Who's In This Podcast
Helen Todd is co-founder and CEO of Sociality Squared and the human behind Creativity Squared.
Taryn Southern is a creative technologist, pioneering artist, strategist, and speaker whose work explores the intersection of emerging technology and human potential.
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Ep74. A.I. & Creators of the Future: Explore How GenAI is Transforming World-Building, Immersive Experiences, and Storytelling with OG A.I. Artist Taryn Southern
With a front-row seat to the future, meet Taryn Southern, a creative technologist, pioneering artist, strategist, and speaker whose work explores the intersection of emerging technology and human potential.
As an early content creator, she uploaded her first video to YouTube in 2007 — and it went viral. Ten years and 750 million views later, Taryn has produced more than 1,500 pieces of digital content for networks like Conde Naste, The Today Show, MTV, Snapchat, and Maker Studios. She’s written for Business Insider and TechCrunch, and served as a host for Discovery Channel’s #1 late night show. A three-time Streamy Awards nominee, her work has been featured in Billboard, Fast Company, Wired, Vanity Fair, Harvard Business Review, and more.
Fast-forward to 2017, Taryn released I AM AI, the world’s first A.I.-composed pop album; then in 2019, she directed and produced a Tribeca award-winning documentary on the future of A.I. and the human brain titled I AM HUMAN, followed by creating an award-winning Google VR series. In 2020, she became one of the earliest content creators to create an A.I.-avatar of herself.
Since 2021, Taryn has served as Chief Storyteller at Blackrock Neurotech, a leading implantable neurotechnology company, where she launched the world’s first Brain Computer Interface museum and oversaw a communications strategy for two successful funding rounds totaling over $230M+. She is passionate about helping people use A.I. and emerging tech to amplify creativity and wellbeing.
Today’s conversation explores the evolution of A.I.-assisted creativity, from Taryn’s groundbreaking A.I.-composed album to her current meditative album in development that celebrates the human experience. We dive into her work deconstructing storytelling taxonomy and building custom A.I. tools, while examining how world-building, immersive experiences, and storytelling are transforming through emerging technologies.
Taryn also shares her fascinating work with brain-computer interfaces and her vision for how technology might reshape our physical and digital worlds. From questioning our relationship with productivity to contemplating a future with more “spaciousness,” this episode offers fresh perspectives that challenge conventional thinking.
What are Taryn’s predictions about the future and why will she be one of the first in line for a humanoid robot? Keep reading or listen in to find out!
A Tale of Two Albums: How A.I. Music Production Has Evolved Since 2018
As a kid growing up in Wichita, KS, Taryn says she became enchanted with how computers offered a window to an outside world full of possibilities.
The enchantment never dimmed. She wrote music for the first time using a computer rather than an instrument, which she says was an “omen” of her later success in creating original music with artificial intelligence.
Taryn’s journey with A.I.-composed music showcases both the evolution of A.I. music tools and her own artistic vision.
She was exposed to early A.I. music tools during her time as a Google Artist in Residence around 2017 and quickly became fascinated with the idea of “coding creativity.” She created what would become the world’s first A.I.-composed pop album to accompany a VR experience she was developing. In the process, she pushed early music generation tools like Google Magenta to their creative limits.
“I was really just figuring out how to kind of break the [older] music tools and push them to their limits. There was still a lot of human input needed to actually make the music sound palatable.”
Taryn Southern
Fast forward to 2024, and Taryn is working on a totally different kind of album — one that aims to celebrate the human experience through meditative, cinematic soundscapes. The contrast between her two A.I.-assisted music projects reveals just how far the technology has come. Where her first album required extensive back and forth to shape the machine learning model’s output, today’s tools offer “incredible production capabilities” right from the start.
But even the more advanced generative A.I. tools she works with now aren’t without their own creative challenges. “There’s some interesting limitations in the fact that you’re sort of handed a fantastic song on the first go,” she said. “What is my role as a creative in this if I don’t get to have some sort of fine-tune control?”
She says that her solution has been to focus on creating deeply personal pieces that leverage the strengths of A.I. while exploring the textures of human existence.
“What I’m trying to do here is show people you don’t actually have to have a human mind behind these tools to create something beautiful.”
Taryn Southern
The new album she’s working on marks a departure from the tech-focused sounds of her earlier work. Instead of emphasizing the technology aspect, she’s using artificial intelligence to create deeply human compositions featuring cellos and cinematic arrangements. Drawing on recent research about music’s impact on the brain, Taryn envisions this project as a “meditative visual album” that will take listeners on a journey through “pure joy and despair” and all the colors of human experience. As she puts it, “It’s kind of like a love story to the human experience.”
Deconstructing Storytelling in the A.I. Age
Taryn says that working with artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed how she approaches storytelling. Where she once relied purely on creative instinct, she now approaches storytelling like an elegant formula for informing and entertaining.
“The way that I think about the world and my work has changed so much as a result of adopting A.I. into my workflow.”
Taryn Southern
The data behind her formula live in spreadsheets containing “years and years of the storytelling experience.” This methodical approach allows her to organize narrative elements by intent, objective, and format; creating frameworks she can use to fuel brainstorming sessions with language models. She’s even built custom A.I. tools that help her engage with her storytelling formulas in novel ways.
She also notes how the digital age and commoditization of our attention is reshaping story structure itself. The traditional hero’s journey, with its slow build to climax, is giving way to new forms driven by the demands of digital attention spans.
While she initially developed her A.I.-powered storytelling tools for personal use and her work in implantable neurotechnology, Taryn says she’s considering making them more widely available. She envisions an “expert storyteller” A.I. model into which other teams can feed their own knowledge bases. While noting that the system would need pressure testing, particularly for industries requiring scientific rigor, she said that the possibility of helping others harness artificial intelligence for storytelling could be an intriguing project for the future.
Digital Worlds and Physical Reality
The future of world-building with A.I. has Taryn excited about democratizing creativity.
“From a production standpoint, world-building will change everything. It will enable small creators to make that project they always wanted to bring to life. There’s no more excuses or waiting for a gatekeeper to say yes and write you a check.”
Taryn Southern
Working with a community of A.I. filmmakers, Taryn is already exploring how these tools can be pushed to their limits. Though she says that current workflows still have their challenges, she can see where the technology is heading. However, she cautions that this democratization of creation will lead to a “really noisy time” where success will depend on mastering fundamental storytelling skills.
The conversation turns philosophical when discussing the relationship between digital and physical realities. “I would hope that if our digital universes were simply an extension of our imagination, that we would be a bit more creative,” Taryn reflects. She notes that our online worlds often mirror existing capitalistic systems rather than embracing the full potential of human imagination, wagering that digital worlds would be prettier and more interesting if they weren’t so closely modeled after the current socioeconomic structures and incentives of our physical world.
