Ep 602 - Future Man (feat. Kevin Ashton)

6:53Shane Gillis:cool so that that was so the whole idea was you you know back in the day you'd have these companies or advise them to attach basically just sensors to regular objects. Yeah. So then those sensors can then gather data. Yeah. Which basically, so, and this was before the smartphone then.

7:09Matt McCusker:Oh, yeah. This was way before the smartphone. Yeah, this was like business systems. Like we got a lot of money from the defense department because, you know, you go to war. Yeah. You got to have enough stuff.

7:19Shane Gillis:Yeah, where the hell are my bombs?

7:20Matt McCusker:Yeah. Bombs is one thing, but like, you know, soda cans. Body bags, Bibles, you know, toothbrushes. It's all that stuff. You've got to know where it all is. And so, you know, that was one of the first like obvious applications was just like logistics.

7:34Shane Gillis:Yeah.

7:34Matt McCusker:That's where all the money came from to fund it. But yeah, then a few years later, you got the smartphone and it becomes easy to put it in everybody's pocket.

7:42Shane Gillis:Yeah. So how did that like, you know, were you kind of following the development of the smartphone? Did that just come out and you're like, hey?

7:48Matt McCusker:Yeah. I mean, it was funny. I was, I guess I can say the name now. Like I was on the board, the research board of Motorola. Okay. And we were trying to explain to them. This was like the flip phone. And one of the perks was they gave you their best phone every year. So I always had like the quote unquote best Motorola phone. It was terrible. Like, do you like the razor, the flip razor? It was awful. I mean, the funny thing is like Motorola even had a partnership with Apple before the iPhone. Really? Yeah, it was called the Rocker, right? It was like an iPod in a Motorola flip phone.

8:27Shane Gillis:Okay, whoa.

8:28Matt McCusker:They fucked it up so badly that Steve Jobs was like, yeah, no. Oh, I don't want anything to do with it. Yeah, we're going to do our own thing. We were trying to explain these, me and some other like futurists, we're trying to explain to them like, you know, touchscreens, graphic user interfaces, guys, sensors.

8:43Shane Gillis:Yeah.

8:43Matt McCusker:Have the phone like know when you pick it up. Like this is not expensive. It's not hard to do. And then the iPhone wasn't the first one. Like LG came out with a thing in Korea about six months before.

8:57Shane Gillis:That makes sense because I had a Droid way before I had an iPhone. My first phone was a Droid. Yeah. I think it was actually an LG.

9:02Matt McCusker:Yeah. So LG had this like, it was called the Prada. Don't ask me why. Like a clothing company. Yeah. But it was basically the same as an iPhone. And then the iPhone came out. And I remember like I went back to the Motorola guys. We had another meeting. and we were like, so, you know that thing we were telling you about for years? It's happened, right? What do you think? And the head of, I swear to you, the head of research at Motorola said, yeah, but it doesn't have a very good microphone. Like people were like lining up around the block to pay like$1 ,000 for this phone they'd never even touched, right?

9:38Matt McCusker:And this guy was like, well, it has a crappy microphone. And that was kind of true. But who gave a shit? Yeah. You know, Motorola is kind of not in business anymore.

9:47Shane Gillis:And it's funny you say that because they were like cell phones. They were like number one. Nokia. Yep. Nokia.

9:53Matt McCusker:Sony, all these guys. And probably in all those companies, there was somebody saying, hey, this is what the future is going to look like. Yeah. And they were like, yeah, no. So, yeah. So who is that? Yeah. Who's above you?

10:06Kevin Ashton:This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. I always find it impressive when someone can, hmm, let me talk about a skill I find impressive or a profession I appreciate. For example, Olympic athletes and their dedication to training, people can touch their nose with their tongues or someone who can speak multiple languages. Well, those are good prompts, but I just love a good accountant. Guys, one skill I found tremendously helpful in my life recently is, hmm, let's say accounting. That's my new passion. I've been doing all of my own accounting lately and I really like it and it's helped me gain a better sense of what all of my accountants have done and I love it and guys should all develop this skill.

