Rina: Back to Arthur C. Clark in 1972, doing a speech in IBM, he said, I’m paraphrasing, the greatest industry will be education followed closely by entertainment and that the two should be intertwined. And we are at that gnarly place because of the tech that we’ve created, education, entertainment.

You know, as people are listening to us now they’re thinking of who these famous podcasters are, whether popular, this wing, that wing, but broadcasters have become the educators.

Television had already done that. Radio was doing that. Like media does educate us, but now it is crazy amount of channels. Can you just count, like you can’t even count it because it keeps escalating. I’m talking every single podcast or substack or YouTube or Instagram or wild. No wonder people are lost, right? Because, before, when we had that remote control, physically, we knew that we can only go up and down to a certain amount of channels.

And now what do we have? Endless scrolling. It’s nonstop. And that I think I. Isn’t a physical reality, like we need constraints and finiteness in certain respects and infiniteness. And that’s why, again, the body is the ultimate paradox, right? We are finite and infinite in this spacesuit, which is kind of incredible in the mind. 

Joel: My name is Joel and I’m a recovering nerd. I’ve spent the last 25 years bouncing between creative jobs and technical teams. I worked at places like Nickelodeon to NASA and a few other places that started with different letters.

I was one of the first couple hundred people podcasting back in the early aughts until I accidentally became an IT analyst. Thankfully, someone in the government said, “Hey, you’re a nerd that talks good.” And that spun me off into the world of startups, branding, and marketing, for the same sort of researchers and startup founders that I used to hang out with. 

Today, I help technical people learn how to get noticed, get remembered, and get results.

On Nerds That Talk Good, I want to help you do the same. I talk with some of the greatest technical communicators, facilitators, and thinkers that I know who are behind the big brands and the tech talk that just works. 

This episode’s gonna get a little freaky, a little woo woo, a little metaphysical. I hope we have some fun with it. 

I am absolutely excited for today’s guest nerd on Nerds That Talk Good. Rina Atienza is a cultural ecologist who probes wicked problems for gathering playfully astute insights. She admits to serving society as an educator, arts curator, games sommelier– I wanna get into that– Yogini, oracle and Community Builder. She’s also the Chief Schemer of Rogue Futures Initiatives.

She co-facilitates the meetup group Cardstock, which we will definitely be talking about and is member of Long Now London and also has a pretty awesome Substack, I must say, which we’ll link to. Thanks for joining.

Rina: you for having me. I’m looking forward to, I’ve, I mean, you know, how is it not so juicy to accept something that says Nerds That Talk Good. Sold on the title alone.

Joel: All my academics and copywriting friends are like, “you know, it really should be speaks well.” And I’m like, “nah, these nerds don’t gotta speak. Well, they only gotta learn how to talk. Good.” So. Or at least gooder, gooder than the people around them. 
 

We’ve chatted before. We actually had a very nice conversation for my book that’s coming out which you contributed some thoughts and taught me some things that I didn’t even know about card facilitation.

But I wanna start kind of at the beginning give us your nerd origin story. You’ve got from what I know, you’ve got a very eclectic background and it hasn’t stopped.

Rina: Well, so Nerd Origins would be easier because I was born in a nerd family and the Atienzas are very academic and so that made it easy and that and I suppose that also meant, having a library in my grandmother’s house.

And that is where naughty children get frequently sent to be quiet. So it’s more ” face a corner or go to the library and be quiet.” No, you know, no playing. And normally you’re isolated in your own, and other siblings or cousins or elsewhere. For some reason I was regularly in that library.

And being quiet and not being able to play meant that you’ll just browse and what are these things? So I ended up. Rifling through those encyclopedias and whatever else, right? So, and I wasn’t an anti reader. I think some people are. Yeah, I am gonna use that now. I think some people are against reading now.

But I guess for me, on my own, regardless of that heritage or books, you know, it’s easy. It is definitely being a spelling bee champion. So, which is which is the benefit of reading books and Reader’s Digest because Reader’s Digest always had this section at the very end, which is vocabulary for 20 words of it.

And so that was my challenge. Yeah, so I was spelling the queen. Spelling bee champion in my primary school. So I’d say that’s really where it starts.

Joel: Do you remember the word?

Rina: Can you believe this? The winning word? Absolutely. It was the easiest word. The last word that scuppered so many of my I think I was grade four, fourth grade even then, it’s inconceivable if you like and I know that I said that word on purpose, but I won on as in perf perfect score.

Sigh right? Sigh as in SIGH. And it was so easy and like what? And so other classmates couldn’t get that. That was the last in terms of, you know, being perfect. The other words I think on fourth grade you definitely needed the rules of “I before E except after C”. So a lot of people get sced by that.

That I, it’s just, I think the reading and, yeah, just reading and playing Scrabble or, you know, word games definitely help in falling in love with language. So I am a language nerd and that’s why I’m tickled when the fuss bot say ” no, no nerds that speak well,” ugh. I mean, I’m not entirely militant about that because I like being playful with language and so that’s my point.

It’s just language or words are fun. And a friend of mine recently suggested that it might be my form of synesthesia. Synesthesia is the condition, not a dysfunction, but actually possibly the more natural condition of creative brains of which we all have, where your senses are synced, synchronized.

