#89 Jack Stewart | Unplug from the Internet: Homeschooling, Plato, Boundaries & boardGames

Jack Stewart is a grown-up homeschooler who now homeschools his kids. We met Jack at HEFF in 2024 and enjoyed talking with him. This is our second episode with Jack, and you should consider starting with the first episode we recorded together. 

In this episode, we sit down with Jack Stewart to discuss how technology affects our daily lives and how setting boundaries around internet use can improve emotional well-being. Jack introduces the idea of technology as a "social appetite suppressant," explaining how it can fill emotional gaps but also lead to a lack of real-world connection. Together, we explore strategies for creating healthier habits around technology.

We also dive into homeschooling and unschooling, focusing on how families can manage education outside of the traditional system. Jack shares his passion for Plato’s philosophy and explains how it inspired the development of his educational board game. The game combines art, languages, and math to help learners connect different subjects and holistically explore education.

If you’re interested in improving your tech habits, learning more about homeschooling, or curious about using educational philosophy in creative projects like game design, this episode offers practical insights and real-life examples.

🗓️ Recorded October 4th, 2024. 📍 The Addisons, Withyham, United Kingdom

▬ Episode links ▬

Jack is no longer active on the internet. If you want to connect, then write to him at jackstewartcontact@gmail.com. If you want to sneak peek at some of Jack's old stuff from when he was active on the internet, then you can check out:

• https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jack-stewart5
• https://www.youtube.com/@daddyhomeschools5710
• https://blog.sonlight.com/author/jack-stewart

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Boundaries in the Digital Age
• 18:57 Plato and The Painter's Eye
• 23:14 Connecting Disciplines Through Board Games
• 36:06 Navigating Ego and Appreciation
• 42:25 Embracing Worth Beyond Accomplishments
• 55:35 Jack sings us a song about forgiveness

Transcript

00:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Today we are yet again together with Jack Stewart, and this episode will come out the week after the last episode. So if you haven't heard the last episode, you should. But it's some weeks since we met and talked on the first recording, which have given me time to ponder a lot about one of the things you said, jack. But first off, welcome, hello, hi, hi, good to have me again, jack. The thing you said about the internet being a social appetite suppressant it's like filling up on cardboard instead of food in your emotional life. Yeah, it kind of hurt me, man, because I have been looking at the different situation where I pull out my phone and how I feel after I've done it and and I'm like I think Jack is right it gives this feeling of being surrounded that I maybe radio and podcast would do as well. So it's not just watching YouTube and shows, but the thing about covering your loneliness by plugging into something. Yeah, it made me relook at how I do it and I can see changes going on, but I'm like oh. 

01:22
I'm not super ready to cut everything out. 

01:25 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Yeah, and it's difficult, isn't it, to figure it out, because it's very difficult to plumb into your own depths of your mind and think, like, how would it be different If I get rid of? 

01:41
You know, there's a placebo effect, it's complicated and it's very difficult to compare with and without internet and the studies aren't really there yet. If we look, trying to look at it from a um, from like an academic, statistical point of view, because we are the first generation, basically we're the guinea pigs for this whole technology, and so, um, it's all a bit of a mysterious. It's all a bit mysterious. But Cecilia was talking about last time the mindfulness, just kind of stopping in and and just noticing what, how, how it works with you, and it sounds like you did that. And even if you don't make any changes, I think that's a valuable thing and literally, if you just carry on, and it carries on being a social appetite suppressant, but now you see it, and that's not, that's not a superficial difference so we spoke to aaron and we spoke to you, I think, on two consecutive days about opting out of the internet. 

02:45 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So we had like the double think about the same thing and I thought maybe the universe I mean the good lord himself we could call it is talking to me like shouting at me. This is a wake-up call somehow, and we are not going to opt out of the internet. But we did create the I'm not co-parenting with this algorithms t-shirt, and so I kept saying for the past two weeks I'm not co-parenting with the algorithms. And I've said, I've heard myself many times say no one's stronger than the algorithm. I think we really need to protect ourselves from this. We will. 

03:36
If you drop a human being in the middle of the pacific, he or she will die. You can only swim for so long. At some point you will die and in a way it's kind of the same. None of us can beat this. So we have to have some avoidance strategies, I think, for the algorithms. I don't think the internet in and of itself and the smartphone in and of itself. I think the internet in and of itself and the smartphone in and of itself are dangerous or bad. 

