{"id":6761,"date":"2026-04-28T05:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/?post_type=transcript&#038;p=6761"},"modified":"2026-04-27T21:34:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T11:34:47","slug":"ep-65-creativity-and-digital-distraction","status":"publish","type":"transcript","link":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/transcript\/ep-65-creativity-and-digital-distraction\/","title":{"rendered":"Ep 65 &#8211; Put Down Your Phone: The Struggle Between Creativity and Digital Distraction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">April 28, 2026\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Episode 65<br>54 Min, 21 Sec\u00a0<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/open.acast.com\/public\/streams\/66bc1a4d8681753490f376cc\/episodes\/69eec461289eeb2c7b144e88.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure><div class=\"wp-block-rank-math-toc-block\" id=\"rank-math-toc\"><h2>Table of Contents<\/h2><nav><ul><li><a href=\"#summary\">Summary<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#transcript\">Transcript<\/a><ul><li><a href=\"#smart-pup-news-meet-lacey\">Smart Pup News: Meet Lacey!<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#bunnings-dates-fish-and-chips-and-the-camper-van-project\">Bunnings Dates, Fish and Chips, and the Camper Van Project<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#welcome-to-pain-in-the-arts-introducing-todays-topic\">Welcome to Pain In The Arts: Introducing Today&#8217;s Topic<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#jay-kristoff-and-the-case-against-your-phone\">Jay Kristoff and the Case Against Your Phone<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#ai-technology-and-the-artists-dilemma\">AI, Technology, and the Artist&#8217;s Dilemma<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#preserving-the-originals-books-history-and-the-heirloom-mindset\">Preserving the Originals: Books, History, and the Heirloom Mindset<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#analog-night-putting-down-the-phone-and-picking-up-a-life\">Analog Night: Putting Down the Phone and Picking Up a Life<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"summary\">Summary<\/h2><p>Join Lyndon and Breallyn on this episode of &#8216;Pain In The Arts&#8217; as they explore the cost of constant connectivity and the struggle between creativity and digital distraction. Inspired by author Jay Kristoff&#8217;s bold advice for creatives, we dive into why putting down your phone and resisting the &#8220;misery machine&#8221; of modern technology is essential for artistic growth. We also discuss the shifting role of AI in the creative process\u2014from the use of tools like Suno to historical debates on technological disruption in art\u2014alongside the usual personal updates, including Bunnings adventures and exciting news about our new puppy, Lacey.<\/p><p>Love this conversation? Get <a href=\"https:\/\/patreon.com\/painintheartslife\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">exclusive podcast episodes on our Patreon<\/a> and support the show!<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"transcript\">Transcript<\/h2><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;m always huffing and puffing.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> You make lots of noises.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;m just trying to survive.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Generally, I&#8217;m\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> just trying to survive. I am the weakest link.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I thought it was a dad thing. Like, everyone&#8217;s dad seems to make a lot of noises throughout the house.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It kind of is.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Isn&#8217;t it? The puffing and the telling everyone about what they&#8217;ve found in the kitchen. I don&#8217;t know, just\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> what found in the kitchen,<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> oh, I&#8217;m gonna get a bit of this and eat a bit of that.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t do that, do I? I don&#8217;t think I \u2014 sometimes I do actually. I do. When I think about it\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, you do. You do a lot of describing about what your day has been entailing and what your body&#8217;s doing.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But if no one was in the house, I&#8217;d still be doing that.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. But we are in the house, that&#8217;s the thing.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. I know.<\/p><p>I get weird looks from our support workers, mainly one \u2014 and then often followed up with &#8220;weirdo.&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. She doesn&#8217;t hold back.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. She doesn&#8217;t listen to this podcast either, so I could probably say whatever I like. But I like how she, uh, on the Easter weekend, how she was just relentless about your mom&#8217;s height to your mom.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> She did.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> She did too. And you were like, keep going. Don&#8217;t stop. I&#8217;m loving it.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It was good. She&#8217;s very cheeky.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. Anyway, so I dunno about this huffing and puffing. I think maybe it&#8217;s \u2014 well, you saw what I was just doing then in prep. I&#8217;m like checking levels and I&#8217;ll say a run back and forwards from this seat to the other seat. But it&#8217;s literally one and a half meters.<\/p><p>But still, I had to step it out and then sit down and\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I mean\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> fiddle with a couple of knobs and then come back and then had to close the curtain &#8217;cause the sun was in my eyes. And then, uh, the\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> rains\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I had to get my drink bottle and have a drink. And uh, so now yeah, I&#8217;m exhausted.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Right?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> There&#8217;s a lot. I saw very little physical movement. I saw a little \u2014 a few little bends. That&#8217;s about it and a couple of steps.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> We&#8217;ve got news, haven&#8217;t we?<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"smart-pup-news-meet-lacey\">Smart Pup News: Meet Lacey!<\/h3><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> You know what, recently \u2014 as in a couple of hours ago \u2014 we were in Bunnings and\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> whereas I like to call it Running Bear&#8217;s House. Running Bear&#8217;s, which I think is hilarious<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> &#8217;cause it&#8217;s Bunnings Warehouse.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. So I say Running Bear&#8217;s House. Yeah. I think it&#8217;s hilarious. I think my kids thought it was great for two weeks.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. When they were little, they loved it. When\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> so I keep saying\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Dad went to Running Bear&#8217;s House.<\/p><p>Yeah\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> But it&#8217;s the big hardware store that has, um, pretty much driven business away from every little hardware store. But if we go there and, uh, you and I both went there \u2014 you went one way, I went the other \u2014 and I hear a voice behind me after a while saying, I thought you&#8217;d be in the plants or the paints, but instead \u2014 yeah, the two\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> peas\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> instead, I found you in a third section. The\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> third P.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> And what was the third section? Pets. Pets.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It was either paint or plants \u2014 no, it was pets.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I was in the pets. I had been in the plants. I was on my way to the paints, but I&#8217;d stopped in the pets.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I was in my own peace section. Power tools, because I&#8217;m a man&#8217;s man.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Righto. But the reason I was just having a little scope out of the pets section was because we have Smart Pup news and it&#8217;s very exciting.<\/p><p>We got a call last week saying that our Smart Pup \u2014 okay, Birdie&#8217;s Smart Pup \u2014 is nearly ready for placement. She&#8217;s coming to us at the beginning of June. So we are getting ready now to have her, and \u2014 I mean, can you \u2014 you&#8217;re a studio guy. Can you produce a little drum roll?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Her name is Lacey.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, and I&#8217;ve realized today that it&#8217;s close to Lassie. And Lassie is a very famous\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> dog.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Famous\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> fake\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> fake Australian dog. Uh, Lassie. There was \u2014 no, hang on. Skippy was the Australian kangaroo. Yeah\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> we had the\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> kangaroo. Was Lassie Australian?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I think Lassie was Australian.