Geneticist Explains How Your Thyroid Controls Your Body's Biological Clock

Vance Crowe [00:00:11] All right. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. As many of you that listen to the podcast know, I made some changes back in January because I had had kind of a, a big health scare and it's, it's gone all the way to the point of it being cancerous and needing to get it removed. And a lot of that has prompted me to have podcasts where the people I bring on are going to have the kinds of conversations with me that if for some reason something were to happen to me, I would want my kids to hear these. And if I'm gonna be saying, Hey, dad's leaving something behind for you, although I'm, I'm not thinking that I'm going to die from this cancer, but, you know, when you think about your mortality, then I want to bring on people that have really interesting things to talk about and talk as plainly as we can. And that led me to today's guest, who is Kate Crosby. Kate, welcome to the show.

Kate Crosby [00:01:08] Hi. Nice to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:01:10] Well, and, and so Kate and I talk all the time. Kate is an amazing person from her credentials. She is a geneticist, she's also an expert in light. She does a ton of stuff on light recipes and prompting plants to come to fruit faster. She has all these fascinating ideas. And I talk to Kate almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day about all kinds of crazy ideas. So I thought I would bring her on and talk about some of the things that she and I normally talk about in our regular lives and, and just let you in on it and hopefully create an artifact that if my girls are ever like, oh, I'd love to hear my dad talking to godmother, Kate, I I'm gonna go listen to that. So Kate, where I wanted to start it with is, I am going through this. So I, I got this mass on my neck. They do an ultrasound of it. They're like, Ooh, that's five and a half centimeters big. Then they do a fine needle aspiration and they're like, Hey, 30% chance of malignancy, but we're gonna do the genetics test. Genetics test comes back and they're like, it's only 5%, but we think you probably should get your thyroid removed. So in one week from today, I'm supposed to get half of my thyroid removed because there's a growth on it. What in the world does a thyroid do and what, what is the consequence of only having half of one?

Kate Crosby [00:02:38] I, so I'm not a human doctor or human biologist, but as best as I can tell, and the reading I've done myself and, and some previous conditions I've had myself, the thyroid is like your, your clock. It's, it's what releases the control hormone that kind of tells your other hormones what to do. And so it kind of is your way of telling time. If you have a lumpectomy or a half lumpectomy, you'll have to take a drug to help you regulate time. And

Vance Crowe [00:03:13] They've told me that I own that, that males largely don't have to something like 80% of males, half a thyroid can do it. But I kind of don't believe that. I kind of think like, once I do this, I'm gonna be on weird medication, so I'll be on synthetic time. How does your, how, how does your thyroid control time? What does that even mean?

Kate Crosby [00:03:33] As far as I understand it, it secretes T four, so it doesn't secrete the sex hormones. It's like a controller for the sex hormones. So T four gets converted to T three and then that kinda kicks off a whole bunch of other things. So that's thyroid stimulating hormone. And you're right, it depends on how much is removed. 'cause sometimes it's fine and it will continue to secrete at normal levels, in which case you're golden. But if not, in general, I think they, they have you take a drug to help you tell time and your body and your hormones to tell time.

Vance Crowe [00:04:10] What does that mean? Like, you mean like, I know we, we sometimes will use melatonin to, to like prompt falling asleep because your body right before you go to bed releases this hormone. Yep. Is that what you mean? Like it's it's like regulating when you wake up and when you go to sleep and things like that.

Kate Crosby [00:04:28] Yeah. So it, it helps kind of regulate the signals to your, your gonna answer your testes if you're male and your, your ovaries if you're female. And I think there is both diurnal cycle, there's mostly diurnal cycles for males. And I think for females it's monthly and possibly also seasonal. And so if those levels kind of start to fluctuate, you might get things like brain fog or tiredness at the wrong times or wakefulness at the wrong times. There are other hormones in the human body that are generic, like cortisol and adrenaline as well. And so if that starts to kind of, if you find yourself kind of stressed out at the wrong time, that can be kind of like a misfiring of time, you know? So I would say it's one of those things that you kind of need to watch everybody. There's a lot of people that get thyroid nodules. I think it's actually really common as you age. And so ultimately it's just kind of a, a feeling like, am I feeling outta time? I would say like, am I stressed at the wrong time? Am I not sleeping? Am I having kind of brain fog because I'm tired?

Vance Crowe [00:05:47] I think like the worst thing that's happened to me as an adult, even outside of like, I was in a ton of pain. I had shingles, but I was not able to sleep and insomnia for four months was terrible. That changed my personality so radically. And I've kind of chalked it up to like some of the pain meds I was on and, and, but like to think I might be removing my thyroid and this may prompt. That sort of thing seems really scary. Like should, the, the only reason I'm trying to get my surgery in now is, you know, this, but like residents, the people that are helping the surgeon, like the, they're not, they're not quite students anymore. They're like, they're a doctor, but they're not a full doctor. They are the ones that do the most screw ups. Right. And new residents come in in July. And so the reason I'm doing this in May is because if I wait until July, now all of a sudden you're having new people that have never done this surgery and maybe they're only gonna do five in their life before they go on to do, you know, something with a completely different part of the body. And so like, there's good research and just anecdotal evidence like, get your surgery before July, but maybe I am rushing it too much. 'cause IIII don't really have like a, a counterpoint. What would you do if you weren't removing half of the thyroid? Eat more apples or something?

Kate Crosby [00:07:13] I don't know. I don't know the answer. I think it's monitoring your thyroid stimulating hormone and making sure that's normal if it starts to not be normal either. Either because some of those cells are malignant. I I think that's something to kind of follow up with your doctor and just kind of monitor it every six to 12 months. But I think it's up to the person too and their family. So I don't wanna, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:07:44] I'm not asking for medical advice more than anything. Like it's very difficult to learn very much about this. I mean, the only reason I feel like I'm confident at all in it is 'cause of ai. Yeah. And you can just sit there and just keep asking AI questions. But there is a problem with ai. It wants to agree with you. So it'll be like, yeah, I think this is a great idea to get this surgery. And then you're like, why don't you steal man? And it's like, oh, this is a terrible idea. Don't, don't get that surgery. And then you're like, all right, what is the logical thing? And humans, there's some amount of logic that is also emotional. Like, all right, where, where are we gonna, how are we gonna make this subjective decision?

Kate Crosby [00:08:20] Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know where that answer lies to be honest. You're right about ai. It can be sycophant, it can be really confrontational and you're just kind of like, oh, the where's the gray? Gimme the gray answer that I can sort of think about. And that doesn't really exist. And so we use our friends and family members maybe a bit as that influence our decisions and maybe our own voice. So it's kind of a gut, a gut call at the end of the day.

