The Cave Project

The Feed Is Fake, But We’re Still Watching the Clips

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

We’re Not Mad Teens Are Online. We’re Mad They’re Not Online Like Us.

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

The Truth About Chatbot Romance: You're Not Dating AI. You're Dating Yourself.

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? 🎧🤖

Doom, Hope, Doom, Hope, Sushi: What the AI Apocaloptimist Doc Got Right (and Wrong)

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.

What if screen time isn't the villain?

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.”