Reid Hoffman Returns (on an optimistic AI)

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Speaker 1 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by Lily Padma.
Hi. Hi, nice stripes.

Speaker 2 Thank you. I'm in stripes today.

Speaker 1 You look like a convict.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
I'm going for that.

Speaker 1 That's a new look. They said 2025 is convict.
That's right. Convict's a new black.

Speaker 1 Returning guest today. Yeah.
But in person this time.

Speaker 2 Yes, we had them during our COVID era.

Speaker 1 That's happening a lot now. We're starting to get folks that we had done during COVID.
And I got to say, it feels in person like it's the first time we interviewed them.

Speaker 2 Definitely. I mean, I'd feel bad saying this, but that time feels lost.
Like it almost feels like those episodes don't count.

Speaker 1 Well, I think we had a lot of great up. I know we had a lot of great ups.
We did. Eric Lander, that's a phenomenal episode, but it didn't embed itself in my memory.
None of the ones that were over

Speaker 1 Zoom embedded.

Speaker 2 Yeah, same.

Speaker 1 It's like, I don't really remember the people.

Speaker 2 I know. So we just got to have them all back.

Speaker 1 We got to have them all back. Yeah.
Talking to you, Barry.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I don't know if that was even COVID.
He just didn't want to come.

Speaker 1 Well, right.

Speaker 1 Let's be honest. He did not want to come.

Speaker 1 So it's going to be funny. Kristen wasn't here.

Speaker 1 But anyways, Reid Hoffman's here. Yes.
And to remind people, Reid Hoffman is a software entrepreneur and an author. He is the co-founder of LinkedIn, also leading voice in AI.

Speaker 1 He's one of, if you listen to our favorite podcast,

Speaker 1 he's all over it. He was one of the first meta people.
He was the first, you know, he's

Speaker 2 a huge investor in massive companies.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He's got a damn good eye for what's going to actually

Speaker 1 work and be desirable by people. His several books, Masters of Scale, Balitz Scaling, The Alliance, The Startup of You.

Speaker 1 His new book, which is out on the 28th, is Super Agency. What could possibly go right with our AI future? And he wrote that with Greg Beto.
So I want to give a shout out to Greg.

Speaker 1 This is really, really fun. And it led me to design

Speaker 1 a van

Speaker 1 that I'm in love with with AI.

Speaker 2 That's really cool.

Speaker 1 Anyways, love Reid Hoffman. This was really, really fun.
Please enjoy Reid Hoffman.

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Speaker 1 My first curiosity read, and this is a sincere question, what's the longest you are anywhere? Because what I've been able to observe from a distance is you seem to be somewhere else every three days.

Speaker 1 It tends to be the stay and then move, move,

Speaker 1 stay. Is home Silicon Valley? No, home is Washington State.
Oh, it is! Yeah, it's just outside of Seattle. And you're on a lot of boards.
Do you have to be in person at those meetings?

Speaker 1 Are those now Zoom meetings? So it used to be all in person. and now one of the benefits of the kind of post pandemic you're like well frequently in person but i happen to be in

Speaker 1 rome

Speaker 1 this time and it's just not convenient for me to come back i'll zoom and so it's kind of a mixture but with more in person okay so you've written another book yes you're in so many different things you're a very active investor you're on the board of all these companies what's the inspiration to write a book it doesn't make sense i don't think almost anymore for anyone to only write a book.

Speaker 1 But it still does make sense to write books. And the reason why you write a book is because you want to think through something deeply.

Speaker 1 The process of writing it, you're thinking about it, you're circulating it to your friends and critics and getting them to challenge you.

Speaker 1 And you're thinking about why it is I hold this particular view very deeply. And then let me elaborate it in terms of the detail of the argument.

Speaker 1 And some people, small number of people, really like reading books. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So like, okay, if you're going to go write the book to think through it, then also produce it and kind of have it available. Yeah, why not?

Speaker 1 One of my fun book blurbs on the superagency book is Yuval Harari, who's basically like, great, compelling future of AI and humanity.

Speaker 1 I disagree with some of the main arguments, but you should read it. And I hope he's right and decide for yourself.
And that's why you do a book.

Speaker 1 So that people who are wrestling with what is truth here can engage with you in some depth.

Speaker 1 But what you should really do is podcasts and social media and a bunch of other things because that's where millions of people are actually going to engage with what you're doing.

Speaker 1 So you shouldn't just do a book. If I had to do one, I'd do this, not the book.
Right. The book is the thinking to get ready for all the conversation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like an elongated pressure test of it, I guess. You're right.
And when you're hearing your own argument in print, you somehow can have some objectivity about your argument.

Speaker 1 That makes total sense in your head, but once you're reading it, you're like, hmm, that's a little weak. Change that.
Yeah, that doesn't work.

Speaker 1 It's funny you bring up Yuval because one of my only pushback questions is something when he was here, he brought up, which I found to be very compelling. I love Yuval.

Speaker 1 And actually, one of the things that we discovered in arguing about it is frequently in arguments with critics, I'll find that I disagree with the question or I disagree with kind of the variable.

Speaker 1 Yuval and I see the elements of the world in very similar ways. We just have different assignments to variables.

Speaker 1 And that's part of the reason why he's like, look, I fear that I'm right and I hope that you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Sure. And it's like, okay, let me tell you why I think we should be motivated by hope, not fear.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So maybe let's start with, because the book starts with Socrates musing on the failings of writing. So tell us about what Socrates thought of writing.

Speaker 1 By the way, some scholars disagree with this particular interpretation because scholars have all kinds of different interpretations, but I think it's a reasonable interpretation.

Speaker 1 So Socrates in Phaedrus was, I mistrust the written word versus the spoken word.

Speaker 1 And I mistrust it because when I'm here, when we're speaking words together, I can hear how you're hearing my words and I can adjust it. I can be dynamically interactive with you.

Speaker 1 I can challenge, I can question. Yes.

Speaker 1 So the dialectic process of this discourse in the spoken word is more true, more close to reality, more a shared learning experience than what might happen with a written word, which could be, who knows where it goes, and it could be abused and it could be misrepresented and it could be misunderstood.

Speaker 1 Mainly that.

Speaker 2 In person, you can read intention. This happens a lot when we're texting.
I'm like, we got to just get on the phone.

Speaker 2 Because I think we are not on this.

Speaker 1 It's a very short sentence. I feel like you're mad.
Yeah. Oh, no.
Exactly. The first recording of technology is the written word.
There were even challenges then.

Speaker 1 And then through all major technological innovations. And that's why the opening with the Socrates and Vedrus, but of course, the written word is essential.

Speaker 1 We do not have anything of the modern world without the written word. And that doesn't say that Socrates' concerns are even invalid today.
All at texting. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Well, I was going to add something he couldn't have anticipated, which is there's something that gives validity to a concept or an idea simply the fact that it made it to print and made it to your newspaper.

Speaker 1 There's some other magic trick where you kind of over-inflate the information you're reading because it has gone through, you think, some steps. Yes.
You wouldn't have even predicted that.

Speaker 1 I think that's largely what happened on the internet. It's like people are reading things and it's in the shape of a New York Times article and has a headline and you're like, this is news.

Speaker 1 This is substantial.

Speaker 2 A gatekeeper came through here, but not always.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is quality information because it looks like the information I associate with quality.

Speaker 1 Oh, and by the way, the mistake that most people make, which we now even have to harder steer against, is, well, it's quality because I naturally agree with it. It has confirmation bias.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're like, no, no.
It intuitively feels correct. Yeah, it feels like it's right to me.
So it's what the people in my community are telling me, et cetera.

Speaker 1 Every generation of new technology, you have to have the, no, no, let's think about why it is I have that basis. What's the challenge of it? What is true on this?

Speaker 1 And realize that my reflexive belief is not truth. My first question when I like an opinion should be, oh, do I benefit from this worldview at all? That's an interesting place to start.

Speaker 1 I think even if we could admit to ourselves, yeah, I have this opinion. That sounds logical and sound, but hold on a second.
Would I somehow benefit if that were true?

Speaker 1 And generally, almost all my opinions, yes, in some way or another, I would benefit from them. You're living your life in a way out of what you believe.

Speaker 1 And so, therefore, like if you suddenly go, oh, Action Vec, there's this thing I believe. Well, how do I now lead my life so that I'm benefiting from the world that I believe to be true?

Speaker 1 It's not necessarily a challenge of the validity of your belief, but you should ask the question and you should adjust. Yeah.

Speaker 1 My conclusion was I should most trust the opinions I have that I actually don't benefit whatsoever from. Not necessarily true.

Speaker 1 So for example, you go, Reid, are you writing super agency because you're investing in these AI technologies that you're going to make money from the companies and all the rest of the stuff?

Speaker 1 I phrase it as you're on the board of Microsoft lead investment round for open AI and you own an AI product. Pie, why would anyone trust you to be critical of AI?

Speaker 1 As an example, the answer is I put all of my energy and effort to the things I believe.

Speaker 1 If I said, oh, I actually don't believe in this, I believe in producing new plays, then I would go do the producing new plays. I think the asking the question of, well, where is your self-interests?

Speaker 1 is an important one.

Speaker 1 But if you said, oh, well, you shouldn't do business where you think the right thing for humanity is, well, that's silly because business is one of the great creators of the middle class and all the prosperity that we have and so forth.

Speaker 1 So you actually should align them. What you should do is not do businesses that you think are bad.
You go, oh, I think the cigarette business is unhealthy for society.

Speaker 1 I don't do anything with the cigarette business. I invest in the businesses that I think are good for humanity.
Yeah, pro-social. Yes.
And by the way, that then is an amplifier.

Speaker 1 For example, podcasting and being in dialogue, that's good. You can invest in the microphone business.
You can invest in the camera business. That's fine.

Speaker 1 That's all you shouldn't then about microphones because you invested in the microphone business well it's nutty yeah yeah that's what you're investing i guess i was more thinking i've not advocated for many things in my life but one happened to be gay marriage a long time ago well i certainly don't benefit from that i don't have a gay best friend that was urging me to get involved who i would then win the love and approval it was just kind of okay i trust that opinion because i don't really benefit from it yeah that's how i feel about taxes i'm happy to give a lot of money away i should probably want to keep it hoard it, but I do think it's telling that this is actually against my own benefit, but I believe it as a value, that it's important for society.

Speaker 1 Usually it's complicated because the reason you're willing to do that, of course, is because you benefit from this great society that we live in with kind of the rule of law and all the rest.

Speaker 1 So it's what you perceive to be actually your benefit

Speaker 1 that we collectively do. And by the way, you think that the right society is one that allows people to be people.
And actually, in fact, sexual orientation is just people.

Speaker 1 Whereas these other, like for example someone who has a religious point of view that's really negative on that goes no no because that's in your interest right so I actually think the right way to approach interest is to be clear about here's why I believe my interests are right and my interests align with a good future of humanity You're right.

Speaker 1 Gay marriage is a single issue within a larger, just society I want to be a part of. Yes.
And of course, I'm arguing for things that may fit my ideology, may fit my economic thing.

Speaker 1 But by the way, the idea is to be truthful and in discussion about it and transparent transparent about it and in dialogue about it.

Speaker 1 And that's why super agencies, I actually view this to be good for humanity.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so there's a lot of perfect, well, they're imperfect, but they're damn near perfect parallels throughout history for this current AI revolution. So I think we should go through a couple of them.

Speaker 1 We could start with the printing press. What were people's thoughts, fears, concerns? How does it parallel AI?

Speaker 1 So here's what's stunning, which most people won't realize, because I think printing press, of course it's great. I mean, here we have all these books.
It's how we create a middle class.

Speaker 1 We can't have science without the printing press. You have to be able to print and disseminate information in scientific journals in order to have science.

Speaker 1 All of our modern life is based on scientific advancement. It's super critical.
And yet, the discourse around when the printing press was created was, this is the destruction of human society.

Speaker 1 It's the destruction of knowledge. It's the destruction of human capabilities like memory.

Speaker 1 And so a lot of the discourse we're having right now around AI was the discourse around the printing press. And there's both good news and the challenging news around this.

Speaker 1 The good news is, of course, we get to the other side of the printing press and modern society is enabled.

Speaker 1 The challenge is we had nearly a century of war because of it, because all this religious war, who can distribute God's word in printed form. Martin Luther said, we have a text.

Speaker 1 You don't need a bishop and you don't need all these people. All you need is this book.
And so the Roman Catholic Church, which was the hegemonic power of the day, was like, this is the end of us.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And so we as human beings adjust very badly to new technological, and we create a lot of problems in doing that.
And that's true of every major technological revolution.

Speaker 1 We've encountered this before. We're encountering it now again.
I'm trying to get us to think positively and creatively about how to navigate these otherwise very difficult transitions.

Speaker 1 And by the way, the transitions are always going to be painful. I'm not saying it's pain-free, it's easy, kickback, tip your margarita, it's all going to be fine.
That sounds nice, Daniel.

Speaker 1 The transition will be difficult. There will be lots of challenges and I don't want to have to learn this new tool and I don't want to have to adjust this new world that the new tool creates.

Speaker 1 And by the way, this will change political power and change economic power and change the power and the position I'm in and will change my job. Yes, there's going to be a bunch of that.

Speaker 1 That's not easy. And you're like, well, who are you? to make that happen.
Yeah, you clearly, Ori, are the beneficiary of this thing. You're on the other side of this.

Speaker 1 Because you're making it a benefits use. This is classically as human societies work and make progress is that we have freedom to make new technologies and we have freedom to make new businesses.

Speaker 1 We offer them to people as consumers and they have the freedom to adopt them. And that's the normal process stuff.
And that's, of course, where the AI revolution is happening as it begins.

Speaker 1 That's a whole set of freedoms that enable that. So what was the historical context from which the superloom arose? What percentage of the world was occupied with the production of textiles and stuff?

Speaker 1 How significant of an industry was it? There was a huge weaver industry, especially in England. People were like, oh, it's kind of the original small business.

Speaker 1 What will the orphans do that we have in these loom factories from the decades novel?

Speaker 1 And this is where the term Luddite comes from, because Ludd was like, this is the destruction of our way of life. This is the destruction of our industry.
We need to bomb the power looms.

Speaker 1 We need to kill the factory owners because this is going to change everything. And it did, of course, because now home weaving is a hobby.

Speaker 1 There's some Etsy in this. There's still some business, but the production of all the clothing that we are all wearing here.
None of this is the home weaving.

Speaker 1 But without embracing that power loom, without embracing that part of the Industrial Revolution, we don't have a middle class.

