top of page
Search

100th Episode Reunion: Human Resistance and Agency, with a dose of Intergenerational Magic

  • 4 days ago
  • 16 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Person holding a transparent smartphone with holographic interface showing career options. Office setting with people in the background.

It’s a major milestone at Signal Shift! To celebrate our 100th original episode, Raakhee reunites with former co-host Lana Price for a deep dive into human resistance and the signals shifting our world today. 


In this episode, we move away from fear-based AI narratives to look at the "real-world" physical limitations slowing down the machine—from the massive energy crunch causing reliability issues for companies like Anthropic to the "Yellowstone-style" human resistance of farmers refusing to sell their land for data warehouses. We also celebrate the power of intergenerational wisdom, spotlighting an Amsterdam agency that uses "retired" talent to solve modern creative briefs and refreshing ourselves on the sound-wave revolution in healthcare. 


It’s an episode dedicated to human agency, creativity, and the next 100 episodes of looking ahead. 




Lana's New Blog: www.pragmagical.com


Physical Limitations of AI Growth and Human Resistance

Lana presents a counter-signal to the narrative of unstoppable AI job displacement, noting that the "steamroller" is hitting real-world physical constraints.

  • Infrastructure Shortages: According to the Wall Street Journal, AI demand is outpacing computing firepower and infrastructure. This has led to decreased reliability, with companies like Anthropic seeing uptime drop to 98.95% due to a lack of data warehouse space.

  • Landowner Resistance: Echoing themes from the show Yellowstone, farmers and landowners are increasingly refusing to sell their land for data warehouses, even when offered hundreds of millions of dollars. They are choosing family, culture, and identity over "selling out" to big tech.


Intergenerational Innovation: Tosti Creative

Raakhee shares a signal from Tosti Creative, a creative agency in Amsterdam that has successfully integrated retirees into the creative process.

  • Wisdom Over Algorithms: Recognizing the "layers of embedded knowledge" in seniors, the agency brought in 70-plus-year-olds to collaborate on briefs for clients like Vodafone.

  • Human-Centered Design: The project demonstrated that older generations offer unique insights—especially those who lived through the transition from a no-tech to a tech world—proving that value exists far beyond standard "chat responses".

  • Intergenerational Magic: This signal reinforces the success of "late-blooming" professionals like DJ Tina Technotic (60+), who performs with a partner in her 20s, showing the power of mixing disparate age-based perspectives.



Signal Recap and Convergence

The hosts look back at how past signals have shifted from the "fringe" into mainstream headlines:

  • Climate Impacts: Skiers are now seen skiing in bikinis on grassy hills, signaling the critical transformation of winter tourism.

  • Cacao Scarcity: Cacao farming risks have gone viral, with companies replacing real chocolate ingredients as prices rise.

  • Sound as Medicine: The emergence of sound-wave treatments for Parkinson's (notably used by Terry Crews' wife) validates previous discussions on histotripsy and sound as the next frontier of healing.

  • Urban Evolution: The "Night Mayor" concept continues to grow, with cities like Nashville and Syracuse implementing the role to manage nighttime economies effectively.


Raakhee concludes by talking about the currently happening Beta Imagination Lab, a program designed to put agency back into human hands and help professionals reimagine their careers amidst global disruption. The program will be available to join post the BETA, in about 2 months - Summer 2026.


*Disclaimer: The text in this post is AI-generated from an original video podcast - applicable data sources, references and/or the episode transcript are provided below.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Selected Links:



Episode Transcript:

Raakhee: (00:00)

Hello and welcome to Signal Shift with me Raakhee Today is a big big day it's a big celebration day because it's our 100th episode.


Now, if you count, you technically will see a bit more than 100, formally, technically on the site. But in terms of actual original solo episodes, not repeated content, just pure 100 episodes, that is this particular episode. But it's also a big celebration day because I get to reunite with a very, very special guest, ladies and gentlemen, Lana Price.


Lana: (00:40)

It's such a pleasure and an honor to be here. It's fun to be on this side as a guest so I'm just thrilled and really want to celebrate and honor you, Raakhee for 100 episodes of Signal Shift.


Raakhee: (00:41)

Welcome. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And Lana, you've contributed to, I think, like 60 of those, right? So it's very much our celebration and a huge, huge thank you to you as well. And yeah, we'll say we miss Sue. It just didn't work out for Sue to be here, so it feels a little bit incomplete. So Sue, we do miss you. We wish you could have been here for us to this reunion. But I'm so, so happy to see you and be with you here, Lana. I think we both are just like...


And I'm popping off with a joy right now. Lana, yeah, but tell us, I mean, you're also doing some really exciting, fun, authentic, beautiful things. And please share with us a little bit of just what you've been up to.


Lana: (01:28)

Totally, yeah.