10:47Kevin Ashton:It's very important. Having a certain set of skills is important, like I said, especially when it comes to hiring. And one of the best ways to make sure you're finding the right people with the skill set you're looking for is to use a ZipRecruiter. Try it free for yourself at ziprecruiter.com slash secret. Along with the powerful matching technology, ZipRecruiter lets you use screening questions on your job listing to help you find qualified candidates fast. So you can make sure you're talking to exactly the kind of talent you need. It's one of the many reasons ZipRecruiter continues to be ranked the number, well, it just says the number hiring site.

11:24Kevin Ashton:I'm going to say number one. They didn't give me the number, the number blank hiring site. But guys, I'm saying number one based on G2. I'm going to make that leap of faith for ZipRecruiter. Number one hiring site based on G2, of course. Let ZipRecruiter help you find amazing candidates with the skills you seek. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash secret. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash secret. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

11:55Shane Gillis:That's right. so the uh that's pretty crazy man to think about it that long ago where it was like because they they it's almost there's like a super like mystique around the iphone where it was like you know just almost you know people a lot of times are like jobs was just like taking acid in the woods and was just like completely tapped in so that had been a slow ongoing process he was

12:14Matt McCusker:a guy like you know like a really good dj who like is just ahead of the trends who like plays tune you wouldn't have thought about but then you realize it's actually he was that guy for like tech like yeah he really had a good eye for what was coming and yeah and so what happened with the iphone like and this is kind of what we all saw it was it wasn't really a phone phone was a thing you know if you think about your smartphone now like how often are you actually making a call yeah right it's just one of your apps there's all the others to use it a camera use it as a video game use it as you know gps mapping whatever you use it for yeah and and that's what he saw you know so you got the ipod idea and the online video idea and the phone idea and the handheld video

12:58Shane Gillis:just all stick it into one thing yeah and he really i i get in because i had the droid first and i you know i was like and i will say there was something about when i would like tap it or touch it that when it would buzz every time i did that there were i i don't know why that like made me feel so happy every time they like respond back to me i don't know i still like you know i had to turn it off my phone because i just i do like those little noises like oh yeah

13:21Matt McCusker:And if you watch the first like presentation on iPhone, like way back when, like he swipes on the screen, I think he gets a standing ovation.

13:29Shane Gillis:It's so funny.

13:30Matt McCusker:We take it all for granted now. But yeah, so it was fairly clear in the late 90s, early 2000s that something a bit like that was going to happen.

13:40Shane Gillis:Well, yeah, that was my whole thing. Apple, like when I had the Droid for a while, I'm like, this is cool. But Apple was like, it was like intuitive where I was like, oh, this is so easy. Like I don't have to spend time figuring it out. i was just kind of like this makes it's just so much easier to use yeah because i mean jobs wasn't

13:53Matt McCusker:really a technical guy you know so he he was kind of like our representative in in the room who's like yeah it's just too complicated yeah make it easier make it easier and then you end up with

14:03Shane Gillis:you know what we have today which is awesome yeah yeah so the uh so here's here's the thing so okay internet of things term you coined and when you gave the meeting were you like kind of aware that like damn i think i'm crushing it right now or like this is a thing or do you have you know what

