Post-COVID World

Recorded in the thick of 2020, the fourth Roots To The Fruits opens in the clearest possible air: a young Tyzen walking The Legend of Lee through Spiral Dynamics — the eight colors of consciousness, beige survival up through turquoise enlightenment, cross-referenced against Hawkins’ map of power and force and Abraham’s five steps of creation. Tyzen names yellow as his home frequency: the place where you can meet anyone where they are, give value, and actually care. They ask the live question — where is the United States on this map right now? — and agree it’s orange shifting toward green, evidenced by something small and real: a grocery-store stocker who looked up and said he was living one day at a time, putting the best stuff he could on the shelves.

Then Lee pulls the tinfoil hat down over both of them, and the episode turns. A Microsoft patent numbered WO-2020-060606 — body-activity data as cryptocurrency. Event 201, the Johns Hopkins pandemic tabletop run in October 2019. The Patriot Act, PRISM, Snowden, China’s live social credit score, Black Mirror’s “Nosedive.” It would read as pure paranoia if the two of them didn’t keep returning to ground — and the ground they find is the real spine of the talk: a long, beautiful unpacking of what money actually is once you stop believing in it. Currency as an agreed-upon permission slip. The dollar as debt, not value. No such thing as a self-made person. They close not in fear but in the wild wild west — the conviction that for every draconian system, some savant will out-hack it, and that as long as we keep using technology, there is always a way through.

Moments

• “Yellow is, you know — what’s up, Lee, how you doing? I’m going to give energy, I’m going to give value, I’m going to show up, and I’m going to ask things about you. I’m going to actually care.” — Tyzen Drake

• “I love the way that you take bits and pieces, parts and pieces, information strings — you tie them together, you weave cohesive stories. It’s a tremendous skill set.” — Tyzen Drake

• “The original form of currency was a little tablet that said: this is worth three goats.” — Tyzen Drake

• “If you look at a dollar, it doesn’t say anything about value — it says debt. It is good for debt. What is debt? It’s borrowing into the future based on somebody else’s ability to give.” — Tyzen Drake

• “It is, I think, five percent of my consciousness is about the max that I can give these kind of conversations and still stay positive.” — The Legend of Lee

• “There’s going to be a way — and I feel like that’s kind of a good way to end this episode. Hope, in the new wild wild west frontier that is the digital era.” — Tyzen Drake

Recorded 2020 under Roots To The Fruits — the origin series. Co-created with The Legend of Lee & Grayson.