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At the edge of collapse—and creation—two unlikely co-conspirators invite you into a radically honest conversation about the future. This isn’t just another tech or self-help podcast. It’s a story-driven exploration of who we are, what we value, and how we might reimagine the world when the systems around us stop serving us. We blend personal storytelling, cultural critique, and deep inquiry into what it means to be human in an age of AI, uncertainty, and transformation. We’re asking better questions—together.
Because the world is changing fast, but maybe that’s precisely what we need.
Hosted by Beth Rudden and Katie Smith, two builders of systems and challengers of the status quo. Beth is CEO of Bast.AI and a globally recognized expert in trustworthy AI, with decades of experience leading data and ethics at IBM. Katie is the founder of Humma.AI, a strategist who drove innovation and revenue growth at major global brands before turning to human rights and technology for social good. Together, they make complex issues, such as AI and its impacts on everyday people, clear, personal, and impossible to ignore.
Beth Rudden is the CEO and Founder of Bast AI, a pioneering company building explainable, personalized AI for good. With over two decades of experience as a global executive and Distinguished Engineer at IBM, Beth blends anthropology, data science, and AI governance to create tools that amplify human dignity and intelligence—not replace it.
Her work spans healthcare, education, and workforce transformation, using ontological natural language understanding (NLU) to make AI transparent, accountable, and accessible. Through Bast AI, Beth is reimagining how organizations deploy AI that’s not only accurate but aligned with ethical values, cultural context, and cognitive well-being.
Beth is also the author of AI for the Rest of Us and a passionate advocate for AI literacy, epistemic diversity, and the right to understand the systems shaping our lives. She speaks globally on the future of AI, power, and social contracts—and believes we’re all stewards of the next intelligence.
Katie Smith is the CEO and Founder of Humma.AI, a privacy-first platform building community-powered, culturally competent AI. With over two decades of experience leading digital strategy and social innovation, Katie blends systems thinking, Responsible AI, and storytelling to create tools that serve dignity, not domination. Their work spans mental health, civic tech, and digital rights, using participatory AI to make systems safer, fairer, and more accountable. Through Humma.AI, Katie is reimagining how people and businesses engage AI that’s accurate, inclusive, and governed by consent and care. Katie is also the author of Zoe Bios: The Epigenetics of Terrorism, a provocative exploration of identity, trauma, and transformation. They speak globally on the future of technology, power, and justice—and believe human empathy is the intelligence that will define our time.
Subscribe to our Substack for bonus content: https://substack.com/@andwefeelfine
Katie Smith (00:00)
So real leadership really is a bridge, right? It's a bridge into the, you know, like you're creating a bridge for the next generation. You're creating a bridge for someone to succeed. And when that person succeeds, the team succeeds, you know? ⁓ You know, one of the things I like to say to folks is like, look, you need to help that person succeed because that's how we all succeed. Like you have to care.
Beth Rudden (00:05)
I like that. Yeah.
That's right. That's right.
Thank you.
Katie Smith (00:25)
about how other people are showing up, like, and actually care about it, not be upset if they don't,
Hi everyone, welcome back to And We Feel Fine and I'm here with Beth Rudden as usual. A little suntan today, Beth, how you feeling?
Beth Rudden (00:54)
⁓ I'm feeling so good. I got in mama ocean. Yeah. Only thing I miss about Colorado is the ocean and you know, middle of the state betting on global warming. So.
Katie Smith (00:58)
Yeah, nothing better.
my gosh, it's one of the most
beautiful places in the world. I lived in Boulder, as you know, for about a year and a half. And it was like heaven in your backyard. But the same thing is like, I'm born and raised Los Angeles. So was like, I could not do landlocked state. Not yet.
Beth Rudden (01:15)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
ocean.
So
yeah, ⁓ so husband is a pilot. So he's definitely air and I am so water and I've always been water grew up and on the coast, Florida, California. And I just, I've been a water baby all my life. Like just put me in water. I'm very happy kids too. growing up I'm like fussy baby put the baby in the water. Like everything, everything works.
Katie Smith (01:41)
You
my God, Tomlin the
other day, you'll love this. So I'm at a friend's house, we're in a hot tub and she just thinks it's normal. She, I kept saying no, no. And she did little twirls and she did like the whole, I'm going to take a big run. She like did this backup and then she's ran towards the hot tub and jumped in. I had to like catch her and be like, no, you are not going in hot water today. Speaking of water babies.
Beth Rudden (02:13)
Literally, did she, did
she try like it with her paw? Like, have you ever done it?
Katie Smith (02:16)
no, she,
yeah, she put her little paw in and that's when she did the run back and like jumped and went for it.
Beth Rudden (02:24)
Such a smart dog. Such a smart dog. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's great.
Katie Smith (02:27)
That was after I said, no, yeah, we are learning still anyways. So yeah,
my leadership with her is like, please don't drown in hot water. so our theme today, that was me trying to do a segue. Our theme today is leadership. What do you think about that?
Beth Rudden (02:40)
you
⁓ I think, know, true to form, let's really start talking about like what is ending and what is beginning. And I think that this can be a pretty meaty topic ⁓ in multiple ways. Full disclosure, both of us are busy, busy, busy, and we are going to be reading from some notes. And part of what I'd like to kind of, I don't know, foreshadow on the fly here a little bit is both of us have been developing and using our own AI agents.
Katie Smith (02:54)
Mm.
Beth Rudden (03:15)
in order to be able to do some PR campaigns in our own voice, ⁓ as well as like kind of break down some of these topics. And so this is also something that we will be making available where you can interact with these segments, mainly because nobody's ever done it. And I'm like, this isn't hard. I have the technology to do it. Everybody should be able to do this. ⁓ it's definitely coming. Yeah, definitely coming sneak peek ⁓ for a lot of it.