14:21Matt McCusker:i mean like oh man this is it's a long time ago so i could so uh the ceo wanted to see the talk of procter and gamble and i was in the uk i don't think they realized that like i got an email saying yeah come and see the ceo like the day after tomorrow or something procter and was based in cincinnati i'd never even been to the u.s right fortunately i had a passport so like i got a ticket first place i ever went to the united states was cincinnati that's pretty sick i was fairly disappointed um right to ohio and i'm in this like walnut paneled like boardroom kind of place and they all come in like there's a you know the ceo and all these other like really senior guys and i do my thing and basically we go around the room and like all the other like the entourage guys are like yeah that sucks that'll never work i don't like it i'm like oh damn you know but then the ceo's like well i like it i think it's a good idea and funnily enough like it's like watching the dominoes go down like all these guys who i i swear had just been shitting on my idea yeah like yeah you're right that's a really yeah what a good idea so yeah if it hadn't been durk yaga wherever you are thank you if it hadn't been for that guy who was ceo at proctor at the time i don't know what would have happened but yeah he got it he said yeah we're going to pay for you to go to mit and make this real whoa so like yeah first time i went to the u.s was like thanksgiving yeah it was like thanksgiving of 98 and then by september the first 99 i was in the smithsonian institution announcing the internet of things to the world and i lived in the u.s whoa it happened

16:03Shane Gillis:really fast yeah that's insane yeah it's crazy and they were like we'll just give you we'll pay for you to go to mit and just figure yeah they gave me money so i could fund the research and

16:11Matt McCusker:then we got a bunch of other companies involved and it just snowballed well and what did you do before that well i was i was a brand manager i was uh i ran like part of the oil of olay business

16:22Shane Gillis:for procter and gamble okay in europe yeah damn just slang emotion you had a slang yeah i was like an expert on mascara and you were like supply chain side of it no it just the shit was never

16:33Matt McCusker:in the store and i got pissed off and i was like why is my stuff never in the store why is you know why is this particular color of lipstick that we know everybody likes a literally true story it's never in this i go get my groceries it's never fucking there and the first answer was well it's just in that one store and i'm like yeah no there's no way it's just the store i go to is so i did some research it wasn't anywhere like we were paying all this money to advertise it you couldn't actually buy it i wanted to fix that problem it just wasn't getting there basically yeah i mean it was it was in the back or something you know wait so you have like

17:05Shane Gillis:computer training like do you are you like a systems i know but like i was like there's an

17:10Matt McCusker:idea i was at school in like the early mid 90s and like like i had a computer when i was 10 i had like a shitty home computer okay you know like the age of like if you've heard of like commodore and all those kind of really early computers no no no i only remember the windows and like that

17:24Shane Gillis:early apple thing that was like purple on top of it so yeah but my generation was like we were the

17:29Matt McCusker:first kids to have computers at home you had like you either had your atari video game system or yeah commodore 64 home didn't do very much but what was the commodore i remember atari what was the commodore 64 was like a keyboard that you plugged into the tv and it had like basic computer ability and you could like buy video games on cassette tapes and like play them into the computer it would sound like a fax machine and it would like load it in you could play some little game that's awesome yeah no so yeah i just grew up with computers so like i was like well there's got to be a this is an information problem right yeah a solution and like there was dang yeah that's

18:03Shane Gillis:pretty cool yeah it worked out so you walked home that day like i i think i crushed it like did you have an idea like you were just that day like i went from there to a meeting at mit

18:16Matt McCusker:and i was having breakfast in the cambridge marriott hotel which is at that time was like the only hotel near mit yeah and a senior guy from proctor and gable campbell came busting in to find me at breakfast was like they've just approved for you to like transfer to mit how quickly can you move to the united states and i was like uh how about two weeks and they're like yeah sure that's awesome and i like went back to my office and like the human resources team yeah we pay for your apartment we pay for your plane we pay for all this stuff i'm like oh my god So yeah, it was like, it was life change.

18:53Matt McCusker:That's insane.

18:54Shane Gillis:That's honestly, that's like a fantasy of mine. I always wanted to go in a boardroom and hit them with the million dollar idea. God, that's awesome. I would love that.

19:02Matt McCusker:Yeah, I mean, it landed, but like, I'm not kidding you, like the first five minutes of feedback were brutal.

19:08Shane Gillis:It is funny, like, nah, I don't like it. What was their, do you remember their pushback specifically or they were just like, this will never work?