Vance Crowe [00:08:52] So as a function of doing all this thyroid stuff, I had to go get these blood tests taken and one of the things came out that shocked me, which is that I'm low on vitamin D and in you and i's conversations about this, you're like, you know, vitamin D comes if you get enough is it's like certain types of oils and sunlight. What does vitamin D do in the body?

Kate Crosby [00:09:18] Vitamin DI mean, for one thing it, it helps a bit regulate sleep. It does help regulate hormones. And I didn't know

Vance Crowe [00:09:28] That it regulates sleep.

Kate Crosby [00:09:30] It helps with immunity, the immune system. It needs magnesium to be mobile in the body. You can get it from sunlight and depending on your Fitzpatrick skin type, which is a way of saying how light or dark you are without, you know, it's kind of a latitudinal gradient really, of where your ancestral population kind of comes from. On earth, you may only need 30 minutes of sun exposure at a certain age. If you're obese, typically you can't absorb as much sunlight, so you need to stay, you would need either to stay out longer or to get it from dietary sources. So it's, it's, it's pretty important. Yeah. Being

Vance Crowe [00:10:15] Obese limits how much sunlight you can absorb. What is that? What's up with that? Just that you're fatter. What, what's going on?

Kate Crosby [00:10:22] It's, well, it, it is a, it is kind of a fat soluble vitamin. So in some ways you'd be like, well, if they're fat, like, and you're just, you know, it's hitting your keratinocytes, shouldn't, shouldn't that make more of it? And it appears the opposite is true. The other thing is, I don't know if we exactly know if vitamin D is responsible for a lot of what we see or magnesium is. 'cause both are paired. So it's not necessarily, it's not just, it's not just one thing. It's kind of like a, a lot of these vitamins pair with metals, it's very weird. Vitamin C pairs with iron. And so if you want iron to be more absorbed, you have to have enough vitamin C. Magnesium is kind of weird. And that it's between synapses, neuron synapses. It is what, and this is just me reading through kind of some AI stuff and trying to map it onto human human neurons and maybe it's over indexing, but it basically stops you from overriding crazy memories between synapses. So maybe it, it in and of itself is a way of conducting time between neurons. I'm not sure, but it's, it's pretty interesting. So you would you do, oh, sorry.

Vance Crowe [00:11:41] Well no, that's, this is wild. I, I think a lot about time because I, I remember reading about if you ask an older person like, hey, count off 60 seconds and then let me know. And somebody that's 35 or under the person 35 or under is going to, is gonna get it way more often. You're gonna say, count to 60, you know, tell me when one minute's gone up and they get it. But the older you get beyond 35, the longer you think an an hour last or a minute lasts. So like a minute will go and you will have gone for, I think it, it's, they'll say longer, right? Or do they say much shorter? I don't remember.

Kate Crosby [00:12:19] I think it's longer. And it, it's interesting our perception of time at our different ages, it may have to do with how these ions flow between neurons and how quickly those neurons connect. I think I was talking to you about something recently and just to let listeners in. So I recently discovered that by doing a lot of exercise, you can uncover memories that were real. And it, it might be from the peripheral nervous system, like there's memory storage potentially between neurons that haven't connected in a while, but once they connect it comes back. So I think that's, that's pretty interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:13:04] And that happens as a function of exercise. Like you go out for a jog and you start remembering things. What does that mean?

Kate Crosby [00:13:10] Intense exercise. So I think when you're asking a lot of your peripheral nervous system, so if I'm trying to get my heart rate into the upper zones, up upper work zones of like zone four, zone five, we call it. So 160 base pair or beats per minute, not base pairs, beats per minute. And you're, you're kind of, you know, doing that. Your nerves are, are firing at a, they kind of have to fire faster. So it's just like connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, leg, move leg, move leg move, heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat. And so you, you get I think more connection, more electricity being generated in the body while doing that. Even in terms of watts. Like if you put a power meter on a bicycle, you will see the wattage go up as you exert and then your memories start to come back. It's almost like you're an AI data center just shooting in the sugar fuel. Just all your memories start coming back. Not all of them, but like, it's, it's interesting. That's an effect of it.

Vance Crowe [00:14:16] And this was something that you read about and then you experienced or you experienced and then you went and looked it up?

Kate Crosby [00:14:22] I experienced it and then I looked it up. I, I remembered someone in great detail that was completely inconsequential and I was just like, and I remembered the name exactly and the man mannerisms of this person. And I was just like, was the, was she real? Was this person real? And it was like, yes, actually she was. And it was like, oh my gosh, I had completely forgotten about this person. And since kind of becoming more regimented about exercise, more memories have started to come back. And I, it's just, it's very interesting. I went and read about it after that. This is a thing. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:15:01] I think one of the things that strikes me about your approach lately, you're always dabbling in exploring in different ways of thinking about stuff. But to right now you're like way into time and like time as a perception or time as a mechan. Like how does the human body keep time? Yeah, yeah. What, what's the, what's the interesting thing you've been exploring in this area lately?

Kate Crosby [00:15:31] I mean, I think time for humans I guess is, I guess I would view it almost the same way as I view plants. So that's kind of how can't experience anything beyond where they are. They're kind of, they can't move, so they're sort of in the ground and whatever photo period they get at whatever latitude, that's what, that's what they have to deal with. And so for them, they're very adapted typically to photo periodic and energy regimes of where they are and also what the spectra is at that place. I think humans are somewhat the same way, but we don't like to think that. So when we move to a different place, let's, let's say we move from northern Europe to the deep south, which was common for say Scottish immigrants. We often maybe don't think about what has changed about our environment in terms of time. And one of the things that's always been interesting to me, and I've wondered about this since I've kind of come gradually more and more south, is what has changed about, about me and how I perceive time moving and, and what happens to my body as I age at a different latitude.

Kate Crosby [00:17:03] How does it, how does it experience it? So there's some fascinating patterns there. I don't know if you wanna explore this.

Vance Crowe [00:17:11] Yeah, no. So, so let's just like, people often think like, oh, I moved from let's say Scotland and my people moved from, they were living somewhere up in the highlands and now they're living in North Carolina. So it's a lot further south now. The the days get way hotter. There is more direct sunlight than what they would've gotten. And then also the seasonal changes, like it'd be much less abrupt. You know, North Carolina doesn't have snow 'cause they're, they get more sunshine, more direct light during the wintertime than you would in Scotland. And you are saying when people moved either just as like, hey, I'm moving, I I'm the, I'm the actual immigrant from Scotland to North Carolina or over generations because their bodies were well adapted to living in Scotland. Now living in North Carolina, their bodies are going to age differently as a function of they have their own Scottish genetics being played out in North Carolina's environment and that's gonna manifest in a different way. And you, you suspect their, in their internal clock of time is somehow different.

