The Cave Project

Our teens will tell you they hate AI. They also read the email our family agent sends every morning, and it keeps catching things we would have missed: a homecoming dance nobody mentioned, a pickup nobody was covering, and two hotels booked for one trip and zero for the other.

AI agents went mainstream this fall. Meta's Muse shot to No. 1 on the app charts, OpenAI launched Dots, and Amazon blocked Muse from shopping on its site. In this episode, Jenny and Greg Swan get into what an agent actually is (Jenny pictured a butler), why "free" AI still runs on tokens, throttling, and your data, and what happened when Greg's agent asked him to solve a CAPTCHA because it couldn't prove it was human.

Jenny explains why she can't stand Muse but planned an entire Disneyland day with ChatGPT, why she cares more about security than privacy, and why AI that turns people into full-time bot-call answerers is creating worse jobs, not better ones. Plus: what care actually looks like when a robot can remember the birthday for you.

Get our free AI Agent Starter Kit, with five easy first jobs, five safety switches, and Greg's Muse invite code, at caveproject.co.

What would you hand an agent, and what would you never let it touch? Tell us at [email protected].

In this episode of The Cave Project, Jenny and Greg Swan dig into the privilege of opting out of screens, social media, and AI, and why “just put your phone down” is not the moral flex people think it is. From working parents using tablets as survival tools to social media becoming job infrastructure, community infrastructure, and sometimes emotional regulation infrastructure, they argue for more nuance and a lot less shame.

They also get into loud iPads in public, adults on speakerphone in airports, the class dynamics of not needing to be online, and why refusing AI is not always an option when your job, income, or creative life now depends on it. Plus, Greg vibe codes a game to help Berdie go to space, The Cave Project launches CaveProject.co, and everyone is invited to your mom’s house. Spiritually, probably.

Find more on this episode and our back-catalog at our website: https://www.caveproject.co

When everyone online suddenly loves the same band, meme, creator, or viral moment… is that culture happening naturally, or is someone manufacturing it behind the scenes?

This week, Jenny and Greg Swan dive into the strange world of “clipping,” bot networks, manufactured virality, and the growing feeling that the internet is becoming less authentic by the day. From Justin Bieber at Coachella to TikTok trends, fake outrage, algorithmic feeds, and digital psyops, they unpack how modern marketing is shaping not just what we buy, but what we believe is popular in the first place.

They also explore a bigger question underneath all of it: if social media is increasingly driven by fake crowds and manipulated narratives, how do humans stay human online?

Plus: Noah Kahan discourse, why Jenny thinks “normals already assume the worst,” Greg’s accidental long-term digital psyop strategy for introducing new music, AI creativity competitions in New York, and the extremely wholesome cooking creators currently healing Jenny’s algorithm.

Find all the details at www.caveproject.co

Teens are not using social media wrong. They’re just using it in ways that make adults feel ancient, confused, and mildly attacked.

In this episode of The Cave Project, Jenny and Greg Swan unpack new data on teen social media habits, why parents keep side-eyeing Snapchat, TikTok, and group chats, and what adults can do besides trying to parent the algorithm.

It’s a funny, honest conversation about trust, media literacy, teen communication, and staying close enough that your kids might actually come to you when the internet gets weird.

🎧 Listen for a practical, not-panicked take on teens, tech, and parenting in the feed era.

#TheCaveProject #TeenSocialMedia #DigitalParenting #MediaLiteracy #ParentingTeens

We rewatched Her. Listened to Esther Perel do couples therapy with a chatbot. And had a fight about whether AI can love you back. Inside: the "flirty voice" debate, the mannequin reframe, and the question that would not leave us alone. Who is the robot? 🎧🤖

We rewatched Her. Listened to Esther Perel do couples therapy with a chatbot, and realized the scariest possibility isn't that the AI becomes human. It's that the human becomes a robot. 🎧🤖

Is the AI industry even talking to the rest of us?

In this episode, Jenny and Greg Swan unpack The AI Doc, or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. It's a new documentary that puts the biggest names in AI in one room and asks: is this good or bad? Should we be having kids? And does anyone actually have a plan? From Sam Altman to Geoffrey Hinton to the doomers who think your children won't survive high school, the film swings between terror and hope like a pendulum. And so do we.

