Futurist(Mom)

Welcome to the Futurist Mom.

Mom.

Today's conversation explores a question that might sound like it came straight out of a comic book was actually deeply rooted in reality.

How do we raise and recognize and support the real life superheroes as children?

Hi, I am Nancy Jordano, a futurist, author, and mom of three, and an advocate for a safe and thriving future for all.

And today we get to chat with my close friend and professional brother Yaro Krater, who is a five time founder, curator, convener, and creative strategist who builds ecosystems that accelerate collaboration.

Has spent over two decades building communities around this very idea.

Way back in 19 99, 3 and a half years before MySpace even existed, Yara created the Hero project, an online platform that connected and empowered what he calls real life superheroes.

It grew to 1.5 million young users.

It was acquired by a major studio.

The concept was simple but revolutionary.

There's a superhero within all of us, and when we tap into their potential and support each other, extraordinary things happen, especially in children.

In 2004, yaro founded Hatch, a global network and series of high impact summits that connects and cross pollinates diverse global influencers and next gen youth leaders to accelerate collaborations and solutions for un sustainable development goals.

By bringing together real life superheroes, again, from astronauts to composers and inventors to software engineers.

Hatches led to thousands of collaborations, companies formed and systems change at the policy level.

The results have impacted hundreds of millions of people.

And selfishly, many hatchers have become my closest friends.

Yaro and I ruminate on how all parents can recognize, nurture, and celebrate the unique superpowers in their children and how we can create the communities and connections that help those superpowers flourish.

And in so doing, create the antidotes to many of the biggest worries we all have.

Welcome to the Futures mom, Yaro

Yaro, I am so excited that you're jumping to this conversation with me.

You know, when I envision this podcast, I thought a lot about the people that would be on it, and I think about the people that I have in my world on a day-to-day basis, like people who have become part of my.

Family part of my world, part of the , the people I need to know, and you are very much one of them.

So I'm excited they get to introduce you to a broader group of people who are parents who may not have heard about you and your amazing history and the work that you do, but it's super profound and it really impacts what their lives as parents as well.

So thank you.

Thank so much for having me, Nancy.

You have this amazing background in being able to identify or encourage, or, help people really reach, you know, this, this amazing, not just potential but impact, but you describe it through the lens of superhero.

Should we start there?

Like, what is a superhero and what is a superpower as you see it, as you look around in your world and think about, the gift that you're bringing and pulling these people together.

Yeah, certainly.

I I was raised by a single parent mom, just her and I, and I, she was sort of the first example I had of someone who could accomplish impossible things in the face of adversity.

And, and yet I still had this sort of ideological pedestal vision of what a superhero was when I moved from small town in Montana to Los Angeles.

And, you know, I was convinced I was gonna be meeting these exceptional, extraordinary human beings every single day of my life.

And after a couple years of just sort of a little bit underwhelmed I started asking the question of like, are they?

Where are these people?

And the moment that I asked that question, different people started showing up out of the woodwork, out of the shadows.

it really had a moment of, you know, after a few weeks of just one after another meeting, these.

Another single parent mom that donated their Saturdays, a soup kitchen, you know, for the homeless or a composer that was teaching deaf kids how to read and play music.

A scientist working the PCOS and learn about together all shapes and sizes of these different individuals.

woke up one morning with this sort of aha moment that like.

They're everywhere.

They're like literally inside each of us.

And that perspective shift, that lens change for me was the, was the massive inflection point, in my life.

And I ended up, you know, starting kind of a movement and a company around that.

I still subscribe to the belief that we're all carrying within us these extraordinary humans that some have yet to tap into.

You know, I was talking to my son about this, you know, my son Zane, and we were talking about this conversation you and I were gonna have.

And you know, Zane's always very provocative and always has this, you know, a side ball question.

He is like, okay, well how do parents recognize the superpower in their children without them becoming obsessed about it or putting too much pressure on them or burning them out?

Like, is this something sort of gracefully unfolds?

As we think about, you know, the fact that I, 'cause I also grieve that everyone has a gift, right?

And I think in work with you and being at Hatch conferences in which we all talk about it through the lens of being, uh, having a superpower, I think it's really, really profound.

And I think that this is a podcast for parents who are thinking about their own children.

And, I think it's very comforting to know that each of our children has that superpower.

So now you put on your hat as parent and say, how do I either recognize it or cultivate it or open the door to it?

Without putting too much pressure on kids, but they're feeling a lot of it right now.

Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean, the teens today are carrying, you know, stress that rivals the adult stress of the eighties.

And I think that, without emotional safety.

Creates burnout and not brilliance.

Yeah.

the, the emotional safety component that, and also the freedom and the encouragement to just express and to ask a lot of questions, to not have all the answers, as a parent creates, more of a dialogue.

And it's probably why you have a son that is creating these provocative questions because you've always encouraged him to be curious and, ask those questions.

So, you know, the more expectation that gets placed on young people, they're more likely to develop depression and anxiety.

And, and some of those things are, are increasingly harder to unravel.

I think that's what I think the tricky thing is as a parent, and now you are a stepparent, right?

So you have two young people in your life that you're really close to as well, is that balance right between wanting them to be able to feel, you know, the, the.

Freedom to express and the freedom to be who they really wanna be and develop who they're going to be.

'cause it's going to evolve over time and wanting to make sure they have all the resources and making sure that they are, uh, well prepared.

And I think right now my experience has been that parents are more focused and hyper-focused on that to the extent that they have time to be right.

Also, they're very distracted by all the things that are going on in their life.

So we as parents put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be able to deliver all of these resources and possibilities for our children.

So I think, you know, for me.

