Welcome to the show, where we expose new perspectives on our ever evolving world through the lenses of various industries, cultures and backgrounds.
Our guests are disruptors, united by a common goal to bring their purpose to life.
Whether they’re from the commercial world or third sector, from the Global North or the Global South, expect an inspirational journey that will transform your perspective on just what is possible.
My name is Philippa White and welcome to Thai Unearthed.
So what happens when intelligence becomes abundant, but meaning doesn’t?
When the tools, they get smarter and faster, more powerful.
But then we’re left asking, what does it actually mean to be human in all of this?
0:57
Welcome to episode 115 of Thai Unearthed.
Today I’m joined by Brad Rosacea, a Creative director, storyteller and self-described rebellious optimist who is on a mission to help both brands and individuals rediscover what it means to be fully alive.
Brad has spent over 8 years at Accenture, where he’s worked at the forefront of innovation, at the moment as Executive Creative Director and Head of Story, shaping how some of the world’s biggest brands think, create and connect.
His work sits at a fascinating intersection where art meets technology, where creativity meets strategy, and where story becomes the bridge between who we are and who we might become.
But underneath all of that is a deeper belief that curiosity and creativity, they’re not just tools for business.
They are actually the fuel for human flourishing.
And in this conversation, we go there, we explore Brad’s journey to discovering that story is at the center of his life’s work, sparked by a moment of stillness in the desert that changed everything.
We talk about the rise of AI and what it means for all of us, and not from a place of fear, but instead from a place of agency.
And perhaps most importantly, we ask who do we choose to be in a world where so much is being shaped for us?
This is a conversation about intention, about the power of the small moments between stimulus and response, and about why, as technology accelerates, our humanity might matter more than ever.
So if you’ve ever found yourselves questioning where you fit in this rapidly changing world or wondering how to stay grounded in what really matters, well, this one’s for you.
Brad, welcome to Tie on Earth.
Brad, it is so great to have you with us finally.
This has been a long time coming.
I’m thrilled.
Same.
I’m really stoked.
For our listeners, Brad was one of the podcast that I had lined up when I suddenly discovered that I had a cancerous lump in my breast and I was like God.
And then I just, every life just took over and I sort of sent this sort of cryptic message to you and you were very kind and very understanding.
And then I just disappeared.
But thank you for holding out and we finally making it happen.
And yeah.
And I’m very thankful that you resurfaced.
Well, yeah, right.
Better than well.
Better than I was when I was talking to you in July, for sure.
So, so I love asking people where they are because I feel very fortunate that I am surrounded by so many incredible people dotted all over the world.
And it’s just really wonderful to just help our listeners kind of picture where people are.
So where are you and just explain and describe a little bit about the work you’re doing.
Where I’m at right now is it’s phrase I heard recently, human flourishing, and it’s really resonating with me for a variety of reasons.
Partly because a lot of my work is in story.
And we are leading a program right now around brain Health and Human flourishing, which is going to involve a short film, documentary, some branding, and just really helping to shape the narrative for global audiences so that they can really start to be intentional and possibly even think more about how we build the life that we love.
And this kind of idea of like, not just survival, not even just thriving, but like, flourishing.
Nice, and where are you in the world right now?
I am physically in Houston, TX.
We’re going to touch on this, I know throughout this conversation, but I just really want to just touch on that word of intention.
That was something that I think we both really just held on to.
And I think it’s something that entering a little bit more into leadership stuff, self reflection stuff.
Think people are kind of waking up and realizing, you know, how can I live my life with intention?
And if I did, what would that look like and what kind of flourishing happens when that does happen?
So I just wanted to hold on to that because I think that’s probably where much of what we talk about will probably be hung on.
Now.
The first time that we spoke that, I just got really, really excited.
You talked about being a rebellious optimist, So what does that mean to you today and how has that belief sort of been shaped or challenged overtime?
I love this question.
I think I love it most from what you just said.
Like what does it mean today?
I don’t know that I had ever heard it before.
It was just one of my good buddies who eventually became the Co host of our show curiosity.
We just kind of were rolling around in this idea of what we called the on and it was the letters you in in brackets.
And so it was originally around what are the things that we believe to be true that are not just fundamentally aren’t actually a real part of our anatomy, our identity, our purpose, our reality.
