Please note: Accuracy and availability of IPR transcripts may vary. 00;00;03;16 - 00;00;12;16 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: If you try to bite off all of this, or you try to be like, oh my God, I'm gonna live like an Amish first. Now, like, you know, it's probably going to fail, right? 00;00;12;17 - 00;00;14;22 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah, it's a drastic change. 00;00;14;24 - 00;00;22;08 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: You know, I think that's that's really important, J.R.. It's like having an experience in your life of of change in any way. 00;00;22;11 - 00;00;33;01 Julio Vincent Gambuto It's so inspiring because it teaches you that you have the power to change even more. 00;00;33;03 - 00;01;04;12 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I'm J.R. Jamison, today on the facing project, I sit down with Julio Vincent Gambuto, author of Please Unsubscribe Thanks. A book about taking back our time, attention, and purpose in a post-pandemic world. We'll also explore his feature film Team Marco, that follows the life of a boy who's always plugged in into his grandpa, makes him play outside. Stay with us. 00;01;04;14 - 00;01;40;09 J.R. Jamison Jamison: You're listening to The facing project with J.R. Jamison, and this season, I'm doing something a little different to mix up the format. I'll still share stories from past facing projects to shine a light on specific topics and issues, but also, I'll sit down for long form interviews with business executives, bestselling authors, filmmakers, and other artists who are using their platforms to make the world a more understanding and empathetic place, asking each of them the same question how do we create a more empathetic world in a time when listening has decreased and each person's message is competing with millions of others? 00;01;40;12 - 00;02;02;03 J.R. Jamison Today's guest is Julio Vincent Gambuto, who did something unthinkable in April of 2020. It was just two months into the pandemic, and most people were plugged in more than ever before. Streaming Netflix and Hulu, doom scrolling on their phones and watching living room concerts. I'm sure I don't have to remind you of this time. We all lived it. 00;02;02;05 - 00;02;27;01 J.R. Jamison But you know what Julio did? He actually unplugged all of his devices and went analog in a digital world. Four years later, he's still living mostly offline, but using technology when he's guiding it for his purposes and not the other way around. Julio Vincent Gambuto, author of Please Unsubscribe, Thanks, How to Take Back Our Time, attention and purpose in a world designed to bury us. 00;02;27;01 - 00;02;30;03 J.R. Jamison And thank you for joining me on the Facing project. 00;02;30;04 - 00;02;32;21 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Hi. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. 00;02;32;23 - 00;02;56;08 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Absolutely. I love the title of the book, by the way. It's it's fun and playful, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation and diving deep into your work. But first, I want to start with the medium essay titled prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting that you pinned in April of 2020. It went viral and we reached 21 million readers and was the inspiration behind your book. 00;02;56;08 - 00;03;08;13 J.R. Jamison Please Unsubscribe, Thanks. Well, 2020 was only four years ago. In some ways, that feels like a lifetime ago. Take us back to that moment and why you wrote this piece and ultimately the book. 00;03;08;18 - 00;03;41;17 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Sure. You know, it was an intense time, obviously, for everyone around the world in New York. It was, particularly intense. I'll use the word again because we were just on top of each other. Right? I was living in a 400 square foot apartment, and things are dense there. And so it's it's here, I should say. And and I wrote the essay because I had we have had a particularly difficult week that week in our extended family and sort of family friend circle. 00;03;41;17 - 00;04;21;06 Julio Vincent Gambuto So we knew about five people who had lost their lives. And in, in the weeks between when the emergency started and the top of April and, and that particular day, we had gotten news the night before of, of someone else who had passed away from Covid. So it was just dark and it was a real moment. I think we were all feeling depressed and devastated and, and couldn't figure out what this was, you know, and where it was going. 00;04;21;08 - 00;04;50;11 Julio Vincent Gambuto Obviously, by that time, we knew what it was medically, but we didn't sort of understand the ramifications, I think, for for society of the moment. And the next morning I woke up and, and I got this email from J.Crew and it was like, hey, 40% off on sweaters. And I was just incense because, you know, a few weeks prior, all of the big brands had emailed and were kind of in it with us, right? 00;04;50;12 - 00;05;21;01 Julio Vincent Gambuto They were all emailing out to all of their subscriber lists to say, hey, we get that there's a crisis and this is how you wash your hands. America. Left, right, soap, water. Right. But now it was only, you know, a week or two later and it was just like back to business as usual. And I was just so angry in the moment that what was happening, what was happening in the political landscape, what was happening, you know, in New York City directly locally and what was happening around the world. 00;05;21;01 - 00;06;06;02 Julio Vincent Gambuto And, and this was just, to me, the most insensitive thing that you could have done in that moment. And so I wrote this essay that was, you know, part, part warning to be cautious to, you know, for all of us that, you know, hey, when we get back to normal, whether that's tomorrow or next week or three years from now, let's, let's remember that, you know, there's going to be or let's be aware at least, that there's going to be this influx, this inundation of brand messages and advertising messages and this push to get back to spending and running around like crazy and not eating dinner with your family and click and clicking, clicking and 00;06;06;04 - 00;06;28;01 Julio Vincent Gambuto getting back to the madness of it all. And, you know, it was a really a call to to say, hey, what are we learning about ourselves now? What are we learning about society now? And how do we want to take those lessons forward? Whenever this moment passes and, and obviously it you know, it hit a it hit a note. 00;06;28;01 - 00;06;28;26 Julio Vincent Gambuto It hit a nerve. 00;06;29;01 - 00;06;49;22 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah. I remember that time April of 2020. It seemed like offices were sending messages to employees about hopefully we can come back a couple of weeks from now looking at the surge in numbers and all of that. I was working in an office environment at the time, and I remember getting an email that said, we may be back here the first week of May, right? 00;06;49;22 - 00;07;11;20 J.R. Jamison Just this optimistic thinking of this worldwide pandemic is happening, but yet somehow it will just take a couple of weeks for us to get over and get back. And and it falls right into everything. You talk about that rush of wanting to get back to normal and how we're afraid as humans, of being taken out of our normal everyday lives. 00;07;11;20 - 00;07;33;08 J.R. Jamison We want that normality there all the time. And the essay you also wrote is very easy to close your eyes to a problem when you barely have enough time to close them to sleep. The greatest misconception among us, which causes deep and painful social and political tension every day in this country, is that we somehow don't care about each other. 