04:09
I grew up without. I think I'm a bit older than you, jack. I grew up without it and I see the things that I didn't have access to, that my kids have access to the fact that they, right now, they're sitting in the garden learning Beatles songs on the guitar. I don't have to bike to the library find a book. I don't have to call a teacher to come out and teach them. They're literally tonight we will start a bonfire and singing together. When they use it like that, it's great and and they have access to these things like this. So we're not going to totally opt out, but we did have that wake up call that we have to get real about. How do we want to use this? How can we stay in charge and how can we stay away from the algorithms? How can we stay away from the toxic elements, away from the algorithms? How can we stay away from the toxic elements? It's a little bit like we have to eat, but we do not ever have to eat crap food and so yeah. 

05:19
So I immediately deleted 75% of the apps on my smartphone and I made sure to. I can't remember. I changed the password to my social media account, so it would be slightly sure to. I can't remember. I changed the password to my social media account so it would be slightly harder, and I've noticed, because I thought I didn't use it. But I noticed the phone in my hand looking for apps that were no longer there, that I don't really want to use, and I also noticed that things I want to do, I'm not doing them to the extent I do I want to. So I have to make a choice. Am I doing this or not doing this? Am I just fooling myself that I think I'm learning a language on Duolingo? 

05:53
but, actually I'm just, you know, keeping my streak, which is, you know, not interesting. So, yeah, we've been. I think I've done more than you. I think you're just, you like, pondering for a while. I went straight to action. I've talked with the kids a lot about it and I think it's very, very interesting how to find that middle way, not doing what you're doing. 

06:20 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Yeah, it's, you're sounds like you're setting up boundaries. It's like like there's a person in your house and he's being quite invasive and he's asking all these questions, personal questions, and he's demanding time from you and he's and he's wanting to co-parent with the kids and he can be a bit abusive, yes, trying to sell you stuff. Uh, he's also, he's also sometimes quite kind and he's very, very clever. Um, and you're, you're, you. 

06:57
You've sat down one day and thought, okay, I, I want, I'm not going to break off completely with this guy, I'm not going to send him away, but I can't. He, he can't be ruling my household, he's not the boss of me, he's a, he's another person here. And so I've got to create my own boundaries, psychologically and just in terms of time. And look, you can do this. You can talk to us this way. You can't talk to us this way and you can't be in this of time. And look, you can do this, you can talk to us this way. You can't talk to us this way and you can't be in this room at this time. 

07:29 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
You know this is definitely not invited for dinner. I like the analogy of turning it into a human. 

07:40 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But also I mean, come sit with me when we're having the morning coffee and share your insights for an hour. 

07:50
Let's say I'll have that and when I call you and I need help to mend the washing machine because I don't know how to do it. Please tell me how it's done. Yeah, but it is setting boundaries. I think it's also. It's because I think the way the problems I see that you could say stem from the internet. I think they stem from more than the internet. It's not just the internet, it's some cultural changes. Um, that has happened over the last, say, 50 years, as, of course, just the next step of what happened before that. But you know, that takes our focus a little bit away, makes us all slightly stressed out, makes us all less focused and I'm sorry now I'm less focused because someone's talking in the background. But this whole, you know, loss of integrity, loss of peace, loss of, I'll say, focus again, uh, and connectedness it's not just the internet. 

09:01 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
That's bigger than the internet. So what? 

09:03 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think it's bigger than the internet. I think it's uh, there's something that just goes faster and faster in general. There is, uh, something being more just has to be this fast food satisfying life all the time. There's the individualism that that kind of sucks up or ruins community. Um, there's this efficiency thing, getting things done, all the little things that came up first. It was what was it called when we were kids, like time management. It was physical books with all kinds of systems to get you structured more and. And then it came out later some apps and stuff. But it's kind of the same vibe of getting people more productive and less present. So you keep obeying your own plan if you're efficient and therefore successful. 

10:01
So it's mending the idea of success into somewhere where no one walk barefoot in the grass it's like the value system is totally skewed and then there's the processed food that's ruining our bodies um, which is more devastating for our psychological and spiritual presence than I think we usually talk about. 

10:24
We talk about the we talk about heart attacks, we talk about allergies, stuff like that happening because of processed food, but actually it's equally affecting our brain and our and our spirituality. Yeah, so that's a big thing as well, and I just think the same strategies like I'm if I don't want to eat crab food, maybe I should buy it and have it in the cupboard. And if I don't want to use the dark sides of the Internet, maybe I shouldn't have that little app on my phone. Just never go there, never go there. So that's the same strategies I've tried to implement and also talk to the kids about. You know, when do you take out your phone to watch a YouTube video about your video game that you're currently playing? Is it when you feel sad and you can't cope with what's going on around you, or is it when you feel curious and want to learn? 

11:24
Yeah so it's not the watching the video itself. That's bad. It's why you're doing it and how it affects your presence so let me put in thank you. 

11:35 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So, diag, thank you for all the inspiration and for the people who haven't heard the first episode, go back, listen to it. It was really after. It was really changing for us interesting yeah yeah I'll shut up. 