Katie Smith (03:39)
Thank you best.
Beth Rudden (03:45)
But what I think is really ending, and this is like, from my perspective, it's really about like the business and how the business leadership is really, I wanna say that it's ending, but I don't know that for sure. I would like to ⁓ manifest that we get back to corporations that have social corporate responsibilities. And this isn't,
There's something in the word altruism in the way that I was taught the word altruism where you do the best for the benefit of the, it's sort of like survival of the fittest. That's not the end of the sentence. It's survival of the fittest within the environment.
Katie Smith (04:32)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (04:32)
So it's
like altruist is to do the best for ⁓ yourself and others for the environment or for the betterment of the entire community or for the betterment of the entire social situation that you want to better. And I always, always taught it like in terms of like tribes and families. you know, the way that I definitely see, ⁓ you know, the Trump family, the, you know, the, ⁓
Katie Smith (04:52)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (05:02)
the Walton family, there's families that are really like, have accumulated lots and lots of wealth and then are creating foundations. The Koch brothers with Stand Together Foundation. And I think that there's like some really interesting kind of changes that are happening in leadership where people are realizing just because you have lots of money or just because you have
become very famous or have lots of followers does not necessarily mean that you understand how to lead people and that leadership is something that is very much built. And so I think what is ending is that veneer that just because somebody is popular or famous or infamous, you know, the opposite of fame. A lot of YouTubers come to mind when I say that word ⁓ like
Katie Smith (05:50)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (06:00)
I think that that doesn't mean that they are the leaders. And it almost reminds me, one of my very first sociology courses, I learned about this idea of leadership called the big man complex. And it was really, it was literally the big man, the one that like beat on their chest. That's how they became the leader because they were the most loud, most
Katie Smith (06:16)
Hmm
full.
Beth Rudden (06:29)
boastful, most apparent leader. And I think that's ending, at least for me, because I read a lot of things like Susan Cain, and I look at ⁓ a lot of leaders that are actually introverts, or working behind the scenes, and doing the incredible leadership that we're just not focused on in this society. And that's...
Katie Smith (06:34)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Yep.
Beth Rudden (06:57)
the news cycle and the media cycle and where the attention goes is definitely something that is modeled, obviously. So I wanted to, when you first asked me to do this session, I was like, you know what? There's so many people out there with a ton of hot air. That's like a big, like that's a big signal from what generation I come from. And so it's like, how do we give like,
how do we give attention to what the type of leadership is that we would like to begin? Because I think that the end of the big man complex can be over now, right? We don't need the strongest male to be leading the tribe. Like that doesn't look good. And ⁓ so many people have taught me to watch Trump without sound.
Katie Smith (07:33)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (07:52)
and the way that he gesticulates really just indemnifies the, am the big leader, I am confident, am, everything, But it's also like the signal that I think that a lot of people are going, oh, wait, we don't need to.
Katie Smith (08:01)
And the way that he wears his tie, his whole motif. Yeah, it's ridiculous. He knows what he's doing.
Beth Rudden (08:19)
We don't need the strong man to protect us.
Katie Smith (08:23)
So many
people really do believe that, but I wonder if like, maybe it's not necessarily the ending of that because even when Trump is gone, I think the nonsense that he created and what came before him is just gonna probably continue in some ways you perform. But for me, what I think is beginning is this new type of leadership. And it's not really beginning, I don't know if that's fair. There's been extraordinary examples of leadership.
Beth Rudden (08:38)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (08:49)
from in history into today. But I think what we're trying to call into this space right now is this idea around AI and society and culture. And there is the PayPal mafia that we talked about in the last episode. know, Ezra Klein is talking about abundance. And so there's like all these, there's, think so many of us feel right now that we need new leadership, we need a new way. And so I do think there's like this,
Beth Rudden (09:04)
Yeah. Yeah.
Katie Smith (09:18)
this opportunity for something new to arise. And that's why like people are talking about web three and like, you know, new business models and what does it look like in the future? And like, there's all these conversations are happening right now. And so it really is wild west days again, like both of us were in the internet days and the nineties. And so the early web as we understand it, and now we're going into this new phase. And so is the new beginning.
Beth Rudden (09:23)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
That's
Katie Smith (09:45)
really focused on this idea of abundance instead of scarcity. And when I think about this abundance and scarcity conversation, the first thing that comes to mind is that with the AI models, they believe in abundance. They believe more compute, more this, more that. And because they have driven this and they've gotten so much investment around this, it's now a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Beth Rudden (09:59)
That's right.
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (10:10)
because the models with the most parameters get the more accurate results. so small players like my shop, right, have to compete in a creative new way. And frankly, I think that's leadership. I think that's us like showing up and saying, no, even though you're Goliath, Goliath, I can never say that word, but Goliath, thank you. My tongue gets stuck up for some reason. But anyways, ⁓ no, we are going.
Beth Rudden (10:30)
Goliath.
Katie Smith (10:38)
We are going to show that we can do this in a completely new way.
Beth Rudden (10:43)
So that's actually, ⁓ think I've talked about this before, but I really want to draw this story out and I want to point people to an alternate version of David and Goliath. And this comes from Malcolm Gladwell, who potentially stole it again from somebody like Rosabeth Moss Cantor, which is where he found the tipping point. But ⁓ the idea of like,
Katie Smith (11:05)
Mmm.
Beth Rudden (11:10)
revisionist history and revisionist archaeology. And here's a good spin. So here's a tale that I would tell a little bit differently is what if Goliath was somebody who lived on the outside of the village and what if Goliath was misshapen and he had like elephantism or he had a disease that made him incredibly big and you know, something that, you know, he was a giant and ⁓
Katie Smith (11:14)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Like Andre the Giant,
remember Andre the Giant? He was the best.