Part of what I've learned in being in the Hatch community and being around so many of these people who do the work that they do, there was such just a natural curiosity.

They had an innate thing that kind of was tugging at them from a very beginning that I think that then with the right space and time, had a chance to either blossom or with the right constraints, had a chance to, you know, also be expressed.

Well, there is sort of a, Well, a dangerous line that I think a lot of parents walk in terms of the best for their kids, but while also projecting their own purpose onto those kids.

Yeah.

And so something you said just a second ago, it's like to allowing them to develop who they're going to be like.

We don't exactly know who they're going to be.

They're gonna be themselves, they're not gonna be mini versions of us.

They have their own, wired, DNA and and synapses and so on.

But I think a lot of kids are, are corrected out of their future gifts because of some sort of projection from a parent or a teacher or authority figures in their lives.

And, you know, sir Ken Robinson, who you and I both, uh, had the, good fortune to spend some time with, to say that, you know, in preschool and elementary school ask hundreds of questions a day, but then by the time they get into.

You know, third, fourth, fifth grade.

Like those questions that have drastically been depleted because they've been sort of course corrected out of that.

So, uh, the other thing I would say is like, kids praise for effort.

Develop, resilience than kids praise for intelligence.

that, you know, the failure is, is, uh, is not the opposite of success.

It's like literally the curriculum.

when you're a kid, the encouragement to have those failures at like low stakes, because as we grow older, those stakes grow higher.

But to not have to sort of orient around perfectionism.

I do love that.

I think maybe what I'm attuned to, right, maybe, and this is just my story, maybe I'm projecting at this particular moment, right, with that sense of feeling misunderstood.

I was a really highly sensitive kid that I was always told that she was too sensitive.

And so the things that I felt or that I saw were, you know, never amplified back or recognized , and my, again, my parents had a lot of their own.

Literally shit going on.

So , it did carry that for a while and it, you know, it took a while to, to shake that off and realize that that wasn't, uh, the truth of my experience.

But even 10, I mean, you know, there's a producer who's working on this podcast with us, Jethro.

He said something really kind the other day that reflected a stress that I had about trying to make something more perfect and just the fact that he recognized that I started getting weepy.

Like clearly I'm still carrying the sense of wanting to feel understood.

One of the things I would encourage is for parents to really just take time to try and see their children.

Uh, even if they don't fully understand them.

And they are very, and to your point, often wired differently, just creating that space of feeling Understood.

I think it was a really, really long way, and I think, again, what I've heard over and over again in those shadow exercises is the call or the wish for that.

I used to describe the Hatchers as the island of misfit toys.

The people who felt as though they were in, you know, the outlier in their rural families or in their organizations or in their communities.

'cause they had these amazing things that they could see and do, but not everyone understood them.

There's a, there's an interesting piece that you just triggered for me like the sensitivity and like, you're too sensitive and so on.

And I, you know, I think we're seeing, uh, the results of some of the sensitivity being pushed out of males in this world that starts to lead to.

Some of the poor leadership that we're witnessing currently, but there's a neurodiversity expert, uh, Dr.

Thomas Armstrong, he said that the, the traits that cause struggle in school are often the same traits that lead to success in life.

that curiosity leads to distraction.

But, you know, sensitivity leads to empathy, defiance leads to leadership, imagination leads to innovation, intensity leads to purpose.

Like these things can all be.

We don't all just have our superpowers, we also have our Achilles heel and our weaknesses and so on.

Like once you sort of spend time exploring what those are, they don't own you anymore.

You get to sort of keep a sense of humor about them and, and mobilize those and potentially even convert those into, superpowers like sensitivity and to empathy.

I definitely think that that is very, very true.

Okay.

So now to creating the environment, if we had the opportunity to redesign like what a school looked like, or learning environment or a family or community, you know, part of it is that there would be this range of resources that kids would be exposed to, right?

You've talked a lot about that.

That was a really important.

Thing for you.

And I think that's a big part of why you've created such diversity inside Hatch, uh, or any of the work that you do.

You like the cross-pollinization that happens there.

So if you think about it as a parent I know I went outta my way.

I actually even took a course on, um, or I went to get a lecture actually to talk to someone about should I keep feeding my child the same stuff because he really, really loves space.

Should it all be about space or should I also encourage him to play baseball or also encourage him to, you know.

Go do something else in the park.

And she had a particular point of view on the axons and dendrites and the things that we feed and the things that we grow.

So a long-winded way of saying how do we add more diversity what else can we do in an environment to stimulate the natural gifts in our children?

I, I, that's a great question.

I mean, it is really sort of one of my core operating thesis and part of it is, I think, you know, spending a lot of time by myself as a kid.

I, I was an only child and a single parent mom that was working like five jobs and putting herself through family's, uh, college degree.

that extra time and space, and developed a sense of exploration and create and, you know, curiosity.

so I was always out, you know.

Traveling the neighborhoods and this, the university and like talking to janitors and professors and just anyone who in the hallway would like stop and talk with me.

And, and that has carried over.

I think when I moved to Los Angeles where I thought I was gonna just go meet all these interesting people.

And specifically I just wanted to meet people in film and instead I started meeting people and like science and, you know, all of these different expanded.

purviews and I just recognized pretty instantly that when you find people that are.

Unlike you, there is a, there's an expansion that happens, there's a growth that occurs, and so like whatever comfort zone that you're in, whatever, wherever the edge of your, you know, who you think you are was a moment ago, starts to grow and expand when you're finding people with.

know, diverse perspectives or generations or lived experiences or ethnicities.

And I think that's why, you know, travel is like one of those huge antidotes for, people in the curiosity and their growth expansion.

