Episode 37 · February 24, 2026
Building The NEW EARTH COLLECTIVE
with Matti Miceli →
Tyzen sits with his brother Matti Miceli — robotics-engineer-turned-musician-turned-polymath — for an afternoon of future-casting in the garden. They trace Matti's arc from a Catholic upbringing and a robotics master's to plant medicine, a definitive awakening, and the moment he stopped choosing between engineering and artistry and let them fuel each other. The through-line: meaning is the one force we truly control, and New Earth Collective is being built to use technology to deepen human connection rather than silo it.
Chapters
Our mission really is to create a paradigm where we use technology to serve humans, that begins with human connection and ultimately ends in in-person human connection.
I can receive new experiences and new ideas to the extent to which I can say yes, and I can design my life and my vision and my path to the extent to which I can say no.
When I transmute the me into we, then I can live with fluency. When I realize that you and I are one, then the game I have actually won. And now we're just having fun.
This is an afternoon conversation that started in the dirt. Tyzen and his brother Matti Miceli spent the day staining infrastructure and tending cactus on Jason’s land, and the podcast picks up still carrying that ground in it — two people who have just done real work together, now future-casting the next wave of humanity from the heart. Matti’s story is the spine: a traditional Catholic kid from New Orleans on a clean engineering track, undergrad degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science, a master’s in robotics in Boston — and then, almost by accident, a fifth roommate, a studio in the loft of a five-bedroom house, and music weaving its way in. Plant medicine cracked open a language the engineering mind never had, and a psilocybin experience he names as his definitive awakening set him on what he didn’t yet understand the stage had been set for. He quit the job, moved to Boulder, said yes to everything, and learned the hard way that saying yes without knowing how to say no isn’t sovereignty — it’s drifting in other people’s visions.
The turn, and the gift of the episode, is the moment Matti stops trying to choose between the engineer and the artist and asks instead how they can fuel each other. From there the whole map opens: meaning as the one force we actually control; the AI age forcing us inward to ask why we’re doing what we’re doing now that the work can be done for us; yes and no as the ones and zeros we use to write a life; the chakana with its void-womb at the center; and Life OS — vision-cast fifty years out, then whittle down to the daily so your habits carry your visions as their byproducts. It all converges on New Earth Collective, the project he’s building with his brother Austin: energetic blueprints mapped to musical harmony, collective intelligence as a mirror rather than an algorithm optimizing for engagement, technology that begins in online connection and resolves into in-person community. Two brothers, a garden, and a clear-eyed bet that the most selfish thing you can do is live selflessly.
Moments
-
“What if I don’t have to choose one, but instead let me just be creative about how they can fuel each other.” — Matti Miceli
-
“Structure your habits so that your goals and your visions are byproducts of them.” — Matti Miceli
-
“We develop a new belief system that sets us free from our old one, but then you get trapped into a new one. Golden handcuffs.” — Matti Miceli
-
“It’s nice to hold strong beliefs held loosely, so the software can update in real time.” — Tyler (Tyzen) Drake
-
“Every problem encodes the solution. The problem cannot exist if the solution doesn’t exist.” — Matti Miceli
-
“The most selfish thing I can do is live selflessly.” — Tyler (Tyzen) Drake
Recorded 2026 on The Ascension Podcast · hosted by Tyler (Tyzen) Drake in conversation with Matti Miceli · New Earth Collective built with Austin.