Daniel (00:04.365)
It's Play Saves the World, episode six, Human Flourishing in the Digital Space with special guest, Dr. Rachel Coart.

Daniel (00:36.815)
Hello and welcome everybody to Play Saves the World, an ongoing conversation on the meaning of play for human flourishing. My name is Daniel Hilty.

Kevin (00:47.59)
My name is Kevin Taylor.

Rachel Kowert (00:49.702)
And I am Dr. Rachel Coart.

Kevin (00:51.833)
Yay.

Daniel (00:52.613)
Yay! Dr. Rachel Cohort, welcome so much to Play Saves the World. We're so glad to have you here.

Rachel Kowert (00:59.667)
thank you for having me.

Daniel (01:02.181)
Dr. Coard or Rachel is joining us today to talk about the digital space and video games, online communities, digital games. Rachel, I was saying, we were saying before we started recording, I think you first came to our attention and we noticed you through your Psych Geist YouTube channel, which is an excellent channel.

Rachel Kowert (01:26.031)
you

Daniel (01:32.367)
Just a great repository on various conversations and research on the intersection of psychology and pop culture and digital games. And so grateful to have you joining us for this little foray into digital games, digital space, and how they intersect with human flourishing in life. So yeah, anyway, so recommend that channel, Geist.

PSYCHGI, no.

Rachel Kowert (02:05.497)
Close. Yes. P -S -Y. yeah, C -H. G -E -I -S -T. I don't even know my own channel.

Daniel (02:13.541)
I understand. I understand. Yeah, it's good. So yeah, well, if you don't mind, please just if maybe this is the first time for some of our listeners to hear about you, would you like just telling us a little bit about yourself, please?

Kevin (02:14.46)
It's a clever name.

Rachel Kowert (02:29.039)
Sure. My name is Dr. Rachel Coart. I am a research psychologist. I have been studying the uses and effects of games for 15 years.

Mostly focusing on the links between games and mental health and also some issues around games and trust and safety. I have a YouTube channel, which I'm glad at least one person watches that makes me feel good. Called Psych Geist as you mentioned, but it's also grown into more of a multimedia content production studio that has videos on YouTube, but also a book series and a newsletter and those sorts of things all about the intersection of science and games.

Daniel (02:50.51)
It is good.

Daniel (03:05.273)
I didn't, I was, I just recently saw that, you've expanded into like even some publications and books, right? There's, have a, I was watching your double header video on Psych Geist publications on the Umbrella Academy and Bluey.

Rachel Kowert (03:24.647)
Yes. Yes, yes, there's a book series. It's called the Psych -Gaist of Pop Culture. And we celebrate icons in pop culture and we take a little psychological deep dive into them. The Witcher was the first one because it's my first love, but we also have Mandalorian, Umbrella Academy and Bluey, but it's a 20 book series from PlayStory Press. So there's a bunch more in the pipeline.

Daniel (03:47.237)
That's great. And these are from a variety of authors and researchers and who contribute to all of these. Yeah.

Rachel Kowert (03:53.839)
Correct, like I'm the series editor, I kind of, I make the decision on the editors and the topics and then the editors kind of run with their own, you know, their own topic. I call them love letters to our favorite fandoms. And so we find people who really resonate with Mandalorian and they take the helm with that one.

Daniel (04:05.922)
Okay, okay.

Daniel (04:12.747)
Is there any available kind of hint or preview at upcoming subjects or is that under wraps?

Rachel Kowert (04:19.727)
I can hint and preview. I also should say all the PDFs are free. What I love about PlayStory Press is all the content and all the books is freely available. The paperbacks are beautiful. Highly recommend, but you can see them all for free. Yes, the next one to come out is Stranger Things, which would be a good one. And then the Sightgeist of Taylor Swift is also coming out this year. Yeah, that's a good one.

Daniel (04:35.44)
yeah.

Daniel (04:44.197)
That's great. Just before coming home to the studio, which is home, I was having a conversation with a pastor friend who was all excited because they just got Taylor Swift tickets. So it was an exciting day for this pastor friend of mine. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Kowert (05:00.301)
Ooh, very exciting. yes, for sure, for sure.

Daniel (05:06.157)
So thank you. as I mentioned earlier, we've first got to know you especially around the subject of digital games. And I know you've done a lot of research and speaking on that. Would you mind sharing? So what's been your story with digital games? How did you get into this as a part of your life?

Rachel Kowert (05:30.753)
It's a classic story of I had an older brother who liked video games and it was what we did together growing up. It was the thing we both enjoyed. So I spent my whole life, still now, present day, playing and enjoying games as a leisure activity. But it didn't become a career until I went to graduate school and I trained to become a therapist and I...

was seeing clients in the practice of becoming a therapist and I was hearing a lot of concerns in and around games and there wasn't any research at the time to inform these parents. Like, should they be concerned? Should they not? Other clinicians were asking, hey, I know you play games. Like, should we be concerned? I was like, I don't know. There's no research in this space. that's when I pivoted into a research -based career, looking at the uses and effects of games.

Daniel (06:22.085)
So you really kind of had to at least maybe invent, maybe not from whole cloth, at least kind of, this was some kind of pioneering work into trying to figure out the psychological impact of games on who we are. And like you're saying, not a lot out there when you were beginning.

Rachel Kowert (06:41.078)
Yeah. No, there were two papers out of Stanford from Nikki and Constance Steinkuler and Demetri Williams. They were the only ones doing it. And I remember when I applied for my.

Daniel (06:46.775)
Okay.

Rachel Kowert (06:53.007)
PhD, you have to do an interview about your topic. And I kept saying like, we need to learn all this stuff about games. And the people in the committee were like, I don't know, like, is this interesting? Is this important? And like they weren't convinced. Whereas today, you know, in 2024, it's a massive field in academia, it's interdisciplinary, loads hundreds of people, not thousands are studying it. Yeah, but at the time, it was quite new.

Kevin (07:17.959)
Yeah, and I've got teenage boys and it's very much, I was thinking how it's the world they swim in, it's the way they hang out with their friends, it's always gonna include some sort of video gaming because the devices are even more prevalent, I think, than when you were growing up or certainly when I was growing up, yeah, yeah.

Rachel Kowert (07:37.056)
for sure. absolutely. Because when I started studying games, it was still very much a conversation of your online life and your offline life and they were separate.

entities with separate groups of friends and separate people and that is absolutely not the case anymore.

Kevin (07:49.618)
Hmm.

