A deepfake of the President hijacked a live stream that 30,000 people were watching. It took generational futurist Ryan Vet five seconds to realize it was fake. That five seconds is the whole problem.

On Father's Day, a stream-jacking deepfake interrupted the College World Series broadcast Ryan Vet was watching with his family, complete with a breaking-news chime, the President's voice, and a QR code asking viewers to send crypto. The unsettling part was not the scam. It was how convincing it was, and how the same suspicion is now aimed at everything real. In this episode of The Ryan Vet Show, generational futurist, USA TODAY bestselling author, and international keynote speaker Ryan Vet unpacks what he calls the credibility hedge: the reflex to dismiss the source instead of engaging with the substance, and what it costs us when skepticism stops being wisdom and starts becoming a cop-out.

Key Takeaways

• On Father's Day, a deepfake of the President stream-jacked a live College World Series broadcast in front of roughly 30,000 viewers. It took Ryan three to five seconds to know it was fake, and he teaches deepfake defense for a living.
• Trust is at a historic low. Nearly 7 in 10 people worry that institutional leaders are deliberately misleading the public, with the sharpest decline in national government and major news (Edelman Trust Barometer, 2026).
• The circle of trust is shrinking. Confidence is concentrating among the people closest to us, our coworkers, neighbors, and families, and pulling away from institutions.
• We have doubted reality before. Photoshop made us question photos. Instagram filters made us question beauty. One study of 18,000-plus "no filter" posts found about 12% had actually used a filter (Santarossa et al., 2017). Now AI makes us question almost everything.
• The credibility hedge: calling something "AI slop" often protects the skeptic more than it judges the content. "No filter" was a badge that proved a photo was real. "AI slop" is becoming the inverse badge that proves skepticism is real.
• Two forces from psychology drive it: epistemic vigilance, the constant calibration of who to trust (Sperber et al., 2010), and source derogation, attacking where something came from instead of what it actually said.
• What AI cannot replace is human direction. In one large organization, employees could recite the mission but not say where the company was going. Clear vision and clear leadership, one human to another, is what rebuilds trust.

Research and Sources Cited

• Edelman (2026), 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer: Trust amid insularity
• Sperber, Clement, Heintz, Mascaro, Mercier, Origgi, and Wilson (2010) on epistemic vigilance, in Mind and Language
• Santarossa, Coyne, and Woodruff (2017) on #nofilter images that actually used a filter
• Fransen, Smit, and Verlegh (2015) on strategies and motives for resistance to persuasion (source derogation)
• The Ritz-Carlton motto: "We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen"
• Ryan's AI course, From Human Hesitation to AI Acceleration, and his related essay The Velocity Gap: Gen Z's Contradiction with AI

Connect with Ryan Vet

• Read the full Collide essay: https://ryanvet.com/collide/is-this-ai/
• Subscribe to the Collide newsletter: https://ryanvet.com/collide
• Learn more and book Ryan to speak: https://ryanvet.com

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Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

If you want deeper research and behind-the-scenes insights on generations and the future of culture and society, join Ryan’s weekly newsletter:
👉 https://ryanvet.com/collide

Everything you’ve been taught about bullying might be making it worse.

Izzy Kalman has been a school psychologist and psychotherapist since 1978 — and since the 1999 Columbine shooting, he’s been the anti-bullying movement’s most persistent critic. In this episode, he argues that a generation of “zero tolerance” policies, mandated by law, took the very things that escalate conflict and taught them as the right thing to do — training kids toward an external locus of control, fragility, and a victim mindset that follows them into adulthood, the workplace, and the college campus.

Then he does something rare on this show: he proves it live. Ryan and Izzy run the “insult game” — a real-time demonstration of how the Golden Rule works, not as a moral platitude, but as applied psychology rooted in our biological wiring for reciprocity.

In this conversation:

• Why the post-Columbine approach to bullying backfired
• Internal vs. external locus of control — and why it predicts a happy, successful life
• Resilience, fragility, and how good intentions weakened a generation
• The science of the Golden Rule and why we’re wired for reciprocity
• How to handle insults, cyberbullying, and conflict without anyone’s help
• Why “the bullies aren’t them — they’re us”

Guest: Israel “Izzy” Kalman, MS — director of Bullies to Buddies, creator of the Golden Rule System, author of Bullies to Buddies: How to Turn Your Enemies into Friends, and lead author of the Be Strong Resilience Program. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Good Morning America, and TEDx.

