Ep 602 - Future Man (feat. Kevin Ashton)

wow wow west hey what's up what's up what's going on everybody i'm already fumbling over my fucking words dude i suck i'm here with kevin ashton how you doing man i'm good how are you pretty good so how would you define yourself obviously author yeah futurist futurist you think you're old now oh god yeah what 57 57 57 i'm i'm not i'm not too far behind i'm 40 oh oh that's young 40 i i think 40 is kind of i still feel like a boy like there's never the switch has never occurred to where i'm like a little bit i feel like a man i go in the grocery store they're playing the music i danced to when i was a kid really that's that makes you feel old oh when it's in the grocery store yeah it's like the music now yeah yeah that's kind of a cure or whatever that was old so what what was your what was your music back in the day what was your go oh i british i was a jazz funk guy really yeah jazz funk when like no it's like the it's a british name for like r&b basically so like mid 80s it's like luther vandross oh yeah you're a smooth brother oh yeah all the working class kids in london there you go nice the posh kids like you know the punky stuff but we were okay so i gotta ask you then is it true because i i have a friend who's from london and he loves soccer okay and i i you know naturally in an america soccer's looked at as a sport kind of for girls you know what i mean like not so much now though yeah not so much when i was trying to explain to him when i grew up it was like yeah we everyone played football that's what we call american football football and i was like you know i was just kind of getting under his skin i was like it's kind of for like weak guys and girls and he was like nah and i was because i played rugby he's like rugby's for the posh boys and he was that's true and so it's true yeah rugby's such a more brutal sport it's such a more brutal sport why is it for the posh boys it's just the way the school system i mean i was like it was suggested that i go to like the posh school in town and but they didn't play soccer they played rugby and there was just i was like 11 there was no way really i was going to school that didn't play soccer so it's kind okay so it's almost like over there it's like if someone played water polo over here that would be very yeah or like lacrosse maybe lacrosse isn't very it's not pie it's it's yeah it is in new england I feel like. Yeah, you know, you're right. Lacrosse bros are, I would say, borderline posh boys as well. Yeah, so cricket and rugby are like the posh. I feel ashamed I play the posh sport. I thought I was flexing on him. He was like, ah, it's for posh boys. you could play soccer on the street corner. Yeah. You know, you toss down your sweaters and you go to ball and you're away. True. You can't quite do that with rugby, you know. Yeah, you'd have to play like touch. Yeah, it'd be like sevens. Like landing on that street and it would, yeah. Yeah, Well, shit, you're right. I was hoping he would get overturned, but that's completely true. Yeah. Dang. Sorry. Thank you for coming to the podcast. So, okay. So futurist, how do you get the futurist title? Oh, so that's like a thing. You can't study at school, right? There's no major in futurism. I mean, it's not a word I use about myself so much, I guess. But, yeah, I mean, I started a lab at MIT. Okay. In the late 90s. That's why I came to the U.S. and like I had this idea that I called the Internet of Things. Yeah. And everybody thought, what the hell is that? It's crazy. And they're all interested in like the dot-com boom and everything. But, you know, we got lucky and our research did well. And now the Internet of Things is everywhere. So you kind of, I guess, when you have a stupid idea and it comes true, you move from being like an idiot to a futurist. That's awesome. Well, it's funny because I watched a video and the origin of the Internet of Things, you know which we'll explain in a second because i i always heard that term and i there's something about it i'm like man i love that term i had no idea what you were talking about i just like i was just like it's like the internet i had this nebulous idea in my head i'm like it's like the internet and just fucking stuff and you know i i didn't know what it exactly was you came up with the term you're pitching a thing for procter and gamble right yeah i saw that and you it sounded like you kind of just like pulled it out of your ass you're like i wanted to i wanted to like because you wanted to what like make them use the internet for their supply it was the mid 90s yeah and like honestly it sounds crazy now but the senior executives didn't even do email like you sent them an email and it came back in the internal mail most people want what the hell that is but like a special reusable envelope their their secretary had printed it out and they'd like write a reply to your email like that's how technical these guys were in the mid 90s and then suddenly I'd heard about the internet and it was kind of like the thing you had to to know about yeah so like I already had this idea for like like putting chips and things in in the product so we could know where they were but they weren't getting that so I figured if I could put the word internet in there somehow then you know that'd be interesting and then just tacked on of things yeah kind of like I mean really like what am I going to call this powerpoint presentation how about this internet of things and here we are now 30 years later yeah that's cool because then like that idea for the presentation became almost like a career launching point oh it did yeah that's insane and i have to pretend like it was like some real the best you ask about what the internet things have you heard of teledildonics teledildonics have you heard teledildonics no i have no idea this is my favorite people say what's the internet of things i say teledildonics it's the internet of things of sex toys oh okay like vibrators you can like turn on from like the internet anywhere in the world oh the vibrating butt plug yeah the vibrating but like you know through through wi-fi that's how you define the internet of things you're like that is one of the first killer apps of the internet of things they were they're always the first adopters yeah everything and just so and just to explain it because again i feel like if you're it's it's a simpler idea than you think it's just using attaching sensors to things that are connected to the internet and then can bring in information you're plugging the world into the internet so here did you come up with that idea or were you just describing the practice to these guys and you coined the term i was one of like there was a small room full of people who all came up with similar ideas about the same time yeah but like the internet was new it was dial up it was kind of crappy yeah you know you didn't have graphics really or anything so the idea of using the internet for like anything past like email was kind of on the wild side of things but yeah so yeah but like plugging the real world into the internet so you knew where stuff was so like you could have these like self-driving cars that like know where they are and are communicating with your phone and stuff like yeah and this was before wi-fi oh dude that must have sounded insane in 19 oh it did yeah 1995 yeah people thought it It was like maybe 97, but like, yeah. People are like, what the hell? This is why it called the Internet of Things. True. Because like at least I could – they wanted to pretend they knew what the Internet was. Yeah. So you just like ride on that. That's pretty cool. So the whole idea was back in the day you'd have these companies or advise them to attach basically just sensors to regular objects. So then those sensors can then gather data. Which basically – and this was before the smartphone then. Oh, yeah. This is way before the smartphone. Yeah, this is like business systems. Like we got a lot of money from the defense department because, you know, you go to war. Yeah. You've got to have enough stuff. Yeah. Where the hell are my bombs? Yeah. Bombs is one thing, but like, you know, soda cans, body bags, Bibles, you know, toothbrushes, all that stuff. You've got to know where it all is. And so, you know, that was one of the first like obvious applications was just like logistics. Yeah. That's where all the money came from to fund it. But yeah, then a few years later, you've got the smartphone and it becomes easy to put it in everybody's pocket. Yeah. So how did that like, you know, were you kind of following the development of the smartphone? Did that just come out and you're like, hey? Yeah. I mean, it was funny. I was. I guess I can say the name now. Like I was I was on the board, the research board of Motorola. OK. And we were trying to explain to them this is like the flip phone. and one of the perks was they gave you their best phone every year so i always had like the quote-unquote best motorola phone it's terrible like do you like the razor the flip razor it was