Daniel (07:54.277)
So the people you might spend your days with in person are also the days you're spending your time with online as well.

Rachel Kowert (08:01.102)
Yes, and then the people you meet online might be people you then bring into other offline spaces. Like there are innumerable stories of people finding their spouses playing online games and those sorts of things. The online dating. Yeah.

Daniel (08:11.449)
Really? Interesting. Yeah.

Kevin (08:14.493)
This almost, through games, wow. It almost reminds me what they said or heard read recently that when ATM started, they thought it would replace local banks. They thought it would just, like, you just wouldn't have it anymore. But the truth is it kind of enabled them to stay open because you needed fewer people. So you had the ATM for cash withdrawals, but you still need to go in that space.

So it's like the digital, the ATM is coexisting with the physical need to, I don't know, have a question, open an account or something that you need a person for. Yeah, like they can cohabitate quite well.

Rachel Kowert (08:56.984)
Absolutely. When I started...

into this work, the concern was a lot around displacement. Same thing you're saying, Kevin, like online interactions in games are gonna displace, they're gonna replace our traditional interactions and that's a bad thing and we should be worried and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that was kind of it. But what we find in the research and what we know very clearly now is that it augments. It's not displacing, it's not fully replacing, it exists, it coexists.

Kevin (09:08.742)
Hmm.

Kevin (09:20.134)
Right.

Daniel (09:26.841)
So it sounds like it was kind of a hard sell at first when you were trying to propose this subject. So how did you finally get it approved? mean, what was there a trick for getting this? Yeah.

Rachel Kowert (09:30.586)
Yes. How did I get approved? Yeah, you know what? I remember the exact moment actually. So I was on the interview. The interview was an hour and at the, kept saying it's important. And at the end of the interview, one of the people on the panel said, you keep saying it's important, but who is it important for?

Kevin (09:34.352)
I love

Rachel Kowert (09:55.075)
Who are you getting this information for? Who needs this information? And I said, the clinicians need it. And I said it without hesitating, but that's the space I was in. I was training to become a clinician and there was a pause and they said, good answer. And then I got a spot in the program. So I guess that convinced them.

Kevin (10:07.538)
Hmm.

Daniel (10:09.061)
Okay, okay, interesting. Okay, good, Glad you thought of clinicians.

Rachel Kowert (10:16.106)
Me too. I mean clinicians, they're the backbone of us all.

Kevin (10:20.243)
And what was your first video game love? what was the one that, you know, cause for board gamers, we often talk about the first game that kind of showed us modern board gaming. So what would you call that for you?

Rachel Kowert (10:31.479)
Good question. it's so hard. I'm have to go Final Fantasy 6 is really sticks with me. It's a

You have a cast of characters. It's an open fantasy world. You save the world. You work together. That one was really hit me in all the right places, I think, because it was the first game I played where I felt I was like important to the story and like important in saving the world. And there were female characters in that game that were really strong, powerful leaders. There's like a general in an army. There was, you know, a mage who could hold her own and wasn't reliant on anyone else to kind of like hold her hand through it.

Daniel (10:53.955)
Mm. Mm. Mm -hmm.

Rachel Kowert (11:10.337)
And that was a really kind of powerful experience for me. And I think it also hit at the right age, like 11, 12, somewhere in there.

Kevin (11:20.519)
That's lovely. For me, and I'm not a big video gamer and I feel just older a little bit because they've changed so much, but I loved Halo. The first Halo because it had such a narrative arc and I had no idea that all of a sudden you'd be dealing with these zombie characters. Like it goes from you fighting the bad guys to there's another bad guy. And I was just like, whoa, I didn't know you could do that. You could tell a story like

Rachel Kowert (11:31.401)
Mm hmm. Yes, Halo is a good one. Yeah.

Rachel Kowert (11:51.245)
Yeah. Video games. Yeah.

Kevin (11:51.576)
So that was great. But now modern board games, there's so much of choosing your clothes and buying. There's always stores where you buy stuff. Yeah, video, sorry, video games. Yeah. I just feel kind of lost. It's so different from my experience for what or what I want.

Daniel (11:58.287)
Digital games? Yeah.

Rachel Kowert (12:05.582)
Yeah. I mean, I think that the industry has changed so much, right? For what you want. You just have to find what you want. What you want is still in there. I would say as I've gotten older,

Kevin (12:11.249)
Sure. Sure.

Rachel Kowert (12:16.783)
and have less time to commit to, know, Final Fantasy games or 100 plus hours. I love them, but I don't have that time anymore. I've really wandered into the world of indie games. And, you know, there's a lot of those to explore that they don't have the money to develop that much customization or storefronts even to begin with in their games. And you can kind of play the closed loop in a couple of hours. I'd say there's still games for you, Kevin. There's still games for you out there. Yes.

Kevin (12:32.306)
Mm -hmm.

Kevin (12:40.315)
I know. I know it's just when I when I occasionally dabble with it. It's it seems so different. I'm like I want to play this game. Why am I picking out clothes? It just it's it's it feels like another culture. It's like going to Italy and you're like you eat this for breakfast is so weird like, you know, it's very different culture. But yeah, yeah, yeah

Rachel Kowert (12:47.46)
Yeah. Right. It's definitely changed. Yep.

Daniel (13:05.861)
It's interesting hearing, I mean, some repeated themes in what you're talking about, Rachel, in what we've encountered in other subjects and other episodes of play before, this sense that it so often feels like when we or whoever is trying to talk about the value of something that is perceived as playful in life or in the world, how much that's so often a hard sell to larger...

Rachel Kowert (13:16.525)
you

Daniel (13:34.605)
society and to folks, this is not considered serious work or important when in fact it often kind of touches upon some of the most important things about how we interact with each other and what it means to be human. And as you said, giving you this sense of importance and value and that's something we've heard in other aspects of play as well, this ability to give a person a sense of

Rachel Kowert (13:40.334)
Hmm Hmm

Daniel (14:05.087)
of self -worth and agency when it seems like there aren't a lot of other places in the world where that person can get that. So, yeah.

Rachel Kowert (14:13.546)
Yeah, absolutely. We're so quick to discredit the value of play in adulthood. It's almost like second nature. It's like what? Play for non -children? That's ridiculous. Yeah.