Learn more about Izzy:
Website: https://www.izzykalman.com
Psychology Today (Resilience to Bullying): https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resilience-bullying

Connect with Ryan:
COLLIDE newsletter: https://ryanvet.com/collide
Website: https://ryanvet.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ryanvet
Instagram: https://instagram.com/theryanvetshow
Book Ryan to speak: https://ryanvet.com/generational-speaker

Chapters:
00:00 Cold open
00:36 Welcome — challenging the bullying orthodoxy
01:28 Columbine and the birth of the anti-bullying movement
08:28 Progressive philosophy and internal vs. external locus of control
11:55 Resilience vs. fragility: how we weakened a generation
12:48 Victim mindset, lawsuits, and “13 Reasons Why”
17:22 The science of the Golden Rule
21:14 Why we’re wired for reciprocity
22:31 The insult game (live demonstration)
30:10 The two illusions revealed
34:37 Comedy, cancel culture, and “making fun”
37:42 Social media and cyberbullying
41:41 “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
42:47 “The bullies aren’t them — they’re us”
44:37 Where to find Izzy Kalman

Send us Fan Mail

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

If you want deeper research and behind-the-scenes insights on generations and the future of culture and society, join Ryan’s weekly newsletter:
👉 https://ryanvet.com/collide

Tom LeNoble was employee number 57 at Facebook, recruited out of Palm, the Palm Pilot and Treo company, back when it was still "the Facebook" and still lived inside college networks. He was older than almost everyone in the building, the person Ryan calls the adult in the room, and he had a front row seat as a tiny unknown startup became one of the most powerful companies in the world.

In this conversation, Tom pulls back the curtain on the human side of that story: what it was like to meet Mark Zuckerberg for the first time, the camaraderie of the early days, the goodbye he gave Mark on his way out, and what it means to work shoulder to shoulder with brilliant, driven young builders. Then he and Ryan widen the lens. Tom is careful to speak only to his own era, not today's Facebook, and he turns the conversation from technology and kids to something bigger: responsibility, the parts of the tech world most people never see, and how a deeply polarized world might start finding its way back to unity.

It is a warm, reflective episode about people, not just platforms, and about the future we are building for our children.

In this episode:

How a Palm executive became Facebook employee number 57

The human side of the early days, including meeting Mark Zuckerberg

Why every team needs an adult in the room

What working with brilliant young builders taught him

Responsibility, and the side of tech most people never see

Depolarization, unity, and a hopeful message for the future

Connect with Tom LeNoble:

Website: openingpathwayscollective.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tomlenoble

Podcast: Opening Pathways (youtube.com/@OpeningPathways, also on Apple Podcasts)

Send us Fan Mail

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

If you want deeper research and behind-the-scenes insights on generations and the future of culture and society, join Ryan’s weekly newsletter:
👉 https://ryanvet.com/collide

Content warning: this episode discusses online harms to children, including suicide, self-harm, and online predation. Listener discretion is advised. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Nicki Petrossi spent years managing social media for tech companies and their executives. Then she started learning how bad the internet had become for kids, and she could not stop. Today she hosts Scrolling 2 Death, one of the most important resources parents have for understanding what is really happening to children online.

Ryan and Nicki go past the usual social media conversation into the traps most parents are not watching: Roblox and online gaming, encrypted chat apps like Discord, and the fast rising world of AI companion bots designed to befriend, isolate, and addict young users. Nicki explains why the common excuse, "my kid will be left out," gets the risk backwards, and why keeping a child off these platforms is an act of love, not deprivation.

They dig into the velocity gap, the reality that technology is accelerating faster than our morality and wisdom can keep up, and what that means when the companies on the other side have hired neuroscientists to build the most addictive products ever made. Nicki shares what is finally changing: Australia and the UK raising the minimum age to 16, more than 1,500 school districts taking action, court cases turning on internal documents, and a growing parent movement demanding safety by design.

Most important, Nicki offers hope. It is never too late to change your family's relationship with screens. She walks through practical steps for every stage, from newborns to teens, and makes the case that the single most powerful thing a parent can do is stay a safe, open place their kid can always come back to.

In this episode:

Why "everyone else has it" is the wrong reason to hand over a device

The online dangers beyond social media: gaming, encrypted chat, and AI companions

What the data shows about Gen Z and chatbots, and why it is climbing fast

The velocity gap, and why regulation has been so slow

How schools and parents can work together

The truth about YouTube and YouTube Kids

A practical blueprint for families at every age

Learn more about Nicki's work at scrolling2death.com.