Beth Rudden (11:39)
Yeah, ⁓ I do. do. And
people, you know, like kind of ostracized him and maybe he didn't have like the ability to verbalize in the same way. Maybe he didn't have the ability to take care of himself in the same way. And ⁓ David was a kid who potentially was in that age that, you know, he didn't know right or wrong. He didn't know that like
making fun of people who are different than you is something that society teaches you that that's not something that you do. But it is an easy way to like, hey, look at, let's all find a common enemy and let's make Goliath our enemy because he's different. We don't like differences. And maybe David was somebody who was just really good with a sling.
And maybe like the ⁓ town elders didn't like the fact that somebody was using Goliath's strength in order to do something that they couldn't do. And they were like slightly jealous of, you know, this human being that was slightly different and, you know, couldn't really.
handle things and was causing some trouble. So they stirred up David to go fight with Goliath and David, who was really good with the slings, simply took a headshot. And what does that say about our, like if that's the history and that's one of the reasons that I think it's very interesting to just take a different perspective and look at it in a different way.
Katie Smith (13:18)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (13:20)
What does that say about the leadership that got a child to kill somebody because they knew that that child was looking and seeking glory and seeking to be literally put as a part of history of doing something where he defeated something greater than him? And like, what if that wasn't the actual story? And what if the message got twisted and spun?
Katie Smith (13:44)
you
Beth Rudden (13:47)
by the optics of what the leaders at the time needed in order to use that story and use that positioning of that story to tell a tale about how their leadership was modeling something as old as David and Goliath.
Katie Smith (14:07)
Very interesting. I like the spin. I love the storytelling.
Beth Rudden (14:15)
Stories and narratives define who we are and how we think. And it defines much more than the memes, the tropes, the mores, the culture, the words that we use, the things that we think about. When we're talking about leadership, good leaders, they give us the stories that really identify the...
really identify their values. like, Brene Brown talks a lot about the man in the arena, and, you know, talks about how, you know, the people who are in the arena, it's not the critic who counts, it's the one that is in the arena doing the work with you. And, you know, especially being a CEO, it's something that I look at a lot where
I have CEO friends who are in the arena and they know they're not sitting in the sidelines. And, you know, the ones that are sitting in the sidelines, I don't believe that their opinions are any of my business because they're not in the arena with me. And so I think that there's something about like the way that I grew up with leaders. And, you know, I talk a lot about Jenny Rometti, who was the leader when I was at IBM.
Katie Smith (15:14)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Right.
Beth Rudden (15:40)
And she has an entire book about good power
when you're in a company, you shouldn't be campaigning to be the most popular person. You should be understanding that it is your job to lead people on a mission that is that it's my definition of altruism that is for the benefit of the whole, not just for you being in political power.
Katie Smith (15:55)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Beth Rudden (16:10)
And I
think that that's a sure sign of leadership. think another really good sign of leadership, especially in the world of abundance that we sort of touched on and like seeing things from what you have versus what you don't have. And what we have right now is all of these human beings who want to be into positions of power. So we should have succession plans, good leaders.
Katie Smith (16:21)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. That's right.
Beth Rudden (16:40)
have succession plans, good
companies have the ability to help the next generation be put into positions of leadership. And here's a thought problem for you. ⁓ What don't you need when you have all of your leaders taking accountability? What do you think it is that we don't need when everybody
Katie Smith (16:48)
Good?
Beth Rudden (17:07)
does what they say and they take accountability and they understand how to, ⁓ all Elon Musk's very first Tesla.
Katie Smith (17:16)
Well, I think you
would say regulation or governance. If everyone was really doing the right things and we trusted them and being transparent about it.
Beth Rudden (17:19)
Mmm,
No, well, look at his very,
look at his very first Tesla team. It was a very, there was no hierarchy. That's what you don't need when all of your leaders take accountability. And when you are there to get a job done and you know what you are being paid to do, and you are accountable for contributing to that, you actually don't, don't need a hierarchy. You don't need to establish.
Katie Smith (17:33)
you
Beth Rudden (17:52)
who is in charge of whomever. Because everybody is in charge of themselves. You have a leaderful organization. Yes.
Katie Smith (17:55)
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's how we run. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. It's like we have interns right now and part of their intern program is time cards. I'm like, we don't do time cards. We just don't do it. And they're like, well, we have to do time cards. I'm like, look, like I trust you. This is a trust system. Like it's all about like showing up and doing your task. And then your peers are telling you if you showed up.
Beth Rudden (18:09)
Wait, what?
Yep.
Yep.
Katie Smith (18:22)
Cause we all
Beth Rudden (18:22)
Yep.
Katie Smith (18:23)
rely on each other period. That's it. Like our job is to show up and, and for each other, that's the job. And here's all the tasks that we do. I don't care what your title is, but like, we will know as individuals and as teams, if we're showing up and you're only as strong as your weakest link. I know that's like, maybe not the greatest framing of it, but actually it's true.
Beth Rudden (18:28)
That's right.
Hold on that that is
right, but that's like one of the very principles of altruism is that you are only as strong as the weakest member of the human being that is part of your accountable or your responsibility or your your family and or team or ⁓ Community and that's why they always say that you can kind of see how
Katie Smith (18:55)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mmhmm.
Beth Rudden (19:10)
how good a civilization is by how they treat their prisoners. And so there's all these like measurements. We have an abundance of measurements. I think that we don't use them all that correctly, but I think that we could really look at leadership in the frame of abundance as the people who are looking at what they have, a plethora of talented people who want to be seen.
Katie Smith (19:12)
Mm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (19:39)
who want to move to the next level, who want to understand what they will never understand until they get there, that the more power you get, the less you can say. the less you can, I think that the less that you can be friends with the people around you. yeah, that's right. That's right.
Katie Smith (19:39)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
It gets long layer as you get higher up in the hierarchy that you don't need.