And also not everyone has the opportunity to go do that travel, but you do have opportunity to find.

Within your own communities.

Like if you are more sort of left brain, you know, science driven, like go find some artists to talk to and vice versa.

If you're in science and know, in hatch, like you might be sitting next to an astronaut, a paleontologist, a 17-year-old kid that's got two patents on turning human waste into electricity.

A farmer, an Someone who's an AI expert, a futurist who runs a future mom podcast, like you're gonna, and everyone is like leaning in and learning from each other.

And it's like, it's, it's not how smart you are, it's how you are smart, right?

It's like Harvard has all these studies around the different levels of intelligence, around linguistic, emotional, spatial, musical, social, natural.

And, and I think that, you know, sometimes parents get a little bit one lane, uh, but it's not even like through.

Parenting and growth.

I think that as we grow into our professional communities, those lanes get narrower and narrower because we're, we're climbing up a, a trajectory that allows us to succeed, but only in that lane.

And so Hatch offers people at that high level of expertise a chance to come in and like have the architect lean in and learn from the filmmaker and the artists learn and lean from the.

You know, the, the aeronautics engineer and, and so on, like, you can solve problems that have been solved over here through a different lens in a completely different or vertical or discipline.

Yeah, I thought of you the other day.

I was reading something from the House of Beautiful Business.

I dunno if you follow those guys.

But Tim Lebrecht and Ken Mickelson had written something about the Theater of Leadership Development right now, and there's a really beautiful essay that they wrote.

But they wrote a, there's a piece in it that I think was so profound about how we teach, one, the, the big line was about , we call for innovation, but we don't understand creativity.

And I think part of what you're describing right now is a really key tenet to creativity is having that horizontal expansion.

It's having that curiosity to go and not know what the direct connection to that is going to be, the direct result.

Of that is going to be instead of somebody who's only, you know has more experience than you in a very particular area and getting better and better mastering that.

It's really about the breadth of it, which I think is such a big, big gift that you offer.

And I think that often we don't spend enough time cultivating, certainly as adults and probably encouraging our kids to do.

And it's one of those things they naturally did to your point when they're three and four and five, if they had the opportunity.

And then it becomes more and more narrow as they're trying to compete in school.

So I think that, this idea of creativity and nurturing, creativity is such a center point.

Perhaps as part of why I jumped on at the beginning and thinking, gosh, if we could help everybody understand some of these core principles of what it means to be, uh, a creator or creating, people always ask me if I'm creative, I say I'm creating.

To me there's a verb difference that makes it easier to label yourself that way.

But what are some of the key parts that you describe or think about?

'cause you are a natural creative, I don't even know if you can name them, but, um, I think.

What is it that we think that is missing in the world about people understanding about creativity?

. There's a huge misconception, I think around, around underestimation of the power of creativity.

I think when you ask a majority of the people around the world, well, especially in the US because I think that European countries creativity more than that we do domestically here.

you know, yeah.

Creativity.

What is it?

Well, well, it's a painting, it's a pottery.

It's, you know, it's a nice to have.

It's a thing that I. Might purchase and, people are sort of missing the, the point that like literally everything that we wear, drive in, live, in, consume, use with my, you know, the telephone.

Like ev, every single thing that we touch and see and interact with on a daily basis was someone's idea.

Including the Constitution, by the way.

Yeah.

It wasn't, it's not even just hard goods, it's conceptual things, right?

Yeah.

A hundred percent.

Yeah.

Intellectual property, I mean, like, it's endless.

It's infinite, like.

creativity, we'd be sitting there with, you know, fire still, uh, and maybe not even fire because that was creative thinking.

So, I don't know, it's like it's a real core thesis for us at Hatch in unlocking leaders who have, in many cases, sort of left creativity behind as a concept.

And then when we bring them together.

it's also a tool that really sort of unlocks people at a soul level.

It's, it would, it's a universal language.

It's, it's ancient.

and it brings people together across partisan lines in ways that, you know, food and dancing and laughter love have that capacity.

But creativity is, is right up there at the top with how we bring people together around a shared sense of experience.

, There's all sorts of different quotes and Einstein, you know, had one of them around that we can't use the same intelligence that got us into this mess to get us out of this mess.

And I'm paraphrasing, of course, but the creativity literally is, you know, like that's why when we're working on like large scale systems change, we curate around a map of these different acupuncture points of how to move that system.

But always, even the one that we just, you know, had in Mexico, know, last month, which was around depolarization and the future of healthy democracies.

We have behavioral scientists and neuroscientists and political academics and movement building experts and you know, leaders of it, like lots of different sorts.

But we also have.

Creatives and musicians and people that are there to sort of ask the provocative questions around like, well, hey, haven't you thought about X, Y, and Z?

And why didn't you apply this lens to that problem?

And point, I mean, 100% of the time, you know, they're asking the most important questions.

We, we did a think tank with a huge consulting firm a few years ago, and they're like, Hey, we really, you know.

We en, we engaged Hatch and paid you to curate a room full of really brilliant people.

And, and we, you know, we wanted 10 diverse people.

But yeah, you brought a cellist, like, why did you bring a cellist?

It's like, well, you know, music is math and this.

Person is a genius mathematician.

It was kinda like a blank stare.

And of course, later, you know, not only did we bring the cell, but we also brought like a two time toying venture of the year.

Nobody could figure out why.

It's because they have a different way of looking at these challenges.

They're not afraid to ask silly questions that suddenly become not so silly because they're gonna end up becoming the solution.

Absolutely.

And you know, you and I did a project which reminded me of the Wonder Project Azi.

Years ago where we would do the same kind of thing, right?

We curated rooms of interesting people to try and get a sense of where the world was moving on behalf of a client.