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Was Lassie American?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Probably. Oh yeah. But it&#8217;s Lacey \u2014 which you guessed \u2014 &#8217;cause I said to you, after I&#8217;d gotten the call, now we know the name of our pup, do you want to guess? Oh yeah. Your second guess. Your second guess was Tracy, which was pretty close.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> What was my first guess?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Can&#8217;t remember.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Fido.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Nothing close.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, no, nothing close. And then, yeah, I guessed Tracy, because I said I bet you it&#8217;s been given a bogan name, so I guessed Tracy.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> But Lacey\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> because I said, what&#8217;s a friend of Karen? It&#8217;d be Tracy. And you&#8217;re like, actually that&#8217;s close. And then you said Lacey. And I said, that&#8217;s named after a hard drive. But apparently\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> it&#8217;s not. No. Lacey&#8217;s a pretty sweet name \u2014 it&#8217;s classic but also modern. I love it. And we&#8217;ve got one photo of Lacey so far, and she&#8217;s just got the softest brown eyes and shiny, healthy black fur.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> She looks like every other black lab \u2014 black fur and brown eyes.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> She looks beautiful. And you know what? I really loved\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> the flowers in the background.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Her photo had been taken while she was clearly in a garden center.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Sitting in front of some flowers and some plants, probably out of\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> probably out of Bunnings\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> the center. So thank goodness she&#8217;s been trained to enjoy those places, &#8217;cause we&#8217;ll be going there quite often.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It shows that context is everything, because that&#8217;s partly why you like the photo of the dog \u2014 it&#8217;s the background. And yet I looked at that photo and what I hated wasn&#8217;t the flowers, but that they formed two thirds of the photo when the subject should have been the whole \u2014 it should have been in the center.<\/p><p>Whoever took that photo, try harder.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Whoever took the photo was handling and training our Lacey.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> So\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> yeah. Haven&#8217;t they heard of burst? And then they can pick the best one. Send that through\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> dear.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"bunnings-dates-fish-and-chips-and-the-camper-van-project\">Bunnings Dates, Fish and Chips, and the Camper Van Project<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> We had a Bunnings date last week that was\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> oh no, we&#8217;ve\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> that was more fun than it should have been. That was fun slash sad. And then we realized we were gonna be the only ones that needed dinner that night, so we had fish and chips.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh. It was the perfect date.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I know.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It&#8217;s great. I picked up a whole bunch of paint sheets and now there&#8217;s little color swatches stuck around all the walls of the place because, yet again, I&#8217;m thinking of painting different rooms.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It never stops.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Can we talk about my, uh, camper van fit out \u2014 or what I&#8217;m calling modules for the Tarago? It&#8217;s not really a camper van, but I&#8217;m just turning it into a weekender \u2014 because when we went to Running Bear&#8217;s House, it was to pick up a click and collect order, then we got home and realized I&#8217;d ordered the wrong size.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh no.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But at least we had a hot date night out of it. But, uh, yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well, I think the listeners are desperate to hear any updates about your camper situation.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s hard to explain without looking at the photos. So I&#8217;m just going to \u2014 I&#8217;ll do a Patreon post and it&#8217;ll all be on there.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, there&#8217;s been a couple of progress shots here and there on my Instagram page, but I&#8217;ll do a full story on Patreon \u2014 &#8217;cause I want to. And, uh, yeah, I&#8217;ve taken a few pics recently and, yeah, it&#8217;s come along. Alright. I will say the wood, the plywood, is very soft. So it&#8217;s very light, which is great \u2014 which is what I want \u2014 but I need to make it robust so that it&#8217;s not gonna get dented and look all ugly after one trip.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> True.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> You need to polyurethane that thing.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I will.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. That&#8217;s\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> where you come into it, actually.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I&#8217;m conscripted into the\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> polyurethane queen.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well, I&#8217;m actually quite impressed with your timber because it is very light, but it&#8217;s also very thick and robust. It&#8217;s not bending anytime soon, but it&#8217;s quite light to carry. So you did well in finding that stuff?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It was a piece of cake.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> took me no time at all.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It took six to eight weeks of research, followed by interviewing\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> owners \u2014 if anyone\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> knows the owners and extended families of every timber yard in the\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> district.<\/p><p>No, you are raring to get stuck into your topic. Fair enough. But I had a call from our mechanic before.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, I meant to ask you about that. Yeah. We&#8217;ve just dropped the MUX off to the mechanic.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. So he&#8217;s called with the verdict.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay. And I mean, I&#8217;m worried because I was out with Birdie the other morning having our little Saturday morning drive. I was actually trying to get her to agree to go to Bunnings, but she wasn&#8217;t interested.<\/p><p>So we were looking for parks, or you know, just like offering her different things she might like to do. But she really was just in the mood for driving and listening to music. So that was fine. And all of a sudden the MUX started to not feel right and very quickly just went to \u2014 what do you call it? Limp mode.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Limp\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> mode, yeah. Limp mode. And it would only go up to 40 ks an hour and it wouldn&#8217;t change gear and it was not good. So that was great that I&#8217;d just driven in a straight line away from home\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> and that we \u2014 it\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> was pretty far. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. Anyway, so he called. Mm-hmm. And, um, it&#8217;s already ready to be picked up.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> What?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, he\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> just dropped it off.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. Solved.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> How&#8217;s it solved?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It was a sensor.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It was a sensor\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow. So there was no actual problem?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Just \u2014 well, we were expecting a three to $4,000 bill.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. I&#8217;ve been over the finances.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, and who knows, that might be in our future \u2014 at least we could save up for it. Kind of. Yeah. But no, it was a code to do with the turbo getting \u2014 I can&#8217;t remember. Who cares? Let me talk about 18 mil plywood again. But anyway, it was basically when you switch the car off and back on again, it reset it.<\/p><p>So the problem disappeared, but the error code remains \u2014 and the light on the dashboard, which was the engine light \u2014 stayed lit up because it&#8217;s saying you need to take the car to a specialist because it&#8217;s something to do with the engine and it could be bad, but it might not be, you know, you need to get it checked.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Right.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Which is exactly what we did.