The same observation extends to our physical environment as well. “When we walk down the street, we accept the billboard and the sort of ugly parking lot and whatever else has manifested in our physical reality… if we were to recreate human reality from the ground up and optimize for all these things that we knew would be beneficial for our health, for our mental well-being, for aesthetics — how different would the world look?” With A.I.’s ability to manifest our imaginations more readily, Taryn hopes we might move “much more quickly into a world that all of us imagine is so much better than the one that we have today.”
As these digital and physical spaces become increasingly intertwined, Taryn emphasizes the importance of maintaining our connection to embodied experience. The challenge lies in harnessing artificial intelligence to enhance rather than replace our fundamental human experience — creating spaces, both digital and physical, that truly serve our well-being and creative potential.
Predictions: Robots, Reclaiming Time, and the Future of Work
When asked about the future, Taryn’s predictions come fast and confident.
“I am willing to bet that most people will have an autonomous robot assistant in their home in five years. If I have the option of spending $30,000 on a car versus having an assistant that’s keeping my space clean and cooking healthy food for me, it’s not even a question in my mind.”
Taryn Southern
According to Taryn, this wave of A.I.-powered assistance in the form of agents and humanoid robots could eliminate many of life’s daily friction points. From dealing with insurance companies and medical appointments to handling customer service calls and household chores, she sees artificial intelligence taking over the tasks that merely help us survive, freeing us to focus on activities that help us thrive.
Taryn warns, though, that the gift of more time could also feel like a curse. A dramatic shift in how we spend our time could create an abundance of “spaciousness” in our lives — a prospect Taryn believes might make some people uncomfortable or listless. She suggests that we’ll need to come up with new ways of finding meaning and purpose when we can no longer define ourselves by checking items off our to-do lists.
Looking at the broader economic picture, Taryn predicts we’ll witness significant changes to traditional work structures. She believes the combination of A.I. advancement and evolving employment landscapes will force societies to reconsider the standard workweek. Rather than maintaining current schedules with fewer employed workers, she suggests we might see a widespread shift to three or four-day workweeks to maintain broader employment. Given the positive results already seen in European studies of shortened workweeks, she’s confident that the traditional five-day schedule will become obsolete within the next three to five years.
Better to Feel Human Than Feel Special
For her final thoughts, Taryn offers a provocative perspective that challenges our fundamental assumptions about human uniqueness. Drawing a parallel to how Galileo’s discovery that Earth wasn’t the center of the universe transformed human consciousness, she suggests that artificial intelligence might offer a similarly humbling — and ultimately freeing — revelation.
“Seeing this other intelligent form, regardless of how you want to relate to it, and whether or not you believe it ever has a possibility of being conscious, just seeing the intelligence come out of it certainly makes me feel less special as a human, and I’m so okay with that.”
Taryn Southern
Taryn suggests we’ve built our human systems around the idea of individual uniqueness and special talents, using these beliefs to construct our identities and create meaning in our lives. But maybe, she suggests, that’s not the point at all. In an age of artificial intelligence, we might find liberation in moving beyond the pressure to be special and instead focus simply on being — on fully experiencing both the challenges and the beauty of human existence.
It’s a fitting conclusion from someone who has spent decades exploring the intersection of human potential and emerging technology. As A.I. continues to reshape our world, Taryn’s work reminds us that the most profound changes might not be in what we can do, but in how we understand ourselves and our place in an increasingly intelligent universe.
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Thank you, Taryn, for joining us on this special episode of Creativity Squared.
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TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Tayrn: We can all see the future and where this is going. So from a production standpoint, world building will change everything. It will enable small creators, small storytellers, individuals to make that movie, to make that project that they always wanted to bring to life, but simply didn’t have the resources to do it.
[00:00:16] Tayrn: There’s no more excuses or waiting for a gatekeeper to say yes and write you a check. And so this is a really exciting time for storytellers. It also means that it’s going to be a really noisy time and figuring out how to actually… I think the secret to success will be telling a great story. We’ll be getting back to fundamentals, and that’s really, really critical.
[00:00:39] Helen: With a front row seat to the future, meet Taryn Southern, a creative technologist, pioneering artist, strategist, and speaker whose work explores the intersection of emerging technology and human potential. As an early content creator, she uploaded her first video to YouTube in 2007 and it went viral.
[00:01:01] Helen: 10 years and 750 million views later, Taryn has produced more than 1500 pieces of digital content for networks like Conde Nast, The Today Show, MTV, Snapchat, and Maker Studios. She’s written for Business Insider and TechCrunch and served as a host for Discovery Channel’s number one The Late Night Show. A three time Streamy Awards nominee, her work has been featured in Billboard, Fast Company, Wired, Vanity Fair, Harvard Business Review, and more.
[00:01:34] Helen: Fast forward to 2017, Taryn released the world’s first AI composed pop album. Then in 2019, directed and produced a Tribeca award winning documentary on the future of AI and the human brain, followed by creating an award winning Google VR series. In 2020, she became one of the earliest content creators to create an AI avatar of herself.
[00:02:00] Helen: Since 2021, Taryn has served as chief storyteller at a leading implantable neurotechnology company, where she launched the world’s first brain computer interface museum and oversaw a communication strategy for two successful funding rounds totaling over 230 million dollars. She’s passionate about helping people use AI and emerging tech to amplify creativity and wellbeing.
[00:02:29] Helen: Today’s conversation explores the evolution of AI assisted creativity from Terrence groundbreaking AI composed album to our current meditative album in development that celebrates the human experience. We dive into her work, deconstructing storytelling taxonomy and building custom AI tools while examining how world building immersive experiences and storytelling are transforming through emerging technologies.
[00:03:00] Helen: Taryn also shares her fascinating work with brain computer interfaces and her vision for how technology might reshape our physical and digital worlds. From questioning our relationship with productivity to contemplating a future with more spaciousness, this episode offers fresh perspectives that challenge conventional thinking.
[00:03:23] Helen: What are Taryn’s predictions about the future? And why will she be one of the first in line for a humanoid robot? Listen in to find out. Enjoy.
[00:03:40] Helen: Welcome to Creativity Squared. Discover how creatives are collaborating with artificial intelligence in your inbox, on YouTube, and on your preferred podcast platform. Hi, I’m Helen Todd, your host, and I’m so excited to have you join the weekly conversations I’m having with amazing pioneers in the space.
[00:03:58] Helen: The intention of these conversations. is to ignite our collective imagination at the intersection of AI and creativity to envision a world where artists thrive.
[00:04:16] Helen: Taryn, welcome to Creativity Squared. It’s so good to have you on the show.
