In this solo podcast episode, the host shares a personal journey of trying to engage with Dungeons & Dragons, describing the difficulty of finding a regular adult group, attempts at online play, solo adventures, and finally using AI as a dungeon master. While AI provided a responsive and immersive experience, the host realized it still lacked genuine human connection. This leads to a broader argument that as technology becomes more advanced, the human need for high-touch interaction intensifies—a concept the host recalls from the late 1990s. The host cites a 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation study showing 36% of Americans (61% of young adults) experiencing serious loneliness, and notes a decline in emotional intelligence among those who spent high school during the COVID‑19 pandemic. Drawing from his coaching practice, he explains how creating space for messy, honest conversation helps clients uncover answers and navigate major life transitions. He references a Harvard Business Review article that claims companies blending high-tech and high-touch grow faster, retain customers, and build trust, extending the principle to personal relationships. The episode concludes with a call to prioritize real, device‑free conversations, an invitation to reach out for coaching, and a promotion of his website, stanstruercoaching.com.
Chapters
All right, you're gonna have to hang with me for a little bit as I do the buildup for this podcast. There's a little bit of a confession in here. I'm not going to say I'm obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, not even close to it, but I do enjoy playing. And I even filter out things that I don't align with or I don't agree with, and I've built— in many cases, I've built some of my own rules. That's what they call homebrew. But yeah, things like the dice, the characters, the campaigns, even the ridiculous inside jokes that make no sense to anyone else outside the group. I don't want to say it's my jam, but I enjoy it. But here's the thing, I've been struggling to find a group to play with. And whether it's because of schedules, group conflicts, people aligning on what kind of campaigns they want to do— let's, let's be honest, getting adults to commit to a regular campaign, I might as well roll for initiative against chaos itself. So then I turned to online play, and there's a couple of websites where you can, where you can get on there. And whether it's through Discord or there's another platform, Start Gaming Now or Start Playing Now, I've tried to get involved in campaigns, but again, it just, it's, it's not working. I mean, people ghost me, there's different time zones. And I realized something, that even with the best platforms and tools, I It still wasn't fulfilling. All right, so hang with me just a little bit longer here, because then what I did next is I started playing solo adventures. I had bought some materials where I could, where I could basically, you know, you know, download the PDF, do solo adventures, keep my own journals, create my characters. That's the stuff I love. And that wasn't quite getting it. So I turned to AI. So this last week I've been playing or going through an adventure where I taught AI the parameters of what I wanted it to do and how I wanted to react and what it would control and what I would control. And it basically allowed— it allowed AI to be that DM or that, or that game master. And it was responsive, it was clever, it was immersive, it had some great stuff in it, but still there was something missing, and that was human connection. You see, all this brought me back to something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I heard this back in I guess the late '90s, maybe the early 2000s. And that was that the more high-tech we are, the more high-touch we have to be. I mean, come on, that was 30, 35 years ago. The more high-tech we get, the more we crave high-touch. We live in smart homes, smart cars. I've got a smart assistant. But what people are starving for is genuine human interaction. We are wired for it. That's the way that we were created. You know, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was just reading this the other day, the rates of social isolation skyrocketed. In a 2020 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 36% of Americans reported serious loneliness. For young adults, that number was closer to 61%. And we're still seeing the ripple effects. In my coaching work, I know something that is really heartbreaking. That's— there's been this drop in emotional intelligence in adults. Who were in high school during the pandemic. Many of them missed critical windows for social development. They learned to communicate over screens, over chat, over Teams calls, over Zoom. They learned to hide their feelings behind emojis. They never learned how to sit with discomfort or hold space for someone else. And now, now I get them in the coaching sphere because they're in jobs, they're in relationships. In some cases, they're in leadership roles and they're struggling. We've gained technology, but we've lost nuance. We've lost that sacred in-between, those moments that happen face-to-face. We've lost that space in human conversation. And what I'm finding in my practice is that is where coaching really comes in. I've got a client that is interested Or their whole interest is just talking and me listening. Just talking and— and I'm asking questions to probe a little bit deeper. One of the things that I enjoy about my profession is sitting with another human being and saying, I see you. I hear you. I'm listening. Let's move forward together. And it's not about thinking about a response, but it's to really understand what's coming out of them. It's creating that space. It's creating that space where people can be messy and honest and real. I had a client this morning making a huge, huge career transition. And honestly, they know the answer. They just didn't know how to tap into the answer. And it was allowing them space where they could be messy, where they could be honest, they could be real. They could pause for a moment so they could go get Kleenex. In this tech-driven world, Coaching is one of the last places where you're going to find uninterrupted, focused human interaction. And don't underestimate how powerful that is. There's a Harvard Business Review article, and it says that companies that embrace both high-tech and high-touch grow faster. Faster, retain more customers, and build deeper trust. And it's not just true for companies. It's true with humans. It's true for relationships. We're not going to stop the digital wave. We're not going to stop innovation. We're not going to stop AI. And honestly, in many cases, we shouldn't. AI is helping us do amazing things. It's not AI that's going to take over You know, AI is not going to take us over. The people who control AI could take us over. But AI can't replace the human need to belong, to be heard, to be challenged, to be seen. If you're feeling that ache, if you're feeling that quiet longing for something more real, Start with a conversation, not with your device. And right now what happens is our phones, these devices we carry around, and I admit this, they have become our pacifier. They've become our blanket. I get upset with my wife. And I turn to watching something on TikTok. My wife gets upset with me. She'll go check out things on Facebook. I mean, look around. When, when you see people getting into uncomfortable conversations, the first thing they do is they pick up that device. I want to encourage you to reach out. As coaches, we hold space for you. We practice presence because in a world where everyone is chasing the next tech breakthrough, through. We're offering something that's truly rare. I mean, I look at, I look at, I look at everything that's in front of me right now. I've got a phone, I've got a laptop with a Harvard Business article opened up, I've got my microphones, I've got a wireless keyboard. I, I just ordered a device from Amazon, that— well, it's a Kindle Scribe. I've got my Kindle, uh, that holds all my books on it. We are surrounded by technology when in reality we need to surround ourselves in human contact. Hey, if you ever want to roll initiative in real life, Let me know because we could all use a little more adventure and a little more human in our story. Check out www.stanstruercoaching.com.
