Simon Waller (00:01.057)
Hello and welcome to episode 14 of the Future with Friends. Today I’m being joined by one of my oldest friends in Melbourne. And that’s an amazing guy by the name of Michael Schiffner. Though I think we’ve pretty much moved on to Mike now, so I’m just going to use Mike. Weirdly though, this is a bit of an aside before we kind of jump into everything this podcast has to offer.

What are you like with nicknames? Cause I’m this thing as well where like I introduce myself to people as Simon, but all of my kind of close friends call me Si, right? But it’s almost like I don’t necessarily give that away to people. And it’s almost like you have to discover it by yourself. And for a long time, I just, you always like all your emails are signed as Michael. And yet you kind of get called Mike. What’s that? What’s that all about?

Michael Schiffner (00:56.598)
Yeah, it’s a, it’s actually funny that you asked because, you know, my birth name was Michael. And as a young boy, I never went with Michael. I, in fact, all my friends from my childhood.

knew me as Mike because my mother would use Michael when she was angry or upset with me. So we had this negative connotation. I for years I only people knew me by Mike. But then when I got in into my 20s, I felt like I’d grown into Michael. and so I started going with that. But I would say

You know, certainly since I moved to Australia 23 years ago, I’ve had a lot of people shorten my name and Mick is the other one. I get Mick and Mike. The only one that I don’t like is Mikey. There was a negative association to that word when I was growing up. There was a television commercial that…

Simon Waller (01:46.719)
you

Michael Schiffner (02:02.03)
made fun of this boy Mikey and I just used to get teased when I was young so I yeah I’ve got a negative association with Mikey but Mike and Mick are I’m fine with and yeah happy.

Simon Waller (02:13.503)
Yeah. It’s so funny about the name associations that we make. I feel super sorry for anyone called Karen at the moment. And I know some really lovely Karen’s, but the fact that you have had your name associated with someone like something so negative. Like it just feels like blatantly unfair is the first thing. But let’s go back. So I first met you as Michael and at the time it was around 2010. was only just after I arrived in Melbourne from Perth and we were both working out of.

Michael Schiffner (02:19.61)
Ugh.

Michael Schiffner (02:30.07)
Mmm. Yeah.

Simon Waller (02:42.805)
Probably one of Melbourne’s very first co-working spaces, a place called Hub Melbourne. Do you remember much of like our interactions back then?

Michael Schiffner (02:53.74)
Well, what I do remember was, you know, that was a really interesting period in my life because my son had just been born. He was just, just about a year old at that time. And so I was navigating, you know, fatherhood and, trying to, you know, trying to find a place that I could work where, where I wouldn’t get interrupted and, and discovered the

the hub and what I do remember was just the impression that you made on me. You I think you just had this energy and this vibe that I was like, that’s somebody I want to get to know better. And I’m just delighted that we’re still friends and we’ve got to know each other both professionally and personally.

Simon Waller (03:52.767)
Yeah. Cause I feel like, at some point in the last five or six years, some fuel has been thrown on the friendship fire in, kind of, I did cheat a little bit. looked back through some of our email threads and there’s been this kind of constant connection that’s happened, but it’s often been sporadic. It’s like, Hey, do want to catch up for a beer after work? And, that might not then happen again for another six to eight or 12 months. And then I remember something, it must’ve been maybe 2019.

Michael Schiffner (03:53.984)
Ahem.

Simon Waller (04:22.921)
I think I was, we caught up at a coworking space. It might’ve been that I ran an event there and it just happened that you working out of it, a different coworking space in the city. I remember us sitting down and we had this conversation for a couple of hours, maybe longer. And I found out so many interesting parallels between our lives. And we talked about, know, sailing was a big thing that came out of it.

I think you got arrested in Cuba, sailing a yacht into Cuba. You sailed a yacht across the Atlantic. And I thought I’d done some pretty cool stuff like, you know, trips to Indonesia and a sea to have a yacht race. But there was some really like, I was like, oh, the richness and the complexity of our friendship elevated dramatically. And then since then, there’s been a few other little things. I think the other thing that happened was we ran into each other at a dance event. Um, it might’ve been, was it down at, uh,

Michael Schiffner (05:09.804)
Hmm. Hmm.

Michael Schiffner (05:18.966)
Yeah, Carl Cox. Yeah, Carl Cox event. Yeah.

Simon Waller (05:20.875)
Carl Cox and Rose bad. Yeah. And I wasn’t necessarily, it wasn’t something we had arranged. I think we just turned up at the same place. And again, I do think that those type of events are ones whereby, I don’t know, like it feels like they sit, because they sit just slightly on the fringe of society. That you, when you run into people there, it feels like there is a sense of connection that gets created or that, like a belongingness.

Michael Schiffner (05:27.297)
No.

Michael Schiffner (05:41.23)
Hmm.

Simon Waller (05:49.032)
that exists in those communities that you don’t necessarily get in day to day life. And I think from there, I think of the last, I know, especially since kind of the pandemic years, these kind of connections and our catches and stuff have become more common to the point whereby I think it was only the last time we saw each other in real life was only on Friday, where we saunaed and cold dipped together at Mordialloc. So

It’s been, it’s been interesting that journey, but I really loved to discover more things as we go on. And weirdly, this is a really wonderful segue into our conversation for today. Is that not right?

Michael Schiffner (06:30.379)
Yeah, I think it’s a perfect segue.

Simon Waller (06:33.706)
So a few, mean, I had you on my list of potential podcast guests for a while. And then we talked maybe about three weeks ago where I said, look, you know, I kind of locked this thing in and gave you the option to talk about the future of absolutely anything. And can you like share a little bit? Cause I, in that conversation, there was a few different ideas that got thrown around, but there was something that you shared.

around one of, suppose, or some of your, I kind of describe as a frustration, maybe it’s a curiosity that you have since moving from Canada to Australia that kind of sits at the heart of this. Do want to share a little bit about what that is for you?

Michael Schiffner (07:16.193)
Yeah, and yeah, I think for me, one of the things that’s paramount to life for me is connection and connectivity. And I really feel that, you know, that the best things in life are

experiences and experiences shared with others. so for example, know, the Carl Cox concert where I just randomly bumped into you, we happened to be in the same place. And then we ended up, you know, dancing the entire afternoon together and, and sharing that experience created a connection and a bond and a deeper connection, you know, between you and I. And we’ve since done that a couple of times. And

and other experiences that have created more opportunities for connection. And one of my observations of having moved to Australia 23 years ago, and I’ve been surprised and disappointed with many of the Australians that I have met that have been reticent to make

deeper connections. you know, I’ve, they’re very polite and friendly, but it’s kind of a surface level relationship. We didn’t go deeper and, and get a chance to, you know, go have experiences together like you and I have had, invite one another over for a meal. And I just, I often contemplate on the, the impact on society that that has when it’s a cultural norm.

