Speaker 1: 0:38

Welcome back to Speak Out. Stand Out. I'm Elizabeth Green, and today's guest is Jeremy Horn. Jeremy is on a mission to bring families closer, one story at a time, and he's doing this through a new storytelling app that helps people capture life memories, which we're gonna talk about in a little bit. But first and foremost, Jeremy, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Elizabeth, it's a pleasure to be here and I'm very much looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:06

So one of the things that well, not one of the things our focus here at Speak Out, stand Out is bringing parents tactical strategies to build confidence and communication skills in their kids from home. And I'm really excited because the angle we're having today I don't think is anything we've discussed before, and it's the importance of storytelling. And kind of before we dive into that, I want to say storytelling and kind of before we dive into that, I want to say I have. Well, let me just back up. How did you get to where storytelling and the importance of it is your focus in life?

Speaker 2: 1:32

Yeah. So it really goes back to when I was a kid, which seems like a long time ago, but we were. So my parents are both English. I was born in Zimbabwe with my sister, so my parents were journalists and they kind of traveled a lot. They were curious travelers back in the 70s and so we ended up living in Perth, australia of all places. That was my dad sort of following a job offer. That seemed really interesting and I've kind of followed these footsteps in that sense. So we were in Perth. We had no family there. We had family in England. My mom was from Manchester, my dad was from kind of London. He then also had his parents living in New Zealand, so we didn't have any cousins. But it was just me, my sister and my parents in Perth, and this was the early 80s by this time.

Speaker 2: 2:18

And so this was back in the days when, if you wanted to stay in touch with family and friends, you had these long-distance phone calls and there were scratchy lines dropping out all the time and they were really expensive. I mean, like if you had a 15-minute call, it was a very expensive undertaking. So we got really good at staying connected with our grandparents and this really came down to my mom and I think probably my mom's mom who's called Winnie, which the app's actually named after her because she was such a good storyteller. But we used to send audio tapes to each other. So we'd send an audio tape all the way from Australia to England and then they'd play it on their side and then they'd send one back. So we had this very slow-moving kind of conversation over these audio tapes and then we'd have those long distance calls which are just awkward because there was always a big pause and as a kid you're not quite sure what to say to the grandparents and they're not quite sure what to say to you, and then you're dealing with these dreadful lines that have all these pauses. So I think I saw how good my parents were at staying connected to their parents and making an effort. And the reality is, anything good requires an effort and that includes good relationships, good, strong relationships with your families and friends. So it's one of those things where you don't realize what you're learning, but you are learning the importance of connection just by watching how that is.

Speaker 2: 3:40

And then my grandparents came over from Manchester when I was about 12, and my dad had brought a video camera home from work and I just fell in love with the idea that you could record video. To me it was like time travel you could record something and then play it back again. So I was doing all sorts of things with this video camera, most of it bad. But the one thing that I did that turned out to be really, really good was recording my grandparents and asking them to tell stories basically about their lives and my mom when she was a kid and what was it like in the olden days. And so we ended up with these stories that my nana Winnie and her husband Jack had shared with us and it went from VHS tape to eventually DVD to eventually digitized and it's just persisted all this time.

Speaker 2: 4:26

But I started to see how important it was to my parents and to our family and people would ask me for copies.

Speaker 2: 4:35

So my uncle and aunt on my mom's side would say, hey, have you got that video of the parents and so on. So I started to see from a fairly young age the importance of having this sort of material and I think I just again kind of became addicted to the idea of capturing those things and over the years I've probably recorded I don't know 300 stories that people have told friends, family, and I'm at an age now where my friends most of them have lost their grandparents and most of them have lost their grandparents and most of them now have aging parents where they're becoming very conscious of wanting to make sure that their parents' lives are captured and their stories are told. So I've had a lot of friends ask me to do what I do, which is kind of interview them and capture these stories and then figure out where to put it, which is kind of what's led me down this path now of setting up a platform where we can capture stories and make them very easily shareable. So there's a long answer to a quick question.