00;07;33;11 - 00;07;58;04 J.R. Jamison White people don't care about the problems of black America. Men don't care about women's rights. Cops don't care about the communities they serve. Humans don't care about the environment. These couldn't be further from the truth. We do care. We just don't have the time to do anything about it. Maybe that's just me, but maybe it's you too. After I read that, I was like, yeah, me too. 00;07;58;05 - 00;08;19;22 J.R. Jamison Right? Like, I remember that time and I think I still live and feel some of that in this present day as we've gotten back to normal, as people like to say, I do a ton of work in Europe and West Asia, and when I'm over there, I don't feel the same pressure to be overly busy, to overly produce. 00;08;19;25 - 00;08;40;04 J.R. Jamison You know, we take coffee breaks in the middle of the day, like people aren't working with those say, hey, let's go grab a coffee. And that coffee breaks like three hours. And then they're like, okay, well, let's go back, right? Like, we don't do this as Americans. What? What is it about us? What do you think it is about us as Americans that we want to be busy all the time? 00;08;40;06 - 00;09;11;19 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: I think a lot of our systems have been designed this way, have been designed for this maximum productivity, maximum output. We, you know, the history of our country is such that it's only the last, you know, from the from the world, from World War Two on to now that we really become this powerhouse economically in the world. And I think in some ways we're still young in the sense of we still sort of behave like a teenager. 00;09;11;20 - 00;09;36;16 Julio Vincent Gambuto Like if the, if, if the country were at age, it would be like 14 or 15. It's like we're still there. It is. There's a yeah, there's a burst of energy, but we kind of haven't like settled into understanding the proportions of time that give us the right amount of joy in our lives or ritual in our lives or ceremony in our lives, or any of the above. 00;09;36;16 - 00;10;04;22 Julio Vincent Gambuto And I think, you know, without without putting myself up for attack here, like Europeans just do it better in some ways, right? It's like it's, you know, I'm like, my fiance is from Montenegro in southern Europe and and yeah, they work from 8 to 4. They have, you know, they have a lunch break in that time. But then they also go out for a coffee for an hour, an hour and a half, whatever it is. 00;10;04;25 - 00;10;33;20 Julio Vincent Gambuto Hey, granted, it's different in every industry. It's different across. But but the general vibe is that we work ourselves in America down to the bone. And I think it's because the opportunity is so big here, right? Like, oh my gosh, like I really could become a millionaire, a billionaire, right? I really could rise from being born working class to, you know, to elevating myself so as to economically like. 00;10;33;23 - 00;11;05;00 Julio Vincent Gambuto So that opportunity, which is an incredible thing, is also a lot of pressure and you know, and don't forget that's that's also an individual perspective collectively as a nation like these systems have been designed this way. And the systems don't allow for things like universal health care. They don't allow for things like, you know, paid family leave they don't allow for, in some cases, more than two weeks vacation for some Americans. 00;11;05;02 - 00;11;30;05 Julio Vincent Gambuto So, you know, the we work really hard because we have to here in some ways because another civilized democracies, you know, some of these things are paid for. So I think there's a lot of different reasons that that is the case. But certainly with digital technology underlying all of it now, all of those reasons have been kind of aggravated. 00;11;30;07 - 00;12;02;01 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I mean, we're available always in today's time, right? I mean, so many ways to be reached, what you talk about so eloquently in your book, in that busyness, as you talked about in the essay, does take us away from really major societal issues that we should be putting our attention on. But when we look at an individualistic perspective, I fall into this trap where I think, yeah, I want to go to that march tomorrow, but I also have this, this, this, and this I need to do. 00;12;02;01 - 00;12;26;10 J.R. Jamison And I know there will be a hundred people there. So what's one more, right. Like we fall into these traps all the time and it's it's really terrifying. And what I did appreciate about the pandemic, and you talk about it in your essay, in your book was the opportunity for the Great Pause or aka the Circus, which I love that you so affectionately call it, being a wake up call to us as Americans. 00;12;26;10 - 00;12;45;18 J.R. Jamison And it was a time for us to reset ourselves. And I think many of us do have stories about how we reset ourselves during that time. I know for me personally, it was trying to assess what brings me joy. Maria Marie Kondo in my life, as you say, in determining what I wanted to get rid of and what I could keep in my life. 00;12;45;18 - 00;13;06;26 J.R. Jamison And sometimes that was work, sometimes that was people which you talk about to you in your book. Who are the people who are actually taking too much of your time and breaking you down? We can't be everybody's psychologist, right? We can't. So I started examining that closely in my own life. But now that we're three, four years from 2020. 00;13;06;29 - 00;13;23;13 J.R. Jamison I find that I'm slowly slipping back into my old self and I see other people doing it too. Have we as a society, forgotten about the Great Awakening? Did we fall into the gaslighting? What do you say to that? 00;13;23;15 - 00;13;46;14 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: I, I think yes and no. Right? I think that we have we there are certainly certain lessons that we can't not take forward. I think many of us have learned them in our homes. Many of us have learned them in our schools. We've and we've we've taken action to ensure that the future is different by making changes and committing to change this. 00;13;46;17 - 00;14;18;15 Julio Vincent Gambuto But in many ways, we haven't taken too much action. In many ways, we are sliding back to that, if you will. Look, I think the word gaslighting is somewhat provocative and and might be off putting for people in the sense that nobody wants to feel like they've been manipulated, nobody wants to feel like they have been somehow coerced into doing something that they that they otherwise would not want to or that they would want to. 00;14;18;19 - 00;14;50;01 Julio Vincent Gambuto So I think when you look at where we are now, I think we have reverted to a lot of the same behaviors because we're still committed to a lot of the underlying beliefs that run those behaviors. So from a psychological perspective, you know, for example, look at it. You can look at it individually and collectively, individually. You know, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm not going to go in the office anymore. 00;14;50;02 - 00;15;08;05 Julio Vincent Gambuto That's it. I'm done. Forget it. And now suddenly everybody else is going back into the office, right? And then suddenly every, you know, the world has shifted, quote unquote, back. But we've been able to say, okay, we're going to carve out Monday and Friday, and we're going to carve out two days a week where I don't have to be in the office. 00;15;08;05 - 00;15;38;02 Julio Vincent Gambuto And in some ways, that pendulum is sort of now settling in a new place. It's not fully the place being perhaps discovered. We wanted to go, oh my gosh, I want to work from home five days a week. That's it. I no longer believe it's possible, you know, that I need to be in the office. And now we've sort of, you know, settled into a middle ground that might be productive and yet a little less pressure. 00;15;38;04 - 00;16;06;14 Julio Vincent Gambuto But I think, you know, if you look at collectively, we're I think Dei is a good example, right. Suddenly, like, you know, in the beginning, after after 2020, it was unquestionable that you had to hire a Di officer. You had to make sure that your organization was looking through a new lens, that we had learned something. Right. We had learned something by millions of people across the world marching in the streets, and we had been awakened. 