My experience of other cultures, so I grew up in Canada and my experience of Canadian culture and American culture is there’s a much deeper sense of hospitality and I’ve also experienced that in Europe. And when I say hospitality, the concept of,

Michael Schiffner (09:38.742)
customer experiences is a very different experience in those countries. And I think that the tip culture obviously is part of that. So people who are working in a cafe or restaurant will go the extra mile because they want to get a good tip from you. But I think that is pervasive in culture. And so what you see is people

being incredibly generous and hospitable. So for example, I was in Hawaii for a wedding, for my last wedding about 10 years ago. And we were just walking down the beach and I saw a husband and wife just putting in a catamaran. So you can relate to this Simon because it was a sailing.

I saw another sailor getting onto a cat, Hobie cat, and they’re just so much fun. Have you used one before? Yeah.

Simon Waller (10:42.223)
I have, yeah, I do. I really enjoy it, actually. Yeah.

Michael Schiffner (10:46.913)
Yeah, it’s such a scream, right? So this guy’s just loading it into the water with his wife and we’re walking along and his eyes caught mine and I just acknowledged him and I said, wow. I said, I love Hobie Cats, they’re so much fun. And we struck up a conversation and during that conversation I said, is there anywhere around here that I can rent one?

And he said, you know, there used to be, but, you know, they’re all gone now. And then he turned and looked up the beach and there was another Hobie cat, up on, you know, on the, on the land. And he pointed to that one and he said, that’s also mine as well. If you want, I’ll rig it up and you can take it out with your wife. Complete stranger, right? Like didn’t know me and just was willing to let me take his, you know, take his catamaran. That’s the kind of.

spirit of generosity that I have not always seen here in Australia. And I feel it’s sad because I think there’s a lot of people missing out. I think that deeper, that humanity, those random acts of kindness are what add the richness to our lives.

Simon Waller (12:06.31)
So there’s a couple of things in that conversation that I found a tiny bit confronting. This is just the conversation about what you’re going to come and talk about. And that was one of them, because as an Australian, we have a story or a folklore about ourselves that, you we’re all about the battlers and we’re all there to help each other. And mateship is a big thing, you know, within our kind of our culture. And to hear that as someone who’s come here, that that wasn’t your experience. I found that a little bit confronting and I

On one hand, you try and explain it away. It’s like, well, you know, that’s, you can’t just make rash generalizations like that. We’re not all the same and we’re not, but at the same time, you can’t dismiss the person’s per your experience. because of my knowledge of you, you’ve always been very generous with your own invitations. I come to this dance party or come play poker at my place, or I’m going down to the hot springs. Like you’re very generous with that invitation. So I kind of think that’s interesting, but I did find that was like, okay. The second thing that I found confronting though, in this

in this kind of the conversation about our conversation was, know, in this space around deep connection, you have done a lot of work in kind of like men’s groups, and that type of a setting. And it’s something that I have, and I shied away from, I’d say. And I think the idea I had people who are very good friends and people that I actually trust.

and, and, and right very highly who run a men’s circle, but the very concept of it is something that I’ve gone, that just doesn’t, it feels to me. And yeah, weirdly on the flip side of that, I also believe there’s something missing in terms of that kind of men, space. And I crudely put it through the lens of like, you know, for our parents’ generation, there was a pub and as much as

associating just friendships with alcohol is probably an unhealthy thing to do. At least there was a place to go where other men would be that you could actually have to man time, you know, and, and that it feels like is missing. And so I know that kind of this kind of, these men’s groups and this kind of deep man work stuff kind of makes theoretical sense to me. It’s something that I’ve always gone like, I don’t know what it is about me that pushes back on that feeling.

Simon Waller (14:33.709)
So this topic that you’ve chosen around deep connection and knowing that this is part of your experience and something that you rate so highly intrigues me about what we’re going to be talking about today. And so I am doing my best to kind of like, how do I get past those kind of feelings? Does that resonate with you at all?

Michael Schiffner (14:56.712)
absolutely. I mean, can I share a little story of deep connection and just where that you know where it can lead to? So, so probably, I’m thinking it’s probably five, six years ago, I’m not sure but I was a member of a tennis club. Not far from from here, maybe.

Simon Waller (15:08.247)
Mm-hmm, please do.

Michael Schiffner (15:23.148)
15 minutes from my house and I was I was playing regularly in a men’s league. So once a week, we had we had show up and play. And this particular day, there was a guy there that I’d not seen before. And anyways, during, you know, during one of the breaks when we were both not playing, I just introduced myself, we got chatting, asked him where he was from. And he was explaining that he

you know, he was currently residing in Thailand, but you know, lived in the US for many years and his mom lives in Hampton, which is, you know, just around the corner from the tennis club and he was visiting his mom for a few weeks. anyways, like, I think many people would just leave it at that, but I said, well, you know, seeing as you’re here and you’re

don’t know too many people, if you want to have another hit or catch up for a coffee, let me know. And he went, that’d be really great. And so that was the start of a wonderful friendship. it turns out he was a Hollywood producer and was involved with producing The Matrix and amazing movies like that. the list went on and I was like, wow.

And as a result, you know, we’ve kept up contact and every year when he comes back to visit his mom, you know, we would catch up and we’d invite him over for dinner and, and one year he said, you know, why don’t you come to Thailand? You know, I, I know it really well. And, you know, he had been, went to Phuket at the start of the pandemic and got stuck there and ended up, you know, being having this amazing experience of

of being able to travel around Phuket with no tourists, I mean, imagine. And obviously got to know a lot of people. And he is very similar to me in terms of his willingness to just reach out and meet people and develop friendships and connections. so Andrew and I decided two years ago, well, yeah, we’re looking for a holiday. said, why don’t we go to Phuket? Alex is there and…

Michael Schiffner (17:44.588)
you know, we’ll probably have a very different experience because he’s local and he can show us around. we did go and we had this amazing, amazing holiday. And just one of the things that was quite unique, I mean, he knew places that I would have never, never discovered as a tourist, you know, a restaurant that had just opened two weeks earlier. And one night we were at the

at the market, the night market. And his phone rang and he answered it. And anyways, he turned to us and said, my friend Bill’s just asked if I want to go on the boat tomorrow. And I explained that you’re with us. And he said, you’re welcome to come out on his boat. Would you like to go out on a boat tomorrow? I, you know, you know me, I’m gonna love boats, right? So I said, that sounds great. So he said, yeah, okay, we’re in. Anyways, what I didn’t realise,

Simon Waller (18:35.875)
You

Michael Schiffner (18:43.327)
was his friend Bill, you know, was a millionaire and this was a super yacht. So we went out onto his super yacht for the, for the day. And my son’s eyes bugged out of his head when he saw the size of the boat. And when we got on and they had like a buffet, you know, ready for us for lunch. And my son’s like, my God, this guy’s really wealthy dad. He’s rich. You know, it’s like, but

That was an experience that I would never have had. And now my son’s had this amazing experience of being on a super yacht. And it’s all because I was playing tennis one day and I decided to strike up a conversation and seek to have a deeper connection than just say goodbye and thanks for the game kind of thing.