Kate Crosby [00:18:22] Yeah. And I think the easiest way to maybe look at it, and I've, I've done some cursory data mining on this. We don't really have great data, I would say like prior to 1900, but the most immediate obvious thing that sticks out is fertility rate tends to go up as you move south for populations. And that, that sort of makes some sense. Your food sources change and I think you're, you know, sunlight changes and I think this is just a suspicion, but I would tend to think that in the winter when you're starving and maybe you're living kind of a more keto diet lifestyle like fasting and, and only consuming the fat that you've already stored or the fat that you're eating because you're not really,

Vance Crowe [00:19:15] You're not eating fresh fruits, you're not eating that many vegetables. If you are, they're very, very low in carbohydrates. Like, and it's gonna be a lot more foods that come that can be shelf stable. So either live protein or fats that have been stored over a longer period of time or milk that you could get consistently, but not a lot of carbs there.

Kate Crosby [00:19:37] Not a lot of carbs, not a lot of sugar. Absolutely. And so it does look like also that, you know, if if you're starving, if you're literally starving before Easter and the first spring egg, it's maybe not great for your uls to try and conceive and grow a child. So maybe those les are of lesser quality at that time of year in that location. But suddenly when you're in the light and you're, you're eating, you're giving your body signals like, hey, I'm eating an orange in February. It might be like, oh, okay, well that's great. Your glucose is is kinda up so I don't have to worry about that. Now I can do some other things. And I think that's something we really haven't explored. I, I tend to think people can go anywhere and just continue as they are.

Vance Crowe [00:20:31] Well you almost think like, oh this is better. I mean, like Anne and I talk all the time about like, oh my gosh, children, you have no idea. I never had berries in, in January. You should be thanking the Lord. Like this is so much better than what we had. And if you think, you know, a hundred years ago, the most they would've had would've been canned, but that would've been a lot better than 200 years ago when they didn't have canning. But better being maybe in a misnomer there, right? Because it could be that your bodies are adapted to a certain style and that when you start changing that if you start e consuming a bunch of fresh oranges with a bunch of easy sugars to get to and a bunch of vitamin C, it's absorption probably won't be the same as it would be if you were getting it in the summertime because it isn't paired with other things that you would get it absorbed with. And this may knock your clock off Yeah. In weird ways and prompt your body to do things that you don't, that that we aren't, we don't even consider, we don't even associate with how we think about diet.

Kate Crosby [00:21:39] That's right. That's exactly right. And it's not to say that there aren't some generalists out there, there are gonna be super generalists that can move everywhere and, and maybe have a little bit more adaptation. But there's, I think, you know, what we see in terms of extreme diets in North America, generally in Canada and the US is, is trying to fit somewhere. Like, I'm gonna do this, this, this keto style diet. I'm gonna do this honey diet, like I'm gonna prioritize carbs. Well, what's telling you to do that? Like where do you get the reinforcement mechanism? What season is it that you're doing it in, kind of, and so like how do you get like good reinforcement or don't you, and I think like being aware of these, how these things work together, the season with the diet versus where you came from might help you better tailor what you need.

Vance Crowe [00:22:36] Yeah. I mean, and nobody talks about diet that way, but I re I remember when I did keto to great success of losing weight, I, I started in the springtime and it was the worst time to do it because it meant all summer long as there were these great simple sugars, fruits and things that I could eat. I didn't eat any of them. And then winter came along and oh, here's sweets and candies and cakes and whatever. And I get off a keto and it was like the worst yo-yo i, I could have possibly done, but it would make sense to me if like around December you really wind down carbs and you, and you amp up this kind of more like keto diet that that would match my Irish and German Swiss heritage that that's probably a lot more similar to what they ate for a few thousand years.

Kate Crosby [00:23:24] Yeah. And fat is also really great for the winter. It's a great insulator. Nine calories per I think per gram versus four calories for protein and carbs. So you get a lot more bang for your buck like in the winter when you need it to heat yourself up. So I think it makes sense that way too.

Vance Crowe [00:23:43] What do you think, I saw the other day this, this guy talking about, oh, you shouldn't wear sunglasses that you will sunburn more frequently if you wear sunglasses. What do you think of this?

Kate Crosby [00:23:56] There is, I mean there's this, this phenomenon in these businesses for, for white people, especially Norway has a really high incidence of skin cancer. And you're probably familiar with the phenomenon of like northerners going south, at least in Canada, my family, they're always like, I need to go south, I need the light. But now there's these services instead of calling themselves tanning services, they call themselves photo hardening where you can kind of go and prime your skin and eyes to absorb a higher wavelength of light so that you're not immediately bombarding your, your skin and your eyes with really intense UVA and possibly UVB radiation, which is harmful. Like it, it is eventually harmful but you also need it for vitamin D. So the amount of time that you spend in it, let's say if you spent all day in it and you came from an environment where it was just winter. And that's generally what people do. They go south, they spend an entire week on the beach and they just get red like a lobster and, and they haven't really like slowly adapted in. So you'll find like people in Florida and California, even if they are of European ancestry, have have less skin cancer rates because they have that gradual adaptation in, in spring and fall as opposed to like straight, it's winter now and now now you're gonna blast.

Kate Crosby [00:25:30] Now we're gonna blast you that you get with spring breakers or snowbirds in Canada.

Vance Crowe [00:25:36] So I mean sunning is something like I, you naturally feel it, right? You get out in the sun and at least if you get some you're like, ah, this, this feels, you know, rejuvenating in some way. I also see people talking about, and this get kind of like, you know, intimate or whatever, but people sunning their, how do you, how do you even pronounce it perineum? They're, they're like, is that, is that your, is that your asshole? Like it like it's,

Kate Crosby [00:26:04] I think it's what's commonly referred to as the taint.

Vance Crowe [00:26:07] It's the space between your, your testicles and your and your anus, right? And so the what I've read is that men that do this get higher degrees of testosterone. But that seems to me like what evolutionary process did that come from, right? Like were people actually like going and laying out in this way or was it that they were naked, they didn't have any loin cloth on, do you think this is all just bullshit and they're trying to trick people into going and laying naked out in their backyards?

Kate Crosby [00:26:38] I'm not sure. I mean it's a stress response. It's kind of like, you know, going to sauna and just kinda heat shocking yourself and then jumping in a cold plunge and cold shocking yourself. So a little bit of stress maybe is good for the hormones. I don't know if I would sit out there for like two or three hours.