But when we believe they are, they can shape us.
And so I think the first thing is the role of metacognition, right?
To think about thinking and to really be introspective in how we see ourselves, because how we see ourselves is how we interact with the spaces and the world and the humans that are around us, right?
And I heard this quote one time that’s someone said, which is we see ourselves how we think others see us.
And if we pause that for a moment and instead we say, well, how do I see myself and who am I and who do I want to be when I really start to think about not just what my purpose is or how I advance my purpose, but why?
And that is really what sparked this idea of rebellious optimism.
It’s because every human, once we start to understand who we are, then we start to carve our own path in the universe.
And that’s where I think something more eternal happens.
Yeah.
And it just, you said sort of these little steps.
So it’s how you think about yourself, how you think about your potential, how you think about a certain situation.
But The thing is, is if you rebelliously challenge how you have always seen yourself and you reframe, it is unbelievable how powerful that is because you change that conversation.
And it might seem very small, but it is huge because the moment you change that in your mind, I mean, that’s what manifestation is, right?
And it, it has this sort of snowball effect.
And it really you are your thoughts.
I mean, I, I talk about this in my book as well.
And it, and it, and it is in, it’s so powerful.
I mean, a handful of religions to talk about this.
Buddhism talks about this.
And it’s, it’s something that in our society, I think that we don’t pay enough attention to this.
It’s not something that we’re reminded about enough.
It’s very easy to live a passive life.
It’s arguably far more common than it is to live an intentionally active life.
It can be cultural, it could be geographic.
I think regardless though, we do have this, this moment in between stimulus and response.
That’s where our real power is.
We get to choose not only how we interact, but also how we respond.
And it’s taking a moment to sit in the power of the pause before we act.
And what I’ve been realizing recently is we really underestimate the power of nuances, things that we consider to be unimportant.
I’m realizing more and more oftentimes or maybe some of the most important parts of our lived experiences and when we identify them, when we name them, when we hold them, it starts to open up a greater opportunity space to really become who we want to be.
I mean, as our listeners can probably tell, you are great at story and you’re great at sort of painting images and, and bringing your thinking to life.
Why do you think story is still the most powerful way to make sense of the world?
And perhaps you can, I don’t know, bring to life this power of sharing ideas from your own experience.
I think the direct answer is we often hear in conversations around just human anatomy and and science that the opposable thumb is the reason our species has been able to evolve the way that it has.
I would say communication is also in that conversation.
The way that humans are able to compute communicate is just fundamentally different from really every other species that exists, right?
And every species communicates in different ways.
One of my favorite stories I’ve ever heard is how this plant root system in some part of the world notified a tree miles away that this invasive species was starting to invade the region, and the tree started to produce a certain SAP that would protect it.
Which is fascinating in every way, right?
It’s, it’s definitely not that we are the only species that communicates in a very complex way.
It’s the way that we are able to communicate and maybe almost know why that we communicate the way that we do.
That is one of our greatest superpowers as a species.
And so I think that’s fundamentally why story is so core to not only human evolution, but as I mentioned at the very beginning, human flourishing.
And it’s not just the communication we have in the conversations we have with one another.
It’s maybe even more important.
What’s the story that we’re telling ourselves?
There was a book I read recently called It Takes what it Takes, which should be a life philosophy that we all live by because it takes what it takes.
You know, it’s like you want to do something.
What is the IT take?
It takes what it takes, but there was this kind of one line that just really resonated with me and echoed, and it was exactly that.
It was.
What’s the advertising campaign that you’re playing in your head about yourself?
While it’s important that we share story to not only capture culture and societies, lived experiences and individual human stories that then inspire greatness and others who then do that in turn, right?
But it’s not always like a capture backwards of something that already happened.
And I think often times that’s how we think of story.
But I think of story as something that’s fully alive, that it’s present, it’s in this moment with us, and it’s evolving and adapting and changing with us, rather than something that we talked about after the fact.
And I came to that realization because I was doing a sound bath.
And for those that don’t know, a sound bath is basically like kind of different bowls and what I would almost consider like things you can find in the kitchen and someone plays different sounds and it’s sort of echoes and it’s very beautiful.
How amazing is that?
It’s.
Absolutely incredible.
And that we were like outside and it’s like a perfectly clear day.