So the paradox of abundance is something that came up when I was prepping for this show because again, going back to the AI models today, there's leadership. Something I've said before and I will say it again because I think it's worth repeating. Some things are worth repeating. ⁓
Narrative is culture and the majority wins. So when you have these large models and the leaders who are developing these large models decide that they don't care about the weakest in society, they purposely do not care about the weakest in society. And therefore they're going to unleash a model that will say and do whatever people's minds want to explore. And some people think this is free speech and there's this and that, but actually it's just creating
harmful outputs and not even just harmful outputs. It's actually training the AI to be its worst self. It's like when you're raising a kid, you know, to me, like the AI networks, it's like raising a kid. It's it's scraped the whole internet and now you're either teaching it to be its best self or its worst self.
And there's certain leaders out there who have just decided, let's see what happens if we let the AI be its worst self. And it's like, that is not good for society. That's not free speech. That's just unleashing a beast on society that is just like not useful, frankly. And I think it's the opposite of leadership because going back to what you're saying about altruism is
You know, how do we balance this need to care about like everyone in society with, frankly, the capitalist ecosystem that we're in? And I think you and I are trying to figure that out with our respective companies. But what if abundance is actually focused on community?
Beth Rudden (21:53)
Mm-hmm.
It has to be. the, you know, the only thing that you get from competition is short term gains and short term wins. And the ability to transform as a leader and to watch a leader transform means that that leader understands how to ride the different waves because we need somebody, we need leadership for short term wins.
Katie Smith (22:15)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (22:34)
as well as the understanding of the long-term hall, like the long-term, which requires collaboration. And that's the fundamental difference between competition, which ⁓ I watched two children just kind of like in 15 year olds, like girls, and one of them is super competitive.
Katie Smith (22:38)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (23:02)
And I watched them have this conversation. And then I watched the super competitive just get so into it and so interested in winning that they forgot that they were not supposed to. Yes, they forgot that they were friends. This sounds like you might have a story here that you could probably tell.
Katie Smith (23:12)
you
Friends.
I don't know about that. ⁓ I will just say that, my God. Well, I grew up playing soccer, competitive soccer. So I think it was like bred into me. I started playing soccer when I was five. I went to the junior Olympics by the time I was 10. So I was playing at like, you know, top of my game by the time I was like a preteen, right? Before I was even a teenager. And then I did high school.
Beth Rudden (23:29)
Were you highly competitive? Were you really competitive?
Katie Smith (23:51)
⁓ competitive sports, you know, so I played soccer throughout high school and varsity soccer and all that stuff. So, but, I got, so I think the diff, maybe this is different for soccer, but for soccer, I think it's both individual and team. It's individual in that I was a striker. I wanted to score as many goals as possible. Like I was just obsessed with like, give me the ball. I'm going to kick it in the net. It was very simple, but I had to play within a team environment. Right. And, and so like, for me personally, I had to learn.
both of those things. It was interesting once I got into the professional sphere, because I think I do actually naturally have a very collaborative spirit, but working at Playboy, for example, which I did for a number of years, talk about a glass ceiling. And like the competitiveness at that level was like something I had not seen.
Beth Rudden (24:22)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Well, that's
Right, there wasn't, that's a, so first of all, I'll go back to soccer for a second because like one of my, whenever people ask me for books on leadership, Good Power by Jenny Remedi and then Wolfpack by Abby Wambach. it is so good. but why it's so good is because she tells her story about her transformational leadership where she understood
Katie Smith (25:00)
Wolfpack is so good. Call out to Abby.
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (25:13)
that as an individual, that it's awesome to be like the superstar on the stage. But it's even better to point to the person that passed you the ball that you got to kick it on the goal. And that, I think that we don't have enough models, especially with women's friendship, because there is this layer of competition, short-term gain, long-term loss.
Katie Smith (25:24)
Yep, so much better. That's right. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (25:41)
And so if we think about the collaboration and what the community needs, I really think that we need to start from the abundance agenda. Like if we look at it from like, do we have that we need more of? And we need homes, clean power, better infrastructure. It's a mindset shift from guarding scarcity to increasing capacity.
Katie Smith (25:41)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (26:09)
And are we removing the obstacles or are we just rearranging the same deck chairs on the Titanic? Another reference that will date me. the construct of leadership in like this generation that I see below me, Gen Alpha, you know, the young people company. Yeah, they're understanding competition on an entirely new frame.
Katie Smith (26:30)
the young young ones, yeah.
Mmm.
Beth Rudden (26:37)
and
their understanding collaboration on an entirely new frame. I mean, even the millennials not really wanting to enter the fray of competition. And so I think it's gonna be very interesting, but I know one thing to be true is that you have to have that ability to transform your type of leadership. What got you here will not get you there. most of us know that at a certain point.
Katie Smith (26:40)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (27:04)
that we have to radically shift in how we view what we have in front of us in order to be able to move forward. And if we think in terms of not enough, ⁓ we get trapped in that, how do I get more quickly? So it's a bandaid, it's quick fix. like a, you know, it's not a, it's an empty solution. mean, Katie, the...
Katie Smith (27:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (27:33)
the dearth of leadership that we have right now makes the leaders that I know shine so bright. And the leaders that I know who are really trying to do better for that next generation and for that next generation's next generation, like that type of like long-term vision, I am craving all the time. And I was about to say, I can't be the only one. Like I think a lot of people
Katie Smith (27:58)
Same. No. No.
Beth Rudden (28:03)
are craving this like, my gosh, where are all the Microsoft and Apple Republicans? Like where are the people who worked in industry all their lives are very conservative, believe in small government, who want societies to be better, who want to build more companies like Apple and Microsoft. Where are they in the world right now?
Katie Smith (28:31)
too scared to come out. Privilege is hard to escape.