Yeah, I have kind of launched a new, like, I guess I call it a creative site of blog newsletter, and it's called Pragmagical. And it is really about navigating life transitions, kind of bridging between practicality and possibility. And so it's Pragmagical because it's really holding that tension between pragmatism and magic.


It's just, it's been so much fun. And, yeah, if anyone, if this sounds interesting to anyone, can sign up at, pragmagical.com


So if folks want to, want a little primer about seeing the future and really holding, you know, strategic foresight as the pragmatic methodology to seeing the future, but also what are some other tools and approaches to seeing the future as well.


Raakhee: (02:41)

I know there's also these sort of whimsical fun parts to it, right? And Tarot is one of them.


Lana: (02:47)

Yeah, I was gonna say that and I was gonna say for anyone who's interested in the tarot today's my card I pull a card every day and today's card is perfect for just our theme right now as I pulled the Sun card Just just a really beautiful Joyous card and so when I saw that I was like, yeah like it's just a perfect alignment for really


You know, just our reunion, the 100th episode, and maybe even some of the themes that we're going to talk about today.


Raakhee: (03:24)

Yeah, think so. think so. Thank you. Thank you, Lana. I love that. I always love when you pull cards and share that deeper story with us. So, so exciting. I love what you're doing and I will link the site as well for everyone. So for today's call, you know, there's no theme.


We just wanted to kind of step back into that practice of where we would all pitch up with a signal and the other person had no idea what that signal was. And we just surprise each other with our signals and learn from each other, which is such a beautiful practice to do.


But yeah, Lana, what what signal did you bring today?


Lana: (04:03)

Yeah, so I have two that are related to each other. And this is about, you I feel like one of the big topics right now is AI job displacement, right? And so, and there's a big narrative around, you know, very fear based narrative around, you know, how quickly and how far widespread AI will replace the human workforce. And so a possible counter signal to this narrative is, you know, they recently, there's an article that came out in the Wall Street Journal, had said that AI is using so much energy that computing firepower is running out. So basically the demand is growing far faster than companies are able to access resources and build up infrastructure. And so historically what you do, you know, when the demand outpaces the supply as you change the price, right?


So your price would increase. But the frontier AI companies are in such fierce competition, you know, they're really trying to like gain and lock in users. And so they're holding the price very steady. And one thing that's happened like Anthropic has been plagued by outages. You know, they've been metering the computing supply during peak hours but that makes users very angry. And also the reliability of their services has gone down. So usually core services on the internet and in software are measured like 99.99%. That is the standard. You cannot even afford a millisecond of downtime.


But as of April 8th, Anthropic was at 98.95. And so they've essentially run out of the infrastructure. So this goes down to the data warehouses. They don't have enough space yet to fill that computing firepower. So it's like kind of good news. If we wanted to slow AI down, it is being slowed down by real physical limitation.


And this reliability rate isn't there because of that too. So another related point is, have you seen the show Yellowstone? OK.


Raakhee: (06:38)

Yes. I mean, I was exhausted by the end of it. Like, I cannot do this anymore, but I have seen it.


Lana: (06:49)

So this is like right out of Yellowstone basically, it's like a storyline. But there's a story in The Guardian that talked about how farmers are refusing to sell their farmland to or data warehouses. so, and they are rejecting bids like outrageous bids, right? Like millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, some of them hundreds of millions of dollars. Like that's how valuable their land is for this problem, this data warehouse problem. And they're like banning together to say no. And so, you know, it's a little kind of like, that's another maybe heartwarming example where there's a human resistance, right? And it's for their own reasons, right? It's for their families, it's for their identity, it's for their culture they don't want to sell out.


And some are selling out, right? you know, I think that's understandable. Someone walks up to you and says, I'll give you a blank check for any amount of money that you want. Of course, who, you know, it's hard to argue that you're not going to take it, but quite a few are not. So I think that's also, to me, it was kind of like, okay, it's not, It's not just a steamroller that is just going to go regardless at this wild speed. We have some other forces at play here that can slow things down. So I just thought that was interesting.


Raakhee: (08:36)

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people are like, yay, it's the same reaction, right? I think there is a need for slowing down. while I think we hoped that would come from policy and governments, everything was just happening too fast. yeah, it seems like maybe some form of balancing act happening here, which is very much needed. that is a good sign. And that is the right way for things to progress.


We need to catch a breath, figure things out, build the right way, instead of the insane speed at which everything is moving, particularly in AI and robotics space. I just did the episode that went out today, and part two will come out next week, but it's about robotics and health care And there was a story of...


A 24 year old who died in ICU and he was being monitored by a telehealth robotic sort of doctor. So doctor was the intelligence, you know? And of course the family is suing, right? There's a lot of deeper questions around that and just overall negligence, the speed of it is this, my gosh, it's the question of the times something we do have to, in a sense, I think, fight against, rage against the machine sort of thing.