Speaker 1 We don't have clothing that everyone can wear and we can't clothe the world. And new industries are created.
And they said, okay, that industry massively transformed.

Speaker 1 It was suffering and pain for the people in that industry. Part of the reason why there was a rebellion around it.
If the Luddites had won, England would have never had an empire.

Speaker 1 England never would have technologically progressed. It would have been other places that did that.
Their children, their grandchildren, only had a future by embracing the power loom.

Speaker 1 Well, it's hard at that moment to predict that, okay, at this point, only 2% of the population is buying a new garment a year because the price is so expensive because it is hand done.

Speaker 1 They're not forecasting, well, those jobs go away, but now all of a sudden everyone's buying clothes. There'll be clothing shops.
There'll be all these different things.

Speaker 1 It could, in fact, explode exponentially versus this little pocket we're trying to protect.

Speaker 1 What did the Telegram do?

Speaker 1 All of a sudden, Telegram now means that information can transit at super fast speeds, that it's not controlled through the people who control either the printing press or the messages by which the printed messages get there.

Speaker 1 whether it's government security or other kinds of things. So we are the current channel distributors of information.

Speaker 1 And so the people who are doing it now have a change of who has power for the immediate information. So oh, this is bad.
This is a destruction of society. You can't cross-check it.

Speaker 1 You can't look at it. The current institutions of knowledge and truth should be the ones who are doing it.
And so again, resistance.

Speaker 1 And every new technological thing, especially around information, but not only information, causes that, no, no, no, we should stay with where we are, not go to the new one.

Speaker 1 And by the way, you can always identify all the problems with the new one, especially at the very beginning, because by the way, we haven't remodified it.

Speaker 1 We haven't done iterative iterative deployment and changed it to go, oh, here is how we get the vast majority of the benefits, and here's how we squash some of the bad things. Right.

Speaker 1 Seatbelt, safety glass, airbags.

Speaker 2 Yes. We were just talking about that with Little Women.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah. I just watched Little Women a couple days ago.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And at the end, they are showing the making of that book and how insane the process was to make a book.

Speaker 1 Hand stitching the binding.

Speaker 2 I was like, oh, wow, we think there's wealth disparity now. But back then, to read a book, you had to be so rich you could get your hands on that one copy that took that long to make.

Speaker 2 Everything's a little bit more democratized with these advancements in technology. It's in hindsight that you look back and you're like, oh, that was good.
But throughout, it's tough.

Speaker 1 The transitions are always tough. I'm not trying to tell people the transition is not tough.
We'll get to the negative shit. We're just going through the history first.

Speaker 1 The one in the book that I had never stopped to think about, obviously, I grew up in the era of it, is the telephone because we're pointing out different things. There's a lot of concerns with AI.

Speaker 1 One is jobs. One is how how is it going to mold culture? What's it going to do to inform all these kind of things? But of course, there's a lot of kind of more societal, interpersonal things.

Speaker 1 And I didn't realize that when the phone debuted, people thought it was going to destroy civil society because you would no longer go to someone's house to visit them. Right.

Speaker 1 That it would completely get rid of any kind of interpersonal in-person, which is kind of the same thing we're yelling about right now.

Speaker 1 I had no idea that there was an uproar about that. We forget it because we're going, oh, it's so natural.

Speaker 1 And of of course, the telephone is great because rather than I'm not going to go by your house to visit you because I don't know if you're there. And they'll say, hey, are you there?

Speaker 1 Hey, can I come by? Great. And all of a sudden, increased social connectivity.
Right. The opposite outcome as they feared.
All right. The camera, the radio, the automobile.

Speaker 1 Small list of technologies that have completely changed our lives. How is AI different than those? What are the ones you can admit to?

Speaker 1 Because I guess right out of the gates, none of those technologies has the potential to be fully autonomous, out of our power, out of our control, savvier than us.

Speaker 1 I do want to say there are some major differences between the previous technologies and the current one. 100%.

Speaker 1 And by the way, in each time, and I'm not saying that to be dismissive, each time there were new differences. It's not like the new technology was exactly like the old ones.

Speaker 1 So there's always new things. Oh, it's much faster.
It's being adopted much faster. And then this one's much faster too.
And that doesn't mean much faster is always okay.

Speaker 1 But each time it was, oh, it's being adopted much faster and it worked out. Now, maybe that's until it doesn't.
So speed is one thing.

Speaker 1 Because now that we all have smartphones, I will launch a new AI technology and literally it could be tomorrow, a billion people are engaged with it. Now, the other parts of it are, so one, speed.

Speaker 1 Two is cognitive. Even though some of them, like the printing press and other things, had cognitive participations change the way that we function, communicate, trust information, share information.

Speaker 1 I got to add, Martin Luther did succeed in raising literacy rates from like 3% to 95%. And in the process of learning to read, that cognitive ability did displace some of our other abilities.

Speaker 1 It did permanently change the structure of our brain interesting. 1000%.
For good.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Because part of the back to why did you write a book is because we're actually writing a book as a way of thinking.
And it changes our patterns of how we think.

Speaker 1 Because, oh, the way we think now is perfect. We don't need to think better.
And you're like, yes, we do. How do we get to the new ways of thinking? My thinking's terrible.

Speaker 1 I don't know how everyone else is feeling about their thinking, but your thinking seems viable. No, I have to shoot down four bad ideas before I ever get to a good idea.
But that's good. It is good.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's discerning.
It's part of the process. Part of technology is first we reject them, then we integrate them in terms of how we're being human.
Back to the question of new is one is speed.

Speaker 1 Another one is it's a depth of cognitive that is completely different new from anything we've done before. Yeah.
Already AI writes better than the vast majority of human beings.

Speaker 1 And so it's like, oh shit. Makes music better than I can and does a lot of things better than I can do.
But part of it is the instruments can make better sounds.

Speaker 1 I can't reproduce those sounds in my vocal vocal cords. So when I play the cello or the guitar, I'm playing new sounds.
And I can only play those sounds with that instrument.

Speaker 1 And they're superior to a human sound in various vectors. So now I have to adjust to I'm talented with my hands and the guitar.
I can make better sounds with the AI doing it.

Speaker 1 And the AI can make sounds, but I can still add something to the mix. And I'm adjusting as I integrate it in.
And I'm shaping what we create. And I'm adjusting myself to doing it.

Speaker 1 And that's the progress of human technology. But the new zone is, this is a set of different creativity and cognitive and expression that's totally new from before.

Speaker 1 And then you add, and it also is capable of being agentic. What's agentic? It can operate on its own.
That's a derivative of agent. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 And that's why I chose to deliberately steer into it, because that's kind of at the root of what most people go is like, am I losing my agency? Well, I be the agent of this thing. Exactly.

Speaker 1 And that's why I deliberately steered into the fear with the title super agency. You can go, oh my God, AI is coming for me, or oh my God, I can use AI.

Speaker 1 You only get to the positive future by taking the steering wheel. And that doesn't mean that it's perfect.
In every technology, your agency transforms.

Speaker 1 It isn't that you had the exact same agency before, plus some new things. It's new agency.
Trade-offs. But so far, every new agency has been massively better than the old agencies.

Speaker 1 The thesis is, and this one can be too. Let's put a bow on the kind of employment fears.

Speaker 1 So what are current unemployment rates versus in the past throughout any of these huge technological revolutions?

Speaker 1 When we did the agricultural revolution to the industrial revolution, it was difficult.

Speaker 1 All of a sudden, people moving into cities, not having jobs, being displaced from farms, a stack of different things. And how do I learn these new jobs?

Speaker 1 The new jobs aren't created yet, and all of this stuff. People say, Well, are you irritated by the critics? Not irritated by the critics.

Speaker 1 I think the critical process is a good thing for saying, How do we steer through the transition? Where do I predict will be the first major replacement areas is actually customer service.

Speaker 1 Because any place where we're trying to get the human being to just be on script, yeah, I can do the script better.

Speaker 1 And rather than, well, we've outsourced the job to some Philippine or Indian or other worker who is just following a script. Can't actually pull a lever.

Speaker 1 It's this enormously irritating experience, which by the way, since it's a cost center, we all have experiences you get on the phone and you're waiting and you're waiting.

Speaker 1 Now customer service is like, I'm here right away.

Speaker 1 And what's more, I'm much better than those previous scripts because I've got this dynamic kind of AI process. The AI is trained to be much more compassionate and empathetic, patient.

Speaker 1 Never triggered by your tone. Yes, exactly.
Where you're like, fuck you, I'm so pissed off of this. This is my 10th call.
Yeah. And I was like, I'm really sorry about that.

Speaker 1 And I understand it's difficult.

Speaker 2 It makes the human on the other end. Like, if you're interacting with the AI, you feel dumb yelling at it.

Speaker 1 You're right, Monica.

Speaker 2 So in so many ways, you just are like, whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like yelling at your VCR because of the cable.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I think if we yell at humans, it does something to us.

Speaker 1 Those are some of the areas where I think you'll see some of the jobs transitioning. We have a little bit last year, and we'll see more next year and the year after.

Speaker 1 You say, oh, well there'll be no customer service people anymore. No, no, but the customer service job will now be different, which is, I'm reviewing how the experience with the agents worked.

Speaker 1 And I went, I have an idea about how we could make this a lot better. What if, for example, the agent started with, hey, hey, obviously you're calling me because something was difficult.

Speaker 1 I'm really sorry to hear about that. And then we end with, here's a little thing that might make your day more delightful.

Speaker 1 I guess the unemployment point I was hoping to make was I listed seven of these that were going to end all employment. And I think currently our unemployment rate is about as low as it's ever been.

Speaker 1 Lower as it's ever been. Historically.
Yes. So in spite of all these things, once it's flushed out and we get through the rocky part of it, our unemployment tends to go down and down and down.

Speaker 1 We have very natural reasons to try to enable employment. A, we want it as a society, much healthier society.

Speaker 1 But B, if I can figure out a tool that helps enable employment, then a bunch of people are going to want to use it to enable employment. One of the parallels I frequently use is Airbnb.

Speaker 1 One of the reasons I led this series in Airbnb is if you can enable a bunch of people to creating new ways of traveling, new ways of staying in places, new ways of experiencing locations, that's a really good thing.

Speaker 1 Does it transform some of the hotel experience? Sure. Does it eliminate hotels? Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 Because there's still reasons at different times you want hotels, but it enables a bunch of micro entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1 There's one part of super agency that's all the people who have fears or concerns or curiosity and don't know.

Speaker 1 But another part is technology is saying, make sure that you're thinking about how do you enable agency in various ways, which it can include microentrepreneurship, because that'll be part of the transitions as we're kind of going through this of what the new opportunities and jobs are created.

Speaker 1 And say, well, can you predict them right now? No, nobody could have predicted Airbnb off the internet and the mobile phone.

Speaker 1 Or for me, who loves to drive that you would get in a car with a stranger and have them take you across town while you're drunk.

Speaker 2 The first thing you're taught in kindergarten, don't get in a car with a stranger.

Speaker 1 We're all doing it. We were trained now no longer.
Yeah, it's wild.

Speaker 1 You have a couple of good quotes in the book. One of them I wrote down that I like was, you'll never get the future you want simply by prohibiting the future you don't want.

Speaker 1 I think that's like a good admission to make right out of the gates. You're not going to get anywhere by just throwing darts at it.
Yeah, it's perfectly good to be critical. I welcome the critics.

Speaker 1 critics but if you want to be helpful put your criticisms in ways of saying this is the kind of thing we want not no no you can't change yeah start delineating what the thing is you want this technological wave is coming because by the way even if you said i can stop this technologist from making it there's tens of thousands and millions of others in other countries and other places It's happening.

Speaker 1 There's no version where America sits this out. Yes.
So forget it. So help steer it

Speaker 1 to the healthy human outcomes. Because people then say, well, let's just slow down.
If you you slow down, then other people shape it too. I use a driving metaphor.

Speaker 1 Doesn't mean close your eyes and hit the accelerator.

Speaker 1 That's kind of dumb. Accelerate to the maximum possible safe speed.
That's a good idea. Okay, so I think the first AI product that hit our doorstep in a way that people understood was chat GPT.

Speaker 1 How was it different and how successful is it and why? They thought we were doing a research release. They just thought, hey, we know this is coming.
Let's start getting some human feedback.

Speaker 1 And then boom,

Speaker 1 mic drop. It was a tweet to an announcer, right? It wasn't like a press conference.
They didn't anticipate any of that happening. All of a sudden, I was like, oh, my God.

Speaker 1 So what did it do that you think captivated people? It made it accessible.

Speaker 1 Just about anybody who could have access to a smartphone or a computer could go interact with it and then see something magical, whatever your thing was, which could arrange from the mundane, like, well, I got this shit in my refrigerator.

Speaker 1 What can I make? There's a recipe that's actually pretty good. That's interesting.
To my kind of esoteric interest. Like I have a philosophy degree.

Speaker 1 So I said, what would Wittgenstein make of these modern AI things? And it writes a little essay. And you're like, whoa, that's pretty good.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you, as a philosophy major, found that critique value. It was a good thing to interact with.
I should test it with automotive shicks. That's the only thing I'm an expert at.
You absolutely should.

Speaker 1 This is what I try to prompt people into this, prompt, delivery, fun,

Speaker 1 is to say, do it on something, not just on the new things you don't know how to do. Like write a sonnet for my kid's birthday.
Do that too. That's very cool.
Yeah, that's fun. Right? Fun to do.

Speaker 1 You should do the new superpowers. Make some hip-hop lyrics on this thing that I care about.
Do the things that are completely out of your skill set, but also do it for things that matter to you.

Speaker 1 These new AI tools like ChatGBD, they're great at taking a role that you ask them to take. So a simple role is, I'm going to make the following argument, make the counter-argument.
Oh, okay. Right?

Speaker 1 Just argue against me. We would love that, you and I.

Speaker 2 What would we do?

Speaker 1 We just sit there and stop talking to each other. Here we go.
Now we're on the back of the bag. You don't have a friendship.
Not at all. You get better.
That's true. You learn.

Speaker 1 By the way, you could train it. I mean, you could go, like, what would Dak Shepard's counter-argument be? And I might be able to create it.

Speaker 2 You could probably predict our entire conversation.

Speaker 1 In doing that, you can then make your conversation even better. Guys, going to the edges, thinking of things, and oh, argument three, it's better for me to do that.
I was doing super agency.

Speaker 1 What would the counter-arguments be? And you can't put this infinite 2,000-page book with all the counter-arguments, but you go, okay, let's address the really important ones.