11:48 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
I don't even know where I started, sorry I was talking to someone yesterday who's an art therapist and she is developing a meditation course to help people with their focus and she thinks it's like a muscle um muscle that you get stronger to focus and to be really present and to focus. 

12:11
And I said that makes sense, apart from my experience of it is I it's not that I had to get better at focusing. I it's not that I had to get better at focusing, it's just I got it was in. In some environments I focus, in some I don't. So it seems to me, from my perspective, it seems less about what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. I have the innate, because I'm just a person. I have the innate spiritual ability to be present and I have a desire for that. But if there is like heroin on the table and someone screaming at me and blood dripping from the ceiling but I'm exploring this idea that it's actually about our environment and the most effective way of becoming, of being present and focusing is a management and curatorship of your environment. 

13:33 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I like that, but I'm still not sure. Um, no, it's a big part of it, at the very least. I don't think those two ideas that it's a muscle and you can grow the ability to focus versus no, it's more about the environment. Have you created a space of somewhat peace around you that calls for focus? Those two are not conflicting. I think you need both. So if you come out of a hyper social media and time management success, career kind of controlled life and want to change into a more mindfully present, simple living, slow kind of focus, deep focus life, it's not enough to buy a house in the countryside and shut off the internet and and fill a room up with books and soft surfaces and nice dim light. You will not sit in that room and instantly read thomas mann for 10 hours straight. It's not going to happen because you're going to have to detox or like change the way your mind works. Yeah, I've read. Have you read the book? Um, your stolen focus no it's a. 

14:49
It collects a lot of research about these things from different areas. It's very interesting and one of the things I took away from that was that some of the brain researchers cognitive researchers had found out that if our mind is used to being disturbed all the time by, maybe, notifications on phones and you know you have that open office work life with emails coming in and messages from your husband and and people talking, you have that life where you're disturbed every three minutes on average in your work life. If you get your own office, you turn off notifications, you can only receive emails twice a day. You know you have a completely different setting. Your brain will disturb itself every three minutes because it's used to it. 

15:41
You will do it. So there is something real about this being a muscle, the deep focus being something you have to work on it. You can't go from not doing it at all to doing it for many, many hours straight without some sort of process, says the statistics that I've seen yeah, that makes sense one of the things you've had after you changed um over to a more tech-free internet. 

16:15 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Free life is a time jack, and in this time I know you have been working on boats, on music and creating a game, and I would love to hear more about that. So, first off, who tried to create a board game based on Plato and his local education? Isn't that weird? 

16:39 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
yeah, that's weird. I just got really excited about Plato. Have you ever heard that? Have you ever heard a young man say that I got really excited about? 

16:49 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
it. 

16:53 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Guys, I'm so excited right now. Yeah, because he. 

16:57 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
What is it about Plato that ignited you in a way where you were like I want to dive deep here. 

17:03 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
So the upshot is for plato he thinks you ought to have a liberal array of disciplines. Um, because making connections is the heart of education, um, and making connections between the disciplines, and you see, this sort of magic behind the disciplines that gives light to make sense of, gives meaning to and gives a sort of beauty to the whole. And what's really special about the way Plato theorizes this is that he thinks it's affective, transcendental and something else. But affective meaning, it is an emotional experience. Education is at its very basis, in heart, an emotional experience. The penny drop moment, that's a feeling. Penny drop moment, that's a feeling. 

18:10
And so, um, he says it's like a painter's, with the painter's eye to see the absolute truth. Now, you have to, you have to be charitable with his ancient greek um words, but with with a painter's eye to see the absolute truth, my absolute truth, um, and with that original to and with that original to behold, with that original to repair, to order the laws of beauty, justice and goodness in this. So that's a weird grammar, but what he's saying is with a painter's eye, you see the magic of something. You don't just see the tree, you see a story, you see something about the tree, you see it connecting with other things. You see that meaning, that purpose, that drama in it. You see like a soul of a tree. You don't just see a tree, you see what it's doing, what's beautiful about it. You see what it's doing, what's beautiful about it, and so it's almost like you see the tree behind the tree, see like the perfection of the tree. And this seeing is with a painter's eye, so it's not a decoding. He doesn't talk about it like a mathematical decoding, left brain at its core. He sees it as an emotional experience of kind of catching spiritual fire of the tree behind the tree. So this all sounds a bit woo woo. 