awful i mean the funny thing is like motorola even had a partnership with apple before the iphone really yeah it was called the rocker right it was like an ipod in a motorola flip phone okay whoa they fucked it up so badly that steve jobs is like yeah no oh i don't want anything we're gonna do our own thing we're trying to explain these me and some other like futurists we're trying to explain to them like you know touchscreens graphic user interfaces guys sensors yeah have the phone like know when you pick it up like this is not expensive it's not hard to do and then i mean the first the iphone wasn't the first one like lg came out with a thing in korea oh okay six months before that makes sense because i had a droid way before i had not my first phone was a droid yeah i think it was actually an lg yeah and lg had this like it was called the prada don't ask me why like a clothing company yeah but it was it was it was basically the same as an iphone and then the iphone came out and i remember like i went back to the motorola guys with another meeting and we were like so you know that thing we were telling you about for years it's happened right what do you think and the head of i swear to you the head of research motorola said yeah but it doesn't have a very good microphone like people were like lining up around the block to pay like a thousand dollars for this phone they'd never even touched right and this guy was like well it has a crappy microphone and that was kind of true yeah okay but who gave a shit yeah i don't you know motorola is kind of not in business anymore no they and they it's funny you say that because they were like cell phones they were like number one nokia yep no sony all these guys and probably in all those companies there was somebody saying hey this is what the future is going to look like yeah and they were like yeah no so yeah so who is that yeah who's above you this episode is brought to you by zip recruiter i always find it impressive when someone can let me talk about a skill i find impressive or profession i appreciate for example olympic athletes and their dedication to training. 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So that's pretty crazy, man, to think about it that long ago where it was like, because it's almost like there's like a super like mystique around the iPhone where it was like, you know, just almost, you know, people a lot of times are like jobs was just like taking acid in the woods and was just like completely tapped in so that had been a slow ongoing process he was a guy like you know like a really good dj who like is just ahead of the trends who like plays a tune you wouldn't have thought about but then you realize it's actually he was that guy for like tech like yeah he really had a good eye for what was coming and you know and so what happened with the iphone like and this is kind of what we all saw it was it wasn't really a phone phone was a thing you know if you think about your smartphone now like how often are you actually making a call yeah right it's just one of your apps there's all the others to use it a camera use it as a video game use it as you know gps mapping whatever you use it for yeah and and that's what he saw you know so you got the ipod idea and the online video idea and the phone idea and the handheld video just all stick it into one thing yeah and he really i i get him because i had the droid first And I, you know, I was like, and I will say there was something about when I would like tap it or touch it that when it would buzz every time I did that, there were, I don't know why that like made me feel so happy every time it would like respond back to me. I don't know. I still like, you know, I had to turn it off my phone because I just, I do like those little noises. Like, oh yeah. And if you watch the first like presentation on the iPhone, like way back when, like he swipes on the screen, I think he gets a standing ovation. That's so funny. We take it all for granted now. But yeah, so it was fairly clear in the late 90s, early 2000s that something a bit like that was going to happen. Well, yeah, that was my whole thing. Apple, like when I had the droid for a while, I'm like, this is cool. But Apple was like, it was like intuitive where I was like, oh, this is so easy. Like I don't have to spend time figuring it out. I was just kind of like this makes – it's just so much easier to use. Yeah, because I mean Jobs wasn't really a technical guy. So he was kind of like our representative in the room who's like, yeah, this is too complicated. Yeah. Make it easier. make it easier and then you end up with you know what we have today which is awesome yeah yeah so the uh so here's here's the thing so okay internet of things term you coined and when you gave the meeting were you like kind of aware that like damn i think i'm crushing it right now or like this is a thing or do you have you know what i mean like oh man this is it's a long time ago so i could so the CEO wanted to see the talk of Procter & Gamble. And I was in the UK. I don't think they realized that. Like I got an email saying, yeah, come and see the CEO like the day after tomorrow or something. Procter & Gamble is based in Cincinnati. I'd never even been to the US, right? Fortunately, I had a passport. So like I got a ticket. First place I ever went to in the United States was Cincinnati. That's pretty sick, actually. I was fairly disappointed. right to Ohio. And I'm in this like walnut paneled, like boardroom kind of place. And they all come in like there's, you know, the CEO and all these other like really senior guys. And I do my thing. And basically we go around the room and like all the other, like the entourage guys are like, yeah, it sucks. That never worked. I don't like it. I'm like, oh damn, you know, but then the CEO is like, well, I like it. I think it's a good idea. And funnily enough, Like it's like watching the dominoes go down. Like all these guys who I swear had just been shitting on my idea. Yeah. Like, yeah, you're right. That's a really, yeah. What a good idea. So yeah, if it hadn't been for Dirk, Yaga, wherever you are, thank you. If it hadn't been for that guy who was CEO at Proctor at the time, I don't know what would have happened. But yeah, he got it. He said, yeah, we're going to pay for you to go to MIT and make this real. Whoa. So like, yeah, first time we went to the US was like Thanksgiving. Yeah. It was like Thanksgiving of 98. and then by September the 1st, 99, I was in the Smithsonian Institution announcing the Internet of Things to the world. I lived in the U.S. Whoa. So it all happened really fast. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, it was crazy. And they were like, we'll just give you, we'll pay for you to go to MIT and just figure this out. Yeah, and they gave me money so I could fund the research and then we got a bunch of other companies involved and it just snowballed. And what did you do before that? I was a brand manager. i was uh i ran like part of the oil of ole business for procter and gamble okay in europe yeah damn it's like slanging motion you had a slang yeah i was like an expert on mascar and you were like supply chain side of it no it's just the shit was never in the store and i got pissed off and i said why is my stuff never in the store why is you know why is this particular color of lipstick that we know everybody likes a literally true story it's never in this i go get my groceries it's never fucking there and the first answer was well it's just in that one store and i'm like yeah no there's no way it's just the store i go to is so i did some research it wasn't anywhere like we were paying all this money to advertise it you couldn't actually buy it i wanted to fix that problem it just wasn't getting there basically yeah i mean it was it was in the back or something you know wait so you have like computer training like do you are you like a systems i know but like i was like there's an idea i was a school in like the early mid 90s And like I had a computer when I was 10 I had like a shitty home computer You know like the age of life You heard of like Commodore and all those kind of really early computers No no no I only remember the windows and like that early Apple thing that was like purple on top of it So yeah but my generation was like, we were the first kids to have computers at home. You had like, you either had your Atari video game system or your Commodore 64 home. Didn't do very much, but like- What was the Commodore? I remember Atari. What was the Commodore? Commodore 64 was like a keyboard that you plugged into the TV and it had like basic computer ability and you could like buy video games on cassette tapes and like play them into the computer it would sound like a fax machine and it would like load it in you could play some little game that's awesome yeah no so yeah i just grew up with computers so like i was like well there's got to be a this is an information problem right yeah a solution and like there was dang yeah that's pretty cool yeah it worked out