Simon Waller (19:35.146)
Yeah. So you’re right. Like when you’re saying that it reminds me of another of my experiences when I was younger, I was in the UK and I was involved in international student society and had that as experiences of visiting friends all through Europe. And you said you through those connections, you get an experience that’s far richer than perhaps what you do if you buy the Contiki tour type thing. So, okay, we’re going to park that because we need to get into this scenario.

Now, so this scenario for those obviously listing, it’s around this concept of deep connection. It’s set, was it 2045? Is that right?

Michael Schiffner (20:14.571)
20 years ahead, so yeah.

Simon Waller (20:16.45)
20 years ahead and there was any significance for the timeframe in terms of when you’re writing this.

Michael Schiffner (20:21.643)
There was because my son’s currently 15, so he’ll be 35. it was, it was, I was around 35 when I went to Burning Man and had quite a profound experience. And so that’s what kind of made me think about, you know, what, what would it be like for my son 20 years from now if he was to go to Burning Man?

Simon Waller (20:51.469)
This is kind of the core of the scenario. Your son Blake going to Burning Man for the first time at the age of 35 and mirroring your own journey in a way, which I think is so beautiful. And so, interestingly, coincidental, Burning Man is on this week. It is happening at this very moment in the US. In this moment, I did see there’s been a bit of carnage. But we might park that conversation because I’m even interested.

Michael Schiffner (21:09.864)
at this moment.

Simon Waller (21:19.51)
There’s a touch of that in this scenario, but there’s some other stuff around hardship and things that are worth probably pulling on as threads at the end of this. So what I’m going to do for now, Mike, is I’m going to throw to you and you are going to read your scenario from start to finish. OK, the camera is all yours.

Michael Schiffner (21:42.859)
The bus doors sighed open, and a ribbon of heat unspooled across the black desert.

Michael Schiffner (21:52.042)
Blake stepped down into it, the fine, talc-like dust rising to greet his boots. The horizon shimmered, sun-silvered dunes, wind-bent shade spires, and a procession of kite-sailed mutant vehicles nodded like patient animals. The air smelled different, sweet, with something like possibility.

Blake rested his backpack against his leg and glanced at the cloth patch stitched to the strap, a small flame with the date embroidered beneath it, June 22nd, 1986. His dad had sewn it on, a relic of a story he told a hundred times about two friends, a handmade effigy, and the first moment when strangers chose to be we.

instead of me. Remember, his dad said, pressing the patch flat. Magic happens on the plier. Back then it sounded like a line. Today it felt real. The gate greeter’s eyes crinkled above a scarf. First time on the plier, she shouted over a gust. First bird, Blake said with a nod. Perfect.

Then you know the drill. She pointed to a low bell hung from a tripod, solar etched, tide worn ring to arrive, kneel to meet the ground. Offer what you want to feel this week. He knelt. The ply of dust kissed his soft, kissed his skin, cool and soft. And for a second, he was 8 again.

chocking spirals on a concrete while his dad told him about radical inclusion and random acts of kindness, like it was a bedtime story. When he stood, he rang the bell with the back of his hand. The sound went up and widened and the wind shifted as if to carry it to anyone who needed finding. The evolving city,

Michael Schiffner (24:16.562)
Looked like old photos he’d seen, tense and domed, an art that refused to sit still, but it sounded different. Less speaker thunder, more voices. A dozen small circles gathered under shade wings.

People sat cross-legged, holding smooth stones as they spoke. At the edge of the camp, a wooden arch read, Signal Garden. Underneath, a rack of sealed pouches waited for phones. Still present, not purpose, purposely silent. Now purposely silent. An elder with a feather hat nudged him. Device asleep there, he said.

They’re safe. You’re safe without them for a while. Blake slid his phone into a pouch and lingered as the attendant heat sealed it shut. He could feel a reflex tug in his palm, a ghost text, the itch to check on everything and nothing. He let it pass. A teenager passed him by, green hair, bright grin, and offered a high five. First hour is the hardest.

then you get your mind back.

Past the garden, he found Kinship Kitchen, a crescent of grills and solar ovens ringed with water barrels.

Michael Schiffner (25:54.315)
Cook for someone you don’t know, the sign said. He chopped capsicum with a stranger named Ro, who’d arrived from a flooded port city, and they swapped recipes and stories, the kind with splinters and salt. Between sizzles, Ro tapped the locket at her throat. AI booked my evacuation bus. It also fired my whole department. Mixed blessings.

She smiled. I come here to remember the parts of me that technology can’t parse. On the hour, a bell chimed across the camp, listening fields opened, chalk circles on packed dust, each circle with a theme. Grief, wonder, beginnings, endings.

You stepped into one and took three smooth stones, traded a stone for a turn to speak, left one to show you were still listening. No moderation by clever software, no metrics, just the slow alchemy of attention. Blake hovered, then walked into beginnings and took his stone. What brings you here? A man asked.

sunlight bright on his forearms. My dad came, a lot, Blake said. He said this place taught him about human connection and to reimagine what society could feel like. He rolled a stone in his palm. I’ve had years of conversations through lenses, scripts, even dates that felt like a performance review. I want to know

I want to know what connection feels like without the training wheels. The circle breathed. Someone spoke about a child born in a blackout. Someone about leaving a nation that had suddenly decided they were a suspect. Blake offered a stone and said, I fixed things for a living. Systems, broken processes.