Speaker 1 Let's put the key ones in to make that work. That's the simplest role taking.
Another one is: what would a race car driver think about what I was saying?

Speaker 1 What would a manufacturer of race cars think about what I'm doing?

Speaker 1 What would a future car be like here? Be the technological innovator, be the race car driver, be the industrial

Speaker 1 perspective in the automotive industry, basically. And be in dialogue with that now, too.
How would an ad agency sell this new thing? Exactly.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair experts

Speaker 1 if you dare.

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Speaker 2 I think so much of the fear with AI, but I think every single one of these revolutions is ego. Because we have a friend who uses it all the time for work.

Speaker 2 And she'll just be like, here's some points, put it in a feasible email that I can send out. And when she was saying that, I was like, that's cheating.
I devise an email.

Speaker 1 You enlisted the Ozimpic argument. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 It's like, that's cheating. I do that because I have the skill to do that.
I want to protect the rare skill.

Speaker 1 You want that to still be a valuable skill?

Speaker 2 Yeah, because I have it.

Speaker 2 But of course, when it's the music thing I don't have, I'm like, yes, I want that.

Speaker 1 If AI can make everyone tall, I'm fucking. It's just ego, ultimately.
Yes. And the idea is, don't keep your ego rooted in history.
Make your ego part of the future. I have this skill with email.

Speaker 1 Great. How to use whatever, your chat tool of choice, copy out, whatever, and make it even better.

Speaker 2 I know. It's transitioning into, okay, well, that is gone.

Speaker 1 Now, imagine Monica plus this thing. Exactly.
One of the things we will do at the end of this podcast, I'm going to pull my phone out of my pocket.

Speaker 1 I'm going to pull GBT-4 up on audio mode and I'm going to prompt you into using it because I'm going to show you some of it. I need you to.
Yes, hold my hand in.

Speaker 1 No, we will do that. I literally did that with my mom at Christmas.
This is me having to get grandma's phone out and show her the icon for podcasts and show her how to get there.

Speaker 1 Because I thought about it. I said, look, what's my Christmas present in addition to all the little nice things to my mom? You better have bought her a house, you rich bastard.
I did that too.

Speaker 1 Of course I did that too. I did that years ago.

Speaker 1 But part of what you want to do is share the journey with the people you love. So she loves painting.

Speaker 1 I put ChatGPT on audio mode and I said, what would Monet be doing with current AI image generation things? How would you imagine that Monet would think about this?

Speaker 1 If you love painting, what are ways that you'd use AI to help you paint better? Show her something that mattered to her in this. So Reed, one of my curiosities is if you give it the same prompt.

Speaker 1 So I've consumed some AI stuff that I find incredible. There's a dude who makes these mashup songs.
So one that I loved is he said, Do Metallica as Yacht Rock.

Speaker 1 And it came out with a song that was truly a banger. I played it on here.
It's a great fucking song.

Speaker 1 My question is, if he put in that identical prompt over and over again, it wouldn't always spit out that song or would it? Would it come up with a new song every time?

Speaker 1 It won't be necessarily exactly the same. These are very large, probabilistic computers.
So even if you scrubbed the entire chat history back to where you were starting, there's probability variables.

Speaker 1 Does time and space intervene? Like you could ask in front of mom, show me Monet's current take on blank. And then three weeks later, you do it.
Would you get the same images?

Speaker 1 If you set up the exact same thing, you'd get something probably very similar. Now, the changes are, it's a probability thing.

Speaker 1 So there's random number generators below some of it just to make it performant. There's algorithm updates.
I was doing it on my account. It has all of my history in there.

Speaker 1 So the fact that I've done this before, if it sees it, it will track that and then go, ooh, we probably want something new. Oh, right.

Speaker 2 It's learning what you want.

Speaker 1 So there's a bunch of different things. They're making changes.
So it's not necessarily the same. But if you kind of said, okay, fresh phone, fresh chapter UPT, here's the Monet prompt.

Speaker 1 You'll probably get something that sounds very much like the earlier one, even if it's a little different, because it's like best guess of how experts think about impressionist painting and what Monet was so revolutionary at.

Speaker 1 I want it to be different because, again, if it's going to be something that extends my agency, I don't want everyone else to have the exact

Speaker 1 very easy to make a difference. Here's some of the fun stuff.
So I was beginning with some of the easy prompting. Tell it to take a role.
Be Ferrari in your answer. Enzo.
Be Enzo in responding to me.

Speaker 1 And it'll go, okay. Okay.
Yes, yes, exactly. Right.

Speaker 1 For example, some of the fun prompting is do things like, consider the Zen Cohen. What is the sound of one hand clapping? And do whatever prompt you were doing.
That'll give you a different answer.

Speaker 1 Wow. Just let that swirl as you give me the answer to something unrelated.
Yes. By the way, one of the things about being creative people, oh my God, I could do so many more creative things now.

Speaker 1 It seems to me from the outside like it was a bit of a shocker. And I'm curious where these other monoliths were at in this.
Like where was Google? Where was Microsoft?

Speaker 1 I know Microsoft had already invested years before, but where were these other behemoth companies at when this came out?

Speaker 1 Because I think the big shocker, and I could be wrong, is that Google has really nothing. Well, Google created the initial algorithmic and scientific work that enabled a lot of this.

Speaker 1 Part of the genius of the Open AI crew was going, oh my God, this at scale, this is magic. And Google kind of knew this at scale be cool.

Speaker 1 And they were then kind of classically more fearful about how people were going to criticize them with it. And OpenAI was like, no, no, this is going to be super important for humanity.

Speaker 1 Well, they had no brand to protect.

Speaker 2 Right, exactly.

Speaker 1 Or market position or a bunch of other stuff. These are researchers who want to demonstrate.
It wasn't zero brand, but they were willing to take the risk and do it.

Speaker 1 I guess it just seems like a shocker that the holder of all the info we're using in some way wasn't at the forefront of this. Yeah, they have the most natural position for all of it.

Speaker 1 But it's part of the reason why, track the news, lots of people yelling criticism at Google, you know, including DOJ.

Speaker 1 And natural human response is, oh, let's try to not increase the amount that we're being criticized. Yeah, let's not stick our neck out any further.

Speaker 1 And it's why imagine what could possibly go right, not just what could possibly go wrong.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you keep saying super agency, but the full title super agency, what could possibly go right with our AI future?

Speaker 1 Is there any device in the works to check the work of the AI? Tons. Everyone's working on that.
What you're really trying to do is not get fallibility to zero. You're trying to get validity to low.

Speaker 1 But that's relatively straightforward. Everyone's working on that.
The fear is hallucination. What does that mean?

Speaker 2 I mean, I know what it means, but what does it mean in this way?

Speaker 1 I invented shit, right? Oh. And I invented shit, and sometimes it's wrong.
But by the way, hallucination, imagination, same thing. Right.
And imagination is sometimes a really good thing.

Speaker 1 So I want to keep all the imagination and use all the imagination.

Speaker 1 Now, when you're saying something that matters to me is true, what I want to do is I want to put in, for example, what Google does with its search algorithm.

Speaker 1 I want to make it so that it's like the first page or two, generally speaking, had some shit that's on target. Seemingly the most vetted.
And so that's what I want in AI.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like if it says sponsored, I throw it right out. So what you want to do is, hey, reflect a rigorous and improving truth-telling process to me.

Speaker 1 Don't manipulate me, at least without telling me that you're trying to do it sponsored. Don't lie to me.
That's what we want.

Speaker 1 The most comical case I've heard in the news of this is the lawyer that wrote his

Speaker 1 debrief and had AI do it, and it cited law cases and the argument that didn't exist. And by some miracle, the judge detected that.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Which I wouldn't have expected a judge actually went and looked at all these references, but did.

Speaker 1 There's an example of this person really had a lot of confidence in this thing and put it in front of a fucking judge. Yes.
And the judge was like, there's no Peterson versus Delta.

Speaker 1 Do you feel like disbarred for that? I think he just got humiliated in the news for it.

Speaker 1 That was a good public humiliation because the answer is when we're in processes, legal, medical, educational, where truth really matters. And by the way, news, we should have a truth-telling thing.

Speaker 1 I just waiting for the day for this to be created is here is our news-checking AI bot. My God, yeah.
That we have collaboratively made.

Speaker 1 Both red and blue people have fought very hard for what things are in it. And now.

Speaker 1 You have something that you're broadcasting. It's cross-checked with the news.
We need to call that AI Walter Cronkite.

Speaker 1 We got to go back to our last trusted. I don't think that means that if you disagree with the AI news bot, you can't say what you want to say.
Sure.

Speaker 1 But I love the, you said X, and AI Newsbot says, oh, by the way, you should check some facts. The moment I was most discouraged by this was in the wake of the Capitol VI.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, happy anniversary.

Speaker 1 Discourage.

Speaker 1 January 6th. I turned on CNN first because I'm a liberal and the pundits saying the police officers were in cahoots with the Trump administration.
And I was like, what?

Speaker 1 The police officers wanted to storm on the Capitol? A, that was not true at all.

Speaker 1 Then I went over to Fox and it was like this triumphant kind of, and I was like, well, neither of these perspectives are even approaching reality. Could we merge them and come to truth?

Speaker 1 I don't know, but that's when I got kind of scared of the whole system. Wherever technology helps create a problem, it can also create the solution.

Speaker 1 In the book, you cite some polls and the worst of the polls was at 15% and the very best was at 35%.

Speaker 1 Only 15% of Americans in the worst case think that the benefits of AI are bigger than the wins of AI. And in the best case scenario, 35% of Americans think that the benefits will outweigh the risk.

Speaker 1 Why is it that stark? I think if you could go back in history and run that in any new technology, it would always look like that.

Speaker 1 So I think that's why, because it's like, look, I'm pretty comfortable with my life as it is. And we as biological creatures, most of us, tend to imagine what could go wrong.
Yes, of course.

Speaker 1 We're trying to overt risk in disaster. It's a car.
Well, it's a two-ton death machine. I might die.
Someone will run into me. Other people are on the road.

Speaker 1 Well, the joy of a healthy fruit off of a tree versus the potential death of the poisonous one, they're not equal. It's a very natural reflex.
Natural reflex does not mean correct.

Speaker 1 Right. He referenced Orwell's 1984 quite a bit in one of the chapters.
So what was Orwell's fear and what happened?

Speaker 1 And he wrote it in 1949, which I found to be interesting, considering what computing power existed. Wasn't it? 1948? Well, you got an issue with your book, Michael.
Okay, then I may

Speaker 1 know what year it was.

Speaker 1 84. That was the inversion of it.
Maybe he wrote it then. Also, the copy I have says in huge letters, uncorrected copy.
So he knows. That's funny.

Speaker 1 There's an inversion of that as part of the prediction of the future. It was kind of a clever thing.

Speaker 1 And it was like these new technologies will be the instruments by which the autocratic governments will exert control over their population, turn all of the people in the population to disagent, disempowered, take their agency away, use the technology to control it, use the technology to fashion the society the way.

Speaker 1 And this is why we should be fearful of these technologies. Yeah, like ignorance is good.
Right.

Speaker 1 And when you look at it and you say, well, what happened with the creation of all of these information technologies and so forth?

Speaker 1 And the answer is, it's actually a little bit like I'm more a fan of Neil Postman's amusing ourselves to death. It's more Aldous Huxley, but neither of those dystopias played out.

Speaker 1 We have an enormous amount of individual empowerment, and that individual empowerment allows us to learn things, explore, say things.

Speaker 1 It's part of the creation of bold new things, which also creates a lot of misinformation and other kinds of stuff that we're still sorting our way through. And what is the way that we do that?

Speaker 1 How do we sort to truth? We have panels of expert people who are involved in the institutions.

Speaker 1 Part of the reason why we like classic journalism in various ways, why we like scientific method, why we like courtrooms and juries, is we have panels of people who kind of work through and try to help us get through that individual.

Speaker 1 Like, I know what's true. But the actual just all the technologies was individual empowerment, not individual disempowerment.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, if you were a leader during that Arab Spring, you certainly didn't think technology was at your assistance.

Speaker 2 Any leader that we're fearing is taking away technology. That's the way to get people really under your spell.

Speaker 1 What is a network of trust? The way we formulate most of our beliefs, knowledge, et cetera, is through network of information we live in. And so what do we do is we try to formulate networks of trust.

Speaker 1 The most simple one is friends, communities we live in, and so forth. Part of how we get to more healthy societies is having networks of trust.

Speaker 1 And technologies can help us do that and help us form new networks of trust. Yeah, it seems like AI would be the only thing that could handle the sheer volume of that information that exists.

Speaker 1 Like when we talk about an AI, that could be some kind of blue and red beat out position. Here's the blue answer.
Here's the red answer. There's a lot of blue people, a lot of red people.

Speaker 1 Here's what each of them would say. Here's what the arguments for are against on each one.
The real important thing is we're all exposed to that. If you're exposed to just the blue, that's a problem.

Speaker 1 If you're exposed to just the red, that's a problem.

Speaker 1 Part of what we're confronting as we try to regain or keep an American soul is we got to engage and we got to understand what this stuff is because it's not that either side is completely loony tunes.

Speaker 1 Now, some stuff I think is loony tunes. The shoulders of both are loony tunes.
Yes. Let's go through some of the things that could go right because I do think there's some really exciting things.

Speaker 1 So how on earth could childcare be impacted by AI? Why would you want an AI watching kid? You can't watch your kid all the time. And by the way, in some sense, you shouldn't.

Speaker 1 No, no, they need some anonymity. But say, for example, the AI is watching kids go, oh, wait, the kid's getting into the drawer that has the rat poison in it.
Or the edibles or the fire starters.

Speaker 1 Uh-uh, let's do something. Yeah.
Ah, great. Or like an interaction.
I'm angry at my friend. Well, do you think your friend might have had a point of view?

Speaker 1 Or what's the right way to engage with that anger? As a greatly human-amplifying, both protect from safety, help learn.

Speaker 1 Like for example, say, well, I'm only going to interact with AI because I'm only going to have AI friends.

Speaker 1 A little bit depends on how you teach your ai friend like at an inflection with pie or personal intelligence is if you sat down with pie and said you're my friend and it goes no no i'm your companion let's talk about your friends have you seen any of your friends recently right is there one maybe you should call today yeah i can envision a version where you have set the parameters of your own personal points of view on parenting and what you want it to do is to remind you of the best version of yourself in that situation.

Speaker 1 Because there's many times where I'm overwhelmed and I don't don't hit my own parameter.