[00:04:21] Tayrn: It’s great to be here. I’m glad we can make it work.
[00:04:23] Helen: Yes, it’s a long time coming. I know I’ve been following you for a long time, but for those who are listening and watching, who are meeting you for the first time, can you introduce a bit about yourself and your origin story?
[00:04:35] Tayrn: Sure. So my name is Taryn. I have been a storyteller and creative technologist for almost two decades now. I’m originally from Wichita, Kansas, which is not actually, you know, not typically known as a storytelling capital or technology capital of the world, but, I spent my childhood growing up on the computer.
[00:04:56] Tayrn: That was really my window to the outside world and, kind of became enchanted by the possibilities that were available vis a vis software technology. Actually, the very first piece of music I wrote was using, computer software, not an actual instrument. So it was an omen of things to come, but yeah, for the past two decades, I’ve lived in Los Angeles.
[00:05:20] Tayrn: I mean, I’ve worked kind of, in a wide variety of roles in the entertainment industry. About seven years ago, I went, from being a full time content creator on YouTube to transitioning into deep tech and helping technologies like neurotechnology, brain computer interfaces, AI, tell broader stories to the public.
[00:05:41] Tayrn: It was just something that really excited me. And, and so that’s really the space that I’ve been operating in for the past seven, eight years. So a lot of my work revolves around creative experiments with artificial intelligence, and also exploring the future of human AI interaction vis a vis the brain.
[00:05:59] Tayrn: So, yeah, I’m excited to hear, like, what all we’ll dive into on this podcast, but those are the primary areas that I’ve been focused on.
[00:06:07] Helen: Well, I’m so excited because all of those sounds so fascinating and we’ll definitely do a deep dive. Well, one thing, and I know it’s in the prerecorded intro too, but you also get credit.
[00:06:18] Helen: You created the world’s first AI solo pop album back in 2018, but I want to hear about this. When was your first, like, what was your AI story? Like, what was your first AI moment, I guess, because clearly you’re like an OG when it comes to this space.
[00:06:39] Tayrn: I remember really diving into, I mean, I remember hearing about machine learning and AI probably in the late aughts.
[00:06:48] Tayrn: And then in 2015, 2016, I was part of the Google Artist in Residence program, and the focus of that program was primarily virtual reality, which has obviously since been rebranded, appropriately to spatial computing, but it was a number of us creators who were playing and experimenting with, various VR technologies to create new types of content, and it was then that I remember stumbling upon some of the earliest AI creative tools.
[00:07:16] Tayrn: And of course, they looked very different than they do now. And I was just really excited by the possibility of being able to code creativity and examine what that looked like. And so I think the first piece of technology I ever played with was Google Magenta and Google NSynth, which were music tools.
[00:07:34] Tayrn: And that began my project of creating an album. I think the first track was released in 2017 and then the whole album was released in 2018, but I used four or five different technologies, most of which are not even around anymore.
[00:07:50] Helen: Wow. Well, just, cause we’ve had artists on the show who use AI in their work, since you were so early pre like all the gen AI moment that has captured the world’s imagination, tell us the inspiration for the album and how did you collaborate with AI for that original, I guess, 2017 single or release and the full album?
[00:08:12] Tayrn: It came out of this VR project that I was doing while in this artist in residence program. So, I had conceptualized creating this immersive world that represented the future.
[00:08:22] Tayrn: And I wanted to explore what that world could look like, both from dystopic and sort of positive viewpoints. So the album really became almost like a space for my inner musings of what this future might look like, of machine meets human intelligence. And while I was working on creating these worlds I thought to myself, “well, I need to have background music in these, VR experiences.
[00:08:51] Tayrn: How cool would it be if all the music is created with AI?” And so I reached out to a handful of these companies, started playing with the technologies and was so blown away. I was like, “Oh, it completely reshifted the project.” So instead of the project, sort of first aim being this immersive experience, it really became more of like a visual album. And I ended up letting the music take kind of center stage and then the VR experiences were created around it.
[00:09:18] Helen: Well, I know, especially for our audio only listeners, it’s hard to see the work so we’ll be sure to embed everything in the accompanying dedicated blog post, so you can see Worlds, but that’s so cool. So, that was back 2017, 2018, pre gen AI moment.
[00:09:37] Helen: Walk us through, you’re currently working on another album now. Tell us the inspiration, where you’re at, how involved is AI in your current projects? Let’s get the tea. Is that the right way they say it? Spill the tea?
[00:09:52] Tayrn: Yeah! It’s a completely different experience from when I wrote my album in 2017, 2018. So in 2017-2018. The, you know, the technologies were actually fantastic, this was pre gen AI, as you mentioned, so some of the technologies were like recursive networks.
[00:10:13] Tayrn: Others were rule based machine learning. I was really just figuring out how to kind of break the music tools. And I pushed them to their limits, download a lot of stems. I was doing a lot of editorial work. There was still a lot of human input needed to actually, sort of make the music sound palatable, so to speak.
[00:10:38] Tayrn: Whereas now, I mean, it’s mind blowing how far the tools have come. The tools are very different now. They have different capabilities. I’ve also found that there’s some interesting limitations in the fact that, you’re sort of handed a fantastic song on the first go. “You’re like, well, I mean, what is my role as a creative in this if I don’t get to have some sort of fine tuned control?”
[00:11:00] Tayrn: So I’ve been trying to figure out ways to create something that really speaks deeply to me and takes advantage of the best that these new AI music tools have to offer, which in my mind is just like an incredible production capabilities. I have become a huge fan of a lot of, there’s been a lot of music research that’s been done in the past five, six years on music’s impact on the brain and sort of combining theory with practical, practical analysis and study of brainwaves.
[00:11:39] Tayrn: And so I’m really looking at this as more of a meditative, visual album and similar to how I built out worlds in 2017-2018 in VR, I’m also building out worlds for these tracks, except I’m using, of course, gen AI to build these incredibly beautiful, immersive worlds. But I really want to take people on a journey of released, kind of my human experience and all of the colors and textures of existence and what that’s like to experience pure joy and also despair and also like “insert human adjectives.”
[00:12:19] Tayrn: And so it’s kind of like a love story to the human experience. And if anything, the thing that makes it very different from my last album is it’s not going to sound very techie. Like I had a lot of technological sounds that I was imbuing in the previous album. Cause I wanted to tell the story about humans and AI emerging.
[00:12:40] Tayrn: And in this way, in this new album, it really feels like deeply human and cinematic, and the instruments that I’m using are, like cellos. It’s a very different vibe.
[00:12:53] Helen: That’s so fascinating to me. To go from the super tech to now fast forward to 2024-2025 leaning more into the human part.