Daniel (14:21.231)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you suggest this research topic. You mentioned clinicians. It gets approved. You enter into this world of researching the influence of digital games. So could you tell us a little bit about that? Then what did you find out? How can, well, I guess,

Rachel Kowert (14:36.225)
Mm -hmm

Daniel (14:50.861)
Maybe start with the... Well, yeah, just start there. What did you find out? What were some of the biggest surprises about the influence of digital games as you were first getting into it? And how have you found ways that it is a positive influence on people, on societies? We can get into some of that. Maybe the concerns that folks have as well. But what did you discover?

Rachel Kowert (15:14.748)
Well, your PhD, first I discovered your PhD is a really niche topic, because I came in, you know,

very like, I'm gonna find out how games impact us in all areas of our life. And they were like, no, you're not. You have four years. Pick something smaller. So my PhD research was looking at the way that online communication and games impacts our ability to communicate offline. Because a lot of parents' concerns was my kids are gonna lose their ability to socialize because they're only socializing through text online with people they quote unquote don't know. And I will be honest, when I started,

I really thought that's what I would find, that there was some kind of social differences between people who were attracted to online games and people who weren't because the veracity of the concern from the parents was convincing. As someone who played games their whole life, I was like, I feel like I have social skills. what's, am I going to now not have them because I'm playing all these games? but turns out that's not the case. I guess I should have known, but you know, that's why you do research.

And there aren't any social differences between people who play a lot of online games and people who don't. They don't have less friends. They don't rate themselves as less socially skilled. The only thing that came across in the four years of research I did on that project was that people who play online games rated higher on a measure of what can be construed as shyness.

Now that doesn't mean the games make them more shy. It much more likely means people who maybe feel a little social hesitancy are more likely to seek some social communication online. Is that inherently bad? Of course not. They can be making friends. They could be learning new skills. They can be gaining confidence in the ability of the skills they already have.

Kevin (16:37.18)
Hmm.

Kevin (16:54.685)
could be an accommodation to what they need. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Kowert (16:56.589)
It could be in there you go, an accommodation. And so I think that actually was surprising for me because I did go in thinking I was going to, I was going to find the other way around. And a lot of people, parents, clinicians were also surprised that we didn't see any of these disparities one way or the other between people who play games and people who don't.

Kevin (17:18.323)
That that reminds me of something I told Daniel we probably could just cut out and then now I want to bring it up after saying that because you know, everyone's a little bit of a hypocrite but but it just reminds me of that moral panic like there's often this moral panic around things and it came up with D &D games or not video games are not Satanic, but there is a there is a moral panic that ensues that parents are rightfully something they don't know

Rachel Kowert (17:32.671)
Yes. Yeah, you know, I'm glad you brought up moral panic. It is my second most viewed video on my YouTube channel.

Kevin (17:47.718)
There's something that's new, they're worried about their kids, but then it's interesting, we freak out so quickly.

Kevin (17:56.693)
Good job, Daniel.

Rachel Kowert (18:00.074)
Moral panic is interesting because it's cyclical and it just has to find something. We all want a simple solution to a complex problem. So, I think the youth are going a little wild. It must be this new D &D thing I heard of. I think that...

Kevin (18:05.927)
Right.

Rachel Kowert (18:13.295)
I am hearing on the news more crimes are happening. It must be video games because you that's the thing. And you're right. I don't blame anyone for having those assumptions in that we want to understand what's happening with our kids. And if we don't understand the technology, it's easy to be like, well, it might be this new thing. I don't know anything about what kind of impact is that having. That seems natural and normal. But the moral panic about games has lasted literally 50 years. It's really the most enduring moral panic of our time. And I find it

Kevin (18:17.724)
Mm -hmm.

Rachel Kowert (18:42.519)
what's the word? Not irritating. I find it to be like the fly on my shoulder because we have so much research now that debunks a lot of the things that are driving the panic. know it's not related to violence. We know that it's not related to peer delinquency. Like we know all these things, but still that panic is in and around video games is just being like a gross negative influence on all aspects of youth.

Daniel (19:08.431)
Why do you think it's so persistent, moral panic? Okay, I wanna hear about it. Yeah, good, good.

Rachel Kowert (19:12.079)
I have a theory, I have a theory. My unproven but educated hypothesis is that a new technology hasn't come yet to overcome it. So when VR becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, they're gonna say, those 2D games, that's not a problem at all. We've moved on. Now it's the fully immersive. They were good, I think, yeah.

Kevin (19:13.305)
Ooh.

Daniel (19:17.657)
Yeah.

Daniel (19:31.257)
Hmm.

Kevin (19:32.85)
In fact, they were good. They were good. They had, yeah, they'll be nostalgic.

Rachel Kowert (19:37.423)
You know, I'm writing a thing on moral panic right now. And I in the 17, the mid 1700s, there was a big moral panic around novels and like novels are not a valuable writing genre. They should be reading history. Novels are going to make women run away with unsuitable suitors, like all of this stuff. And then literally 40 years later, they're talking about like, I wish people were reading novels. Now they're listening to the radio and my God, 40 years, more than 40 years. But you know what I mean?

Kevin (20:02.706)
Right, right.

Daniel (20:02.981)
You

Daniel (20:06.511)
sure it's legendary, but there's probably even no way to document this at all. But I remember hearing a story a long time ago about just imagining this situation where the development of writing and someone starts, you know, and this idea of I can put my thoughts down on parchment or whatever. And this pushback to it like, well, you're obviously going to get dumber because you can't hold it in your head anymore and you're going to forget things. Your memory is going to... Is that right? Was it Play -Doh? Well...

Rachel Kowert (20:16.802)
Yes.

Kevin (20:29.881)
Mm -hmm Play -doh actually says that at one spot. Yeah, I of yeah. Yeah. Yeah

Rachel Kowert (20:31.138)
Yes. It was going to say it was Play -Doh. Yes. Yes.

Daniel (20:35.903)
I'm in the presence of too much smarter people than I, but yeah, that's so cool. So I didn't just imagine that. Plato said that. Okay, okay. Interesting.

Kevin (20:39.1)
Ha ha.

Rachel Kowert (20:40.163)
Yes. Yes, exactly. So games are just the latest in a long line of these. And actually, would say games still do sustain because like VR isn't taken over, but we're seeing the same world panic around the amorphous screens, screen time, smartphones, social media, not to say they don't.

Kevin (20:41.714)
Play it as it yeah.

Rachel Kowert (21:02.274)
have the potential to harm specific users, but there's no research to show that they themselves, in and of themselves, are harmful, and that's what the problem with the moral panic is.