00;16;06;14 - 00;16;32;19 Julio Vincent Gambuto And now we had to make changes at a at an organizational level. It makes me really sad that that that momentum is waning now. And you're seeing a lot of reports of people disbanding their Di teams or limiting the scope of what they can do within an organization. And I think the reason for that is that we haven't necessarily interrogated the underlying belief that got us there in the first place. 00;16;32;20 - 00;16;59;06 Julio Vincent Gambuto Right? And the underlying belief is that there needs to be more equity in this system. You can't necessarily just hire someone, put a hat on them and tell them to, you know, preach the gospel of diversity, equity and inclusion without doing the deep work of making changes at a much deeper level within an organization. So without getting into much in the weeds, you know, to answer your question, I think the answer is yes and no. 00;16;59;06 - 00;17;21;04 Julio Vincent Gambuto In many ways, we have been making changes and learning lessons and putting them and putting those into effect. And in other ways. We're kind of losing our confidence to be bold about that. And I wanted to write this book because I wanted it to be a reminder to us that this is how we felt a few years ago. 00;17;21;09 - 00;17;41;01 Julio Vincent Gambuto Yeah, let's revisit that. Let's stay present to it. Let's extend that awakening as far into the future as we can, because we're going to need it. In an age of AI and an age of automation, we're going to need the lessons we learned in the pandemic to help better the future. 00;17;41;08 - 00;18;05;11 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Do you think it's generational as far as wanting to get back to normal, getting back to the office, do you find that older generations want to get back to the way things were before March of 2020 and the younger generation, right. Like they've they've adapted to the way things were and they don't want to go back. Do you see that being generational or does it not really matter? 00;18;05;13 - 00;18;24;22 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Yeah, I wish I had the data on that and I don't I think just anecdotally, what I have heard, especially with respect to the book or in response to the book, has been that some, you know, some folks who are my parents generation have said, like, you know, I don't feel this sense of go, go, go constant, constant, constant. 00;18;24;22 - 00;18;46;12 Julio Vincent Gambuto I don't feel the sense that I have to be everyone to, you know, everything to everyone, all the time, everywhere. But I think if you look, I'm 45 now. So I think if you look at my generation and below, we are the ones who entered the workforce on email. We are the ones who entered the workforce with cell phones. 00;18;46;12 - 00;19;10;06 Julio Vincent Gambuto We are, you know, I was class of 2000 at college, and we were the first class at my college to have an email address. So that was a that was a real cut off line. Right? Because we had spent our childhood in analog, but we were about to spend our adulthood in digital. And so we are that last kind of micro generation, if you will. 00;19;10;09 - 00;19;30;29 Julio Vincent Gambuto That kind of had one foot in each. But we had to go full force forward into digital because we didn't have a choice. We were 22 years old and starting, you know, at companies across the country. And so I don't know if the I don't know if it's the desire or resistance to go back to normal that's generational. 00;19;30;29 - 00;19;54;25 Julio Vincent Gambuto But I think the experience of the day to day of what work is, is generational, and what life feels like is generational. Everyone, my generation and below feels they have to always be on all the time, and that's a really difficult and unsustainable way to live. Yeah. 00;19;54;26 - 00;20;11;04 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I too am 45 and I remember my freshman year of college, we were the first class at the university to have an email address. As you were talking about, I didn't even know how to use it. I was like, what is this thing? Who do I email? Do I email like my professor? 00;20;11;08 - 00;20;13;04 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Like why would I need this? 00;20;13;06 - 00;20;33;27 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Like I remember email etiquette classes and all of that, right? And so in our generation, we've seen so much change in the workforce and the way we communicate that I find sometimes I, I long for those days before I got that email account in the mid to late 90s to when it was harder to reach me or anybody else. 00;20;34;02 - 00;20;54;04 J.R. Jamison And as you said, we just continue to add more and more and more ways to connect, to communicate all of the technology. And I think someone like my dad, who's 80 and doesn't even have a cell phone, never has, or an email account for that matter, and I just think, wow, how how refreshing would that be? And so would you. 00;20;54;04 - 00;21;11;05 J.R. Jamison Wait, because his experience during the pandemic, right, was totally different. He was retired. He was already at home anyway, so he just kind of stayed at home and still watch TV. Didn't have to worry about pinging and dinging him all day long, right? That just seems so refreshing, but also a little unrealistic to totally unplug. 00;21;11;09 - 00;21;31;25 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Yeah, I mean, plenty of people have called me out, you know, after reading the books being like, all right, well, I don't know if I can do all that you did, but I'm gonna do a little bit of this. I'm going to unsubscribe in a few different ways. I'm going to take your advice or your suggestions in these minor ways and see how that works for me and go forward. 00;21;31;25 - 00;21;49;13 Julio Vincent Gambuto But I you know why I wrote the book? Because I went kind of full throttle and I just went off of everything. I was off social media for six months. I didn't turn the TV. I literally unplugged the TV in my house and only plugged it in for the news at night and then unplugged it. I unplugged the Wi-Fi. 00;21;49;14 - 00;22;12;22 Julio Vincent Gambuto I just I just found every opportunity to step back and I think it's important J.R to to to communicate this, which is I'm not advocating that people give these things up and never go back to them. I'm not advocating that they have no value. I'm not advocating that they don't have any benefit to us. They have all of those things. 00;22;12;25 - 00;22;40;04 Julio Vincent Gambuto But we've got to be able to build in to this system. Moments of reflection, moments of stepping back, periods and chapters of our life and our work life and our day to day where we're able to turn off and not always be on and really evaluate what is all of this giving us or allowing us to do, and what is it keeping us from? 00;22;40;11 - 00;23;06;02 Julio Vincent Gambuto And I found in my life it was keeping me from a lot, right? I was on, on autopilot, going, going, going, going, going. And when you're on autopilot like that, you don't have a lot of room in your life for the things that are missing. And for me personally, that was love. It was a romantic relationship. I didn't I couldn't find the space for it because I was simply oversubscribed. 00;23;06;02 - 00;23;32;20 Julio Vincent Gambuto And that doesn't mean I had, you know, oh, you have a Netflix subscription. That's why you don't have a boyfriend. No, no. What I mean is that my entire life, you know, was tethered. I was always tethered to some sort of commitment that was making other people happy. Rich? Yeah. You know, et cetera, etc.. And those weren't necessarily making me any of those things. 