And the clients came into that room too, but they had to learn to behave differently in that space.

This wasn't just about extracting smart stuff from smart people.

It was about being engaged when it was about having a reciprocal, uh, relationship with them.

It was about being seen, it was about being vulnerable in various conversations about not knowing.

Something or just being more seen as a person and not just as a professional.

Right.

There was a whole like un just, you know, unveiling, I dunno what the word is, but like taking off a layer of this, like a mask of only being one thing and really having to show up as a person in that.

And I think that's a big part of when we talk again about gifts and, uh, contributions that people are making.

It's about this whole self.

It cannot just be through the, you know, the lens of, uh, as a role or focus only on efficiency and productivity, which is I think, the thing that people miss, which is why I love that quote so much.

Again, we ask for innovation or we push for innovation, but we don't understand creativity.

Creativity doesn't get scheduled.

1, 2, 3. It's not an efficiency process, right?

It is about taking time.

It is about investing in these relationships.

It is about showing up.

It is about having confidence and that, to your point about safety before I think there's a lot about creativity that all of us have access to, but we have to give ourselves permission to be in the spaces that cultivate it, including our families

You're talking about accelerating relationships and I think, you know, over the years, hatch has even evolved from, in 0.1 years, it continues to iterate and sort of listen to the world.

And we have moved away in the last, like five years from focusing so solely on solutions to, to focusing on accelerating relationships and building trust.

Because the relationships then lead to the collaborations, which lead to the, to the solutions.

And mean, it's not, you know, we're not advancing a world of loan heroes, like we're advancing it.

Through aligned humans and, and a community and like the number one predictor of, of life satisfaction according to, you know, one Harvard study is the quality of relationships not achievement.

And that human connection beats credentials.

so, you know, kids don't need more followers.

They need authentic belonging and sense of purpose.

And you know, I think we would do well by raising people through building agency and not anxiety.

A hundred thousand percent.

And actually even when we start talking about the tech tools, I always make the distinction between the Silicon Valley people who teach their kids how to build with things as opposed to just be passive users of things.

Right?

Everyone else is like making sure the kid knows how to use the tool, but I'm like, how do you.

Yeah, exactly.

And, and that, that the agency that comes with, I see a problem or I see an opportunity and I feel like I've got the capacity to be able to go do something about it.

Either, you know, innately from a creativity standpoint or also that I understand the tools and I can go do something with it.

So I think that's a really, really huge part, and I think a lot about.

It's a little, sort of outta the scope of the conversation that we're gonna have here, but I also think a lot about how these technologies are going to shift and change our children's ability.

Like we talked about the, you know, the three or 4-year-old that asked why, why, why, why, why, which is both fascinating and draining as a parent.

But what if your toy starts answering all those questions for you, right?

You start asking your American girl doll or your, you know, train conductor in your whatever toy, whatever kids are playing with right now.

Or you start going into character AI and building, you know, your favorite version of a.

You know, Fortnite character becomes somebody who speaks back to you.

Like it's gonna be a really, really weird world in terms of having infinite ability to ask questions, but not a lot of trust necessarily, and where those answers are coming from about this.

Right.

Which is why, again, I think about raising kids in really strong and healthy communities is a really important part because I think we're not gonna be able to see around all the corners and all the edges as parents.

Yeah.

Kids are inheriting a lot of complexity and uncertainty and you know, like a lot of people are having conversations around what the future job market looks like.

No one knows.

I mean,

Well, I, I, you know, I have, have some theories on that one, and we have a conversation.

We had a, a whole podcast episode about employment is dead and what it means to build,

everyone

uh.

theories.

Well, I, I, even if I had Nancy's world, I would know exactly what it would look like.

So it's not like even impossible to imagine what it could look like.

But actually interesting when we did that conversation with De Deborah Perry p who literally just wrote the book, employment is Dead.

It really came down to a lot of the same things that you're talking about here, about having agency, about being a creator and a builder, not somebody who is just like a, you know, a cog inside someone else's machine.

It's about being able to have confidence about that you've got something to contribute.

In the world and to have a community with which it is that you can go and build those things.

So these things are all connected and tied to one another.

But now if we go back to this conversation about like superpowers and superheroes now, I think what was.

Fascinating to me.

A zillion years ago when I went to a TED conference is there was a woman who was giving a talk about her life's work, understanding how dolphins speak to one another.

It was, you know, 18 minute talks that didn't last forever.

But for me it was like a very like long talk 'cause I was like, I really don't care.

I literally could care less about how dolphins talk to each other.

I know that sounds really cold and awful, but I really didn't care.

But I suddenly had this aha, sort of like the epiphany that you had once, which is, if she has that really narrow curiosity, I must have a complimentary one, right?

That there must be this tapestry of like, she's focusing on this, and then I get to focus on that and Rgsa focus on this, and Jet Row gets to focus on that and somebody else gets to focus on their thing.

And so we get to have, like, I started realizing that our curiosity.

It's as unique of an identifier as our fingerprint is.

Like we all have very, very unique curiosities and I think a big part of what the opportunity is at the moment right now is to help feed those curiosities, right?

To nurture those curiosities in our kids and not put them all through the same extruder of having to be, you know, a straight A student that gets high AP scores and can go to the same kind of university.

I think that's the big invitation of the moment is that we get to look at this very broad range of capacities and talents and superpowers that people have.

What do you think?

I mean, part of the, the model that we built with the hero project in, in 1999 was the.

Ability to identify your own sense of agency and define, you know, we really ask people to sort of interrogate themselves and, and, and define what it is that makes them unique and super and what lights them up.

And, and also to name their weaknesses and to sort of like.