Speaker 1: 5:29

No, that's incredible. My background is in journalism and so I understand the storytelling side of things I know a lot of. When we talk about storytelling, a lot of parents instantly go to things like the Three Little Pigs we're talking about like you talking about somebody's life as a story and we look back I think back on my grandparents and the questions I wish I could ask them and to have videos of their voices and things like that that we don't have. So that's absolutely incredible that you did that at such a young age and now you have something that's priceless for your family.

Speaker 2: 6:01

Yeah, I mean it was hit and miss. That was just one of the hits. Everything else was pretty much a miss, but it turns out that one worked out well yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Well, that's fantastic. So I think that you know this is so. How can we build we're talking storytelling, right. How can we build storytelling skills in our own children and how can we prompt them? Like one of the things you said a little bit ago, it's difficult to have conversations with grandparents when you're young, and we go through this because my parents live in a different state and so, trying to keep my kids in touch with them, we'll get on FaceTime and all that. When they're little, it's mainly they're just running around with the phone. You know what I mean? They're like just being a kid, just running around with the phone.

Speaker 2: 6:42

You know what I mean. They're like just being a kid, that's always a fun one.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Yeah, yes. And now, like my oldest son is 16. And when he talks to my parents, he'll answer the questions that they have, but he very rarely asks them questions, and so this is kind of an offshoot to what we're talking about. But is that something that we can teach our kids to be more interested in other people's lives, or does that just literally come with age, because right now they can't picture a world without them?

Speaker 2: 7:07

Yeah. So I think it is something that can be taught, but I think it's something that can be helped along really. So I mean, one of the things that we have I've got one right here is these conversation cards, right, so these Winnie conversation cards, and the idea is that you can scan these. It will take you into our app so you can record those stories. But even if you just use them to help facilitate a conversation and one of the things that we do is we have questions that are aimed at bridging that generational gap between a grandkid and a grandparent, and in our case, the more the app sort of learns about both of you, the more it starts to suggest questions that would be relevant. So if it's a grandparent talking to the grandkid and it knows that the grandkid is into whatever Pokemon cards, then it can be a question about a Pokemon card.

Speaker 2: 7:55

So it's just a way of finding some common ground that people can bridge their conversation on, and so it doesn't all need to be stories, but the beauty of stories is that everyone loves a story, and stories connect us to everything. I mean, everything that has value has a story, and I quite often use the example of my mother-in-law. She's got all sorts of antiques and things that she talks about eventually wanting to hand down to her kids and at the moment some of these things have no meaning because the kids don't know the stories behind it. But what she started to do is she started to record herself explaining why these things have meaning to her and where they came from. And suddenly now the weird looking vase with the flowers all over it that really had no value to the kids suddenly has value because it turns out it's handed down from a great, great granddad who brought it across during whatever the First World War, and now there's a whole story behind it.

Speaker 2: 8:50

So my goal really is just to get people to have a more meaningful conversation and, ideally, just learn the skill of turning those conversations into stories. But it really just comes down to taking an interest in someone's life and there's nothing to lose from that. I mean, if you ask somebody a question about their lives, most people want to talk about it, even the ones who say they don't. I mean, my experience is I've had people say, oh, I don't have anything to say, no one wants to hear my stories, and then literally, you know, back in the old days I'd be running out of videotape and these days it's like I'm running out of batteries. So everyone loves to have those conversations. They really do. You've just got to find that common ground and take a journey on interest.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Yeah, you made me think of one of the tips that we always did as a journalist when we would ask a question and somebody answered it. You don't respond right away, because if you don't, our human nature is to jump in and respond, but if we don't, they will have more to say. It's just giving them the space to do it.