Michael Schiffner (28:20.362)
But I haven’t let anyone fix me in a while. There were nods and not the polite kind. The circle held. It held the space. In the afternoon, the wind came up like a mood change, sharp, insistent. Shade spirals flexed. The repair yurt opened its flaps, mending cloths, patching tents, and writing.

written in chalk beneath meditating arguments. Inside, two friends sat back to back, a facilitator tattooed forearms, patient eyes coaching them through breathing before words. Outside, a group practiced consent signals, palms up and open, learning to greet with body language before language itself.

Somewhere a parade of wind kites pulled a whale the size of a tram across the plier. Kids ran behind it dragging tails of ribbons like comet dust.

Michael Schiffner (29:35.412)
Flight past a witness hut, no AI counselors here, just a bench and hand-lettered invitation. Be seen, be quiet, stay until the impulse to perform dissolves. He sat, the world slowed to the click of bicycle hubs, the hush of filtering.

filtering cloth, the occasional whoop when someone’s home-built instrument found a perfect note, the need to caption his own life and bed.

When he opened his eyes, a woman was sitting across from him, hands folded, gaze kind and steady.

What did you come to feel? She asked.

Like I’m part of a we, he said, surprised by his own swiftness, not a feed. Then let’s find your people, she said, standing. They walked toward the inner ring, where the man rose, latticed and impossible, the late sun snagged in his ribs. Around the base, plywood plaques told fragments of the lineage. Larry and Jerry on the beach.

Michael Schiffner (31:01.929)
A crowd finding itself at the edge of the Pacific. The years in the desert. Years of smoke and storms. The turn when camps agreed to go carbon negative. And not as a stunt, but as a promise. A kid traced a finger over 1986 and asked his mom, was it always this big? The mother giggled.

It was always this human. Night came on like ink spilled slow. The city lit itself. Glow wires, lanterns, a galaxy of headlamps, and the whale floated back. Now lit from within, a moving constellation. A drum line synced with the wind. Blake felt a hand slip into his. Roe.

smiling, come see something. She led him to the quiet burn, a circle within the circle. No music, no narration, just a ring of people standing shoulder to shoulder around a small sculpture of intertwined hands. One by one they stepped forward and whispered into the wind what they were releasing. A grudge, a mask,

a habit. When the flame caught, the crowd didn’t cheer. They exhaled.

You could hear it, a single tender tide. Blake watched the carvings blackened, curl and rise to join the night. He felt the weak unfurl before him. Meals made and shared, circles entered and completed, art stumbled into and then stewarded, the old muscles of presence waking up again. He thought of his dad.

Michael Schiffner (33:07.773)
Four burns stitched into his stories, sending him out with a patched backpack and a blessing. Let yourself be changed. On the walk back to camp, the wind went soft. A stranger offered him a cup of tea and a question. How will you carry this home?

Blake didn’t answer right away. He lingered in the silence, the warmth in his hand, grounding him in the moment. Then he replied,

by remembering that what we share here isn’t casual. When humans truly connect, something deeper stirs, something magical that only lives between us. The stranger raised her cup. To the magic of connection. To the magic of connection, Blake echoed, and for a brief moment, the desert felt like a neighborhood.

where everybody knew his name.

Simon Waller (34:21.955)
my god, so beautiful. Like, it’s so beautiful.

Thank you. Thank you for the time it’s taken for you to write this. Like, it’s so deep as well. Like, I’m genuinely concerned about how we’re going to do justice to this in the time that we have available. Like, there is just layers and layers of meaning and ideas that have been stitched together in this. Before we kind of get into…

Michael Schiffner (34:29.833)
Thank you.

Michael Schiffner (34:50.089)
Hmm.

Simon Waller (34:57.935)
some of those kind of questions and stuff I have. Do you want to share? Like I know you mentioned just in our kind of pre-chat that, you know, in reading it back, you almost kind of had a tear in your eye yourself. Like, and obviously this is very personal in terms of the subject being Blake, your son, and this experience and the experience that you had. Tell me about the process of, of bringing this together as a scenario and what were the

the signals and the ideas that you felt were so important to capture in this.

Michael Schiffner (35:33.541)
that’s yeah, so much goes through my mind and a lot of emotion also comes up when I start thinking about this because I really wanted to say I wasn’t really, it caught me by surprise how emotional I got when I started writing this.

And as soon as I started feeling these emotions, I could feel my throat kind of choked up a couple times. I said, wow, like there’s really something here. I’m definitely onto something because when you get that strong emotional response, there’s a lot there. And for me, like I discovered Burning Man through a friend and

This friend I met when I was on my incredible adventures sailing around the Caribbean. I ended up going back to like, so I sailed from the Bahamas to Cuba, and then I was meant to sail from Cuba to some other islands. we ended up demasting that boat.

in an accident and had to return to Cuba. And there’s a whole bunch of stories. You’ve heard some of them. But one of the consequences of this was I ended up going back and spending a couple more weeks in Cuba that I never planned. And I ended up going to a remote area of Cuba, an area called Flores, which is not

not really touristy and I had this random meeting at a waterfall and I met this very eccentric couple that had just arrived a few days earlier from the UK and they were celebrating their honeymoon. They just got married. And we had this just random chance meeting at the bottom of a waterfall where um

Michael Schiffner (38:02.087)
We were the only ones crazy enough to strip off and jump in and go skinny dipping in this ice cold water. And, you know, was a moment in time and we, you know, sort of put our clothes back on and say goodbye. And, then a couple of days later I bumped into them and, I bumped into them on the beach and Charlie, who I was traveling with, we, we discovered this amazing.

really authentic Cuban bar which had live music and no tourists. And we were like, yes, like this is it, right? It’s the real thing. And so I said to them, you know, would you like to come? And they were like, yeah, that sounds fantastic. And so they joined us that night and we partied with all these Cubans and we like got incredibly drunk on Cuban ramen. And, you know, at the end of that night we…

exchange emails and this is long before Facebook, right? And so I’m so grateful for that because fast forward six months later, I’ve now sailed across the Atlantic and sailed from Miami all the way to the UK. And my mom’s British so can…

live and work there and I decided to stay for a while and I ended up there for two years. And after being there for a few weeks, I sent an email to Tony and Sarah to say, hey, I’m, in the UK and, and they said, why don’t you come down to London, spend the weekend, come stay with us. And so I did. And what ended up happening was they became very close friends.