Keep a sense of humor, as I mentioned earlier, like navigate those.

But the, but the bait and switch was like once we had, and there was a, you know, hold, had like digital currency, we gamified it.

So you play these games, you gather these points to rise up this karma counter to unlock these prizes.

But along the way there was a sort of a bait and switch towards in horse where it said, how do you really save the world?

Type in your zip code once you type in your zip code, we'd pioneered this volunteer match engine and we would match people to one of 10 things they could deal with in a backyard, you know, three mile radis to the way to live, to, to mobilize into their community.

they would go donate a Saturday for a nonprofit like Walking Dogs to the Humane Society, reading books to the elderly neighborhood, cleanups, park, reclamations, and you know, on and on.

They would come back lit up because the people that were there receiving them would say, wow, what an amazing young woman you are.

I mean, you're really, you know, you really are a superhero.

And like their chest would puff up and they were like, suddenly there's have this whole oxytocin dopamine head of like, wow, I'm doing something good for other people.

So that sense of purpose would carry forward.

They would come back and upload proof and they would get 10,000 of these like digital currency knowledge nuggets.

suddenly we started mobilizing, thousands, tens of thousands of people into their communities, and we had like a half a million volunteer hours in a year of that program.

But.

when we started getting like letters from child psychologists and parents and teachers thanking us because we were letting young people know that they have this like deep and expansive within them that is purpose and that they can have a difference.

And to think outside of your own self.

And I, you know, I think in today's world of social media as a teen and you're scrolling through, you know, social platforms and comparing yourself to others and seeing what you know, everyone else is doing, like.

There's also much bigger things to think about out there, and I think that is part of the gift that we have.

That's not It doesn't, you know, it, it's not it doesn't cost a lot of resources.

Like you can literally just find something for your young person to do in the neighborhood nearby and.

It's gonna suck the first time you're dragging them, kicking and squealing to, you know, to the front lines of that.

And then they're gonna just be lit up.

And that, I think, will, can prove to be like a real drastic inflection point for loneliness and depression.

And, uh, it's, you know, the idea that you can actually have an impact on other people.

I think, you know, when you were talking about agency before, I was going in a different direction, but I hear you on this one, which is the fact that if you just get out there and start doing something, it does start to feed that flywheel, right?

You start to feel more and more encouraged and uh, whatever the word is, incentivized.

Just emotionally to do that.

Even if you aren't gamifying it, people just feel really good when they get to go do that.

And I don't even know if they would go kicking and screaming.

We just don't have a lot of opportunities.

Right.

If we're not gonna churches and organized religions like we did.

'cause a lot of that used to happen through that kind of channel, and I feel like that.

That has become less and less a huge focus in many people's eyes.

I'm not advocating that it needs to be, but I'm just suggesting that, you know, we've lost a lot of these community elements that allowed it to be seen that somebody else needed something or that we could go do something.

I remember my children were really young and we were trying and figure out things to go do on the weekend.

You know, you could go back in the early days of the internet, like find a zillion activities to go do, but not a lot of contributions that you could make.

And I was gonna start something called Families for others.

Which would be a whole list of ways in which you could go volunteer in all these different places and do all kinds of interesting things.

And then, you know, it was one of the 47,000 ideas I've had that didn't make it out into the real world, but I wanted there to be a platform that made it easier for us to go do that.

But you're suggesting that you just go find it anywhere in your neighborhood or in your community and just start doing.

Uh, yeah, I mean we, that's what, that's what our, that's what the platform we built I was really proud of it when we got acquired by.

A major studio.

They didn't really get it and they kind of, you know, lifted the hood and rummaged around and grabbed some of the gaming mechanics that we had built out and understand how everything sort of connected and what the volunteer match engine did, et cetera, et cetera.

I haven't looked recently, but I, I have to believe that there are, there's potentially something out there

this is where I think, again, the advantage of being a younger parent right now, because I think there's so many more ways in which we can find connections to these things or access to these things.

And so if someone's listening and has a suggestion, please put it in comments.

And if you haven't seen that exist, let's, let's go put that together.

'cause I think it should exist again on the planet.

I really do think that you are right that not just about building community, but engaging in community and contributing to community and building community is a really, really key part of how we.

Navigate this future more successfully.

So now let's take scope it out and talk about the work that you're doing now in terms of why it's so important that we connect to our superpowers and that we engage in communities to start building this sense of agency.

Well there, you know, there's no shortage of big challenges in the planet right now when you think about inequities across the board of, you know, poverty, justice, climate,, education.

I mean, there's just kind of on and on and on.

the fact that we're sort of facing an authoritarianism regime right now . There's a couple different things.

One that we're noticing is that people that are on the front lines of, you know, pushing this sort of boulder up the mountain of purpose, are exhausted.

Like right now, like more than ever before, like leaders, uh, are becoming.

Beat up and, and tired.

And so to refuel them, like, we need these people at their full capacity to continue to do the work that they're doing.

So to, I had a call this morning with someone outta DC who came to Hatch, you know, a month ago.

And, and like, I had no idea that I needed this.

Like, I, I came back with, with full vigor ready to, really tackle these things that I've been working on for the last 15 years.

That I was almost sort of ready to tap out of.

And so, and, and doing that in community, right, like when you recognize that you're not alone, there's other people that are also rolling in the boulder up the mountain impossible, odd, like, oh, well, let's, like that shared empathy is instantly a, a bonder.

and also, you know, but I think to another.

Part of your question the, the way that we curate diverse perspectives, like you don't need 16 corkscrews on a Swiss Army knife.

You need the nail file and the, and the, the little scissors.

And like, you need all these different tools to come together to form, you know, what I would call sort of a, a like a power pod.