Speaker 2: 9:46

That's so true, and again, that's kind of the art of conversation as well, isn't it? It is about pausing and allowing the other person, and it gets a little uncomfortable sometimes. But you're absolutely right, it's at the end of the question or the answer that there is that pause, and then quite often you just uncover something that you might otherwise have missed out on, because you're kind of rushing that conversation and just you need to be kind of comfortable with silence, like it's amazing what comes out of silence between people as well yeah, but it is very hard.

Speaker 2: 10:17

It's definitely our nature to to fill it, yeah yeah, I mean, for me it is hard because I actually find that silence quite uncomfortable. I've had to get good at just stopping and waiting and it always amazes me what then comes by just being quiet, right.

Speaker 1: 10:33

And this applies to parenthood too, right? So I was talking about this in a work situation, but the same. I've definitely experienced the same with my kids. If I don't respond right away, most of the time not always, sometimes they don't have anything else to say and the silence doesn't bother them, but most of the time more will come out of it.

Speaker 2: 10:51

There's something else, yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:52

So why do you think this is? I know you talked about this being so important in connecting with family and the people that are important to you, but we also live in this world where we're connected to so many people now that there's so much information out there, but it seems to be hampering genuine connections, Wouldn't you say? And if so, is that important for our kids as they grow up?

Speaker 2: 11:16

Yeah Well, look, it's important to all of us, I mean. So there's this notion now of social health. I don't know whether you've come across that, but it's a term that I've really latched onto, so it's not one that I coined, but it's started to get momentum. So everyone gets physical health, everyone gets mental health. So mental health has finally started to have its place and its understanding that it's just dealing with the health of the brain. And now there's this notion of social health, which previously was bundled up with mental health for the most part, but it is a separate pillar. So you've kind of got these three pillars of health, and the idea is that you really need to be firing all three of those to have a complete picture of health.

Speaker 2: 11:56

And social health to me is my favorite one, because it's just the easiest out of all of them. It's the strength of your relationships, and it's all about knowing that there are people in your life that have kind of got you back. Essentially, and unfortunately, what tends to happen is, as we get older and we become disconnected from friends for different sorts of reasons, mobility can be an issue as well. I mean, you can't just hop in the car and drive off to see your friends, or maybe you no longer have the ability to keep up with technology. So you suddenly find that there is this older group who are really struggling with social health because they don't have that connection. But, really interestingly, it's also this younger group who are the most connected humans that we have ever had, who have so many different ways of being connected and yet they are feeling lonelier than ever. So, and to your point, the issue is, it's this surface level connection that's not kind of nourishing the soul and I often make the comparison to it's almost like you're living on a dart of mcdonald's and your various fast foods and your body's craving that chicken salad or whatever. It might be that the thing that's really just going to enrich your body and it's a similar sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 13:07

You need to have those deep conversations where you feel true connection and build rapport in order to have what is really that social health. So just connecting at a surface level across apps and so forth, it's not providing that kind of nourishment that we need for ourselves to connect really in a deep, meaningful way. So it is a problem but it is one that hopefully we're partly solving. I think it's very solvable because humans are designed to connect. We are social creatures and we crave connection. And it's unlike going to the gym where you've got to put your gym shoes on, you've got to go there, you've got to sweat, you've got to be uncomfortable and it's got kind of no pain, no gain sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 13:53

The beauty of social health is you really do just need to have a conversation with somebody, and it doesn't even need to be somebody you know. I mean, you can literally just strike up a conversation on the street, and sometimes I've been showing my son that you can literally just walk up to strangers and start having a conversation with them. And it's a little uncomfortable at first because everyone's like, well, why are you talking to me? I don't know you, but within seconds you can build that rapport and you always walk away feeling really good, like you've had a connection with someone. They walk away with a smile, you walk away with a smile and it's as easy as that, like there's no you know there's no downside.

Speaker 1: 14:29

So yeah, and how often do we scroll social media and turn it off feeling good? Most of the time it's the exact opposite.