And as a result, they introduced me to a whole network of friends that were amazing, extraordinary people. And so my entire experience in the UK was shaped by a moment at a waterfall, the base of a waterfall in Cuba. And this is the point I guess I wanted to make is that if we actually embrace connectivity and this, you know,

Michael Schiffner (40:23.43)
You just never know where that leads to. So fast forward, I’m living in the UK. I’ve been living there for a year. I’m catching up with Tony and Sarah, having an amazing time going to parties, meeting their friends. And they started talking about Burning Man. And they said, they were going and I’d never even heard of it. And so…

It was them that invited me to go and share the experience with them. That was the start of my experience. I’ve had now four trips to Burning Man and each one has been profound. I think what a lot of people think about when they think of Burning Man, a lot of the media portray it as this bohemian party.

it’s, just a music festival in the desert and it’s so much more than that. And what I was going to say is, is, that I’ve, I’ve discovered that every time I go, I get a deeper, more profound experience. And, know, I, I, I have had extraordinary experiences there. So it kind of made me,

Simon Waller (41:25.655)
Are you good?

Michael Schiffner (41:46.138)
You know, so was kind of fortuitous that we started this conversation and I started thinking about deep connections and, what, what the future might look like. And the whole birth of Burning Man was a couple guys that started thinking about the thinking about what, could we reimagine

what the future of humanity and civilization might look like. And it started with this tiny little gathering on the beaches of California in 1986. And today, as we speak, there is close to 80,000 people from all over the world gathering to create a, to form a

temporary community that is based on a gift society. There’s nothing, you can’t sell anything, you can’t buy anything. Everything is gifted that entire week and it is a profound experience.

Simon Waller (42:57.11)
This in reading this, like I think even that first paragraph, it was incredibly clear that you had been and that you were sharing a very personal experience that line around the horizon, shimmered, sun, silver, dunes, wind, bent shade, spires and a procession of kite sailed mutant vehicles, nodding like patient animals. It was like, my God, it was like I’ve seen pictures. And yet that was the very first time I felt like I was there.

You’ve done an amazing job of taking people into that space, which is very admirable. I want to talk though a little bit about this as a future scenario. So this is not your experience. This is Blake’s. This is set somewhere probably 40 odd years after your experience. Is that right? I’m kind of guessing you’re there somewhere maybe in the mid 2000s or so that you were there.

Michael Schiffner (43:55.164)
Yeah, yeah, yep.

Simon Waller (43:57.63)
And part of this is obviously dotted through your scenario is references to stuff going on in the outside world. That the shaping of the flooded port cities and AI being used and these other types of, like they’re almost as in external to this space, which I think is beautifully done by the way. But I’m curious as to how you imagine, and I don’t know, cause I’ve never been like, what parts of this story about Burning Man?

are the same as your experience and which are the ones are you projecting the future of Burning Man? Like what, what, tell me, tell me where the future is in this, in this story.

Michael Schiffner (44:45.745)
So I think the thing that I’ve experienced going to Burning Man is the…

the way that it strips away all the norms of society, you the car, the kind of car we drive, the neighborhood that we live in, where we went to school, all of these things are stripped away so that we are all one having an experience in the desert and

One of the things that I think has made Burning Man so successful and why people seek it out is partially because the climate is so harsh and extreme. As we speak, they’ve had high winds that have

torn people’s tents and they have things called theme parks, theme camps, and people build these amazing elaborate structures to invite other people in. And they have bars that serve you martinis all week long and you don’t have to pay for them, right? Like everything is gifted. So this amount of…

intentionality and generosity that go into creating an experience for people with nothing, no expectation of anything in return. It’s a gift society and that’s one of the things that is amazing. there’s people walking around just gifting things. And so you have these random acts of kindness happening constantly for a week, all the time. just, you know, you just, and it…

Michael Schiffner (46:48.999)
It is really quite profound. And it brings the best out in humanity, in my opinion, like, and you know, you and I were sitting here today, blessed to live in Australia blessed to have been born into the circumstances we are. And yet we turn on the TV and we see horrific images of Palestinians starving to death. You know, we see what’s happening in the Ukraine and

It just, it really frustrates me because I think on one hand, we’re still savages, you know, that we can do this to one another, but also be compliant in not stopping it. And I think at the moment, you know, there’s a massive, uprising in terms of people just going enough’s enough. Like this, this just,

This is enough. So I think.

Burning Man is a microcosm of what the world could be. And I think that the intent that I’ve, you know, what I’ve experienced is that a lot of people go to Burning Man and it changes them. it actually, it’s a profound, deeply profound experience if they’ve, you know, if they open themselves up to that and they start to.

realise that we can, you know, like we can live differently, that there is a different way. And, and that there’s this shared humanity that we all have. And, you know, I like the, you know, the amount of people that I just struck up conversations with random strangers, and had incredible conversations, just, it’s magnificent. And you know, people just

Michael Schiffner (48:49.489)
giving you hugs in the middle of the desert that, know, like, it just gives me hope that we might find our way so that we can live differently than we are. And I guess, you know, I hope that for my son, like, that’s what I, when I was writing this, I think why I got so emotional is because I sometimes get really saddened and I feel a sense of despair and also

almost helplessness when I watch what’s happening in the world today. So that’s kind of, I don’t know, I rambled a bit, but I hope that helped.

Simon Waller (49:25.745)
Yeah, that’s okay. There’s a bunch of stuff that came up in that that ramble that I’d love to kind of unpack a little bit more. It’s almost hard to know where it’s at. But I think the first one I heard, which I think is really powerful, is the value of discomfort in terms of creating connection. And in previous episodes, we kind of talked about this. One of my frustrations is this idea that we almost

Seek to live life at 22 degrees Celsius. This idea that we want a level of comfort and we move from our air conditioned houses to our air conditioned cars to our air conditioned offices. And on one hand, we in doing so, we don’t get to feel as alive because we don’t get to deal with the variation. But what I’m hearing from you, which I think is also really powerful, is that hardship is actually a place where we find connection and almost extreme hardship.

is a place where we find deeper connection. And I’m not saying that that’s the only place we can find it, but there is something that is forged in shared hardship. And, you know, one of the things I lament as well as we get older and more affluent, we almost feel bad about calling on our friends to help us with things. It’s like, I need to move house. I’ll get a removalist. I need to do the gardening. I’ve got a gardener. Like, but what we’re actually doing is

is taking away the opportunity for people to have that shared experience with us. So I find a bit of that in this. That was one thing that I picked up. Another thing that you mentioned that I think is, is you talk about this as a microcosm. It’s a place of almost, ah like we can suspend disbelief. Like we can suspend the norms of society and live out a version that’s different.

