(relaxing music)
(escalator doors sliding open)
(chill pop music)
- Ah, good morning, from Austin.
Woo, It's been, like, a hot minute since I've been here.
Dani and I are gonna go vintage shopping,
but regardless, it's time to get ready for the day.
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The weather in Austin has been very touch and go,
I feel like this meets the conditions of today.
So, I went with a nice little collared knit sweater,
pleather pants with my Asics,
my little bag and I'm ready to go.
Dani has mapped out a very cool vintage adventure for us
and our first stop is Pavement.
So, I am just preparing for an interview
with The Atlantic.
When I was 12, I think that's when MySpace really emerged
and I think the internet was so punk rock.
It's one of my favorite media theorists.
Douglas Rushkoff coined that where the internet
was a time where everything was free.
It was nonconformist.
It was where a community of misfits just hung out.
It blended music, proximity and visuals.
And so you were able to connect with people
that actually lived around you.
So I remember making all these internet friends
and then we would actually meet up in real life.
I would sneak out of my house at 1:00 AM
and then we would just meet in a parking lot.
And I think this was when technology was really used
as a tool, like a tool to connect us.
And I think now it's heading towards a direction
where technology is starting to enslave us.
- [Kat] It's funny 'cause I'll sometimes
tell my friends they'll be like,
ah, everything is content now.
Like if I go somewhere, I'm like
at least I write about it for the site, you know?
- Yeah, yeah.
It's like a collective tendency to optimize everything.
I almost feel like maybe it's inherently just all in us
because life is so, you know, it's gonna end.
We're all gonna die.
So it's like our attempt
of just like grasping something that's so ephemeral
especially the things that are important to us.
Oh my goodness, okay.
I am feeling exhilarated after that interview with Kat
who is such a sweetheart.
If you're watching this, hello.
Oh my God, I really do have the coolest subscribers.
As you saw, we just had an extremely long conversation
about social media, parasocial relationships and the future.
One of the cool things about being on my end
of a parasocial relationship is to have access to such a
just like a brilliant community.
Like the fact that you guys have been here
for so long or some of y'all have been here
for so long since I've grown up is insane.
And I forgot to say this to her in the interview
but I truly think that my videos are less about me
and more of a reflection of where you are currently.
Like when you're watching this
it pokes different sides of what you're experiencing now.
You are kind of reflecting on your own life
and seeing what resonates you
and you're discarding what doesn't.
And I think that's what's beautiful about it.
My past videos, when you watch them
they're almost like time capsules.
They show you, they remind you of who you once were
when you were watching that.
I also think that journalists
have a very important role in our society.
That's like, who calls big corporations
or like big public figures out on their (duck quacks)
or else people will get away with everything.
Think about like Watergate.
Even the most recent example is like, I don't know
Coffeezilla, who did a whole video piece
on Crypto Zoo and how he scammed everyone.
If he didn't do that
then he would've just gotten away with it.
Regardless, I think it does require extensive research
and it is fact checked and as accurate as it can be.
Obviously, not everything is 100%,
but it sure is more fact checked than
just random videos on YouTube.
Cute, okay, face is done.
I think I might just keep my hair like this too.
Oh my God, this is so nice babe.
Babe, thank you so much.
- [Ben] You're welcome, my love.
- [Jenn] Look at the setup, oh my goodness.
- We have a little afternoon tea assortment of sandwiches.
We've got the cucumber and mint with cream cheese.
We've got the smoked salmon with a bit of cream cheese
and lemon and a touch of dill.
We've got some egg and cress sandwiches as well.
We've got some grapes 'cause they're always grape.
We've got a little charcuterie board.
We got some little mini french toast things.
Bit of champagne 'cause it's Valentine's Day.
We've got some hot tea.
In case you want a little bit of hot tea?
Then we've got the hot tea cup and the champagne cup.
(cork popps)
Yay, happy Valentine's babe.
- Happy Valentine's day
- What do you wanna start with babe?
- Okay, we gotta start off,
let's start off with something light.
Let's go with the cucumbers
- Cucumber?
- Hmm hmm.
- Should we play the game babe?
- Yeah.
So we brought, We're Not Really Strangers, Couples Edition.
- What intimidated you most about me early on, if anything?
- Hmm.
- Was I intimidating at all?
- I think, think once I liked you.
once I realized that I liked you, I got really in my head.
Remember when, when we first started dating
or like when we started to talk every day
and you you wanted to FaceTime me
and I couldn't bear to see you.
I had to, I literally had to drink a beer at like 2:00 PM
to have a FaceTime with you.
- Steph FaceTimed me.
- Yes.
- With Jenn in the background.
And Jen just had the sheet over her head
and that was, I didn't see her.
Yeah, I kind of heard her.
But then I was terrified as well.
FaceTiming for the, for the same reasons really.
It was the same intimidation of, you know,
if I say one thing wrong and you get the ick
or a bit put off, I'm 5,000 miles away.
So it's a lot easier to throw that potential relationship
away than someone that's ticking all the boxes
that live around the corner, you know?
- Right, well honestly, like one thing I loved
about you was that for the first time
I felt like I could be myself.