[00:13:05] Helen: Is that just a reflection of where you’re at on your AI journey? Or do you feel like the world needs more human centeredness right now as AI is like kind of taking over the news and everything?
[00:13:20] Tayrn: Those are great questions. I mean, I think on some level I have been astonished by the capabilities now with AI of creating beautiful things, not just beautiful sounds, but beautiful aesthetics.
[00:13:37] Tayrn: I mean, any one of us who’s spent any time on mid journey recognizes the incredible power of visual imagery, and bringing [the] greatest corners of our imagination to life. But I think now we also have those capabilities with sounds. So before when I was creating my album, I had to really, as I was saying, break apart what I was creating to make it, to turn it into something that was palatable.
[00:14:00] Tayrn: And now I’m, you know, I just like, I have an aesthetic and I’m so moved by the music that’s being created by these models. And I think if we’re going to build a beautiful life with technology, we should always endeavor to push it to bring out the best of our human experience. And so that’s really what I’m trying to do here is like show people that you don’t actually have to have a human mind behind these tools, to create something beautiful.
[00:14:35] Tayrn: But if we have an aim to release beauty into the world, then I think like having those intentions is important. So, so I’m excited about hopefully creating an emotional, emotive experience, for people.
[00:14:50] Helen: Very cool. I’m very excited to hear it when it comes out. And I’ll also do a quick plug for the episode with Walter Rizzoa.
[00:14:59] Helen: I think you would find him fascinating, but for our listeners and viewers, he’s working with AI to decode what happens to the brain when listening to music, and then also to decode music’s impact on the brain. And there’s a study, I think it’s a Bach song, but don’t quote me on that, that is scientifically proven to reduce epilepsy seizures.
[00:15:20] Helen: When you said the scientific research on music, like there’s a whole field. Another guest, Joanna Pena Bickley, her new company, Vibes AI, is the new hearable that uses sound and hertz and sound therapy to like calm your mind and stuff. So it’s a very exciting field and I’m excited that you’re playing with it with your new album as well, too.
[00:15:43] Tayrn: 100%. And I’ve always had this very strange sensitivity to music. I know every musician is different. And certainly listeners of music too, have their own preferences. But I’ve always felt this ability to feel certain types of music really, really deeply. And then other types of music, like in contrast, not only do not speak to me, but I find highly aggravating and upsetting.
[00:16:11] Tayrn: And this is, this can come with some severe disadvantages if you’re in a restaurant and you can’t control what’s on the [speakers]. I tend to be the most sensitive one and the one that’s frequently asking the waiters to turn the channel or to shift the volume. But to this point, I mean, there is a lot of really interesting research happening now around how we can optimize delta waves in the brain, you know, how we can turn off some of the less productive mind chatter using certain tones and sounds and vibrations.
[00:16:41] Helen: It’s so, so fascinating. And I know I’ve gone down rabbit holes also in like, it’s very new from a tech side, but from like an ancient knowledge side that our [ancestors] have been playing with this too, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day. So two decades, you’ve been a content creator, starting with YouTube and then moving.
[00:17:03] Helen: And you were telling me before we started rolling that after two decades of storytelling, now you’re really looking to kind of deconstruct storytelling. So tell us about what you’re currently thinking and I want to hear all about how you’re deconstructing your storytelling.
[00:17:17] Tayrn: Sure. I mean, it’s, man… The way that I think about the world and my work has changed so much as a result of adopting AI into my workflow.
[00:17:28] Tayrn: I used to think for the longest time as a creative that your creative instincts were just that. They were instincts and they were honed and fine tuned over time. You know, you’re taking in more data, kind of making adjustments to your process as a result of that data, but I don’t know that I really understood storytelling as a process.
[00:17:56] Tayrn: I didn’t have a formula. I just kind of, like, I used these instincts to drive my decision making, about how to tell a story. Now, I mean, the opposite is true. I have taken years and years of the storytelling experience and I have tried to map it into spreadsheets, into various ways of organizing these ideas as a sort of storytelling taxonomy.
[00:18:23] Tayrn: You can organize it by intent, by objective, by format. There’s so many different ways to do that. And then to use these kind of models to then fuel brainstorming sessions with the help of language models, you know, I’ve created several applications with Claude and with custom GPTs that enable me to engage with my own storytelling formulas in new ways and to drive creativity and drive my brainstorming.
[00:18:52] Tayrn: That’s been really, really exciting for me. I kind of feel like it’s, taken these years of experiences and, it’s now sort of developing a science out of it.
[00:19:03] Helen: And you and I were talking about this too. Like there’s so many stories out there, especially with AI, they’re more like dystopian leaning and doom and, you know, we know all the ways that AI can take over the world and take over humans, but we need more positive stories and utopian leaning and what’s possible, especially in light with everything that’s happened in the world, like not only questioning the content of the story, but the structure itself, in terms of, you know, the hero’s journey is a very masculine framework of like an individual who goes on a climax and then comes down, you know, that type of thing.
[00:19:41] Helen: If you draw it, it looks masculine, you know? So, I’ve been thinking about with my team, like the structure of story, maybe we should be reevaluating the fundamentals too. So I’m curious, like in your coding, like if you looked at that and your thoughts and reactions to that too.
[00:19:59] Tayrn: 100%. I mean, we’re rewriting story structure as we speak in this new world where attention has become commoditized and it’s just, it’s completely shifted the way that we tell stories. It used to be that you’d have this kind of like slow lead in and then get to this climax, right? There’s the hero’s journey is of course like one presentation of that.
[00:20:21] Tayrn: And now we’re in a world where the hook has never been more important. You know, what is the first five to 10 seconds of a story? I mean, when we’re talking about digital stories, it’s literally the first three seconds, but it’s impacting, I think, the way that we read the news; tell stories in the news.
[00:20:40] Tayrn: It’s impacting the even the movies and the TV shows and how those are being designed for better or for worse, so we’re seeing like evolutions of storytelling happen before our eyes, but I think it’s a really interesting challenge to say are there different ways to tell stories that are not these sort of traditional formats. But the hero’s journey I mean, it really is so baked into our psyche.
[00:21:02] Tayrn: It’s baked into our own personal meaning making apparatuses like when we go through hardship, we have to assume or hope that on the other side is some, you know, is some sort of beautiful, masterful plan for us or lesson, you know, from all of the hardship, and that is almost like a necessary, it’s like a necessary story for the human condition.
[00:21:26] Tayrn: And so I don’t see the hero’s journey being disrupted anytime soon, or at least going away, but I think, to your point, it’s really interesting to explore other formats. And I have been doing that through, this, like I said, this sort of taxonomy creation.
[00:21:39] Helen: With that exploration, is that all internal? You mentioned building your own custom AI where you’re starting to play with your own stories. Is that something that other people can play with or can work with you and consult on? Or if someone’s curious, like I want to explore story taxonomy, where would you point them to?