Kevin (21:13.562)
I do worry sometimes that the limitless nature of modern, these modern forms of

Attention seduction, whatever you want to call it. It's so much more potent like a novel I you could reread it or a newspaper you could grab and Victorian times and read it but eventually you stop but the endless nature of your Netflix queue I guess eventually you get tired but the 24 -hour news cycle those sorts of things are kind of inhuman in the sense like we need rest we need

Rachel Kowert (21:36.561)
Hmm. Hmm.

Kevin (21:47.878)
to be away because we can't function like that, but we're very tempted to do that because of, you know, so I, because we're human.

Rachel Kowert (21:54.487)
Because we're human. We're tempted because we are human also and we as humans seek novelty. It's a core drive and there I am in my PhD at York. There was a professor there who studied visual processing and she told me once that why humans never tire of looking at fire or fireworks is because your visual cortex

Kevin (22:00.933)
Yes.

Rachel Kowert (22:16.257)
never acclimates to the stimulation. So if I tapped you on the shoulder for a bunch of times in the exact same spot, eventually you kind of wouldn't feel it anymore because it acclimates to that feeling, but your visual cortex never does. And so when you have the endless scrolling list constantly changing, your brain and your body, like they want that. So I don't know if it's inhuman. I think it's the most human. Is it necessarily good? That's a different conversation. But we drive for that. Yeah.

Kevin (22:42.055)
Yes. Right, right, right. Yeah, I guess I was struck partly today. I went to the YMCA and in the locker room there's CNBC blaring and it's just, thought, because I don't, we don't have cable TV. It's such a weird idea that there should be a TV on something all the time. And there's like, stay tuned. I'm like, I don't want to stay tuned. I don't want to see this commercial, right? Like I just want to change and get on with my life. Yeah. Like what's wrong with a little quiet, but maybe I'm just, you know, grumpy old man, but.

Rachel Kowert (23:02.511)
I wanna break. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. like, no, I like a little quiet too. I think, you know, to each their own and also in different phases of our life, I think we want different things. Yeah.

Daniel (23:03.0)
You

Kevin (23:13.67)
Yeah.

Kevin (23:20.505)
that's a good point. That's right. Yeah, that's fair. Interesting.

Daniel (23:25.295)
I mean, it reminds, this conversation reminds me of something I heard you say, Rachel, about these weren't your words, but the idea of kind of blaming.

blaming the misuse of media.

as a way to kind of ignore or cover up deeper causes for...

Daniel (23:52.131)
Maladaptive behavior is the right word or just unhealthy, unhealthiness or, know, and separating this idea of kind of separating media from separating the use of a media or the reason that we're using a media from the inherent value or not of that media itself. Kind of is that that is that kind of get at some of the things that you've you've looked at or?

Rachel Kowert (23:54.578)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Kowert (24:21.539)
Definitely. And I think this goes back to the moral panic idea. So for instance, video game addiction, addiction is a very common term that we hear in the context of video games. The research shows that games are not inherently addicting or there hasn't been any research to demonstrate that they are. And the research very clearly points to that people can use games in problematic ways, but what's driving that behavior is

always something else, underlying depression, underlying anxiety. They're using it to help manage moods, but now it's become kind of a maladaptive coping strategy. And that is actually a very important distinction talking about clinicians. How are you going to address the problem? You have to address the anxiety or you have to address the depression. You don't take the games away as if the games are the source of the problem. That could be the coping strategy that's helping them hold on at this point.

Kevin (25:09.722)
Hmm

Daniel (25:10.147)
Right. Right.

Rachel Kowert (25:13.783)
And I think that it's really important that we don't fall into moral panic and be like, it's this one thing instead of looking deeper at the more complicated problem, the more difficult problem, but it's actually the source of what we're seeing externally as quote unquote game addiction. But really it's, you know, a coping strategy for something else.

Daniel (25:30.339)
Yeah.

I know you've had a lot of folks in, if seen on your channel, interviews from news stations and others wanting to talk to you about the moral panic, maybe not so many words, around digital games. Have you found a way of talking about it that you think can help kind of effectively address some of that or lower the temperature on that kind of concern that people have? Is it just talking about the research or is...

What helps with that?

Rachel Kowert (26:05.327)
Yeah, I haven't quite, I haven't quite found the magic formula. I think that talking about the research tends to be my default because as someone who went into the field originally skeptical and expecting to find things and didn't, it was the research that really moved me to rethink the way that we think about games. So I talk about the research, you know, generally, if you look across the board, we've been studying games for 50, almost 60 years and the effects are

Daniel (26:08.932)
Yeah.

Rachel Kowert (26:30.215)
overall more positive than negative. That's usually the kind of the anchor where I start. And then they say, is it okay that my child plays Fortnite? Like at the end of the day, they actually just want to know about their one specific child case. They don't actually want to know about kind of the global effects and...

I guess it's okay probably that your kid plays Fortnite. Is he playing with strangers? But I find that anchoring the research is a good place to start. And also just to validate, like I understand that you want a simple solution to life's complexities. We all want a simple solution, but life isn't that simple.

Kevin (27:01.628)
Mmm.

Kevin (27:05.724)
Right, well said, well said. Yeah, there's this temptation to kind fundamentalism, whether it's religious or not, that would give very simple, you know, these are the fundamental things that will separate the wheat from the chaff, but just, life isn't like that, yeah.

Rachel Kowert (27:20.491)
Mm -hmm. No, and you can just remember, Plato didn't want us to write things down. And look, we love writing things down now. Never write anything down.

Daniel (27:29.763)
I don't know. I'm still suspicious. That's why I. That's why I that's right. Nothing, nothing.

Kevin (27:29.937)
Right. That's right.

Kevin (27:39.367)
That's right. That's right. Hopefully the IRS never figures that out.

Daniel (27:41.997)
I don't do text messages. No, that's right. Thankfully, the IRS is not among our listeners.

Rachel Kowert (27:44.428)
Yeah, exactly. So many. It's a big question. Good ones. Mood management is a really great one. It can take us from.

Kevin (27:47.068)
Thankfully. So discuss, Rachel, what the benefits of digital games are. I know it's a big question. Yes. So give us some good ones.

Rachel Kowert (28:04.443)
board to less bored. can help us go from like frustrated to more calm. Like there's a lot of research that shows that playing game, playful activities, digital games included, could also be board games, could also be playing a...

sport outside, help us manage our moods. Games are really good at creative thinking. A lot of times there's puzzles in games and you have to think of creative ways in order to solve them. And there's not usually just one way to solve them. Sometimes there's multiple ways to solve them and to figure that out.