19:13Matt McCusker:It was just like, they had some bullshit. I mean, the thing you always heard back in that day was all the laws of physics. you know if you want to put a radio microchip into like a bottle of moisturizer it's going to cost ten dollars and and it won't work and like this was before wi-fi it was before bluetooth and there are a lot of people who are convinced that you really couldn't send data over radio okay or barely yeah and that's crazy now like we think about like you know you can download like a high-def movie on your phone over like the cell network yeah yeah but in the 90s it's like yeah that won't work it's gonna cost too much we already know where all our stuff is anyway i'm like no you don't yeah you know there were guys whose job it was like to know they weren't going to be like yeah you know he's right we actually have no fucking idea true like this is not a

20:01Shane Gillis:problem that was one of the you know so what were they how did they like who the guy who knew where all the stuff was back in the early night they would just call a warehouse make yo did you guys

20:08Matt McCusker:get that stuff well they're no like they're no like down to the nearest like million or something right but was because i used to get this like even after we got to mit we'd have like ceo type guys come through and we'd pitch them and they'd be like yeah we already know where all our stuff is and i'd be like okay you sell this product and you've got a store down the street in boston how long would it take you to find out how many of this one product are on the shelf in that store and they'd be like uh yeah well you know and else was they couldn't do it

20:40Shane Gillis:Yeah, of course. I used to work in a beer distributor in the, when was this? The early 2000s. And the guy would still walk around, count every single case of beer. He had a piece of paper. So I remember I stole a 12-pack from him one time. Yeah. And he was like, did you? I was missing a 12-pack of MGD. And I was like, God damn, you really had this thing. Oh, that's good. Yeah. He was the only guy. That guy owned that store, I reckon. He worked very closely with the owner. He was trying to get a citizenship. And he lived in the warehouse itself. So he was, it was like his ticket to America. He's invested.

21:13Shane Gillis:But like in a big box store? No, there's no way. No, especially if you go to like a Target. Still to this day, you go to a Target sometimes and it's like just crap. Like it's pretty bad.

21:23Kevin Ashton:Oh yeah.

21:23Shane Gillis:It's a mess. Yeah.

21:25Kevin Ashton:This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. And I always find it impressive when someone can, hmm, let me talk about a skill I find impressive or a profession I appreciate. For example, Olympic athletes and their dedication to training, people can touch their nose with their tongues or someone who can speak multiple languages. Well, those are good prompts, but I just love a good accountant. Guys, one skill I found tremendously helpful in my life recently is, hmm, let's say accounting. That's my new passion. I've been doing all of my own accounting lately and I really like it and it's helped me gain a better sense of what all of my accountants have done and I love it.

22:05Kevin Ashton:And guys should all develop this skill. It's very important. Having a certain set of skills is important, like I said, especially when it comes to hiring. And one of the best ways to make sure you're finding the right people with the skill set you're looking for is to use a Zip Recruiter. Try it free for yourself at ZipRecruiter.com slash secret. Along with the powerful matching technology, Zip Recruiter lets you use screening questions on your job listing to help you find qualified candidates fast. So you can make sure you're talking to exactly the kind of talent you need. Let ZipRecruiter help you find amazing candidates with the skills you seek.

22:40Kevin Ashton:Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash secret. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash secret. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Well, cool.

22:55Shane Gillis:So you came up with that idea and that kind of, I don't know. Did you ever feel like kind of, since you weren't technically like a, you know, you were savvy with computers, I guess. I guess if you used a computer regularly in the 90s, you were a tech guy. You know what I mean?