[00:21:59] Tayrn: Yeah. So I built my own that was designed primarily for telling short form video stories.
[00:22:07] Tayrn: And, through, through my own lens and through my own sort of curiosities, and I have my own knowledge base that I uploaded, but yeah, I thought about releasing some kind of version of this where people could, you know, could sort of take this and upload their own knowledge base and have their own custom version of an expert storyteller working on their team.
[00:22:34] Tayrn: And it’s possible that maybe I’ll do that. I haven’t had time to pressure test it outside of my own uses and then I’ve done some with my, the company that I work with, in implantable neurotechnology with this as well, but I think it needs some pressure testing. You know, I’m not sure how it would hold up with certain like different industries in particular ones that may require more scientific rigor and wanting to make sure that the LLMs aren’t hallucinating information if you’re trying to you know actually tell a story that’s based in reality and truth.
[00:23:10] Tayrn: So there are some things I need to do, but maybe that’s my next project is to get this in a state where it can be released.
[00:23:18] Helen: I’m definitely connecting you with Katie at Narratize cause she has like a PhD in the narrative science of storytelling. I feel like you guys will have a lot to talk about.
[00:23:28]Tayrn: We will geek out. We will geek out. That’s great.
[00:23:31] Helen: I’ve been thinking a lot about different types of storytelling too. I always have my own creative projects and a mini series, which actually was the beginning of my Chat GPT moment and gen AI moment. But it’s almost like expanding from the linear to how many different tools can you tell the story?
[00:23:52] Helen: And I’m probably not expressing this well, but you’ve mentioned so many times world building, as part of how you describe your album and your different songs and tracks, how do you think about story and world building where we’re at right now and where we could be going because it’s like we’re all building worlds are going to be able to build worlds very soon with AI. So how are you thinking about that right now in this moment in time?
[00:24:20] Tayrn: Oh my gosh. I mean, you can think about it from a couple of different angles. There’s the sort of pragmatic production angle, which is just, we are getting to a point where we can build CGI, realistic worlds very quickly, very cheaply.
[00:24:35] Tayrn: You can place a camera in that world and then adjust it any which way you want. You can put AI actors into the world where you get to control their performance and every sort of minutiae of the process. So from just like a, I guess from a director perspective, this is the renaissance. Like, this is the moment where you have every possible tool at your disposal to bring your vision to life in an epic way.
[00:25:03] Tayrn: And, obviously there are some, like we’re not quite there yet. Like right now I’m part of a community of, kind of AI filmmakers, AI creators. And we get together and we host these monthly sessions where we, like use the tools and figure out like how we can push them to the limits and how we can integrate the tools to have a workflow and I’m sure that 12 months from now we’ll all be sitting around some kind of custom tool that does everything for us where we’re not kind of running into the same speed bumps, but we can all see the future and where this is going.
[00:25:36] Tayrn: So from a production standpoint, world building will change everything. It will enable small creators, small storytellers, individuals to make that movie, to make that project that they always wanted to bring to life, but simply didn’t have the resources to do it. There’s no more excuses or waiting for a gatekeeper to say yes and write you a check.
[00:25:54] Tayrn: And so this is a really exciting time for storytellers. It also means that it’s going to be a really noisy time and figuring out how to actually [tell a good story]. I think the secret to success will be telling a great story. We’ll be getting back to fundamentals. And that’s really, really critical. I think the other thing about world building that’s interesting, is just this idea of not having linear stories.
[00:26:20] Tayrn: This idea that someone might be able to insert themselves in a story and choose their own adventure. And, you know, it’s almost like a version of Westworld where you’re like wandering around this whole world that someone’s creation and getting to experience, you know, all kinds of elements of that life and world and it’s sort of funny because we could just look at our own human lives that way, but we don’t.
[00:26:47] Tayrn: Like if we are part of sort of a masterful, some sort of masterful world building experience. Like none of us are, most people are not wandering around being like, “let me just like poke at some things and see what levers I can pull in this world and what kind of crazy rabbit holes I go down.” It feels, I think the risks feel too high for that. So we’re more interested in doing that in these virtual worlds, but that’s fine.
[00:27:13] Helen: I have so many thoughts and reactions to that.
[00:27:16] Tayrn: Please, all of them.
[00:27:18] Helen: One thing that I mentioned before we started recording, but this kind of speaks to a little bit of, you know, how AI is kind of having us reflect us back to us, but also like make us contemplate what it means to be human.
[00:27:35] Helen: And one of the, things about the human experience is our physical embodied experience. And one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about, is, you know, our imagination, like how we spend time in the world or where we exist, like in our, we spend time thinking and then our minds and I encourage everyone listening to spend more time thinking and just in your mind in a quiet space.
[00:27:59] Helen: We exist in the reality and the physical time space reality and this new thing called digital, which is relatively new. Like I did a, my presentation, I think 40 years ago when I was born, there were only a thousand computers that were connected together. And now you’ve got over 5.4 billion people logging onto the internet.
[00:28:25] Helen: Like in context of the 80, some thousand years that humans have been on [this planet], this is like the internet and this digital space is so, so new. And yet while pixels are kind of time and space, it actually mirrors more of our imagination. And then the infinite possibilities of what you can do. And kind of how you were saying, like, I think, you know, a common, I like to noodle on it of like, are we in a simulation?
[00:28:48] Helen: And the more you learn, it’s like, maybe we are in a simulation, but that distinction, I think it’s really important of we can do so much in digital, but what does that mean for our embodied human experience? And I don’t think we’ve really grappled with the digital being more like imagination. I feel like it’s mostly referred to as an extension of our offline selves, but I’m curious your thoughts and reactions because I’m still kind of marinating and fleshing this concept out too.
[00:29:17] Tayrn: That’s interesting. I mean, if I think about social media, we’ve certainly recreated it in our image, just in the sense that we all have an avatar. We all have some sense of what we want to present to the outside world as a representation of us, even if that isn’t actually a real representation. So is that a reflection of our imagination or is that reflection of an extension of a reality? I think it’s a little bit of both, but I would like to, I would hope that if our digital universes were simply an extension of our imagination, that we would be a bit more creative and like a bit more, I don’t know, like, I mean, I don’t know about you, but I often feel a little bit bummed about like where a lot of the human capital and energy has been going into digital spaces over the past 10, 15, 20 years.
[00:30:04] Tayrn: Like, you know, we have a lot of people optimizing for ads. That’s a lot of really smart people optimizing for attention in ads. And I don’t want to sound like overly critical of that space. It is what it is. These are just like underlying incentive structures and until we change those, like that’s the reality.