I think that animal crossing is a good example I like to give at the beginning of the pandemic. We played a lot of animal crossing and I swear to you, taught my kids how to read because there's no voice acting and you have to figure out what those words are on the screen. And so in addition to creativity and creative thinking and mood management and happiness and playing together and socializing, they were also learning how to read, which is pretty.

Daniel (29:02.469)
Creative thinking, mood management, yeah, those are great, like that.

Rachel Kowert (29:05.741)
Yeah, there's a lot. mean, leadership skills, if talk about online games, I was studying online players and their social skills. You can learn social skills from socializing with others, but also from observing others in the environment. And then just a lot of cognitive flexibility.

Daniel (29:10.467)
Yeah.

Daniel (29:17.935)
Yeah.

Daniel (29:23.642)
Mm -hmm.

Rachel Kowert (29:23.695)
Thinking in the moment, know, World of Warcraft is kind of where I was raised. So if I think of, you know, you're fighting a monster and he has a lava comes out of his mouth and you have to move, but you have to think about the other people and where are they? Like you're doing a lot of mental flexibility and just figuring out how to make it through the next 10 minutes of this battle. And that's just, you know, one of the many things you're doing in those kinds of spaces.

Daniel (29:48.845)
In the world of board games, you often hear it said that a good quality for a game is you have a moment in it and you think, I was really clever there. Those little bits that help you to feel, I figured this out. I'm a clever person, yeah, yeah.

Rachel Kowert (30:03.178)
I did that. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin (30:04.871)
Yeah.

Kevin (30:11.467)
And most board games coming out now are trying to zone in on that so that even if you didn't win, you feel like you did something. You had this, you you built something. You feel productive and you don't feel dumb. Whereas Monopoly makes you feel dumb because someone takes all your stuff because you landed on the wrong space. So that's where games have gotten so much better.

Rachel Kowert (30:30.362)
Yeah. You know, you are board game experts. Let me tell you, the game of life was one of my favorite games growing up. I never owned it. So I have a lot of good memories of playing at other people's houses. So my nine year old wanted to play it. And I was like, absolutely, we're going to buy this game and play it. It was my favorite game.

They have changed it. And now that game did not make me feel like I achieved anything. Really? Yeah, I'm gonna leave you with homework, which is to replay the modern game of life because I felt like there was no challenge. I didn't feel clever. I felt like my car filled up real fast. They give you pets now and they count as pegs in your car and then your car's full of pets and then there's no room for people in your car. I don't know.

Daniel (30:57.027)
Really?

Daniel (31:08.76)
Interesting.

Daniel (31:13.081)
Really?

Daniel (31:17.461)
Where did all these cats come from?

Rachel Kowert (31:19.539)
I know! yeah, exactly. Yeah, yes! Because you can't be a parent to anyone else because all your seats are full. Yeah, yeah. Lovely, I look forward to that. Yes.

Kevin (31:20.688)
You really are a dog parent.

Right, Wow.

Daniel (31:27.095)
Interesting, Actually, one of our future episodes, we're talking about a book that details the history of silver board games, including the game of life and how it's changed. It's interesting.

Kevin (31:40.018)
Yeah, And video games, again, I'm struck with how it's such a great way to socialize. So my teenage boys, anytime they have some friends, though, and there's a bunch of them, they want to play Smash Brothers and they have the best time. But after about 30, 40 minutes, they'll go outside and play basketball, too. So they're not playing it the whole time. It gets a little old. They never play it on their own. But when people come over, they just have they just have a grand time. Just

Daniel (31:41.049)
That is... Go ahead, Kevin.

Rachel Kowert (31:49.224)
Yes. Mm -hmm. Yep. Yeah.

Kevin (32:09.788)
getting all these crazy powers and smacking each other around and laughing and yeah, I just love that.

Rachel Kowert (32:13.899)
You know, it's fun to experience something outside, you know, the mundane. That's what they call play, right? Experiencing something outside the mundane. And the other thing about games, board games, I would argue as well, and video games, the reason they're so compelling and the reason they're so fun is because they hit those three buckets of motivation, human motivation. At the end of the day, you can draw down all human action into three motivational tracks, the desire to feel autonomous,

Kevin (32:19.26)
Yeah.

Daniel (32:21.285)
Hmm.

Rachel Kowert (32:42.478)
free to make choices, the desire to feel achieving that you've achieved something, you did something clever, and the desire to feel related to other people, either actual other people or the characters in the game. And that's under this umbrella. It's called self -determination theory. And the argument goes that all things we do as humans ever in our life are motivated by one or all of those three things. And games do all three really, really well. Really well designed games do all three. And that's why, you know, I'll happily spend 150 hours in a Final Fantasy

Kevin (33:05.905)
Yeah.

Daniel (33:06.148)
Mmm.

Rachel Kowert (33:12.385)
because it's all those buckets and it's feeling very satisfying to me. Or Smash Brothers, they'll do that for 30 minutes, but you know, they're also getting those same buckets hit when they go outside and they play basketball. Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Kevin (33:24.477)
Right, right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's not tempting them to stay inside all the time because eventually they're like, let's go do something else. But it's such a, mean, as a kid, I would have loved to have that way to play with friends. So I remember Pong and that kind of stuff, but that was one, two people. I mean, it was not nearly as exciting, not nearly as autonomous.

Daniel (33:24.697)
I that.

Rachel Kowert (33:43.239)
Not a whole bunch. Wasn't, yeah. Wasn't a round of Fortnite, which is when all the kids are playing now. Yes?

Kevin (33:49.702)
Yeah, yep.

Daniel (33:51.525)
terms of connection, if I could share one story, two from our family, I need to give credit where it's due to my wife Kristen on this. So both of our kids are adults, are out of the house, and have moved away to college and jobs and things like that. But they grew up playing Minecraft here in the family.

Rachel Kowert (34:00.143)
Mm -hmm.

Daniel (34:20.577)
After they left, Kristen said, you know what? I'm going to learn to play Minecraft so I can connect with our kids. And by golly, so our son is a programmer and kind of set up our own server, things like that. And it took me a while, but I eventually kind of got into it too. And now they're roommates. And so now like there these really fun nights when like, even though we live in different places, the whole family gets together.

and just does Minecraft together and then some of their friends too and it's just delightful. It's so cool. I'm horrible at it, but it's really good. Yeah, Right, right.