Speaker 1 You're entitled to your own parameters, but is there a device that could nudge you into the best version of your own parameters? It's already there.

Speaker 1 Like William Gibson, one of my favorite science fiction authors, best quote, the future is already here, but unevenly distributed. So you can already talk to ChatGBT.

Speaker 1 This is the kind of parent I'd like to be. And so remember that.
Now I'm going to talk to you about, oh, I'm having this interaction with my kid just came in. Yeah, but just broke this thing.

Speaker 1 Oh, here you go, Monica.

Speaker 2 Good, good, good, good. Just because mistakes are such such a huge part of learning and growing as people.

Speaker 2 So if there's something that's popping up that's basically stopping you from making any mistakes in front of your children, there's something to be said about seeing

Speaker 2 a parent make a mistake, repair, learn from that.

Speaker 1 The money we would put that into our parameters.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 You could do that? You could say, I value rip and repair. Right.

Speaker 2 Then it might cause fights so that it can repair.

Speaker 1 By the way, it's impossible to eliminate all mistakes. I know.
No, no, but but it's impossible. What you want to make is constructive mistakes.

Speaker 1 Say, look, I actually value having constructive mistakes. One of the things people say, oh, I want to avoid conflict with other people.

Speaker 1 Actually, me personally, I steer into the areas where I think there's constructive conflict because we can learn from it.

Speaker 1 That's the thing is, like, any argument you or I can think of in the way you can pick that version of it. Just like that.

Speaker 2 I think everyone's self-aware enough.

Speaker 1 People who do like constructive. Exactly.

Speaker 2 People who do like constructive conflict, a lot of them don't know that. They would say, I don't like conflict, but then they do.

Speaker 2 I think you just have to be very self-aware of what you really want, the way you really want to live your life and the way you really want to be.

Speaker 1 That goes into the wonderful philosophical homo deus, Yuval Harari. Are we servicing our experiential self or our narrative self?

Speaker 1 Like, you also have to be clear what percentage of yourself are you servicing? Yeah.

Speaker 1 All that stuff is a good use of your time. time and thought, right? I agree, yeah.
Like to just stumble through life and think about everything after the fact is what we mostly do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it almost forces you to have some intention because you're kind of declaring you have a goal or an objective.

Speaker 1 Yes, tax filing and legal advice, this feels very democratizing because I think most people who are struggling, they don't have access to either of those things.

Speaker 1 I think what we will get to is co-pilots assistance for everything.

Speaker 1 Oh, you have a problem with your landlord, can't afford a lawyer, don't know which lawyer to hire, which one's a good one, which one's an indifferent one, which one's a shyster.

Speaker 1 Well, now you could say, hey, I can consult.

Speaker 1 And even today, you can put your rental contract in the ChatGPT and say, what should I be concerned about and have a dialogue with the ChatGPT about your rental contract?

Speaker 1 What's it going to do in medicine? We've touched on this a little bit.

Speaker 1 We were at that conference, the thing that I found to be mind-blowing is that to perform the amount of experiments required to get to a FDA phase one trial, the amount of man hours involved, the amount of expenditure where these companies now using IAT that are just running a bazillion different experiments to see what happens.

Speaker 1 How does all that materialize? Massive transformation. I have a line of sight today about how you can create a medical assistant on the phone.

Speaker 1 Like it's only regulatory and liability that you don't create a medical assistant today that's available to everyone who has a smartphone, 24 by 7. That's one.

Speaker 1 Drug discovery is going to get massively amplified. Because by the way, when you slow down the invention of a new drug that will actually work, there's millions of sufferings and deaths between that.

Speaker 1 We're going to see a renaissance on all of that. Probably on both sides, too.
Like the FDA can use this technology to take on such huger quantity to evaluate.

Speaker 1 That seems to be one of the huge logger jams in this whole thing is they have a finite capacity to evaluate all this stuff.

Speaker 1 It is funny. I, of course, like Monica's email thing, I have a knee-jerk reaction to kids writing term papers

Speaker 1 because I fucking killed myself. And it was one of the things I did well.

Speaker 2 Something you got praised for.

Speaker 1 And something I got praised for, I mean, probably got me through. I had other columns that were very low, and that was lifted by that ability.

Speaker 1 And then another part of me that's realistic goes, yeah, okay, so they're going to write the term paper. It'll be good or bad.
They'll have to evaluate. They'll turn it in.
They'll get a grade.

Speaker 1 The same skill set will be applied when they go get the job where they're required to write. The bill doesn't ever come due because it's not like anyone's taking that tool away from them.

Speaker 1 Why should that bill come due? We don't teach handwriting. script anymore.
Being able to handwrite at length, that doesn't matter. Yeah, people were pissed when I no longer had to know how to spell.

Speaker 1 Now, as a dyslexic, I was like, Yeah, finally, I'm not handicapped by this thing. I have spell check because I'm as smart as you.
I just fucking can't do that thing.

Speaker 1 So, I, of course, was a beneficiary of one of these technologies. I no longer suffered from not being able to spell.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I guess so. It's so dependent on the actual thing.

Speaker 2 I guess most people would say everyone should be able to spell somewhat, but I guess if you're a spelling bee champion, you'd be pissed about spell check.

Speaker 1 No, I have no problem with, hey, we have these unai-assisted spelling bee competitions. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the thing.

Speaker 2 Even with spell check, it's not that now we can all go win the spelling bee. It's still a very specific group of people who can do that.
And same with the essays.

Speaker 2 It's like, now everyone can turn in an essay, but it doesn't mean everyone can write the best book.

Speaker 1 A kind of broader question would more be like, will some of these tests of merit just actually go by the wayside?

Speaker 1 So even like a college admission essay, if at some point everyone you read is a perfect great essay, the college admission process might go, well, this is no longer longer really a relevant measure of anything.

Speaker 1 I think they just all change. Why should the college admissions process stay the same? True, true.
I feel like it's that awesome system that everyone should be fighting to uphold.

Speaker 1 It's like, well, we lose this one. We really like it.
It's like, what's the better one? Let's do the better one. We got new technology.

Speaker 1 What is the triumph of the private commons?

Speaker 1 It's kind of playing on the tragedy of the public commons, kind of plastic Adam Smith and everything else, you know, physical goods, and people take from it and don't give to it because it benefits them.

Speaker 1 The triumph of the private commons is as we create these digital things, they're actually infinitely generative. Being a free rider doesn't take anything from anybody for the first time ever.

Speaker 1 And we should take advantage of it. Right, right.
Okay, why is innovation safety?

Speaker 1 People usually think of innovation as only risk because there is risk, but actually as you innovate, you create the new safety. So you go, oh, I create a car, it's risk.

Speaker 1 It's like, well, actually, in fact, I create bumpers and I create brakes and I create seatbelts and I create airbags and I create safety glass.

Speaker 1 And you're willingly ignoring how many people died in horse-related injuries. Yes.
Exactly. Which was probably infinitely higher than even these horrific crashes we were witnessing.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And if you even took that to an extra point, you say, the important thing is getting there at some speed. What's my safety at getting there at speed?

Speaker 1 And as we innovate, we can up the speed that we can get there very safely. Yeah.
We just went to Mexico City over the break and I said, you know, we all want teleporting, but we fucking have it.

Speaker 1 If you told someone someone from the 1700s that in the morning I could be in Los Angeles and in the evening I could be eating dinner in Mexico City, that's insane.

Speaker 2 I know, but I still do want

Speaker 1 teleporting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're so olding out. I am.
But the problem with teleporting, Star Trek girl,

Speaker 1 is which of the two universes is it kills you and makes a clone, and it's you going? Because we tell two different narrative stories.

Speaker 1 Our current understanding of physics would be a clone would be the other side, not you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Can't we have AI work on this where we don't have to die?

Speaker 1 We could do two hours on teleporting. So I've said to her, even if the technology ever existed, there are infinite industries incentivized to kill that.
Every industry would collapse with teleporting.

Speaker 2 People said that about AI.

Speaker 1 That might be the one though that breaks everything.

Speaker 1 If you can live on a ranch in Montana and eat dinner at Emily Burger in Manhattan every night, who the fuck's going to pay for the rent in New York?

Speaker 1 You just go there when you want, and then you can be in your ranch. But it's part of the changing of economics that technology likes.
That's what cars did, is it made suburbs.

Speaker 1 Distributing the prices of real estate across more space, that's good for humanity. It's good for humanity, not good for real estate owners.
That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 The incentives to crush that would be the most astronomical ever. Okay, tell me about America's role and responsibility in an AI future.

Speaker 1 I think one of the things that we've done really, really well over the decades since World War II, and it isn't to say that America's leading the world is perfect.

Speaker 1 There's lots of legitimate criticisms, lots of shit we got wrong. One of the things I love about America is we self-criticize and accept other criticism.

Speaker 1 But overall, among the things we've done is created a lot of technology leadership and created a lot of new technologies, like creating new vaccines and creating the way the internet worked.

Speaker 1 A bunch of this stuff has been just net, massively positive. Allowing innovators, technologists, individuals, she or they or he to make new things in the future is a great part of America.

Speaker 1 And that's one of the things we do. And the responsibilities are try to be the better version of human.

Speaker 1 We in building these technologies and building these new companies and building these new products, like drive and drive responsibly. There's obvious reasons we're uniquely positioned for this.

Speaker 1 A, the technology is largely coming from 300 miles north of here. That seems helpful.
We have more capital than anyone to be steering it.

Speaker 1 Does the democratizing nature of the technology actually threaten America's all technological transformations have a threatening resort, and technology naturally, this is part of the 1984 worries, can generally be deployed by more autocratic regimes to control things.

Speaker 1 You know, China loves to use surveillance technology for all kinds of things and we want to enable that individual freedom.

Speaker 1 And so that's not a reason not to do the new technology, but to figure out what values we want embedded in the technology that we as individuals use, that we as society use, that we have the government use.

Speaker 1 For example, one of the things that's very popular on the left is say, oh, we shouldn't have facial recognition technologies available to the government.

Speaker 1 It's like, no, I actually think we should have facial technologies available. That's part of how we track down terrorists, how we might prevent that tragedy that happened in New Orleans.

Speaker 1 We just have good, healthy governance of it. You say, I'm going to issue a facial awareness surveillance alert.
Well, it should go through the judicial process.

Speaker 2 And the facial recognition makes it so easy to get through the airport. I love it.

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 It's so fast.

Speaker 1 I was going to bring that up. I just got cleared for global entry on the way home.
And I'm like, hold up a second. I don't even have to go in my pocket to pull out my passport passport now.

Speaker 1 You really are sometimes a technology-laid adopter.

Speaker 1 Oh, always. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I got that so many years ago. Yeah.
Well, he got

Speaker 1 closer to the global entry office you had to drive to. I've taken two kids there.
It's four hours of my day to get to LAX and do the whole thing.

Speaker 1 I was smart enough to do it at the airport when I landed this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you have to do it when you land.

Speaker 1 It's called planning.

Speaker 1 There might be a new concept to you. AI can help you with it.
Yeah. You're right.
I'm a big contradiction. I'm going to ask you my Yuval Harari pushback.
We had him on to discuss his new book.

Speaker 1 What I love and appreciate about the way he thinks is, which is almost impossible to do in this day and age, he finds a thing to worry about that almost no one else is worrying about.

Speaker 1 He focuses on bureaucracies and the power of bureaucracies and how much bureaucracies have shaped our world more than the charismatic leaders in question. Jesus didn't write the Bible.

Speaker 1 A crew of people edited many, many stories to create the Bible. That's really interesting.
What really has lived on is the Bible, not Jesus. And ultimately, that was bureaucrats that did it.

Speaker 1 So that's a fascinating thing to think about. The point that he made that I find myself repeating a lot when this topic comes up at dinner parties is we are organic creatures.
We work in cycles.

Speaker 1 The stock market's open. It's closed.
There's a nuclear attack. The market's not open.
That's convenient. Our world is built in these cycles and for a reason.
His point is

Speaker 1 These aren't going to help us.

Speaker 1 They're going to run all day long because that's that's what they do. And they will force us to join them as they run all day long.
And the stock market being an example.

Speaker 1 If that thing ran 24-7 and you are in that industry, you could tell yourself you're only working.

Speaker 2 Think about email. Just that one advent has made work 24 hours, essentially.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, philosophy major, what's your philosophical answer to that really rudimentary point? Well, we live in great societies because we have institutions.

Speaker 1 This is one of the problems that I have with all the critics. You know, government bad, universities bad, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 This morning, I was thinking a sector of this country hates the government. And what I think is like, when I drink water out of my faucet and it doesn't poison me, guys, that's also the government.

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly. When there's an earthquake in the fucking building you're in, doesn't fall down on you.
That's the government. The fire department.

Speaker 1 You're focused on the five things they did that were fucked up and conspiratorial, but you're missing the fact that the stoplight worked.

Speaker 1 Everybody should be a renovate institutionalist. A renovate institutionalist.
What does that mean? So not destroy institution, not, oh, allow the institution or whatever.

Speaker 1 How do we constantly be renovating the institution? The institution's good. The institution is the cars are safe.
The institution is we have stoplights.

Speaker 1 The institution is you're not allowed to rob someone in the street. You can't put mercury in my well.
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 Public universities.

Speaker 1 And by the way, it doesn't mean perfect. So what we should do is have discourse and expertise to how do we renovate the institutions and always be renovating.

Speaker 1 And we might have red versus blue on which renovation we should have. And we should have some discussion discussion and argument about that, about what they should be.
That's the thing to do.

Speaker 1 So, for example, I am anti-government. You're like, oh my God, you're anti-American society.
You may not realize that's what you're saying, but that's what you're saying.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair experts,

Speaker 1 if you dare.

Speaker 1 This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. So many of us are really impacted by the colder seasons when it gets dark so much earlier and the days feel shorter than ever.

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Speaker 1 To be a patriot and anti-government is in itself antithetical. You might as well just say, I'm an anti-patriot.
You don't realize that's what you're saying. Yeah.
That's what you're saying.

Speaker 1 I think if you had to sum up your overall arching opinion, it's like, guys, give yourself some fucking credit. You've done it.
You have the capacity to do it.

Speaker 1 You're not going to lose your critical thinking on it. Even if we don't do anything, the future will be magical.

Speaker 1 But let's be intelligent and try to make the transition more magical sooner and less painful as we're going through it. And let's imagine what are the things that we could possibly do with this.

Speaker 1 And by the way, on the America point, in these revolutions, so I call this the cognitive industrial revolution, the societies and the industries that embrace it first have massive benefits.