And because you need strength, who's aligned with other people's weaknesses and vice versa, like we all need each other.

We can't just get through the world alone.

And so let's, you know, commit to lifelong learning.

Not just through online platforms, but like in person, uh, with dinner parties, with, you know, how can we bring perspectives together that, that feed and fuel and grow us, and to lean into that difference.

Like in our, in our sameness, we, we can become very comfortable, but in our differences, we continue to grow and expand.

Now you have become a, a stepdad, right?

In the last, is it 10 years?

Yes.

How does joining a family with kids that are looking at the world, you know, that are younger, obviously than you and most of the hatchers how, how did it expand your understanding of the world and how did you potentially bring some of all your patchiness into their lives?

I'm just curious, you know, we talked about this as a futurist mom because I had this cross weave.

Being a futurist allowed me to be a, I think a more open-minded mother, and because of the mother obviously cared so much more about where the future is actually going.

Like these two things really fed each other.

Was there something that you were surprised that you learned as you watched it now through the eyes of young people at home?

Uh, so many things.

I mean, you know, first I'll say that.

I was, I was dealt several lessons of, of stark humility.

Welcome to Parenthood Baby.

That, that, that was like an overnight lesson.

I was like, huh, I think I'm gonna have my ass handed to me every day for the next years, you know?

And, you know, frankly it was, it was a little painful at the beginning, and then I really had to sort of like.

Have a conversation with myself and, and sort of reorient and be like, okay, I'm growing here, you know, this, I'm learning.

And, and even to the point where, you know, initially I think I, I'm all, I'm really, I love the work that I get to do, the people that I get to do it with.

I'm inspired by the, people I get to surround myself with.

I feel like the, you know, the differences that were created in making.

Ours are, are tangible and I get a, you know, so I would come home and have conversations about some of those things.

And you know, I remember pretty early on it was like, I wasn't really getting any sort of read or, or reflection of energy off of either of the, the two, the, the, you know, son and daughter.

And, and I think at one point, uh, one of 'em just turned to me and said, you.

You make it sound like the stuff you do is so important, like with a yawn.

And I was like, well, I'd like to think it is.

I mean, it's what.

Kind of keeps me moving forward, you know, otherwise you could just sort of like lose hope and give up.

And so I, yeah, it sort of fuels me.

But even in that moment, I just recognized like, all right, a, I'll probably talk about this a little bit less, and, you know, start asking a little bit more questions.

And, and B, curious.

And, and we also had one child that was very talkative and did it like absorb and a lot of the sort of the hatch ethos.

to two hatches as a freshman and as a senior in the, within the Next Gen program.

And learned a lot.

I think it was, you know, she told me that it was a big inflection point in her life.

Uh, he was not interested at all, like he really prefers, uh.

Outdoor pursuits and skiing and fishing and, and more, you know, sort of kinda organic, natural hanging with friends.

And, I had to, you know, I had to learn that.

And, and at some point I was like, this is him.

This is me.

know, I don't have to impose my enthusiasm onto everyone.

Like, some people are gonna take to it and naturally and some are not.

And so I think letting.

Them both be them , I think I was, you know, at the beginning I was like literally trying to impress them because I wanted them to like me.

And, and then recognizing that like the, the less I tried, the probably more the, the possible that them liking me

The the cooler you became?

Yeah.

yeah, I was like, me, let me just like lean backwards instead of lean forwards.

I think it's an interesting point that you make though about this enthusiasm that you and I have and this ability that we have to go and travel in the world and get to see these amazing people and amazing ideas, amazing things, and then bringing them home and.

In a way that doesn't make it seem as though their daily lives are too small.

Right?

Or the day-to-day conversations that we have aren't meaningful enough or that, you know, whatever it is that you're doing.

Like, I talk a lot about the big stuff, but I also have, I have started talking a lot more about micro actions.

The words that we use or the, the, you know, the kindness that we show in a moment or there's a lot of really tiny things that we can do each day that really have giant ripple impacts.

And so it doesn't always have to come through this big massive lens.

You know, I just came back from a. A trip recently in Zane.

Again, the sun that you know.

And I, uh, were sitting in the car always seems to be like this little crucible moment.

We get to sit in the car, in the garage and have this like, deep conversation.

And, uh, he was talking about, about some of the real fears he has around the political structure in the US at the moment and his own safety and his own future.

And just, you know, he is a really, really sensitive kid.

He feels that stuff and he just felt, uh, really, really nervous and worried about it.

And I immediately put on my superhero cape and wanted to protect him from feeling any of those things and started to, you know.

Launch into all the things that are going right in the world and all the ways that we can change things and all da dah, dah, dah.

And I went to my, and a few days later he and I had a much deeper conversation about how he felt really not heard in that moment, and that I didn't connect to the depth of feeling that he had, but I immediately wanted to rescue him.

From that feeling.

'cause it's really hard to watch your child feel overwhelmed by the world right now.

And you do worry that they're getting way too much red pill content and you wanna be the counterprogramming to that, you know?

And I realized, uh, that we were both probably right.

Like I did want to offer an alternate narrative to the one that he was telling himself at that moment.

But I needed to step back first and listen to where he was and.

Be more comfortable with the uncomfortable that he was feeling, which I think is a really hard thing for you and I in particular to do.

'cause we work really hard not to be in that space too long, you know?

So I think that, yeah.

I think you and I both also, are capable of feeling the pain of the world.

It's the optimism that the flame that keeps us moving forward.

And so that, that when that flame goes out, it's like, you might as well just check out.

Well, that's what I meant.

My older son who was a bit more pragmatic on all this, and he was very similar to the experience that you had.