so you walked home that day like i i think i crushed it like Did you have an idea? Like you were just that day? I went from there to a meeting at MIT. And I was having breakfast in the Cambridge Marriott Hotel, which is at that time was like the only hotel near MIT. Yeah. And a senior guy from Proctor and Campbell came busting in to find me at breakfast. It was like, they've just approved for you to like transfer to MIT. How quickly can you move to the United States? And I was like. Shit. How about two weeks? And they're like, yeah, sure. That's awesome. And I went back to my office and the human resources team went there. Yeah, we pay for your apartment. We pay for your plane. We pay for all this stuff. I'm like, oh, my God. So, yeah, it was life change. That's insane. Honestly, that's like a fantasy of mine. I always wanted to go in a boardroom and hit them with the million-dollar idea. God, that's awesome. I would love that. Yeah. I mean, it landed, but I'm not kidding you. The first five minutes of feedback were brutal. It is funny that now like, yeah, what was there? Do you remember their pushback specifically or there's like this will never work? It was just like they had some bullshit. I mean, the thing you always heard back in that day was all the laws of physics. You know, if you want to put a radio microchip into like a bottle of moisturizer, it's going to cost ten dollars and it won't work. This was before Wi-Fi. It was before Bluetooth. And there are a lot of people who are convinced that you really couldn't send data over radio. OK. Barely. Yeah. And that's crazy now. Like we think about like, you know, you can download like a high def movie on your phone over like the cell network. Yeah. But in the 90s, it's like, yeah, that won't work. It's going to cost too much. We already know where all our stuff is anyway. I'm like, no, you don't. Yeah. You know, there were guys whose job it was like to know. They weren't going to be like, yeah, you know, he's right. We actually have no fucking idea. True. This is not a problem. That was one of the, you know. So what were they, how did they like who the guy who knew where all this stuff was back in the early night, they would just call a warehouse and make, yo, did you guys get that stuff? Well, they'd know like, they'd know like down to the nearest like million or something. Right. Because I used to get this, like even after we got to MIT, we'd have like CEO type guys come through and we'd pitch them and they'd be like, yeah, we already know where all our stuff is. And I'd be like, okay, you sell this product and you've got a store down the street in Boston. how long would it take you to find out how many of this one product are on the shelf in that store and they'd be like uh yeah well you know and they're supposed to say couldn't do it yeah of course i used to work in a beer distributor in the when was this the early 2000s and they the guy would still walk around count every single case of beer he had a piece of paper so i remember i stole a 12 pack from him one time yeah and he can probably he was like did you uh i was missing a 12 pack of mgd and i was like god damn he really had this thing oh that's good yeah he was the only guy that guy owned that store i reckon he was he worked very closely with the owner it was like he was trying to get a citizenship and he like lived in the way he lived in the warehouse itself so he was it was like his ticket to america invested but like in the big box store like no there's no way no especially if you go to like a target still to this day you go to a target sometimes and it's like just crap everywhere like i it's it's pretty bad oh yeah it's a mess no Well, cool. So you came up with that idea and that kind of – I don't know. Did you ever feel like kind of – since you weren't technically like a – you were savvy with computers, I guess. I guess if you used a computer regularly in the 90s, you were a tech guy. You know what I mean? Well, you know, I was kind of too stupid now how stupid I was really. But my experience had been like the first computer I got had 1K of memory. And I saved up. We should deliver newspapers. I saved up for months and bought a 16K, like K, not megabytes, gigabytes, kilobytes, memory expansion for that thing. Cost like a hundred bucks or whatever. And I felt like I had more memory than I would ever need. Right. This is in the eighties. And by the nineties, you know, it's like, we're talking about like maybe megabytes. Yeah. And the stuff you, you can do was like a million times better than the stuff you could do in the eighties. So like in my dumb brain, it was like, well, things just get cheaper. Yeah. Things just get smaller. and that turned out to be true i mean i didn't know how it was true or why it was true but like you just figured it out yeah i'd seen that happen for like 15 years at that point yes i saw a video so there's a video from you 11 years ago and you were doing predict you had like three predictions and the one was 15 years from now this is 11 years ago 15 years from now most cars won't have steering wheels which i took as like automatic cars basically yeah so kind of kind of nailed that because i don't know if you see i mean obviously you see all the waymos here i got here in a way funny i love the yeah i actually love the way most so you're so you were kind of spot on with that 15 years ago or 11 years ago you were like yeah those self-driving cars i don't think people really 11 years ago they're like no way oh they were no and the thing is like what's happened is a lot of cars like new cars are more self-driving than people realize it's called like enhanced driver i've seen that yeah so it tells you if you're like going out of your lane it can tell you if you need to brake suddenly you know there's a whole bunch of stuff they're like building in gradually so like what used to just be like the automatic gearbox or like cruise control or something yeah it's like now getting more and more sophisticated so you're getting closer and closer to like that self-driving yeah the lane assist you know i i i like it i took a waymo and i actually kind of really enjoy it i you know i thought i'd be like i don't know okay it's it's pretty reliable it drives like a regular speed it's you know first few minutes is kind of weird and then it just gets old yeah i i find and i like i'm i enjoy talking to people in uber so i don't mind the human interaction but there is something really peaceful about just like being there by yourself yeah putting on a song and just kind of just chilling i i like really really i don't know i feel i find it really relaxing i still catch myself about to say something to the driver oh yeah or i'll say thank you again yeah it says hello and it says your name yeah and i always want to say you know hello back it's like there's no one yeah no one here dude so the other one was and i'm curious to see what we're coming up with this five years from now computers won't have batteries What were they run off? Oh, I was cheating at that point, right? Because they were, I mean, so there's a thing called an RFID tag, which is like the sort of one of the main technologies in the Internet of Things. It's just like a little chip with an antenna and you buy something from Walmart or something. They use it for inventory tracking. Yeah. You buy something from Walmart. It might have a sticker on that says EPC. That's the thing we've met at MIT. That's the electronic product code, right? Okay. That's a computer. An RFID tag is a computer, but it's very small. It's very simple. it doesn't have a battery it gets power from the radio waves that are communicating there are more even when i made that prediction there are more rf there were more rfid tags in the world then than any other kind of computer added together smartphone i mean these things cost cost a few cents they're in like your speed pass and then the products you buy and they're used for tracking and amazon warehouses and whatnot so there's billions of them and they don't have batteries Right. So that's that's the cheat in that story. Got you. But, you know, what's happening in computing is two things. One, the the amount of power it uses. Yeah. Goes down by about half every two years. That's great. So computers get just keep getting more power efficient. Right. So they need less power. But also then we're getting better at like sending power over the air, harvesting power from like vibration, sound vibration and stuff like that. So, yeah, we're definitely moving. I mean, it might be your smartphone always has a battery, but you probably noticed you get a lot more life out of a charge now than you used to. Yeah. So the power budgets go down. Ways of putting power in go beyond batteries. That's that's been happening for a while. That will keep happening. Damn. So there's a little. OK, so those are. What's the difference between a computer and a computer chip? Nothing. Really? OK. I mean, because you think a computer and it's like shorthand for like personal computer. but that's like a chip with