23:09Matt McCusker:Well, you know, I was kind of too stupid and how stupid I was really. But my experience had been like the first computer I got had 1K of memory. And I saved up. I used to deliver newspapers. I saved up for months and bought a 16K, like K, not megabytes, gigabytes, kilobytes, memory expansion for that thing. It cost like 100 bucks or whatever. and i felt like i had more memory than i would ever need right this is in the 80s and by the 90s you know it's like we're talking about like maybe megabytes yeah and the stuff you you can do was like a million times better than the stuff you could do in the 80s so like in my dumb brain it

23:48Kevin Ashton:was like well things just get cheaper yeah things just get smaller and that turned out to be true

23:54Matt McCusker:i mean i didn't know how it was true or why it was true but like you just figured it out yeah i'd seen that happen for like 15 years at that point yeah i saw a video so there's a video from you

24:03Shane Gillis:11 years ago and you were doing predict you had like three predictions and the one was 15 years from now this is 11 years ago 15 years from now most cars won't have steering wheels which i took as like automatic cars basically yeah so kind of kind of nailed that because i don't know if you see i mean obviously you see all the waymos here i got here in a way mo funny i love the yeah i actually love the way most so you're so you were kind of spot on with that 15 years ago or 11 years ago you were like yeah those self-driving cars i don't think people really 11 years ago they're

24:31Matt McCusker:like no way oh they were no and the thing is like what's happened is a lot of cars like new cars are more self-driving than people realize it's called like enhanced driver aids i've seen that yeah so it tells you if you're like going out of your lane it can tell you if you need to brake suddenly you know there's a whole bunch of stuff they're like building in gradually so like what used to just be like the automatic gearbox or like cruise control or something yeah it's like now getting more and more sophisticated so you're getting closer and closer to like that self-driving

25:00Shane Gillis:yeah the lane assist you know i i like it i took a waymo and i actually kind of really enjoy it i you know i thought i'd be like i don't know it's it's pretty reliable it drives like a regular

25:09Matt McCusker:speed it's you know first few minutes is kind of weird and then it just gets old yeah i find and i

25:14Shane Gillis:like i'm i enjoy talking to people in uber so i don't mind the human interaction but there is something really peaceful about just like being there by yourself yeah putting on a song and just kind of just chilling i i like really really i don't know i feel i find it really relaxing

25:27Matt McCusker:i still catch myself about to say something to the driver oh yeah or i'll say thank you yeah it says hello and it says your name yeah and i always want to say you know hello back it's like

25:39Shane Gillis:there's no one yeah no one here dude so the other one was and i'm curious to see what we're coming up with this five years from now computers won't have batteries what were they run oh i was cheating

25:49Matt McCusker:at that point right because they're i mean so there's a thing called an rfid tag which is like the sort of one of the main technologies in the internet of things it's just like a little chip with an antenna and like you buy something from walmart or something they use it for inventory tracking yeah you buy something from walmart it might have a sticker on that says epc that's the thing we've met at mit that's the electronic product code right okay that's a computer like an rfid tag is a computer but it's very small it's very simple it doesn't have a battery it gets power from the radio waves that are communicating with it.

26:22Matt McCusker:There are more, even when I made that prediction, there are more RFID tags in the world then than any other kind of computer added together, a smartphone. I mean, these things cost a few cents. They're in like your speed pass and then the products you buy and they're used for tracking in Amazon warehouses and whatnot. So there's billions of them and they don't have batteries, right? So that's the cheat in that story. Gotcha. But, you know, what's happening in computing is two things. One, the amount of power it uses goes down by about half every two years. That's crazy. So computers just keep getting more power efficient, right?

26:57Matt McCusker:So they need less power. But also then we're getting better at like sending power over the air, harvesting power from like vibrations, sound vibrations, stuff like that. So, yeah, we're definitely moving. I mean, it might be your smartphone always has a battery, but you probably noticed you get a lot more life out of a charge now than you used to yeah so the power budgets go down ways of putting power in go beyond batteries that's that's been happening for

27:21Shane Gillis:a while that will keep happening damn so there's a little okay so those are what's the difference

27:25Matt McCusker:between a computer and a computer chip nothing really okay i mean because you think a computer and it's like shorthand for like personal computer but that's like a chip with like a keyboard like a memory or you know a fan or something right but the thing that's doing the computing is a microprocessor gotcha and that's one chip one integrated circuit that's crazy they just pull