19:39
But I think if you think back on a moment when you're like, oh, you know what I read now, that those, the idea of the function and the idea of pi and what that's doing, and with the circumference, the diameter, and like this moment where a penny drop moment, you're like this starting to make sense and you and all, that idea can also be applied over there and over there and over there and it could actually help us think about about time, and it could make us think about this and that. And it could help in biology to this moment, not just when you like down, not when you just memorize a fact for an exam, but when you're like your eyes brighten and you feel excited because you really feel something great is here. And you feel excited because you really feel something great is here. You know what I mean, that you need a painter's eye to see that sort of thing going on behind the scenes. And so I love that about Plato and I also loved that I mean, yeah, the transcendental just means you're trying to see beyond the superficial facts. You're not just seeing that a hill is round, you're not just saying that the stone is round, you're trying to make a connection that's deeper than both, that's higher than both, that sees both in a new light and so kind of sings. It doesn't just say it to you, it sings it to you. And so one of the main, one of his main ways that he is suggesting in order to kind of train this painter's eye is to present Not facts on their own but together, not disciplines on their own but together, to make connections between the disciplines. 

21:29
And so my board game is designed in order to make connections between art, languages and maths, and so it's a role playing game. 

21:39
I say it's a bit like, it's kind of like Dungeons and Dragons mixed with chess, say it's a bit like um, it's kind of like dungeons of dragons mixed with chess. 

21:49
You are um jewelers and sort of iconographers in ancient britain at the dawn of christ christianity and in roman occupied britain and you have to um go through from old english druidic country to Roman country where the burgeoning Christianity is is the rumors are just coming about about Jesus and this sort of thing, and so and what you have to do is make money by doing little, by doing drawings in real life, and so you get silver pieces for your drawings and then you use your silver pieces to buy weapons, to do this chess like thing which uses geometrical patterns and maths and stuff, division and um, and then you progress on oh and you have to talk to people in in latin, and so the idea is I'm trying to unite those disciplines in a central story and invite the player to think about what's the similarities between these disciplines and how do they make sense together. That's what it's designed to do. 

23:06 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I want to play. 

23:09 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Do I remember correctly, if you tested it on HEF which is for people who do not know the abbreviation then it's Home Education Family Festival, which takes place every year in the UK, where we met this summer. 

23:23 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Yes, I tested it on dozens and dozens of kids. Amazing response some kids said it was the the best, their favorite game that they ever played. Um, I got a couple of investors who were interested in investing. So, um, it's now I'm I'm just setting up the legal and and uh, business side. I'm going to workshop it more. I'm workshopping it for educators now. So if there's anyone interested in so it's designed for educators, so the package would go to the educator. The educator would read out the cards and sort of lead the journey and sort of judge their drawing according to their capacity and sort of orchestrate it depending on the students and so the experience from the educators. At HEF I did a lot from the players point of view, but now I need lots of educators to test it out, and so that's what I'm trying for now. 

24:21 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
How is the progress of making a board game? From sitting and saying, oh man, this Play-To guy is really, really cool, let's make a board game. 

24:34 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Good question. What was the progress? What was it? Oh, you know what? 

24:44
So I had been doing this for years, this sort of thing for years with my kids and reading educational, classic educational texts alongside it. And so I'm so I would be. You know, we have to learn. We're doing our three times tables today, so we're going to make this little chess thing where when they move they have to multiply it by whatever, and then they have to. And we're also doing French, so we might as well try and intersperse the French, because they don't really like to do it on its, they don't have much incentive unless it works in some sort of story. And so I did a bit of this, a bit of that, and maybe I was um, we're reading a novel and so we sort of implant it into the story of the novel and so trying to the basic idea of trying to can gather them in together, because I have three kids and so I don't have time to teach them individually. Basically, usually I mean I do, but I yeah, it just makes more sense to teach more. 

25:44 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, they make sense. 

25:45 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
To do it together yeah, even though I don't teach them because I unschool, I do the same, you know. I hang out with them and join their projects and one of the things that can drive me mental is if I'm listening to storm and he's talking about behavioral psychology and silk is on with the language and fjord is doing a third thing, and they all need me, my presence in their. 

26:15
My mind don't stretch that much I just go crazy, yeah, so tell me how to do it what you did not how to do it well, I, um, yeah, so we would. 

26:26 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
I would make up a story. I'd be like okay, you're in a, you're in a shop now and but he's only speaks french. Um, and you need to sort of get round this, the shape of the shop, or something like that, and so you have to work out this edge and then you have to get to this part and talk to him in that language and then you go over there, but then you need to explain to him why the Romans are coming, or something like that. You just tell a story with need to explain to him why the romans are coming, or something like that. Is you just whatever it tell a story with, um, what you've been learning about, but also it you can. You can also hand it to the kids. So last week we did um sum up week, so we did four weeks of learning and then we did a sum up week, which was, I said to the kids, make a game connecting all you've learned for the four weeks. 