So we see it a lot in piano players where the sense of touch, sight, and sound are in sync because you have to do it at the same time. I believe for a language that there’s something about it, that reading it, saying it, or pronouncing it gives some sort of sound like world pleasure of like, ooh and in terms of understanding its meaning the way that it’s pronounced and yeah, the spelling of it, like there’s something I love about that.

Joel: My, my wife has color synesthesia, so she is a wizard at dates and numbers. I am not, I can’t, I, and she, you know, I’ll say, “well, I thought it was the 24th.” She says, “no, it’s the 26th. ’cause the 24th. If is brown and the 26th is red.”

Rina: Amazing.

Joel: But it also plays havoc because as a former brand strategist, you know, I would show her these brands we were working on, and she would say, “that is not a blue company, that company, that, that cannot be blue.”

So she, you know, it puts her I think out of step sometimes with with other creatives. But it is, it’s something that I’m fascinated about. 

I want you to define for us “Cultural Ecologist.” I think this is something that I know both of those words, speaking of language, but how do they fit together?

Talk a little bit about what you do with that. You teach what is really the crux that you’re trying to get at?

Rina: I would love to I am not sure if I am the only one or the first one. I definitely know that it’s not a combination that people recognize, which is why I mashed it together. You will get cultural strategists. Maybe you’ll get, you know, cultural historian or cultural anthropologists. So that’s, there’s this, you know, culture is definitely a job title in a field that many people practice in.

And then there’s ecologist, which are solidly, I would say scientific and or environmental, I guess, into do with the climate, the planet, you know, trees, nature, and all of that stuff. And I’ll get to why I combined them. So my, my BA and my Masters is a combination of art history and social and cultural history.

And the modules that I study involve complex phenomenon that that affects different countries. So globalizations, civil societies, studying nationalisms, studying the making of cities. Cities like Paris, London, Shanghai, Kyoto. And then, you know, and then other modules to do with the visual arts and the ecology part is because that’s me trying to add a new qualification, which is media ecology or which is beyond media studies.

And so I’m, I am specifically and directly referring to the Marshall McLuhan school of study. And and the reason I joined. This academic background of mine with my experience of working in the communications industry since 2003. So it’s a number of years with my expertise in at least beginning to properly understand the application of media or mediums and communication is then by combining cultural with ecology, it sends a signal to wake up both fields. Well, more specifically the ecology fields to say that culture is ecology, right? Culture is the environment. And I know some people have said that before, you know, the like the, you know, the maps are not the territory and, or well, you know, there’s other phrases that we talk about that whoever discovered water wasn’t fish and all this stuff.

But really we’re still neglecting that the different types of cultural patterns and conditioning is part of the environment in the context of when we talk about the environment in context of climate change or sustainability and regeneration. Because I also worked in government in climate change commission with the Philippines.

That was a sore spot. When people talk about changing the world, making it better, sustainable, development goals, or how do we deal with the Meta crisis? Or how do we make things more environmentally friendly? Culture wasn’t part of the conversation. Or is not, you know, this is not categorizing rarely.

So let’s again, to break it down, climate change, which is where e ecology is strong on. They will barrage audiences or communications with the science with the, this the dystopia, the urgency you know, we have to act now, mitigation, adaptation, but culture is key to why people behave when we’re talking about lifestyle or choices, consumer capitalist choices.

And even beyond the consumer capitalist stuff, it is the nationalism, like the. Program of belonging in which we are born in, and I can dive deeper into that. So, you know, when I was in the Philippines and really I was a communications, a senior communications coordinator. What was missing, which is important in cultural anthropology is that you can sell them communications, advertising as much as you’d like, but how people behave.

On a ground level, grassroots level because of how they were raised in their family, how they, as, you know, what they aspire to become in terms of being more than their class, all that stuff. It’s pretty key. And that’s a sore spot. The other, sore spot in cultural anthropology, which is where ecology then raises its game is technology.

So a lot of both in the climate activists and in culture. Cultural studies about changemaking and, you know, we need to be better with, I know belonging or nationalism is just how media really influences us and how media influences people, you know, their spending, beliefs and all that.

So it was just mashing that up together and cultural ecology was the perfect concoction to address these issues with maybe some dashing of futurist thinking as well. 

Joel: I recently had on and I will introduce you a friend of mine the pseudonymous, Dr. Implausible, who is a Canadian futurist, and he talks a lot about how media influences technology influences media. And so I think you guys would, we should just get a, we should get a book club together.

Rina: Doctor Implausible.

Joel: Dr. Implausible. Yeah, he’s, he great. I’ll drop in, I’ll drop in a little bit of that in interview here. And I recommend people go back and listen to it a couple weeks ago. It was great.
 

Dr. Implausible: Uh, I think, uh, TikTok, well, let’s talk about it right now. So the thing that TikTok really brought to the table was I think the algorithm providing you stuff that you found engaging was really fantastic.

And. It’s the earlier way I described it is it was like a remote control. It was like, uh, Rick and Morty and the Interdimensional Cable in that you’re continually just flipping through a new channel of, “Hey, what’s on this channel? Oh, what’s on this channel?” Flip up. That’s you’re flipping up on your remote control.