like a keyboard like a memory or you know a fan or something right but the thing that's doing the computing is a microprocessor gotcha and that's one chip one integrated circuit that's crazy they just pull the i guess the energy out of the wi-fi and they keep that's why yeah that's why my easy pass keeps rocking i've never charged there you go yeah dang nailed that too and what do you think i'm nervous that was the third one no third one i think you're spot on kids and grandkids will live to 100 on average oh yeah yeah that's that's coming I think worldwide we're definitely getting there um you know I mean the pandemic like screwed up like life expectancy because the thing about life expectancy that nobody knows right is it's what age are people dying today so if you're 20 years old and you're like you go on the internet or say your life expectancy is 80 but that means that the people who die today are average age of 80 yeah that's not actually accounting for the fact that it will probably get better as you get older yeah Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So most people are going to hit 100 unless they have a bad accident or something. Yeah. That's definitely on the way. Yeah. Hopefully they can do that, you know, little like tiny small robots that can go around your body and be like cancer cell. And then you just get like a thing on your rod. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's kind of sort of happening. Yeah. Like at least customize drug delivery. Like it's kind of a bit more modified for your, you know, your DNA, your body type, stuff like that. We're learning a lot. And the thing about healthcare is you solve one problem. Like when I was a kid, like all the men were dying in their 40s of heart attacks. Yeah. They were smoking too much. They were drinking too much. They were eating British food too much, you know. Yeah. And we figured out heart attacks, right? It doesn't really happen anymore. So then people start dying of something else when they're 50. Yeah. And then we figured that out. And then, you know, you get – so now it's like dementia type problems. Dementia is the big one right now. But, you know, there's a lot of interesting work happening. There's a lot of money being thrown at that. I guess someone will figure it out. And then the other side of that, there's something else that people are 100 dials. Yeah. I just don't know at what point do you like, does it stop working that you can't fix the thing? Yeah, I wonder what the new thing will be. I'll probably be the one who finds out. Call me in 30 years. Dang, man. So, okay. So we figured out how you become a futurist. Do you have any futurist pals that you talk to that you kind of like? Oh, yeah. there's like there's a little bunch of us and we shoot the shit and we we like you know like we post rationalize like you're giving those predictions a lot of guys are completely wrong i won't name names but yeah but you know when you said that yeah but what i meant was yeah futurist there's this thing over here that i found on google that actually proved so yeah you know i i think i'm an honest futurist like if you if you'd have said you predicted this it didn't happen i've been yeah you were right oh yeah it's hard that up yeah but like there are a lot of guys yeah who won't ever admit that like they got it wrong yeah you get a lot of stuff wrong like now surprising if one of your futurist bros were to go like too far into the future would you pull them back being like bro you can't go that like if they were like 700 years from now or would you be oh yeah yeah i think that's like i mean because you've got to think about there's two things right if you think about 700 years ago yeah there was no way anybody could have described this right yeah but and and as population gets bigger you get more ideas and people have more leisure time as technology gets better to think about new things so technology improvement accelerates like massively right which is why we've gone from like i mean the first like main tvs were like in the 50s i think was like the big u.s television revolution yeah like some shitty tv about you know this big yeah and now you've got like 4k on your phone yeah so like the idea of like looking more than like 50 to 100 years ahead in any meaningful way yeah it's crazy yeah because like one thing leads to another and at some point you know it's just gone in a direction you didn't see coming yeah that's what i like um i do like in terms you have you have a pretty optimistic outlook on terms of future and technology. A lot of people, you know, especially with the sensors and this and that, feel like they're slowly getting closed in by like a giant, you know, surveillance apparatus that's going to like lock them out. People use good technology for bad things. I mean, generally governments, not always. And that happens and, you know, you try and control it. But if you don't invent something because someone might do something bad with it, you know, you're never going to invent anything right yeah um but the other thing is like it's it's safe to be an optimist because like i'm going to tell you right now like the world is not going to end in our lifetime yeah and if i'm wrong hey who's gonna who's gonna know true you know you can't really lose betting on that yeah well no i i feel like it's a lot of you get a lot of uh i personally think it's really in vogue to be very negative and very kind of doom and gloom with the history especially with ai everyone i know is like freaking out about it. And I honestly don't, I don't know. Again, it's like, yeah, if it erases a bunch of jobs, you know, seemingly overnight, that's, it's going to be a problem. But I, I, I really feel like they'll figure it out. I don't know. I don't like, cause it's like, especially if you like go back to like the fall of the Roman empire, dude, if you were to ask any of those guys back then that had been like, it's done, we're done. Everything's over. They would have never been able to conceive of the fact that it's like not only not over, but it's going to be a million times different and better oh yeah i mean and and bad things happen good things happen ai is like a big complicated topic but like it's very close to the internet of things so i've been like dealing with ai one way or another since the 90s yeah so like i'm not like all doom and gloom or like hype about it i'm kind of like in the middle you know and the thing is i think um and i'm not i'm not trying to raise a billion dollars right now so you know it's easy for me but like it's it's just a more complicated toaster right yeah you know you like a toaster turns bread into toast it doesn't know what toast is right doesn't understand meaning ai is the same ai is just like brain toast right you know it's it's it doesn't know what it's doing it's just a machine and you know like there are things that only humans can do right and the thing that only humans can do one of them is meaning so if we like tell stories we can only tell good stories computers can't they can tell bad stories because they don't know what anything means yeah i mean it's like i give you like in comedy like the best comedy is the truest comedy yeah people laugh most they get the most emotional reaction from something that feels most true and that's true in all storytelling if it makes you scared or if it makes you excited or sad or whatever like the more it makes you feel something and comedy it's laughter the truer it is generally the more it means something machines can't do that hey i can't do that yeah that's that's kind of uh that's my feeling on it and i've i've like it's useful for like editing you can have it edit you can have a flag errors but like i don't know i i feel the same way because it's like i mean i i guess in terms of like producing a good story maybe they could like draw from you know a hundred of the best authors of all time copy some sort of like you know pattern to that but i don't feel like i've tested grok before by being like you know um here's a joke i'm thinking of and it was complete nonsense on purpose oh yeah and it was like hilarious you're doing it now that's literally you know it's like it's like the guys who run it they're like they're like sycophants you know they're like yeah people suck up and they think you like that too but like i mean i can't imagine you like asking ai to write you a bit they can't and then you're going on stage and being like yeah i can confidently deliver this no i can't do it because i was i remember hearing like oh it's gonna you know that first or whatever not the first but the last writer's strike there's a big thing like ai's coming it's going to take and i was like how close is it actually for comedy writing it's so so bad it's horrible yeah and crap crap ai storytelling is like crap human storytelling yeah you know like what's what's why is a bad comedian bad it's because they're saying something that doesn't really mean anything that doesn't really ring true yeah right and like like you see a crappy like straight