And part of me goes, that’s amazing. But also part of me goes, if you think about it, right. The guy hanging out the free martinis, he’s probably had to save up months of his pay packet, you know, like to be able to go there and hand out the free martinis. And in some ways, this is not sustainable in the model itself is not sustainable without people going and doing the stuff outside the model to feed it. Right.

Simon Waller (51:49.104)
So I kind of find a tension there personally, like on one hand, I would like to believe that we could take this microcosm and expand it. And yet the microcosm isn’t expandable in the format that it’s experienced at Burning Man. kind of pick up on that tension too.

Michael Schiffner (52:06.715)
Yeah, I mean, I see it slightly differently. I think, yes, some people might not be able to hand out free martinis for an entire week. But I think it’s the like, Burning Man is a gift society. And what I’ve seen is people will gift what they can. And I think there’s an opportunity for us to

also pay it forward? Like, did you ever see that movie, Pay It Forward? Yeah, like that was such a

Simon Waller (52:45.146)
Is that Will Smith? Was that that one? Will Smith.

Michael Schiffner (52:48.326)
I think it was Will Smith. I forget the actors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, for me, when I saw that movie, I thought, wow, like, if we all just paid it forward for someone else, because the idea that, you know, if you do something for me, I pay it forward to two people. And they, the only…

Simon Waller (52:50.265)
It feels like something that Will Smith should be in.

Michael Schiffner (53:18.032)
caveat is that they have to pay it forward to two people. So you’re always going out and with this expansion. I think, yeah, I think coming back to the question, is, you know, what, what, does Burning Man have to do with, with the future of deep connection? I think there’s something profound when

we go and we are stripped of our modern day, you know, comforts like air conditioning, air conditioned car, air conditioned office, et cetera, as you said. And we are now living through some hardship and we are also, we’re back connected with earth. we’re not living on a 30th floor building, we’re…

on the Playa, which is what they call the ground at Burning Man. And it’s a harsh place because nothing grows there, like nothing, not one blade of grass, not anything. And yet everything flourishes for that one week, even in the extreme rain or winds that they’re experiencing this week.

you know, people are flourishing. And I think it is, it’s humbling for us as humans to go and have those experiences. And I think it’s important because I think technology and certainly the rate rise of AI is creating more distance between us, not bringing us closer together is my biggest concern. And I think

You you talked earlier about my experience with men’s workshops. I feel it’s the same thing that, you know, I’ve been involved for, yeah, it’s probably about 18 years ago that I did my first men’s workshop. It was a three and a half day residential full immersion experiential workshop. And it literally changed me. And it was…

Michael Schiffner (55:41.51)
more profound than I was expecting. what I think the link between that weekend and going to Burning Man is you go through hardship, you go through an experience together that unites you. so I still remember that weekend, there were

you know, 30 odd men who were all strangers from various walks of life, you know, some wealthy, some very modest, but you know, all of us came together and we were like brothers by the end of the weekend. And I was amazed that you could feel that close and share such deep intimate secrets with complete strangers.

in three and a half days. And I think for me Burning Man is very similar to that.

Simon Waller (56:45.859)
Yeah, and that’s an interesting connection that I wouldn’t have made myself personally. Like if I was to look at those two things, a men’s workshop and Burning Man, they feel like they’re so different. But in the way that you have described this experience, that’s like, I don’t know which bits which in this, it feels like there’s elements of this scenario, which like they could have been just lifted out of a men’s workshop. And yet they feel perfectly at place.

in this scenario about Burning Man 20 years from now. Before we jump into that, because I do want to explore that a bit more, but the other thing that came up for me, and I don’t know if you’ve ever come across the kind of spiral dynamics kind of theory. So Claire Graves, Don Beck, and spiral dynamics basically suggests that as human society, we go through evolutions and levels of development, we spiral upwards. And

I studied this as part of my post-grad work and I don’t remember all of it in detail, but these levels of development and sophistication in society happen. And what kind of appears to us at certain times though is we get a glimpse of the next level before we get to live it. So we get a glimpse of it. We get this kind of aha moment about how this next level of development

answers many of the problems and the questions that we have about the current level of development that we find ourselves in. Not all of the societies are on the same level of development. So you have more authoritarian societies around the world or democratic societies. And we kind of also have this oscillation between individualistic and collectivist views. But at this highest of levels, there’s a collectivist view. And I kind of feel like in some ways, through your experiences of Burning Man, you have had this glimpse.

And you’ve got, this is what it could be like. Then you kind of leave that experience and you go back to the, the kind of the center of society that you live in on a daily basis. And it’s not like that. It’s highly individualistic. And there’s little kind of, maybe signs around the place that it could be more collectivist and it could be more generative, right. But it doesn’t exist. And almost as a frustration that then we sit with.

Simon Waller (59:08.111)
because we know the potential, we don’t get to experience on a daily basis. So that came up for me with this. And it came up for me even in that pre-conversation that we had around your frustration around deep connection, because you in some ways have both the gift and the burden of knowing what an alternative could look like. Does that resonate with you?

Michael Schiffner (59:36.121)
Yeah, yeah, and it creates a, that creates a real challenge, right? This tension because…

Well, I think that’s why so many burners, people who go to Burning Man, come back year after year. Like I think, I don’t know what the statistics are, but I think most people who go to Burning Man don’t just go once. So I’ve got a friend in Brisbane, he listened to me talk about my experiences at Burning Man for a number of years.

He one year said, I’m going like I’m going to go check this out. He’s now been eight times like and he started going, you know, later than I did. Right. So and for him, you know, he really like it. There was something that really spoke to him.

Simon Waller (01:00:41.166)
So there’s been an attempt to do Burning Man or an aversion of Burning Man or recreate that within Australia. I don’t know if you know about that. I think it was even run by some people out of the hub or that may be where I heard about it. Part of me feels that if you wanted to take the principles and the premises of deep connection that happen at places like that and you want them to flourish in general society, we need to find other places for this type of deep connection to happen.

And so one place might be a men’s workshop, but even that, as I said, I feel like there are barriers to who can attend, like A, be a man. But B also, it has to be a man that is looking for that thing. As opposed to, think a lot of people in general, male or female or whatever, like they…

wouldn’t even know that this is the thing that is missing for them. How do you take what you know to be true about the value and the need? I almost describe as a need for deep connection within society because it does address or feels like it is part of the the answer to me that of the ills that we face. What would be the things that we could do to bring that into more mainstream conversation?