Rachel Kowert (34:51.268)
That's lovely. It's the best. It's the best.

Kevin (34:57.394)
you

Rachel Kowert (34:58.196)
But you know what's so good is because you're playing together. It's not that you're just hanging out together. It's not that you're just on a phone call together. You're doing something fun and playful together. And that's really magical in terms of like the social connection that's happening there. Yeah. Yes.

Kevin (35:10.877)
Right. And like board games, ultimately the stakes are low. If you're terrible at Minecraft, it really doesn't mean much of anything. Like it's still fun. a board game, you're like, hopefully you have the perspective of, know, it's just a game. And then of course people do get, can go down a different path and get, you know, put their ego too much in the stakes. But hopefully, hopefully you're just like, yeah, it's just Minecraft and I'm bad at it. Let's play again. Right? Who cares? This is fun.

Daniel (35:11.013)
That's awesome. That's awesome.

Daniel (35:23.801)
Yeah.

Rachel Kowert (35:30.776)
Totally. my gosh, I'm awful at Minecraft and my kids love it. I fall off cliffs, I run into creepers. that's the best for them. Yeah. Sure, why not? Yeah.

Kevin (35:40.72)
Right, exactly. Yeah, and you'll play again. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. Why not?

Daniel (35:48.921)
They have all modded their Minecraft in some way that they can teleport. I cannot do this. so most of my playing involves me getting into some horrible situation and just saying over the Discord, could someone please come teleport to me and get me out of this lava pit or whatever. As I say, okay, dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is.

Rachel Kowert (35:59.994)
Help!

Kevin (36:02.45)
Please help.

Rachel Kowert (36:05.907)
That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, that's see that's so fun. That's so fun. Yes. It's called self -determination theory. Yeah. it's great. And there's SDT. it. And then there's there's articles specifically framing the SDT framework on top of video games and showing how those two.

Kevin (36:07.878)
Dad's in the cave again, help!

That's great.

Daniel (36:13.357)
So freedom, achievement and connection, guess those were kind of my words that I put in, this, said the three, what was that overall theory called of, of self -determination? I love that.

Kevin (36:23.506)
Hmm. SDT.

Daniel (36:28.067)
Yeah, yeah.

Kevin (36:33.778)
Hmm. Hmm.

Daniel (36:36.79)
That's great. So we talked about the moral panic around video games and really how it's just not what the research bears out. Are there any, do you have any concerns that are unique to the digital world and or not?

Rachel Kowert (36:57.558)
Yeah, I mean, definitely. Nothing is all good or all bad. And there's definitely concerns. know, people do people use games problematically. Absolutely. We talk a lot about escapism, for instance, like I think it's great to escape into a book or escape into a Netflix series or escape into a video game. But if you're escaping for distraction, that's one thing. If you're escaping for avoidance, that might not be as good for you to be doing. So there's definitely concerns around.

Daniel (37:01.146)
Yeah.

Kevin (37:14.226)
Mm

Rachel Kowert (37:25.312)
those kinds of things, problematic use. There's concerns about online harms. That's kind of where my work is these days. I have a lot of concerns about online harms, especially in game spaces because they tend to be...

less regulated and less moderated than traditional social media. They tend to be excluded from those conversations around regulation. So I have a lot of concerns around that. So like when parents say, can my kids play Fortnite? Right? My answer is usually, are they playing with strangers? Honestly, that's usually where I go. Cause I'm far more concerned about the social harms that could be happening in this space than the harms of the technology or the content of the game itself. Right.

Daniel (38:04.687)
harm inflicted by another human player.

Kevin (38:05.138)
And by that you mean...

Rachel Kowert (38:08.746)
Yeah. Yep. All that kind of stuff. Yep. Exposure to hate speech, normalized misogyny. Like there's lots of things that kind of discuss in there.

Kevin (38:09.052)
By that you mean threats, bullying, that kind of behavior, okay.

Kevin (38:24.572)
What would you say the criticism, the attention merchants type criticism that these games are really pulling us in and taking away our attention from things that we maybe aren't aware of?

Rachel Kowert (38:37.39)
It's a good question. would say as a good academic, would say that's not my area of expertise. I would say there's a lot of conversation about that specifically related to what are called dark patterns or dark design. Dr. Celia Hodent is really kind of expert in this space, but the things that are going into games that don't put the player first. like

microtransactions or loot boxes or those sorts of things. I think that's worthy of a discussion in and of itself. Like is that really the best design we could be having to help our players flourish, you know, in these spaces or is that more not player centered in terms of the choices that you're making and how you're designing these spaces. But for attention economy, there's other experts for that. I'm not as well versed in that.

Daniel (39:04.569)
Mm -hmm.

Kevin (39:26.887)
Gotcha. Okay. Yeah.

Daniel (39:31.875)
I like that idea of how you phrase it about putting the player first. Yeah, I if that's not...

Rachel Kowert (39:36.128)
Mm -hmm. It's not putting them first. Is it really what we should be doing? Yeah.

Daniel (39:38.649)
That's not the motivation.

Right, right, yeah.

Kevin (39:45.422)
And the threat is always with corporatization of things that it can... that we're not going to put the player first because their goal is to make money, which is fine, and that's how it works. But it can become, you know, don't know, predatory. And board games have been... People are asking these questions as well. There's this whole wanting to kickstart a game and adding on all this stuff and basically paying up front for a game you've not played and ending up...

Rachel Kowert (40:02.671)
Right.

Kevin (40:14.578)
getting excited and then a year and a half later you've got a $700 in a game you don't like and you're like, what, how did that happen?

Rachel Kowert (40:20.713)
Rights. Rights. Yeah.

Daniel (40:27.717)
Are there any digital games that you would recommend to newbies? or, yeah, newbies to the world of digital gaming. maybe Kevin and me, we know a little bit about it. I know their thing. There's something called Minecraft.

Rachel Kowert (40:37.714)
Newbies. you know.

a little bit. There's something called Minecraft. actually, I love Minecraft. I don't know if I'd recommend that for new players. And I think that that's because I'm biased that I have very bad visual spatial skills. And so I find Minecraft very difficult actually to navigate effectively. I would say like a Mario Kart. Everyone can do a Mario Kart and one button to go, one button to shoot a shell. That's, it's pretty simple. Although a new game came out recently called Astro Bot.

Kevin (40:57.382)
Hmm.

Daniel (41:02.562)
Yeah.