But yeah, so I love that. I love that. That's a great one. I'll share my one. It's a very different one, but I think they actually link and they do speak to each other. And this is also a positive, uplifting one, I would think. I just thought of, know, I think Lana will love this one as well.


So a company, it's a creative agency in Amsterdam, it's called Tosti Creative. They were doing work in designing briefs and creative briefs for clients, but a lot of the work was around some of the issues facing older populations, like loneliness in aging populations and things like that, and products for those sorts of things. And so they were serving all the people around this. And someone had the idea of saying, like, hey, I get that you're serving me and asking me these questions, but why don't you like... bring me in to actually give you ideas. Like if you're getting my thoughts on this, I might have really good ideas of what you could do. And they thought it was a great idea.


And so they brought in 12, 70 plus, like well-retired kind of people who been doing this stuff onto these creative briefs and got them to kind of think up and come up with these ideas and collaborate with them. And it worked out really beautifully. They had kind of three groups. They were split up in three groups. They mixed things up in terms of background and gender and they worked on things for like three clients. think one of them was Vodafone Foundation and it was digital skills for all the adults. The other one was housing market mobility. The other one was kind of where host families take care of refugees and looking at that as well. And yeah, they brought the insights. They actually took these briefs to clients. It was so well received and it was just a beautiful lesson again in how much value and knowledge exists in all older generations that we kind of take for granted, right?


And again, speaking against that AI and the ease of just getting your chat response, but there are layers and layers of embedded knowledge in ways we don't even know how to quantify and recognize when somebody has lived for seven decades, right? And they've seen so much in the world, particularly the generations who've been there from the start of no tech to kind of tech, right? They were there like before the internet became a household thing.


So yeah, pretty amazing. And I think it was a real lesson in that. it reminded me of very recently in the podcast, we had a 60 something DJ, DJ Tina Technotic, right? And she transitioned into this career basically in late fifties. And yeah, just has this mindset of it really doesn't matter and it doesn't.


And she spoke about how, and her partner, her DJ partner, think is in her late 20s, early 30s, something like that. And it's just that magic again of that intergenerational mixing. There's just something to it, right? And these different perspectives, because the truth is that when you're 40 or when you're 20, you've only seen certain things. You only understand certain things. And you've experienced things that, sure, all the generations haven't. There's a lot that exactly they have experienced that you haven't.


So when you bring that together, just so much more to be discovered and so many greater insights. So yeah, that was my one,


Lana: (13:09)

I love it. And I think, you know, I think what the one that you what you're bringing up is, you know, especially as our our population, not just in the country where we are in the United States, but globally as we're aging, right, and just putting the customer voice in the center of the design experience. And I think we will quickly see how many things are really inadequate for serving our needs as we age. And so I think that what you're saying won't be as much of an anomaly.


I think that's another thing that the podcast has done a really good job of spotlighting different designers, because designers are really the ones who are also employing strategic foresight and thinking about future needs.


And so I think what you've pointed to really comes back to that intersection.


Raakhee: (14:16)

Yeah, yeah. And I think, again, speaking about this concern around AI and job loss, which is a valid concern, but just kind of showing this alternative narrative that's also true, that wow, look at as integrating knowledge of different groups of people who should technically be the least employable, should not be working, right? And yet realizing, wow, no, there's so much value to be added. I think


Yeah, I think there's so many alternative narratives around work to be explored and so much more that we haven't even tapped into. And that kind of speaks to the beta imagination lab that we have kind of happening at this point in time, and which will become available for everybody over the next two months or so.


But yeah, think just interesting to bring these concepts. I think it really speaks to the work we're doing in the Beta Imagination Lab as well. So yeah, I love that those just great signals and I am so glad we kept it to always being uplifting and fun, Lana, and hopeful, know, sticking to the positive side of things.


Lana: (15:30)

Yeah, I mean, definitely. think the I was thinking of the Beta Imagination Lab when I was thinking about my signals, because yeah, I think the AI job displacement conversation is real and people are scared. And I think what you're offering is, you know, a way to make that conversation bigger than that, right, like, more expansive, more thinking about the possibilities and really putting the agency back in our hands as humans. to say really it's about our agency, it's about our creativity. It's like our choices are more limited by if we can't imagine it, right, then we don't see our options. But the bigger we can make that that purview, the bigger we are, you know, what's available to us. So I'm very excited to see how that goes and what comes of it.


Raakhee: (16:35)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I love what you said there. I that was so beautifully stated, you know, and it's exactly that. It's about agency and it's realizing this inherent power we do have and that there's actually an opportunity in all of this disruption. And we have a lot of power that we may not have realized.


So I love all of that. Lana, the one thing I wanted to cover today as well was just major headlines on certain stories we've covered in the past. And those have sort of come up again in the media and where they are again. just speaking to, I think, the relevance of all the signals we have covered over time and how important it is, right, and how it is shifting culture and the world we live in. I just, yeah, I just love to get your take on it. And maybe you've even seen the headlines for some of these. So one was skiers who were literally skiing in their bikinis.