Vance Crowe [00:26:57] You're probably not a good thing to do in the afternoon. Might be a good infrared morning thing or evening thing. But it just, I, I see it now all the time and I wonder, are you guys fucking with me? Or like, is this really like, 'cause people will be like, man is life changing, this is just great. And I think like even if you have a pretty private place, the idea that you would somehow adjust yourself so that you could sun that particular area of your body seems like it's a trick. Like April Fools.

Kate Crosby [00:27:24] Yeah, it's, I I I think a little bit of stress, everything in moderation. I don't really judge. 'cause I, I have had these effects. Not quite that one in moderation is great. Definitely spent time in saunas and cold plunges. But after about the fourth cycle, you're like, that's enough. I'm gonna go home. Maybe I'll do it a week later. Seems to be about the right rhythm. Nothing needs to be, maybe not nothing, but I don't know if everything needs to be 24 7, 365 days a year. I think that's what we've gotten used to.

Vance Crowe [00:27:58] Yeah, maybe there's some good times to send your perineum and then, and that's, it's a certain time of year, so there should probably be rituals. So I've been talking a ton about rituals lately and you listened to the podcast I did with Shay Foulk, but about like, there's some really interesting things in Catholicism that I think drives Protestants crazy where you're like, yeah, but where in the Bible is using this frankincense on these special holidays and you know, where, where in the Bible does this thing do? But there's like the ritual of it seems to be like a Chesterton's fence. Like I don't know exactly why they do this, but the fact that they do it when you do it there, there's benefits to it. There's like things that connect and seem right?

Kate Crosby [00:28:48] Yeah, yeah. I mean I, so you know, I was raised Catholic, but I have to, I have to, I don't have to, I often interact with Protestants in the States and, 'cause I think that that's sort of the major European founding, you know, Episcopal, Episcopal Presbyterian, Lutheran. And for a while I think I had looked this up, my, my dad told me about this, I didn't believe him, but there was all this anti-Catholic propaganda in the early 19 hundreds, like crazy posters in the states. Like, you know, no dogs, no blacks, no Irish, 'cause they were Catholic. And then like the papal plot to take over the states, there's all the, these cartoons like you can go and look this up. But I, I'm from Canada originally and, and so the province I grew up in was primarily Catholic Irish and Scottish Catholic. And so I just didn't have a conception, I didn't grow up with Protestants. Like I just didn't. And you know, meeting Protestants has been an interesting experience for me and, and learning how to communicate with them. And I'm not great at it, but I'm getting better every day.

Vance Crowe [00:30:16] So what do you do you make the comparison, what is your people's style relative to the Protestant style of communication?

Kate Crosby [00:30:24] So I think that faith is almost a software for ancestral environments. And if you know a person's faith more than their ethnicity or any other ident ident identity category, it maybe becomes a little bit easier to understand and, and communicate. So I, I was looking at this map of Europe 'cause I was, I've always been sort of interested, it's a, it's a continent. It's almost smaller than the United States as a whole continent, but it's got all these like fractal populations that, and tribes that sometimes didn't interbreed so they have their own languages. But it was interesting because the north was all Protestant and then as you move south you got to Mediterranean, Catholicism to the east you have orthodoxy and to the south you have the very south northern Africa, you have Islam and then you just like look at that and you're like, oh my gosh, that might be an environmental gradient. And then you overlay the primary fat group from, from those regions and it's almost like a perfect match. So you have, in the north you have Protestants with butter in the middle you have olive oil, Mediterranean like sun, people, like everything's fine and we can, you know, be, be ornate and we have time to do things and we have all these different vegetables in high society.

Kate Crosby [00:31:56] And then you go further south and you kind of also encounter environmental constraints with extreme heat. So you get like the date palm oil and then you get the sunflower off with the Orthodox and it's just like, I was floored by how well these two mats matched each other. And I was like, huh, I wonder if faith is just like emergent from the environment. So winter is a brutal season, especially if you don't have the modern convenience conveniences. And it makes sense to have like really precise language to have words mean really precise things, to be extreme linear thinkers to be really into identity politics as well. It's the other side of it I think. And that's how I kind of view a lot of Protestants now. And it's better to ask them how than why. That's another thing I've realized.

Vance Crowe [00:32:55] I mean that's, that, that's something I talk about in my class. I hadn't always thought about it as like a Protestant Catholic thing, but, but the, when you talk about the woke ideology, I poked Shay with that last week about how it was like, you know, the Protestants, they keep breaking down like, hey, we have a different interpretation of this literal translation and therefore we have another schism, right? Another break apart. And, and this is what you see in, in like kind of the woke ideology, but where do you see that, why, why do those two flow from the, from the same progenitor?

Kate Crosby [00:33:32] To me, I guess it's, well I mean America is kind of founded on Protestant principles. So even if people like children are lapsed from their parents, they still get their parents' views. And I think faith dictates language as well. So I find Protestants very careful about how they use their language and I so even if these children are kind of not practicing religion, they're still practicing reasoning that's similar to that faith. I would say the, the high level algebra is similar. So even if the unknown variables are a little different, so if I were to look at it like higher up, I don't know if that's a good analogy or not, but to me, like the L-G-B-T-Q-I-A plus plus is a really long acronym that keeps scheming the very same way. I think Lutherans have now schismed seven times in the states and I think Presbyterians have schismed a bunch in the states. So it's, yeah, that, that pattern to me is very similar. I don't know if that works.

Vance Crowe [00:34:53] I mean I I it's, it's very interesting in Legacy Interviews because I get to talk with people, I've talked with people that were Jewish Catholics and Protestants, and I have a sense for just a few moments into a conversation before we start everything where, what their faith is. And I I even make a joke like with the Catholics, by the time you've walked into my door and shaken hands with me, I'm like, this person, if they weren't Catholic, their parents were or some part of them. And this is not to say like good, bad, that is not an indicator of how well we're gonna get along. It is none of that just, I get the pa I spot the patterns here and it, and it's totally true about language and which values people talk about are different. And like, I don't know that I would want to like hammer down, oh, Protestants have these values and Catholics have these values, but maybe more in the way that they describe different things. And it, it's like, it's so fascinating to me because I'm not, I I'm not judging at all, right? Like I just get to sit and and prompt it out of them. But I've gotten to hear the way that people's values manifest in which stories they tell and how they present themselves in a really, really interesting way.

