Episode 405: Is Everything Just a Commercial Now?

0:00Welcome back to the streaking podcast. We are really glad to be back. It's been a while. Our last episode was in October of 2025. So it feels great to be behind the mic again. Let me ask you a question. Have you noticed that almost everything online feels like it's trying to sell you something? So if everything is promotional content, how do you know what's real and how do you stay authentic in a world like that? That's exactly what Jamie and I explore in this episode, content, AI, and how to lead your own thinking in a world full of influence. Quick thanks to our sponsor, the MyStreaks StreakTracker app. If you want to cut through the noise, build consistency and what matters most. My streaks helps you do it one day at a time. Alright, let's start streaking. What is streaking and why should you do it? Streaking is how you set up personal winning streaks. Look at who you want to be and what you need to do to become that person. This is streaking. I'm Jeff. And I'm Jamie. And we are streakers. Through

1:0230 years of marriage and seven children, we have learned the power of consecutive consistency or streaking. To start streaking is simple. You just follow these three laws, make it laughably simple. Keep a record and join the streaking community. Streaking is your hidden superpower with it. You will consistently progress and grow in whatever area of life you want. In this podcast, Jeff and I will share all the fun, exciting, serious, solemn, wonderful parts of family, spiritual, professional, and personal life, and how streaking powers it all. So join us in the conversation, join the movement, and start streaking today. So Jamie and I were in a conversation this morning on our streak run walk. And how many years have we yet been at that now? Eight and a half, nine, ten. A lot, ten. But I want to invite everyone to join our channel. Oh, that's right. Just real quickly. Before we go to our topic, walk 100 miles in April for cancer. Yeah. It's a fundraiser, an opportunity to, so I'm going to do that. And I'm going to create a challenge on our I think that's great. Or I will create the challenge. You'll help me create the challenge.

2:04We'll start. I'll create the challenge and we'll do it. We were talking a little bit about that this morning about Jamie comes up with the idea. And then she says, Jeff, you do it. And I'm like, yeah, because honestly, that's how we operate a lot is I have a bias toward action. And Jamie has a lot of great ideas. And so, for example, I remember way back when you said, we need to go on family vacation. And I said, okay. And so we went off we went took a Disney cruise. And it was great. And then that led to many, many, many vacations after that. We were talking about that as one of the things. But something that really we discussed that we'd like to discuss here with you is the idea of being authentic. And Jamie, you probably need to give a little bit of a thought process on this because you were you were the one that kind of came up with. Okay, I didn't come up with I was question. Well, you were question. Yeah, you came up with a question. Here is my question is is so it started with I have

3:05a service that I bought about four years ago. It's a it was a class on planning. And since then, she has sent me she sends me about three emails a day or not a day. Sorry, a week, three emails a week. She does a weekly newsletter. She has a weekly podcast. She does a live event like once a month or maybe twice a month. So in all of those things. And then she also has like a yearly planning event. So all of those things I'm getting information on on a regular basis. Right. And and then just says what we've been thinking about was streaking. And I was just kind of thinking about years and years ago when I was little, we would watch TV. And you had to watch TV based on what was out at a certain time. So you'd get the TV guide and you'd see what show was coming on.

4:06And you would plan to watch so that you could watch the show at the time you wanted to. And then there were commercials. And then when I was in advertising was an advertising major, we talked about the different forms of advertising direct mail or print advertising or commercial advertising on TV or commercial advertising on radio. But now we are in this place with social media and the internet that pretty much everything is content. There was a point in advertising. And I remember studying this. We're advertising changed from just kind of throwing it out there like a TV commercial. And and they would when when TV had certain times that everyone watched, they kept statistics on demographics and who watched what kind of shows. And so you get advertising based on who was watching those shows at that time. Then as TV and streaming kind of came into to purview advertising change to what was called content advertising, which you would give

5:09people content. You'd give them information. And in that information, you're advertising. And I think that's a lot of what we have now is content advertising. But as I was thinking about it, I'm like, we have become so content oriented that people that are running any kind of business or social media think are constantly creating content. And I just I just was asking the question because sometimes it can be off-putting. It feels like everyone is just creating a lot of content. Well, we even talked about it in regards to our podcast right here. Are we just creating the content in order to get more followers or to or to pitch our wares, our product or services. And there is some truth to that. I mean, not necessarily to get more followers, but we do want to encourage people to use streaking and my streaks. And that's one of the reasons we do the podcast. However,