And the, the story’s a little bit wild if I back up from that moment and then I come back to it.
In 2024, I lost one of my best friends to terminal stage 4 colorectal cancer.
And he was also the Co host of our podcast Curiosity.
And I learned that that type of grief when you lose someone that you most consider to be a brother, it doesn’t necessarily go away.
It becomes a part of you and it becomes a motivator and you want to honor their legacy.
And two of the words that he often said were onward and Echo and so much earlier that morning I was sitting having coffee with my wife and I just felt really compelled to get up and go for a little nature walk.
We were staying in this cool little cabin and we had a couple of acres.
And I end that kind of the top of this little hillside and there’s this like outdoor day bed.
And sitting on the day bed is this little metal box.
And I open up the metal box and in the metal box there’s two pens and a book, like a little journal.
And so I sit on the day bed.
It’s the desert, right?
So it’s very quiet.
It’s early morning, the sun is shining.
The sky is perfectly blue.
It’s January.
And I’m just sitting there and I’m thinking, I want to write a word because many people had written in the journal their reflections or thoughts and they had like paragraphs and paragraphs.
And I was like, I feel like one word is appropriate.
And I just want to describe like the space I’m in, in a single word, which is very hard for me because I like using many words.
So for me to use one word is a really difficult task.
And I wanted to challenge myself.
Like it’s a new year, I’m going to challenge myself.
So the first word I write, I wrote the word alchemy, but it was a while It’s a great word.
It was a little too on the nose because the cabin was called The Alchemist retreat.
So I flipped to the second page or a new page and I wrote peace like P/E A/C E and I was like, that’s to like expected.
It’s like that’s, that’s not it.
And I wrote echo.
And I thought echo is definitely the word.
So then I go back inside the cabin and sit back by the fire with sky.
And I’m like, you know, I don’t always consciously remember my dreams at a level of recall the following morning.
But last night I had this really interesting dreams.
I’m telling her the story.
And I said there was this like ginormous mahogany table with these high tobacco leather backed chairs.
And there’s this figure to my left who’s speaking at the pace and a decibel that almost made you have this visceral reaction.
And this is all happening in my dream the night before.
And there’s a second figure to the right of that figure who’s just sitting with their arms folded over their chest with this like booming presence but completely quiet.
And I look and in the dream, it’s my friend Scott.
And I leap across the table and I fall into his arms and I’m like weeping.
And I can feel him.
I can’t hear him, but I can feel him whispering words of wisdom in my ear and just gave me this total peace.
So like I’m kind of remembering these things backwards in real time.
And then we go to the sound bath.
And so now here I am and I have this transcendent moment where I feel like I’m somewhere between heaven and earth and I’m a very spiritual person.
And so I kind of felt like God speaking and story was the word that emerged.
And my favorite visual of the Echo framework or story is Simon Sinek’s Three Concentric circles of the why, the how, and the what.
And then I’ve kind of layered on this 4th dimension of what I call infinite ambitions or infinite aspirations.
And the whole logic of the echo framework is that we start with human belief system, right?
How do we gather together?
And then how do we advance that?
And then what does that become, right?
But then what I love about this visual is that that’s not the conclusion.
That’s the beginning.
And that’s where we really start to advance our infinite ambitions.
But we still think of it as linear, even when we’re looking at the circles.
But circles aren’t linear.
So the infinite aspirations or infinite ambitions aren’t just sitting at a certain point, they’re infinite.
And so in this moment, I feel this presence of story is your purpose, and not just to tell story, but to make story.
And I had not ever before that moment thought of my life’s work Story.
I had thought of it as creative.
I had thought of it as creating products, creating services.
But I had not ever had a single word that was story until that moment.
And then Fast forward a few months later, my actual role became very focused on story.
Unbeknown to me, it was sort of an ass that came up is, hey, would you like to lead story?
And I was like, obviously, yes.
I have just discovered my purpose just as a complement to that.
It’s so fascinating listening because you’re talking about echo and when I think of echo, I think of ripples, right?
Because it’s the ripples of sound.
And obviously the the reason we connected a year ago or more than a year ago was really much rooted in our joint belief of the power of humanity and more human ways of doing things.
And in my book, I talk about these three pillars. 1 is self-awareness, which is totally what we’ve just been talking about.
Again, who are you?