Kate Crosby [00:36:16] Yeah, I mean it'd be interesting to hear some of your stories. I I obviously there's some confidentiality around Legacy Interviews, but I would love to know how to communicate better. The one thing that I think maybe, maybe I have latched latched onto, and you can tell me a bit more about this, is the how versus the why. I don't know why that's so powerful, but it, it works every time. So if I suspect a Protestant, I always ask them, how are you thinking about that? Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:36:54] I think why is a symbolic question, right? Like it's, it's why is multifactorial and when you go to isolate, why did you do something? You know, the brain research that I've looked up says, oh, when you ask somebody why, and you're in an MRI, the part of their brain that that stimulates imagination lights up. And so no matter who you ask a why question to, maybe there's some truth in it, but really it's like, you know my why, well I need to come up with a finite answer, so I'm gonna give you this specific thing. But the truth is like why happens as a result of many things? And usually what we do is a reaction to the forces that are at work upon us. And so if you ask somebody a why question, they're gonna give you an answer and to them it's the right answer, the truth, whatever. But if you ask them a how question now, it's not in the realm of symbolic thinking. They just go back, well, let me figure out where the starting point was and now let me tell you what the next thing was and the next thing and the many factors that led up to it. And so the why emerges from the how in a way that a Protestant, even a Catholic really anyone, but, but specifically you're talking about Protestants, like it allows them to express symbolic thinking in very precise language.

Kate Crosby [00:38:14] Yeah, I think that's super interesting. And I, maybe a good analogy, let me try this on, is in computer, in computer languages we have like assembly language and c plus plus where you almost have to tell the machine, Hey, this is how you do one plus two. And in other programming languages there are libraries that already deal with that. So I feel like, like they just go and like high level, yeah, we already get that moving on. And, and for Protestants it's like build the base.

Vance Crowe [00:38:54] I agree with that. I mean that's, that's, this is a really good way to kind of break out what I was saying with Shea. Probably not very articulately 'cause this is all just new stuff I'm exploring and somebody could walk along and be like, no, that's wrong and let's blow it up. I'd be perfectly open to that. But the, you know, I talk about the, the experience of frankincense, right? The incense, if you talk to a Catholic, even if they couldn't name that, that is frankincense, but like you put them in the space with that smell, they are instantly transported back to church. Likely it incorporates other things like the sound of echoes because you're in a big church or a certain type of song and then you say, well what what does that mean? Or show me what, like specifically how that is tied to something else. And you're like, you know, it's really, it's really more of like an added dimension through which you can have this experience with the transcendent that doesn't have words. You know, like I don't have words for it, but to somebody that doesn't have any experience in that domain, this sounds like apples and oranges, you know, doesn't make sense.

Kate Crosby [00:40:09] I actually really love that. I hope this isn't too much of a non sequitur, but today and yesterday I was trying to figure out the difference between predicting tokens and an LLM. So an AI 'cause language itself is kind of a one dimensional vector space. So it's just a, a sentence like run on like if you just kept typing, it's not two dimensional, like a matrix algebra where let's say we have an X and Y coordinate in space. So that's a different type of data. And each time you layer up the information, I'm gonna get back to smell on this since frankincense, each time you layer up the information, it gets more energetically costly to, to think about this. So language is, is the simplest, LLMs are the simplest, the next step you have vision and then after that you have video which can have four and five dimensional tensors. 'cause you have height width time, you have hues, so you have color. And trying to predict that is very, is very hard. One of the things, and I'm always looking at like where are humans different kind of from ai, one of the things that humans have are olfactory neurons. And it's a great way of hacking memory really quickly.

Kate Crosby [00:41:41] And it's not computationally expensive like eyesight. We have huge parts of our brain dedicated to vision, but pretty small to nose. But memory recall is really great with it. And I was thinking wouldn't it be great

Vance Crowe [00:41:57] Memory recall? But well I didn't want you finish, I don't wanna interrupt

Kate Crosby [00:42:01] You. No, no, no, no. I wanna hear what you have to say.

Vance Crowe [00:42:03] Well, so what's so interesting about smell is let's just do an experiment, right? If I say recall the scent of a lemon, right? You can picture a lemon and you may even for a split second be able to grab a citrusy ish type image in your mind about that smell. But you cannot hold the smell of a lemon in your mind. And to me that's fascinating. The only way you can smell a lemon is if you're actually in its presence. Frankincense, you know, somebody can be like, I remember it's like a holy smell, but can I recall it? Not really. Not for any length of time.

Kate Crosby [00:42:40] That's that's very true. But as you're saying that, I think what I'm also saying is if you think about a lemon, I might have a trigger right out here, it immediately triggers vision,

Vance Crowe [00:42:52] Right?

Kate Crosby [00:42:52] And it immediately triggers a scene. So it's almost like a hack to get that perfect memory. And we all know that AI is very, can be expensive in terms of tokens. So wouldn't it be cool if you had a chemo sensory that could just hack that perfect memory for less tokens? And our memory isn't perfect as well, but yeah, that was just sort of,

Vance Crowe [00:43:14] Well, and our memories being perfect is is not always the, the most valuable thing, right? Like what meant what humans remember are stories, you know, I thought things were going well. I ran into a problem that I wasn't expecting. Now things not going well. And the, and the thing that ever if, if you can run that pattern for people, anyone will listen to your story. 'cause what they wanna know is as things were going down, did you somehow change and make them get better? Or did you fail to change and there were in a tragedy and you, and and and now I'm gonna watch you crash and burn. Because humans are completely primed to be like, Hey I, I don't want to have to repeat the mistakes of that person or I want to leverage the success of this other person. And stories, when you treat them literally, I think sometimes lose some of the, the depth and sophistication by letting them breathe and be transportable across time.

Kate Crosby [00:44:11] I would agree with that, but tell me more about it. Like maybe from the perspective of your own family. 'cause you, you wanna,

Vance Crowe [00:44:21] Well this is a perfect segue and I'm gonna give you a break. We've been going hard. I'm gonna do just a 32nd clip about Legacy Interviews and people telling stories. I did not plan this, but it works out as a perfect segue.

Kate Crosby [00:44:32] I grew up with my dad and my uncle all the time and I heard all the old stories like my mother not having electricity and water. It's one generation removed today's world just so, so different. And that gap is there. We always talked about it with my dad, but we never really did it. I would've liked to have had it of my parents, you know, we always wanted to do something like that, but somehow we never did. You keep waiting so long,

Vance Crowe [00:44:54] The memories

Kate Crosby [00:44:55] Too fade. I'm not saying I'm getting

Vance Crowe [00:44:56] Old.

Kate Crosby [00:44:57] You take the opportunity when you can.