And that is what made that experience so sticky for a lot of people. The two other things that made it sticky were the ease of creation. Click a button, and it was doing fantastic work, uh, with, you know, allowing view and audio and add in a few stickers, add in a few elements, and then they added more features to it, the AI elements, the, uh, um, automatic, um, um, Captioning all these things. It’s an incredible video editor. And I think that gets lost. Everybody talks about the algorithm, but if you just say it’s a video editor with like a Dropbox and you can share it with your friends, which is kind of what Loops is right now, then it would still be good . And then it was ease of sharing it. Um, you could I could send it to my friends. They could get it. They could take a look at it. It would be fantastic. And they go, and you know, that cross channel communication didn’t really need a whole lot to get, especially someone’s shorter TikTok. It didn’t need to be embedded in it. It’s just like, Oh, here’s a funny cat video or whatever. And similarly, um, that going back to the McLuhan quote that you mentioned, and you got it right, I think, in a, broad perspective. I’ve forgotten the exact phrasing as well. I’ll, I’d have to go get my paper back off the shelf. But we’d see early Twitter posts or people would take a television show and cut them into one minute episodes.

“Here’s part 22 of this episode of The Office” or something, and you’re kind of going through, going, Oh, geez, where’s the rest of them? But, um, that ability for it to, uh, You know, take all these other elements of media. So, “Oh, somebody just made a picture of a painting.” Okay. “Or here’s just the audio for something and you can take it and stitch it and engage with it.” And that was the thing, the idea that Henry Jenkins talked about, about spreadable media. TikTok was so good at allowing people to take media and engage with it and do something with it in their own way, remix it using the audio or duet it. And you had all those goofy duet chain things going around and all that kind of stuff. And so those made TikTok magic, the spreadability, the uh, ease of creation and the algorithm of showing you stuff that would be engaging to you. 

Joel: So. What are the key strategies that you’re using to make this content, to make these topics more accessible, engaging; especially to non-experts. You teach, you probably have students who are like, look, I just want to get.

I just wanna get this this grade and move on. Maybe when you’re talking to not peers, but other stakeholders who aren’t at the level you are how do you approach that introduction?

Rina: So my practice, my weekly and yearly. So it has been this way for the last four years, which is also pretty gnarly if we’re considering what those four years are, have been for education, lockdowns and disrupted classes. So I’m teaching the first years of an art college creative and cultural industries aged 18 to 20; international students as well.

So that’s already different types of languages in different exposure of educational systems, right? So not everyone will have experienced the same high school or grade school. So here I am teaching and the the module used to be “Histories and Contexts”, right? So talking about histories and contexts of the creative industries, and you’re talking about competition and it was like a really long title.

And I am I’m a believer of nominative determinism or at least nominitive influence. And so here’s art college students taking a module, and the first two words is “history and context.” So context is a little bit more foreign to them. History also is dip. You know, sadly some teachers don’t make it as fun.

So you will have art students questioning, why am I taking a history module? I’m only here to do, you know, specifically artsy creative courses. And it didn’t say art history either, right? It’s “history and context.” And so since then, after about two iterations of that it has moved on to be called simply “Thinking About Ideas”, which is accessible but also too vague.

So I’ve then extended that a little bit from “Thinking About Ideas: Understanding Media and World Building.” The key is, again, which is quite funny, that’s how we started this conversation. It is language, right? Language or words make worlds as we’ve heard others mentioned before this notion, you know, Wittgenstein talks about “the limits of your language or the limits of your world,” and.

Even the wording of the module was fundamental in people’s receptiveness to these lessons. And then also naming the classes. Do you teach learning how to PowerPoint or do you say one of my friends is really good at it, Marcus Brown. I’ll name check him. So instead of talking about presentations, it’s “Speakery”, right?

So words do help in. Providing pathways to understanding or interest and curiosity. So that’s what I’ve been doing. So apart from the restructuring of the kind of the administrative scaffolding of this syllabus, it’s really stitching together as well a breakdown of communications starting with, you know, what stories in your head.

This is also name checking Timo Peach. He’s a climate storyteller. And, you know, what story do you think is in your head? It’s, you know, psychology 1 0 1 as well, and then I kinda, it’s it’s like I provide Lego like block or units of learning so that they can be shuffled or swapped and we’ll get to Cardstock as well later.

Where students, my students need to understand cultural literacy. By knowing its basic elements or basic ingredients. So words in the sense of, you know, science and symbolism or you know, Pictionary, right? The skills that Pictionary teaches you. Like, how do I communicate, what are the different methods of learning?

And we’ve seen memes about that where you are visual, kinesthetic, oral, you know, gustatory, olfactory and all of that stuff. And I do introduce that. So I, before I get to the philosophy of it, the students need to understand that the world they have inherited has been built for them by others without their consent or contribution.

And that they need to understand the rules of this culture game in order then to make adjustments or make innovations. And so, it has taken me four years to also summarize when they wanna understand, well, what is it really? I’m like, look, it’s a basic cultural scavenger hunt, right? The better you are at sourcing, uniquely sourcing references or stories that’s not being churned by algorithm, the better you’ll be at being adaptable or resilient. So it, again, it’s breadth and depth of knowledge rather than currently the instant access of, I don’t really need to know. I don’t need, really need to remember because I can just quickly look it up and then I might forget it later, but I’ll just look it up again.

So this. You know, language and books and reading have really, I think, formed this thing of indexing. And so we’ll get to cards. Like indexing skills are underrated because you know, people will dismiss and no, that’s just for you. My first swear word, very “mild print-oriented bastards,” right?