27:45Shane Gillis:the i guess the energy out of the wi-fi and they keep that's why yeah that's why my easy pass keeps rocking i've never charged there you go yeah dang nailed that too and what do you think i'm nervous the third one no third one i think you're spot on kids and grandkids will live to 100 on average oh yeah yeah that's that's coming i think worldwide we're definitely getting there um

28:04Matt McCusker:um you know i mean the pandemic like screwed up like life expectancy because the thing about life expectancy that nobody knows right is it's what age are people dying today so if you're 20 years old and you like you go on the internet or say your life expectancy is 80 but that means that the people who die today are average age of 80 yeah that's not actually accounting for the fact that it will probably get better as you get older yeah that makes sense yeah so most people are gonna gonna hit 100 unless they have a bad accident or something yeah that's definitely on the way

28:36Shane Gillis:yeah hopefully they can do that uh you know little like tiny small robots that can go around your body and be like cancer cell and then you just get like a thing on your rod oh i mean that's that's

28:47Matt McCusker:kind of sort of happening yeah like at least customize drug delivery like it's kind of a bit more modified for your you know your dna your body type stuff like that is we're learning a lot and the thing about healthcare is you solve one problem like when i was a kid like all the men were dying in their 40s of heart attacks yeah they were smoking too much they were drinking too much they were eating british food too much you know yeah and and we figured out heart attacks right doesn't really happen anymore so then people start dying of something else when they're 50 yeah and then we figured that out and then you know you get and now so now it's like dementia

29:21Shane Gillis:type problem dementia is the big one right now but you know there's there's a lot of interesting

29:24Matt McCusker:work happening there's a lot of money being thrown at that i guess someone will figure it out and then the other side of that there's there's something else that people are 100 dials yeah i just don't know at what point do you like does it stop working that you can't fix the thing that yeah i wonder what the new thing will be i'll probably be the one who finds out call me in 30 years

29:47Shane Gillis:dang man so okay so we've we figured out how you become a futurist it's uh do you have any futurist pals that you talk to that you kind of like?

29:56Matt McCusker:Oh, yeah. There's a little bunch of us and we shoot the shit and we post-rationalize. You're giving those predictions. A lot of guys are completely wrong. I won't name names. But you know when you said that? Yeah, but what I meant was. Yeah, futurist. There's this thing over here that I found on Google that actually proves. So, yeah. I think I'm an honest futurist. If you'd have said you predicted this, it didn't happen. I've been, yeah, you were right. oh yeah it's hard yeah but like there are a lot of guys who yeah who won't ever admit that like they got it wrong yeah you get a lot of stuff wrong like now surprising if one of your futurist

30:35Shane Gillis:bros were to go like too far into the future would you pull him back and be like bro you can't go that like if they were like 700 years from now or would you be oh yeah yeah i think that's like

30:44Matt McCusker:i mean because you've got to think about there's two things right if you think about 700 years ago yeah there was no way anybody could have described this right yeah but and and as population gets bigger you get more ideas and people have more leisure time as technology gets better to think about new things so technology improvement accelerates like massively right which is why we've gone from like i mean the first like main tvs were like in the 50s i think was like the big u.s television revolution yeah like some shitty tv about you know this big yeah and now you've got like 4k on your phone yeah so like the idea of like looking more than like 50 to 100 years ahead

31:25Shane Gillis:in any meaningful way yeah it's crazy yeah because like one thing leads to another and at some point you know it's just gone in a direction you didn't see coming yeah that's what i like um i do like in terms you have you have a pretty optimistic outlook on terms of future and technology oh yeah a lot of people yeah you know especially with the sensors and this and that feel like they're they're slowly getting closed in by like a giant you know uh surveillance apparatus that's going