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> He&#8217;s run it through the computer and, yeah, it was just something to do with something that I&#8217;ve forgotten.<\/p><p>Hi. Hi, Tiago. Thanks for spending 45 minutes explaining it to me. I can&#8217;t explain stuff after someone else has explained it to me. Go explain something to me and then I&#8217;ll try and explain it back to you.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well, if you have 18 mil plywood and you would need to attach it to 12\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I already know that. You gotta explain something that&#8217;s new, new information to me.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, I can&#8217;t even think of something.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so there you go. So it&#8217;s been diagnosed and it may happen again, it may not happen again.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Mm.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But anyway. Okay. So now you can breathe.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Allow that stress to just dissipate out of my body right now.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. That&#8217;s what I thought.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That&#8217;s good news.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I know. I said to him, I&#8217;ll take it.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> You know what&#8217;ll\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> take\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> it? What we can do is go back to Bunnings to celebrate.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Have another date.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. With a little bit of money to spend because\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Bunnings and then \u2014 oh, can we please drop into Subway on the way home?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, but I wouldn&#8217;t say no to fish and chips again.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But you know what? I don&#8217;t wanna sound like I&#8217;m the guy that complains about everything. That fish wasn&#8217;t very nice. Normally their fish is good. It was a bit watery and tasteless.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I had a better piece than you, then.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It was pretty good. Well, I did try and choose the better one \u2014 I mean the worst one. And I did, uh, okay.<\/p><p>So shall I do the intro?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;m the intro king. You can try it one day if you want. You can try the intro.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I have to read it.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"welcome-to-pain-in-the-arts-introducing-todays-topic\">Welcome to Pain In The Arts: Introducing Today&#8217;s Topic<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Welcome to Pain In The Arts, where the pursuit of \u2014 all I could think of was &#8220;future&#8221; and &#8220;magical.&#8221; And I knew that they were both wrong. Where the future of the magical \u2014 welcome to Pain In The Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life. You&#8217;re listening to Lyndon\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> and Breallyn <\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> and boy have we got a show for you today! I dunno. Do we? Do we, Brea?<\/p><p>What is it? Tell me.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Do you read much science fiction?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I have almost made a point of not reading science fiction. That&#8217;s kind of not true at all because I barely read. I can read \u2014 just for the record, I can actually read pretty well. Um\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I actually think we need to verify that, &#8217;cause I don&#8217;t know \u2014 you&#8217;ve only ever gotten two sentences into the books that you&#8217;ve\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> got on the bedside table\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> sometimes. Hard to check. They&#8217;ve\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> been there for years.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, there&#8217;s one around here. Oh, there you go. The Boat by Nam Lee. I was enjoying that \u2014 that&#8217;s up there to remind me to keep enjoying it. I do have a problem with comprehension, as in like, I&#8217;ll read and then realize I just read a whole page and have no idea what&#8217;s happening. Oh gosh. And so then I go, uh, I&#8217;ve gotta read it and stay focused and, yeah, it&#8217;s \u2014 see, it is much\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I&#8217;m speechless.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Well, it&#8217;s easier for me to just pick up a guitar and I&#8217;ll get immediate feedback from it. Musical feedback. I like that. As if I read, I gotta try a bit harder so I can read the words. I&#8217;ve got a pretty good understanding of the English language\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> the individual words\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> weirdly\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> when they meld together. No\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I do enjoy it. I enjoy the word play and sometimes the hidden wit and, uh, underlying messages and whatnot. Nothing&#8217;s really lost on me if I&#8217;m concentrating, anyway, so \u2014 yeah, to answer your question. No.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Right. Well, I thought that was the answer.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve actually forgotten the question. I just think \u2014 trying to remember that the answer should have been no, something. Do I read science\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> fiction? Uh, I asked if you read science fiction. I knew you kind of never have, but\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> you&#8217;re setting up for a fail thing.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, I&#8217;m not really. I just was saying that by way of saying there might be a reason why you&#8217;ve not heard of Jay Kristoff, although I have mentioned him on the show before. Oh\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> But he&#8217;s an Australian author of science fiction and fantasy novels. He&#8217;s published around 18 novels, I think. And he&#8217;s great. And he&#8217;s a Melburnian too. Shout out to Jay. Maybe one day I&#8217;ll pop him on my list of like, dream guests to have.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> How come when?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Pop him on.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> When we say Melbourne, the spelling of Melbourne changes \u2014 like, normally with stuff like that, the spelling changes at the end \u2014 but we drop the O in Melbourne.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That&#8217;s true.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> We drop the E at the end as well. But like, that&#8217;s kind of normal when you&#8217;re adding an I or whatever to something. But we dropped the O in Melbourne.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well, we&#8217;re fickle people with fickle spelling.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, we&#8217;re short on time. We don&#8217;t have time for that extra O.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, we don&#8217;t have time. We&#8217;ve gotta go get a coffee. So leave us alone.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I put the O in Melbourne. That should be the slogan.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It&#8217;s your personal slogan.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. I put the O \u2014 no \u2014 in Melbourne. Yeah. So good on this guy Kristoff.<\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"jay-christophe-and-the-case-against-your-phone\">Jay Kristoff and the Case Against Your Phone<\/h3><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Jay Kristoff. Yeah. Really good author. A lot of good things to say, but he was recently asked: do you have any advice for young writers? Mm-hmm. And this was his answer. Although I&#8217;ve left out a section of it, but other than that, I&#8217;m gonna read it word for word what he said.<\/p><p>He said: &#8220;This thing in your pocket that you misname a phone. Get rid of it. Keep it as far from you as you possibly can. Do not think this is a phone. We call it a phone. It&#8217;s not one. It&#8217;s actually an alien organism that wants to eat your free time. That&#8217;s what it exists for. The people who make it want you working and sleeping and scrolling and occasionally clicking buy.<\/p><p>&#8220;That is what the ideal human being is to the people who make this thing. They don&#8217;t want you wandering a park and daydreaming. They don&#8217;t want you going to strange places and having weird conversations with wonderful people. They don&#8217;t want you sitting quiet and bored and letting your mind wander and letting the ideas that are circulating into your subconscious filter forward into your conscious.<\/p><p>&#8220;They don&#8217;t want that. They want you spending money you don&#8217;t have on shit you don&#8217;t need. That&#8217;s a distraction device. It is a misery machine, and if you&#8217;re a creative, you need to take the time to be bored. You need to be quiet. You need to be still, and let those ideas that are bursting in your brain have the opportunity to filter forward into your conscious mind.<\/p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve looked at the world in which we live right now, but if you&#8217;re an artist, if you&#8217;re an illustrator, if you&#8217;re a painter, if you&#8217;re a director, a photographer, a designer \u2014 if you are a creative, we need you more now than ever. So you need to be still and quiet and bored, and that thing is the opposite of it.