27:33
And she, my 11 year old, she did fantastically. It was amazing. She, she, she thought it was going to be torture and it was so much fun. She, it was a she, she set down the story and she was. And then she sort of gave exam questions to go on to the next thing. And then she described the we're reading the Upanishads and she said you won't go into this room where the Brahmin comes from heaven and he talks about the war he was doing. And then she described I can't remember how she got. And then she described I can't remember how she got, and then for some reason asked her about maths, the maths questions, but it's all. It was a great way of inviting her to imagine all of those things in one world, because they are in one world. They're made of the same stuff, like maths is actually the mates made of. There's a spirituality to maths and there's a maths and spirituality and all the other disciplines like they all. There's all sort of different ways of talking about the same thing. 

28:37 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Um yeah, I like that way of looking at it. We do not live in a math world and a history world, psychology world. Sometimes when people teach in the school I was for a long time it was individual worlds, but then they actually made. We were like a test tube class for a new way of teaching, where we made interconnected learning. Class for a new way of teaching where we we made interconnected learning and and I think that is part of what saved my, my learning experience yeah, I learned to connect the dots more than just having like one line here, one line there. Then I I did the connection of, of of things, how they connect that makes a lot of sense. 

29:24 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Another little trick you can do, um good question you can ask is um we do nature, sorry, we do notice, wonder remind. We used to. We used to do this in when we're out in the woods and I would say, okay, you got to do a notice, wonder, remind about that tree. And so I noticed something. They would write this in their journals or you could just do it verbally um, I noticed that the tree is got more leaves than usual. Um wonder, I wonder why it's getting a brown, uh, faster than the other trees. And it reminds me of the when the apple was going moldy. 

30:06
And so the remind is a really simple way of making connections. Um, just spot, it's like word association, spontaneously in the back of your mind. You are already making connections and just notice it and accept it. That, even if it doesn't make any sense at all, you're creatively making connections. The tree reminds me of a cow and it doesn't make any sense at all. You're creatively making connections. The tree reminds me of a cow, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't matter if you're of the person that you're talking to can also see the connection. That's a connection in your brain, if that, if that arose from your heart, as it were, then that's, that's a great start to that multidimensional thinking, integrative thinking that we're doing. And then you can develop that and you're like why is it, why does it remind you of that? And when you do reminds and then you do reminds of reminds, then you have this beautifully fractalized picture emerging of connected disciplines of connected disciplines. 

31:13 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
This reminds me of a technique that we use in therapy and that we should all use more in life. One of our friends is very systematic at using it every time we spend time together. He will start the sentence saying what I love and appreciate about you is and that's noticing the people that are around you. 

31:33
So when we, you know, we travel, so sometimes we hang with them, and then the day we leave, he will always make sure to say to everyone what I love and appreciate about you, and then he'll mention something, and then he will come up that could be your wonder thing. You know the way it's expressed right now, the way I see it, and I that the thing about it that made me think this time we were together and that might been changed since last time, is this element yeah and then you said um remind yeah. 

32:05
So it's not the same, but it's a parallel technique. It's more. This is how it affects me. This is what it does to me, or the takeaway I will take from it, or the memory it brings up. It reminds me of an aunt I had, who did had a dog who did this. So this is what I love and appreciate about you. 

32:27
This is how I saw it unfold and this is how it connects to me when you when you talk to people in this, I mean I don't like being systematic and I'm very much against being manipulative, but noticing other people within this and connecting all these three elements really makes people feel seen and loved, and I I will. I just made your technique about the tree reminded me that this is important. 

32:54 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It is our wonderful friend cecilia's talking about chris adford, who we have also interviewed for an episode. You should go listen to it. 

33:02 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
He's very. 

33:03 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Some of the first couple of times he I was almost about to say did this against me, showering me with acknowledgement and love, it felt overwhelming in a way, where he's not doing it to get something and that is kind of scary that I in my mind can have. Oh, when a p person out of the blue is appreciating me like that, I feel kind of sold to uh, are they doing it to get me to like them or what? And for chris, it's just the most natural thing. He sees you, he, he sees something with you that he really cherishes and he shares it with you and tells you how it affects him. And I'm blown away by it and I'm still trying to learn to get to a state where I notice that and do that. And he often does it, as Cecilia said, on the day we leave. But it actually means that he he, in the time we are together, are viewing in a different way, I think he, which made me more present in seeing how how is affecting them being together with me. 

34:18
Yeah, so let me appreciate you. One of the things I love and appreciate about you, jack, is you make me think, and I really like that about you and I it, it, it. As I said in the start, sometimes it hurts me because I can see some bad habits that I need to lay away, but I'm still grateful for them, and other times that was good, that, that was a good insight and it so being in your presence make my life greater, and I want to thank you for that. No, I appreciate that. 