00;23;32;27 - 00;24;05;09 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so I had to really kind of cut the tethers around me and step back. And so it's the stepping back that the book is really about. It's the act and the practice of not being always on so that you can really understand where in this system is there value for me and to my life, where do I want to plug in, where do I want to be tethered and, and kind of allow yourself to get rid of the rest. 00;24;05;11 - 00;24;28;02 J.R. Jamison Jamison: And I appreciated that so much about the book. There's one part where you mention your friend's home and how it lights up, like the East River on the 4th of July, every time the phone rings. And I actually laughed out loud when I read that, because that's my reality. That is. Seriously my house. We have two TVs. We have a we have a small 1200 square foot home. 00;24;28;02 - 00;24;44;05 J.R. Jamison It's not huge. We have a TV in the living room and a TV in our bedroom, and they are always on. They've been on for probably a decade. We never turn them off when we leave the house. The TVs are still going. It's just that's how we live our lives and most of the time it's on the news. 00;24;44;06 - 00;25;02;02 J.R. Jamison And so one thing I did do from your book is we, my husband and I agreed to turn off our TVs and we have. And it's so weird, first of all, to be in the living room. It's so quiet. It's like, what in the world? I can hear like a humming of, like the world humming. Or maybe in my house, I don't know, but I've never noticed it. 00;25;02;08 - 00;25;20;16 J.R. Jamison So that quietness is a little weird at first, and we have agreed to only turn the TV on in the evenings. Sometimes we still do watch the news because we want to be up to date on what's happening, but most of the time we are turning to the Discovery Channel or National Geographic to kind of just get us away from the anxiousness of the world. 00;25;20;16 - 00;25;42;28 J.R. Jamison And I have felt like my anxiety has dropped by by doing that. I do miss sometimes constantly having that background noise going, because I got so used to doing it all of the time, but my anxiety has dropped. Can you talk a bit about when you started to unplug during this time? How did it improve your mental health if it did? 00;25;42;29 - 00;25;51;05 J.R. Jamison And also, what did others around you say? Or how did they do? How did they adapt to the new Julio? 00;25;51;07 - 00;26;44;28 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Great question. The best way for me to answer that is to talk about the quiet. The quiet is the thing. I think we as a society have grown very scared of. The quiet is so unnerving to us because the noise has been so intense for the last two decades, and it makes us on edge when we have to wrestle with the quiet, or wrestle with things that are uncomfortable, or wrestle with disappointment, or wrestle with grief, or any of the things that are a part of the human experience, that this new way of being as a society, a digital, fully automated subscriber society, doesn't allow the time and space for and and that, to me, 00;26;44;28 - 00;27;07;13 Julio Vincent Gambuto is the value of stepping back and creating that quiet what I call in the book kind of a sacred space, because I think our humanity is in that quiet and our authentic selves are in that quiet. And I'm not suggesting live like a monk. I'm not suggesting, you know, live like the Amish. I'm not suggesting any of those things. 00;27;07;16 - 00;27;48;09 Julio Vincent Gambuto But but I have found to your question that my mental health has gotten so much better in the last few years as a result of that quiet, because it has allowed me to very much to the point of your show, to face myself, to confront the things that are too easy to run away from. And the the society, as it's now designed, gives you every opportunity in the world to run away, every opportunity in the world to push off and not deal. 00;27;48;15 - 00;28;16;01 Julio Vincent Gambuto Bury something in the noise. It's so easy now to do those things that if we want to confront our own humanity, we have to be willing to find the quiet. And so I've seen my mental health dramatically change to the second part of your question. Yeah, a lot of people think I'm crazy. And like a lot of my friends and family think I'm not like my sister is like, when is this new phone going to end? 00;28;16;05 - 00;28;21;16 Julio Vincent Gambuto Because I have a because I have a phone that's created for and marketed to senior citizens. 00;28;21;19 - 00;28;23;09 J.R. Jamison Jamison: A jitterbug right? Is that what it's called? 00;28;23;12 - 00;28;48;12 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: I have a jitterbug phone. I got rid of my iPhone. I have this jitterbug phone, and it has limited apps. And it has a button I can press if I fall down and I can't get up, right. Like, but it it's. I did it because I wanted to slow it all down and I wanted to be less always on. 00;28;48;12 - 00;29;11;23 Julio Vincent Gambuto And the response is always shock and horror, right. Yeah. Like I, I went into a restaurant once actually, while I was writing the book, and I didn't take my phone with me, and I was meeting, I was meeting a friend and the restaurant was pretty big. And I said to the, you know, the server, the the host person. 00;29;11;25 - 00;29;30;04 Julio Vincent Gambuto You know, I'm here for for lunch with a friend. And she said, okay, can you just text them and tell, you know, find out where they are? And I was like, I'm sorry, I don't have my phone with me. And she looked at me like I had committed the gravest social sin. Right. Because I have. And she said, oh, you're giving me so much anxiety. 00;29;30;05 - 00;29;31;17 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Oh my gosh. 00;29;31;20 - 00;29;51;17 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: I said, well, I'm sorry if I'm getting you anxiety, but my anxiety is much, much lower. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm kind of out in the analog wild and, and I feel freer. And so that has been the response right from, from waitresses, from my sister, from all sorts of people in my life who have said, like, how are you doing this? 00;29;51;17 - 00;30;11;06 Julio Vincent Gambuto How do you find anywhere? How do you keep in touch with the world? How do you work? How do you do? And the answer is that, like I still do the things I have to do, and I sort of tap in and use these tools as I need to, but I'm using them now. They're not using me, which I think is a really important distinction. 00;30;11;09 - 00;30;39;20 J.R. Jamison Jamison: As a fellow author, as I read your book and know your current life style, how you live your life unplugged. I was thinking about just upcoming book releases and the pre-sales. The release Barnes and Nobles running their 50% off sales and needing to amplify that message. I mean, for people who are not in other land, there's just so much marketing and publicity that authors do. 00;30;39;22 - 00;30;48;16 J.R. Jamison How did limiting time on socials and the internet impact promoting your book, and how did your team respond? 00;30;48;18 - 00;31;09;15 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Well, it has been a challenge, I will tell you that. Yeah, it's been really hard because I said to the publication team, like, I'm not necessarily going to be always on and be everywhere. It's not the way I live my life anymore. And that's why I wrote the book. So it would feel antithetical to the, the, the ethos and the purpose for me to be doing that. 00;31;09;15 - 00;31;26;09 Julio Vincent Gambuto But we had to kind of reach like a happy middle ground, right? Which is that that a lot of other people besides me on their team have, have put a lot of hard work into this book, and it's important that I do get out there and shout about it as much as I can. I think the message is important. 