Michael Schiffner (01:02:09.685)
Talk on a podcast about it I’m hoping that someone listening today goes hmm. There’s something in this so I I want to say thank you for giving me the forum to spread this I Think you know

I’ll give you another sort of insight and then I’ll try to answer the question. Like I was at the gym this week and I was on the treadmill and just winding down after I’d done a spin class and I just was looking out at some of the people in the gym and it’s a large gym. There’s probably easily 80 people there and

You know, I just noticed, I just was observing how people are just keep to themselves. And there was this one young girl, like she must’ve been probably 20, maybe 19. And she was on a machine with headphones on and she was looking at her phone the entire time and, you know, tapping away.

and I imagine she was talking on some kind of socials with her friends. And I just thought, I had this moment where I thought, geez, know, this is just the norm now. The other day, I picked up my son, I was taking him to his, you know, was explaining he’s just got his first job, driving him to work, and he pulls out his phone and he’s just.

he’s constantly messaging his friends on it. So on one hand, they’re hyper connected, but he’s missing the moment to connect with me and have a moment of conversation. Same with this girl in the gym. She could probably make a new friend in the gym just by striking up a conversation with someone or making eye contact.

Michael Schiffner (01:04:22.263)
I think, you know, somehow we have to create.

opportunities for people to put their phones down. like, one of the things that I recently experienced, you know, back in April, I went to Bali for Easter and Andrea and I, we were in Ula Watu and we went to this one place that when you arrive, they take your phones. You’re not, the phones are banned and we were thrilled. And guess what happened?

Simon, people started making eye contact and lo and behold, I struck up a conversation with this amazing guy from him and his wife from Switzerland. And we’re now friends and we’re now communicating and talking and we went out for a beautiful meal together that night. Would that have happened if we were allowed to bring our phones in?

Simon Waller (01:05:23.595)
think there’s something really powerful in this and it’s something that, so we all want a level of connection in our life. And we can have that connection with our family, like say our nuclear family, and we hang out with them and sometimes we fight with them, but we have that connection and that trust with them. And then I said through the mediated connections that we can have through technology.

We can just choose a handful of people and convince ourselves that we can connect with them. And then there’s a likeness between us and almost not be forced to find a likeness with others.

And I think that that’s interesting in terms of like the fragility it creates because by not exploring and finding the fact that as soon as you scratch the surface, we actually have a lot of similarity with lots of other people. In fact, I do deeply believe that there are some underlying philosophical beliefs that are common to probably 90 plus percent of people around the world.

Like 90 plus percent of people largely believe deep down the same core things. How they express that in the world could be quite different. And there can be different interpretations of what those philosophical beliefs are. But at the core, there’s some stuff around, be good to your neighbor and stuff that was just like, yeah, that’s just true. And yet we’re taking away the opportunity to find that connection with others. I think that’s a really

really interesting insight and part of me then goes, okay though, the use of the device though is so personal. It’s like you get to pick up your device or you get to go to the place in Bali that takes your phones, but that was a personal choice in and of itself, right? And if people aren’t choosing that thing, how do we get this to spread?

Michael Schiffner (01:07:26.358)
Easy ask tough questions Simon.

Simon Waller (01:07:29.131)
Okay. So let’s frame it another way. Okay. Here’s a thought experiment because you know, we talk about the spiral dynamics and how do you give like, it’s almost like, how do give people a glimpse? Do you mean like we don’t actually have to change them? think sometimes we feel we need to change people. Obviously not withstanding the fact that for someone to change their mind, they must do it. You can’t do it for them. But if that idea of that, you know, on one hand you had this glimpse and it was not even just a glimpse, it was an immersion.

into say Burning Man or into a three day men’s workshop, right? And you left there and go like, wow, this is real. What would be the glimpse that people could have? The pay it forward concept even, like talk me to about how we could do this. We’re going to change the world.

Michael Schiffner (01:08:16.032)
Yeah. Well, OK, because I think the pay it forward concept works, right? So let’s use the men’s workshop, for example, right? So how did I discover it? Well, I was going through a divorce at the time. And my wife came back from the doctors to say, she just saw the GP and he

mentioned she should do this women’s workshop. And she kind of was dismissive of it. And I had to go see our common GP a couple of weeks later. And I raised it. said, she mentioned that you suggested a workshop. What was that about? And so he said, well, I went on this men’s workshop recently. And he said, you know, I’m not really usually into those kind of things.

To be honest, the only reason I went was because a mate of mine kept nagging me. And finally I thought, well, just go and do it to shut him up. And he said, it changed my life. And I was like, wow, tell me more. what he shared made me think, this is something that I’m interested in, I’m curious about, right? So I’m naturally curious, probably more so than.

the average person, I, you know, I went and what was extraordinary was at the end of the men’s workshop. So I’ve been there for three and a half days, had this experience. They have this final, this ritual where we finished the event and we form a circle and we’re a group of men, like imagine like

50 men standing around in a room holding hands with their eyes closed singing together, all singing, right? And what they do is they invite the family and the friends that had sponsored the men to come up on the workshop. They’re invited to come to acknowledge the men at that moment. And so what happened was they said, gave us instructions, close your eyes.

Michael Schiffner (01:10:43.861)
in a moment where we’re going to play some music, we want you to sing along with us, keep your eyes closed for the entire time, don’t open your eyes. So, you know, because of the weekend, that’s something that everybody honored. And then at the music stopped and they said, okay, you can open your eyes. And here standing in front of me was my GP. He’d come up like driven from, and I was living in Brisbane at the time, he’d driven, you know, an app.

over an hour to come and be there for me and stand in front of me when I finished this experience. And I just burst into tears because it was so moving the fact that he was willing to do that for me. Like he was doing something that he didn’t have to do. he just told me about the fact that he told me about it and suggested I go was enough, but he’d actually taken time out of his weekend.

away from his wife and kids to come up there, be there to acknowledge the inner work that I’d done. I was like blown away. was like, wow, this is amazing. I think in that moment, I decided to start to pay it forward. I have sent other men to do this, that people who are open to it, who’ve said,

I’m kind of curious. know, yeah, I’m going through some stuff. think, you know, and I said, well, would you be open to it? I’d be happy to introduce you. And I’ve probably had maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 men that have gone since then, like over the last, what is it, 18 years, I’ve probably sponsored 18 men to go do that work. And I’ve been there for almost every one of them when they opened their eyes and

Each time it’s like two souls looking at each other with this experience that I can’t even put into words. Just an acknowledgement of his soul, acknowledging my soul in that moment was profound. I think what could we do? could create…

Michael Schiffner (01:13:08.087)
tell people about it, to create these opportunities, look for those opportunities to help people. It doesn’t always have to be a men’s workshop. It could be inviting them to a Karl Cox concert. To me, it’s about what I think community is. It’s community is about participation. It is about involving everyone.