Rachel Kowert (41:11.214)
which is incredibly fun platform game, which also has very simple mechanics. It's very colorful and bright and shiny. And that one's been pretty fantastic. Yes, it's very fun. PlayStation. Yeah. It's really fun. Highly recommend.

Daniel (41:22.093)
astrobot.

Kevin (41:23.762)
What platform is that? Peace.

Daniel (41:28.28)
Nice, cool.

Daniel (41:34.671)
I like it. Thank you.

Kevin (41:35.218)
Very cool.

Rachel Kowert (41:36.772)
Mm -hmm.

Kevin (41:38.501)
Is it time?

Daniel (41:39.385)
Well, we're approaching kind of our end of the show. Do you want to play the game? Okay. All right. Before we get to our closing game, anything else that you wish we had talked about or asked about that we haven't talked about? I'm sure there's so much more we could talk.

Rachel Kowert (41:42.447)
I want to play the game. I want to play the game. Yes. there's a lot to talk about, but I think we covered the bases. think it's important to understand that just games are tools. Games are one piece of media, just like any other thing. And they may have been subject to the moral panic for many decades. but I hope that for people who are listening,

They'll give them a try and they'll give them a shot, you know, and they're really fun and they can be a great way to connect with your family and just, you know, manage your moods. How can they find me? You can find me on YouTube at Psychgeist. I also have a website. It's R -K -O -W -E -R -T dot com. And on that website, you can find all the ways to find me.

Daniel (42:16.345)
Yeah, yeah, great, thanks. And before the closing game, in case people don't wanna listen to the closing game, how can people find you?

Kevin (42:38.118)
Yeah, I just Googled your name and got to the website. Yep. Yep.

Rachel Kowert (42:40.367)
There I am. There's my face. Yep. Yeah. I say that Kevin because I showed that to my children once I Googled my name and a bunch of pictures of my face come up because I'm on the internet and my kids thought I was like, they're like, my God, are you famous? Why is your picture here? And so I use it to impress my children. Yeah.

Daniel (42:44.257)
yes, please. Yeah. Check out the website and the channel if if if you have it already. We recommend it.

Kevin (43:06.652)
buddy.

Daniel (43:08.097)
It's use of it, yeah.

Rachel Kowert (43:09.92)
It is, it is.

Daniel (43:12.129)
Well, so Rachel's been kind enough to agree to end with a game. Yes, game or box. We've been trying to perfect the simultaneous chant over the internet and it hasn't quite quite worked out yet, but the the zoom challenge. So this is something that Kevin and I have been working on. Kevin and I have done this a couple of times just ourselves, but it hasn't been published yet. This might be our first.

Kevin (43:14.204)
Game. Or. Fuck.

or or fuck

Daniel (43:40.997)
published example of it. Yeah. So Rachel's kind of to agree to this. It's a little game we're calling Game or Box. And here's the thing. One of us tries to pitch a beloved board game to that person, to the other person, and talks about the virtues of this game, why we think the other person would like it. And then at the end of it, at the end of the pitch, we also talk about

Rachel Kowert (43:41.35)
.

Kevin (43:42.051)
it is. I hadn't thought of that.

Rachel Kowert (44:03.118)
You

Daniel (44:10.795)
a mystery box which will also be revealed and give some clues as to what is in the con what's the contents of the mystery box the person that is being pitched to then has to decide between the game or the contents of the mystery box if they choose the game the game will be delivered to them by place saves the world carrier pigeon which which which does not really exist so sorry Rachel all of all of these awards are just are just metaphorical

Kevin (44:32.626)
doesn't really exist, yeah.

Rachel Kowert (44:36.621)
Boo!

Kevin (44:37.842)
It's all fictional. Actually, there is one you get which is a t -shirt, but that one is real.

Daniel (44:39.813)
Or, that's right, we are going to give you a t -shirt, Or, they can choose the contents of the box. If they choose the contents of the box, that will be delivered by, please save the world, or pigeon. Or they can shoot the moon and try to guess the contents of the box. If they guess correctly the contents of the box, they get both items delivered by carrier or pigeon. If they guess incorrectly, they get neither. So that's how we play.

Rachel Kowert (45:03.702)
my gosh. I feel like I'm on Price is Right. Okay. Awesome. There you are. You're back. Maybe. Yes.

Kevin (45:09.819)

Daniel (47:57.957)
So, so Rachel, I'm going to pitch you a game and, and, all right, all right. So here we go. All right, here we go. The game I want to pitch is the only game that I'm aware of in my collection that was inspired by, a video game. So that's why I thought it'd be especially appropriate for today. Have, are you familiar with, with Dorf Romantic?

Kevin (47:58.676)
-huh.

Rachel Kowert (47:59.456)
Yes, yes.

Kevin (48:01.811)
What?

Rachel Kowert (48:10.392)
Okay, let's hear it. Mm -hmm. I'm not, but I'm already pretty convinced by the name alone.

Daniel (48:31.749)
So there we first got to know dwarf romantic as a as a video game on the Nintendo switch it is We did as a video game. It's a very peaceful tile laying game. It's a video game that looks like a board game kind of very like Kattan like where you are You're taking these little tiles and some of them have railroad tracks on them

Rachel Kowert (48:40.352)
Okay.

Kevin (48:41.498)
so you had played it before. Wow.

Rachel Kowert (48:48.706)
Hmm

Daniel (49:00.453)
And some of them have, I don't know, fields and forests on them and sheep. you're just, and you take turns, well, in the video game, it's just one person. You have to match sides and you grow this village with different terrain types. And then you get rewards based on certain goals, like having five field tiles connected or 12 forest tiles connected or things like that. It really a lovely,

almost kind of meditative video game, Dorf Romantic out of Germany. And so then it was so board game -like they decided to make an actual board game based on it. And this is a game that is cooperative, it's tile laying. It's unlike most other cooperative games, it's very, very peaceful. My wife, Chris and I have...

Rachel Kowert (49:46.702)
That's cool.

Daniel (49:56.197)
joy doing it in the evening and we just kind of, we just make this growing map of a village out in front of us. It's also a campaign game, which means that you add new elements each time you play it based on how much you've achieved in your previous game. So it kind of, it feels different from game to game. It came out in 2022 and super board game nerdy here in 2023, it won the...

the annual Spiel des Jahres award, which is like the big, the big game of the year award in the board game community. So that's my pitch for a board game to you. So Dwarf Romantic, the board game or...