34:56 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Um, I find it really hard to to say those love and appreciation things because and I was just thinking about why I find it so scary I do find it scary. Part of it, I think, is I wonder how, if people will think I'm being, I'm trying to get something from them, um, or trying to flirt with them, or something, that would misinterpret it. 

35:18 - Jack Stewart (Host)
But I think, actually probably deeper. 

35:20 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
What I find so difficult is, I think it threatens me, because when I go I, I love how you're bilingual, I love and admire that you are fluently bilingual Part of me just shrinks back because and hurts my ego because now it's I'm, or I'm comparing with me and I am not. As part of that's part of why I love and admire. It is because I am not and I'm really bad at that, and so there's. I think that happens every time, even if it's something that I think I also. You know, I love how you read, or something. 

35:55
Part of me thinks oh, maybe they read more than me, maybe they're more clever than me, maybe they read stuff that I should be reading, and then I'm not, and you know like my brain does that, and so that's part of the discipline of saying I love and appreciate is to deliberately just put you it doesn't just I'm not good, I don't matter for five seconds, and it's not about me for five seconds, and maybe they are better than me if for five seconds it doesn't matter, I'm just gonna totally look forward out of my eyes, out of my head and not live in me and live sort of amongst you for a second um. I think that's a great discipline. I should do it more. 

36:37 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think also, I mean you can also. I, I can totally relate with this, uh, ego flare like inflammation, little flame that comes up in these situations, and I think I have two things that might help. One is you can always ask people is it okay? I kind of want to share something about what I appreciate about time we spent together, you know, so they can opt into it, they. If you're not used to having this kind of conversation, it can be overwhelming. So you can kind of introduce it instead of just walk up to people's face and say what I love and appreciate about you. 

37:16
When you only have casual conversations for two weeks, it's weird. Um. So to unweird it a little bit, just give it like a hat, yeah, a header maybe. And the other thing is, the more we can work with getting our egos out of the way, the better it is. The ego will always get in the way. It's very rarely helpful. Very rarely helpful only if you're actually struggling for basic survival. Ego energy is helping you. For the rest of the things we want to do and accomplish and be in this life, the ego is not. 

37:55
It's not going to be helpful to have it anywhere near the center of our being. So when we do this, we can even appreciate, just silently, in our own hearts. I get to work with my ego right now. I get to take it from center stage and teach it to go over here and stay there while I'm in the space of living a real life here. Um, it's hard work. It is, um, maybe we can do smaller things. Just, you know, sometime mid-morning say, oh, I really loved how you cleared the kitchen table off before I even got out of bed. That made me smart and it made my day easier. That's a little thing. It's the same thing, same technique, if you want, but it's a little thing. And, and just you know, do it in the small. You could say that to me oh, I love how you please I did? 

38:53 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I think I did no, but the making um connections again and thinking about plato then. So my my bridge over to pl is saying I think this whole am I good enough thing that we for some reason have? Actually, it's a story from Chris, again together with Janet Atwood, the book they wrote. They talk about this when you came to be in the world, you were already perfect, people cherished, and you had literally done nothing other than being born and they were happy with you. Why aren't you thinking you are good enough still? And my point is then I sometimes, when I look at media, what we consume is life stories shortened down to 25 minutes sometimes, or even with the reels and stuff, it's life stories compressed into 60 seconds where we see how someone, amazingly, you know, bought a bare landscape and planted trees and now, 15 years later, they have created a wonderful forest. They live 24 hours a day. 

40:07 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It was boring as hell, I presume, but we no, no, but, but what we see is this compressed life which I think sometimes makes us, yeah, um, have a value system that when we have a normal conversation you talked about us being bilingual and you identify as not being bilingual and I think another it's actually to say why do we keep talking about? 

40:34
they are very smart people, we know yeah but janet, she says when you compare you die. And I think she's almost referring to a board game like in monopoly, when you have to go back to start. 

40:47 - Jack Stewart (Host)
So when you compare. 

40:48 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
When you start comparing, you have to go back to start and it's a very, very good little kind of it could be another t-shirt, a little reminder on the fridge. When you compare, you die because obviously, not obviously. But I speak two languages fluently and a handful more like conversational, and that could sound extremely impressive in and of itself if we compare it to someone who speaks only one language. 

41:15
But that person did other things that I can't do and never did and will never accomplish. And even comparing you know I did this, but you did that it's still comparing. It's not. It's not taking into account the entire spirit of both of us. I have light, we just and you have light and you have light. We just talked about it yesterday, about your storytelling and how you don't like to shine and and, oh, you don't like to be the light that you are, and and even though I'm the one agitating for him starting to do his storytelling again, I also said you have no more light than everyone else. It's not like his light shines brighter than every. We all are the same from the same source of light and we have the same amount of light, if you want to measure um, because it is the same light it just comes out through different souls and in different forms. 