- It's easy to be yourself when you're
with someone that lets you be yourself.
- Yeah.
- And same for me.
I was great just to be, oh, I can be silly and goofy
and and not have to, because when you are in your head,
you're the one that gets you in your own way all the time.
You're like, should I say this?
Should I not?
And when there's that, that sort of wall,
you can't be yourself
and then that person feeds off that energy.
- Right.
- So we were able just to be ourselves with each other,
be open and be silly.
And it's just, that's what it's like to be human you know?
- If we started a business together, what would it be?
Oh, I know this one.
- I think I know what this one
- Yeah.
- Well you answer first.
- Well, okay.
So it'll be a situation where
we would do live experiences together.
Cause I know that you and I are really
big into community, and as much as we love
like making content for people to see later on,
nothing really beats the present.
You know, like those ephemeral moments
where we all gather together and do something transcendent
whether that's dancing, or you're just sharing things
or building something.
Like I know that's what we would do.
And if we could do something built on like mental wellness
or, and physical wellbeing, I think that's what we would do.
- We would have like a big old a community
that has everything for the mindfulness.
We'll have the breather, the meditation,
the movement, the yoga.
But we'll also have the kind of
the connection we have that community, you know.
- Reflection.
- Reflection, the connection.
It's hard to have a community these days
that isn't specific to, you know, a religion or a music
or these kind of times where people do come together,
which is beautiful.
But I think we'd love to make something
where people can come together, grow and learn,
like a little wellness party.
- Yeah.
- You know, you come, you learn, you grow,
you get to know each other.
Get outta that ego state and just have a nice time.
You know, I think we'd do something like that.
- I think so too.
- I like that
- Smile.
(toddler screaming loudly)
- My baby's fast asleep.
Aw, I feel like the photo shoot definitely tired him out.
It's been a big day for all of us
and so it's nice that we get a little breather.
We just finished shooting our family portraits
at this amazing studio called Studioism.
It is by my friend Brian and his girlfriend Dureen.
And it was really difficult to choose
where we wanted to shoot because
all of the rooms looked so sick.
But we decided to do room number three
because it looked most like the vision I was going for.
So I wanted something that was very like sci-fi,
futuristic, and also like where whether you didn't know
if it was a utopia or a dystopia.
it's actually like very similar to the Atlantics new cover.
I think back in the day I just really took photos
just for the sake of it, just content for content sake.
So back in my twenties, like that's just what people did.
We would just drive out to somewhere beautiful
and have a suitcase of five to six outfits
and then just shoot everything all at once.
But I think now I'm at a place where I want to like
dig a little deeper on like why I am taking these photos.
Even for these images, I have been kind of like
musing about a piece that I would write about parenthood
because I think ever since I became a mother,
it truly has been like I've been blasted
into another portal dimension,
and it's just changed the way I perceive everything
especially the future.
And so my mind always flickers about like
will it be a utopia, will it be a dystopia
or just like a protopia.
It's a society that is just good enough.
It's not like completely idyllic,
but it it holds up the community so that
every human being has a basic standard of living.
I think another way that parenthood changed me is that
I have this yearning to learn more,
not only for my own curiosity,
but for when Lennon starts to ask me things.
Like it's so crazy that we're watching consciousness emerge
and he's understanding what we're saying,
and the second he asks me questions about things,
I wanna try and explain to him the best of my ability.
And if I don't know, I'll just tell him
and then we'll figure it out together.
This is also one of the reasons why I decided to enroll
in a US history course in my community college.
At the beginning of the year, I like to write out
just like a bucket list of things I wanna do.
And one of them was to enroll in a community college
and it just turned out that the winter quarter
was starting on like January 3rd.
So I was like I guess I'll just do it.
So I did five weeks of US history
all the way up till like 1786 or something.
It started literally from the beginning of America
all the way till the end of the Civil War.
So during like the reconstruction.
And let me tell y'all,
it was truly the most fascinating class.
I feel like this moment just all came full circle
because I started my channel when I was
in community college and I was just so miserable
and embarrassed to be attending there.
And now here I am just like voluntarily attending
and it's just been such an enriching experience
because now my intention is to learn
like I'm there because I want to be there
and because my intention has changed
I am absorbing so much more.
So I feel like education is definitely something that
should be revisited when you're older,
especially if you have the time or the luxury to.
I feel like now I really strive to be the best version
of myself because like there's someone like kind of like
subconsciously holding me accountable.
Not that he is, but it just pushes me to be just like
the best optimal version of myself.
Like I just, I don't know,
it's like I kind of wanna make him proud
to like for him to be like, yeah, that's my mom.
You know, she makes videos but she's also a therapist,
and she also writes, and she also is a scientist.
Like, how cool would that be?
I don't know.
I was looking at the courses
that my community college had to offer,
and I kind of wanna take all of them.
Like there is even a class that
where you can learn how to weld.
That's so cool.
I've been chatting up a storm,
but I hope you guys are doing well.
And thank you guys so much for watching me
and supporting this channel.
It truly means the world.
And I'll talk to you guys in my next one, bye.