Send us Fan Mail

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

If you want deeper research and behind-the-scenes insights on generations and the future of culture and society, join Ryan’s weekly newsletter:
👉 https://ryanvet.com/collide

On July 4, 1776, fifty-six men who agreed on almost nothing signed the Declaration of Independence anyway. Two hundred fifty years later, we have forgotten how they did it.

Generational futurist, USA TODAY bestselling author, and international keynote speaker Ryan Vet marks America's 250th anniversary by walking back into the Pennsylvania State House on Chestnut Street. The signers ranged in age from 26 to 70. They were lawyers and ministers, immigrants and planters, men of different faiths and fortunes who disagreed about nearly everything. This episode of The Ryan Vet Show makes the case that the founders were united, not uniform, and asks what shapes us as a people when we lead with our labels instead of the common ground that was there the whole time.

Key Takeaways

• The 56 signers ranged in age from 26 to 70, averaging around 44 (National Archives). More than two generations stood shoulder to shoulder, and they argued the whole way.
• The pen went to Jefferson at 33, not to Franklin at 70. Franklin's restraint, knowing when to step back, was its own kind of leadership.
• Jefferson's one pre-Adams edit changed "sacred and undeniable" to "self-evident" (Becker, 1922). Common ground never required shared belief. It required a willingness to reason together.
• 41 of the 56 signers owned slaves at some point, beneath the line "all men are created equal." The promise was freedom. The practice was not. It took a war, a proclamation, and a march on Washington to start closing that distance.
• The Generational Pendulum: every generation reacts against the one before it, overcorrects, and hands its children a fresh set of problems to correct in turn.
• Americans still agree more than we are told. In May 2026, 69% said the country has achieved at least a fair amount of its founding ideals, across party lines and age groups (Gallup, 2026). Ask what unites us and the most common answer is simply freedom (AP-NORC, 2026).
• Adams and Jefferson were enemies for eleven years, then exchanged more than 150 letters late in life, and died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day. They chose each other again without ever agreeing.

Research and Sources Cited

• Jefferson's Weather Records and the National Archives signer factsheet on the room, the ages, and the day
• Carl Becker (1922) and Michael Zuckert (1987) on "self-evident" versus "sacred" truth
• Martin Luther King Jr. (1963) reading the country its own sentence back at the Lincoln Memorial
• Yascha Mounk (2023), The Identity Trap, on letting the category stand in for the person
• Gallup (2026) and AP-NORC (2024, 2026) on founding ideals, shared values, and what unites us
• Cultural touchstone: John Trumbull's Declaration painting (the calm image we inherited that was never the room)

Connect with Ryan Vet

• Read the full Collide essay: https://ryanvet.com/collide/america-turns-250-they-signed-the-declaration-without-agreeing/
• Subscribe to the Collide newsletter: https://ryanvet.com/collide
• Learn more and book Ryan to speak: https://ryanvet.com

Send us Fan Mail

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

If you want deeper research and behind-the-scenes insights on generations and the future of culture and society, join Ryan’s weekly newsletter:
👉 https://ryanvet.com/collide

What happens when you trade a fast-rising San Francisco startup job for a one-way ticket to Casablanca and no plan past three nights in a hostel? Weh'yee Barkon found out. He joins Ryan Vet, a friend of more than two decades, to talk about the digital nomad life, rediscovering his roots, and building businesses across Africa.

Weh'yee was employee number seven at a fast-growing electronics-recycling startup, helping it climb from roughly one million to nearly seven million in annual revenue. He was traveling constantly and climbing the ladder, but he wasn't fulfilled, and the pace was wearing on his health. Single, no kids, and standing in front of an open window of time, he bought a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Casablanca and spent the next twelve months moving through eleven countries, much of it overland.

As a first-generation Liberian-American whose parents were born and raised in Liberia, the trip was about more than travel. It was about rediscovering where he comes from. Along the way he lived on a Workaway program, farmed in the Sahara, hosted a hostel in Seville, and eventually crossed into Senegal, where an accidental moment with a refugee family and a bag of charcoal became the spark for everything that came next. Today he runs Africa Rising, a recruitment firm that connects skilled African talent to global companies, alongside on-the-ground businesses including short-term rentals in Dakar, a poultry farm, and a butcher shop in Kigali, Rwanda.

This conversation is really about the future of work. Weh'yee and Ryan dig into why a lean team of two to five people plus AI can now do what once took fifty, why the return-to-office fight is the same push and pull that follows every period of change, and why, in the age of AI, the real edge is getting back on the ground and shaking hands.