[00:30:22] Tayrn: But man, like if it was actually an extension of our imaginations and not just an extension of our capitalistic system, like it would probably look very different. I bet our online world would be a lot prettier and more interesting.
[00:30:36] Helen: I love that thought experiment. I’m going to be thinking about it after this and I encourage our listeners too, cause I think we, it’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day, to not even reflect on questions of like, you know, just accepting the internet as it is and not like, what could it be? And I think that question is a really great avenue to explore that.
[00:30:57] Tayrn: You know, same is true in our realties as well. When we walk down the street, we accept the billboard. And the sort of ugly parking lot and whatever else has sort of manifested in our physical reality. It’s just, that’s what’s normal.
[00:31:13] Tayrn: And if we were to recreate human reality from the ground up and optimize for all these things that we knew would be beneficial, for our health, for our mental wellbeing, for aesthetics, like how different would the world look if it actually was just like built from a place of pure imagination versus functionality, you know, capitalism, whatever all of the different systems are that are sort of governing our actions.
[00:31:41] Tayrn: But yeah, I mean, I love all, of these thought experiments and I do think that AI being as powerful as it is in manifesting our imaginations and my hope is that it will push us like much more quickly into a world that all of us imagine. There’s so much better than, you know, the one that we have today.
[00:32:05] Helen: I definitely share that enthusiasm. I think one thing too, and this comes with a little bit of a trigger warning for our listeners, we discussed it with, Shira last week, the, story about the teenager who had the AI girlfriend and then really lost connection with reality and ended up committing suicide.
[00:32:29] Helen: And I, can see, I think we’ve all had a dream where it’s like, was that real or not? And sometimes in our imagination, it’s hard. Our brains don’t really distinguish what we imagine from reality sometimes. And now we’re having these digital spaces that are more immersive, overlaid our physical, becoming more realistic.
[00:32:48] Helen: Taryn and I both digitally cloned ourselves. So they look and sound like us, but what does that mean? How should we be thinking about it from staying in our embodied selves as we explore the digital. I think that’s something that we really need to think about too in this day and age, especially in light of the story.
[00:33:08] Tayrn: How, are you thinking about it?
[00:33:11] Helen: Full confession. I’m taking a course on Mindvalley right now from Jeffrey Allen on energy and it’s really informed a lot of my current thinking, but then going back to episodes, I’m like, “oh my gosh, it’s already kind of been bubbling up,” even like, the use of energy and manifesting and stuff.
[00:33:30] Helen: So I’m just kind of curious about that, but I think the, and this is in my presentation, “Farewell Information Age, Welcome to The Imagination Age,” which everyone’s going to hear about for a long time as I’m working on my presentation and book, but you know, so much of our devices distract us and pull our attention away from us, but that you mentioned, you know, people are creating ads and distracting us and all this stuff, but our attention actually gets outside of us.
[00:33:59] Helen: And we’re not in our embodied self. From a spiritual [standpoint], you can say your spirit is not present in you, so you can have attention and focus. So like when I think about the embodied human experience, it’s like being grounded and having your awareness inside of you and full control of your awareness and not being distracted and pulled out of that.
[00:34:22] Helen: And that as we get more immersed in these digital and I can really, really understand how you can lose track with reality and then throw on, you know, all the psychedelics and other things that are happening on top of the digital, you could get really disconnected really quick. And especially with our young people whos brains are still more malleable than ours, you know, that disconnection.
[00:34:47] Helen: So I’ve been thinking much more from an energetic, my own energy, what drains me and how I can stay grounded and embodied in my body and control my awareness and attention as much as possible. But this is a very new thing that I’ve really been exploring of recent.
[00:35:05] Tayrn: Very beautifully said. I couldn’t agree more. I also think we have a crisis of embodiment to your point. I mean, we see teenagers and you go out and they’re like all on their phones. And, by the way, I don’t blame them at all. I think they’ve been handed a really tough, dealt a really tough hand growing up with technology, but, you know, one of the greatest gifts that we had as children is that we got to grow up without these devices.
[00:35:35] Tayrn: We actually understand what it means to be fully present with the world around us and not have these other distracting forces. And we all know that it’s better for us. And we all know that it feels better and I think as adults, we’re able to make different choices about how we try to optimize for that presence.
[00:35:53] Tayrn: But it’s, hard. It’s really, really challenging. I’m curious, kind of like you are, how technology is going to, you know, amplify some of these issues, and how what kinds of choices we’ll make, especially in an ecosystem that is still driving, you know, it’s driving everyone towards more online use not less.
[00:36:19] Helen: Yeah, and I spoke to a group of college students yesterday and I really wanted them to start challenging current narratives. Cause one thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about too, is like, and I’ve said this on the show, like right now we have the AI chat bots that are going to go into workflows like we’ve discussed.
[00:36:40] Helen: And then the next wave is AI agents. We’ve had a whole episode on it, but do we really want agents in the way that the tech leaders describe them? The same ones who have gotten us addicted to our cell phones that we can’t put them away, and they want a technology that never leaves our side that we’re even more codependent on, even more intimate.
[00:37:06] Helen: And, I had a discussion the other day with a gentleman in Cincinnati where he’s seeing like some of his team not even want to talk before talking to AI; their behaviors becoming so codependent. So it’s like, yes, AI can amplify the best of human potential, but how does that look?
[00:37:25] Helen: I don’t think having the people who got us addicted to social media without any regulation or recourse… Yeah, let’s get them even more embedded into our lives.
[00:37:36] Tayrn: Let’s give them more power.
[00:37:40] Helen: Yeah. Like, so, I think we really need to think about these things right now in this moment in time.
[00:37:47] Tayrn: It’s so complex, right? Because there’s this whole, I don’t know about you, maybe I shouldn’t ask a lead in question. I should just ask you a generic question, but what would you say offhand is some of the things that frustrate you most about being a human? Like just like tangible things that you find frustrating in everyday life.
[00:38:06] Helen: In everyday life? Well, I actually, another, a guest is coming in my ear. I have a joke. Everyone’s like, how are you doing Helen? I’m like, I’m looking for a magic pause button so I can pause time and get caught up on everything. Like we’re all behind, we all have to-do lists, a never ending stream of to-do lists.
[00:38:27] Helen: And you know, it’s probably a lot about time and Walter, on the show, Walter D Graeson’s like, we should actually have a new relationship with time that it should be, instead of time as money and time is a luxury, that time is abundance and that it’s more malleable and like getting into flow state and, you know, all those things. But yeah, I would say finding a magic pause button so I can get through everything on my to do list.
[00:38:59] Tayrn: I like that. I mean, yeah, spaciousness, right? Spaciousness and the luxury of time, like all of that, I’ll never be at inboc zero, no matter how hard I try, it’ll just never happen. And so I’ve given up.