00;31;26;09 - 00;32;05;13 Julio Vincent Gambuto I think the practices and the strategies that are in the book are really important. And and this illuminates another point, J.R., which is that, you know, this is all going to look very different for everybody. We all have very different lives. We all have very different priorities. We have different responsibilities. So my advocacy in the book is not that you do X, Y, and Z specifically, but rather that we look and we do two things that we blow it all down and that we put limits back in, because those are the two things that have really changed, especially from the world that you and I grew up in. 00;32;05;14 - 00;32;36;01 Julio Vincent Gambuto And then and then we're released in after college. It's this, this digital world has speed things up and taken away the limits. And so if you can't do or don't want to do the specific things that I've done or that I suggest in the book, my counsel to people, my my urging, my call to them is just slow it down and find opportunities to slow it down and find opportunities to put limits back in. 00;32;36;04 - 00;32;57;14 Julio Vincent Gambuto And and if you can look at those as principles of unsubscribe, if you can look at those as, as sort of guiding principles for behavior, I think that that can be helpful to people who are not necessarily, you know, willing to get a new cell phone or to abandon Wi-Fi in their home or any of these things. Right. 00;32;57;16 - 00;33;21;24 Julio Vincent Gambuto But the book has been very difficult to promote. Yes, because of that. So we just made a deal that I would go on two days a week. Yeah. So I would be on social media two days a week. I would be on full throttle while I am on, but I would go on two days a week and I post about the book, and I post about the book tour, and I post about, you know, how full things for folks who are looking for new strategies for do to do this. 00;33;21;26 - 00;33;42;25 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so, you know, my social media is my social media. It's one part of promoting the book and talking about it, but I don't let it overwhelm my calendar. I also don't have it on my phone, which is really helpful because that means that, like, I promote the book and I do my work, quote unquote, when I'm at my desk on my laptop. 00;33;43;01 - 00;34;00;15 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so I interact with Facebook and with Instagram and all of that on my laptop, so that at 6:00 I can close that laptop as opposed to sort of scrolling and scrolling at 11:00 at night when I'm in bed and being like, oh my God, I have to promote the book now while I'm sleeping. Right. 00;34;00;17 - 00;34;20;09 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I love I love that so much because I feel like, I mean, I'm toggled to my phone. It's constantly in my pocket and my hand on the table right in front of me where I'm sitting. And I really want to get there where you are. I just can't imagine doing it. But that constant need to check socials is real. 00;34;20;11 - 00;34;34;21 J.R. Jamison It's an addiction. I mean, literally, I am addicted to my phone and social media and I'm going to have to go through a detox. I think if I got to the point that you're you're at, did you have moments where you felt like you were detoxing from. 00;34;34;23 - 00;35;08;09 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: For sure? I mean, the metaphor is very apt because it's very I have have never necessarily dealt with addiction in that in those context. But but this has been an addiction, right. And in the sense that I couldn't I didn't feel whole getting through the day without constantly being I would sit at home when I was single, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling on, you know, gay dating apps for hours and hours and hours. 00;35;08;10 - 00;35;30;24 Julio Vincent Gambuto Or I would be on the Instagram for hours and hours and hours or Bumble or it, you know, and and they're designed for us to be scrolling that way. Right. And when you look at all of this, and especially the conversation in the book and digital capitalism in general, it's important to remember that, you know, it's not about personal flaws, right? 00;35;30;25 - 00;36;00;18 Julio Vincent Gambuto It's not my especially the criticism I'm raising. It's not about the fact that you and I don't have the personal power to say no. What's happened is that these systems have been designed to need us to say yes. Right. It's not that we cannot say no. They are architected for the yes. They have as a, as a as an industry, as a company, as products. 00;36;00;18 - 00;36;44;07 Julio Vincent Gambuto They have all been designed to remove friction, to remove pain points, to make things as seamless as possible, so that we go from I want something to I have it, whether that's a physical product or simply validation, or simply a dopamine hit, or simply feel loved. Because we have 15 likes on a photo within the first 30s, whatever that is, the system, quote unquote, has removed all of these barriers so that we have immediate access to those feelings of power, of love, of lust, of pleasure, of validation, whatever they may be. 00;36;44;09 - 00;37;04;02 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so, you know, it's a really, really, really important to be aware of those things. If you want to get to that place of being able to leave the house without the phone, or being able to leave the house and be offline for the weekend for work or whatever that is, right? We have to remember that this is not a personal flaw. 00;37;04;04 - 00;37;14;29 Julio Vincent Gambuto These systems are designed that way. So, you know, it requires us to be all the more strong and conscious and intentional about how we use them. 00;37;15;02 - 00;37;35;00 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I was recommending your book this morning to a woman I was having a conversation with, and she was saying to me, which was why I brought up your book. I was like, oh, actually, I'm, I'm interviewing Julio, who wrote this book. She was venting a bit to me about how her, her boss kind of expects her to be on all the time. 00;37;35;02 - 00;38;02;08 J.R. Jamison You and I are both creatives, right? So we have that a little bit in our lives, but we have also a little bit more freedom in some ways to she's she's in an office, strapped in an office pretty much all day. And then when she goes home, if her boss has a question hole texter or he's working on something because he's working past normal business hours and a question comes up to him and and he texted her and she kind of feels like she can't set limits with him. 00;38;02;08 - 00;38;13;20 J.R. Jamison What would you say to somebody who's in a 9 to 5 job, an office type environment where they feel like they can't, they want to, but they can't really unplug in this way? 00;38;13;22 - 00;38;57;05 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Yeah. I mean, I think that the immediate answer is this is hard, right? This is hard. This is much harder than me, the solo entrepreneur writer who has a little bit more flexibility and privilege to be able to step away. But I do think it's important that we recognize that, you know, the kind of change that we're looking for in the society, the power changes that we're looking for between leadership and workers, between the wealthy and the underprivileged, between different groups, that those are real and they're difficult. 00;38;57;05 - 00;39;43;24 Julio Vincent Gambuto But we get to and, you know, we get to put our finger on them in these individual moments of power, of power. And when we struggle with power, on an individual moment, on individual level in our lives. And so I think this is an opportunity for people in the corporate environment at the desk in a 9 to 5, to raise their voices in ways that are respectful and that are aligned with the the job and the work, but also are clear about what they need in order to get the job done well and what they need in order for this to be an environment that they're comfortable working in. 00;39;43;26 - 00;40;14;06 Julio Vincent Gambuto So, you know, that's going to be different in every office. It's going to be different in every relationship between someone and their superior, if you will, or their manager or their boss or their owner or however the structure is. But I think finding ways to to discuss communication expectations is really important, whether that's at the beginning of a job, whether that's, oh my God, I've been here three years and I just got a new manager who wants to talk to me all day long, whatever that is. 00;40;14;08 - 00;40;37;24 Julio Vincent Gambuto We've got to find the inner strength to have conversations around communications, expectations. What is it that you expect from me? What is the response time you expect from me? What is what are the hours you expect from me? And when the individual conversations don't work, or they don't feel like you're exercising enough power, that's when the group conversations really need to happen. 