That. Some of you book people just don’t wanna let go. That we’ve moved on that it’s all digital now and it’s yes, and indexing really is important. Yeah. So we’ll talk more about that.

Joel: I’d love to get into that specifically. I have recently you know, working on this book and it’s a reflection of my career and my interests and, “well, I accidentally invented this card game to help do this,” and ” I’ve learned this about branding and messaging” and it was really, you know, a melding together of all those topics. I’ve recently, and I’m sure that, I’m sure it’s not a foreign concept to you of the Zettelkasten. And

Rina: I love the visual. Perfect.

Joel: I just have it, I have it right here. I’m trying to get the author of this book on. He says, “I don’t do podcasts. But Scott, if you’re out there, dude, I would love to throw down on this anyway.”

Rina: Also for the listeners, right? The, but this book has an image of an indexing catalog. What you see, I’m trying to remember. Like it’s wooden furniture. It has drawers in it, and it’s the index cards where

Joel: Yeah, it is the card

Rina: catalog, that’s it. You kinda need to rifle through them, pick an index card and then we’ll tell you where to find that book.

Joel: Yeah. Well, in, in, in the Zettelkasten process is as you’re learning things, I mean, I’ve, I have journaled, I have written things down, and my problem with that is one, I can never, I remember where I laid the damn thing. But then your thoughts are still linear and they’re still time bound, and they’re not melding together.

And with this process, as you learn things, as you have thoughts, you’re putting them in a card catalog. There’s an index so you know where to find them, but they’re grouped together more organically. And so you have this thing where your thoughts are bumping up against each other. “Oh, I’ve read a book.

I, I. I have some think some thoughts on this subject. I put it into my card catalog. I read another book. I have similar thoughts, and when I go to put the cards in there, I can pull them both out and do a comparison”. 

And it’s almost what we talked about for my book, that offloading of your cognition, that offloading of thinking to physical spaces and to

Rina: Woo.

Joel: I’m just getting started with this.

It is a bit culty. So.

Rina: Yeah, there, there’s also bullet journaling. Someone was asking me the other day whether you know, which system to use, Obsidian, is it room research? And you know, for me at the moment, I’m, I am trying out bullet journaling. But the bullet journaling I think is easier because I have, again, experience and memory of different types of journaling, more structured, right?

So, and I’m using that experience to customize. But let, what was I had a thought. And when you said something about the Zettelkasten, that’s it, you said this, the physicality of using your hands and placing things, is key because when we also talk about say in, in, you know, the parallel of, you know, why is Sherlock Holmes so incredible and, you know, a lot of these photographic memory investigators and we mention this thing called memory palace, right?

That we need to visualize where you place things. Magicians use that. They use playing cards like normal pack of playing cards, you know, and how each card represents a memory. So there is that they, it’s right there. This notion of physicality, physical time and space. And our movement with our digits right there, as in our fingers.

You know, index fingers, right? The indexing the placement, the touch of it. In relation to our other senses, if, you know, if we have this metaphor called having a memory palace, then surely the clue to that is doing that physically to train your memory in terms of I’ve got the memory palace because, you know, and again, even a, on a mundane example I recently kinda moved flats, so I had my room for four years.

And I know exactly right. I have clear memory of even if I close my eyes, this room doesn’t exist anymore. It’s all been packed away. I can close my eyes and then I can be there. I can be there in memory of when I’m doing yoga, where I’ve pla… even the books like where I’ve placed my books and where the bookshelf is, what it looks like.

So I have that memory palace because the physicality of being there and the consistency of remembering its shape and form and movement and how maybe there’s a clue for a lot of us who are wondering why then this digitization, because it’s so disembodied that it’s harder for us to you know, very literally bin symbolically.

It’s harder for us. To place things, place, emotions, where are they from, where to where they should be put, where do they belong? And it’s all this binary soup and I can’t even call it soup ’cause you can’t really taste or smell it. But, so we need a better metaphor for what this, you know, muddle is of the digitized information.

Joel: Nothing has shape. They’re…. You know, nothing has a, something you can grab your hand around. My wife refuses to read digitally because every time she refreshes the pages reflow and she keeps track where she is on the page and, I find the same. I’ve become a huge, since I’ve started writing, I’ve started reading again and I’m relishing that.

I mean, I have books all over the place and I’ll have a conversation with somebody. I was in a a webinar the other day and they mentioned the Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottchall, and I just reached right over and pulled it right off the shelf. And held it up for the, in the Zoom and, you know, and it’s chaotic, but it also, like you said, is there’s that physicality.

Hey, it’s Joel just busting in here for a quick moment. Speaking of physicality, if you wanna do something physical to show that you are a nerd that talks good and you wanna support the show. I got swag and stuff up now over, uh, on the website, and I would love for you to go check it out, t-shirts, hats, pins, stuff like that. 

You’ll find it all over at NerdThatTalksGood.com/shop. See you over there.

But if you really wanna support me, uh, get in touch. I wanna know, um. What you think of the podcast. Uh, if you’ve got any problems with your own messaging, I’m getting ready to announce a whole bunch of services, uh, clinics, coaching packages, things like that. But, um, you know, it would mean an awful lot. I am here to help the nerds talk good. And, uh, I want that to be, I want you to be one of them. So, uh, thanks a lot and let’s get back to this amazing conversation with Rina.
 