Beth Rudden (28:37)
Well, the trick, I think, is that we have to look for leadership that is happening locally. I think that, you know, that people are leading with urgency and foresight because I think it's complicated. Like you have to, you have to do really good with your business to make an impact to the people that you're serving and your consumers. And you need a 70 % profit margin.
Katie Smith (28:47)
Excuse me. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (29:06)
well look at all the companies that are being successful that are just on that mid tier that nobody's really looking at because the hot air in the room is being taken up by you know, the the
Big men.
Katie Smith (29:20)
Quickly, just really quick, I have to say, I love when this just naturally happens between us, because I love Abby's book. I really love Abby's book. I give that to my staff. That's the thing I hand out to staff about, this is what leadership looks like. It's not me, it's you, it's all of us. Yeah, so anyways. But yeah, who gets to build? In this world of abundance, who gets to build?
Beth Rudden (29:33)
Mm-hmm.
Great. Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you.
Well, yeah, let's go back to the beginning of ⁓ the patent process. And I got to do something really cool. ⁓ I got to instigate a bunch of innovators at a university. I got them to like, ⁓ I got a phone call and the phone call, like I actually.
said, I can't do this phone call. So this amazing human being got back on my calendar and she got back on my calendar because she wanted to show me. She's like, Beth, look at this patent. And she holds up the paper of like all this paper that she created, that she created for her patent. And like, you've done patenting. Like, let's talk about the beginning of the patent office in like 1870 and what it was like in New York and anybody who wants to watch the Gilded Age, like,
Katie Smith (30:29)
So novel, yeah.
Beth Rudden (30:44)
you know, that was the beginning of the patent office and the people being able to truly pick themselves up by the bootstraps because they were in ⁓ social classes. And so they were like the lower class person who didn't have the education could invent something, patent it, and then sell it to the bankers and then make lots of money. And they're like, insta-rich. And that's the nouveau riche.
Katie Smith (30:47)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Right. And the old money didn't like it back then
either. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. ⁓
Beth Rudden (31:11)
Yeah, that's where the nouveau riche or the French, like the
new riche, right? And similar things in France, like this has been done before, like we've had this happen. And right now, like we have this calcified middle that is just sucking all the life out of that innovation. So our innovation today excludes. It's exclusive.
Katie Smith (31:39)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (31:40)
And
it just becomes another power play. Who has the right in the foresight and the necessity to innovate? That should be everybody. And right now we have a system that is very difficult to get through.
Katie Smith (31:55)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (32:00)
and tell people like me come and start shit and say, you, you're going to develop a patent and we're going to sponsor you and put it through the patent office. And that's going to like five extra business and five extra business model. And it's like, that's, that's where, mean, I love what I do when I start shit like that, but how many other people are like thinking in that way where you can take something you have.
Katie Smith (32:04)
You
amazing.
Beth Rudden (32:27)
which is the knowledge of how to get through the patent office and the knowledge of how to get the right lawyer. And getting the right lawyer is very similar to getting your doctor interested and curious about what you're doing. Like that same thing, same sort of like skill of telling the story and having a passion and really putting all into it. ⁓ But like, think, who gets to build? Katie, we need to look at the systems and the structures that are being
Katie Smith (32:31)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I agree.
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (32:56)
co-opted and it's not, I don't think it's an active, like there's no like malicious leadership kind of like doing that. I think that it's just entropy almost that these systems need to be disrupted. we need, right? We need more stories of, you know, people who are immigrants in this country and getting their very first patents and winning, like really winning for their team.
Katie Smith (33:10)
Yeah, big time.
Beth Rudden (33:25)
Like, that's, we got to do more of that. I think, and that's, that was my instinct when you first brought this whole leadership. I'm like, let's talk about what's going good and, and what's really happening in the world where we do see people writing and speaking and it's just, it's just drowned. So that's, that's why I wanted to, kind of think about like Abby Wambach's book and Wolfpack and like cite the
Katie Smith (33:26)
Right.
Beth Rudden (33:54)
cite the more modern version of the, it's not the critic who counts kind of thing.
Katie Smith (33:59)
So the leadership that we actually need, I think you brought this up a little bit earlier. It's like, it's not about short-term thinking. Yes, we have to care about the short-term because like you and I have investors that we have to report to. Like people are expecting something. But if we only thought about the short-term, like if I was at Playboy and I only thought about the short-term when I was running a $20 million subscription business,
I could have bankrupt the whole company. I would have been fired. If I only cared about short term, I would be like, here's a promo, do this, do this now, dah, dah, dah. I would have burned through the list. I would have done everything possible just to make as much money in the short term. And I would have been fired. No, and that's frankly, even the president of the United States. If they are only thinking about short term,
Beth Rudden (34:42)
Yeah.
Katie Smith (34:50)
which I think you see examples of this right now, that person needs to be fired because if you're not thinking about the long-term, you're actually not doing what's best for the company, you're not doing what's best for the country. So at Playboy, for example, I had to come up with like this sauce, like this, these, you know, the secret sauce of like, how do you balance to hit your short-term sales goals, right? So that, cause you have to report to the market on that.
But you have to build an infrastructure and a team and a culture and a brand that is sustainable for the long term. And so one of the things I'm most proud of my Playboy experience, ironically, I know it's a whole story, like how did I go from an EMT to organic fair trade non-GMO.
company to Playboy is a story for another day. But like one of things I'm most proud of is that we did find maybe not, you know, maybe a recipe is not the right way to say it, but like the levers of like, here's how you hit those goals, but that you can create compounded growth, right? With with these programs. And it became a legacy program. In fact, Heff was really upset with me because he's like thought I we were killing the magazine is like no half the magazine was dying anyways, but
Beth Rudden (35:47)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Katie Smith (36:05)
You have to care about both. And the way that we got to that balance of just sustainable growth was tons of testing and understanding our audience and engaging with people. And I didn't have all the answers. I actually had to do a lot of testing and to get to this place, right? I think there's a lot happening right now where people don't actually care about the end user as much as they just care about growth.
