When Brené Brown Slides into Your DMs
Learn how the Dare To Lead: Unmasking AI podcast episode came to be!
"LOVING your book!" These were the first words I saw when I opened my messages on Instagram on an otherwise uneventful Thursday Morning. The sender was supposedly Brené Brown, acclaimed researcher, six-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, vulnerability guru, and fellow southerner. I was suspicious. Impersonators have been around for a long time, and new AI tools are making it even easier for scammers to take on different identities. There are spoof accounts and even AI chatbots supposedly made in the image of celebrities. Some like the Snoop Dog and Tom Brady avatars on Whatsapp are legitimate collaborations. Others are made without consent.
Once upon a time the “Blue Checkmark” was supposed to provide some level of confidence that an account was indeed legitimate. When Elon Musk started selling these checkmarks on Twitter it weakened the designation. So even on Instagram where the Blue Checkmark is supposed to mean something, I was hesitant. Plus, accounts can be hacked. Or maybe my suspicion was a defense mechanism. The message sounded too good to be true. I did not want to be disappointed. I tapped on the profile image to see the account details: 4.9 million followers. I became a believer.
The messages from the clearly official Brené Brown instagram account went on to say that she had tried to reach out to me with little luck. This added even more credibility. Lately I had been overwhelmed by a sea of requests. Even golden opportunities were falling by the wayside. I've been on the receiving end of the ire of high-level publications, conferences, and VIPs of many flavors awaiting a response. Thankfully, Brene's aim was not to shame me. Instead she wanted to engage.
“Would you be on my podcast?”
“It would be my honor!”
On a sunny Spring Monday in Boston, I arrived at Bristol Studios and settled into a former bank vault turned sound studio. This was the same studio where I spent over three days recording the audiobook for Unmasking AI. Brene Brown's cheerful voice and welcoming gaze greeted me. We joked about her sliding into my DMs. I shared how the cover of the Unmasking AI book was also the result of an Instagram message. Last summer, I was in desperate need of a book cover and quickly running out of time. I found the instagram account of Malika Favre, an illustrator I have long admired. She's done iconic New Yorker covers, worked with brands like Sephora, and her designed have sparker viral moments for representation like the #ILookLikeASurgeon spontaneous posts . To my delight she agreed to lend her talents and gifted the world with the cover of my dreams: for a fee of course. Creatives from illustrators to writers should absolutely be paid. (See more here with AJL's Creative Rights Campaign).
Brené and I spent the next hour or so in deep conversation laughing all the way. Throughout I share my poetry, my thoughts on the risks of AI, the need to protect what is human in a world of machines, my recent homecoming trip thirty years in the making. Brené dropped quotes. The one that stuck with me the most is one she recalled from Stanford University Professor Emeritus James G. March:
“Leadership involves a delicate combination of plumbing and poetry. You need the poetry to paint a compelling vision and plumbing to execute.”
Mentally, I thought poetry: check, plumbing: work in progress
In addition to the quotables, one of my favorite parts of the interview was the rapid fire session:
BB: "Vulnerability is..."
JB: "Unmasking Truth"
BB: "You’re going to make my cry, get it together…"
BB: "What is your favorite show to binge?"
JB: "Bridgerton!"
And on and on we went.
We must have been in flow state because by the time we ended, I felt we were still laughing about her sliding into my DMs.
Catch the full episode on Brene's Brown Dare to Lead Podcast.
So great! A fan of you both.