So I wanna talk about cards. I am, I have become, and I’ve got card decks scattered all about. Since I accidentally invented my one card game. I’ve just been fascinated by why they work and how they work. A friend Nick Kellett, recommended that I, I sit in on and I’ll link to Deckible because I think it’s a phenomenal product. And

Rina: Audible for cards. Okay.

Joel: yeah, and you can buy, and you can buy my MessageDeck there too. So there’s my plug. So, so he recommended that I join Cardstock. I had no idea what it was. Can you give us a little bit of a description and a history of Cardstock? It is I jump in every couple months when I’m free on that afternoon, and it is just the best group of people and what binds them together?
 

Rina: So everyone, or not everyone, like people who understand the history of festivals, know Woodstock, right? So Woodstock Festival, we know what that is. Card stock by its definition obviously is this, you know, stock of cards if you’re a stationers and you know, to do with cardboard and everything.

But Cardstock also. Is a bunch of, yeah. I think we became all friends because we’re in the communications industry and strategists and freelancing. And a group formed from regular attendance of conferences. A notable one doesn’t exist anymore, called, what’s called, This is Playful.

The, This is Playful Conference, and a core member and founder of that of Cardstock is John Wilshire. And because he created Artefact cards and it’s this customization of playing with them. And a lot of us were using these cards and having discussions of whether we talked about our latest client or some sort of cultural playful thing.

And before lockdowns we were meeting at least once a month and the meetup would include, let’s check out a cultural thing to do, whether that’s attending an exhibition at the, you know, Wellcome Museum in London or somewhere else. Or also just go to a local pub and play with cards, right? And you know, have discussions and play with ideas that, that was currently in our, whatever we were working on.

And then it really flourished when we made it online because it allowed for more people to attend from different places. You know, just go international, worldwide. And it’s such a joy to be a part of it. I am know we have a fact I call it the Cardstock faculty now, or like a roving and rotating members depending on time and, you know, space, I guess.

But it is that, it’s the core is a shared love of learning. Irrespective of what medium, but a shared love of learning is quite core to that. And then followed and write. So how, you know, what are the methods in which we learn? And the secondary level of that is, oh, we love card decks, right? 

Card decks, index cards flash cards, playing cards, all sorts. And it is such a. You know, it’s so joyful. I know there’s so many meetups and so many strategy groups and whatever else, and, you know, clubs and that talk about ideas. But I think there is a power, there’s a real magic to the fellowship of all of us who are involved in Cardstock because of this tactility.

That we do handle these different types of cards and we are very genuinely generous towards one another in sharing that enthusiasm or saying, oh, “have you tried this? Have you tried that?” And every time we gather there’s always this, you know, ch-ching like the sound of an old cash register.

Because, we end up spending to buy another card deck based on the recommendation of another colleague friend on their enthusiasm or demonstration. ’cause we demo it to each other as well. 

And there is a a shared parallel to how we handle books, right?

So, you know, books are thicker card deck with more pages. So this notion, again, of book swapping, card swapping. There’s something magical about that. I think that it’s hard for me to summarize it only again, I think it’s more the invitation is not to encapsulate it, but more to unpack, unravel, or dive in and just be part of the faculty or the library maybe.

Joel: Every meeting I have I’ve purchased so many and books and you know, I it’s amazing. When we get together, it is definitely nerds, nerding out and it is so fun. But I also learned, you know, I as a card game inventor, and I guess I can call myself that because I’ve done three or four of ’em now.

Rina: Yeah. You’ve done it once your Yeah, 

Joel: there are functions that I was not even thinking of, not even aware of, and I’m learning myself how these things work and I think that’s sort of. Call it instinct or something that’s sort of inbuilt, getting the words for something that you knew that you are and having someone.

Give you the name a as you said, I think you said it was nominative determinism. I hope I got that right, is so powerful. And I think that’s very critical in technical storytelling as well. We all have experiences and there are experiences that people are having out there that they may not be aware of.

They may not have a word for, but the moment you put a word to it. And they go, “aha, that’s it. That’s what I’ve been feeling,” is just absolutely so, so powerful. Um, where do you find opportunities to do that? Like when you’re working with students, when where do you see those lights pop off?

Or turn on in their eyes. Any interesting stories or aha moments? 

Rina: Ah, 

wow. Okay. So this is more my arts. Like when when someone asks you, oh, what’s your art?

Or what are your arts? And by default, maybe people will think, “oh, I’m a painter, I’m an illustrator, I’m an I’m an artist.” And I’d been struggling to find what the primary word or primary occupation is when I say, am I an artist? Because obviously I teach an art college. So there’s that assumption that I, you know, maybe I must be an artist also.

And yes, I am. Like I can paint, I can draw. I’m not a sculptor yet, but you know, so, so partly there’s always this hesitancy in labeling oneself. And will you become more of what my friend calls a slasher? I’m like, Rina slash lecturer slash this slash that. It’s like a slasher. And you know, you call that multipotentialite or a bunch of other words, but my arts is what I’d call divinatory .

And this is card based, right? Then the notion of what is an oracle? ’cause we have oracle cards, but. Before oracle cards, you had oracles no card decks, just people, hence the Oracle at Delphi. And so my arts is partly there’s this skill of clear cognizance of instantly knowing or intuitively knowing.