Beth Rudden (36:07)
Right.
Katie Smith (36:34)
Growth at any expense. Growth in the short term. Drop interest rates now. Throttle this here.
Beth Rudden (36:41)
It's literally the definition of cancer.
Katie Smith (36:44)
Mm.
Beth Rudden (36:46)
it right is growth without, you know, any sort of boundaries. So let's let's go back like Ginni Rometty for me. I mean, you the transformation and she totally focused on people so much so that she had indemnified like the 139, like the one mission, the three values, the nine principles. And it's like we all knew it, like, and that was like, that's, that's what I call systemic.
Katie Smith (36:47)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hmm. Hmm.
Beth Rudden (37:14)
understanding is like the entire system can understand. ⁓ Jacinda Arden, the former prime minister of New Zealand, ⁓ led with empathy, transparency, and steadiness during Christmas. Reshma ⁓ Sojani, the founder of Girls Who Code, and she is out loud and proud. I love her story about
Katie Smith (37:24)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm?
Beth Rudden (37:37)
having to speak behind Bill Gates and other people who were very famous men. And she's like, these guys, like these guys don't scare me. My girls and I can like run around. I love her. Satya Nadella, believe it or not, I love what he has done for Microsoft. Cause he totally turned that company around because he re-centered the entire company culture. And he's one of the few that.
Katie Smith (37:57)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
you
Beth Rudden (38:04)
openly talks about like really transforming the culture of people so that you have employees that are lifetime employees because they will die for Microsoft. And my request for the Microsoft Republicans to come up and please take some love. Fei-Fei Lee, thought leader and educator bringing total inclusive approaches to AI technology. Well, and more than that,
Katie Smith (38:15)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Grandmother of AI, yep.
Beth Rudden (38:33)
an immigrant who worked, her family worked so hard. she had like, when you read her book, it's just, it's a beautiful, beautiful tale. Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andMe, innovating in healthcare and what she's doing to buy back the data that she now understands. she's trying. ⁓ Wendy Knopp, founder of Teach for America and CEO for Teach for All, investing in education and systems.
Katie Smith (38:34)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's a beautiful story. Yeah.
Yep, she's trying.
Beth Rudden (39:01)
totally worldwide. I piece, piece like, well, and then like Darren Woods, CEO of Exxon Mobil, right? None of these people are without controversy, right? That's, that, that, that, the, point is, is like, you can, I just literally say, it was like, give me a list of 10 leaders that are doing good. Like, and that, come on, why aren't we telling the stories of the people who are doing good? And then every day in our community, the,
Katie Smith (39:03)
I have issues with teach. ⁓
Yeah, sure, sure,
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Beth Rudden (39:31)
the human
Katie Smith (39:31)
⁓
Beth Rudden (39:32)
beings that are working for the nonprofits, doing the organization, doing the execution, doing the ⁓ grind of helping people through the systems and then actually helping to change some of these systems in a way that creates more equitable results, maybe not even in the short term, but definitely in the longer term.
Katie Smith (39:57)
Yeah.
So real leadership really is a bridge, right? It's a bridge into the, you know, like you're creating a bridge for the next generation. You're creating a bridge for someone to succeed. And when that person succeeds, the team succeeds, you know? ⁓ You know, one of the things I like to say to folks is like, look, you need to help that person succeed because that's how we all succeed. Like you have to care.
Beth Rudden (40:02)
I like that. Yeah.
That's right. That's right.
Thank you.
Katie Smith (40:22)
about how other people are showing up, like, and actually care about it, not be upset if they don't,
you know, ⁓ because you never know what's going on with people. So yeah, I really think, you know, we're a bridge, but going back to that community piece, yeah, there's so many leaders on the ground that, you know, those are those quiet,
Beth Rudden (40:28)
Yep. Yep.
Katie Smith (40:43)
leaders that don't ever get credit because they're just showing up. A lot of them are in nonprofits. A lot of them just volunteer. There's so many leaders. And to me, if we could just uplift those voices and if those were the people that we were getting the news from, could you imagine the richness of that news? It would look so different coming from community.
Beth Rudden (40:48)
Yep.
Well,
there's ⁓ this quote, he was respected because he was respectable.
And I think, you know, there's some, I believe that we are beginning to see the nature of human beings. And I love this quote from a leader and my friend, Adam Cutler, AI is today's version of the electron microscope that can see the human condition. And when you take something that somebody has written,
I mean, especially telling if it's like a bunch of tweets and you put it into an AI and you say, tell me about the human being's character who wrote these tweets. You can see the human condition. You can see the character of people. So take, this is something that we can now do. This is why I, this is the age of transparency. This is the tool that AI is. It's, it's a,
It is literally a functional tool of the patriarchy, but they didn't realize that everybody can use it. Take somebody's writing. I mean, especially if you're like, say you're dating somebody, like take what they write and then put it into an AI and ask the AI what the AI sees as far as they, you know, is that person respectable? Is that, does that person?
Katie Smith (42:38)
⁓ yeah, that's interesting.
Beth Rudden (42:40)
Yeah, does
that person have integrity or does the human who wrote this have integrity? And we do it for yourself too. It's like, ⁓ I told you this, I can't remember, it's probably even this morning when we talked, but ⁓ I'm rereading the book Traction, which is ⁓ a great book for entrepreneurs because it gives you the entrepreneurial operating system.
Katie Smith (42:46)
Yeah, sure.
yeah.