Speaker 2: 14:38

No, it's so true, right, like yeah, it's yeah. More often than not you're scrolling through and you're like, oh God, where did that hour go in my life? And am I kind of turning this off now as a better human than I was an hour ago? Probably not.

Speaker 1: 14:51

Right, well, how do we? You said? I mean, our kids are the most connected humans in the world and this can be an amazing thing. I mean the fact that we can have this conversation, you know, from an ocean apart is. Technology is phenomenal, but we've just gone down this path where it could be argued that it's more harmful than helpful. How do we help our kids to have meaningful connections through the technology that they have, without it providing all the negatives that come along with it too?

Speaker 2: 15:23

Yeah, and again, using that gym analogy, I mean you have to be intentional about having these sorts of conversations and the more intentional you are about it, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. So your intention could be just carving out some time to call people. I mean, literally in my calendar I have got sections of time there which is call my dad, call my sister. I mean I literally in my calendar I have got sections of time there which is call my dad, call my sister, call my brother-in-law. With my brother-in-law we do a podcast. We don't even publish, so every couple of weeks we get on and we kind of do it like a podcast where we share things that we found that are interesting. Eventually we may get around to publishing it, but we both agreed that just getting together for 20 minutes and having a chat and sharing some books that we've come across or resources that we found, or having a conversation, it's just, it's like again, we both come off that just feeling better and connecting. So you do need to be intentional and I always say like your calendar really is a reflection of what's important to you in life. So when you look at your calendar and if you don't have time in there to connect with friends, to journal, connect with yourself all of those things then you're not prioritizing it in your life. So you might have 50 appointments.

Speaker 2: 16:39

Meetings with clients is an obvious one for people who are working internally with their own companies, and so on. You need to carve out that time and be intentional, and then you do potentially need some tools. So find the tools and then use them properly. I mean even WhatsApp, like you said. I mean we can use WhatsApp, we can use FaceTime, we can use any of these tools in different sorts of ways to connect. We just have to make sure that, again, we're being intentional about how we actually put them to use, and the reason that we built Winnie was to have a dedicated place. That was all about having more meaningful conversations and again, being able to start recording those conversations so that you can build up your family legacy, so to speak.

Speaker 1: 17:21

And so let's talk about that then. How does Winnie work? We've got the understanding of what it does, but how does it actually do it?

Speaker 2: 17:27

Yeah, so you can have a conversation, like we're having right now, and you can record. It's going to bring up prompts and say well, jeremy, you're having a chat with your dad. Why don't you ask your dad these questions? So, based on the fact that it knows me, it knows that I'm speaking with my dad. By the way, can you hear my dog?

Speaker 1: 17:45

I can hear your dog, but we've heard mine too, if you're listening, we have dogs, we have dogs.

Speaker 2: 17:50

Surprise. This is a really nice way of connection as well. Adam was a beautiful when it comes to a form of connection, and this one right now is waiting to go for a walk, I think. But yeah, so just the intention. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. Remind me.

Speaker 1: 18:07

Yeah, no, you were saying it will give you prompts of questions to ask your dad.

Speaker 2: 18:10

Exactly. That's right. So it knows that I'm talking to my dad. It knows the questions that my dad's answered in the past. And then it would say well, why don't you ask your dad this? And it could be something like ask your dad how he met your mom, or ask your dad how he met your mom, or ask your dad what were the first things that they said together, or ask your dad what's been one of the biggest challenges in his life. So it will prompt questions and then you know, my dad may or may not want to answer them.

Speaker 2: 18:35

So we could be on a call and it'll pop up and I'll say, hey, dad, like let's use some of this time to start recording your stories, and and then I will choose one and say what about this one?

Speaker 2: 18:44

And he'll look at it and say, no, I don't want to answer that, but maybe I'll answer that later, in which case then when he's sat there on his own, he'll get a little reminder and say why don't you record that story now? Or it might be something that we do talk about. And then, vice versa, he would be prompted questions for me and they're going to be relevant to my life and where I'm at it could be a question about how am I going at the moment with being a dad of a seven year old? And then suddenly we start having a conversation and he remembers what it was like parenting me when I was seven years old. So suddenly we're in a conversation now where we've got some common ground because we're both parents at some point of seven year olds and we're going into a deeper conversation than talking about the weather, so to speak.

