's an interesting dish you have made, what is it?
00:56:40.104 --> 00:56:44.587
And then you can hopefully start a conversation on it.
00:56:44.587 --> 00:56:47.362
It is time to round up, it is time.
00:56:47.503 --> 00:57:03.307
Yes, Blake, it has been a big pleasure and I know in Europe this fall I don't think our paths will pass, but I look forward to when they do and then we should have a potluck and good long conversation face-to-face.
00:57:03.327 --> 00:57:04.449
A non-recorded one.
00:57:04.515 --> 00:57:05.283
A non-recorded one.
00:57:06.157 --> 00:57:06.398
Analog.
00:57:06.398 --> 00:57:08.554
Let's go analog, that would be very nice, very nice.
00:57:08.554 --> 00:57:09.177
That's great.
00:57:09.599 --> 00:57:10.683
Thanks again, that would be nice too.
00:57:10.683 --> 00:57:20.098
Yeah, thanks a lot for your time.
00:57:20.098 --> 00:57:25.020
And also, before we hang up, blake, please plug your podcast and the other stuff you're doing if people want to know more about you and the things you're doing, because I would like to highlight that as well.
00:57:25.462 --> 00:57:28.024
Sure, I've got my writing, which is the newsletter.
00:57:28.024 --> 00:57:38.184
I've got the book I'm working on called Dirtbag Rich, which is also a podcast at this moment, and other stuff, and all of it can be found at blakebowlescom.
00:57:39.045 --> 00:57:39.826
Easy, fantastic.
00:57:39.826 --> 00:57:41.289
Thanks a lot for your time, man.
00:57:41.930 --> 00:57:42.370
My pleasure.
00:57:42.370 --> 00:57:44.064
Good to see you two again, bye.