Did you see this?


Lana: (17:32)

I did see some really sad pictures of people on like grassy hills with their skis. But I don't know if I saw the bikini one.


Raakhee: (17:44)

Yeah, yeah, there was some snow on, can't remember which state, it was in the US. I think some of it was happening in Europe as well, but it was just kind of saying like, oh, it is so warm, we can actually be in our bikinis. There's just about enough snow to maybe possibly ski, probably not safely. But yeah, I mean, we spoke about what is happening with ski resorts and we've kind of seen it a little bit more each year and I just felt like, oh, this year was really the tip of saying wow.


It's, you know, it's changed. It's completely changed. so there was one. The other one, which was, and it was a passion area for Sue as well, but it was the cacao and, you know, everything that's happening with cacao farming. And I'm sure you saw the viral Hershey's chocolate.


Lana: (18:32)

I did. totally thought I thought of how we had covered the chocolate and how companies are like replacing you know, their their chocolate candies with different ingredients.


Raakhee: (18:49)

Yeah, exactly. So that was another interesting one where I think now, I think, you know, most people are starting to realize and understand, oh, wow, you know, that chocolate's at risk. We're not actually getting real cacao in our chocolate and starting to question what we consume as chocolate. Like, what actually is it? What's in it? What does it mean? And hopefully, again, more of a respect for cacao and using it wisely and sparingly as those prices are going to continue to go up, think.


So really interesting landscape there. And then this was just a fun one and you'd appreciate it. But there was an article about Nicole Kidman has become a death Doula.


Lana: (19:30)

Yes, yes.


Raakhee: (19:33)

And we're talking a lot about, you know, of course, death and acceptance and cloning and cryogenic freezing.


Lana: (19:44)

Yeah, no, that's it's true. I'll add one that's just come to mind that I thought of You know, we've talked a lot about pets, but it's the emergence of the want to say that it's like a pet, the pet luxury market, not, mean, spas is just kind of like the tip of the iceberg, but it's pet longevity. And so it's kind of sad, which is another thing that we've talked about. And so I think that's what kind of makes it fun is when we see the signals converge, right? And they become new things. And so just, you know, people putting their pets on a like specialized diet that really kind of mimics the longevity movement that we have for humans. I thought it was just, yeah, another interesting thing that's kind of circling back to the themes we've covered.


Raakhee: (20:47)

Yes, yes, no, absolutely. it's exactly like we spoke about, that pets are now that additional family member. And even with them, we spoke about animal rights and the rights of pets and that getting recognized in different ways, so much more. And so I think this trajectory of really recognizing this entity form in almost all equal ways as humans, like maybe not cognitively, but in every other sense to treat them as our equals and opening up, I guess, those markets for them as well in retail. And then two other, two interesting ones.


This was really hopeful. This was really nice. But Terry Crew's wife, who has Parkinson's, is using some sort of radical new treatment that uses sound waves to kind of treat her brain to help with things like the tremors.


Lana: (21:24)

That's right.


Raakhee: (21:45)

And yeah, it just reminds me of the histotripsy, right? The name of the treatment we spoke about. And we spoke about sound as like the next frontier of healing and medicine. And that is emerging right now as well in a big way. So that is so cool to see. So that was one. And then the last one was, if you recall, had spoken about, we spoke about nightlife so much as well, right?


Lana: (22:03)

Pretty cool.


Raakhee: (22:12)

And night mayors was one of it and night mayors are growing Nashville, Syracuse, like lots of cities are now starting to implement this concept of night mayors because it's working out so effectively and positively. So yeah, I just wanted to kind of throw back to those and refresh us on those and just say like, wow, look at these themes


Lana: (22:33)

I love that we're doing this as part of the hundredth episode because I think it really speaks to the power of Looking for signals as a practice, right?


Raakhee: (22:42)

Yeah, yeah, it's a nice way to recap on, wow, 100 episodes and talking about how the world is changing, how culture is shifting. hopefully, yeah, to the next 100 episodes where we will pick up even more and more signals of what's happening in the world and kind of being just at least a little bit ahead of the curve and picking up more of what's happening on the fringe.


What's going to be happening next. yeah, Lana, this was so, so special. It was so fun. So amazing to have you here.


And to everyone listening, thank you for supporting us over the years, we can kind of say now, you know, and yeah, to reach the kind of hundredth episode milestone is pretty amazing.


I think when you're doing the work, doesn't necessarily hit you. So I'm not sure if I've comprehended it myself, to be honest. But hopefully it's something that'll sink in at some point. But thank you so much for the support and here's to the next 100. Thank you so much and Goodbye for now.



Comments

bottom of page