[00:39:15] Tayrn: I throw in the towel. I’ve got 4,857 emails right now in my inbox. Clearly I’ve given up. But I mean, for me, it’s like, it’s that, and it’s also just, there’s a lot of friction that we have created out of a post industrialized nation, that like, we need, now we need tools to solve the friction points.
[00:39:37] Tayrn: I mean, like, the things that bring me the most frustration, it’s like dealing with insurance, health insurance, doctor’s appointments, having to get on the phone with a customer service thing to work out some billing issue and something, doing laundry. Like, just like stuff that keeps us surviving, but it’s not a mechanism or a force function of thriving.
[00:39:58] Tayrn: It’s certainly not making me feel more creative or more abundant. And those are the pieces that I do feel AI agents and/or robots, you know, are going to completely transform human life by taking away these friction points. I mean the thought of never having to get on another customer service call again makes me feel thrilled.
[00:40:21] Tayrn: You know? Or fold laundry again. So I do think we’re going to, I do think there’s like a strong argument that we’re going to be faced with a lot of extra time five years from now. I mean, I am willing to bet, and I can’t remember what some of the other predictions have been from other tech leaders, but I’m willing to bet that most people will have an autonomous robot assistant in their home in five years.
[00:40:49] Tayrn: I think it’ll be that fast. I mean, I know for myself, if I have the option of spending $20,000-$30,000 on a car versus like having an assistant, that’s like keeping my space clean and cooking healthy food for me, this is not even a question in my mind, I’m going to have the robot assistant because I know that the rest of my life is going to feel so much more abundant as a result of that and getting that time back.
[00:41:14] Tayrn: So it’s “both, and.” It’s like, yes, on one hand. These AI agents and whatever else we might call them are going to be doing things that we can’t even conceive of. And how much of that, what kinds of new problems is that going to create for us? And, I think that we might end up with a lot more spaciousness and by the way, some people are going to be very uncomfortable with that, I think.
[00:41:41] Tayrn: I think there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to be really uncomfortable with that spaciousness and having to create new meaning making games. Because if you don’t have to get the next five things on your to do list crossed off because the robot’s already taking care of them, like, how do you spend that time?
[00:41:54] Helen: Everyone should be really reflecting, but not even like, how do you want to spend your time? I think it kind of goes back to your first question, because we get so bogged down with the admin that it takes to exist in our current society that like, and all of these devices keep us in a stress state, where when you’re in a stress state.
[00:42:21] Helen: It’s like evolutionary. It’s like a tiger’s chasing you, but it’s like just a ding on your phone and another text message you have to like respond to that stresses you. Like, this is not normal to have this amount of stress, but if you’re in all this stress, we’re in survival mode and you can only think about surviving.
[00:42:40] Helen: Whereas if we could actually get out of that, then we’ll be more free to use our imaginations and then actually reflect in a grounded, calm space. How do you want to spend your time if you got to choose? I think that’s such a hard question because it’s so hard for people to even imagine outside of their day to day grind right now, like what do you want your day to day look to look like?
[00:43:03] Tayrn: 100%. And not to mention the fact that when we do get free time, a lot of us are spending it on our devices because we’re addicted. And so, what does that mean? If we’re given more time, do we actually take advantage of that to do the things we’ve always wanted to do?
[00:43:18] Tayrn: Or, you know, or in a more dystopian view, do we lack control over that because of, you know, the hold that these things have on us? So it’s tough to say, I don’t know. I’m, hopeful that, you know, I’m hopeful it’s not the latter, but yeah. I mean, if we all end up with three hours more a day to do what we love, is TikTok still going to win out?
[00:43:44] Tayrn: It’s an interesting question. We’re going to need a lot of people, kind of evangelizing ways of being and thinking through these big shifts.
[00:43:54] Helen: Well this show will be exploring them and have conversations like this. Okay, so you mentioned, I love that you mentioned a prediction about the humanoid robots.
[00:44:10] Helen: You’re going to be first in line to get one.
[00:44:17] Tayrn: I will. Hopefully it doesn’t kill me in my sleep.
[00:44:22] Helen: I’m not sure if I’m going to be first in line, but, what are some other predictions that you have?
[00:44:28] Tayrn: I do think we will all be working much less. I think, some of this is going to be a force function of just the employment landscape and the fact that there will be less jobs and we’ll have a decision to make as a country or as a society or as a world, you know, do we actually care to continue this nine to five? Work day, five days a week and have less people employed versus, you know, moving everyone to let’s say a three or four day, work week or part time, to keep more of our society employed because we know like an unemployed society is not a happy society.
[00:45:09] Tayrn: We also know that the amount of kind of work, that’s been ingrained in our consciousness hasn’t been healthy for us. There’s some great studies coming out of Europe that the four day work week is optimal both in terms of productivity and well being, which is really exciting. So I’m hoping that those studies, will kind of help lead the charge on companies shifting into that.
[00:45:33] Tayrn: And I think this will be fairly near term. I think we can all expect that the five day, 8 to 12 hour workday is it’s going to be toast in the next three to five years. So that’s a prediction I have.
[00:45:45] Helen: What about on the brain front? Cause I, we probably won’t have a ton of time on this interview, but, cause we haven’t talked about BCI and the neurotech side of things much on the show, but you’ve done so much in that space.
[00:45:58] Helen: So I’d love to hear, well, one, what you’re excited about right now, but also maybe some predictions on the neurotech side.
[00:46:05] Tayrn: So I work at an implantable neurotechnology company that builds brain computer interfaces for people with paralysis, ALS, and other neurological disorders. They’ve really been at the cutting edge for the past two decades in this work in decoding the human brain and decoding motor intention so that you can essentially connect the brain to a digital device.
[00:46:28] Tayrn: So anything you and I can do with a computer cursor, with a keyboard, these patients can do just by thinking about it. and so it’s pretty remarkable seeing them create art, type up essays, play video games, you know, and doing all of that, simply with the power of their thoughts. And these little implantable chips.
[00:46:49] Tayrn: It’s not a stretch of the imagination to think that in 20 years time, you know, people who have reduced function or limited function as a result of these diseases or disorders will have these implants and those implants will be used to help them regain independence, which is really exciting. And I also think it’s not ridiculous to think that in 20 to 40 years time, we start to see, and maybe even sooner than that, we start to see, ancillary uses of the technology to extend human capability beyond just what has been lost to embody, you know, to embody other digital forms, like, you know, suddenly you, Helen, have your Helen robot, and so if you’re traveling overseas, you can sort of use your BCI to embody the robot and feed your pet while you’re gone, and actually have this whole experience with your pet, where you’re, touching your pet, you can feel your pet, but it’s not you, it’s just an embodied extension of you.