00;40;37;25 - 00;41;02;11 Julio Vincent Gambuto Right across the organization, with coworkers, with unions, with, you know, with just the people who sit in your cubicle next to you, whatever that might be to say. How do we approach this in a way that's productive? And how can we have this conversation with the people that we report to? And you're going to get, you know, you're going to get varied responses, right? 00;41;02;12 - 00;41;16;22 Julio Vincent Gambuto Some people are going to say, you're crazy. I expect you to work from the night. I expect you, you know, I expect you to answer this email on a Saturday. I expect you to get back to me within ten minutes. And then you've got to be able to decide if you're willing to put up with that or not. 00;41;16;22 - 00;41;35;10 Julio Vincent Gambuto Not. But you might also find that the other side goes, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize I emailed you at 11:00 at night. That's the only time I can get away from my kids to do email. I didn't mean for you to respond. I should have emailed you in the morning or oh my gosh, was it really Saturday morning? 00;41;35;12 - 00;41;56;04 Julio Vincent Gambuto Maybe I shouldn't have sent that. All I'm saying is that, you know, people people will get a variety of responses to that kind of exercise of their voice. But, you know, the book is an exercise in my voice, and the book is an exercise in encouraging others to use theirs in these ways. 00;41;56;05 - 00;42;17;07 J.R. Jamison Jamison: That's what I enjoyed so much about. Please unsubscribe. Thanks is that you do provide practical solutions for people to take back their lives, and the onus is on the individual right to say what is doable and not doable in my life. And even if, like I personally haven't done some of these things that you recommend in the book, I still think they're practical applications. 00;42;17;08 - 00;42;17;26 J.R. Jamison Right? 00;42;17;29 - 00;42;40;10 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Well, look at Marie Kondo, right? Like I read Life Changing the Magic of Tidying Up, right? I didn't do everything that she said in that book. Right. Like, if I did, I would still be sitting here holding pictures from when I was in seventh grade, right? Like. Like I didn't do everything, but it's. But but every single thing that I did do held the promise of change for my life. 00;42;40;12 - 00;42;58;28 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so that's that's really how I want people to look at this book as. Look, there's a hundred things in here you can do. Pick the ones that are going to work for you and the ones that are really going to hold and honor what you want your future to be, and try them. Yeah, and see if they work. 00;42;58;28 - 00;43;06;26 J.R. Jamison Jamison: So what have you heard from folks who have read the book and tried some of the practices? Have you heard anything? 00;43;06;29 - 00;43;37;17 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Yeah, it's funny because, you know, I've heard some folks who say like, oh my gosh, I'm not ready to do all of that. But I did do this one thing. And it was it changed. It changed a lot of, you know, a lot. Or I did start leaving my phone at home when I go to lunch, or I left it at my desk when I went out to get a salad, or I did, I did do you know, I did sit down my kids and have a conversation about our expectations about phones and the house. 00;43;37;19 - 00;43;54;09 Julio Vincent Gambuto We decided that, you know, the family room can only have this hours of Wi-Fi or TV or whatever it might be. So I'm thrilled when I hear stories like that. Right? Because it just means to me that people have. 00;43;54;12 - 00;44;16;20 Julio Vincent Gambuto Experimented and challenged themselves to to try some of these things, and some of them are new and fresh and you may not have seen before, and some of them are things you've heard 14 times and should probably give a shot. You give a try. Yeah, but yeah, no. I've gotten really great feedback with respect to change and people's abilities to just, you know, I think that's that's really important. 00;44;16;20 - 00;44;45;06 Julio Vincent Gambuto J.R. is like having an experience in your life of, of change in any way, whether that's, you know, your in meaning like your personal behavior. It's so inspiring because it teaches you that you have the power to change. Even more so if you try to bite off all of this, or you try to be like, oh my God, I'm going to live like an Amish personnel, like, you know, it's probably going to fail, right? 00;44;45;07 - 00;44;48;05 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah, it's a drastic change. 00;44;48;07 - 00;45;26;27 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: But if you start to do the things that you're even talking about with your husband about, you know, limiting television, or you start to your body and your brain start to kind of gift and you go, oh my gosh, like, what else can I change? What else can I do? Where else can I lower the volume, lower the anxiety, lower the pinging, the ringing, the digging so that I can get closer connected to the people around me, the relationships I have in my life, the where I have joy and fun and like, you know, where my friends are, you know? 00;45;27;00 - 00;45;31;25 Julio Vincent Gambuto But I've seen a great response, and I'm really happy when people tell me that they, you know, have tried things. 00;45;31;26 - 00;45;43;24 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah. I also found the book to be a good testament to relearning oneself and finding what brings joy. And then, you know, not letting that go. What brings you joy these days? 00;45;43;26 - 00;46;14;28 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: At the moment, I'm spending a lot of time with my partner, who as of as of last year as my my fiance and, and we, we read together. We have a lot of fun just kind of being in the same room with one another. And that's just not something I'm used to. Right? I mean, our relationship is now on its fourth year, but ten years before that I was single and this has been wonderful. 00;46;14;28 - 00;46;33;02 Julio Vincent Gambuto So he brings me a lot of joy. I get a lot of joy from my nieces and nephews. I, I am not at every game and every cheer practice and things like that, but but we spend a lot of time together and I try to be there as much as I can. I don't know a damn thing about football, I don't know, but I love watching. 00;46;33;02 - 00;46;34;15 J.R. Jamison Jamison: You’re in good company. 00;46;34;18 - 00;46;52;29 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Yeah, like, you know, I've no idea what just happened. I don't know what yard line they're on or whatever it is, but like, I'm glad that this, you know, 12 year old, 13 year old sees my face. They're cheering him on. I get a lot of joy from my relationships. I get a lot of joy. And that's what for me was missing. 00;46;53;02 - 00;47;19;26 Julio Vincent Gambuto It was always there. I just couldn't access it, right? I wasn't I wasn't making enough space for my sisters. Right. I love laughing with these two women. They're incredible people. They're so fun. I was living too far away and was just too busy. And I wasn't making the space to to to do that. I also get a lot of joy out of font and typography. 00;47;19;27 - 00;47;21;19 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Oh, really? Tell me more. 00;47;21;21 - 00;47;41;13 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: It sounds so weird. No, I get a lot of joy out of graphic design. I get a lot of joy out of. I don't get any joy out of cooking. I'm not. I have sort of didn't. I did not get that gene whatsoever. I get a lot of joy out of architecture. I get a lot of joy at its history. So, you know, we we mix it up. 00;47;41;13 - 00;48;01;13 Julio Vincent Gambuto We we will we'll go to, you know, places and museums and read books and do things that I probably wouldn't have done before, only in the sense that, like, I was just on this auto pilot that was like, I'm working the film business. I can only read things about film. I can only go to things that are movies. 