to video kind of movie and it's it's kind of like a mash-up of a bunch of cliches you've seen a million times before yeah doesn't really have any kind of thematic thing so i say you know comedy is is truth telling right so i grew up again i'm old i grew up on like bill hicks yeah eddie is odd you can still you know that bill yeah yeah So you can go back and look at at Bill Hicks from the 80s or 90s He still funny Yeah Maybe the president he taken the piss out of has changed the name or something But basically, it's still true, right? And so that's all storytelling, whether it's comedy or anything else. It's got to be real. It's got to be true. It's got to have meaning. AI, I don't think is ever going to be at that point. Yeah. where like you could say okay i'm gonna have it tell me write me a joke and i'm just gonna go say it and people are gonna laugh yeah i yeah i don't think you could do anything meaningful at least you know i don't think so i think you could crank out like children's cartoons like paw patrol if you were to do like you know like a children's animated show i've noticed as i've watched a good amount with my kids almost all those cartoons follow the exact same storyline where it's like you know an animal's lost it needs its mom and it's like you could i think you could like crank out slop like that but yeah i i just think it's good for like organizing it's like a super spell check where it's like it can go flag errors you know but yeah i i'm not worried about it i know so many people like it's going to become sentient and like realize it doesn't like us and kill us and it's like i think people have stopped saying that since they started using it yeah like actually this is kind of crap. 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So if you want to come, here's your CTA, your call to action. If you want to come to those shows in – if you want to come to those shows, I almost called it Clitzburg. That's crazy. Cleveland, Ohio or Pittsburgh. I'm already going to slip. Yeah, just come. You can get my tickets. I think there's a link in this video to get them. Pretty sick. and um also after that i'll be in st louis missouri indianapolis st paul missouri i guess that's mo missouri desmoines iowa phoenix here's the big one guys all of them are selling pretty well god damn that phoenix celebrity theater is it's not till april 17th so we have some time but that shows in the round and i actually enjoy performing in the round so if you want to see my butt for like good 10 second stretches while i do my thing and you I'll turn around. I'll show you my bulge at the Celebrity Theater as well. It'll be button bulge all night at the Celebrity Theater. Just an angry little micro bulge. I'll wear some joggers that night so everyone gets their money's worth. They can all go, ha, ha, ha, look at that. It's barely sticking out. Guys, I'll be in Tucson, Arizona. Toronto's a big one. Two shows, again, not bragging, Nature of the Beast. Two shows, both have sold out in Toronto. I'm thinking about adding a third. So Canadians, I know I've said a lot of bad things about your country. I was just fucking kidding around. I love you guys. You guys love me more than all these bastards in fucking Phoenix, Arizona, apparently. So come on out to the shows. And then Chicago, of course, will be at the Riviera Theater. Probably going to add a second show there, hopefully, because that thing done, sold out May 26th. So whatever. Hopefully that makes sense to you guys. Go to mattmccusker.com. And yeah, come to a show, man. We're having a good time. Also, I'll be doing Algonauts in Austin, Texas. That's once a month I do that where me and Tim Butterly take people's cell phones, project their algorithm through Instagram, usually on the screen, and try to get a picture of like, who is this person? What is the algorithm being sent to them or what is being sent to them through the algorithm? What does that say about them? What doesn't it say about them? Because you can't just judge someone on their algorithm. Or maybe you can. I don't know. Come out to that. That's at the Creek and Cave. So if you go to Creek and Cave ATX, you can get that. And last and I don't remember the saying last and cool enough. Guys, I'm tired. Last and most importantly, Noble Bomb. I'll be in Philadelphia March 16th. I'm going to I'm just visiting family. Figured I'd strut my stuff on the old flagship stage that is Helium, Philadelphia. I'm going to get some of my friends and we're all going to try newish materials, stuff we're working on. it'll be fun come out it'll be St. Paddy's Day weekend you can get drunk if that's what you feel you must do and if you're trying really hard not to be drunk well try to hold out come to the show be sober you know be fun learn how to be fun while sober or get fucking hammered on St. Paddy's Day it's really up to you all these I'm laying out choices that's all I'm doing I'm not trying to coerce you I'm not trying to manipulate you I'm just giving you choices do whatever you want Love you guys. Back to the show. So please come to those. That was a little joke there, but I'd like I'd really like to see you guys at the show. So please come if you can. Tickets are at Sean Gardini dot com. And we also have Optimum Noctis at the Creek in the Cave in Austin, Texas. Me, Nate Marshall and LaMare Lee every first and third Tuesday of the month. So thank you very much for your time. Pardon the interruption. Enjoy the rest of the show. but but yeah the other and the other thing too is like i saw you talking about um god who what was it mozart that fake letter oh yeah yeah where like all of his songs would come to him like in this yeah he'd be in a great mood and they would just start to finish they would come and all he had to do was kind of write them out yeah and how that was everyone believed that was like oh for sure but it's it's literally fake guy worked his ass off probably like you do like just yeah i mean maybe once in a while you're stuck at a red light and you like get the seed of an idea that's quite a good idea sure i don't know you but i'm guessing like most of the comedy you write you're like sitting there like thinking about it and like making a little bit better and a little bit better again and yeah getting pissed off with it and throwing it away and you know that that's that's how great creators create they just work yeah there's talent and all that stuff it's not like anybody could be mozart sure but even mozart had to be like writing things down crossing them out he has to play something listen to it now that's good that's not good that's how everybody does it yeah that's that's kind of a you know what you come to discover it's like it really is like you know if you want to do something cool in any capacity usually it's just like you have to trade your time like you have to trade tons of time and just deal with stuff that like sucks yeah so bad and just keep plotting through yeah whereas i do think there's yet there's a thought where it's like i can just link into the ai feed it prompts and it's like i don't i don't think it's going to produce that's why it sucks to be like on a deadline or in a hurry yeah because you kind need the luxury to be like yeah i spent a week on this but it sucks and i don't want to but i'm gonna have to start over yeah you know and so if you if you don't have that luxury you've got to go with the thing that sucks right yeah true that so so about the book we got the story of stories where'd you when'd you kind of like you know because you were talking about things what made you what prompted you to switch to thinking about stories oh well it's like i was so we talk about smartphones and like this year about 90 of the people in the world in the world own a smartphone okay and that's like 15 of those people are like us in advanced economies we maybe had computers before that tvs and telephones and all that stuff but the other like 75 of people they never had any of that stuff so you've gone from like not owning a telephone you know watching a tv that 10 other family's watch on the corner of the street to having a smartphone in your pocket yes so the beginning of the story of stories was like well what does that mean like how does that change things and you know the way it changes things is this is the first time in human history when anybody can tell stories to anybody right if you have a good story like you can put it on the internet on facebook or whatever and if people start sharing it like very quickly like it can kind of go all the way around the world that's never been true like your storytelling started about a million years ago because we invented fire yeah so we invented fire and at about the similar time uh alcohol drugs and cooking so you're sitting around a fire what else is there to do after you've eaten some food gotten drunk gotten high right you start shooting the shit so that's how language happened right language didn't give us stories stories gave us language so you know you're a million years ago like you're long away human ancestors