What makes you tick?
What makes you happy?
How can you live your life with intention?
What does that look like really under truly understanding yourself?
And that takes time.
It takes the pause, it takes time to reflect.
Then it’s interdependence.
We need other people to be able to create, find the answer things.
We cannot do things in a bubble.
We need to call on other contributors and bring in other sectors or other people or other divisions.
And again, that falls into the self-awareness part because you know, ego.
We can’t think that we are the best at everything.
We need to be vulnerable.
We need to be humble.
We need to realize that we need others.
But then it comes this echo piece, which is actually, I call it interconnectedness.
So a decision made in one place, but not just a decision, something done in one place impacts some in another place.
That’s that echo.
But it’s being aware that that power can be used for good.
It can be used for evil as well.
And we, if we’re not careful with the power of what we have access to, those ripples can do amazing things, or they can do not so amazing things.
Well, and it’s interesting for for so many reasons and you articulated it so well.
I think sort of the build on that is this idea that even in this moment when I’m in Savasana doing the sound bath, I’m literally in the echo of sound.
And so the whole just nature of it was like there was a physical experience that was happening that was literally being in the echo.
But then there was also this.
If I think about it, from the origin of human existence, I’m a believer in like God spoke and the universe emerge in this beautiful, intricate way that’s unfathomable, but there’s an echo of that that continues forever.
And The thing is, is all the sort of it all just happened together.
Yeah, literally.
Like I could not have architected that if I try to gajillion times like nor did I know there was that experience was going to happen and I was going to have this sort of moment of enlightenment.
It was just occurred.
And I think why I get so excited about that is because when I’m creating Story, my ultimate hope is that other people, humans that are watching it, start to see themselves in the story, and that this becomes what unlocks and inspires greatness in themselves so that they can truly build the life that they love.
That’s why I love story so much.
And I think it’s it’s the greatest medium to inspire culture.
And culture is one of the most profound ways to shape not only humans at a societal level or at a community level, but also at a very individual level.
Yeah, totally.
So you said something the last time we spoke, which I absolutely loved.
What sounds are you not hearing?
What are we missing right now as individuals or as leaders?
I think we’re at a an interesting inflection point around human agency.
And what really got me thinking about this was an article that was published in the Harvard Business Review around human agency and human judgment.
And there was a survey that was done of a little less than 2000 people.
And in the survey, they found that high agency.
Organizations are utilizing artificial intelligence, especially Gen.
AI and a gentic to augment human judgement, low agency, low optimism.
Organizations are utilizing Gen. and a gentic AI to offload thinking.
And it was very interesting.
You could even put AI aside for a moment because not, you know, we’re not universally using AI.
It’s it’s scaled pretty significantly at this point, but at a global population leveled, they’re still, you know, humans in their day-to-day who are using it less than others and others you’re using it more than others.
And so that’s kind of why I surface and and name the role of technology and then specifically the examples of Gen. and a genetic.
But the role of agency, I think is becoming more important than ever because of how rapidly technology is advancing.
If we go back about 20 years and we look at how much technology has reshaped culture and our daily lives, I mean, we’re talking we went to a movie store like a Blockbuster.
We went to a bank, deposited a check.
We used MapQuest or a Rand McNally paper map.
Like this is not that long ago when the way that we interacted with the world around us and how we navigated our reality was just fundamentally different, right?
We were social media was was barely even part of our daily lives like Facebook, you still had to havea.edu to even get an account.
So we’re talking about not that long ago, incredible transformation technologically, the advancement of the smartphone and the development of the smartphone, streaming music and film and television, how that democratized access to content.
Then we get into the role of social media and how it has become such a common part of our daily activities and has almost given us even more attachment to our device.
There was an interesting study around people’s relationship with their phone and the study found that 85% of the time we were never more than 15 feet away from our device.
And what’s so fascinating about this is that study was done in 2010.
So we’re only a few years in at that point to the smartphone really playing an active role.
And social media is so new at this point that it’s it’s not as mainstream right, as it is today and as an enrollment in the fabric of society yet is as it is today.
But we look at the evolution of social media, we look at the role of streaming.
I mean, we look at the idea that brands were able to build trust and confidence between humans and products.
If I were to say in 2005, 2006, you’re going to get in strangers cars or you’re going to stay in strangers homes, you would be like, you’re out of your mind.