42:13
So comparing light to light, you can't even ruin light with other light, it'll just be more light. So yeah, so, but it is a way to to just tweak that whole ego energy, to just say comparing is illegal. Don't do it. 

42:30 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Yeah, that's I should. I ought to notice and sort of give myself an arm of compassion Next time I do that comparing and just see it, notice when it happens and why, when it arises and what it's about. Uh, I spoke to my friend who's a um single mum, um middle-aged, and she was. She was talking about how she felt like her market basically I mean she wouldn't put it this way, but she basically was feels like her market value is dropping. 

43:07 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
On the romantic market. 

43:09 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Yes, yeah, I mean probably kind of in general, but I think she's talking about, yeah, romantic on the romantic market, and it's such a tragic sort of antithesis to what you're talking about. She doesn't think of herself as an infinite and unchangeably beautiful light from the same source as she was born from. She thinks of herself as, like this number that was, that was 5,000, 20 years ago, and then it's slowly depreciating. This is what a horrid way that the, that the society teaches, I think, especially women to think about themselves. I'm reading a book about menstruation at the moment, called wild power. You heard of Wild Power? No, it's really brilliant. 

44:09
Did I talk about this last time, no, and she talks about both the menarche, which is when the bleed first happens as an adolescent, and menopause, culturally are thought of as kind of depreciations like this. Menarche is this embarrassing thing that happens. It's okay that you do that, just do it quietly over, then make it so nobody can see it. So it's like you're becoming less pure in this in the societal way. I think you're becoming kind of a bit more disgusting. So please just be quietly a woman over there. And then menopause, similarly, like you're, you're losing something, but that's okay, just do it quietly. 

44:57
Whereas in reality both of these are initiations into power, says wild power. Both of these you're, you're coming into that divine light. In menarche, this is a rhythm of death and rebirth that's being built into your body. That brings wisdom. There is a divine wisdom in this, an infinite, an infinity in your body and it's absolutely amazing. And in menopause too, you're coming into this new wisdom of, yeah, like bringing this new feminine power into a sort of stabilization in the world around you. 

45:49
Um, anyway, I say this because it seems like, from what I'm seeing, society's kind of systematically, um, inhibits that stability that you're talking about of my infinite worth, or my not infinite sounds like it's a number two, like just a number that goes on. But my, that sort of I, I, I, I divine, I suppose, is the best way I can put it. You know what I mean? Yeah, so the the light in us, as opposed to this sort of measurable um addition to my achievements. This is the way I personally, this is the way I naturally want to think about me, and my worth is that I can do this, and now I can also do this, so that makes me double as impressive and double as important. And now I can also do this, so that makes me double as impressive and double as important. And now I can also do this and I'm good at that. And then five people, you know, gave me money for this and you know I'm adding to my resume and I just it can hurt the soul. I think that way of thinking. 

47:01 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, and, as I said earlier in the conversation, I think our entire society has been more and more focused on this accomplishment lifestyle and and I see a lot of I don't know if I'm using the word digression right, but I see a lot of life being sucked up by the accomplishment idea and this achievement and efficiency structure, doing things differently, as if the more boxes we can tick off especially make them beforehand, then tick them off and then go to bed and then press repeat when you get up and then every sunday make a new list or whatever, um, and the more you can squeeze in there, the better it is. This whole structure, it's a mindset, it's a way of being present that's somewhat easier because it takes you out of the of the present. Yeah, there is something layering here when we talk about the infinite light, or the original light that we came with and that we maybe are on a spiritual level, and the present, because the present also holds this extreme energy. If we put these two together, things become very, very powerful. And we have, unfortunately, with the life, growing up, uh, with institutions and broken families and and and this whole accomplishment lifestyle that we give children because they get grades and all these things. 

48:57
So they, they are trained into the accomplishment 10. So while while they're not even at all in your mind yeah, that's another story. So it's we're not used to being in that presence with our totality of our being, we it's like the focus I talked about before. We have no experience and there's a lot of power there. You can be religious or not, but there's a lot of power there. You can be religious or not, but there's a lot of power going on there, I think, for everyone, no matter how you, what you believe in. 

49:36
So that makes it hard and what I see I see it in a lot of my clients is the easy solution is to make the accomplishment thing yeah you know, I have to cook the breakfast, I have to teach the children, I have to clean my shoes, I have to uh, do the yoga, I have to brush my teeth, I have to, and then it just goes on and I've done all the right thing. I have to do the meditation, even I have to do the mindful exercise. So we try but we don't get there because it's all about this getting things done thing that takes us out of the here and now and and also maybe I'm not gonna say it puts out the light, but it's definitely a curtain between the light and and you. That that lists. It's a. I can even see a little curtain with tick boxes. Yeah, where did that come? 