<\/p><p>&#8220;So please, for the sake of all of us, put down your fucking phones.&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I read that last week. I didn&#8217;t know I was reading, um, a quote from a local\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yes, he is local \u2014 local-ish \u2014 search through 5 million people odd and you might find him.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. I suppose I shouldn&#8217;t be suggesting that we walk down the street. We&#8217;ll just\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> say, I don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s in this neck of the town.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Hi, Jay. Is it J or is it J?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It&#8217;s J.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> JAY J. Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. So we&#8217;ve talked before about how distracted we can get. We&#8217;ve talked about how life can be very distracting when you&#8217;re trying to focus on something creative. And we&#8217;ve also talked about how phones and media and scrolling can be an addictive habit.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Distracted by the birds outside right now.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Everything&#8217;s\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> distracted. Yeah. If you&#8217;re wondering what that noise is in the background, it&#8217;s some randy birds, I&#8217;m guessing, outside. I dunno what they&#8217;re doing.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well, our cat&#8217;s clearly not doing anything.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Cat&#8217;s not doing his job. No.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> And we&#8217;ve talked about it \u2014 to try to minimize distraction so we can clear the way for creativity \u2014 just as individuals wanting to make more room in our lives for that. But I just feel like increasingly there&#8217;s this wave of trying to clear that distraction and take a bit of a stand against it \u2014 almost as an act of resistance and of rebellion against the way of the world and against the way that kind of tech corporations or whatever would have us lead our lives.<\/p><p>It seems like a lot of people are kind of signaling some warning sounds about that \u2014 that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening. We are kind of being corralled into: this is how we live. This is how we buy stuff all the time because nothing lasts. So just go buy a new one again and again and again and just be continually looking, scrolling.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;m\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> being distracted\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;m getting worried. Worried for you now.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Why?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Because you had your concern with the state of the world via the manosphere, and then you had your war, and now you&#8217;re getting all very concerned with the world and politics \u2014 are you okay?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Maybe I&#8217;ve been spending too much time online.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I dunno.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No. It&#8217;s hard. It&#8217;s hard to not obviously see what&#8217;s going on around the place. But I think that we are wise to be considered and very mindful of the place that we live, where we fit in history and what we are gonna choose in response to it \u2014 and not just be ushered along the tide of whatever&#8217;s happening. And we can, because we have education, we have resources at our fingertips, so we have these choices that we can make.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ai-technology-and-the-artists-dilemma\">AI, Technology, and the Artist&#8217;s Dilemma<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I had a thought that I thought was interesting today, and I bring it up because it in a way relates \u2014 well, it&#8217;s on topic, so it&#8217;s not me being facetious. So a friend of ours popped around last night who I haven&#8217;t seen for a while. Well, a friend of ours \u2014 I used to work for him at his studio. And, uh, anyway, he was telling me of a mutual acquaintance of ours who is using Suno. So you&#8217;ve heard of Suno? Like \u2014 to explain \u2014 Suno is an AI music creating software.<\/p><p>I&#8217;ve not used it or gone to it or heard anything from it, so I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ve heard stuff from it.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But I haven&#8217;t sought it out and I probably never will. I&#8217;m wired that way and I&#8217;m a bit of a Luddite. And also for some of the reasons that you are saying \u2014 it&#8217;s like, you know, you don&#8217;t wanna pollute yourself with that. We did an episode last year about how we use AI, and we were sort of saying, like, at the time I remember I was saying, well, I&#8217;m using AI to create transcripts of the show &#8217;cause it saves me a lot of time.<\/p><p>Strangely, I&#8217;ve since stopped doing that because it was actually also taking me a lot of time. You know, so it was taking me an hour and a half to do these transcripts that ordinarily would&#8217;ve taken me a lot longer than that. But in the end I was like, you know what, I don&#8217;t have this extra hour and a half on top of everything else.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So I don&#8217;t do that anymore. But the arc \u2014 or the timeline, I suppose \u2014 of people getting into something like ChatGPT and then being sort of, um, seduced by it and amazed by what it can achieve, which is pretty amazing. But then also subsequently learning about how much water it takes to cool the data centers. And then also a distaste with, you know, like you are talking about \u2014 power and money being in the hands of so few.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And all that stuff. And so there has been a shift \u2014 not with everyone, of course, &#8217;cause we&#8217;re all different \u2014 but there has been a shift of people sort of going, actually, <a href=\"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/transcript\/ep-25-art-in-the-age-of-attention\/\">I don&#8217;t even wanna touch that stuff anymore.<\/a><\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So anyway, so this mutual friend of ours is using Suno as part of his workflow. And as a way of not needing to hire musicians. And\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> wow\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> and I was thinking about this &#8217;cause I thought we should get him on the show \u2014 because I wanted to get him on the show anyway before I knew this. And we may get him on and not talk about it because there&#8217;s something I&#8217;d rather talk to him about. But I thought we should, if we do get a chance to talk to him about it, we should. Because throughout all of history with artists, I was realizing that there has been \u2014 in sort of one circle of artists or whatever \u2014 a common thought that everyone&#8217;s sort of buying into, that is nearly like, it&#8217;s believed to be: this is what we should be doing as artists. Like this is our either our responsibility, or this is what we should be pushing for in society or whatever it might be.<\/p><p>You know, and there&#8217;s a collective \u2014 often they&#8217;re called collectives, yeah, or they&#8217;re called a movement or something. But there&#8217;s always\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> all thought around\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> and then\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But there&#8217;s always been artists that have gone, eh, I&#8217;m not with you guys. And they&#8217;ve been ostracized, or they&#8217;ve been sidelined, or they&#8217;ve been forced to sort of set up their own thing or find their own people or not commune with the other artists. And so that&#8217;s gonna happen as well. We&#8217;re gonna find people \u2014 perhaps like this guy I&#8217;m talking about \u2014 that go: this technology, I&#8217;m embracing it because it enables me to actually achieve what I couldn&#8217;t have before because it wouldn&#8217;t have been affordable.<\/p><p>So, like, his end product is not gonna be \u2014 you are not gonna hear Suno being used. It&#8217;s just in the process of putting something together, trying to hear what an orchestration would sound like or whatever, an arrangement. And he doesn&#8217;t have to pay other musicians to get it to that point \u2014 to then sort of make a decision on it. Yeah. Right. So I think it&#8217;s being used like that, but still you could kind of go, well, you know, that&#8217;s money that could have gone into the hands of artists that really need it, you know.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Instead of tech bros at the top, kind of thing.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. Or you could go, well, I actually wouldn&#8217;t have even gone down this track because I just couldn&#8217;t have paid the people.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Mm-hmm.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I would&#8217;ve had to\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> not have a string section, or\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> yeah.<\/p><p>So, but still, when you step back, you go \u2014 this guy is still a serious artist and contributor to not just the arts community, but to the wider community. And sometimes I think when you&#8217;re looking from the outside in at artists, it&#8217;s easy \u2014 not so much for us, but for other people \u2014 to kind of see a self-centeredness or a selfishness or something like that, and sometimes that might be true, but there&#8217;s a lot of service happening in the arts.