So that’s clear cognizance is the skill or the power allegedly. And with my students, it’s about being prepared to improvise. So I never wing any of my classes ever and I’m very proud of that, and that’s like a practice of my integrity. But being well read is key.

So well read of not just. Books, but a bunch of different resources that’s not just mine, but friends like Cardstock, absolutely. Every month that is an update or an upgrade in what’s happening, right? So it’s the, you know, like coffee with the faculty or lunch, but talking about card decks so the network circles of people that I know.

We use the web to say, oh, we’re connected to all of these different people. But is that really true? Are they actually connected in the real world? Is there a real circulation or cross pollination of ideas? And again, my behavior online. Firstly comes from my behavior offline, or IRL, in person. And this is quite key to being a cultural ecologist too, is that everything as per not just Marshall McLuhan, but Edward T. Hall talks about this, he’s another cultural anthropologist, about what’s called the et, right? Not extraterrestrial, but Extension Transfer, the transfer of man. So who we are extends to what we touch, what we use, right? So the laptop, the pen which is also technology, the book, the Notebook and that then also it it goes, you call it both ways now.

’cause obviously the tools shape us as well and all of that. But really my learning has got to be, and I wrote about this in my substack, it’s having multiple like origin stories or I. Different counter environments as in physical counter environments that when you grew up in the Philippines, for example and I’m loving this ’cause behind Joel, there’s this, an eye test letters behind him, a poster of an eye test and a bunch of IDs hanging.

So it’s like symbolically. So see, here’s me. Using that as my divinatory arts to prompt me to talk about identity century. I’m kinda name checking Tracy Follows here. That identity is so much of what we do really in communications and storytelling and change. So when you’re born in the Philippines, I mean, when I was born in an instant village.

No mediation, no Facebook or, you know, followers? No. You are born in you’re a number kind of Borg like you, Rina are one of 80, right? Because you have a mother and a father, and they’re one of 11, like one of nine. So you have, you’re introduced from the age of the baby. Oh, here’s everyone you’re connected to by blood relation.

Primary as in then you even have secondary. ’cause you have second cousins and third cousins. You get introduced to that early on and you know all of their names. Absolutely. You know their birthdays because you attend birthday parties and that’s fun if you’re a kid. Or you have to know the birthdays because you have your godfather or to, to them or godmother and you have to give them presents.

Or Christmas. So that’s an instant village right there. Gated, you know, your my family. And then, so that’s kinda you know, Southeast Asian kinship ties, right? So it’s not unique to the Philippines. It’s with Sri Lanka, Singapore, a bunch of others. And then you have religion. So you have this basis of religious rituals and connected to a bigger community of other Catholics and Christians.

You attend regularly on Sundays. You attend the rites of passage through events like marriage, confirmation, communion and then you know, memorization of the rituals, prayers, songs, kneel now, stand now, you know. So behavioral stuff, and then you add school and then, so you keep adding these layers and that creates experience embodied, like embodied experience rather.

That is fundamental to memory, that is, is cognitive capacity, right? There is no, “I’m sorry, I haven’t got bandwidth for that. Or I’m sorry, I’ve already got a million tabs,” which is again, a total like misnomer isn’t even enough to say that, you know? I have many amazing, smarter friends than I who are linguists and psychologists to say, yeah, our brain isn’t a computer.

Really fleshy, and that’s maybe where we’re going wrong in that the media that we’ve been using, the algorithms is now somewhat educating us. It’s almost like it’s teaching us to be like the robot, like the machine. And we are not machines in that way. I. Like I totally recommend, and there’s this painting by Eric Drass called The Versificator.

He painted it last year, and there’s two images on it. It’s a painting and it’s like a, there’s a painting of what we might identify as a robot or an Android, and it’s molding a tinier version of this, you know, what we might assume is a human but without skin and it’s all fleshy and pink. So again, this and it’s it’s the image that I use as part of my module syllabus cover to remind students that we are fleshy beings and we’re surrounded by the things that we have made, the extensions of us and how these things that we have made are also shaping us or has become the environment in which we’re trying to understand what it means to be human.

How am I human? Well, let me see. How much stuff have I bought? How much stuff do I own? What am I wearing? Am I human? I don’t know. Let me see if I can prove it by passing this test and enter some numbers in a box and identify how many traffic lights there are. It’s just, there’s so much cosmic jokes about how we live.

And so, you know, to get back to this point is just that experience. Is really key. And then the experience of the resource that includes. And that’s why it’s not some sort of formula of here’s tips to be success, right? It’s just reading and writing absolutely core to that, listening.

So all of these like human skills. And all I can say is when you ask me how do I get to these aha moments with students? I can’t tell you precisely. All I know is knowing myself have, like at the age of, you know, early forties and the combination, the cumulative effects, an ongoingness of the people that I choose to connect with, to learn from a spread of multi-generation.

So not just my peers, younger as in younger to the age of seven, with my nephew older to the age of 102. ’cause my grandmother’s still alive and she’s 102. Right? So that school range of what we again, will identify as community communities, or the global village maybe. And then I have that regardless of this laptop or this mobile phone, but the laptop and the mobile phone does extend it further.

But because I have these flesh based or, you know, tangible, actual, real time, real space experience of it, it gives resilience or it gives adeptness to how I navigate through this portal we call the internet and cyberspace. So in combination, that means that I am prepared to improvise as much as I can at the time.