6:10any any product that's out there, people have to be aware of it. Right. And that is a huge out of what advertising is is you are making you're helping people be aware. But then you're also trying to persuade them. And so it was just interesting to me to look at and think we've changed a lot in that everything has become content. And so how do you feel that things are genuine? How what's what's when you say things have become content. You mean everything has been promotion, been content has moved to promotional. That most of it is performed promotion. Yes, that yeah. Yes. What used to be content like, oh, I want to learn something. Now I feel like nearly all content is at some level of promotion of something of some sort. At least that's what I feel. I don't know if that's accurate, but I'm starting to feel that way. Yeah. And so the question I asked you was, do you find value in what you get in those emails from your planning service? Do you find value? And the interesting thing is that sometimes I find value in it, but it's also

7:13challenging because you're getting it all the time. Right. All the time. The content is coming at you all the time. And so that was part of what I was I was kind of joking that I pull up a recipe online and there will be anywhere from four to five ads on that same space while I'm trying to do the recipe. And so it's just interesting that that this is my kind of ready player one when Nolan Sorrento is talking to the board of directors. If you've seen the movie. The movie. And because they're using, you know, it's virtual reality and they're using goggles, he was saying, once we control the oasis, which is where people went into the oasis. Yeah. Into the oasis was the virtual reality. Once we control that, we can populate their visual screen with 80 or 90% without causing them to go crazy without without causing a psychotic break. And I think that that's what I think about when you talk about the recipes.

8:15Well, because when I pull up a route, it's like 3000 as you try to find where the actual recipe is and you've got a sift through many, many, many different promotional ads. So at the same time where we have access to more content that access has also created this environment where everything all content seems to be some form of advertising. Right. Right. And so I was just asking them like, how do you yet if you're running a business, you have to be producing content. The other thing that we talked about though is that you would go to AI and have a conversation because there was an a promotion. And in fact, if you wanted that same recipe, I'll bet you could go to AI and say, give me a recipe for out of, and you name it, Mel's Kitchen or Best Bites or whatever. And AI will return it to you without all of the advertising advertising. Right. So it'll be, oh, how long will we have that before someone finds a way to have sponsors in AI that your

9:22top sponsored search has now produced something that someone has paid to have at the top. And the thing that I look at is how do we genuinely add to the, because because what I look at, so here's a couple other things as you were talking, here's some things that came to my mind. One that what we try to do here on our podcast is provide value, value of some sort. Now that value can be entertaining, entertainment is valuable. That value can also be a new skill or thinking about something in a different way. That value can be learning about what a streak is and how to keep it alive and what that can do for you in your life, specifically in streaking. Right. There's other times where we'll have guests and we provide value in a way that we bring the guest on who has had a specific insight or something that's been really interesting and expertise that is really interesting that we want people to experience and feel, right. So all of those things to add value.

10:27Now what what you can't do like what you can with AI is have a conversation with us. And with AI, so with with chat, I have many conversations. I just had a conversation this Sunday, Sunday morning with AI as I was questioning some things in my professional life and in my life in general. I was just questioning going forward. And so I basically plugged it into chat and I had a conversation. And it was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. I read it to you. It was great. In fact, it led me to having a chat, a conversation with chat where I specifically asked, I said, your responses are very kind and encouraging and friendly. How much of that is the like, how is the programming incorporated into that? And it was great because it did. It's so fun to ask chat about chat about itself, but it said AI is meant to be helpful. Like the responses that

11:30are given are meant to be helpful. So it often so it's programmed to answer questions in a helpful, not critical way. So often it's very kindly. It is. It's positive. It's kind. So I would rather now go to an AI engine. Whatever engine you prefer, I prefer chat. And that's one that I typically use to get whatever. I mean, it can be any type of questions whatsoever. That's the amazing thing is it's very difficult to say, what's the limit? What is the limit of what we can really do with AI? And I don't think we know yet. We don't know what that limit is or where it's going to be. However, when I go into it, I know that I'm going to get a conversation that I can go back and forth with, be challenged a little bit, but there's something else I know or maybe I don't know. Maybe I feel this way is that it's not biased toward a particular action. Now it may be biased because of how