But now we use Uber and Airbnb on a regular basis and literally don’t even think about it anymore.
And fundamentally, it’s because they were able to build trust and confidence in a brand and they were able to activate a variety of technologies and a combinatorial manner that brought these different technologies together and made these systems possible.
And so when we then bring in technologies like a genetic and generative AI as another part of the conversation, I am a huge proponent that these are tools and they are very powerful tools that have a lot of opportunity to help create an even more flourishing society.
And sure, with every good there can be negatives.
And we all know that.
I’m not here to argue that case.
But what I will say is that is why the last 20 years are going to shape the next 200 or the next 2000 in a very powerful way because there’s so much abundance of access to intelligence, to information, to content.
And that is why I believe human agency and, and being intentional about building the life that you want to build and being introspective and shaping your life and being a rebellious optimist and really carving your own path in the universe starts with metacognition, thinking about thinking.
It really layers in the role of introspective living where I check in with myself every single day.
So important to really stop and reflect on that because I mean, as we’re talking about AI and that actually brings me to my next question.
But knowing that the power that these tech companies and these algorithms have over us, and if we give that power completely over, we become a slave to that.
And so this intentionality, this agency, being aware of who we are, what do we stand for, what is important to us?
Because even when it comes to things like the algorithm, you then can control that even more if that is becoming part of your day-to-day routine.
Well, and you know, that’s interesting.
Maybe that’s almost like a litmus test or a benchmark for self is, is the algorithm deciding what I’m seeing or am I deciding the role that the algorithm’s going to play?
Like we have to choose to put definition around the technology or it’s just going to do what it’s designed to do.
But it all, you also have the opportunity to shake that.
Like you can go into your search feed and you can intentionally search for things that you’re actually interested in and you can follow the accounts that you actually want to follow and unfollow the ones that you don’t.
But I think it also goes back to a fundamental principle of saying yes to the right things and saying no to the right things.
I remember 3 or 4 years ago now.
At the time I was talking with a friend of mine and I’d I’d shared with them.
This year we’re going to master 3 words Yes and no.
Nice.
Yeah, When to say yes, when to say and and when to say no, because all of them are important.
I’m really good at the yes.
In the end, I am abysmal at the no.
Yeah.
And it, I mean, without going into too much detail, having gone through the last year, and sometimes it does take pretty hefty challenges in our lives, not even hefty ones actually.
Sometimes they can just be small challenges.
But you know, it is those moments that sort of shake you up a little bit and get you to sort of there’s something out of balance.
What is that?
Or why did I respond in that way or hold on a second, this is not cool.
Whatever it might be.
It’s interesting how when you discover those boundaries and you suddenly realize they are really important.
And no is a very important word to master.
And when you do, suddenly agency over your life, right?
And what it does right is that it creates space for the right yeses because you’ve said no to the right nose.
And that’s what actually opens up the opportunity for the serendipity of the universe to really conspire with you in ways that are truly helping you to fulfill your purpose.
So reflecting on this intersection of AI in creativity, human experience, as intelligence becomes more abundant, what becomes more uniquely human?
I would say our humanity becomes more uniquely human.
I think that’s one of the most interesting aspects of what I’m starting to see more and more of is technology is actually bringing us closer to our humanity rather than pushing us further away from it.
And you’re already seeing examples in society where people are rejecting some of the AI generated types of content because they just don’t feel authentic.
And so I think authenticity becomes more prevalent, morality, spirituality.
I really am starting to see it already.
I’m seeing it in very small ways.
It to me, it’s feels very obvious because it’s happening in the nuances, it’s happening in the micro moments of daily living.
And so that’s what I’m seeing.
And I’m getting so excited about it because every other time in human history when we’ve had major advancements, there’s always a hype cycle.
I think this hype cycle might be faster than any other because it’s scaling faster.
And so it might actually hit that peak hype and then sort of level out at a faster rate because of the speed at which it’s been evolving.
Like Gen.
AI, for example, took 60 days to reach 100 million users.
Instagram took 4 1/2 years to reach 100 million users.
So the speed’s a lot faster, which means that the hype cycles maybe as well.
The Armaze example I thought was absolutely fascinating, where they intentionally found an artist to hand draw their campaign launch in 2026 because they wanted it to be so obvious that it was made by a human.