<\/p><p>Yeah, you know, it&#8217;s in a way a service industry. Like hospitality is \u2014 I mean, in the hospitality industry, the clue&#8217;s kind of in the name \u2014 whereas it&#8217;s not in the arts, you know? So anyway, you can have people that are fellow artists that might be embracing technology in a way that we&#8217;re perhaps tutting at or saying, oh, this is a bad thing for the earth or for the world, or for governance, or whatever.<\/p><p>But meanwhile, there are people that, at a very sort of local social level, are artists in service to other people that are still utilizing this technology. So anyway, it was just a thought that I had because historically it&#8217;s always been the case.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It has always been the case. I mean, I think a similar conversation happened, what, a couple of decades ago when digital technology came into the musical sphere \u2014 like recordings and beatboxing and all that kind of thing. Drum machines and stuff like that.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh, it&#8217;s happened a couple of times. There&#8217;s been \u2014 yeah \u2014 when would it have been, like \u2014 I&#8217;m just gonna say the eighties, but yeah, you&#8217;re talking about like when sampling started being used, so other people&#8217;s albums \u2014 like a sample from a James Brown song would be used as the base beat now for a rap song. You know, and this was at a time too where people \u2014 even industry people \u2014 thought rap won&#8217;t last.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Like it&#8217;s just a fad.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well yeah \u2014 so\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> there&#8217;s\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> that conversation about like, oh, it&#8217;s an electronic instrument, or it&#8217;s not a real\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> yeah, it&#8217;s real\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> musician.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. They&#8217;re using MPCs, they were using sampling machines and being able to create whole tracks. And then it&#8217;s funny &#8217;cause, like, while that was also happening, there were songs \u2014 rock songs and pop songs \u2014 that we were listening to that were starting to use that technology, and we perhaps wouldn&#8217;t have even realized. Yeah. You know, that the drum beat we were listening to wasn&#8217;t real drums, and so on.<\/p><p>And then beyond that too, there was the other sort of digital debate \u2014 &#8217;cause a lot of this stuff is tied up in copyright as well. It&#8217;s not just, is it real art or is it real music? It&#8217;s like, is it stealing?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And that&#8217;s true, yeah, with the whole Napster thing.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> A way that kind of spawned, um, Apple iPods, you know \u2014 where it was like, that was the first time you could just buy digitally, like one track.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And it was legal. Yeah. As opposed to\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> getting online and going onto a share site like Napster. So there&#8217;s, yeah, there have been these junctures all\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> along the\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> way. Yeah, definitely.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. And that&#8217;s not super new either. I mean, you can imagine when photography \u2014 when they used to have those great big cameras on tripods and like one plate, you know, and they&#8217;d have\u2014<\/p><p>Oh yeah.<\/p><p>the flash that would blow the bulb, yeah, and that kind of thing. But they would stage, you know, models or just groups of people to have their photo taken \u2014 and not just for the sake of taking a portrait, but for the sake of art. As the beginning photographers were exploring that as an art form.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> As an art form.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Did they instruct people to not smile? &#8217;cause everyone&#8217;s always so stoic.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well, I think there&#8217;s some early work that&#8217;s sort of got people kind of dressed like nymphs and stuff like that, and sort of was quite tied to the romantic art movement at the time.<\/p><p>So\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> not very romantic in my definition of romance. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Similar themes, similar aesthetics. Did\u2014<\/p><p>you\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> say gimp or\u2014?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Nymph.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Okay. So still not romantic.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay. Right.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Carry on.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> But you know, many artists at the time would be like, well that&#8217;s not really \u2014 how can that one quick photograph compare to the years of work that we&#8217;ve done figuring out how to do light and shade with paint, you know, and that kind of thing.<\/p><p>Yeah, yeah. It&#8217;s not the real art, it&#8217;s not the real thing. But nowadays even people who are painters have been massively influenced by photographers \u2014 because not only do you see a lot of photographs, but you see a lot of photographs and videos of painting and that kind of thing. You can see all of the world&#8217;s amazing art just by clicking through a photo album or clicking through your computer kind of thing. So you&#8217;ve got the opportunity to see more. So the processes, what we are exposed to \u2014 changes how we do things currently, I suppose. Uh, so all of which is completely off track.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Well, I don&#8217;t know \u2014 off track to your topic?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Mm-hmm.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Is it? Yeah. Okay.<\/p><p>I was gonna say, even talking about historical photos \u2014 even they&#8217;re now in question, like what you&#8217;re looking at, whether it\u2014<\/p><p>Oh\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> that&#8217;s true. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. Is it\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> did you see it?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Something\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> There&#8217;s this \u2014 he&#8217;s not a professor, but anyway \u2014 he had an old photo from when he was a kid, so it&#8217;s him as a baby basically, and his mom. And, um, he just wanted to colorize it\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> you\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> know, bring color in. So he tried three of the different LLMs\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> to colorize it \u2014 to see which one would do a better job of turning this old faded black and white photo, just taken in their home, into a nice color photo. Pretty simple. And one of them changed the \u2014 there was a pot plant in the background on a table, a pot plant, and it was growing out of \u2014 I don&#8217;t know \u2014 like a tin can or something. Anyway, it changed that \u2014 it put three cereal boxes there and the plant was growing out of one of the cereal boxes.<\/p><p>So like there&#8217;s cornflakes and something else. Good job. And so it&#8217;s colorized it, but it&#8217;s also gone and just put cereal boxes in there. One of the other LLMs \u2014 there was something on the ground that could have been like \u2014 not a rug, but like a baby blanket or something \u2014 there on the floor.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Mm-hmm.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It was a bit hard to discern exactly what it was. It was on the floor. Just got rid of it.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Just decided\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> just decided \u2014 nope \u2014 it doesn&#8217;t\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> who struggles\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> with photo \u2014 it doesn&#8217;t need to be there. Yeah. And he&#8217;s like, if that&#8217;s happening when all I asked \u2014 the exact same prompt \u2014 was literally just to colorize it.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> is very \u2014 and it&#8217;s just sort of\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> very concerning.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So, are we still off track? &#8217;cause it seems on track.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, it&#8217;s fine. We&#8217;ll get back.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It seems on track to your topic. It is. Everything&#8217;s stuffed and the artists are responsible for bringing the world order back in line.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"preserving-the-originals-books-history-and-the-heirloom-mindset\">Preserving the Originals: Books, History, and the Heirloom Mindset<\/h3><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Do you remember a few years ago in the gardening world?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh, so this is on track, is\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> it? Well, it is kind of \u2014 I&#8217;m fine with the track we are on. It&#8217;s all good. Because it is relevant and it&#8217;s seasonal for what we are talking about.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Explain the gardening world. &#8217;cause it feels sort of big.