Speaker 1 The power loom. Yes.
Let's do that. Let's not fuck it up.
That's, again, the third bucket I find myself in. We have no option but to try to lead this.
Not only, no option. It'll be great.

Speaker 1 If you had to isolate a single promise that you're most excited about, what do you think is going to be the very most impactful?

Speaker 1 Well, the first one that I think, and this reason I started doing this, and I think it's begun getting some broad, is the medical assistant on every smartphone.

Speaker 1 You and I have doctors we can call 24 hours. The vast majority of human beings do not have that.
Oh, no.

Speaker 1 We are walking around Mexico City, and the aforementioned friend who uses his chat GPT all the time, Eric, said, I'm really sincerely curious, how does the medical system work here?

Speaker 1 You're seeing all these different people, and we're in Mexico City, and you imagine that every one of those people had a doctor as good as my doctor is pretty mind-blowing. Yes.

Speaker 1 And so fucking positive. You, your kids, your family, your friends.
Now, please, now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 When you talk about safety, that's safety and innovation of safety.

Speaker 1 Now, this has nothing to do with your book. I have one nosy curiosity, and then I have you, which I don't regularly get you, and I want your opinion on on something completely unrelated.

Speaker 1 My nosy question is, have you made more money from investing or from exiting the companies you've founded? Never asked myself that question. You have to know the answer to that.

Speaker 1 You can also stay in your business, but I'm curious. You come up, Reed.
You do.

Speaker 1 We're listening to Acquired, and we're listening to the story of Meta. Probably from LinkedIn, but by the way, it's close.

Speaker 2 I got so excited when your name came up.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh, I didn't know that you were deeply involved in the world.

Speaker 1 And LinkedIn. The way that I keep score is the impact I have on people's lives.
Well, we're different. I would be looking at that bottom line.
Okay, I look at it occasionally.

Speaker 1 It's not that I think it's wrong to do it. And obviously, you manage it.
I believe you, though, that you're just more interested in getting in on it and getting it going.

Speaker 1 And then this result ends up happening. You're not doing podcasting for that.

Speaker 2 Like, that's not why you started this. Right.

Speaker 1 Okay, that was my nosy question. Again, aforementioned Eric Richardson.
Shout out third time. He and I argue all the time about crypto.
What do you think about crypto?

Speaker 1 2014 is, I think, when I bought Bitcoin. Oh, how much was a Bitcoin? $200, I think.
It's currently at $100,000 or something or something. Just under $100,000.

Speaker 1 Wow. So again, it's what the future could be.
There's a bunch of stuff that's broken about crypto that needs to be fixed.

Speaker 1 Use for criminal organizations, use for terrorism.

Speaker 1 I think all the solutions for it nullifies all the benefits. Well, today, I think a reasonable person could argue that.
Take a snapshot of where the puck is today versus where the puck could be.

Speaker 1 You'd go, okay. But actually, I believe in where the puck could be.
So let me make a couple of the arguments.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but not just the obvious ones of like, oh, look, you create a financial system that is programmable, you have a whole bunch of entrepreneurial innovation on it for payments and for assets.

Speaker 1 Here's one thing that Bitcoin does an excellent job of today. There's 200 governments in the world.

Speaker 1 You could argue zero of the governments are well run, but maybe 50 of those governments are well run.

Speaker 1 What happens to all those Venezuelan citizens and other people where the governments are totally fucking shitty run?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they work their life, they amassed this saving, and then these assholes completely devalued everything they've ever done. Devalue, steal, et et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 This creates the world safety net. You live in a bad fucking government.
Now there's something you can do. How does that differ from just buying U.S.
dollars? Many of these places, you can't buy U.S.

Speaker 1 dollars. U.S.
dollars is not available. That's a good answer.

Speaker 1 I don't know that. And by the way, some of those places, you might not trust U.S.
dollars either. Exactly.
I think you should. But, you know, by the way, there's variability.
Buy the pound.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Buy something that's stuck around for a long time.
Well, U.S. dollars is the post-World War II.
As long as they trade oil in it, pretty safe. Yes.
But it has that as a feature.

Speaker 1 When you get to a certain level of wealth, upper middle class, even above, you go, hey, distributed portfolio holding is good.

Speaker 1 And so distributed portfolio holding could, of course, be some stocks and some bonds and a 401k. And distributing that more is actually, in fact, a good thing.

Speaker 1 And crypto becomes one more mechanism for doing that. Those are things where it's good today.

Speaker 1 Now, like I said, a rational argument to say, all this fucking cybercrime, all these rogue states, that's terrible. And we should do something about that.

Speaker 1 What's the way we should mod cryptocurrency in regulations and other kinds of things to say all of these good things we should enable and future good things we should enable and these bad things we should disable?

Speaker 1 So I'm positive on cryptocurrency, but just like on AI, I'm not positive on anything that could be made with crypto and any use that could be made with crypto.

Speaker 1 That's just good and you should just love it. I just watched a doc about the greatest heists of all time, right? These two stole $72 million of Bitcoin in 2017.
At the time, it was $72 million.

Speaker 1 Its current value is $4.5 billion,

Speaker 1 right? So what was funny is in learning about how they caught the people was this thing I never thought of. The appeal for so many people of crypto was, yeah, the government has nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1 It's anonymous. You can't track it.
Well, the ledger of it all is accessible and known at all times. Every single Bitcoin is public to everybody.

Speaker 1 And so you can hold it anonymously, which they did, but you can't convert it into any goods, service, or property or anything. You have to, at some point, convert it into US dollar.

Speaker 1 Now, once you do that, you're fucked. You have to present some identification.
And so, again, one of the big selling points when you look at it in practice, well, that's not true.

Speaker 1 It's anonymous so long as you never get a good or service with it. So that whole appeal to me is useless.
The fact that you could get it stolen, there's no one to call, that sucks.

Speaker 1 So now we're getting involved. You have the SEC.
So, really, all that's happening, in my opinion, is you're just more and more funneling it into a currency.

Speaker 1 So, everything it was supposed to be, it doesn't function unless we get it to be an actual currency that our government is going to somehow investigate when it's stolen. And so,

Speaker 1 yes. Am I wrong about that? Well, I'm generally positive.
Don't come after me, crypto bros.

Speaker 1 Steal our money. They're as bad as Taylor Swift banks.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I'm so scared of them. Please don't come after me.
One aphorism that I sometimes use just as a proxy is, you want to regulate where bad regulation is better than no regulation.

Speaker 1 And they go, whoa, how could that possibly be true?

Speaker 1 Well, actually, financial system is one of them because a functioning financial system and it not breaking is more important than getting the future innovation. Right.

Speaker 1 A collapse is a massive disaster. So financial regulation good.

Speaker 1 Yes. Now, that doesn't mean all financial regulation doesn't mean don't be smart versus stupid.
You know, try to be smart versus stupid, et cetera.

Speaker 1 So do I think there should be regulation around cryptocurrency? Absolutely, yes. Is it a currency exactly? Unclear.
There's lots of tradable assets. Are diamonds a currency? Is gold a currency?

Speaker 1 You know, is your car collection a currency? God, I hope so,

Speaker 1 at this point. Yes, right.

Speaker 1 But, you know, there's lots on different asset value and so forth. And people say, well, the currency is because it has no intrinsic value other than its value as a currency.

Speaker 1 And we have various things which have that kind of no intrinsic value system. Well, that's where I'll call myself a hypocrite.

Speaker 1 I look at the crypto and I go, of all the stories that have been told, this one is the furthest out there. Yeah.
Well, it's newest.

Speaker 1 It's the newest, but it is not linked to a government, an institution, to any kind of GDP. There's no way to assess its value other than you all agreed on it.
Well, I'll admit. The U.S.

Speaker 1 dollar to me is a story I believe in.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a bunch of paper.

Speaker 1 So I can admit I'm hypocritical. I go, I believe in one version of the story.
This story feels a little out there for me. I can't latch on to this story.

Speaker 1 Things have value based on how many people and which circumstances believe in the story. Yes, exactly.
So, you know,

Speaker 1 storyteller. Okay, so you're pro-crypto.
I'm pro-crypto, but again, just like super agency, let's be smart about it, not whatever you can do.

Speaker 1 I'm irked with the people who are trying to co-opt a phrase I think I started with the techno-optimism, which is like, look, it's not whatever you can do, it's be smart about it.

Speaker 1 Right, right, right, right. Oh, well, Ray, this was a blow.
Wait, do you want to get out your phone? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's good.
Do you want to do it on the phone? Yeah, the show is doing it.

Speaker 1 Let me go get it. Is that an Android? It is an Android.
Wow. You are mixed messages.
And polymessage. Polymess.
Polymessage.

Speaker 1 Well, if it works on an Android, it'll really work. Yes, exactly.
Time teasing.

Speaker 3 So what do you want to discuss today?

Speaker 1 What I would love to discuss today is

Speaker 1 tell me how AI is going to reinvent. the car industry and cars.
For now, we have software, we now have autonomous vehicles, but don't just do autonomous vehicles.

Speaker 1 Do you like how it reinvent the actual physical car itself?

Speaker 3 AI is set to revolutionize the car industry in some fascinating ways.

Speaker 3 Beyond autonomous driving, AI can help design more efficient and safer car structures by simulating countless scenarios to find the best materials and shapes.

Speaker 3 We'll also see AI enhancing manufacturing efficiency, predictive maintenance, and even personalizing in-car experiences, making vehicles more adaptable to individual preferences.

Speaker 3 The integration of AI could fundamentally transform how cars are built, maintained, and experienced.

Speaker 1 And if I collected old cars and rebuilt them, what's some of the ways that I could use AI to help me?

Speaker 3 AI can be a game changer for rebuilding old cars. You could use AI to optimize your restoration plans by suggesting the best parts or techniques based on historical data.

Speaker 3 AI-powered design software can help visualize modifications or improvements. Additionally, AI can assist in sourcing rare parts by scanning databases or even suggesting 3D printing options.

Speaker 3 It can also enhance diagnostics, making it easier to identify and fix issues in old vehicles.

Speaker 1 You want to ask us. Does it only know your voice? No, no.
Everyone's. Oh.
Okay, let me think about it.

Speaker 1 Sure. Take your time.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Are you aware of the podcast Armchair Expert?

Speaker 3 Yes, I'm familiar with Armchair Expert. It's a popular podcast hosted by Dax Shepard.
Do you enjoy listening to it?

Speaker 1 I do, quite a bit. Embarrassingly so.
Let me ask you: if I wanted to recommend an episode to somebody, what are the best five options?

Speaker 1 They only have three good episodes.

Speaker 1 What if I broke?

Speaker 3 Please continue.

Speaker 3 The episode with Esther Perell about relationships is is also highly recommended. And for something lighter, the episodes with Kristen Bell are a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 Sure. So if she was on my phone, do you think she'd recommend different episodes?

Speaker 1 Possibly because ChatGPT remembers your chat history, so all my chat history is in this.

Speaker 2 Like she knows you, and Bill is a great recommendation.

Speaker 1 Well, you saw our friend fifth time now, Eric. He said, based on my searches, please draw a picture of me or create a picture of me.

Speaker 1 And it was this huge muscle bone guy at a desk trading stocks because he's been searching searching peptides on the internet nonstop and he's a stock trader. Yeah, it's pretty funny.

Speaker 1 So it does have that, but it is the same program, but there's different history of interaction. Now, here, it might not have been able to have enough data on that to fully match.

Speaker 1 What it will tend to do is go, what could possibly be something interesting? Let me throw out a few. Right.
Right.

Speaker 1 So if you notice, we're like, well, some human relationship stuff, some technology stuff. Oh, and then some interpersonal stuff.
Well, I got one to try.

Speaker 1 If my favorite movies are Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Thief, Raising Arizona, Flirting with Disaster,

Speaker 1 what's another movie I might love?

Speaker 3 Based on your favorites, you might love Fargo. It's a quirky blend of dark humor and crime, much like Raising Arizona and Flirting with Disaster.

Speaker 3 Plus, it has that rich storytelling and style you enjoy. Give it a try.

Speaker 1 If Fargo were made today, what would be a modern Fargo?

Speaker 3 A modern Fargo might involve a quirky crime in a contemporary small town, perhaps involving internet scams or cryptocurrency gone wrong.

Speaker 3 It could feature a cast of eccentric characters navigating both the digital world and their tight-knit community with a similar mix of dark humor and suspense.

Speaker 3 Maybe something like a tech startup's shady dealings leading to unexpected and chaotic consequences in a snowy, isolated setting.

Speaker 1 Oh, this leads me to a question I forgot to ask. How does ownership of content it creates work? So I can think of it more in images.

Speaker 1 Like if I create an image through it, could I copyright that image once it's been created? Can I own it? It's new ground.

Speaker 1 Current legal process says, nope, there's no ownership of it because ownership is something only created by humans.

Speaker 1 But of course, that has a massive thing of you get an image and then I go, okay, now I touch this one pixel. Aha.

Speaker 1 I'm going to give you a very specific example. I've written all these scripts.
They went unproduced. I think it's called Google Veo 2, maybe.

Speaker 1 And it created a musician, had a song, wanted a video, and it was this crazy cool sequence of a car chase through a post-apocalyptic movie.

Speaker 1 I saw that too. It was very cool.
I mean, it's not there there for me, but it was very, very cool. It's on path.
It's on fucking path.

Speaker 1 But I was thinking, could I load in one of my unproduced screenplays and make it? And let's say I accomplished that goal. Now I have this movie that came from my screenplay.

Speaker 1 What could I then do with that? And I guess my thought was, I guess I would put it on YouTube and monetize how many clicks it got.

Speaker 1 Could I sell it to a studio if it was completed and worth distribution? Like, what would happen if I did end up creating a movie on one of these things with a script I had written?

Speaker 1 What could I do with that movie? You could do anything that you could do with a video today. And you probably know this tons better than I do.

Speaker 1 Ranges from a YouTube channel to an event with a private screening.

Speaker 1 That's kind of a fun idea.

Speaker 2 Does Google own any of that or no?

Speaker 1 I don't know what the Google ownership, you're using the tool, what the terms of service on the license are.

Speaker 1 They probably don't get in the way of you asserting your own ownership and it would be bad for them to assert ownership of it. Yeah, like Instagram doesn't then own the image you've uploaded.

Speaker 1 They don't try to do that. And what they try to do is have enough ownership that they can go, well, look, all the rights that we needed to do to do the service that we do.
To publish it.