Beth Rudden (43:04)
And part of that entrepreneurial operating system is to really understand what is the mission of your organization? What are the values of your organization? You know, how do you align everything you do to the principles that you set up? How does every human being in your organization understand those principles? And the thing that I really love about that is like, it gives you a step-by-step instruction.
Katie Smith (43:21)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (43:31)
on how to do that within a framework that is tried and true. And ⁓ I definitely see that like the leaders that I was around in IBM in a company that forged leaders and truly let them make tons of mistakes because that's how you learn. That is how you learn, but it's also how you transform.
Katie Smith (43:35)
Mm-hmm.
That is how you learn. And you have
to create safe space for that, which I am purposely doing. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (43:57)
It's so
that and that is so necessary because in order to be a good leader, you have to know how to transform and in order to transform, you have to know where you are and where you need to go to. And the only way to do that is fuck up a lot like in.
Katie Smith (44:13)
Well, and you need to know to your point
the how and more first the why. Why are you doing this? And then you get to the how, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (44:17)
Yeah.
That's right. That's right. Yeah.
mean, like, you know, and there's so much, there's so much about the why where people don't want to see other people in poverty. People don't want to see other people sick. People don't want to see their loved ones suffering. They don't want to, you know, leave the world that we borrow from our children worse than when we got got here that people know what is good. So
how do we elevate those that are doing good? And how do we give a shout out to the people who are doing these good things and come from, we might have an abundance of good leaders.
Katie Smith (45:02)
I think we do actually, it's just that they're not the ones that like, you know, they're not in the PayPal mafia, right? And that's the capital just keeps flowing between them. And this is part of what's wrong with this abundance agenda right now is the capital system needs to be massively disruptive to actually create a sustainable abundance.
Beth Rudden (45:07)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So hold on. Companies and corporations by definition are job creators. When did that change?
Katie Smith (45:40)
when the efficiency has played its course.
Beth Rudden (45:46)
Efficiency of what? Like to manage all the cost out of your business?
Katie Smith (45:48)
Well, there you the big
list. We'll just let's stick it with AI in terms of like focusing on one thing. I mean, you know, that's better than anyone that he's like, we're going to like create so much efficiency. And then that gives us, you know, better profit margins. And that's better for the market. And then like, right. It's like the whole game.
Beth Rudden (46:08)
But the fallacy is that currently companies can announce that they are doing layoffs and their stock price increases.
Katie Smith (46:18)
Mm-hmm, efficiency, efficiency. Sure it is, from a bottom line perspective. P &L, you know this.
Beth Rudden (46:21)
That's not efficient. That's just an...
Yeah, but it's not real efficiency. Like there's no actual, actual. I think that cost levers typically get pulled in organizations when people don't plan very well, or when they have a leader that is ⁓ beating up on their salespeople and their salespeople are over committing to what they can deliver to the business. And therefore a cost lever needs to be pulled in another part of the organization.
Katie Smith (46:31)
No, it's short term. It's short term.
Beth Rudden (46:53)
in order to be able to make up for the revenue that was supposed to be delivered by the salespeople. So I actually don't.
Katie Smith (46:59)
Right. Well, it's different
for a publicly traded company than it is for like our companies, right? So I think the dynamics are a little bit different. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (47:05)
Agreed. But
would you hire a bunch of people and then put AI in it and then say, I'm going to fire all of the people that helped me put the AI in it for efficiency? I don't think that that's actually what the companies are doing either. I think that they just know that the ⁓ stock market responds in this way. ⁓
Katie Smith (47:18)
No, you and I wouldn't do that. We would not do that.
Tell me more.
That's right.
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (47:34)
when
you make these types of announcements and you know the
Katie Smith (47:37)
Yeah.
You grow and then as soon as you get too big, they cut costs. Even the, you, you fire people who are even good because you just, you, and then you bring back, you're like, it's a game they play.
Beth Rudden (47:49)
But look at the makeup of these companies.
Right. But look at the makeup of these companies. Like, you know, many people were like, hey, let me hire some extra labor for like tax season help, for instance, you know, like, or seasonal help and whatever it is. And then they naturally decline those people out. But they don't. Some companies, publicly traded companies, they keep contractors around or short term labor around four years, potentially decades. That's
Katie Smith (48:00)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah,
depending on what state you're in, you don't have to pay them insurance or benefits or any of the things. All right.
Beth Rudden (48:22)
That's right. That's right. Yes.
and but like I was a contractor, I made bank over time. It was lovely. You know, and so there's a lot of bloat that is in these systems and you know, workforce is complex. So I want to go back to something. Companies are job creators. Remember, all of the people say, well, if we give tax breaks to the companies, they will put more money back into the economy and create more jobs.
Katie Smith (48:39)
Mm.
We'll see how that goes.
Beth Rudden (48:50)
no, we know how that goes. The companies that are, you know, the companies that are creating the most amount of jobs right now are not the companies that are the highest on the stock market. Not even close. So, Nvidia, 30,000 people tops. I mean, think about that. Like, that's mind blowing. And so it's like, what I feel like is out of balance here,
Katie Smith (49:14)
I know that's mind-blowing. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (49:20)
is that the companies who are reaping the benefits are not actually taking accountability in their single, like what I would say their main mission is for the economy and that's to create jobs. When I put a dollar into the economy, a job is created for somebody to take that dollar in a good and service. Fundamentally, all the economy should be working.
Katie Smith (49:43)
Yeah.
I think that's how the economy works and that's how we think about growth from a ⁓ growth domestic product. But I think companies were born to create profit, not jobs. mean, it's an important distinction. ⁓
Beth Rudden (50:00)
I hear you. hear you. don't
know that I dispute that, but I think that what if we looked at companies for creating jobs? Yeah.