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Now, I&#8217;m not really part of the gardening world\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> just the Garden of Eden. A part of it.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I&#8217;m a gardener in the sense that for the last 30-odd years I have managed to bring my \u2014 let&#8217;s call it strike rate \u2014 up from killing about 80% of the plants that I would buy\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> right\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> to now killing maybe about 60%.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh, I think you do better\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> than that. Yeah, I probably do do better than that. Oh, thanks.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> You keep these ones in the studio alive.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I know. I rotate them. I dunno if you&#8217;ve noticed \u2014 there&#8217;s no natural light in here. But no, I actually enjoy gardening. I&#8217;m not amazing at it or anything, but a few years ago \u2014 and actually it&#8217;s probably been happening for quite a while \u2014 there was concern about, hey, with all these hybrids, we&#8217;re doing all these different things and like the mass producing things. Like our favorite warehouse, Bunnings\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> no.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> they only order certain varieties and things like that. Everything&#8217;s kind of being bred, you know, to be pest proof and this, that and the other. So there was a bit of a movement of going, we need to be creating storerooms of heirloom varieties. Uh, you know, we need to continue to propagate things that haven&#8217;t been changed and that haven&#8217;t had any genetic modifications and things like that. So there was a bit of a movement and just a general awareness about it.<\/p><p>And I&#8217;m thinking that the same thing is \u2014 it&#8217;s probably already happening, but it&#8217;s gotta be imminent \u2014 certainly about exactly what you are talking about. Have we got our historical documents saved and secured in a way that\u2014<\/p><p>Oh yeah\u2014<\/p><p>they&#8217;re not gonna be tampered with? Or that there is at least a copy of the stuff that hasn&#8217;t been doctored yet by AI. Like, can we keep it, can we secure it, can we save it and make sure that it&#8217;s readily accessible so we can check back and fact-check stuff against what was actually written at the time, rather than stuff that&#8217;s been changed in accordance with AI \u2014 and not even AI.<\/p><p>I heard something very concerning recently.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Of course you did.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> On another tangent.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> What was I doing while you were hearing all this concerning stuff? I was probably watching the footy or making a\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> probably\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> making a decaf coffee.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, no doubt.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Probably out in the garage sanding and getting all the dangerous residues up my nose and into my lungs.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh good.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But apart from that\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> well, I was being actually disgusted by this. You&#8217;re being a concerned\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> citizen, being disgusted\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> by things that I&#8217;ve heard\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> raising your cortisol.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p>Which is that actual publishers \u2014 book publishers \u2014 going into books that aren&#8217;t that old, even like from the 1980s, nineties, two thousands. And changing little lines, little references, without even the author&#8217;s permission sometimes. And so this is the actual publishing houses doing it. To try to sort of update it so that it&#8217;s relevant.<\/p><p>So for instance, the book would&#8217;ve said something like one teenager character saying to another one, do you wanna come over to my house tonight and watch this show? You know, like whatever show it is that they love to watch \u2014 or whatever, you&#8217;re gonna come over tonight and watch this show. And then they have a conversation about that. So if you have an original copy of the book, that&#8217;s what it&#8217;ll say. You know, the book that you&#8217;ve bought in 1989 or whatever? Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Wanna come back to my house and watch Neighbours?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, or whatever show it was. Yeah. Yeah. Now if you buy the same book \u2014 that passage will read: do you wanna come over to my house tonight and watch a TikTok about this thing that is really funny that I wanna \u2014 so it doesn&#8217;t even make sense. Like, who&#8217;s going\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> over to anyone&#8217;s home\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> anymore? Yeah. To watch a TikTok\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> at home.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> But what it does is completely remove \u2014 it leeches away \u2014 the sense of place and time that that book originally had.<\/p><p>Yeah. Replacing all these tiny little touchstones of that era with trying to make it modern \u2014 and like, what&#8217;s the point? Because that&#8217;s the whole point of a novel \u2014 to be somewhere else, hear something else, be in a different world to your own world, you know? So I don&#8217;t know. That just blew my mind that book publishers would be doing that. Like, for what reason?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, honestly, that \u2014 I mean\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> the first I started\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> really made me upset\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> stuff was ages ago. And it was like \u2014 it was in Noddy, wasn&#8217;t it?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Didn&#8217;t they change something?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well, yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> The character&#8217;s name \u2014 what was that?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> They changed a few things. Noddy had some very problematic golliwogs who were always the bad guys.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Right.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That was the problem from there.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. But I mean, it&#8217;s where this sort of started, I suppose. Yeah. Of going, hey, we&#8217;re gonna go back, we&#8217;re gonna change it. The \u2014 was it the Magic Faraway Tree? Dick and Fanny?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Now Rick and Franny.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Rick and Franny, yeah. Like, that&#8217;s an unnecessary change. Like, why is that changed? Do you know what I mean?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Apart\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> from all the kids circling Dick and Fanny \u2014 but that&#8217;s their books.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I mean, that&#8217;s all reason to keep it, I would say. But even like the thing with Noddy \u2014 you know, like it&#8217;s important to understand the context and times things were written in. Mm. And it just seems a bit weird to \u2014 I mean, that&#8217;s a whole other topic.<\/p><p>Mm-hmm. But to sort of censor that stuff. But I&#8217;m just saying that&#8217;s when I first heard about like actually going back and changing things and it just seems like that&#8217;s so precious. Like, why would you do that anyway? And here we are now\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> and here it&#8217;s\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> happening. They&#8217;re trying to make things more relevant.<\/p><p>So it&#8217;s sort of similar kind of going, well, this is more culturally appropriate or it makes more sense. That\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> was more like, because we are trying to undo lots and lots of colonial damage basically, that sort of stuff. But this seems to be more just like the original doesn&#8217;t even matter, you know?<\/p><p>And the constant tampering and AI-ing of everything doesn&#8217;t seem to matter \u2014 that&#8217;s the concern. So yeah, I&#8217;m advocating for a \u2014 oh\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> God, don&#8217;t have to\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> sign something. Now \u2014 a story, a repository, a massive library of all the originals.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> A repository. Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. So yeah\u2014<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"analog-night-putting-down-the-phone-and-picking-up-a-life\">Analog Night: Putting Down the Phone and Picking Up a Life<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> speaking of the doctors, right?<\/p><p>So what ran\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> over \u2014 ran over something that \u2014 um \u2014 something that did come \u2014 a little idea that I saw somewhere, or you might&#8217;ve actually sent it to me or something, or we discussed it at some point. This probably on our\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> on our date at the servo\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> was the idea that people are starting to do now. Even younger people. People are now creating in their homes an analog room.