Speaker 1: 19:22

That's what I was just thinking how many times I have conversations with people that I love the most, and it's just about. Well, what are you doing this week? You know? What doctor's appointments do you have? How's the weather that?

Speaker 2: 19:34

is a common one.

Speaker 1: 19:35

yeah, so, and you mentioned though, it's recording it. Are we is this like through an app or are we like just is it?

Speaker 2: 19:43

we're just getting these prompts and we're recording through our phone. How does that work? No, so it's recording it through the app, and that's important, because the way the app works is because we're recording those stories through the app. It means that we have proof that that was the story that was told. So we're in this world now where AI can create anything right, and it's only going to get more difficult to navigate as these things get more and more believable. So we're actually recording it through the app so that we can prove that it was recorded. We can prove that it was a story that I told.

Speaker 2: 20:13

And then, at some point and this is another thing that we've just started to do we've got another product called Forever you, and Forever you is now using all of those stories to create a digital avatar so that, instead of having to go through and search through all the videos, you can just have a chat with somebody. So we've got an example at the moment. My mom passed away a couple of years ago, but I'd recorded stories with my mom and my dad for years and years, and years. So I've got so many stories and I took all of those stories, put them into our knowledge base and then created a version of my mum, a digital version of mum forever.

Speaker 2: 20:48

Mum and I can have a conversation with her and during that conversation, I can ask things like what was your biggest challenge in life?

Speaker 2: 20:55

And, conversationally, now we can talk about it, instead of having to go off and search for that video of mum telling the story about a challenge in her life. And the beauty of it is, whilst we're talking, there's a luxury and authenticity score. So if she's saying something that she definitely said, because we've got the original video, you can see that the score is very, very high, whereas if she might tell a story that isn't quite right, then you'd see that the authenticity is maybe 50% or lower. And then you can say, well, actually, you can tick a box and say, well, I only want to have a conversation with this person or avatar where it's all up in the high end of the authenticity. So that's a way that we start using this content, these stories that have been recorded, and that goes back to what I was saying. By recording it through the app, it just means that we have proof that it was actually something that was told and that's becoming becoming more and more important.

Speaker 1: 21:46

Wow, I like that almost gives me chills, because I'm lucky enough that all of my both of my parents and my in-laws are still alive and healthy, but they are aging and you know I can't help but think what it will be like when I can't call my mom and ask her a question. You know, and I think that's something that's you know, that everybody who's lost a parent has felt that gravity, and so this is incredible.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Well and it's funny. So I literally just got back from Australia a week before last because I went over there to the ABC, which is the Australian Broadcasting Commission. We're actually doing a show which is all about AI and the impacts on humans and so on, and I'm all about using technology to connect humans. In fact, ai like one of the few things that it can never replace is human connection, because you need humans to be connecting in order to do that. But it can provide different experiences that help that connection. So the idea of this is that you can now have human connection across generations where my mom now can get to know, or, vice versa, my future family can get to know my mom, kind of at her best, because they can have a conversation with her. It takes a personality profile so it starts to sort of you know, my mom was from Manchester. They got a great sense of humor, so she liked to laugh a lot and that sort of plays out through this experience.

Speaker 2: 23:06

But really importantly, at any point you can see the source video so you can say well, did you really say that? You can actually then click on it and then you can watch it. You can watch the video that she recorded where she tells that story. So, um, so, yeah, it's, it's it's anyway. The point of that was it's general sort of feedback is it's.