12:37I train it. Right. However, if I go to the streaking website or the mystreaksapp.com website, that is has a specific bias toward streaks and streaking. If you go to chat and say, how do I develop consistency in my life? It may offer a streak. Now for me, it would definitely because I've trained it that way. Right. However, someone else is just looking out there. I don't know that it would give them that. It probably talks about habits and about what you need to do to establish good habits and how you do that. I don't know that it would say something about streaking, but what the reason I bring all that up is because I know that I'm going to get bias when I go to a specific source. I get less biased with chat and I can direct it in the way I want it to go or through the questions that I ask. So I know that it's that I'm being if there's promotional content, it's being promoted because

13:44I'm asking for it, not because it's being forced upon me. Which is true. I've asked specific questions and it's given me three or four apps or three or four programs that are and what that I could use to accomplish the thing that I'm asking about. Right. It is interesting. I asked chat what AI is being used for most now and it did say that it originally it was answering questions, but it's definitely evolved into more says it's used most for a lot of deep and deep thinking. Kind of a brainstorm companion. Yeah, brainstorming was a huge part of it. And then the third thing was it's being used much more as a collaborative resource. In other words, similar to what you're saying, people are appreciating and using more this, I can ask a question and then I can go further and I can I can even ask it to recognize things I'm not seeing, like help me see what I'm not seeing. And so it becomes almost a partner. Yeah.

14:44In in the way that people are using it. Yeah, totally fascinating to see. Well, it honestly, it's so we're so I am a narrator for audible. I've been doing audible books and one of the books that I narrated recently was called How to Become a Genius by Boris Krieger. Phenomenal book. We're going to try and get him on the podcast. Yeah, we want to get him on the podcast. And in that he or where was I going with this? I got excited about reading the book. You just mentioned, you talked about. AI and using chat. Oh, yeah. Thank you. So he's talking about actually how AI is a cognitive extender. In other words, it extends your cognitive ability and that it can it can be it can be negative in the sense that if it takes over the thinking for you, then it's negative. But it's positive if it helps you to think through and the analogy that he uses is a calculator. And I wonder if I have this right here because where where are you in the book? You're

15:47I haven't got to that part yet. Yeah, I haven't gotten that because let me just see if I have that really quickly here. Where would I have it? I think I have it in books. And while you're talking, yeah, go ahead talk talk amongst yourselves while I look for this. Just kind of this isn't what we were going to originally talk about. We got stuck talking about artificial intelligence. But I've had some fun conversations that it was talking about how a lot of the things that used to be done all by humans. Now the initial part of it is done by AI. So the writing of an email, the initial actual writing of it is often being done by AI and then being edited or reviewed by humans. The programming coding is often being done by AI and then reviewed or edited by humans. And so this idea that a lot of what we used to do instead of now becoming the people that are doing it all, we're becoming the people that are evaluated and making the decisions as it moves

16:49forward. So it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here. All right, I think I almost have it. Calculator. So it's the idea and the concept is that it extends. Okay, yeah, the extended mind. That's the chapter. So in the extended mind. So this is chapter 14, the extended mind. I feel like I'm reading a yes. I know how to become a genius. How to become a genius. In 1998, do I read it like I do? Am I audible voice? The philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers published a paper that proposed a radical idea. The mind does not stop at the skull. If an external device performs a function that weren't done in the head, we would unhesitatingly call cognitive, then the device is part of the cognitive system. A notebook that stores memories is functionally equivalent to biological memory. A calculator that performs arithmetic is functionally

17:51equivalent to mental calculation. The boundaries of the mind, Clark and Chalmers argued are not fixed by anatomy, but by function. So this is the extended mind thesis and artificial intelligence transforms it from a philosophical curiosity into a practical reality. A person working with a large language model, which is AI, is not using a tool in the way they might, excuse me, use a hammer. They are thinking with it. The AI generates hypotheses, identifies patterns, retrieves relevant information, drafts text, catches errors and proposes alternatives. All functions that done internally would be called reasoning. The boundary between the person's cognition and the AI's processing is not sharp. It is a gradient defined by the bandwidth of the interface. So that now he talks about how quickly you can start to interface with it. But the whole idea is that it is