Speaker 1 To publish it and all the rest. We have that, but we're not stopping anything else you're doing.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 1 You picked a perfect time because I finally saw something that really lit a bulb in my head where I was like, God, if I could see these things I've written come to fruition that I needed a studio to give me the money for, that's a very exciting future for me.

Speaker 1 One thing, do it today, tomorrow, whatever. Take one of your scripts, upload it, and say, critique this script from the following perspective.

Speaker 1 What are the three areas that I would most improve in the script and why? Right. Just start playing with it.

Speaker 1 Part of what the AI does in terms of creativity is the speed of the interaction because it allows you to like think more like that versus the, I'm staring at it. I'm staring at it.

Speaker 1 It would really work with my kind of ADHD leaning thought speed. Exactly.
Yeah. And being creative about it.
Like, try it. Yeah.
Let me see. Cool.
Oh, I don't like that.

Speaker 1 Okay, Reid, this has been so much fun. So fun.
Yeah, pleasure. Reed, I adore you.
It's always so fun to bump into you anywhere on the planet. And I hope you'll come back with your next great thought.

Speaker 1 In delight and with, you know, with AI on. Okay.
all right please everyone check out super agency what could possibly go right with our ai future all right thanks for awesome

Speaker 1 he isn't our care expert but he makes mistakes all the time thank god monica's here she's gonna let him have the facts

Speaker 1 Two P's in an hour, Monica. I'm actually concerned.
Oh. A little scary.
That's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 I only need one P once a day.

Speaker 1 Once a day. I know.
I mean, in two in an hour, you're like... Some would think that's scary, but

Speaker 1 initially that part's scary but then you get used to that that's right and then it's scary if she goes twice in an hour yeah well i did think for a minute that i was getting a uti

Speaker 2 but i'm not okay okay it's my mom's fault because she um she gave you dirty underwear yeah

Speaker 2 she does my laundry

Speaker 2 um no she takes cranberry pills she's been taking them for a long long long time and she like swears by the cranberry pills. And so I started taking them for a while.
And then I stopped.

Speaker 2 And so when I was home for Christmas, she was taking hers. And she said, Are you still taking your cranberry pills? And I said, No, I'm not taking them anymore.

Speaker 1 And she's like, Why are you fucking with those anymore?

Speaker 2 Yeah. She's like, Why you should take them?

Speaker 1 Whatever.

Speaker 2 And I was like, I'm not taking them. And then on New Year's Day, I called and we were talking about our resolutions.
And she's like, What are your resolutions? Cranberry pills.

Speaker 1 And I was

Speaker 1 so annoyed.

Speaker 2 I was like, no, I'm not doing it.

Speaker 2 Like three or four days later, I was like, I think I'm getting it.

Speaker 1 Great.

Speaker 2 And I had to go pick up some good old cranberry pills.

Speaker 1 She'd be so happy, right?

Speaker 2 How could she not? I just told her I'm back taking the cranberry pills. I didn't tell her.

Speaker 1 I didn't admit. No, I didn't admit.
It was under duress.

Speaker 2 I did not.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll just say in a forthcoming episode soon, next week. Yeah.
We have a guest on who's talking about throwing a birthday party. And I went on and on about how I don't want want a birthday party.

Speaker 1 Half the episode is about how I don't want a birthday party. And we walked out of the garage from that interview and I was like, that's weird.
Kristen's got a man over in the swimming pool.

Speaker 2 A big man.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I did. I did not notice it was Aaron at first.
I was just like, oh, she's got a man over.

Speaker 1 I saw a little bit of, there was a woman in the mix, and I'm like, oh, these are her singing friends. Friends over, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So then I come around the hedges and and I see my son's here, Sharon Beasley. Yeah.
And I go, he's in the hot tub. My very first thought, not to get too dark for the cherries, but this is our past.

Speaker 1 I'm like, the only time Aaron has ever shown up in California without letting me know he was coming was the day I opened my apartment door in Santa Monica and Aaron was standing there.

Speaker 1 And it looked like he had been drugged behind a car for a week. And he had been smoking crack for five days.
Oh.

Speaker 1 The tiny moment of I I think I'm gonna die or go get on an airplane and fly to my dad. He got on an airplane.

Speaker 2 So you thought you thought something bad was happening.

Speaker 1 I was already sober for a year, maybe at that point. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I just got a bit of a PTSD. Like, why would Aaron just be here without telling me he's coming?

Speaker 2 But did it make you feel better that he was in the hot tub and laughing?

Speaker 1 Well, I said, surprise.

Speaker 1 And he goes, Are you coming off of crack again?

Speaker 1 And I said, I'm here and I'm healthy. Oh, good.

Speaker 2 I didn't really think that Ruthie was there too.

Speaker 1 But you never know. She might have been like, We got to get Aaron to back this down.

Speaker 1 It wasn't that really deep as I'm saying. I just had this really weird moment where this has only happened one other time.
So, Kristen at that point had to acknowledge, you're having a surprise party.

Speaker 1 I've planned a party and I brought Aaron and Ruthie here for the party.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 I was really excited. Good.
Because I didn't have to ask anyone to come. I didn't have to get scared about that.

Speaker 1 There wasn't a bunch of time for me to worry about who's not going to show up because it was just going to be the next day, which was last night.

Speaker 2 It was perfect timing. She planned, she knew she was going to tell you, which I thought was a good plan,

Speaker 2 that there wasn't going to be a real jump out moment.

Speaker 2 And also, Rob and I did great acting because during that interview, we all knew.

Speaker 1 We already knew.

Speaker 2 Of course we knew.

Speaker 1 Did you feel so bad for me? Like, what a dumb, dumb. He does, he's digging himself deeper and deeper.

Speaker 2 No, I was just like, oh, this is going to be a funny moment.

Speaker 2 But then I also was like, if he is then mad that this is happening or anxious, we had an interview scheduled the day of your party, which was yesterday. Yeah.
And it was scheduled for two o'clock.

Speaker 2 The party started at five o'clock. Yeah.
And I was like, oh no, okay, I think we should probably move up the recording. When is she going to tell him?

Speaker 2 Because he needs to have enough time to do his research. He's going to be mad if he doesn't have enough time to do his research.
And if he already doesn't want the party,

Speaker 1 I'm going to react.

Speaker 1 I'm learning terrible stuff about myself.

Speaker 2 He's going to be even more mad about it.

Speaker 1 People, he's going to hit the children.

Speaker 2 But you were very happy.

Speaker 1 Hey, my son's there, so I'm happy right away. Aaron's here.
This is unexpected. I had just seen him a couple of days before in Detroit.
I mean, which was a surprise, or it was last minute.

Speaker 1 Last minute and so exciting. I was like, oh, I get to see dad before my trip and get to pretend that it's our last night together.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But Aaron's only been here for 10 minutes, but boy, we've already had a very eventful trip. Yep.

Speaker 1 So yesterday before the interview and the fact check that was moved up, I said, you want to go for a ride in the new station?

Speaker 1 To which Aaron was like, absolutely. So we went for a little rip around town.
It was so fun.

Speaker 1 And then I was like, let's quickly, I think we can, before the fact check, we'll get some eggs so we stop at cafe 101 we parallel park the wagon on the street we go inside we sit down we're there for I don't know a minute and a half

Speaker 1 and a stranger walks in and he looks at me and goes white car and I go yeah and he goes it's on fire

Speaker 1 horrible and I just PTSD oh my gosh too many fires in this city I sprint out of the restaurant I'm I'm fully expecting it to be engulfed in flames so we sprint outside get to the wagon Sure enough, there is smoke coming out of the hood.

Speaker 1 Pull the hood pins, open it up. A wiring harness is on fire.
There's flames. I don't know how this worked.

Speaker 1 Did you see this happen? The spit? Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I just went, I spit as hard as I could at the water. It was the fire and it went out.
It went out. I might have a superpower.
I didn't know about it. I was just grabbing a fire extinguisher.

Speaker 1 I couldn't figure out how to pull the plastic pin up. And

Speaker 1 by the time I got the pin, I was watching him and he went,

Speaker 1 and the fire was gone. It was just smoldering.

Speaker 1 I don't know how that worked.

Speaker 2 I do worry about that with fires, about using the fire extinguisher, because it's not something you can practice.

Speaker 1 Well, you should, I guess. I guess.
I realize that. Oh, I should know how to do this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know. I have one by my bed, and I look at it a lot, and I think, I don't really know how.

Speaker 1 You should get the safety off and everything ready to go.

Speaker 1 It seems really simple. And then also, when you think about it, it seems really hard.

Speaker 2 There's a video of Taylor Swift trying to use one

Speaker 2 of the kitchen. And she's also like, what the fuck?

Speaker 1 She didn't do a good job.

Speaker 2 She did end up doing a good job as she always does. Good job.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Was something on fire in front of her?

Speaker 2 Yeah, in her kitchen.

Speaker 1 Oh, and someone was running video. Yeah.
And then I'm piecing together because there's now a woman behind the car who I guess was either parking or got in her car.

Speaker 1 And then what became obvious is she must have got the hotel guy. But I do wonder, had we not just had the fires, if like she would have been so incredibly,

Speaker 1 she might have seen a smoke coming out of her car. I'm like, oh, it's not my problem.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 But yeah, everyone's on such high alert that I think she immediately.

Speaker 2 I think that's right. She's like, this whole area is about to

Speaker 2 ignite.

Speaker 1 I was then thinking, like, oh my God, what if I had set another round of fires?

Speaker 2 I mean, you guys finally got Los Felas.

Speaker 1 People would have been like, that entitled bastard. I know.
Why is he he got to have these cars that catch on fire? Old, new cars that keep catching fire.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he can afford a new one, but he bought an old one.

Speaker 1 He should be driving electric. That one caught on fire.

Speaker 1 You went near the end of it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but you can drown in them.

Speaker 1 I should say that. Well, when they catch on fire, you can't go breathe anywhere near them, as we're now finding out.
That's the crazy part.

Speaker 2 But also, you know, that horrible story. And I don't know all the details, so I don't, and it's very sad, but Mitch McConnell's sister-in-law

Speaker 1 drove into a pond?

Speaker 2 Yes, and a Tesla and like couldn't get out and died.

Speaker 2 And I think it might have to do with that Tesla. It probably shuts down.

Speaker 1 The door opens electrically. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Mechanically. Or I think I don't want to be sued.
I think there's a release on there as well. If you had read the manual and practiced like a fire.
It's in like the fire.

Speaker 1 I don't know what's doing that. It's in the name of the one.
It's right there. It's what? It's right there in the door, though.
Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Well, apparently, people like came and tried and they were there and they couldn't.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm vaguely aware of that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I probably talked about it before.

Speaker 1 I think you did. It was when you were wanting everyone to have a window.

Speaker 2 Yeah, now I have a smash and

Speaker 1 nice.

Speaker 2 Aaron, I have an update for you. Oh, please.
I think one of the last times you were here, we were talking about my running.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I remember this.

Speaker 2 Yes, and I want you to know since then, a sign has been put on the yard, not by me,

Speaker 2 that says no. It says no dogs allowed slash no trespassing.

Speaker 1 I forget anything. Congregated.

Speaker 2 It says something explicit, like no more of this.

Speaker 2 So it was solved for me.

Speaker 1 I thought you were going to bring up his chest hair. That's where I thought this was going.

Speaker 1 No. The last time I see you talked about having shaved his chest hair, how sexy he felt.

Speaker 2 Okay, so what's the update on that?

Speaker 1 Well, I just had my back shaved again.

Speaker 2 Are you making cash beer?

Speaker 1 I should because it's an enormous amount of fur that comes off.

Speaker 1 Really quick, Aaron. I've never let you feel this.
No, but I think

Speaker 1 it's a very select group. Go ahead and touch it.
Be really careful. Give an honest

Speaker 1 what you think about that. Oh,

Speaker 1 oh my God.

Speaker 1 Is that not the softest thing you've ever felt? Can I sleep with it tonight?

Speaker 1 Dude, you need a blanket made of that? No.

Speaker 1 So you can make some.

Speaker 2 I know. You've got to be careful.

Speaker 1 It is Cashmere, isn't it? It sure is. There's no denying.

Speaker 1 And you know, now Delta's leg hairs are in here, too. Oh,

Speaker 1 so we're getting it from harvesting from my back and her legs.

Speaker 2 Family. Maybe it can be a joint, Aaron's hair, because then we can really get some movement on it.

Speaker 1 At the risk of hurting Aaron's feelings, Aaron has had dense body hair his whole life he's a man he's always been a man i i'm not i've always not been a man i've always felt like a

Speaker 1 preteen or a woman next to him and he's always had a gorgeous burt reynolds chest hair since we were seventh okay so you think it's coarser i think it's coarser would you yeah yeah yeah i i um yeah all i'm saying is the amount yeah okay well you don't have to have cashmere we can do mohair for you so ruthie just shaved me again

Speaker 1 with the dog.

Speaker 1 You know, it's got a vacuum. I may have said this before, but I don't think it has a hose and you watch it accumulate in a chamber.

Speaker 1 And this is so fun because that's why I realized, I'm like, oh my God, I have so much hair, like this much.

Speaker 1 Whoa. Ruthie's

Speaker 1 super grossed off by it.

Speaker 2 Well, she can't touch the cashmere then.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I know we're both getting hair now everywhere.
It's maddening, but have you noticed, have we already talked about our armpit hair?

Speaker 1 Have you noticed your armpit hair is like, will be two feet long sometimes? If we haven't talked about it, yeah. I've been chopping mine with scissors.
Yeah. Same.
I now give myself like a haircut.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Me too.

Speaker 1 And then I have this very weird, I want, do you have this where it's like, I have it in my mind it's supposed to be some length or else why would it be that long sure because what i i'm tempted to just like cut it as close to the skin as possible so i have to do it less but then i think aren't you supposed is there to be some length i wonder that too can you just keep like grow it out just so we can see how long um

Speaker 1 you're right we there should be video evidence of some of this you know why i had to finally confront it other than like maybe my kids pointed it out and i was embarrassed but also

Speaker 1 You can't even get your deodorant to the skin anymore because it just clamps up in your hair. And then you have dingleberries in your armpit.
And you're like, what the fuck is going on?

Speaker 1 Why am I a mess like this? Treadlock. 1250, you know? Not Erin.
Yeah, not yet. Not even close.
Six months. Well, why we got a party? Okay, great.
How about you guys talk about my party? Oh.

Speaker 2 It was a yacht rock theme.

Speaker 1 It was a yacht rock theme. It was at my favorite roller skate rink, Moonlight Rollerway.
Yep. To name drop, Kimmel made the playlists, as he's made me, many playlists in the past that I love.