[00:47:46] Tayrn: So, I mean, there’s all kinds of wild and crazy ideas that once you understand where the technology that don’t seem so wild and crazy and it’s just kind of a matter of time. I think in the near future for the general public we’re just understanding so much more about the brain. I mean, it’s still like a black box compared to so many other fields of science.
[00:48:11] Tayrn: There’s so much that we have left to learn and understand, but we were understanding more and I think there’s going to be a push toward optimizing our world to improve our internal state. We’re seeing that already happened in the longevity space. I mean, longevity was not something that people talked about a decade ago.
[00:48:30] Tayrn: They just didn’t care. And now it’s just like everywhere you go, you know, there’s new companies and technologies that are launching so that people feel that they have some kind of control over lifespan, over health span. And that’s relatively new. And I think that’s going to start extending into our mental wellbeing and our brain.
[00:48:50] Tayrn: We’re going to say, “okay, we now have the tools to understand how our external worlds are impacting our brain. We have data to back that up. And so now let’s actually start building a better world. And what does that actually look like?” I don’t know. It could mean that, you know, we’re actually creating, home environments that are in alignment with, principles of neuroaesthetics that we know optimize for well being, happiness, creativity.
[00:49:16] Tayrn: And some of these things are just sort of obvious, like, you know, making sure that there’s a lot of light coming in to our structures. You know, certain things like clutter and design, like all of that will be sort of really, but it’ll all be very interesting because I think it will be looking at things more through the lens of its impact on our human bodies in this like embodied form that we get to take.
[00:49:44] Helen: I agree. And actually I think I got this from Chat GPT when I was playing with the imagination age that, it really makes sense for companies to care about well being, and I’ll tie this to the more capitalistic angle for our listeners who need that, that as we’re moving more into creative spaces where it’s about the power of your idea and imagination that in order to have more creative and imaginative thoughts, you actually need to have higher well being, you know, like in terms of calm nerves to think expansively. So the ability, our wellbeing tied to our quality of ideas are hand in hand.
[00:50:29] Helen: So for the economic incentive for our wellbeing, I think as we enter more into more creative spaces, that those two go hand in hand as well.
[00:50:45] Tayrn: I totally agree for that. I love it. And I agree.
[00:50:47] Helen: Well, I know we’re getting close to the end of our interview, but there’s so much more to dive into.
[00:50:52] Helen: One question that I ask all of my guests, if you want our viewers and listeners to remember one thing, for them to walk away with, what’s that one thing that you want them to walk away with from today’s conversation or about AI in general?
[00:51:08] Tayrn: Oh, that’s a really hard one. I mean, part of me wants to say something provocative just because that’s a good storytelling angle to take here.
[00:51:16] Helen: You can have multiple angles. I love a good provocation.
[00:51:22] Tayrn: Yeah, I mean, I think similar to the, I don’t, remember which scientist it was that discovered that the earth is not the center of the universe. Maybe you know that. But
[00:51:33] Helen: I thought it was Galileo, wasn’t it?
[00:51:36] Tayrn: It was Galileo, I’m pretty sure but I was like, I don’t want to say the wrong thing and then sound like an idiot, but I mean to me like when I read that I thought that was such a freeing thought and that was such a threatening idea for so many people at that time and still continues to be you know a threatening idea that maybe the world was not created for our enjoyment or for us, maybe we are not the center of the universe.
[00:51:59] Tayrn: I find it very freeing and beautiful that like, there’s something so much bigger happening here, and we’re just this, like, tiny speck of dust on a floating planet, and I think for me, AI, like, seeing this other intelligent form, regardless of how you want to relate to it and whether or not you believe it ever has a possibility of being conscious, like, just seeing the intelligence come out of it, engaging with it, certainly makes me feel less special as a human.
[00:52:32] Tayrn: And I’m so okay with that. Like, I think we’ve built our, human systems around this idea that we are special, that we are unique, that we harbor all of these unique talents and skillsets. And that’s how we arrange our identities. That’s how, you know, that’s how I suppose we create meaning and purpose in our lives.
[00:52:52] Tayrn: And I would almost like to empower people to think differently, that maybe it’s not about that. Maybe it’s not about being special and it’s just about being, and it’s just about living and embodying, and like having this space where we get to go through like all of the most challenging aspects of life and the most beautiful aspects of life and we get to decide how we navigate through those things and maybe doing and improving our specialness just isn’t, actually isn’t the point anymore.
[00:53:27] Tayrn: I don’t know, I find it beautiful and freeing. So the thing I want to, for people to walk away with is maybe we’re just not that special and that’s okay.
[00:53:37] Helen: So beautifully said, but that’s going to be added to my little quote bank of references. And we did have, Dinesh on the show and that whole episode was really exploring about, how we’re really good at existing, but not living, And, he’s a big proponent that so much of the information age has been about doing and productivity and the skills and what you can do, and not so much about being and how you phrased it, of just like, It’s okay not to be special, just be, I think that’s really beautiful.
[00:54:20] Helen: So thank you for, sharing that, today, Taryn.
[00:54:24] Tayrn: Thank you!
[00:54:26] Helen: I’ll definitely have to bring you back on the show. Cause I feel like we’re just like scratching the surface, but thank you for all of your time. Good luck as you’re having fun playing with your new album. I can’t wait to see it on the other side and listen to it.
[00:54:41] Tayrn: Thank you. It was a joy to be here and to hear your thoughts as well on this feature that we’re all co creating together. And it’s always wonderful, to be, you know, to have these conversations and to try and create abundance out of the space that we’re in.
[00:54:57] Tayrn: So thank you, Helen.
[00:55:01] Helen: Thank you for spending some time with us today. We’re just getting started and would love your support. Subscribe to Creativity Squared on your preferred podcast platform and leave a review. It really helps. And I’d love to hear your feedback. What topics are you thinking about and want to dive into more?
[00:55:16] Helen: I invite you to visit CreativitySquared.com to let me know. And while you’re there, be sure to sign up for our free weekly newsletter so you can easily stay on top of all the latest news at the intersection of AI and creativity. Because it’s so important to support artists, 10 percent of all revenue Creativity Squared generates will go to ArtsWave, a nationally recognized nonprofit that supports over 100 arts organizations.
[00:55:41] Helen: Become a premium newsletter subscriber or leave a tip on the website to support this project and ArtsWave. And premium newsletter subscribers will receive NFTs of episode cover art and more extras to say thank you for helping bring my dream to life. And a big, big thank you to everyone who’s offered their time, energy, and encouragement and support so far.
[00:56:03] Helen: I really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. This show is produced and made possible by the team at Play Audio Agency. Until next week, keep creating.