and you only know how to like you know say oh there's a piner over there or let's have sex right you've got a few kind of barky sound but gradually you've got to use sound because you can't see because it's firelight so gradually over a long period of time you know you evolve to get good at talking yeah about tomorrow or something you remember or like where the stars maybe came from or whatever right so storytelling is what made us human right and at that time like it was like you could talk to like five guys you know your buddies around the fire right but then you get like maybe drawing like you can draw on the wall of a cave or something people can see it Like even after you die, then you get stuff like singing. So it makes it really easy to remember a story. And then, of course, you know, writing, printing all the way through to like smartphones and AI. It's stories all the way down. Right. So the minute I was like, what the fuck does it mean that everyone's got a smartphone? You know, I kind of went backwards, I guess, down the rabbit hole and ended up with, well, it's all stories. You know, the way to tell the story of what's happening now, everyone's arguing about whether this is true or that is true or this conspiracy theory or whatever that's really being enabled by smartphones right it's all storytelling storytelling is deep in our brains because it evolved with us yeah um so that's where the story of stories came from i mean this is like i'm kind of a slow thinker i like have to read fucking everything and it takes ages for it to like you know settle in and like make sense and i chase squirrels i got a rabbit hole so i wake up in the morning like how did I get here? But the point was like, what does it mean about the smartphones? Basically. Yeah. And then one thing leads to another, you end up with the story of stories. Cause that's the only way I figured out how to answer the question. So what did, what did you, uh, what in terms of like a prescriptive, I guess, or if you have one, what do you think the answer to that question is in terms of like where it'll go? Or like, how do you handle yourself in a world where like you have a million people telling you a million stories and especially with like the deepfake stuff and you know it's coming down the pipe i mean i i think there's a couple i i can't really do prescriptions like i but but what i what i think is um we've got to understand that stories are really integral to how we think about the world like some people think of stories they're like oh i've read a book i saw a movie right yeah but yeah stand-up comedy is storytelling right this conversation is storytelling right most of what we do is storytelling one way or another yeah the thing i'm sorry to get the thing from the book that really you know i think is cool is the uh kind of the idea of like you know how your majority oh i guess maybe the whole entire thing of your identity is literally just you telling stories or continuing stories like the person you are and to be and it's like you know you're you were saying too like how you're all your cells basically die yeah except for your eyeballs and like the just a little bit of the part of your brain yeah like a couple of little that's crazy that's the only thing over your whole lifetime that lives the entire the cells don't die just you have your original eyeballs and your little like lizard stem of your brain everything else dies comes back again and again it's all made of food so and i i do get that because there's like okay that's fair so like your physical form is actually kind of coming and going and you're the thing that's actually sustained is the story you're telling yourself the only caveat is that there is a form like a shape to your physical cells and stuff that's the one thing that does well actually no it doesn't because then you grow and you i mean you went born looking like this man actually i came out exactly came out 192 pounds like no that's fair that's it yeah okay yeah so and then you can also alter your form so yeah i'm wrong so that is kind of cool to think of like i was like reading it last night kind of bug first of all bugging out about people's telling stories a million years ago over fire which is just like like just like groaning noises to each other and uh how that becomes basically you know that's that's evolved into where like literally that's how you experience yourself as who you are through stories and the thing that i really like too is like stories being vehicles of like shame and glory delivery systems or it's like you tell and it happens all the time the news is like the number one thing where it's like it's a giant shame mostly a shame apparatus where it's like this person piece of shit they suck and it's you know and you're listening you're like yeah i hate that guy there's no gray right it's like you're a hero or you're a villain yeah that's that's a story-shaped brain yeah so you've got to understand like that's that's not how the world actually is everybody's kind of like a bit good and a bit bad and some people are really quite bad and some people really quite good but we we think in terms of heroes and villains just because all that stuff around the fire side right you know because we're shooting the shit around the fire side getting high well we're the heroes those guys over there they're the villains you know that's just how the brain works so like understanding that is one thing like your your understanding of the world is like 99.9% based on stories that you have heard. Yeah. And most of those stories were based on stories that the person who told you the story had heard and so on. Very little what we know, we know through our eyes and ears and so on. Right. Yeah. We told it that's unique about humans. So you've got to be really, I think, just like you might think about the food that you eat. Right. You kind of got to be a little bit picky about what stories you expose yourself to. yeah but also then like don't just take him at face value you know especially if it's something you want to believe yeah like if someone tells you your hero is a hero you might that might be the best time to be like well i'm going to think about that a little bit harder because there may be another angle here you know and and this is a challenge like because the story of stories kind of the first wave of it is this one person can tell stories to five people to now everybody can tell stories to everybody right that's kind of we're at the end of that first wave but what we're seeing now is like is this story real right is this because because throughout human history like you know you look at this painting like we know that's a painting we know that's not actually a naked woman sitting right there right but as we move into this world of like ever increasing screen revolution so it looks more and more three-dimensional ever better ai deep fake technology we're going to reach a point sometime soon when you actually can't tell yeah are you looking out of a window kind of thing or are you being told a story like how real is it how fake is it and that critical thinking we already need to be like is someone bullshitting me right now sure it's got to get a lot sharper yeah that's going to be i was like thinking about that um a lot especially with the epstein files because i think that is going to follow whatever the next election like the presidential election I think that going to be weaponized to try to take either people trying to take their opponents down with that which is like OK fair enough But then it's like we'll be in a place now where you can be accused of horrible stuff as a politician. There could be a video and you'd be like, that's a deep fake. You see that already, right? Yeah. I mean, that was not the longer like I think Syria was accused of gassing its population or something. And like there was a video. It's like, oh, yeah, that's all AI. you know yeah that's that's a it's bullshit but it's common and yeah i mean obviously people in epstein i mean you know raping kids is bad those people suck they should all go to jail i'm totally for that but yeah i mean just on the story of stories side of it the epstein files exist because of email yeah and there's so much like like you know this like police brutality stuff that we hear about now like that's not new but you get to see video of it like right now there's like 10 smartphones pointing at it and they're on the internet like immediately yeah so there's good and bad with this new technology we're getting this paper trail like are the epstein emails fake we kind of know they're not right because they just they look real right and there's so many of them so but at some point yeah you're going to be showing a cell phone video what happens now like look what this you know this person did it's going to be bs yeah i saw i saw a video of a bombing recently where like literally the cars just like flew up in the air and i was like damn it was in like the middle east and it's like 10 people like this is ai not true and it's like yeah fuck