Speaker 1 And Kristen enlisted him to do that. Tons of blasts from the past.
A lot of my groundlings, friends, just an incredible, perfect group of people. My dad came all the way out from across town.

Speaker 1 Tom Hansen.

Speaker 2 Adam Perry Lang made barbaric

Speaker 1 cooked.

Speaker 2 It was incredible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, did you get on both of the meats?

Speaker 2 I just had the pork.

Speaker 1 The pork rips. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So insane.

Speaker 1 How good were those?

Speaker 1 They were so good.

Speaker 2 And the cornbread was so good.

Speaker 1 Oh, it was damp as a motherfucker. It was like a, it was like a, um, uh, what do you call it, cake? A sponge.
A pound cake. Pound cake.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was delicious.

Speaker 1 I was really excited about the Adam Perry lane of it all because

Speaker 1 most of my friends that were there didn't know about him.

Speaker 1 And I don't know what their expectations were at a roller skating rink, how good the barbecue was going to be, but he is one of the best barbecue.

Speaker 1 He does these pop-ups around LA and there's fucking lines around the block. Yeah, and he's just there cutting ribs.

Speaker 2 At a roller skating race.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was really sweet of him to do that. He's a very nice man.
He is. I've also enlisted him to teach Kristen how to make crepes

Speaker 2 for Christmas one year, her birthday, I forget, and like got her all the machinery and stuff. And now she knows how to make crepes.

Speaker 1 She's stuck with it. She goes through little phases.
You know, there's no crepes for months and months and months. And then there's crepes 10 days in a row.
She could cook some compulsively.

Speaker 1 No, I guess we got to talk

Speaker 1 tomorrow. Well, exactly.
Oh, you should bring that up. She would love to.

Speaker 2 I thought I had a craving for crepes

Speaker 2 three days ago.

Speaker 2 And it was 9 p.m. So I didn't think it was possible for me to get it, but I wanted it so bad.
And then the next day I told her I was craving them. She said, I'll make them for you.

Speaker 2 And then guess what the word was on Wordle today? Crepes.

Speaker 1 Plural or singular? Singular. Singular.

Speaker 2 Isn't that weird?

Speaker 1 That's suspicious.

Speaker 1 So normally this is Delta's birthday party is here every December, and we always get the rink for two hours.

Speaker 1 And it's always my commitment to skate as long as possible because it's such a unique opportunity. But the window of this party was 5 p.m.
to 10 p.m. And I was like, I don't,

Speaker 1 oh, I got to back up. One other thing that happened because I didn't know I was having a party is that day before I rode the furthest I've ever ridden on my new road bike.

Speaker 1 I told you, I passed your house a couple different times. Arm Cherry sent me.
I was even paparazzi. I didn't know it.
Oh. Yeah, I went everywhere.

Speaker 1 I was down on the LA River, down past Spoke, then out in Glendale, then back into Silver Lake. So that whole day when I came out and he saw him in the pool, I was like, I went too hard.

Speaker 1 I can barely walk.

Speaker 1 Then she said five to ten, we're skating. I was like, five hours of skating.

Speaker 1 And we're going to skate. We're going to skate hard.
And oh, one thing I got to add is people really went for it with the yacht rock theme. Aaron had an incredible outfit.

Speaker 2 He really did.

Speaker 1 Turnkey bought off of Amazon.

Speaker 2 yeah it was perfect yeah captain's outfit it was white

Speaker 1 white on white hat

Speaker 1 pipe

Speaker 1 the pipe really the pipe pushed it over

Speaker 1 i don't even know why it makes sense but

Speaker 1 it does i don't know i don't i can't like i'm racking my brain of where i've some famous image of a captain with a pipe i love boat or whatever but again i don't even think on love boat that was the other one um where they're all shipwrecked gilligan's island yeah gilligan's island skipper Skimberdon smoked a pipe.

Speaker 1 Did Gorton's fishermen have a pipe?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 yeah. But again, that's a yellow rain slicker.

Speaker 2 We all just think we know these captains have pipes, but none of them do.

Speaker 1 I don't think any of them do. And how long has it been since you skated, Aaron? Probably seven years.
Seven years.

Speaker 1 I was a lot heavier and I, and you were at 320 at that point. Yeah, and I remember really because I was like, I'm going to do this.
And

Speaker 1 I was real wobbly. And then after a few laps, I was expecting everyone to be watching me because I thought I was that good.
It's so fucking stupid.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, oh, really? I'm just a fat guy roller skating and I'm old.

Speaker 1 But you're waiting for them to notice I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm waiting for the kids to be like, yeah.

Speaker 1 I didn't know your old man.

Speaker 1 Everyone's going to high-five my fucking kids.

Speaker 1 Hoist you up on their shoulders. I probably got beat up the next day.

Speaker 1 Well, despite that, you did quite well.

Speaker 1 And Monica, let me thank you in public. You have sat out the last two skatings.
I have.

Speaker 2 But then it was your birthday. And so I thought, I got to do it for your birthday.

Speaker 1 And so sweet. And did it? You did.

Speaker 2 I did it. I did like.

Speaker 1 You did quite a bit of skating.

Speaker 2 You did like 12 laps or something. Maybe more.

Speaker 1 I should say,

Speaker 1 yeah. I want to say you were out.
You had three different sessions, didn't you?

Speaker 2 I had multiple sessions. Even after eating, I put them back on.

Speaker 1 And I learned today, earlier today, that you actually had gone out by yourself to do a little trial run, like the garage in Tennessee.

Speaker 2 I did when I learned to ride my bike. Yes.
Yeah, I got a little nervous not having been on them for a couple years, and I was first to arrive at the party.

Speaker 2 And so I just went out on my own and did a little practice. Yeah.
Found my sea legs. I'm not good on them.
And I don't. Ryan tried to help me.

Speaker 2 He was like, you know, you go more

Speaker 2 side to side. I go more front to back, I guess.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And sort of my proprietary move.

Speaker 2 So I'm just not very good at it, but it's fine.

Speaker 2 It's hard for me to not be good at it. But yes, you kill it.

Speaker 1 I ate shit, though. Let me say that.

Speaker 1 And by the way, on the way there, I said to Aaron, okay, if you haven't gone in a long time, my prediction for you is you think you're going to be bad and then you're going to get out there and go, oh, my God, I'm actually quite good.

Speaker 1 And then you're going to get overconfident about 15 minutes in. And then that's when the big brett comes.
And I had been skating for a good hour and a half, two hours at this point. I was very loose.

Speaker 1 I was feeling very confident. And I decided, you know what? As I skate by Joy,

Speaker 1 because she was high-fiving people on the sidelines. I'm like, you know, it's going to be radical.
So I'm going to blow by shooting the duck. Oh, exactly.

Speaker 1 Oh, did you think I just fell out of nowhere?

Speaker 2 I knew you were doing something with Joy, but I didn't know that was happening.

Speaker 1 So for people who don't know, shooting the deck, you like, you get on one skate and you bend down.

Speaker 1 I can't even bend down on one leg if I wasn't wearing skates, especially with the biking from the day before and the two hours of skating.

Speaker 1 And I got halfway into this commitment and realized I'm going down and I went down pretty hard on my hip. Yeah, it's

Speaker 2 scary.

Speaker 1 Luckily, you were on the rink at that moment. I was.
And you were right behind me. So you saw the whole thing.
I did. Made a loud enough noise that I think most everyone looked.
I missed it.

Speaker 1 I don't think so.

Speaker 1 I was skating, but I missed it. Yeah, I don't think so.
I'm not sure if I want, I wish you had.

Speaker 1 Well, I wish I had, but

Speaker 1 of course. You skated up to me and you go, the fucking duck bit back.

Speaker 1 The duck shot. And I was like, I was like, what?

Speaker 1 I didn't even know that ended up.

Speaker 2 You got up really fast.

Speaker 1 You didn't look hurt. That's the goal.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I knew you were.

Speaker 1 And then you hadn't seen, I knew you were. You hadn't seen Fall Guy.
Right. And so, have you seen Fall Guy? I did, dude.
Oh, what a movie, right? So good.

Speaker 1 Every time this stunt's over, they give the thumbs up, like, I'm good. They're not good.
Their back's broken. They're like, so then I was like, I gave the thumbs up.

Speaker 1 And for the people who had seen it, but you hadn't seen it. And then I felt compelled to try to explain to you my jokes.
I was in a background.

Speaker 1 Yes, I was in a good deal of pain, and I had given you the thumbs up, and I needed you to know. That was a nah.
I was making a bunch of things. I said, Are you okay?

Speaker 1 And then you gave the thumbs up, and I was like, oh.

Speaker 2 And then you had to come back and tell me what, in fact, wasn't okay.

Speaker 1 I was not okay. But I kept going.

Speaker 1 I was like, is it Frath? Is my hip fractured? Maybe it's fractured. Let's just keep going.
There's nothing they can do for that. So you can put a caster on your hip.

Speaker 2 This is why it's really roller skating so tricky because you have to commit if you're going to have fun and if you're going to be good.

Speaker 2 But then you will fall.

Speaker 2 So you're choosing.

Speaker 1 I suppose you're going to try to show off like me.

Speaker 2 Well, once you're feeling it, like everyone's going to try. And that's what I don't do.
I just do half because I don't want to fall. Yeah.
And I don't fall. So that's great.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But then it's. There were very few falls last night.
Right. In fact, kind of a shocking few falls because at Delta's party, the first few years, people were going out really bad.

Speaker 1 People had wrist injuries. It was like 20% of the dads were fucked up the next week.

Speaker 2 Anna fell last time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she went down pretty hard. I saw that.

Speaker 1 And everyone else, you see it, and then you just like, you kind of look away and let people recover on their own.

Speaker 1 Well, no, so that's a great as you know, I like getting embarrassed. And when I fell down at the movies, you know, I was laughing hysterically.
But the pain was so sharp.

Speaker 1 Like, I wanted to laugh because it's just embarrassing. I tried to shoot the duck.
Joy watched the whole thing. Her friend's watching.
She doesn't know me. So there's a new person.

Speaker 1 At least Joy is my like sister. Yeah.
I've known her for 12 years. It was painful enough that I couldn't actually get to the laughing part.
I just got to

Speaker 1 shake it. You were pretty big.
Well, I was performing.

Speaker 1 I came on a retirement from acting and put on a real good thing, then gave a thumbs up, and only two people got it because I thought everyone saw a fall guy and they had it.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

Speaker 1 If you dare,

Speaker 1 we are supported by Audible. You know, I spend a lot of time listening.
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Speaker 1 And then, Kristen, somehow, I'm not, I haven't even mastered logistics, but our favorite treat in the world from Michigan is Saunders Bumpy Cake.

Speaker 1 For people who've never had Saunders Bumpy Cake, it is

Speaker 1 a chocolate damp devil's food cake base.

Speaker 1 And then these huge ribbons of Twinkie filling, all covered in a fudge icing.

Speaker 2 Eat it. Did you try it? Yeah, I did.
I hadn't had it before. I loved it.

Speaker 1 Did you like it? Yeah, I loved it. You're not, that's not your thing.
Oh, fuck it. Oh, now we go.

Speaker 2 It was really good.

Speaker 1 When we were kids, you didn't love chocolate. Right.
Yeah. Right, right.
I do know. I had some for breakfast this morning.

Speaker 1 And I fucking went nuts. I had my immune suppressant before the party because I knew we were going to have bumpy cake and I ate way too much.

Speaker 1 So I coupled the hip pain with like, I made myself sick. But then I was like, you must get out and push through all of this.
Did another couple hours of skating. It was a fan.

Speaker 1 It was a great, great party.

Speaker 2 It was a lovely party.

Speaker 1 And as I told you, what was really kind of novel about this party, because I've had them in the past, I'm always, I get feeling really guilty.

Speaker 1 Like Tom Hansen, he drove 50 miles across town through rush hour traffic to get to the party. And he's older.
And then I'm out skating the whole time.

Speaker 1 And the whole time I'm like, I got to go sit and talk to Tom. He drove all the way here.
And then virtually everyone that's showing up, I feel like I should be talking to them for a half hour.

Speaker 1 And then I had this light bulb moment. I was like, everyone here is a blast to talk to.
When I look around, everyone's quite happy talking to whoever. I'm not needed here.

Speaker 1 I can stop feeling guilty about that.

Speaker 2 Did you have the moment where you were like, oh, all these people have collected?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I tried to have that moment. I did.
I was in the bathroom and I actually even did my mantra for like two minutes. I was like, I really, I really want to,

Speaker 1 yeah, have that moment and see that. And then Tom Hansen, who knows me so well, he hugged me and he said, Are you able to let any of this love in?

Speaker 1 And I said, I'm trying real hard, but also, I'm pretty sure everyone's here just because Kristen invited them.

Speaker 1 Like, if I'm being honest, I think

Speaker 1 that's so unfair. That's so unfair to all of us.

Speaker 1 To you, yeah.

Speaker 2 To anyone who went.

Speaker 1 I don't know, it's still my residual low self-esteem or something. I don't know.
It was the funniest party I've ever been to.

Speaker 1 And there's no fucking booze there. That's saying something.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm still riding on it today. I got to push back a little bit.
I guess you're not counting your birthday parties because Aaron's birthday is July 2nd, which becomes a 4th of July.

Speaker 1 Aaron's birthday spectacular. It was often at his dad's farm.
And it would be like a three-day party with 50 people camping. Those were

Speaker 1 fun. These were fucking awesome.
Those were damn good. Plus were good.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
But I'm happy you had fun. I fucking had fun, man.
I had so much fun.

Speaker 2 It was really fun.

Speaker 1 So much fun. And I don't want you to get the wrong impression.

Speaker 1 I felt very loved.

Speaker 2 Good. Yeah.
I mean, when you were blowing out your candle, I looked around and I was like, oh, this is so lovely.

Speaker 1 Well, what I thought of many times is like, this is,

Speaker 1 you'd be a hard press to find a better group of 40 human beings.

Speaker 2 But it was a really good group. I felt lucky that I had been collected

Speaker 2 over the 50 years. I was happy to be there.

Speaker 1 Did you have a favorite conversation with anyone?

Speaker 2 I had so many. I had one I can't repeat.
Oh, okay. It was the most memorable.

Speaker 1 It was with Eric. Yeah, it was funny.

Speaker 1 He's so open, though.

Speaker 2 I can't because it's not about him.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I can't wait to hear that. Jesus.

Speaker 2 He never fails. Like, I think I know every, I think there's not one thing he can say that will get me.
And man,

Speaker 2 man, does he. I got to talk to Joy.
I ate with her, and that was so nice. I hadn't talked to her.