Speaker 2: 23:24

It's just kind of spooky that you can have a chat with someone who's no longer around, yeah, but at the same time it's amazing. And so my dad was interviewed because he was talking about what it's like from his perspective to be able to talk to his wife, my sister and my mom's grandkids as well. So we all kind of had a different perspective on it and everyone agrees that there's a different perspective on it and everyone agrees that there's a strange comfort to it, like the idea we know that we're not talking to my mom, but it's a really comforting experience just knowing that one her stories have been captured so we do have the videos and that future family would get to see her as she was. And there's just there's a strange comfort to just being able to chat away, even even though we know that it's a representation of mom. It's not real mom, she's gone, but we can still have this sort of connection with her. It's a way of kind of keeping her in our thoughts.

Speaker 1: 24:14

That's really that's amazing and like, yeah, creepy was kind of like a little bit of a feeling, but you know, but it's, but it's still amazing. You're really just blowing my mind here, Creepy but amazing.

Speaker 2: 24:25

But you know what? I liken it to online dating. Like quite often I give that example. I'm like look back in the late nineties and early two thousands. Like when, when friends met through online dating, they'd be like, oh, we met at a bar. Or, you know, friends met through online dating. They'd be like, oh, we met at a bar or wherever it was, when in actual fact, they'd met online. But there was like a weirdness to meeting online, whereas now it's the default, like most people are at least having dates that they started online and so forth.

Speaker 2: 24:50

And I think it's going to be the same. Like we are going to find ourselves in a world where, like it or not, there are going to be avatars of us, because you can point to a photo, you can take a quick sample of voice and suddenly we could be having a conversation, like we are now. But it turns out that it's my avatar, but in order for it to be an authentic version of me, one that I digitally sign and actually say a little bit like if I'd written an autobiography, and you sign it off and say I wrote this autobiography, same sort of thing I've created my avatar and I sign it off and I say this is the me that's going to represent me, because I put all the time into recording the stories and I believe it's an accurate reflection of who I am. So so, yeah, it's, it's important. Like I said, one way or another, like we are going to have avatars, so I think it is important that we put some thought into how that's going to play out.

Speaker 1: 25:34

Yeah, going to play out. Yeah, absolutely, I, you know, I've seen. I have given my parents the books where it asks the questions and they're supposed to write the answers and they don't know your story, right.

Speaker 1: 25:44

Yes, yes, and they don't do it. And my mom is always very hesitant. She says, well, I don't like my handwriting, I'm not a good speller, and so she doesn't want to sit down and do it. So then I tried to get her to do a video, one where it prompted her on her phone to record herself, and that was very awkward for her, and so what's really interesting about this is that she would have that conversation with me if I was asking her a question, and that makes it more authentic.

Speaker 2: 26:09

Yeah, and it just makes it easier, right, it's just, it's a more natural process, like we're used to talking to each other. And again, this goes back to human connection. So, because one of the questions I have was like, well, look, if you're the human connection company, it's all about connection why would you have an avatar that people can speak with? And my answer to that is because the process by which you capture those stories is a conversation. So, by encouraging us to have these deeper conversations and then having the option to record them and then having the option to then, if you want, to create an avatar out of that that can then go on to converse with future family for multiple generations, that's the important bit.

Speaker 2: 26:45

The important bit is the conversation, and that's again. We're actually naturally good at that, but, like anything, you need to practice it in order to sort of maintain that skill set. We're good at walking, but if you sat in your butt for the next 10 years, you'd find that walking gets quite difficult, right? So you do it every day and these things get easy.

Speaker 1: 27:04

And that kind of drives me to think about. I know a lot of our audience are moms moms of tweens and teens and younger kids and a lot of moms either work from home, like I do, or stay at home and that, I feel like, is a huge blessing. But it also comes with the challenges of not having real connections outside of the house, and one of the things you said earlier was making time on your calendar to talk to people. Not too long ago I had a long conversation with an old friend of mine who we'd kind of fallen off with just different stages of life. We don't live near each other anymore and I am very much a don't call me, text me kind of person because we're busy.