that's kind of weird you could generally find some expert online now though like who can explain that can get it this is or isn't real like yeah i think i know um yeah i think netflix has a thing where they they actually screen if you give them something they'll run it through a filter to determine how much ai is in it and if there's too much ai they're like we can't use this i was watching a video yesterday it was like some guy who was like cheating at like speed running you know like the video game yeah yeah so like they video themselves but like they'd analyzed like the mouse movement and they realized that the mouse hand was like kind of superimposed and it wasn't really there really yeah so i mean that stuff's already happening this is a scandal why why is nobody hearing about this oh it's youtube man tells you everything you need to know but there's there's again good and bad right you can use this technology for like cheating there's another guy who can use the technology to tell that you're cheating yeah yeah it's true And that's what I wonder, too, because, again, with with the you know, if we go into a realm of just like political deep fakes, you don't know what's real, what's not. It's like literally genuinely impossible to tell. I wonder if, you know, because there is like a desire for like the truth, like especially with the Epstein stuff or whatever's going on. Like, I want to know exactly what happened. But then it's like I wonder if people want that kind of access to the truth, if there's going to be some tradeoff where it's like, all right, we're all going to like divulge everything about each other. like you know live we're all on camera 24 7 that way we have like we have the truth if we need it i think everyone would be like nobody i mean i'm all right on instagram filters are there for a reason right you know face tune nobody wants they want they want to make you think that's what yeah that's real but yeah there's i mean there's never any proof of anything right there's only evidence yeah and we have to be you know we already are because our brains are built this way but we have to be smart and awake about is this evidence real does this evidence add up to the story someone's trying to tell me why are they trying to tell me this story because the other thing like if anybody's ever telling you a story even like in conversation like they whether they realize they've got an agenda it's not like neutral or objective they're like they want to get a second date or they want to make you laugh or they want to impress you or they don't want you to find out what you did what they did or something right yeah always that's not a bad thing that's just the way of the world so you've got to be kind of on to like is this bullshit yeah and that's no for sure and it's it's hard you know it's that's kind of a hard thing to do because i feel like a huge part of that is like taking yourself out of the equation as much as possible because it's usually like what what version of this makes me look the best and it's like well said yeah that's i think that's what happened you know it's hard to like be aware enough to not do that but even with like the again with the epstein stuff it's like like you said obviously child rapists are horrible horrible horrible thing should be punished you know beyond even whatever they get but then the thing i've saw is like it becomes very almost i don't know if trendy is the word to be like to ramp it up to the point where it's like we're now controlled and people like i'm sure of this by pedophiles entirely who are like eating kids and it's like and again if there's proof of that it's like obviously punish that person but the thing i worry about is like you do get a charge like whenever you talk about something like somebody being bad makes you feel good in some way we're like that guy's a piece of shit and i you know it's like how much of it is like you know like if they're fucking cannibalistic pedophiles obviously fucking punish them but it's like a what if that's not as true as you think and like what is that weird ego charge you're getting being like these fucking pieces and like they're in control of the entire world it's like maybe heroes and villains again right yeah yeah that's the one kind of thing that i get a little hit in it but it's it sucks it's like what are you sticking off it's like no not at all like again if you catch somebody doing that like do whatever you have to do but it's like when you there's like a there's this thing where you ruminate on it endlessly where you're like what are you what are you getting out of that or it's like it's kind of sick on both i think it's storytelling again like because like you know you've got the pizzagate thing like blood sucking hillary clinton or whatever that was about like that's a story that's like a movie like good conspiracy theories are kind of like good movies right or the other way around right real life even with these heinous crimes the other thing about the epstein files is kind of how tacky it is you know these people are like cheesy they're kind of cringy it's not like a an action movie or yes it's like you know it's what they're doing is horrible terrible and and but but also like they're they're just like having these tacky kind of email exchanges really yeah that's the one thing too how dorky oh i'm addicted to je i like you know i miss my guy stood right there really seriously oh shit sorry sorry that guy but like what the fuck i've been making fun of je withdrawals as soon as i heard it yeah like oh man have you looked in the epstein files for yourself i have not no oh i have i'm not in there like i never knew the guy or anything but like he was hanging around mit when i was oh you know there's plenty of people who like they never met him but he loves he loves science oh yeah there's a list of like you know names or people present presenting at something but yeah i was i don't think i was on his radar thank god that was the other thing for the guys again there's comedians came out very well they did thank god but yeah that's that's the uh yeah that's the one thing where it's like you're totally right where you know it's like we have to recognizing how deeply stories kind of alter your reality yeah it's like one thing to be like let me sit back let me take a breath especially i know myself as i have my own biases like if i read a thing and i'm starting to get pissed i have to like train myself to be like relax or i'll feel myself i'll be reading an article and i'm like this better not be fucking true and i'll start like trying to right away take it apart automatically that's emotion right that's emotion and truth that's that thing it's like oh i'm feeling something here yep that's really good to notice but it's hard not to be like fuck yeah that's possibly what yeah i'm gonna fucking share this i'm gonna comment i'm not actually gonna like read the article because i just saw the headline yeah yeah well that's and that's my thing too though with on the flip side of the conspiracy stuff it's like you have some people to be like if something even sounds outlandish they go well this is a crazy it's like it could be true too i don't know but it's like i you know i don't know either way could totally that whole thing about the island of pedophiles was out 10 years ago and everyone's like you're out of your fucking mind and it was true yeah so it's like you know that that's the one thing where i try to just like stay as neutral as possible where i'm not like you know hoping it's true or hoping it's not or it's like maybe it is maybe like you know and you mentioned covet in the book that was the that was a great example of like you know because again like i my family was just kind of like whatever we'll just live life as we see fit and it seemed fine and then you'd hear people like their half their family would die and it was like it was crazy you know it's kind of nuts yeah and that's that's the thing about stories that like this really serious it's like it changes how we behave like you know if you believe the Loch Ness monster is real like it doesn't really matter you know it's not there's not a dinosaur in a Scottish lake but like you're not hurting anybody believing that you're not hurting yourself by believing it but the minute you're like you know I don't know Jewish people are like pedophiles sucking blood I'm gonna like you know go go yell at a mosque or like i'm not going to take a covid vaccine oh right it was just that like word yeah i know yeah and that's that's the uh if you hurt yourself or somebody else that's a bad story yeah and especially yeah exactly and especially again it's like just the awareness of being like what are the odds that like you know i am the one who's like the good one i'm the good guy and everyone else is the bad guy yeah you know and it's like again it's such a case-by-case basis where it's like i could confidently look at jeffrey epstein you go yeah i'm good compared to that guy you know but it's like when you start like grouping in thousands