Because they were finding that people were not interacting with their brand at the same emotional level that they had previously when they weren’t using AI generated content.
Which is fascinating because it’s so easy to say, Oh well, you know, people aren’t going to know the difference, whatever it might be.
But I think there’s just this.
Well, we do, I do.
You do.
Just reflect on yourself now.
There’s a lot of fear around AI replacing us, but we’ve now just talked about, you know, human agency and judgement and spirituality.
Also just the importance of authenticity, of human connection.
How do you see this moment differently than perhaps many people are seeing it?
I believe that human agency is a core part of it, and our human story plays a very real role in society.
And I think it’s necessary that we scale human agency because that will be the great multiplier that will ensure that we decide and we name the role that the tool is going to play in society rather than the tool deciding for us.
But if we don’t choose to take agency over our own lives and then agency over our work, then we’re sort of creating space for the tools to sort of make decisions on behalf of theoretically.
I also find that there requires a very sophisticated system to integrate that culturally, and it also requires humans to operate with those systems in a way that is intelligent, that’s of sound mind, that really understands the intricacies of the culture of the organization.
And this is almost like at an individual organizational level, right?
And then deciding the best ways to engage, interact with those tools and putting definition and naming around where and when and why and how the tool should be used and where and when and why and how the tool should not be used.
Because AI is not necessarily designed to do every function inside of an organization.
There are things that it does really well and there are things that it does less well.
And it should be that way, right?
The idea that AI is just going to replace, you need to sit down with yourself and you need to really think through what does it actually have a propensity to not necessarily replace, but help make better.
And then there also has to be an ROI to it as well.
There’s a lot of cost to AI.
It can be very expensive.
Look at Open AI shutting down Sora.
They’re just fundamentally wasn’t an ROI.
An article I read the other day said they were spending $1,000,000 a day just to keep the program running, and the return just wasn’t there.
So there’s just very real factors that have been proven about what technologies in the infrastructure of a culture, of Society, of an organization are actually valuable and where and why and how we leverage them.
Totally.
And for some reason, AI is getting this narrative wrapped around it, that it’s just the great technology that’s going to fundamentally reshape Everything Everywhere all at once.
And I challenge it.
And I challenge it hard, not because I’m afraid of it.
I love using it.
I use AI every single day in a variety of mediums.
It’s not out of fear that I’m saying this.
It’s actually quite the opposite.
It’s out of excitement and joy, but also like kind of a grounded realism rather than an idealism that’s completely fabricated based on a narrative that’s being shaped in society.
Totally.
And, and I just, I echo that it was interesting.
I had a conversation with somebody not that long ago and I, I was in the process of hiring a person who now is working for me.
And first of all, she doesn’t really know that much about my business.
And she worked in big tech company.
And so she does understand a lot about AI, probably more than me.
I, I, but she said, no, no, you, you do not need to hire that person.
AI can do everything for you.
I was like, well, I can tell you right now that AI cannot do what I’m hiring this person to do.
I mean, I and I don’t want AI to do this.
And actually, I am a very human business.
And for a number of reasons, this role cannot be, it will never be AI.
And it’s just, yeah, I think it’s really important.
Back to agency, back to self-awareness, back to all of these things that we have talked about on this conversation.
I think it’s important to know where you stand to know what you’re about to know where your skills like, to know what you’re doing and then intentionally move forward with what makes sense to you at that time in that context, but blindly just moving forward with whatever it might be.
AI also, it’s part of that.
It actually can probably just be more costly or dangerous.
And I think agency and intentionality back to what we talked about right at the beginning is so, so important.
And that self-awareness.
Well, and I, I was thinking about this the other day because the conversation I often hear is just the the narrative of Gen.
AI and a gentek are going to replace.
So it’s seen as a take away.
It’s seen, it’s scarcity mindset, which is very ingrained in our humanity.
But if we flip the narrative to an abundance mindset and we say, what if it’s an and what if it’s a build rather than a break?
And not that there won’t be some level of disruption and some level of breaking down systems and challenging and questioning of where and when and why and how we need to adapt, evolve, change.
Like that’s how we advance as a species.
That’s how we glow up.
That’s how we become better.
So the idea of breaking is always seen as a negative, but I think it’s more of a break to build rather than a build to break.