They dig into what the AI industry can't agree on, what it means for the rest of us, and why the gap between "imagine a better future" and "tell me what to do tonight" keeps getting wider. This isn't a tech review. It's a parenting conversation, a policy conversation, and a sanity check. All at once.

Along the way, they talk about:

🎬 The documentary everyone should see but only 6% of Twin Cities moviegoers did

🚪 Why Jenny walked out of the theater during the doom section, and what pushed her over the edge

🐜 The ants metaphor that has been living in Greg's brain rent-free since Saturday

🎤 Greg asking Tristan the same question at SXSW for the fourth year in a row, and still not getting a satisfying answer

🤖 What AI actually is right now (spoiler: it cannot count movie theater seats)

⚖️ The Meta and Google verdict that just made the big-tobacco lawsuit theory very real

👶 The techno-optimists who are thrilled to be having kids right now — and the doomers who would never.

🏫 What to ask your school board, your kids, and your Congress person this week.

🍣 Robot cats, sushi, and the moment we realized the future already happened and we did not even blink

This episode is for anyone trying to figure out where they land between doom and hope. The AI industry is having its conversation at 30,000 feet. We are having ours on the ground. Come sit with us.

In this episode, Jenny and Greg Swan pull up their real Screen Time stats on mic, break down the American Academy of Pediatrics’ newest guidance, and watch the Toy Story 5 trailer to ask the obvious question: are we really doing “tech bad” again?

We talk about why we don’t feel guilty, why we’ve never been a “no screens” family, and why restriction without relationship doesn’t teach kids how to live in the world they’re actually growing up in.

This episode is for: parents who are tired of screen-time shame, anyone raising kids in a world built to capture attention, Toy Story adults who felt either very excited or personally attacked by that trailer, and people who want something more realistic than “just set limits.”

Are we absolutely sure that what we’re seeing is even real?

In this episode, we dig into the increasingly blurry line between real and fake online—from AI-generated bunny videos to deepfakes of ourselves, and the billion-dollar platforms that are encouraging all of it. We explore how tech companies like Meta and OpenAI are normalizing synthetic content at scale and what that means for trust, identity, and the future of human connection.

This isn’t a “look what AI can do” episode. It’s a conversation about what it’s already doing—to our feeds, our friendships, and our sense of reality.

Along the way, we talk about:

• 🐰 Why that bunny-on-a-trampoline video might be the end of the internet

• 🎭 How deepfakes are shifting from creepy to commonplace

• 📉 The death of real content in algorithm-driven feeds

• 🔓 The risks of uploading your face and voice to AI tools

• 🚫 Why “don’t share it if it feels weird” might be your best defense

• 🧠 What brain science says about why we fall for fakes—and how to fight it

• 👀 How to protect yourself (and your kids) in an era of hyperreal lies

• 🔧 What the tech bros aren’t telling us about the future they’re building

Are we all just… not okay?

In this episode, Jenny and Greg Swan unpack the emotional and digital overwhelm of the past few weeks — from political violence and algorithmic trauma to school shootings and the unbearable pressure to post through it all.

They dig into the cultural churn, social media's emotional toll, and the growing desire to simply log off. This isn’t a hot take. It’s a human one.

Along the way, they talk about:

• 🌀 When the algorithm trains you, not the other way around

• 📱 Why muting, unfollowing, or pausing your feed is not failure — it’s survival

• 🧒 How to talk to your kids about scary things without transferring your own panic

• 🧠 The mental load of being extremely online right now

• 🤖 Why “everyone’s yelling” energy is contagious — and how to break the cycle

• 🛑 What not to post, even when you’re mad

• 🧍‍♀️ The power of asking real people real questions — instead of subtweeting them

• ⚠️ Gentle reminder: You don’t have to become the dumpster fire you see online

This episode is for anyone feeling off, overwhelmed, or overexposed. The internet is a tool . Not a place you have to live. Take care of your brain. Then come back when you're ready.