Right, like so you feel part of the community because you’re being involved and you’re participating. And that’s what Burning Man, of like they, there’s 10 principles of Burning Man. One of them is participation. There’s no spectators at Burning Man. Everyone is a participant. It’s a very different way of thinking about community. So I think, yeah, that’s my thought on that.

Simon Waller (01:14:02.439)
I feel like we haven’t really done justice to your scenario. Like there’s so much in there and I don’t feel like we’ve even scratched the surface of it yet. Which on one hand is a reflection of how many amazing little tangents there are to explore. And the second is probably a reflection of how awesome it is as well. And I know unfortunately we can’t talk forever.

on this, though I do sense it will come up in our conversations again. But before we kind of move towards the end of this, I almost want to ask you, what is the thing that we haven’t talked about that we should have? Like in writing this, like what was, is there a line in there or a concept in there that you go, this matters or this part of it that deserves to be discussed?

I don’t want to leave here and feel like we missed the gold.

Michael Schiffner (01:14:59.693)
Hmm.

Well, there’s a lot of gold, right? There’s a lot of gold. For me…

what I hope from today’s podcast, those listeners that have listened this far, and if they’ve been moved, right in some way, curious to just be open to taking more risks. think that’s particularly what one of the themes that maybe we didn’t talk about is, you know,

I took a risk to strike up a conversation with Tony and Sarah in Cuba and it changed the course of my life. I took a risk to strike up a conversation with Alex at the tennis club and that’s changed and enriched my life. And you know, I took a risk to go to Burning Man and that created an experience for me. think, I think

Part of the concern I have is with the digital age that we live in is we become more more insular and we become more reluctant to take a risk to reach out to someone that we don’t know.

Michael Schiffner (01:16:32.584)
it is a risk to be rejected, right? Every time we reach out to try to connect with someone, some people can choose to reject us. I think what I would invite all of your listeners to do is to lean into the risk and do it anyway, right? Because I think what I’ve experienced, the richness of my life has really come from

taking those risks to strike up a conversation with someone that I wouldn’t have otherwise connected with. And my experience at Burning Man and my experience at these men’s workshops is often I look at the surface, the person seems like so different to me, from a very different walk of life or we don’t have anything in common.

there’s always something that we have in common. it’s been, I think, the common thread in my experience is that that’s our common humanity that often comes from some form of…

of challenge, right? So whether it’s on the men’s workshop and we’re starting to look deep at and doing some inner work, which is challenging, or we’re at Burning Man this week, you know, enduring, know, 70, 80 kilometer hour winds and, you know, floods. It, those are the things that create opportunity for us to

deep in our connection. And I think if we are going to evolve as humans, evolve human consciousness, and I think if we’re going to survive as a species, we have to evolve human consciousness. And I believe that is linked to connection. And the more we

Michael Schiffner (01:18:52.585)
see people as friends rather than foe, the more we make connections with strangers, the more we realise we’re all together, we’re all one. And the more like the more chance we have of saving the human race, because right now we’re at a pivotal point. And I think, to me, that was the message that I hope people take from our

Simon Waller (01:19:17.86)
There was one, there’s a line in there that I think was the message you sent Blake off with of let yourself be changed. It feels like that. It’s just let yourself. I, thing that’s really come up for me in this is I’ve always kind of, you know, even perhaps my reluctance in terms of things like, you know, men’s workshops or men’s circles has been almost the, to go is in some ways to acknowledge that you’re broken.

And just in this conversation, I’ve kind of wondered about a reframe of that. And it comes back to some, an idea that a friend of mine and a previous podcast guest, Dr Adrian Medhurst said to me, so Adrian’s an organisational psychologist, but there’s a line that he said to me once long ago that’s always stuck with me. And he said that we don’t really have a health system. have a not sick system. So we don’t…

go to the doctors to get healthy. We go there because we’re sick and we want to be made not sick. Like none of the conversations that we have around health are generally about, how do I get better? Like how could I even be better? And I wonder, you know, if in that sense of reframing, when we do these things, maybe it’s not about fixing something broken. Though I do believe probably we all have broken bits, but the other reframing of it is like, but I don’t worry about whether you’re broken or not broken. It’s just.

what’s the opportunity to find something new and something better, you know, and then maybe that could be the catalyst to make that little shift. And I love the idea that that shift could be as small as just put your device down when you’re on public transport, be open to eye contact, you know, even if nothing else comes from a be open to eye contact, be open to the conversation. And then the next level beyond that is if you’re open to the conversation, start it. I think they’re beautiful little micro

actions that people could take. Okay. This, this honestly, I w when I’ve done these podcasts, I was like, about an hour or so is a really nice amount of time. And we’re substantially over that. But, but that’s because I, know, even now I still feel we haven’t done justice to the conversation that could be had, which is again, Testament to the scenario that you’ve written. The question I do want to ask you though, before we close this out though, is about your own experience of doing this.

Simon Waller (01:21:42.179)
And, and, you know, as I said, we, we’ve known each other for a while, but this podcast recording kind of its genesis was three weeks ago or so when I said, Hey, do want to come on? What would you talk about? And since then, your kind of antennas, like your mental antennas have been tuned into these kinds of concepts of deep connection. Even though I know it’s something that you spend a lot of time thinking about. What has, what have you uncovered or what have you learned?

over the last few weeks as you’ve kind of gone through this process.

Simon Waller (01:23:58.21)
It’s been an absolute pleasure. Like this has been a delightful conversation and one that it does in a way reflect some of the conversations that we’ve had in the past. But I think that even some of the conversations we’ve had about these different kind of parallel experiences and stuff have not gone as deep as this has. So it’s been beautiful to have this conversation with you and quite legitimately your scenario is one of the most like beautifully written scenarios that I’ve seen.

it’s just so nuanced and the way you bring together both this optimistic perspective and parallel that with the challenges that society potentially faces is, is extraordinary. So thank you so much for your participation in this and being on my podcast and thank you for your friendship. and I look forward to the next time we get to sit around and talk like this, whether it be in a sauna or by a fire.

with some Cuban rum, there’s so many opportunities.

or a burning man. Yes, that did come up and you have certainly re-wetted my appetite.

Alright.

Simon Waller (01:25:15.645)
Awesome. Well, that is all for this episode of The Future with Friends. We’ll be back again in another couple of weeks with some more deep conversation. But for now, catch you later.