Like when I was doing all that TEDx stuff and I was dragging Hugo into it and Hugo was like, this is not my world.

I am not interested, but here's Zane, let me like let my younger brother step in.

And Dane, obviously we never really did, but but Hugo teases me, he's like, if you weren't optimistic mom, you would just fold.

Uh, like you need to have this sense of being endlessly optimistic so that you believe it's possible that we can shift and change things.

'cause otherwise it'd be too hard to bear.

And I think that's true.

I think that that is very true.

By the way, we optimists also live, what, 15 to 20% longer than others.

So I do think it's a, it's a good inoculation to have even if we are full of complete delusion, but I don't think we are.

Right.

I think that the work that you're doing, you're starting to see opportunities to make a bigger impact.

Just on that, just a quick note, there was like a science, uh, study that was done in Japan where they.

You know, our bodies are made of roughly like 70% water and so is the planet.

And that's not, know, that's not a, an accident.

There was an exercise that was done in, in Japan where they had these huge steel containers like, uh, steel.

Steel from all elements.

With all these jugs of water.

in one of those, they had a bunch of people that were in there like yelling mean things at these jugs of water.

And at the other there was a bunch of people yelling or, or whispering like love and, and positive affirmations and optimistic messages to this water.

And then they tested the water.

And one of the, you know, the bin from the left that was sort of receiving all this like hatred and angry.

Emotion was, you could literally see it in our microscope, was like disjointed and fractured.

And also that kind of water is not good for your body to ingest.

And the water that was receiving these more positive affirmations was, was like optimized and, and, and much, much more healthier to ingest as the.

For our, for our bodies like that.

Think about that in terms of the media that we take in and the things that we're telling ourselves like it is lodging itself in at a molecular level.

And so it's not just that we are optimists, it's also that we are trying to sort of a attune our bodies to be the most efficient and effective and healthiest, and offer that to others as well.

1000%. There's just a study out of UCSB that actually didn't come from the psychology department.

I think it came through the comms department, but if you just spend, I thought it was like the first 15 minutes of the day watching inspiring.

Content.

Maybe it doesn't even have to be long, that long.

It could be just be three minutes of the day.

It completely rewires your sense of what you think you can do resilience and that they should even have 10 days later.

Your ability to handle stress is better if you just feed yourself good stuff from the very beginning of the day.

But I'll just laugh about that research, which I remember reading about.

Many, many years ago, and there's another, uh, test that had been done like that with rice.

You could talk to like a thing of rice and either, you know, be really negative or be really positive.

And so of course I tried to do that test in my garage with the children.

I was trying to like, speak really awfully to one and like really positively to the other.

And it didn't work.

So either I couldn't be that mean to the one rice or maybe it was just a failed experiment.

But I just laughed that at home.

I really tried to like bring that research home so they could see it didn't quite work.

it.

But you know, at least we, we gave it a good try.

All right, well, as we round out this conversation about what is possible, and we go back to the, you know, the thesis of this idea that, uh, we are all hopefully raising children who feel like superheroes and can connect to their superpower, which I think is
a really, really important part, general in life overall, but particularly in this moment in time where it feels like there's so much happening around us and we don't have a, it's, it's easy to believe that we don't have any control or any ability to impact it.

I think it's really important, again, to feel that locus of control and that sense of agency and that sense of that you are not the only one who's seeing or hearing or feeling it.

'cause part of it is having community that you can do something with.

But I will also say I have found it's really important for me to see being communities that can also see the same things that I can see.

Then I don't feel so overwhelmed.

Buy it, I'm sharing then this concern and that feels much easier than to, uh, to navigate.

So if you're listening to you, you're a parent of a anywhere from, you know, 2-year-old to 22-year-old, because I get a lot of parents who, with older kids who actually are really worried about this right now, I'm really worried about their kids' ability to navigate the future.

Any thoughts and points of either wisdom or questions that you would encourage them to ask themselves?

Or ask their

Yeah, either way, because I, well, I think it's both.

I think that sometimes it's like, you know, how are we approaching it?

And then sometimes it's about what's going on for our kids.

So I think it could go either direction, but I guess I'm just saying it's like you have this, I think you don't realize, Yara, this is the part where I think I'm trying to draw out, and I'm not doing a very good job.

You have this incredibly unique perspective on the world.

You spend so much time in the world with people who are.

Very actively seeing the problems and designing solutions to the problems and you're part of it.

What do you love to explain to people who aren't in this world that you see?

Like, would you ever, ever talk on a stage?

What is it that you most excited to talk to people about, about the, the worldview that you have?

Uh, well, a few things.

I mean, one is I think I, I really do prescribe to the, the appetite of shifting your own perspective.

Whenever I hear something that makes me uncomfortable, I, sort of take a beat and, and really try to think about that, like where that came from, why that was said from that person, that person's lens and perspective.

I would, you know, mentally kind of take a step to the left or to the right.

To, to try to understand what, that is coming from and what that, what the intended message in that is.

And so the perspective shift for me has like, worked my whole life.

Like, you know, we grew up in like serious poverty and were homeless for a, you know, a year and a half and we're like donated cabins without lights and electricity in the middle of winter.

Every time I, I just remember thinking like, I would just sort of my perspective on, well, this is an adventure.

or, you know, it was like, I just noticed that looking back over my lifetime, that that has really served me well.

And I don't know if that's a coping mechanism or, you know, I think it is, but it's also served me well.

And as things get a little bit dicier in a more polarized, you know, country,, that continues to serve me well.

And by asking also, share more.

know, when I hear that perspective, like say more, rather than having instantly, something that is going to feel like a judgment within my own heart.