So when my students say something, I’ve planned enough for the theme of the day that I’m willing en enough to again, yes, and it. And ooh. Like I’ve what’s it re rehearsed so much of my memory to make these connections, but also I love, I genuinely love and it’s a game, the surprise when a student contributes and challenges because it’s something that is unknown but creates serendipity or synchronicity or just surprise.

And then, you know, I am forced to learn on the spot. So if a student feedback, I’m like, wow, okay. I’m actually, that’s making me think and I’m processing that new information, integrating it with the rest, but then also chiming it in with the other students. So there is an orchestration of knowledge and I think I love that because, Andrew McLuhan as in grandson of Marshall McLuhan. Also a card deck, which is how we met because there’s a card deck called the DEWS system, right? The DEW Distant Early Warning System card deck from 1969. 

Joel: I’ve emailed him to get my hands on one of those. I just, I wanna have them. I actually wanna have him on the program. 

Rina: Guaranteed.

You’re gonna get one now I’m gonna message Andrew.
 

Um, anyway, it’s acoustic times. We live in acoustic times. And so this idea of an orchestration of synesthesia, of really tuning in to our communication skills, capacities that is based on human experience and human storytelling, oral histories of metaphors, not machine led.

And so, there’s a reclamation that needs to happen. ’cause I’m not, I’m totally not anti-tech either. ’cause sometimes the students think that, whereas I’m a total nerd too, because part of growing up as a nerd was. And having a nerd, families being introduced to, yeah, we had a computer or we were one of the first families in the block who had a, like a Betamax player.

And so because, ’cause you do need technology to look this important new movie or musical. And then and the thing is, it’s a joke ’cause everything is technology, right? So. I can’t be anti-tech because everything, or a lot of things are tech, pencils, pens.

But so, yeah what’s exciting is that firstly, I think it is consciousness and awareness, conscientiousness. And to wrestle away from the linear finiteness that that we have chosen as well to create that construct of the machine rigidity. And I am, you know, this isn’t just philosophy talk.

On practical terms, this is what’s happening at university, which is the front lines, which is again, very demanding and intense because there’s this idea that education is streamlined is like a factory or kinda mechanistically predictable in that if I do tick the boxes X, Y, and Z, I’m gonna get a first or an A and therefore I’m good at this thing or you know, done. I graduated, and then I don’t never have to think about it again. Rather than the cradle to the grade type of learning of continuous professional or personal development. So, we’ll use CPD for a job, but not for life. It’s like everything. That’s the joke. Everything is CPD, continuous, personal, professional, philosophical development.

Yeah, so I don’t know. It’s just I think it’s exciting to be in education and I do love the vocation, even if the jobs itself can be very frustrating. Back to Arthur C. Clark in 1972, doing a speech in IBM, I’ve got the transcript from it where, you know, in that speech, allegedly because of this paper evidence,

that he said, I’m paraphrasing , the greatest industry will be education followed closely by entertainment and that the two should be intertwined. And we are at that junction, I mean, not junction. ’cause it means that, you know, it’s, we are at that gnarly place because of the tech that we’ve created, education, entertainment.

And that’s why it’s not so surprising that you’ll have notable types. I don’t need to promote them. You know, as I’m listen as people are listening to us now they’re thinking of who these famous podcasters are, whether popular, this wing, that wing, but broadcasters have become the educators.

Television had already done that. Radio was doing that. Like media does educate us, but now it is crazy amount of channels. From TV channels to sky cable channels to shit every, sorry, like I just swore that. It’s just because it’s, it’s, it’s kind of mind blowing. I think that’s where it is warranted.

Can you just count, like you can’t even count it because it keeps escalating or developing and by channels, I’m talking every single podcast or Substack or YouTube or Instagram or wild. No wonder people are lost, right? Because before, when we had that remote control, physically, we knew that we can only go up and down to a certain amount of channels.

And now what do we have? Endless scrolling. It’s nonstop. And that I think I. Isn’t a physical reality, like we need constraints and finiteness in certain respects and infiniteness. And that’s why, again, the body is the ultimate paradox, right? We are finite and infinite in this spacesuit, which is kind of incredible in the mind.

I’ll park there, but I just thank you for letting me wax philosophical. But I deeply care about this stuff. All of this. 

Joel: Going back to the concept of tabs I grabbed my phone ’cause I have a tab in my, in an article that I’m putting off reading. ’cause I know that it’s going to, it’s gonna change some of the way that I approach even my work.

It’s called the Empty Brain. And I’ll put a link to it and I’ll send it to you as well. And the summary is by Robert Epstein just says, “your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge. Store memories and short, your brain is not a computer.” 

I skimmed it.

Joel: He talks about the various metaphors. In the 17 and 18 hundreds, we thought our brains were clockwork, you know, and we have computers. This is the metaphor that we use. And, you know, yeah, I mean, it even gets back to McLuhan. It’s the environment that we’re in is shaping us. 
 

So. Just as a wrap up in summary, you’re very analog.

You’re very physical. You’re also very technical and definitely people should read the Substack. We you are contributing to the channel problem as well. As am I. 

Rina: Well, we are in the world, right? 

Joel: We’re in the world. In the world, not of the world. Is that what 

Rina: Yeah. Yeah. 

Joel: Is that the scripture?