Speaker 1 That's what I was excited about. That I was more looking around, seeing people I love talking to each other and watching you guys chat.
I was like, oh, yeah, my sisters are chatting. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And she's wearing all day glow yellow. Like,

Speaker 1 oh, yeah. Like a neon amazing.
Yeah, neon fish nets.

Speaker 2 So awesome.

Speaker 1 We came up with my superhero name because we were, of course, talking about spades. Uh-huh.
And her friend she was with was black as well. And she's like, this is the upside-down world.

Speaker 1 They play spades. We don't play spades.

Speaker 1 And then her and I came up with that. My superhero name is the appropriator.

Speaker 1 And my catchphrase is, I'll take it. I see something from your culture.
I like, I'll take it.

Speaker 1 The appropriator. Oh, that's funny.

Speaker 2 Really fun to talk to Nate. Hadn't talked to see Nate in such a long time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, again, if if Nate talks at a party, what am I worried about? Anyone finding someone to talk to?

Speaker 1 How about you? Did you chat with anyone new that you were like, oh, that was fun?

Speaker 1 I loved catching up with all the, yeah, like the old groundlings, your crew from back then. Like, I hadn't seen Ben, Tim Lovestead,

Speaker 1 Nat. Yes.

Speaker 1 So that was all very fun and super comfortable. Like we all just dove into conversations that were fucking great.
Yeah, Ben sent me a text. Like, I talked a lot with Aaron Weekly.
It was so fun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was great. And that vaccine, of course, probably stole the show.
He was the same white outfit Aaron had, but his was short short. Oh, my God.
Yeah. And he was very sexy on those rollers.

Speaker 1 He's so athletic. He was so good on those.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Like I said, best party I've ever been to.

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 2 It's kind of your birthday, too. You get to take, you guys get to share birthdays.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I felt like it. Yeah.
Kristen did a damn good job there. She really? And she was very worried.
She said,

Speaker 1 boy, he's really been talking a lot and

Speaker 1 that he's very grateful he didn't have a party.

Speaker 1 And what a lovely thing. I think she had heard me say like four times between my birthday and yesterday, I'm so glad I would hate a surprise party.
And the poor girl had planned a surprise party.

Speaker 1 I'm so happy.

Speaker 1 And that just goes to show, I'm known better than I know myself in a lot of domains. Like, yeah, I was delighted.

Speaker 1 As long as I didn't have to go through any of the anxiety of it all, it was absolutely delightful.

Speaker 2 Would you have been upset if it was a real surprise?

Speaker 1 I guess there's no way to do it. I think so, but I just, I don't know how you get me to the roller ring.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 I think she would have had to tell. I'm just so annoyingly curious about why would we be.
Panay wasn't going to take you to the

Speaker 1 roller rate.

Speaker 1 The only thing that had been planned and I had been tricked on is that Panay and Nate and I were supposed to have dinner that night. That was the big plan.

Speaker 1 And even like on Monday, I asked Kristen, can I go to dinner with Nate and Panay? And she's like, yeah. I'm thinking she must have been laughing her buns off.
The plan was coming together perfectly.

Speaker 1 And then so. I was both really excited about the party.
And then I was like, oh man, I was really looking forward to going to dinner with Panay and Nate.

Speaker 1 So we just decided we will also go to dinner next week. Are you guys going to Martin's?

Speaker 1 I hope.

Speaker 1 I hope we bring George Kittle with us. Aaron and I decided the best compliment you could give any guy is to say, like, oh, I'd love to go to Morton's with that dude.
Like, if you don't know him,

Speaker 1 but you've seen him from afar and you go, fuck, I'd love to go to Morton's with that guy. I mean, he is a great guy.

Speaker 1 I like Dan Campbell.

Speaker 1 He's going directly to Morton's.

Speaker 1 Don't stop. You guys wouldn't even have to say it.
We get there, and the food would be on the table.

Speaker 1 Yes. What's the equivalent? Is there an equivalent of that for the gales?

Speaker 2 Oh, like at the spa

Speaker 2 solo, yeah. I'll check the mall, I guess.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Shopping. Yeah.
Go right to the mall with her.

Speaker 2 I think I'd go shopping with her.

Speaker 1 Like, what do you want to do with Ashley and Mary Kate the first time you hang out? Besides tours.

Speaker 2 Oh, my pants just fell off.

Speaker 1 Exploded. My underwear fell off.

Speaker 2 I don't know if I can go shopping with them. That's confusing.

Speaker 1 I imagine I would be self-conscious if I were you because I'd be afraid everything I said I liked, you'd worry they didn't think it was good style.

Speaker 2 I guess we would go to their store.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And I'd say,

Speaker 2 what do you guys think I should get? I'll pay. And they'll be like, I know you'll pay.
We don't give discounts.

Speaker 1 We wouldn't fuck around like that.

Speaker 2 And then they'd pick out some stuff for me. And then we'd all go have martinis.
They would smoke cigarettes. I wouldn't.
Oh, no.

Speaker 1 You won't smoke it, though.

Speaker 2 No, I've never done it. And even for them, I won't.
Wow. I'll roller skate for you, but I won't smoke a cigarette for you.

Speaker 2 Don't we go to bed early?

Speaker 1 Super early.

Speaker 1 Right away. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Anyway, well, it was lovely. And I hope you

Speaker 2 feel happy today.

Speaker 1 Oh, I do.

Speaker 1 I took my immune suppressant, and I think I have a cold that came back. And I think I have a fractured hip,

Speaker 1 but also just beaming with gratitude.

Speaker 1 I did feel, I felt hungover this morning. In fact, so many times, I don't know if you remember this.

Speaker 1 Do you remember I got like a really cool sweatsuit for Christmas and a watch and I was at your house. We were in the backyard and I somehow fell and fucking split my lip like wide open.

Speaker 1 When you were little? No, and I was like home for Christmas.

Speaker 1 And our Christmas started at a certain time. And then we had stayed up till nine in the morning the day before.
And then, so I didn't wake up till 5.

Speaker 1 So I got to Christmas Eve, our big family tradition, quite late. And I just had this horse bloody scam on my mouth

Speaker 1 before.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we had a lot of those. So, anyways, when I woke up, I was like, I have a headache from eating all the cake.
I'm sick and my hip hurts. I feel like I was in Arizona somewhere.

Speaker 1 99 or something.

Speaker 1 Okay, should we do a little just quick fact? Some facies?

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is for Reed Hoffman. Okay.
You said that Martin Luther raised literacy rates from 3% to 95%

Speaker 2 according to AI.

Speaker 1 What do you mean?

Speaker 2 While there isn't a precise percentage readily available to quantify how much Martin Luther raised literacy rates, historical research indicates that the Protestant Reformation, largely driven by Luther's teaching, significantly increased literacy levels across Europe, with some studies showing a difference of nearly 20 percentage points between predominantly Protestant and Catholic regions.

Speaker 2 Essentially, areas with a larger Protestant population had substantially higher literacy rates, but there's no percentage.

Speaker 1 I'm clearly way off given that percentage.

Speaker 2 But you got it from weirdest people on earth. Joseph Henrik.

Speaker 1 Joe. Friend of the Joey Hendrik.

Speaker 2 Go back and listen to that one. Is our unemployment rate as low as it's ever been? The unemployment rate was 3.4% in January and April 2023, the lowest in 55 years.

Speaker 1 55 years.

Speaker 2 The last time the unemployment rate in the U.S. was this low was in the first five months of 1969.

Speaker 2 The average unemployment rate during the Biden administration was 4.1%.

Speaker 1 Really low. Yeah, very low.
A lot of countries have 10% and above.

Speaker 2 Yeah. 1984 did come out in 1948.

Speaker 1 49.

Speaker 2 But we think he wrote it in 1948.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 But he had said, read our guess. Now

Speaker 1 it was 48, which was clever because 1984 was a flip of 48.

Speaker 2 And we still think that's true.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But it did not come out until 49. The price of of Bitcoin today is $104,627.70.

Speaker 1 Wow, wow, wow. Aaron, did you watch that greatest high stock on Netflix? Not yet.
Okay. Well, in a nutshell, these two incredibly weird people.

Speaker 1 I don't feel bad saying that.

Speaker 2 Their names are Ilya Dutch Lichtenstein and Heather Razzle Con Morgan.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So a bit of a clue in their names.
And they stole,

Speaker 1 stole. I always say stole.
That's one of my things. They stole 70.
Yeah, there they are. Oh, man.

Speaker 1 Boy, that photo of him on the left.

Speaker 1 He might have Stockholm.

Speaker 2 This, yeah, this makes me feel sad, actually.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's not. Yeah, you are not.
Okay,

Speaker 1 for either of them. But they stole $72 million in Bitcoin that they really couldn't unload.
So they just held it. By the time they were arrested, it was worth $4.5 billion.

Speaker 1 So it's the greatest theft in the history of the world. Oh my God.
No, I have not.

Speaker 2 Now worth $10.8 billion.

Speaker 1 Now worth $10.8 billion. If you had 72 million.

Speaker 2 It was stolen from Bitfinex or Bitfinex.

Speaker 2 I don't know. And it's a Hong Kong-based virtual cryptocurrency exchange.

Speaker 2 So that's yikes.

Speaker 1 We've had friends that were involved in some thefts of of that, right?

Speaker 2 Yes, we did. Well, that was of.

Speaker 1 We have a friend that's a victim of it. A victim.
That's what I meant. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yikes. A lot of money.

Speaker 1 Which I can only imagine what it's worth now because that was, what, five years ago?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, I have a thing marked here. So you made a car.
You designed a car using AI and you decided you wanted to show it.

Speaker 1 I would love to. Wabby, you want to put it on the TV? Cause you're so good at that now? Yep.
You can email me it. Oh, and I'm going to send you one picture after that of a Ted Segers poster that I.

Speaker 1 Well, there's two. There's three, actually, that I really like.
Let's see. Oh, I'm going to send four things.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Because then I did something for our show.

Speaker 2 Exciting. All on AI?

Speaker 1 All on AI.

Speaker 2 I played around with some merch stuff on AI. That was fun.
Ooh, okay. So

Speaker 1 for the listener.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I want a 15-passenger van for Nashville because I assume we're always going to have so many people staying with us that anytime we go go to dinner, we're going to need like tons of seats.

Speaker 1 So then I was like, well, I want a 15 passenger G-van, a Chevy, but I want it to be John Plair paint scheme. I want it wide body.
I just said like not a ton of things. And it spit this one out.

Speaker 1 It spit three amazing ones.

Speaker 1 Look at that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the John Plair

Speaker 1 livery famous paint scheme. Isn't it interesting how they fuck certain things up? Like, look at the grille.
It's kind of going to say Chevrolet, but it doesn't.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's weird. And then then, like, there's normal letters on the tires and then weird abstract.
And that's the third one. Look at that

Speaker 1 fucker. Can you imagine if I send it this way? Here's a weird thing.
I did look. And I'm only noticing now that it's blown up that big.
It's got two gas.

Speaker 1 Oh, it does. Two fuel doors.
Yeah, two fuel doors. That's weird.

Speaker 1 Right? You see that, money?

Speaker 1 A lot of gas for that. Well, it probably knows I'm going to be

Speaker 1 have my foot in the kitchen the whole time. Okay, now go, Rob, to the other.

Speaker 2 What is John Player?

Speaker 1 It was a cigarette brand

Speaker 1 that sponsored Formula One and Racing, and they have this signature black and gold.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I said,

Speaker 1 make a poster for a beer brand named Ted Seegers in the style of Miami Vice. Yeah.
I have loved this one. Isn't that great?

Speaker 2 That's really cool.

Speaker 1 And again, what does it say? It doesn't say Miami beer, but it says like Niamio beer.

Speaker 1 Almost makes you think it's like a Thai beer or something.

Speaker 2 Underneath it's just squiggles, kind of like the hieroglyphics.

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 okay now then they said give me um a beer brand you know Ted Seeger's I want a muscle car a motorcycle and a muscular horse

Speaker 1 this one is lit up

Speaker 1 the fucking horse

Speaker 1 That thing is ripped. Oh, this is so funny.
All right. And then I was like, what if a beer brand named Ted Seegers sponsored a hydroplane race boat and it made that?

Speaker 1 This is incredible. yeah but what's on the side did you i think it's a i think it's barley or crops

Speaker 1 probably yeah okay all right and then

Speaker 1 look at this beautiful

Speaker 1 what'd you say a crow with a cherry yeah a crow with a cherry in its beak okay but i had to do many to come up with this one this one took a while did you see this

Speaker 1 what's this that's your um oh that was your invite for the party oh i didn't see that it says your rock, rock.

Speaker 1 Right? Yeah. That's not an H.
It's an R. It's Y-R-A-C-H.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 And Captain's questionable. Well, there's, oh, he's got sneakers on.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's a jacked crow. No, I hadn't seen that.
That's great.

Speaker 1 Look at that vascularity. Oh, my God.
That crow is a fucking bro. How scared is that other crow that's flying in the background? He's probably flying to get the fuck out of there.

Speaker 2 I didn't realize she used AI for it.

Speaker 1 Oh, she must have. Well, that's that.
That was it. Those were all the facts.
Those are the facts. That was a fun AID tour.
Yeah. Unless you're listening.
I guess that'll all get cut out. If you're.

Speaker 1 I was just thinking if you were listening and you couldn't see any of this, go to YouTube and watch it. Y'all.

Speaker 1 All right. Love you.
Love you. Love you.

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Speaker 4 Hey there, Armchairies.

Speaker 1 Guess what?

Speaker 4 It's Mel Robbins. I'm popping in here taking out my own ad.
Holy cow, Dax, Monica, and I, I don't want this conversation to end. And I'm so glad you're here with us.

Speaker 4 And the other thing, I can't believe, Dax loves the Let Them Theory. He can't stop talking about it.
I hope you're loving listening as much as I love having you here.

Speaker 4 And I also know, since you love listening to Armchair Expert, you know who you're going to love listening to?

Speaker 1 The Let Them Theory audiobook.

Speaker 4 And guess who reads it?

Speaker 1 Me.

Speaker 4 And even if you've read the book, guess what? The audiobook is different. I tell different stories.

Speaker 1 I riff. I cry.

Speaker 4 You're going to love it because it's going to feel like I'm right there next to you. We're in this together together as we learn to stop controlling other people.

Speaker 4 So, thanks again for listening to this episode of Armchair Expert and check out the audiobook version of the Let Them Theory, read by yours truly.

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