#313 | Joscha Bach; Mistaken Compassion, Living During a Revolution & Fighting Hopelessness

About this episode

A solo "As the Crow Flies" episode where Vance strings together three loosely connected reflections on time. First, a conversation with his friend Kate Crosby, a self-described "light philosopher," reframes sunburn as literal accelerated time exposure via faster ultraviolet wavelengths, which Vance turns into a personal anti-aging motivation tied to being present for his daughters. Second, he recounts an incense-based sensory experience hosted by a guest named John Lanius, describing how shifting scents shifted the mood of a room of strangers and produced an intensely present-focused, non-replicable experience — with a plug for an upcoming St. Louis event. Third, and most substantively, he works through a thought experiment on communicating danger across 100,000 years (nuclear waste burial signage) and pivots that directly into Legacy Interviews' archival problem: how to make family-history recordings survive for generations. He details the technical solution — M-discs (porcelain-based Blu-ray media developed by BYU scientists for Mormon genealogical archives, validated by the Department of Defense) — and a design solution, embedding the M-disc in a leather-bound "family Bible"-style autobiography book so it is passed down rather than discarded. The episode closes with teasers for upcoming guests (a construction-worker mountain climber, farmer Zach Smith) and a new hire, filmmaker Sean Theon.

“So then he progresses through this entire experience and he starts taking one away and then putting another one on and you watch the mood of the other people around you rise and then fall.”

“How will you make sure that this video that I'm giving to clients that contains their loved ones sharing stories and ideas and things that they wanna make sure future generations know about so that that way those future generations can understand where they came from in their history?”

“What if not only would you take this autobiography, this book, the written words that you had of your family passing down wisdom that would be valuable to them. But what if you could make the book itself, the box that contained the DVD?”

Key moments

• Vance introduces new Legacy Interviews hire Sean Theon, a filmmaker, and frames the solo format as a response to editor workload.
• Kate Crosby's "time is light" framework — sunburn reframed as literally faster time exposure via UV wavelength speed.
• The incense experience with John Lanius — mood of a room of strangers visibly rising and falling as scents change.
• The 100,000-year nuclear waste signage thought experiment — language, symbols, and taboo all fail as long-term warning systems.
• Pivot from the thought experiment to Legacy Interviews' own archival problem — USB drives fail in 15 years, DVDs degrade in 30.
• Introduction of the M-disc — BYU-developed, porcelain-based, DOD-validated, thousand-year archival medium.
• The solution of embedding the M-disc inside a leather-bound family-Bible-style autobiography book so it survives via cultural reverence rather than technical durability alone.
• Teasers for upcoming guests — a mountain-climbing construction worker and regenerative-farming guest Zach Smith.

Notable quotes

“It's not gonna be USB drives because they go away in 15 years. It's not gonna be a DVD because they actually degrade in 30 years.”

“What if you could make the book itself, the box that contained the DVD?”

“Think about how quickly the English language changes... a thousand years from now, are you so certain that the writing there... would mean anything at all to you?”

“Time is light. Light is time... your skin is actually literally experiencing time faster than it would if you were sitting somewhere not in the sun.”