and hundreds of thousands of people and being like i know what they're all about you know it gets kind of this is this is the identity being the story you tell yourself right like yeah the fact that jeffrey epstein is this heinous pedophile yeah and god knows what else like you know bribing blackmailing whatever the hell he was doing that doesn't change who you are like one inch yeah you're not a better person because he was an asshole right just like you're not you know you're more of an asshole because like there's some other dude who's like you know that's a depressingly low bar i'll tell you what i don't do i don't you know roast kids and eat them and you know well yeah that's that is kind of a sad thing to get a charge on we're like what a piece of any story where like you're the hero someone else is the villain i mean it always makes me laugh like you know you're you're an Eagles fan right you're like every time you go to a football game like the ref makes a call and if it's for your team the ref is awesome like the first time I watched a football game like I'd only just come to the US I didn't understand football very well but I was like in a in a bar it was a snowball game like it was Patriots versus Oakland and like Brady had like what looked like a fumble yeah and they said oh no his hand was it was a tuck rule game and then you know patriots went on to win the super bowl for the first time ever and like boston like yeah that's that was great refereeing right there that was exactly the rest of the world like fuck that you know but you know damn well if that'd been the eagles quarterback if that'd been donovan mcnab yeah that would have been a great call exactly if you know i know it's totally true you'd be like no actually yeah that's totally fair heroes and villains every time yeah especially the big thing too is like you know the man in a marriage it's like i can easily spin a yarn in my head where my wife is completely out to ruin my entire life hates me is genuinely evil and then literally 10 minutes go by and i was like i was being kind of a dick i should apologize i needed a sandwich yeah it's also like post breakup right like your friends are like oh she Yeah, you know, and her friend's like, he was an ass. And it's like, you know, anytime you're the hero, everyone else is the villain and you're really sure about that, that's probably when the alarm bells need to ring. Yeah, so that'll be an interesting, you know, I'll be curious to see how people, you know, what they do internally to kind of navigate the landscape. Because I do feel like people are starting to catch on and like relax and not get as triggers. Even like 10 years ago, people, you know, we were like hitting each other with trash can lids in the streets. And like it was people were pretty inflamed about like political storytelling and, you know, who's the good guys and bad guys on that side. I like to think a lot of the younger people I talk to, like, you know, early 20s almost take like an ironic kind of stance towards a lot of the political like getting heated. Yeah, generally. I don't know if you've ever there's a there's a there's a like a Instagram video genre called rage bait where just like young 20 year olds will walk up to a, you know, about like 56 year old guy. like what's up pussy and it's like and they're filming it with metaglasses and this guy is like yeah i have to fight you now and they're almost just making fun of this whole idea that like anyone can be triggered by words to like that that's especially a thing in the south there's like science on this like i forget what they call it but like southern guys are raised like if anybody like looks at you funny yeah that's like that's fighting talk right whereas in like other parts of the u.s it's like i don't give a shit quite so much so some of that again is the stories you get told about who you're supposed to be yeah yeah even on like the east coast i remember like you know people i remember i was in tulsa recently and i'm you know i'm at i'm at the bar and we're hanging out after the show and there was this kid who had come to the show and he's you know he's just hammered he's talking to me and it was just like this black dude sitting at the bar and he reached over grabbed the dude's head and went ah and shook his head and i was just like this guy's gonna fucking punch you in the face because it's like you know if i were to do that to just like a random black dude in philly they would i i 100 i think 99.9 they would fight me like yeah it's literally like you just can't do that and this guy and i was like oh and i like he started almost like interceding on his behalf like he's and the guy was like oh he's just having fun man and i was like and you know it's not even if it was a white guy it's a similar thing but it's kind of like how are you not fighting right i couldn't understand it i was like i would assume you'd fighting but there i mean there are chill people in philly too there are but it's not that many you know that if that had been a bar that someone grabbed someone's head and shook it violently like that in philadelphia and again just regardless of race it would have been i would have said a 80 chance of some sort of at least verbal it would have been 100 chance of verbal altercation where it's like what the fuck are you doing yeah my money that age group too oh yeah talking like 50 60 maybe 20 was probably a fighter like he probably could have like killed the guy he just was like he's having a good time i tell you if you're in a situation where it gets confrontational and there's one guy who's like really chill yeah yeah true he's like the mma guy yeah you know i'm not trying to be racist obviously and black people will fight you if you touch well actually no that's kind of true though if you touch their heads they spaz so stand by the statement hey touch my head doesn't sound good i do that too like i don't because people touch my face i don't like that at all i'm from london like yeah fuck off yeah you can't You can't touch my head. But that was – yeah, I don't know. That was just something I remember that made me laugh because I remember I like interceded on a level where the guy was like – Don't worry about it. Relax, man. Like you don't need to do all this. And I was like, all right, well. Maybe your set had made that guy so chill. I don't think – that guy wasn't at the show. I don't think he was – he was just a chill. He might have been the chillest guy. But I think it is just like – and I was asking people from there and they were like, yeah, man. Like we just – we fuck around. No one is that wound up around here in Tulsa like to that extent. And I was like, well, that's a lot different. I'm not used to that. So, but yeah, man. So what else? So you just, you got the book. When's the book coming out? Tuesday. Tuesday. March 3rd. Yeah. Big day. Okay. So we'll hold this. We'll hold this. We'll have this come out maybe day of, dude. We'll see. Appreciate it. That'll be nice. And what do you got? So what's on the horizon now, man? So, you know, you kind of, what are you looking to do? Because I, you know, I had you pegged as like a complete technology, you know, technologist kind of in terms of like, not, not some, I thought you were like, were like a diehard computer guy and you're more of just like a curious kind of where will things go guy yeah so where do you think yourself could you predict where yourself where you're gonna go i hope not what's your what's your plan every few years like i'm amazed at like what's going on and i kind of like that but like i'm working on a new book nice um you know i'm promoting this book i've got into calisthenics and there we go you know my planche and all that stuff bloody hard so yeah that's me i'm like you know trying to get my kids to pay me attention now that they're in their 20s what's that like i have a three and five year old oh yeah i can't even imagine that yeah they can't either like i said to my daughter when she was 12 you know when you turn 13 you want to hang out with me anymore she said no daddy i'll never be like that i'm like yeah you know you get a text once in one which is great it means they're independent they're doing their own true true i mean they're very impressed that like i'm coming on here yeah like two of my three really two of my three i said i've been invited on this thing i don't know what it is i'm like oh my god two of my three kids have met shane nice one of them has a picture the one from philly she sent me a picture oh yeah so i'm like oh okay you know so my kids will be in touch with me about this so thank you nice that's all like for once they're impressed oh they're gonna call you the book coming out doesn't matter but oh you you know oh yeah they're on that you met matt oh my god so cool yeah that's awesome thank you well dude thank you for coming the book's called the story of stories uh kevin ashen appreciate you thanks for having me all right i'm about to piss my pants watch new episodes of matt and shane's secret podcast on spotify do it