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> yeah. The analog room where you&#8217;ve got your record player\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> you&#8217;re sitting in one right now.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I think this is fairly digital.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> That&#8217;s very analog.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> There&#8217;s lots of instruments. I&#8217;ll give it that. There&#8217;s lots of computer screens also and wires running everywhere.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. This does sort of run opposite to my earlier statement of me leaning towards being a Luddite.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. But\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> there&#8217;s\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> a lot\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> of my mind is\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> blinking lights and knobs. Things that I don&#8217;t understand. But\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> well\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> we actually do have \u2014 we have another room in our house.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh, the transcontinental drifter room.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Will you call it that? I call it the library. Why do you call it the transcontinental drifter room?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I can&#8217;t remember.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> You just like that spillage of words together, do you?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No, I do, but there&#8217;s a reason for it. Yeah\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well, it&#8217;s \u2014 yeah. I&#8217;ve always called it our library, although it doesn&#8217;t have nearly enough bookcases.<\/p><p>No, clearly I need many, many more. I&#8217;ve got a few.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I think &#8220;transcontinental drifter&#8221; is a little nod to the multipurpose nature of the room.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, I remember where that came from. Remember you\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> the transcontinental?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Transcontinental Drifter.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> You bought a satchel. Now\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> allegedly\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> dear listeners, you&#8217;ll know how Lyndon goes about buying things. This was back in the day, you couldn&#8217;t even be looking stuff up online. So we went to a number of stores.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Really, I don&#8217;t\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> remember this. There was a lot of discussion about buckle width, the strength of the strap\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> all valid\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> the combination of the materials used\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> and then the bank account\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> the stitching\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> what if I could actually afford\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> the stitching and whether the zips were YKK. What are they? YKK. YKK. Oh, the only zip brand that matters to someone with your refined tastes. And the bag that you chose \u2014 it had stitched into it, like \u2014 this was the name of the bag or the particular model of the bag: Transcontinental Drifter.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh, did it really?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Was that that little blue satchel thing\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> no, it was \u2014 it was kind of brown and with a bit of orange. And\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> do you remember that\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> top?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh yeah. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Is that what it said? You had the bag for like 15 years at least. Yeah\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> but also\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Transcontinental \u2014 Transcontinental\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> was \u2014 this is probably not even allowed anymore, for who knows why. But back then when I bought it, everyone referred to them as man bags. Remember that? You&#8217;re probably not allowed to say man and bag in the same sentence these days. I think it was even before\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> man bag. I mean, this is more like a\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> student \u2014 true satchel. I do set trends. You&#8217;re right. Like I did with my Crocs. Anyway, that&#8217;s a whole other story. And with sauce squeezy sauce packs. That&#8217;s gone anyway. But so I called it my paddock satchel. Remember I said it&#8217;s not a man bag \u2014 &#8217;cause everyone&#8217;s going, oh, I like your man bag. I&#8217;m like, it&#8217;s not a man bag, it&#8217;s a paddock satchel.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, no, no. You&#8217;re conflating two different times when you&#8217;ve bought bags.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No, I&#8217;m not.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Because people didn&#8217;t call it a man bag until later, after we&#8217;d had kids and you got one of those leather satchels. Anyway, people immediately went, nice man bag.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I think I was on a plane too, and I saw like \u2014 you know, you&#8217;re reading like the Qantas \u2014 as if I flew Qantas, but you&#8217;re reading like the Jetstar advertising booklet, whatever it is, magazine. And there&#8217;s companies in there trying to sell you their supposedly upmarket products and one of them \u2014 they were calling it a field bag.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Field bag.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Field bags. And I thought, we all know it&#8217;s a man bag, but that&#8217;s when I was like, yeah, mine&#8217;s a paddock satchel.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Paddock\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> paddock satchel, field bag. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Gotcha.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. So\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> so there you\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> go. I have no idea what you were \u2014 oh, analog night.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Analog in\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> the transcontinental\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> drifter\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> room.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> An analog room. So yeah, we&#8217;ve sort of got a \u2014 we&#8217;ve got a library. There&#8217;s some seats and a couch and whatnot. Betty does some drawing in there.<\/p><p>Is it? I do a whole lot of folding clothing in there. It&#8217;s \u2014 you really do\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> ruin\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> the \u2014 all that. It&#8217;s just got a big table, enough room.<\/p><p>Anyway, we&#8217;ve gone a step further than the analog room.<\/p><p>And we&#8217;ve started to set aside analog night. Now the first one came around the other night.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. A roaring success.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I was trying to wake up our son who&#8217;d gone to sleep in the late afternoon, so that was no good \u2014 &#8217;cause he was on board for it. And then after dinner I was like, all righto. Analog night. Lyndon, let&#8217;s go. And you went \u2014 and next thing I look around and the football was on the TV and you were sat in front of it.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s a very analog sport. So I felt like I was participating in analog night.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, you weren&#8217;t. You left me to my own devices and watched a screen \u2014 and you just missed out. You missed out on analog night.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. I mean, I think next time you need to send invites out or something.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Hmm.<\/p><p>I&#8217;ll have to create them on Canva.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> You had it in the diary, but then you have a lot of things in the diary. Like you forgot you were going to Geraldine Hickey last night.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But you remembered analog night and you\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> happily spent that on your own.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I checked in the diary. I did. I didn&#8217;t even \u2014 I didn&#8217;t put music on or anything.<\/p><p>I sat in that lovely room \u2014 the library. I didn&#8217;t read either. I was gonna, but then I remembered there&#8217;s some watercolor paint somewhere. And I did \u2014 I did my first watercolor, like just playing with watercolors, essentially just \u2014 I was just like coloring in and I outlined, but, you know, enjoying the way that the paints work.<\/p><p>I was like, oh, use a bit more water \u2014 this went on wet and went on dry.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It was\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> great. It was very enjoyable. So calming. Yeah. So I&#8217;m all for it.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It wasn&#8217;t even my team playing that night either.