Katie Smith (50:11)
differently. Yes, I think we should
look at it differently. And I think we can be profitable. And that's the whole point. Like in this new, you know, if we have an abundance agenda and that abundance agenda is all about more infrastructure, more housing, you know, more, you know, we don't need more production of food. We just need a better distribution of food. Actually, we have plenty of food on the planet. We just need to rethink how we feed people. ⁓
You know, so if we're leaning into this, like, strip out the regulations, build, go, go, go, I think we could create a lot of jobs. But then it's like, you you like to talk about the pendulum swinging. I think then we're going to see like, ⁓ there's reasons why we had regulations, right? But I think there is a need right now to actually strip away the regulations that we have imagined in the past because they're restraining us too much.
Mostly what they're restraining, think, is a lot of people on the ground. Like, so for example, in California, I can't really hire contractors because they want them to be full-time employee with benefits. Right. And so it's like, you're actually making it really difficult for people like me to just hire a specialized talent to do a specific thing. I have to like figure out how to make it whatever legal in California. So.
Beth Rudden (51:17)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's right.
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (51:38)
I think there's plenty of people who want to create jobs and want to create like a sustainable future that involves people, not just AI agents. ⁓ And yeah, thinking about how AI actually serves us as human beings. And it's not just taking away jobs so that we could have this fantasy utopia someday, which we know is not going to come true. So.
Beth Rudden (51:49)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (52:03)
⁓ right now the abundance is stuck in the 0.001%. Let's just be real, you know, and we need to disrupt the system and we can choose to do this. And this is another thing I will repeat with our time and our money. We do, we, we, can keep investing in that or invest in something different, not just for ourselves, but for our kids, you know, I'm even going to have kids and I care about this.
I care about my friends, kids.
Beth Rudden (52:34)
Well, I think it's the we borrow this world from the next generation, whether they are physiological children or not. the fact that, yeah.
Katie Smith (52:42)
Yeah.
Yeah. And for me, like, I've just had
a lot of people who've helped me throughout the years. Like I've been given a lot of support and in different ways and, you know, coming from my background, you know, and it's like, it's time to give back. It's time to be a bridge and a bridge doesn't mean sucking up billions of dollars so that you can try to create something that nobody actually needs or wants or is asking for. It's a different, it's a different path.
Beth Rudden (53:13)
Yeah.
Katie Smith (53:16)
I think Bast is doing it. think Humma is doing it. think there's lots of other companies. we're going to have somebody next week who's actually doing incredible work in New Zealand that I can't wait for people to get to know. I'm sure, you know, people already know Julia, but ⁓ we'll all tease that name, but we're going to we're going to have we have a really exciting guest next week who I think is going to show us what it really means to care about abundance and people.
Beth Rudden (53:23)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Katie Smith (53:44)
And it's not just short-term thinking, it's long-term thinking. And guess what? We can do that and still make a profit.
Beth Rudden (53:51)
Yep, absolutely. that's... ⁓
Katie Smith (53:53)
This is not socialism.
We are not communists. This is a disruption.
Beth Rudden (53:59)
Neither
of those models are functional in adaptive societies or complex adaptive systems. Katie, thank you so much for this. I liked this conversation and I appreciate you very much letting me turn this into something where we can really talk about what is it that is beginning for us. I do think that it's
Katie Smith (54:05)
Yeah, yeah.
Beth Rudden (54:26)
it's going to be the ending of the big man. Because I think that we have the electron microscope of the human condition and everybody can see people. I definitely would love to see what people do when they take people's data, people's information that they freely give and put it into something so that they can see it a little bit differently. And I think what is beginning is the
companies for job creators, companies that can not only create jobs, but create sustainable boats for human beings to be able to have really good jobs and be able to do something that is functionally better for the system, not just work for the man.
Katie Smith (55:02)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Absolutely. Yeah, I think what's ending or what I hope is ending is, well, I'll just say this. We purposely didn't mention a name or a news item, but this entire episode was inspired by a particular individual who is leading a very particular AI company right now or owns an AI company recently, who has developed a model that does not serve society.
Beth Rudden (55:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (55:44)
and
we all learned about it the hard way. What I love is what we did is like, I think what we just did is we ended the cycle of just rehashing the same thing and giving more clout and air time to these people who don't need it. And what's beginning is, is we're talking about what matters.
Beth Rudden (56:02)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (56:06)
real
leadership, like what you're doing with Bast, I think is real leadership. It is so bold. It is so brave to take your experience and apply it in this new way to have written that book, to push like you are to do the right thing, to be on this podcast and to share your stories and your knowledge with us. That is the type of leadership we need. And it's not short-term thinking. You're thinking about the long-term.
Beth Rudden (56:24)
Yeah.
Katie Smith (56:33)
And I know at Humma we're doing the same thing. And again, there's more people. So can't wait for next week. We're going to have more guests on real leaders, the leaders that we need in this moment, not the stuff you're hearing in the news, everybody.
Beth Rudden (56:47)
That's amazing. Thank you so much. And Katie, right back at you. I think that what Humma is doing and the ambition, it's, it's, you have to have the courage of your convictions. And that, that says everything because I, you are courageous because you are showing me courage. Like that, that is that, that yeah, that's that we're doing the thing every day.
Katie Smith (57:08)
We're doing it. Every day. It's hard, but we're doing it.
Katie Smith (57:36)
Hi, my name is Katie Smith and I am the co-host of And We Feel Fine. This episode is brought to you by Humma. We are a California benefit corporation creating empathetic AI made by and for community.
Beth Rudden (57:49)
Hi, my name is Beth Rudden, co-host for And We Feel Fine. This episode was brought to you by Bast.ai, where we build full stack explainable AI to help everybody understand there's an alternative to black box AI. Come discover AI you can trust. Thank you for tuning in.
Katie Smith (58:06)
Subscribe, restack, like, follow, tell your friends. Bye.
Beth Rudden (58:11)
YouTube.
Bye.