50:31 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
from. 

50:32
I can see that no, yeah yeah if we um, I would like to talk more about your game, so just to understand it, if there. If we are, which I hope that enough people will enjoy playing it. Um, there's so much knowledge in the world that you can combine as you say that it is. The aha moments is when you see the combinations and how knowledge can be used in different spaces. How will you handle this would? Will it be in different editions that you will make like a new edition, or you cannot take the whole world's knowledge into one board game kind of? 

51:11 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Oh, yes, I can. No. So one option is because ancient, this one's ancient Britain, roman occupied Britain. Another option is medieval Britain and then go on, but what I'd love to do? Britain, roman occupied britain. Another option is you know, medieval britain and then go on, but or, and what I'd love to do, though I don't have the knowledge, for it is like then german version, so now it's german language, german history or french or whatever. So that's a. That's an awesome option, but what's happened so far is that, um, kids have made their own games, kind of based on this template, and and educators have made. 

51:51
You know, someone's just came to me last week and said um, inspired by the game, I, we're trying to learn faroese, which is language um, and so I I made this little, I thought out this little story where you go to school and then you can learn a phrase, and then you get points going over here talking to these people, and then basically you can sell the things going over to these people, and so you had these like four different sections. You go to different parts, literal parts of the house, and and so you go through this drama trying to, through this drama trying to, uh. So basically she made a game a bit like kind of based on the template for her personal learning goals with her kids, and that's what really excites me, actually, about the way this could go forward, um, is that this could provide a here's one structure that you could input various different elements of your learning landscape and do it your way like that, and people will take that and use it the way they want to to. I think it could be valuable like that. 

53:02 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I'm excited about that even be valuable to. I mean, if people make it at home about something to, if there was a way to share it with others, so we don't all have to come up with all the games. I mean it's great to do it, but could also maybe be great to play somebody else's game, yeah, and learn from that that is when it's your plans, to see if you can get it out there so I think it's gonna take a year, um from now, for it to be fully out there and saleable. 

53:35 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
So, um, I'll uh, I'll come back on the pod in a year and flog it, but um do it yeah so you know you have to do the, the business and the legal, and then you have to do more workshopping, then you have to do a prototype and there's manufacturing, and then you know, then there's the sales and marketing, so it's gonna take a while can I um can I play a song, though? Are you interested in hearing a song? 

53:58 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
yes, yes. How about we end with a song? Okay? 

54:03 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
yeah so, before we go to the song, is the interest in music or you spending time on it? Is that something that came after? Um, uh, plugging out of the the internet? How did I, or have you always been playing? 

54:22 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
my dad was in a punk rock band for all of his professional life. Basically that mom was a singer. Um, dad's dad was in the lso. Dad's mom was a professional ballerina and so this just been in my blood, it's been in my family for a long time. So this is way before you know I was, I was 11 or something. I was listening to Mozart on the record and then trying to play it on just by ear, and I'm trying to play it on the guitar and then the piano and writing songs from when I was 11 or something like that. And so this is this is my first love perfect. 

55:05 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Let us enjoy it. 

55:15 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
Bad quality on the phone, but you'll forgive me the burning light of day is growing softer with old age. 

55:27 - Jack Stewart (Host)
She throws her arms, begins to pray to bless the life that she has made, and the snow begins to gather around her ankles anyway. And kicking off that tune. He sings to another place. He will build a home. The way your father suffered, your children will not know. I don't understand. Send a letter to your mother, say what she must know. The horse and wagon fell, but with the rider it as well. A Cossack in his uniform beholds a dancing band and, twisting in the twilight, is taken by the hand. 

56:51
A heron in the haggard light, the lights to watch them stay. The same bird that had seen him sin but followed anyway. He trembles and remembers the dancer he had left To march across the embers Of the village to the west. 

57:17
Father won't believe me. Her mother won't forgive. But the heron will remember. And the heron lets him live. He has built a home. The way your father suffered, your children will not know. We don't understand. Send a letter to your mother, say what she must know. The horse and wagon fell, but with the rider it as well. 

58:26 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Thank you, thank you, you, thank you. There's not much to say after that, is there? No? 

58:32 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
no, no, beautiful and and uh jack, thank you for once again sharing your time with us and I I would love to. Let's pass some time, but let's follow up later in life. Yeah, maybe we could do before a year. That's what I'm thinking, but I like chatting with you. 

58:53 - Jack Stewart (Guest)
It's a big pleasure absolutely, it's been a pleasure, thank you thank you bye.