Vance Crowe [00:45:04] So speaking of stories, it's like this is something that, it's so funny because the only way a story goes on into the future is if it is passed on somehow, right? If somebody is expressing it. And so stories are alive in some way and they're always changing and evolving and they, the lesson that they're imputing can transcend more than just what was that one person's experience with it?

Kate Crosby [00:45:32] Yeah, that's, that seems right to me. I'm, I definitely have from my own experience, I used to get my grandpa to tell me trouble stories. So stories when he used to get into trouble and coin this term as a kid and you know, he would have to adapt his own stories for a child. So I often wondered did I get, did I get it from his perspective or, but I think I got the gist of the meeting anyway. So that would be my kind of symbolic kind of real world experience with that. But I think also,

Vance Crowe [00:46:11] Okay, my current love right now, and I, you know, as a Catholic I, you know, we are loathed to, to be evangelizing people, right? I'm just telling it about my own experience and I've started reading my kids the Bible and I realized that I had like a children's picture bible understanding of the Bible. 'cause we've been reading the story of how Samuel anointed Saul and then Saul became the king that then David came over top of now Saul, when he starts chasing David, he kills 80 priests, their wives, all of their children, and slaughters these oxen and leaves them in a pile, right? You read this to your children, this is not Nickelodeon, this is not Disney. This is like the raw thing. I have no interest in censoring the Bible. So my girls are like holding onto the chair as they're flying through the air of this insane story. And you realize like, man, there are a ton of just wild stories in there. I had no idea. My, my understanding of the Bible was that it was like, oh, it's all just the good, nice stories and you know, I, I don't know. So this is the stories that I've been telling my kids outside of my own trouble stories.

Kate Crosby [00:47:22] Oh, that's great. Yeah, reading the, the, the bible as an adult versus the child. It's a trippy book. Like there's a lot of stuff in it, a lot of metaphor and a lot of analogy and allegory to current time that sometimes blows my own mind. But

Vance Crowe [00:47:43] I mean, I can't believe how open they are about things. Like they talk about, you know, he had not laid down with women or you know, she had gone through four cycles of with no child and you're like, holy shit. Like this is, we, we have this impression, I have this impression that we live in a progressive, modern, more open world where we're explaining things more openly to kids. And I, I don't think we are, I I think like we have a, we've kind of, we've got like a Nerf and I don't know, like child lock kind of Garden of Eden. But the Garden of Eden for children was when, when people were reading their bibles, to them more was way more stark. They knew way more about what was going on in some way.

Kate Crosby [00:48:31] Yeah, i I, my own hypothesis on this is money might be a hyper object of energy and time and I think we have lost any sense of time. I, I think we have, and I think you and I are of a generation where we lost time. We, we basically canceled seasons, we canceled kind of perception of time of year being special. And, and maybe that's, that's too harsh. Does that strike you as as true

Vance Crowe [00:49:10] Super interesting to pursue, right? Like

Kate Crosby [00:49:13] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:49:14] I, I remember when I lived in California and there were really only two seasons, right? It was like rainy season and dry season. And to me it, at first it was really fun. It was like, oh, it gets to be forever so warm and perfectly fall weather. But then eventually you get where you're like, yeah, yeah, but nothing ever changes. And so for me, the seasons growing up in the Midwest, growing up Catholic, having these holidays, these various things, time was a lot more embedded. But if you get rid of all of that stuff and you're in air conditioning and you never have to go outside if you don't want to and you can have any kind of fruits or vegetables that you want at any season, you're right. Like there is a graying out of time where you're not having this, these fluctuations.

Kate Crosby [00:49:58] Yeah, one of the examples I would say growing up in Nova Scotia, Canada was we always had, everything was close on Sunday when I was growing up, everything was close on Sunday. And when they started to bring in Sunday shopping right after we did free trade with, with I think the United States and Mexico, they started to bring in Sunday shopping and there was this big referendum on it, like should it be 12 to five? And I think that's initially what we did, noon to five on Sunday so people could go to church in the morning and then that morphed and then it's morphed again. Really if you think about it, you can get anything 24 7 if you live in certain spaces 365 days a year like you base, it doesn't, it's almost like nothing is worth anything anymore. 'cause it's line of,

Vance Crowe [00:50:51] Well I mean this is funny that you bring this up because in my family I've been really pitching the idea of like, hey, I want Sunday just to be family day. Like that's all we do. It's only family and like what, how we define family is bigger than just our actual relations. We have God family, you know, we have like special people in our lives that we would spend time with. But like this idea of sports, you know, in integrating into it and it's like, well if you wanna play on the special traveling team, you're gonna have to play both on Saturday and on Sunday. And if you don't like it then you can't participate. But I think that that flattening out of the weekend, making Saturday and Sunday the same day has really deep implications both for how you keep time but then also for the relationships and what is time other than relationships and seeing growth and seeing things change.

Kate Crosby [00:51:41] Yeah. And so I don't know. And you know, if there's a way for even some of the new AI agents to help us with this, I'm, I'm not sure, but I suspect we might see some reversion to how we keep time because I think it's driving us crazy. I I really do. I think it, I think keeping the world flat, I don't know if it's helping everyone. I I don't know if it's helping us. I maybe that's too generic to say, but, so

Vance Crowe [00:52:16] I I've got a deeply personal question, but it's, the listeners should know I'm not just like sandbagging you with this like, like my time is marked by I have children and I'm now trying to raise them up. You are at the age where you are unlikely to have children.

Kate Crosby [00:52:34] Correct.

Vance Crowe [00:52:35] How do you gauge the future? What does that, what what does the future look like to you? What is it that you want to put into the world, if not children, how do you think about this?

Kate Crosby [00:52:47] This is tough because I think I've reflected on this deeply as, you know, we did try to have kids but we're unsuccessful. But so my wife, her partner is female. You, you know that very well. But, so I am 45 and what that, what I've reflected on basically, and this is, this is maybe a bit harsh, but I think that women in particular probably have a little less time than they think. And they also, like, one of the things I've become aware of, I, without participating in it 'cause it's not necessarily I guess my orientation, I don't know. But women do have this thing called pretty privilege where they can pretty much get anything up to a certain age and they can probably still exploit that even maybe into, to some, some amount of age. I wouldn't say past 40. No. But like, you know, I think they can certainly use that as a way of, of getting things. But when it, when it drops away, it's very obvious when it drops away, it's very obvious. So then I've, I've not really ever conceived of that. So it's only through observing some of my female friends that I, that I've kind of just like from afar like sort of noticed it and then I then I started to wonder, well, was I getting things like not aware and so what can I contribute?