I wanna understand.

And so I think we could all do well with a little more grace and, passion around trying to understand that where people are coming from.

There's also a bunch of data that's come out recently that like, we're much closer on many of these issues than we think we are.

And the news is profiting from exacerbating that division so to, to better understand.

know, ask someone specifically, like say more, share more.

And you know, in terms of like a, what I ask when I'm talking with leaders who have never even met me before and I'm getting ready to invite them to hatch, know, it's not all about their work.

It's like, what do you love?

What lights you up?

You know, what drains you?

Like what, what feels hard right now, but still meaningful and worth fighting for?

Like, what do you get up in the morning for?

Like, what's keeping you up at night?

Like these are questions that start to.

me sort of the resume and the person, and I think those same questions are really val valid for conversation with a teenager.

When you're starting to ask less about their grades and more about sort of what's bringing them energy and what's draining them, then you're starting to address them as a, an equal human and not as a, uh, I mean, a parent has a little bit of built in hierarchy.

And when you start, I've always loved how you parented your, your young ones, not even young anymore, but you know, like have equal ground on those conversations.

There's a, there's a, a shared sense of a respect in the answers that you're going to get, and I think that has really contributed to building some incredible young humans.

So thank you for that.

Well, thank you for the grace on that.

You know, we were talking about also really was considered a hardcore disciplinarian and Harper.

Tease that she was scared to death of me, so, which worked out really, really well in very many circumstances.

So it went both ways.

But I just remembered, I just, uh, totally outta the blue that you were also at Burning Man, when I took Zane to Burning Man when he was 15, which was a really interesting.

Uh, decision for me to have made, but he will talk about.

That has been a very, very seminal experience for him.

And being able to see alternative, back to your point, very early on, about alternative points of view.

What is a construct?

Choices that people make about how they present themselves in different things.

The kinds of questions and conversations we get to have there, you know, shielded him from some stuff because it was a little.

You know, whatever.

But even then, at that point, he is 15, he could go online and see anything he wanted to go see.

So at least see it in real life with people having conversations around it like it felt yeah, like a.

An interesting thing to do because to not shield our children, right.

But to really be in there with them and learning with them, I think is a really, really key part of this.

And I think just as you're saying all this stuff, I think that that is probably the biggest thing, is that parents are walking into a world right now in which they don't understand what's happening and they want to have this.

My sense of is a strong front for their children to make it seem like we've got it all figured out.

We know what it is.

And you know, sometimes for some people we're doubling back on the way the old ways in which it had been done.

If we could just get back to that nostalgic moment in time where we understood all the rules it's all gonna get better.

And for other people, they just sort of leave it up to the internet to teach our kids what's going on.

And I think really stepping in and learning with them and figuring out what some of these platforms are doing or not doing with our children.

Hearing and seeing what it is that they're curious about and being really open to those answers and not being scared when they tell us, because I think we're so afraid to hear what they're gonna say about some of these things sometimes.

And I think again, just that belief that each of our children has something really, really unique,, to be bringing to this moment in time.

And that our job is not to build it or to shape it, but it is to nurture it and to release it.

I think that that is a really just an amazing gift of parenting, and I think we're way too hard on ourselves sometimes, and it doesn't have to be as hard as we make it.

They're, they're showing us who they are, right?

Our, our thing is not to stomp it out.

And then there's definitely mistakes I made as a young mother that I wish I could go back and, and redo.

But even then to have grace with yourself, we're just, we're all here figuring it out together

I'll just say a couple different things about this sort of next generation, that, that is growing up right now in a, in a really interesting and complex world.

The thing that never gets outdated is the belief in someone.

so the continuous, you know, I see you, I believe in you, and the, these are things that are not going to get replaced by ai.

You know, to, for, to encourage young people to sort of like, know their differences, not a weakness.

It is literally their superpower.

And to identify their own slice of genius and creativity, and then find others who have the opposite to be able to learn and grow from that.

And I hope that parents also recognize how, you know, the, the, the brilliance comes in all these different unfamiliar forms and that, know, try to help build this world in which choosing between fitting in and, and fully becoming themselves is not the question.

It's.

Letting them just sort of uncover who they are and knowing that there's this gem inside.

Like I always sort of picture this, transceiver that glows, but it also grows plaque.

It gets diminished, it gets extinguished sometimes, and you gotta blow that plaque off through letting people know how amazing they are.

And you can see things for themselves that they might, might not even be able to see for themselves.

And so it's just, that's a, these are all like sort of.

Tools that I've to try to practice and, and, and sharpen and focus in my daily world and, and the people I get to, to meet and run into.

Which is why we are so loyal to you.

I remember very early on, and you haven't, you haven't done it in a while, Yara when used to send you a text, you was right back.

You're awesome.

Like you used to have all these, uh, positive affirmations.

But I just say because it was really important, right?

There are just days where someone just says, Hey, you're awesome.

Without having to have o owned it or proved it or delivered anything in order to receive that, just be

You're

yes.

Truly.

Yara.

So are you.

You are super awesome.

Uh, and I really.

I'm very grateful for the ride that we get to be on together.

I'm glad that we found each other so many years ago and that we get to continue to dance together and these events that we create and communities that we get to share and dinners that we get to pull together in spaces that we hold for each other.

So thank you for everything that you do and for also extending that done to the next generation.

I really appreciate that Zane is a part of Hatch, uh, and.

That, that, that ripples out to his whole network and his whole world too.

So thank you for taking care of the next Gen with such love.

Thank you, Nancy.

Appreciate you.

All right, my friend, let's go and make the world shine bright each and every day.

Love you.

Mm. Love you too.

Great to see you.

I'll see you in person soon.