Rachel Kowert (50:30.773)
Okay. That's your pitch. Good name. Good name. Or

Daniel (50:44.415)
or the contents of the Play Saves the World Mystery Box right there. So here are some clues. Here are some clues and then you can decide if you want one or the other. We always try to tie it into the theme of the board game. So how it's tied into the theme this time is half of the name of what's in this box is also German. That's clue number one. The name of it, half of it is German like the dwarf romantic. Okay, here we go. Clue number two, half, the other half of the name is Spanish.

Rachel Kowert (50:46.704)
I do like a mystery box. Okay. Okay.

Daniel (51:14.821)
First half is German, second half is Spanish. Clue number three. It is, and this might just kind of give it away. Maybe, maybe not give it away. don't know. A chocolate hazelnut confection treat that you can find in grocery stores.

Rachel Kowert (51:15.425)
What?

Kevin (51:16.305)
What?

Rachel Kowert (51:18.487)
Okay

Rachel Kowert (51:33.951)
That's half Spanish and half German. I'm so confused.

Daniel (51:39.413)
half German, I, I, it's a chocolate treat, half German, half Spanish is the name. Not, not to add to the confusion of all, it's actually made by an Italian company. We live in a strange world. So, so those are the three clues. So either you can choose to have this without guessing what it is and you'd get it by carrier pigeon. Okay, okay. Or the video game.

Kevin (51:40.412)
but it is the chocolate treat.

Rachel Kowert (51:52.083)
What? my gosh. Okay. I cannot guess it.

Kevin (51:53.924)
Our world is very disturbing.

Kevin (52:06.974)
Can I can we discuss maybe because is it something like Aldi has German what's that some of those German candies that have come over? the little kinder something kinder chocolates I Don't keep the Spanish

Daniel (52:09.145)
Yeah, we could totally guess.

Rachel Kowert (52:17.967)
There's kinders, but like, but those like kinder surprise kinder egg. No. That sounds so appealing. Made by Italians. yeah, I used to live in Germany.

Daniel (52:19.119)
Hmm.

Daniel (52:23.077)
Have you heard of a kinder kind of game with candy with a Spanish word after it?

Kevin (52:23.42)
but there's not a span.

Kevin (52:30.32)
Kinder salsa.

Daniel (52:32.921)
It's so good. It's so good.

Kevin (52:39.527)
Hmm.

Daniel (52:45.305)
Did you really? Where? Mask whereabouts? let's start.

Rachel Kowert (52:45.56)
So now I'm going, I did, I did my postdoc in Germany in Munster. Munster in the North. my God. Well, look, it might have a German name, but the German name isn't Dorf. So I feel like the game wins between game and box. I think the game wins, yeah. I want to know what's in the box.

Daniel (53:02.437)
you're going to get the game yay i think that was a good choice that's what i would have picked as well so yay we're gonna we're gonna get a really strong carrier pigeon to bring that to you so yeah thanks in the box in the box is ready i guess you can do on camera here in the box is little mini kinder bueno's kinder bueno's yeah

Kevin (53:06.652)
Yay.

Kevin (53:12.39)
Yeah.

Rachel Kowert (53:12.476)
Yeah, a muscley one. Yeah.

Kevin (53:27.186)
Kinder Bueno, I have seen that. no. I was right about the Aldi Kinder thing.

Rachel Kowert (53:27.202)
Kinder Bueno! I know Kinder Bueno!

Daniel (53:33.125)
So this is kinder bueno, German Spanish made by an Italian company, Ferrero. This is a year's supply if you eat one every 26 days. So yeah, so there you go.

Rachel Kowert (53:35.786)
You were, you were, you were.

Rachel Kowert (53:42.798)
They're good. Here's a... great, great. Yeah, that's weird.

Kevin (53:49.01)
I didn't know that was an Italian company. That's wild.

Daniel (53:51.429)
I didn't either. just discovered these just like in the last week, but I've been eating more than one every 26 days. They're really good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well played, Rachel. Thank you. Good job. Good job. Let us know when your carrier pigeon arrives with the game.

Rachel Kowert (53:59.16)
They're delicious. Kinder Bueno's are very good.

Kevin (54:00.636)
They are good. Yep, yep.

Rachel Kowert (54:06.04)
Thanks. Thanks. Yay.

Kevin (54:07.12)
Yay!

Rachel Kowert (54:11.084)
I will, I will. Yes, yeah.

Kevin (54:12.188)
Please send them back.

Daniel (54:13.893)
he will come back. That's what he does or she or it or yeah. No, it's way too complicated. We need to train it from Rachel's place. That's how I could release it here. Yes, that's right.

Kevin (54:17.444)
alright, I forgot. I forgot.

Rachel Kowert (54:18.798)
Yeah.

Kevin (54:27.292)
That's the trick. It would have to be Rachel's pigeon. Where are you? Where do you live? You're our kin. Okay.

Rachel Kowert (54:27.501)
That I'm, I'm far. Yes. Yes. Canada. So I hope that that pigeons prepare. okay. Great. Great. He's not going to go through immigration.

Kevin (54:37.816)
You

Daniel (54:38.361)
We train our pigeons to have no respect for national boundaries. just, they, yeah, yeah, it's a very.

Kevin (54:42.096)
Right. But he will need to purchase a health care plan to come back to the United States. There's the problem. Yes. Poor us.

Daniel (54:48.345)
That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Well, this has been great and delightful. And thank you so much, Rachel, for being a part of this. I really enjoy this guy. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Rachel Kowert (54:48.87)
He will, he will, he will.

Rachel Kowert (54:55.576)
Yes, thank you.

Rachel Kowert (55:03.17)
Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, that great.

Kevin (55:03.398)
Yes, this is delightful.

Daniel (55:07.907)
All right, and Kevin, where can people find us?

Kevin (55:10.642)
placeastheworld .com

Daniel (55:12.197)
playsavestherworld .org. Yeah, we're just getting used to our new brand. Yes, playsavestherworld .org. And they can email us at playsavestherworld .gmail .com. And again, check out the Psych Geist channel and ourcoart .com. Yep. All right.

Kevin (55:14.908)
dot org is what I said.

Rachel Kowert (55:31.554)
That's it. Bye.

Kevin (55:32.466)
Super bueno, kinder buenos, everything. Kinder bueno, thank you. Bye.

Daniel (55:34.863)
Kinder Bueno everybody.

Daniel (55:39.247)
Bye bye.