Kate Crosby [00:54:32] And I think the two things that,

Vance Crowe [00:54:34] Wait, wait, I wanna clarify this. So you are saying because of your orientation, you were not somebody that was trying to attract male attention and, and the pretty privilege is female to male? Or is it bigger than that? I'm, I don't, I don't wanna oversimplify your point.

Kate Crosby [00:54:52] I think it's like, it's generally male to female. So like females attracting males and getting things from males because of their aesthetic

Vance Crowe [00:55:05] And because you were not attracted to males, like likely you were not exploiting this in the same way that a woman that is attracted to males might

Kate Crosby [00:55:13] Yeah. Or just not as cognizant. And I, I think that, you know, I I I, yes. So yes to your question. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:55:23] Okay, so now keep going from this, this is, this was insightful.

Kate Crosby [00:55:27] Yeah. So, you know, I think I probably, if I had any of it, I probably lost it over 10 years ago. At least that's what I'm thinking. But my perception is still like, I'm very curiosity driven. Like if you're not gonna create life, create ideas and create things, like that's the only reason for me to really live and create relationships and maintain them, you know, support my extended family. Those are probably the reasons for continuing on and, and, and living. I'm not like, I, I think I'm resolved to that now as well. And so to me, you know, I, I've gotten a few patents and I've put them into scale in production and that's been really great. But I also think cultivating relationships with my own family and my own friends is really important. And I think also being really open-minded, like I think I am pretty open-minded. Like I'm, I'm, I can a lot, like I'm not the

Vance Crowe [00:56:41] Most open-minded on an extreme level. Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:56:44] I, I like diverse extreme perspectives. I like hearing them. I think it's better to hear them and consider them than for them to be within a person. So I love having conversations and I would say like I have a lot of male friends, like I'd say majority of my friends are male. But yeah, like I, I think all of those things are important to lead a successful life. And I'm not necessarily interested in personal legacy as as much as like knowing people and that maybe ideas continue on through them, but without like really inserting them heavily. 'cause I love hearing their ideas too.

Vance Crowe [00:57:29] Yeah. What strikes me is like, is very easy on our culture, particularly among conservatives to be like, oh, people that don't have children, they're, they're not like us, therefore they are different, right? We, we, but, and, and maybe separate and we don't consider them. And I, I resist this because I was talking to a good friend of mine this morning and he was like, you know, any, any man that was delivering before he had children all of a sudden is now, will always have that path that he can look down and be like, what could I have delivered if I were not putting my attention towards my children? And in the worst way that's like if my children weren't distracting me or keeping me from it, but also like, you know, I chose this and this is where I'm going because I think it's, IM, I think it's very difficult for a great man or a great person, somebody that is really putting things into the world, that are going to last generations centuries, a long time to be a good father. Putting children and humans, you know, distant into the future because they both require proof of work. They both require time. And so in, in many ways, I think it comes down to if you don't have children, are you still creating life? But that life being more symbolic in terms of ideas or opportunities seems almost like too cliche. How does that resonate with you?

Kate Crosby [00:58:59] I think it resonates well. And I think one of the things that maybe females do more than males, and, and this is just a stereotypical observation, so it's probably majority true, but there are exceptions, is I think females are risk averse. And I don't think you should be risk averse once you hit this age. I think you should just let ideas kind of come to the forefront and not hit them down with regulations or just like fear. Like it's probably a, a good time to do some novelty search and to allow younger people to have the floor, to have ideas and to listen to them and to support them seriously.

Vance Crowe [00:59:44] Yeah. Well so this would be another observation from Legacy Interviews. There's a certain type of mom that after the kids are out of the house, all of a sudden she gets active in all these groups. Now all of a sudden is, you know, running book clubs and starting a knitting shop and doing all these things and that, that is not the way with men. They don't, they aren't like, oh, finally my kids are out of the house and now I'm going to go do this thing. There's something of a second life when women hit their forties that I think may be more external facing. And I think, like Carl Jung talks about when men hit 40, there's a lot of like internal searching. 'cause you've spent so much time having your persona up there like, Hey everybody, I'm competent. Trust in me and I'm gonna lead you forward and this will bring financial resources to me. But when you finally do get those financial resources or that stability, men often will be like, all right, now I want some introspection. Now I want time to myself. I wanna be in my library and I wanna read my books with my pipe as opposed to external relationships.

Kate Crosby [01:00:51] Yeah, and I, I don't know if I'm speaking myself about external relationships, I think it's just about like, how can I maybe invest in this young startup or how can I, you know, help people with resources that they might need? But maybe it is, I don't, that's a good observation. I, yeah, consider it.

Vance Crowe [01:01:16] Well, you are like inventing things and exploring ideas. I mean, you're my most novel per, like, if I call you Kate, what are you thinking about? Like, it, it's gonna be so out there. And I think part of that is like, one of the reasons I like talking with you, because in talking to you, it's like iterative, like, or generative, right? I talk with you and then I get to think about ideas and oftentimes if I didn't talk with you about these ideas, I would not think about them. And this makes you like super, super engaging and I think keeps you younger. 'cause you are exposed to so many more new ideas.

Kate Crosby [01:01:51] Yeah, yeah. And I, I think novelty helps keep you young a bit, but you need some amount of conservative backing. Like it can all be a novelty. So I'm, I've been, maybe I've been trying to think about lately like what, what is more a bit like what's my axiom, my conservative rock inside of me And I, you know, some of that is like maybe some religious upbringing. So what is that? How does that ground me for the future? What are the, what are the readings that kind of speak to me in terms of metaphors that way? Yeah. So this is some thoughts.

Vance Crowe [01:02:34] Well this has been a great conversation. I know you said you had to go at one 15. I am going to be interviewing Joscha Bach on Monday. What should I ask him about?

Kate Crosby [01:02:45] I think you should ask him about the energy of novelty and AI versus the energy of novelty in a human being.

Vance Crowe [01:02:56] What does that mean?

Kate Crosby [01:02:57] How many watts does it cost to generate something new, a new idea with AI versus a new idea with the person?

Vance Crowe [01:03:06] Oh, that's fascinating.

Kate Crosby [01:03:08] What the systems evolved. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:03:10] I wonder if the evolution of the humans is, it's cheaper to get new ideas from humans and run out the, the ideas Well thought through ideas through ai. That's fascinating.

Kate Crosby [01:03:21] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:03:22] Well, Kate, thank you so, so much for coming on. If people were interested in stuff that you're doing, you're not really a public person. Do you have like a website or any place where you just like, nah, I'm out there.

Kate Crosby [01:03:33] I, I mean they can reach out to you and I'm always happy to, to talk to people.