So the role of disruption, I keep thinking about how much more we can do.
If I have, you know, 10 humans on my team and ten of us now have access to these tools like Gen. and a gentic AI.
How much can we create?
How fast can we create?
How much more can we build together?
How much more can we advance society and culture onward?
Rather than just having a scarcity mindset of I’m just going to maintain the status quo, instead have an abundance mindset of with these tools, I can do infinitely more than I ever imagined possible.
Whereas before I could advance three to four infinite aspirations, now I can advance hundreds of infinite aspirations.
And that starts to solve for just like the fundamental layers of society that historically have been overlooked or de prioritized simply because we only have so much time.
And you actually touched on the word time earlier.
And I was thinking a lot about that.
And I’ve been thinking about how time is another nuance that gets very little airtime in our daily thinking, but it’s one of the most powerful layers of our entire species.
You want to build wealth.
What you need time because it time is required to actually develop your portfolio.
You want to be healthy.
It literally requires time because you have to invest in yourself and eating the right clean, Whole Foods and getting the exercise in and having the mental break time to pause and to work on your brain health.
Everything in life requires time.
And so I think in a very similar way, these tools have the ability to give us some more time to do even more meaningful work.
But we have to decide that’s what we’re going to use the tools for.
How do we create more equity?
How do we create more space for belonging?
How do we start to fundamentally reshape the fundamentals of a society and of a culture and just really wonder what more can we do with the technology rather than how do we continue to just stay in the status quo?
And so as we think back about the early part of the conversation on that’s why rebellious optimism matters, that’s why agency is essential.
And that’s why bringing our own belief system forward to saying and truly believing in an empowered way that I’m going to decide how I assign these tools to my life and my work.
And I’m going to use that intelligence in a way that starts to advance far more than I could have done before these tools existed.
We have come to the end of our podcast, but I don’t want to finish until asking you if you could leave people who are listening with a final thought or a question or an idea that they might want to carry with them.
I think it goes back to something that you and I discussed in our last conversation, and it was a question that my therapist asked me, Brad, how do you define God?
And immediately I just said the inevitability of intention.
And as I’ve reflected on that more over several weeks, what I realized is as humans, we’re very complex.
We’re sort of this contradiction, this enigma within ourselves that where there’s always tension and tension is for some reason perceived negatively.
But really, I think tension can be a very powerful force multiplier.
And so I guess my question that I would love to leave is what is the tension within self, the contradictions, the parts of you that sort of are this enigma?
And rather than seeing it as a net negative, how do you start to reshape your thinking such that those conflicting parts of you actually can continue to be in tension, but work together to create and build a better version of yourself, a better life, and a more beautiful reality?
Beautiful, but I have absolutely adored this conversation.
I could keep talking for another hour.
Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you just you do want to leave our listeners with?
I guess I would maybe say like we’ve only touched on certain things, right?
We haven’t had an absolute narrative.
I mean, and maybe it’s important that it is a bit unfinished.
Like the, you know, the conversation on AII could spend hours on the on the philosophical principles that I believe are essential for how we actually build that in.
And at the same time, we’re intentionally just rolling around and sort of the Bessie beauty and wonder of it all right now in its current state.
Yeah, we’re.
Going to have to have another conversation and it and it, you know, next year, we’ll, we’ll do this again and we’ll see where things have evolved too and see what your thoughts are on everything.
I think that would be a good idea.
Thank you so, so, so much for your time and for joining me.
I’ve adored it.
Oh my gosh, saying this is I’m like on a high now.
I’m like ready to go talk for everything.
Hey everyone, it’s Philippa again.
I hope you enjoyed listening.
Now if you’d like to dive a little deeper, why don’t you check out my book Return on Humanity Leadership Lessons from all Corners of the world.
It reveals how putting people first is actually the smartest, most competitive business strategy of our time.
And if you’re ready to breakthrough disengagement, spark innovation and build agile, purpose driven teams.
Let’s talk.
Whether it’s workshops off sites, keynotes, or full scale leadership programs, we’ll shift paradigms and create the change you’re looking for.
Visit philippajwhite.com to learn more or get in touch.
A huge thanks to Benna Vieira for the music and to Pete Morgan for his help with the editing.
Until next time, and I hope we’ll meet again soon.