00;48;01;13 - 00;48;22;02 Julio Vincent Gambuto I can only, you know, occupy my life with film people. I know some incredible film people, but I also know other people in my life that I love. Yeah. So a lot of this effort for me has been about kind of bringing more texture back into my life and and realizing that not every friendship is a text message. 00;48;22;04 - 00;48;46;03 Julio Vincent Gambuto Not every friendship is to be looked at the same way. And so I'm finding much more joy now in doing things with friends that make us both happy. So instead of like maintaining my friends like a Rolodex on text message every day and making sure, you know, and like being intentional about being like, oh my gosh, this person loves to bowl. 00;48;46;05 - 00;49;16;00 Julio Vincent Gambuto I love to bowl. Let's go bowling. This person is a foodie. They love food, I love food, and I always love food through their eyes. Let's go to a new restaurant in New York together. That to me has been a really big shift in my social life because it means that, you know, when somebody texts me, I pick up the phone and call them, and and it has just sort of like brought new energy and to our friendship. 00;49;16;02 - 00;49;16;15 Julio Vincent Gambuto So. 00;49;16;22 - 00;49;48;08 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Well, in addition to being an author and a writer, you're also a filmmaker. Your first feature film team, Marco, tells a story of a young boy who is constantly plugged in and obsessed with video games until his grandfather moves in and Marco's life has turned upside down when he's forced to play outside. It's a wonderful story and is available in all the major digital movie platforms, but the making of the film happened before the pandemic, and before your viral essay and before the book and everything that we just talked about. 00;49;48;10 - 00;49;51;25 J.R. Jamison Did Team Marco predict the slowing down that was to come? 00;49;51;29 - 00;50;30;23 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: I Team Marco, I have always talked about as a movie, about friendship and about bocce and about appreciating your Italian or I should say, appreciating your background no matter what it is. And then as soon as the pandemic hit, and as soon as I started engaging and writing this book, I realized, oh my God, I made a movie about technology and technology use and about the compromise we all have to come to between tradition and modernity, and between technology and more physical forms of play. 00;50;30;23 - 00;50;59;21 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so I don't know if it predicted the slowdown, but it certainly predicted like personally, artistically, creatively, like in my life. And there's there's definitely a thread there for sure. But yeah, I think I think it also gave me another opportunity to work with young people and to literally be on that every day for 5 or 6 weeks with, you know, people in their, in their, you know, 15 and below. 00;50;59;21 - 00;51;29;21 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so I got to see how they interact and how they form community and how they socialize. And they were totally willing and, you know, to get in a circle with me and engage physically, meaning participate in conversation and in the acting exercises that that we did to prepare them for the movie. But then also, you know, after that they would go off and make sure that they were on a group text and make sure that they could text each other when they left and make sure that they FaceTimed each other if they had a question. 00;51;29;21 - 00;52;06;13 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so, right in front of my eyes, I sort of saw young people negotiate the physical world and the digital world and find ways to put them together. And so, you know, the call and the book and the call and that movie is the same, which is in this feature that we are facing, you know, how do we combine them in a way that actually betters ourselves and pushes forward and is humane and is also equitable and fair and, and promotes justice? 00;52;06;13 - 00;52;14;14 Julio Vincent Gambuto But how do we do that in a way that doesn't strip us of our humanness? You know. 00;52;14;16 - 00;52;18;01 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Sometimes the universe works in mysterious ways, doesn't it? 00;52;18;07 - 00;52;45;11 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Very strange. Yeah. Very, very I mean, the oddest part about Team Marco was that it was a movie about technology use that then came out during the pandemic. Right. And we were on streaming, not in theaters, which broke my heart because we didn't have the opportunity. We had one opportunity at the Mill Valley Film Festival in 2019 to kind of have an opening and have a premiere, and then the world shut down a few months later. 00;52;45;11 - 00;52;52;09 Julio Vincent Gambuto So it was very strange to try to put out a movie in the middle of the pandemic. Yeah, we did, we did. 00;52;52;13 - 00;53;01;27 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah. Congratulations on that. You also grew up in a large Italian family from Staten Island. How much of t Marco is autobiographical? 00;53;01;29 - 00;53;21;15 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: A lot of it, actually. So the team Marco is about a boy who is obsessed with his iPad. And his grandfather, who's an older Italian man, moves into the house and kind of drags him to the bocce court to teach him about life. And the movie is about their unexpected friendship. And so, you know, I grew up with four grandparents. 00;53;21;15 - 00;53;43;23 Julio Vincent Gambuto I was very, very lucky. I grew up knowing my four grandparents, having relationships, friendships with them. And and it was a great way to grow up. It was a great way to, to have access to them and exposure to them and their worldview in their history and the history of the family. And so, you know, I love that. 00;53;43;23 - 00;54;03;21 Julio Vincent Gambuto So a lot of Team Marco was me trying to communicate creatively. What was so valuable about that and what was so lovely about that and what was so beautiful about that. And and I loved it. And, you know, my grandfather used to say, like, Bolton should be seen, not heard and like, like they were old. They were all they were old school. 00;54;03;22 - 00;54;27;18 Julio Vincent Gambuto Like, I don't want to run mantises in too much, right? They were like super old school. And I fought with them all the time because I've always been a little loud. But it was very autobiographical in that sense. Was it autobiographical about it? You know, was I a kid who played bocce with his grandfather? Not directly. I played a lot of cards with my grandmother, but cards are not as interesting to watch on screen and watch. 00;54;27;22 - 00;54;36;14 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Very true. I was going to ask if you played bocce. It sounds like you did. Maybe not. Maybe you still do, I don't know, do you still play Pachi? 00;54;36;16 - 00;55;00;10 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: I do, I mean, I played a lot, certainly a lot more when we were making the movie and we were preparing for the movie. But I live in New York now, and in a lot of the surrounding suburbs. There are just courts everywhere now. Like, every, like new development. They build a tennis court and a bocce court, and in some of the old parks they're converting and putting bocce courts in. 00;55;00;10 - 00;55;22;07 Julio Vincent Gambuto So there's been this strange surge in the game in the last few years here in the New York area. And it's always been a place where it was popular, but I think it's become more popular. And funny enough, as the pandemic hit, it kind of presented, you know, it was a game to play outside that you could be in the outdoors with family playing, you know, intergenerational. 