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, were they? You&#8217;ve got no excuse. You&#8217;re just dipping out of analog night for nothing.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> So I\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> do like football.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I think that&#8217;s the movement \u2014 the resistance is analog night. It&#8217;s gonna be very hard. Oh yeah. We need to put our fucking phones down. Jake Christoff there.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh no. Now I need to put an explicit warning on this episode.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well, I\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> so the people don&#8217;t accidentally play it in their car on their way to dropping their kids off at school.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> So that&#8217;s my \u2014 that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m \u2014 that&#8217;s my little proposal. This \u2014 as they say on Instagram \u2014 this is your sign to \u2014 oh gosh\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> don&#8217;t start that.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> This is your sign to buy a new something.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> This is your sign for analog night.<\/p><p>Yeah. So analog, analog night \u2014 tell us if you have one. And also\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I have analog night every night.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, you don&#8217;t.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Just\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> sleep. Put the TV on.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I know, but why have it one night when you can just live it every day. I&#8217;ve got analog day anyway.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> And my other takeaway from this episode is: what are you gonna rename your phone?<\/p><p>Because\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> if we&#8217;re taking Mr. Kristoff&#8217;s advice\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> well\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> it&#8217;s not called a phone. It&#8217;s a \u2014 what did he call it? A distraction device. A DD. Or a misery machine.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> An MM. A DD. He likes alliteration.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I reckon there&#8217;s the Joy Stealer. You know what I like to think of it as. Broken\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> the\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> pattern now. Yeah, I like to think of it.<\/p><p>Remember how we would teach kids that lollies and sweet things and cookies and that are a sometimes food \u2014 they&#8217;re not like an all the time food. Yeah. And then we always eat cookies, junk food \u2014 and it becomes an everyday food, whereas it really should just be the sometimes food. We started to use our phones and our devices like an all the time, everyday main staple rather than a sometimes thing.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Do you remember what was the nickname for phones when they first came out?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> like mobile phones \u2014 bricks. Do you remember that? You got your brick on you?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, but it wasn&#8217;t \u2014 once phones started to become smaller, and it was only those that couldn&#8217;t afford the smaller ones \u2014 their friends that did have the tiny ones \u2014 we&#8217;d be going, oh, you still got your brick with you?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Probably. &#8217;cause that sounds like human nature.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I remember when they \u2014 when my\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> put people back in their place, &#8217;cause you know they don&#8217;t have the money for the latest phone.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, it started early, doesn&#8217;t it. I remember when my mom first got a mobile phone \u2014 and it would&#8217;ve been a brick, and I mean no shade, &#8217;cause I couldn&#8217;t afford one for years.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Did you say no shade?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I probably did. Oh my\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> god. Yeah. You have been online too long.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I know. I hang around with young people now, so yeah. But\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> weirdo\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> my mom got a phone and then she would&#8217;ve bought a like a case, you know, from those shopping centers in the middle of the shops.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Hmm.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> To wrap around the phone.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh yeah. A leather, like a\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> leather, leather, light leather case. Yeah. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Leather pleather.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> But then also for some reason she had a calico drawstring bag that she had from some other thing, and she had the phone in that just for like, to keep the dust out of it or whatever. So yeah, on the odd occasions that the phone would ring \u2014 my gosh \u2014 the rigmarole to go into the handbag, find the calico drawstring bag.<\/p><p>Undo the drawstring.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No wonder she&#8217;s always gonna\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> huff \u2014 the phone out and open up, open up the leather \u2014 oh. And then figure out which button to push. It was just \u2014 it was a lot.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> When the \u2014 oh gee \u2014 when the iPhone 12 came out, my parents were using walkie talkies.<\/p><p>That&#8217;s a whole other story. I mean, why use a perfectly good iPhone when you could use a UHF handheld radio?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I do, I do\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> remember that. They might as well have each just carried like a couple of empty soup cans and a piece of string.<\/p><p>You know what? They might as well have each had a calico bag with a pigeon in it.<\/p><p>Dad should have just carried around one of those massive Swedish horns that they have up in the mountains. He could have just stretched it out to wherever my mom was and just\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> God, you killed me.<\/p><p>Okay. Well\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> on that note, <em>&#8220;yes I like technology always and forever. Always and forever.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> So what, what are we saying? Don&#8217;t\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> you have to go\u2014<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> get rid of your phone and get a Swedish horn? Yeah, I&#8217;ve gotta go. Alright. Thanks for joining us today.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> They&#8217;re not even called Swedish horns. I can&#8217;t remember what they&#8217;re called.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Bye. See you next time.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><p>Want more deep dives into the creative process? Our Patreon supporters <a href=\"https:\/\/patreon.com\/painintheartslife\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">get exclusive episodes and behind-the-scenes content.<\/a> <\/p><a href=\"https:\/\/patreon.com\/painintheartslife\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"patreon-button\">\n    \ud83c\udfa7 Click for Bonus Episodes\n<\/a>\n\n<style>\n  .patreon-button {\n    display: inline-block;\n    background-color: var(--wp--preset--color--primary, #FF424D); \/* Uses Podcasty's primary color *\/\n    color: var(--wp--preset--color--contrast, #ffffff); \/* Theme contrast color *\/\n    font-family: var(--wp--preset--font-family--body, sans-serif);\n    font-size: 16px; \/* Slightly smaller font *\/\n    font-weight: 600;\n    text-align: center;\n    padding: 10px 18px; \/* Reduced padding *\/\n    border-radius: 6px;\n    text-decoration: none;\n    transition: background-color 0.3s ease-in-out, transform 0.2s ease-in-out;\n    box-shadow: 0px 3px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);\n  }\n\n  .patreon-button:hover {\n    background-color: var(--wp--preset--color--secondary, #e63e48);\n    transform: translateY(-2px);\n  }\n\n  .patreon-button:active {\n    transform: translateY(0);\n  }\n<\/style>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>April 28, 2026\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Episode 6554 Min, 21 Sec\u00a0 Summary Join Lyndon and Breallyn on this episode of &#8216;Pain In The Arts&#8217; as they explore the cost of constant connectivity and the struggle between creativity and digital distraction. Inspired by author Jay Kristoff&#8217;s bold advice for creatives, we dive into why putting down your phone and resisting the &#8220;misery machine&#8221; of modern technology is essential for artistic&#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/transcript\/ep-65-creativity-and-digital-distraction\/\">Read More<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","categories":[60],"class_list":["post-6761","transcript","type-transcript","status-publish","hentry","category-productivity-mindset","is-cat-link-regular"],"featured_image_url":[],"post_author":"","assigned_categories":"Productivity &amp; Mindset","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/transcript\/6761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/transcript"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/transcript"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}