Vance Crowe [01:03:38] Fair enough. I will be your filter. I will be a vicious filter of people, but if you have good things that are interesting to talk about, I'll, I'll, I'll connect you with Kate. Kate, thanks so much for coming on and I will, I will let you have your, your afternoon back. Thank you.

Kate Crosby [01:03:54] Thanks Vance. Okay,

Vance Crowe [01:03:57] Well thanks for joining me today on the podcast. As I said, I'm gonna be interviewing Joscha Bach. I've got a couple more really interesting podcasts coming up for a while. I had just taken so much time because we were getting so much work. We've been doing the Legacy Interviews if you wanna do them in person, I offer full day interviews in studio in St. Louis with me. And if you're looking to do them online, I have hired and trained a fantastic host. It took me six years to finally get comfortable with another person taking on this art form. But I have had Brian King interview my wife, and I've seen other content that he has created. I really like him and, and I think if you've been wanting to do a legacy interview, it's a great Mother's Day gift. It's if your parents can't get up, they can't move, or you wanna find a more cost effective option, you can do the online version with our host Brian King. I'm gonna finish out by playing a short video about the interest-based communications class that I put together. This is a class that is designed to help people express ideas so that other people want to listen to them and want to engage with them and how to listen to other people so that you can understand them and find the best outcomes possible. I have been delivering this to corporations and it has been going very well. I've been traveling all over people in Arizona, Nashville, all over. People are inviting me to their sales meetings, to their scientific groups.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:05:30] But if you would like to take it for yourself, I am offering a three day course where we will have daytime activities where you're learning about negotiations and storytelling and we'll do evening activities where you're gonna get to really try these things out. And we're gonna do the next class, June 1st through the third here in St. Louis. Here in my studio, come join 11 other people that are dedicating themselves to becoming better communicators and know that this is a very well received class. So go to Articulate Ventures slash IBC and sign up. There are only 12 spots available for the June 1st through the third, or we have one in July coming up. Alright, I'm gonna close out with this outro about interest based communicating. We'll be back on Monday with a podcast with Yosha B. My name is Heath Hunter. I'm a managing director at Broadview Group in our business, your success is dependent on how you're able to effectively tell your story to relate to your customer or your potential partners, and we needed a course that could train our staff on how to do that. I was looking for something much less than what Vance delivered. I literally just wanted him to come in and help us a little bit with storytelling. And he came back with this curriculum, which was awesome. How to craft a memorable introduction, build a story around our firm and how we personally weave into that story. How do we continue the conversation through asking good questions, how to negotiate in a collaborative way versus a competitive way so that we maintain that relationship that we've worked so hard to build.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:07:11] Our relationships are everything. To me, Interest-Based Communication is really understanding the perspectives and the point of view of others being able to meet them where they are. Interest-Based Communication to me is creating a dialogue with someone else sitting across the table from you. It allows each party to really describe what they care about and work together to accomplish that for each party. A lot of people, myself included before I took Vance's class, really went in with higher weight on what was important to me.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:07:43] Everybody has a tendency to just focus in on the price, but there are hundreds of other components that come into something as complex as a transaction for a company.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:07:56] What are they actually interested in? What do they hope to achieve and what does success look like for them walking out of a negotiation? Those could differ widely from how they're showing up.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:08:06] If we can somehow get on the same page, you can create these collaborative solutions that are a win for everyone, we've definitely woven that into the process. We're trying to ask those deep probing questions on what are their motivations, what do they care about? Really understanding who they are, introducing yourself to better communicate who you are and your background. What

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:08:28] Makes a good introduction? This is something that I,

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:08:30] I really appreciated and I've been in the workforce for, you know, 27 plus years

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:08:35] And done lots of introductions. I've heard lots of introductions, making a good introduction. I think everyone just assumes that you should just kind of start talking about yourself and go into your title and what you do and frankly, that's typically not very memorable or interesting. Going through this course and learning about storytelling and the arc of a story and how to embed that in your introduction was honestly like nothing I had ever heard before. And it makes a lot of sense, right? Because if you're a good storyteller, you tend to sort of

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:09:06] Capture

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:09:06] An audience and you want to be able to do that with your introduction, sort of that hook that you need in in a story.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:09:13] For me, the big thing was having faith that sitting back and really paying attention to the conversation will help draw out a connection. Before I would spend my time trying to, okay, what do I have in common with this person? Oh yeah, this is a chance to interject and, and establish that link. Ironically, just kind of stepping back and saying, I'm just gonna really pay attention to what's in front of me. It really has impacted the conversation because you can get deeper faster. I used to think it was all about how interesting I could come across, but what I've learned, and honestly what Vance taught us, the most interesting folks that you run across, ask really good questions.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:09:50] That's been a game changer for me. Instead of trying to focus on myself, focusing fully on the other person and really just listening for like, what are the details that they're giving me, because there's a reason that they mention that.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:10:03] We assume that folks can kind of see what we see in our heads. And what this course taught us about diagramming your ideas is to put it on paper, put it out there so the other parties can see it. We were meeting with a group that week and we were trying to communicate different ideas and outline a vision for this potential business. Instead of doing it in a PowerPoint format, we did it on a whiteboard. It was transformational. The CEO he, he just lit up. We actually handed the pen over to him and we said, Hey, show us where we've got it wrong. Show us where you have additional ideas, the level of engagement. You went through the roof and he got up and you could see he was almost giddy. Having that limiter of the speed of your hand, you're bringing them along in, you know, your idea you're trying to convey. So

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:10:49] The practicality of the course, the mirroring, the

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:10:51] Diagramming, the exercises.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:10:53] I think that's one of the things that I appreciated

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:10:55] Most about the course. Super candidly, I've been through a lot of these in my career and you walk out of there and you're like, well, that was a waste of time. What I can tell you about what Vance brought to the table. I, at no point ever felt that way. I was able to walk out of every single session and put to work immediately what we had practiced, that he has a great way of connecting concepts so that you have this, you know, holistic framework, so to speak, to connect with people, which is something that we do all the time, but deliberate practice of it really helped up my game.

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:11:24] I would recommend that everyone take this course and I would venture to say that this has been more impactful for me at home than at work. Pretty much everybody is having conversations and negotiations at home. I feel super lucky and blessed that we were able to have this course at work and that it sort of bleeds into home life. I think that's kind of the best of both worlds. Any corporation

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:11:50] Or

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:11:51] Any firm,

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:11:51] No matter what the size I think would benefit from something like this, who I'd

Ad segment / testimonials (multiple voices) [01:11:55] Recommend this to, is a small group of professionals who are really dedicated to self-improvement. Interest-Based Communication to me is a holistic way to build relationships. Can benefit anyone.