18:55something that the tools that we use are still a part of our cognitive process. Interesting. Isn't that fantastic? Isn't that amazing? So he talks about just how you use AI and there's one other part in here engineering your own system that I don't think I'll be able to get too fast enough because it's a little bit more involved. But basically he's saying where it is a cognitive extender can be a cognitive limiter if AI starts to do the thinking for you. So how do you stop from having that happen? The whole idea behind it is that you're coming up with the prompts and the questions. You're thinking it through. You're the forward thinker, not the chat. So here's another way to describe it. Have you ever been in a conversation with chat where at the end of it it says, if you'd like, I can show you x, y, and z. All the time. I think it's programmed to do that. And so you respond sure. Certainly that. Well now as soon as you go that way, it's starting to lead you rather than you

19:59leading it. Now that's not necessarily bad. However, if that's always the case, then what you're actually doing is surrendering your cognitive ability to the AI rather than looking at it and saying, no, I need to ask some different questions. So there are times where I have followed that vein. I've said, yes, please. And through several questions. And then there's other times where it suggests it's something, no, that's not really where I'm going. What I want to do is think through this. And I think that it's important that we take the lead in the thinking rather than letting the AI take the lead in the thinking. I think it's going to. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think it's going to take some attention. Does that answer your question? Yes. I think I'll take some intentionality on our part to be able to to be able to learn how to how to do that. Right. This is where I do love. So bringing it back to streaking. I do love having a methodology in place that is

21:03saying, okay, now we have this new tool, artificial intelligence. I want to learn how to use it. But just like any new tool, whether it be a hammer or a knife or a writing lawnmower, there is risk involved that I could get hurt or that I could that that things could not go well. So I want to learn how to use it well. Yeah. And so I love that by setting up that you could actually set up streaks to help you learn how to how to have AI be how to use AI in the way that you want to learn to use AI without it dulling what you do already to make it something that enhances not not diminishes. Right. And so there was a woman and I've been thinking about this when we spoke at the organizers group. We are all over the map today. We've it's been a while since we've been on and we talked about this beforehand. We're like, we may go through several subjects, but we are going to come back to authentic. I promise. So she used streaking not to keep track of

22:10her objective was not to have it be so many days in a row. That wasn't something that she was proud of or she found motivating. She actually set her streaks by the seasons. So each season, as things changed, she had new streaks that she decided she wanted to have for that season. And the way that she kept track of it rather than numbers, she actually created a notebook each season with her streaks. And she she's an organizer and a designer. So this fit what she wanted. I love that she made it work for her. But for every time that she completed her streak, she had a page that had that streak on it and colored dots in varying sizes. And sometimes very in colors on a page that was really aesthetically pretty that had a picture for her streak. And she would add the dots to that page for the streak. And she was inspired by in the book where we talk about the poignolism painting. And she's like, I'm going to do that. And I just loved that she

23:14adapted it to what worked for her. In other words, she was saying, I don't need, I don't need to know that I've done this this many hundreds of days in a row. And that she would change her streaking every season. I just thought that was fascinating. I that she would change it in that way. Yeah. And find a way to adapt. So I love that the concept of doing something consistently runs through all of it. But that she found a way that worked specifically for her. So I think that that leads beautifully back into being authentic. Yeah. That's true. Because she was authentically herself. And what we try to do with streaks and my streaks is give people a tool by which they can get chronically consistent. And that chronicle consistency leads to compounding wonderful results. I want to come up with a word better than chronic. Because they always use chronic with pain.

24:15I don't with pain. So chronic pain. This is chronic chronic consistency. It's just if you can get there the strength of consistency, the superpower of consistency. If you can really unlock that, like I believe we have, it really does help you to continue in your own authentic self. That's the that's the one thing I've always appreciated about the streaking methodology. Is it's not a, you know, a specific do these seven things, do these six things do this. It's more about here's a tool to be consistent. And this tool can help you accomplish whatever it is you want to do in life. So it's more of a framework framework. And then you actually add the content. Yeah. Each individual person creates their own content based on what they need in that moment in life based on because I do, I do love that we've developed that there's lifetime streaks.