Speaker 1: 27:43

You know we've got things like I need to know what you need and move on. I can get you your answer or whatever, and I tend to avoid those things and after having that conversation I felt so good. You know, it was like I wouldn't say euphoria, but like it definitely did something internally that boosted my spirits, because it was a genuine connection, and so for the moms at home, like we can't let that slide. It's an important part of what I've just learned today is social health.

Speaker 2: 28:08

We really can't Exactly. And social health, by the way. So the statistics on social health there's this wonderful study, there's two actually. So one is that shows that children who have an understanding of their family history have more resilience. So and this was a study done in the mid-2010s I think it was, and you know, essentially they found that children who just sort of know their family history show up in the world with this sense of confidence and resilience and potentially it could be because you've kind of got this anchor to your past, so the idea that if you know that your great granddad did whatever and your great grandma did these difficult things and you think, well, that's my family, if they did that, then I can do that as well. So it kind of provides this anchor of connection. But just in terms of the health of your children, there is a lot to be said for making an effort to connect them with their family history, because it has been shown to have all sorts of positive benefits. And then, just in general, social health, just like a physical health and a mental health, if you've got good social health, then it's shown that you will live longer.

Speaker 2: 29:15

So the longest study of humans, which was I need to dig up the detail, I can send it to you so you can put it onto the notes. Basically, it was a study. I think it was done by Stanford. They tracked a group of originally men from Boston. I think it started in the 50s. They basically worked with a group of these students from Boston and they basically worked with a group of these students from Boston, but then they also had a group of men who were coming from difficult families and so on, and they tracked them for their entire lives and they tracked everything, like everything blood tests, psychological tests, everything else and what they found was, over all these years, was that the ones who had healthy, strong relationships were the healthiest and the ones that were living the longest. So, and you know, since then there's been all sorts of studies that have been done around social health and the reality is you need strong relationships in your life in order to have this total picture of health.

Speaker 2: 30:14

So you know, and to your point, like it releases all these endorphins, it does all of these wonderful things, and I do often use the analogy of there's so many shortcuts that we can use. So texting it's a great shortcut, it's definitely got its place in our lives. And it's the same as, like you can take the 12-lane superhighway that's going to get you from A to B in 15 minutes, or you could take the long scenic tour, and maybe you might even walk it, or hop on your bike and go through the forest and the trees and it might take you three hours to get there. And you can't do that every day, but whenever you do do it, you're going to enjoy that so much more. So there is always a cost to a shortcut and it's the same.

Speaker 2: 30:53

If we're just constantly texting and just having these short, brief conversations because we're all so busy and we need to get things done, we just need to be aware of what the cost is of missing out on those longer conversations and uh, um, and you know again, another example is even just sometimes asking questions, like people say, well, you can google that and it's like well, you could, but actually if you go and ask your grandparents for the answer, it gives them a chance to feel useful and again you get a chance to connect with them. So yeah, just be conscious of the shortcut.

Speaker 1: 31:24

Jeremy, this has been a really enlightening conversation and I very much appreciate your time and coming on and sharing all this with us. And if you're listening, and even if you're like I don't know if I want a digital avatar you might change your mind in a couple of years. I keep saying the way Internet changed the world. Ai is going to do it even faster, but the importance of just connecting and the message behind all of that is so valuable. So thank you so much for being here and sharing, and we'll make sure we link to everything in the show notes if you want to check out Winnie, if you want to see some more about what Jeremy's up to, all that will be wherever you're listening or watching above or below?

Speaker 2: 31:59

Yeah, brilliant Thanks, Elizabeth. And look, by the way, one thing I tell everyone is just interview your parents. I'm yet to meet anyone who regrets either audio interviewing or video interviewing, but I've met plenty of people who wish they could do it, and they no longer have that choice. So it's just the one message I give to everyone is just make the time, interview your parents, because you'll never, ever regret having that captured.

Speaker 1: 32:20

You're absolutely right, well.