So what do you do to refresh and keep yourself. Where do you find inspiration? Who is inspiring you? I’ll go through the transcript and pull all these names out and link to these people. ’cause I’m nodding my head to at least 60% of them. And the rest, I’m gonna all look up. But what, where do you find today in the position that you are, trying to communicate this to others?

Where do you find the continued passion and the fuel to keep doing that? 

Rina: Continued passion and fuel. Ooh on one metaphysical level there. I but you know, on a metaphysical level, and if you want to ground it as some sort of easy to understand casual, you know, plain English language. Being a Acquarian, I’m gonna say that it’s timely and like my birthday’s February. So this, this label like, what does that mean? Like Yeah, my birth signs. The conditions of birth or your makeup? I. And and it’s strange because we won’t allow people to say this, but we’re we’ll obsess about features and ingredients about the other stuff that we do, like my milkshake or, you know, our food, but us as human beings, apparently we can’t talk about that. For some people kinda turn their nose in it, but that’s, that, that is that.

So a short answer. Sun in Aquarius, moon in Sagittarius. Rising in Gemini, so, Ooh. Astrology stuff? I’m like, yes. It’s been a clear marker for some time. Um, nominative determinism, I was born in Saint Scholastica, feast Day, Scholastica, Scholastic. I’m not joking. So I’ve just revealed my birth date.

Then for those who wanna research that, born on Saint Scholastica’s Feast Day. So, so there’s that. What is it about Rina that makes Rina herself without the body form. So that’s the riddle with metaphysical stuff. 

In practical terms, yoga and meditation absolutely is key to my wellbeing in terms of management of energy.

Qi, prana, right? It’s the martial arts hold hold true that physical strength, spiritual strength together is essential. And again, this notion of spirit, heart, soul. So if there is one source that is so inspirational and accessible and is a doorway to how I have ended up talking all of this in this kinda conversation with you in this space.

I would recommend Roy Porter, social historian Roy Porter and he has a book called Flesh in the Age of Reason. And in this he talks about a lot of the enlightenment, and again, a lot of these famous thinkers from the 17th, 18th century; mechanical philosophers that in a way has got stuck in our cultural programs that this is how humans are, rather than the conversation should be continued.

I think partly we have forgotten that conversations need further synthesis rather than, oh, it’s just got stuck and it’s how things have always been done, but always actually just means, you know, this particular time in 1700 when someone’s treaties was never challenged again in, in the 2020s.

So, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. There are a lot of these books and ideas and cards that need reshuffling. So I’ll get back to our Cardstock, it’s just the art of the shuffle. There’s the, you know, the, that is it, which is again, pure playfulness, which is why I love yoga meditation. That’s a form of play.

Why I love learning. That’s a sort form of play, you know, even in the a acquire stuff, all of that, one word playfulness. 

Joel: Absolutely. 

Rina: Yeah. 

Joel: Play is a superpower. I love that. Well, this has been an absolute, just just so much fun. I love when whenever we talk, I love when we get on these very deep conversations and I’m glad that I have this one recorded so that I can listen to it over and over again.

So where can people connect with you? I will put, I’ll put links in the show notes to a lot of the stuff we talked about. But you know, right now where can people connect, learn more about your work? Obviously the Substack. 

Rina: So, so, so the usual channels of LinkedIn is useful. And what I like about that is I want more soulfulness in there. It’s one of my least favorite sites because of the whole keeping up with the Joneses metrics of success and money and jobs. But, so let’s reclaim LinkedIn, and that is just like a the current version of a directory of a yellow phone book is, from there, it stems into yes, more Cardstock meetups. 

People can join us in Cardstock. There’s also the Long Now London meetups which is at the Royal Society of Arts, currently once a month, like the first Thursdays of every month, and then the Holy Hand Grenade Substack is more an invitation for people to probe it further with me, right?

I’m not looking for more subscribers. I’m looking for more conversations. Really deep, meaningful proper conversations of say “hey, I read that. Can we talk about it? Or have you read this?” It’s really more of my homework. So the Substack is more of, can I find other classmates in life who I can chime with rather than I just want to be followed, or I just want people to subscribe blindly.

I want conversations. Real conversations. Deep conversations. More nerds that talk good. Absolutely. And so I am, you know, even though I’m absolutely tickled that you invited me with this opportunity to get the ball rolling. This isn’t to me about, oh, that’s it. And selling. And so it, it’s really more about starting, right?

Where could this conversation lead in As much as you and I have been involved in other conversations that weave together, and that’s the true joy of it, rather than to be consumed so much as to be transformed. 

Joel: Absolutely. And to keep the conversation going, I will put some links. And I look forward to seeing you at the next Cardstock.

Yes, if I’m not, if I’m not occupied at that moment I always try to break away for those. It’s been an absolute pleasure, Rina, always, and have a fantastic day. 

Rina: And just one last thing is Yes we’ll link up to do with card, decks and McLuhan. There’s something there for us to go to next.

Joel: Fantastic. 

Rina: Thank you. Okay. Thank you. All right. Bye.

Joel: If you want links to the resources mentioned on the show, head on over to the episode page. And for information on booking a message therapy workshop, getting your hands on the MessageDeck, to check out my upcoming book, or just buy me a coffee, go to nerdthattalksgood.com/podcast. 

 Until next time, happy messaging.
 

 Remember, you don’t have to speak well, you only gotta learn how to talk good.