25:18Things that you really are like, I want to do this my whole life, no matter what. There's time of life streaks where something is really important right now and I need to capture this time of life. But it's not going to be something I do forever because it's specific to this time of life. And then what was the third one I just forgot? Challenge streaks. Thank you. Yeah. Once that you're like, I'm definitely, this is something that's going to stretch me. Like what we're doing with the hundred miles in April for cancer. Yes. So cancer research, cancer fighting, whatever it is. So as we get back to just talking about where we started, which was the content and content being purely promotional because I think that's what you were saying is content has evolved from just something that's something that's either interesting or educational or entertaining to now it's always promotional. Yes. Everything is a promotion. And it's and it's what I think a negative side of that is that I don't view

26:21content as positively anymore because it's now got this feeling that all content is just trying to sell me something. Right. Rather than looking at it being like, this is this is actual content that I can do something good with. But I do think that we have gone into a place where a lot of content is promotional. Yeah. I agree. And so. And I believe that there's a balance because there does have to be some promotion out there else we wouldn't know about any of the content. And AI needs to be trained in some way to be able to tell us we only have some of the resources. True. We only have AI because of all the content. All the content that's out there. I look at it and say if people see and or see this podcast or hear this podcast and they're thinking about it and they're like, I want a tool that allows me to be able to keep track of the consistency in my life. Well, that's the My Streaks app. That's our promotional part of this. And I think that there has to be some amount of promotion. Yeah. But what's what is the balance?

27:25And I think that's more so what we're asking is it is the pendulum swung so much the other way that now I don't really trust any content because it's all promotional or is it is there still room to go? I mean, can it can it get even more promotional? And I think the question that I asked and the thing that I was thinking about this morning when you asked when we were talking about AI and having a conversation with it, I can have a genuine conversation and I am completely vulnerable with AI. I don't feel any compunction to hide anything because I don't feel like it's it's not a thing that's judging me. I'm I'm looking at it as a tool that is drawing on billions of points of data and can it bring to still that data together to be able to help me to find an answer to questions that I have about any number of things at any given point in time.

28:26Can it can it help me to distill and also draw from the sources that are out there? For example, this podcast is public. If it's trained on streaking and streaks, it may be something that someone who's asking some AI engine somewhere that it can go out and grab this information and be able to present it in such a way that a person can change their lives for the better. So their content still has to be produced. I think the question that you have and that I also have is can it because it's promotional, can it be believed? In other words, are they just pushing the product or are we actually getting the the genuine real content that we can use? Information that we can use to change our lives for the better. For the better. And part of the challenge is that there's a lot of information out there and and being able to sort through that is also part of that.

29:36You seem like you're way out there in cognitive land. Just trying to. I feel like you're you're thinking your your mind has gone and expanded in this area. Not more expanded. Just kind of looking at being like I don't have an answer to this question. I'm curious how and what but what is the specific question? I guess answer to the question of I think that I think that I think it was me wanting to trust content more and not feel like everything is just someone advertising to me. Like how do I get to on this flip side though? And something that I don't want to discount is that I have access to a lot like a lot more information and content than I've ever had before. So taking my cooking recipe that I experienced before. If I wanted to have a recipe before the internet, your options were cookbooks or grandma or mom grandma or those were yeah those were that was where you found

30:45your if I want a recipe now I can go on and say I want a recipe for this and I can find probably millions of them right yeah 100% with hundreds of different permeations or variations of that same recipe. I can be in the middle of cooking a recipe and like I did the other day where I was like I've got this recipe for minestrone soup. It doesn't include turkey. Can I put ground turkey and minestrone and immediately it'll be like that's a great idea. That's great. People do that all the time and I probably could have found a recipe. Did you do that in AI? Was that all AI? Can I put turkey in it or was that? Well the interesting thing is that AI is incorporated into the site that into yeah to the search engines now. Oh I see what you're saying okay so you were doing it with the search engine and you have the AI at the top where it says it responds it in the same way that AI would. Anyway there we are. Here's