00;55;22;10 - 00;55;30;13 Julio Vincent Gambuto So yeah, there was a lot of sort of fortunate overlap between the movie and real life. 00;55;30;15 - 00;55;41;21 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I want to go back quickly to the book, Please Unsubscribe, Thanks. You're also a comedian and you've created a new show based on the book. What can you tell us about that? 00;55;41;23 - 00;56;05;21 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: So, so so I wrote a show called Please Unsubscribe. Thanks that I started putting up on the fall and I'm going to start putting up again probably this fall. The schedule is a little tentative, but it's a stage version of the book. It's a it's you know, for those who have read the book, there's some comedic moments. And I like to write with as much comedy as I can. 00;56;05;22 - 00;56;44;08 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so the the show is me on stage for an hour talking about the issues that we're talking about, talking about the societal shifts that we're talking about, talking about everything from economics to to history to strategies for, you know, being happier. But all through the lens of a sort of stage act, a stage show. So I spoke at South by Southwest back in March and, and, and had the opportunity to address the conference with some of that material and some of that content, and it has evolved and grown. 00;56;44;08 - 00;57;04;28 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so it's been really, really, really fun to watch it evolve and grow. I get a real kick out of having conversations like this, but I love I love doing them in a theater and I love doing them on stage. And I love, I love when audiences will kind of audibly agree with certain things or audibly respond to certain things. 00;57;04;28 - 00;57;26;29 Julio Vincent Gambuto There's a bit in the show about income inequality and about how we're all sort of like hanging on, right? And we're having a heart. Some of us are having a harder time than others. And, and people will, you know, sort of will say out loud like, yeah, that's me, you know, so, so I, I'm really enjoying that. It's a, it's a, it's an incredible way to connect with people. 00;57;26;29 - 00;57;34;13 Julio Vincent Gambuto And so we're going to get back up on stage soon. I don't have a date yet, but all that will be on my website as soon as soon as it's ready to go. 00;57;34;19 - 00;57;38;01 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Awesome. What else are you working on? Anything you can share? 00;57;38;05 - 00;57;59;20 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Sure. Well, the book is out in paperback now. It came out a few weeks ago in paperback. It's available in France and in Italy and in Brazil now. So I'm having a great time continuing to talk about it. And now to put it on stage and to talk about it more. I'm working on a few screenplays, a few projects. 00;57;59;20 - 00;58;40;28 Julio Vincent Gambuto The film business is incredibly slow, and it's been a few years of pandemic plus strike plus whatever, but this year we are sort of back in the swing of things. So there's a few projects there, and then I'm working on my next book, which is going to be sort of in the same vein, but more focused on branding and personal branding and why we all feel the need to become personal brands and what that does to the soul and what that does to our happiness, and how we can kind of live in a very branded world with more balance. 00;58;41;00 - 00;58;46;00 Julio Vincent Gambuto So no. Yeah, no date for that yet. But that's, that's, that's on my desk now. 00;58;46;01 - 00;59;14;27 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I can't wait to read it. If you need an early reader, let me know. They are. Yeah, absolutely. Lastly, the work we do here at the Facing Project is to create a more understanding and empathetic world. I'd love for you to add your perspective on this question. I'm actually asking all of my guests this season, this same question, how do we create a more empathetic world in a time when it feels like listening and understanding the lives of others has actually decreased? 00;59;15;00 - 00;59;43;00 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: We have to get off autopilot. It's the point of my book, and I will double down on it right now with you in the context of that question, because on autopilot we become less feeling, we become less empathetic, we become much more willing to put up with, but we become much more willing to just swallow what is given to us. 00;59;43;06 - 01;00;13;22 Julio Vincent Gambuto We lose our voice, we become less authentic, and we learn how to code the line, obey the rules and be quiet. And my advocacy with my book and all the work I'm doing these days, is to push people to open their mouths in a kind way, and in a forceful way, in a productive way, to get off autopilot. 01;00;13;23 - 01;00;49;10 Julio Vincent Gambuto Just just get off this, this, this treadmill that we are on and have been on and fell off during the pandemic and may have gotten back on again. I think empathy and understanding and humanity and kindness and community are all on the other side of a transition we need to make in the society right now, where we need to kind of rebalance what the economy has done, what the digital ecosystem has done to us, and it has put us on autopilot. 01;00;49;11 - 01;01;19;08 Julio Vincent Gambuto It has done that intentionally. It has done that with incredibly powerful tools. And I don't believe that it always honors our best and it always honors our humanity. So if empathy is the goal, which it is, right? If we're going to all get along well and survive and survive and thrive and make this world a better place and make this world someplace we want to be in and live in and thrive in, I think we've got a. 01;01;19;10 - 01;01;45;19 Julio Vincent Gambuto Exercise our power and exercise consciousness. And sort of when we find ourselves waking up a bit, stay awake and just stay present to who we are and what we are and what we want and what we want to put into the world. And stay off that treadmill. Because the treadmills easy and the treadmill is comfortable and the treadmill is smooth and the treadmill has been made all of those things on purpose. 01;01;45;21 - 01;02;01;25 Julio Vincent Gambuto You know, but empathy is a is is in, in short order, or I should say, in short quantity these days. And we need more of it. And and that's my take on how to get more of it. 01;02;01;28 - 01;02;12;20 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Julio Vincent Gambuto, author of Please Unsubscribe, Thanks. How to Take Back Our Time, attention and purpose in a world designed to bury us in. Thank you for joining me on the Facing Project. 01;02;12;21 - 01;02;14;02 Julio Vincent Gambuto Gambuto: Thanks for having me. 01;02;14;04 - 01;02;27;15 J.R. Jamison Jamison: More about Julio Vincent Gambuto and his work at Julio Vincent dot com, where he never pressures you to subscribe. But you'll be thankful you did. 01;02;27;17 - 01;02;52;21 J.R. Jamison Many thanks once again to Julio Vincent Gambuto for joining me on today's show and to his publisher, Simon and Schuster, for providing a complimentary copy of Please Unsubscribe, Thanks. How to take back our time, attention and purpose in a world designed to bury us. And to listen to past episodes of this program, visit Indiana Public Radio Project, or find us on your favorite podcasting app. 01;02;52;22 - 01;03;15;21 J.R. Jamison Or just ask your smart speaker to play The Facing Project on NPR to continue the conversation about this episode. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and at The Facing Project. The Facing Project is recorded at Indiana Public Radio at Ball State University and Beautiful and Wonderful, Muncie, Indiana. It is produced by the amazing producer and audio engineer extraordinaire, Sean Ashcraft. 01;03;15;23 - 01;03;26;22 J.R. Jamison The show is distributed nationally through. I'm your host, J.R. Jamison. And until next time, I wish you the courage to share your own story and the empathy to listen to others.