In this episode:

• Why Weh'yee left a fast-rising San Francisco startup at the top of his climb
• The one-way ticket to Casablanca, eleven countries, and traveling overland with about ten thousand dollars
• Rediscovering his Liberian roots as a first-generation Liberian-American
• Workaway, a month farming in the Sahara, and hosting a hostel in Seville
• Why we become "country club visitors" of other countries, and how to actually experience a place
• The charcoal-bag moment in Senegal that became his entrepreneurial spark
• Africa Rising: connecting elite African talent to global companies, and why it is a win-win-win
• Hedging online income with real-world businesses: rentals in Dakar, a farm, a butcher shop in Kigali
• Why a team of two to five people plus AI can now do what once took fifty
• The return-to-office push and pull, and Ryan's advice to leaders afraid of distributed work
• Why the age of AI is sparking a renaissance of in-person, on-the-ground connection

Connect with Weh'yee Barkon:

• Africa Rising: africarising.work
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/wehyeeba

Connect with Ryan Vet:

• Website: ryanvet.com
• COLLIDE Newsletter: ryanvet.com/collide
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryanvet
• Instagram: instagram.com/ryancvet
• Book Ryan as a Keynote Speaker: ryanvet.com/generational-speaker

Subscribe to The Ryan Vet Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. The guest era continues every Monday at 6am ET. Next week: Nicki Petrosi on "Scrolling to Death," and what always-on screens are doing to all of us. The COLLIDE essay podcast continues every Thursday at 7am ET.

Send us Fan Mail

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

If you want deeper research and behind-the-scenes insights on generations and the future of culture and society, join Ryan’s weekly newsletter:
👉 https://ryanvet.com/collide

The Wizard of Oz taught a generation to gasp when the world turned to color. Now Gen Z is deliberately turning its phones back to black and white.

Generational futurist, USA TODAY bestselling author, and international keynote speaker Ryan Vet starts with a viral photo, two rows of cars sixty years apart, captioned "America is losing its color," and goes looking for the numbers. What he finds is a culture draining toward white, black, and gray, from cars to countertops to the grayscale screens Gen Z is choosing on purpose. This episode of The Ryan Vet Show asks whether all that restraint is peace or avoidance, and what the overstimulation era is really signaling.

Don't miss this week's Monday guest episode with Lenore Skenazy, founder of Free-Range Kids, on why overprotection is the real danger.

Key Takeaways

• By 2024, roughly four out of five new passenger cars worldwide were white, black, gray, or silver (BASF, 2024). White and off-white together make up about 70% of US countertop choices (Houzz, 2024).
• 71% of Americans report overstimulation, and Gen Z carries the heaviest load at 85%, nearly twice the rate of Boomers at 47% (Best Therapies, 2026).
• Students who switched their phones to grayscale used them about 40 minutes less per day, with the steepest drops in social media (Holte and Ferraro, 2020). Bright color is the reward. Take it away, and the slot machine goes dark.
• Gen Z is the only age group actively shrinking its digital footprint (PYMNTS Intelligence, 2024), and built a movement around buying less called underconsumption core (McKinsey and Company, 2024). It cut overall spending about 13% in early 2025 (PwC, 2025).
• The bare white room and the dim gray phone may be the same instinct aimed at two screens: when the input will not stop, you turn down the part you can.
• The open question is whether this is calm or avoidance. A grayscale screen reads as discipline in one hand and exhaustion in the other.

Research and Sources Cited

• BASF (2024), Houzz (2024), and Fixr (2024) on the neutral drift across cars, countertops, and home palettes
• Best Therapies (2026) and the American Psychological Association (2023) on overstimulation and Gen Z stress
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2023) on teen screen time
• Holte and Ferraro (2020) and Dekker and Baumgartner (2024) on grayscale smartphone interventions
• PYMNTS Intelligence (2024), McKinsey and Company (2024), and PwC (2025) on Gen Z's shrinking footprint and underconsumption core
• Northeast Recycling Council (2024), EPA (2018), and McDonald's (2021) on the recycling era that shaped Millennials
• Cultural touchstone: The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Connect with Ryan Vet

• Read the full Collide essay: https://ryanvet.com/collide/gen-z-is-turning-its-phones-black-and-white/
• Subscribe to the Collide newsletter: https://ryanvet.com/collide
• Learn more and book Ryan to speak: https://ryanvet.com

Send us Fan Mail

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

If you want deeper research and behind-the-scenes insights on generations and the future of culture and society, join Ryan’s weekly newsletter:
👉 https://ryanvet.com/collide