31:50Matt McCusker:to like lock them out i mean people use tech good technology for bad things yeah i mean generally governments not always and that that happens and you know you try and control it but you if you don't invent something because someone might do something bad with it you know you're never going to invent anything right yeah um but the other thing is like it's it's safe to be an optimist because like i'm going to tell you right now like the world is not going to end in our lifetime yeah and if i'm wrong hey who's gonna who's gonna know true you know you can't really

32:22Shane Gillis:lose betting on that yeah well no i i feel like it's a lot of you get a lot of uh i personally think it's really in vogue to be very negative and very kind of doom and gloom with the history especially with ai everyone i know is like freaking out about it and i honestly don't I don't know again it's like yeah if it erases a bunch of jobs you know seemingly overnight that's it's going to be a problem but I I really feel like they'll figure it out I don't know I don't like yeah because it's like especially if you like go back to like the fall of the Roman Empire dude if you were to ask any of those guys back then that have been like it's done we're done everything's over they would have never been able to conceive of the fact that it's like not only not over but it's going to be a million times different and better oh yeah I mean and bad

33:04Matt McCusker:things happen good things happen ai is like a big complicated topic but like it's very close to the internet of things so i've been like dealing with ai one way or another since the 90s yeah so like i'm not like all doom and gloom or all like hype about it i'm kind of like in the middle you know the thing is i think um and i'm not i'm not trying to raise a billion dollars right now so you know it's easy for me but like it's it's just a more complicated toaster right yeah you know you like a toaster turns bread into toast it doesn't know what toast is right doesn't understand meaning ai is the same ai is just like brain toast right you know it's it's it doesn't know what it's doing it's just a machine and you know like there are things that only humans can do right and the thing that only humans can do one of them is meaning so if we like tell stories we can only tell good stories computers can't they can tell bad stories because they don't know what anything means yeah i mean it's like i give you like in comedy like the best comedy is the truest comedy yeah people laugh most they get the most emotional reaction from something that feels most true and that's true in all storytelling if it makes you scared or if it makes you excited or sad or

34:16Shane Gillis:whatever like the more it makes you feel something you know in comedy it's laughter the truer it is

34:22Matt McCusker:generally the more it means something machines can't do that hey i can't do that yeah that's

34:26Shane Gillis:That's kind of, uh, that's my feeling on it. And I've, I've like, it's useful for like editing. You can have it edit, you can have a flag errors, but like, I don't know. I, I feel the same way. Cause it's like, I mean, I, I guess in terms of like producing a good story, maybe they could like draw from, you know, a hundred of the best authors of all time copy some sort of like, you know, pattern to that. But I don't feel like I've tested rock before by being like, you know, um, here's a joke I'm thinking of. And it was complete nonsense on purpose. Oh yeah. and it was like hilarious you're doing it now that's literally you know it's like it's like

35:01Matt McCusker:the guys who run it they're like they're like sycophants you know they're like yeah people suck up and they think you like that too but like i mean i can't imagine you like asking ai to write you a bit they can't and then you're going on stage and being like yeah i can confidently

35:16Shane Gillis:deliver this no i can't do it because i was i remember hearing like oh it's gonna you know at first or whatever not the first but the last writer's strike there was a big thing like ai's comment it's going to take and i was like how close is it actually for comedy writing it's

35:29Matt McCusker:so so bad it's horrible yeah and crap crap ai storytelling is like crap human storytelling yeah you know like what's what's why is a bad comedian bad it's because they're saying something that doesn't really mean anything that doesn't really ring true yeah right and like like you see a crappy like straight to video kind of movie and it's it's kind of like a mash-up of a bunch of cliches you've seen a million times before yeah doesn't really have any kind of thematic thing so i say you know comedy is is truth telling right so i grew up again i'm old i grew up on like bill hicks yeah eddie is odd you can still you know that bill yeah yeah so you can go you can go back and look at bill hicks like from like the 80s or 90s he's still funny yeah you know maybe the president he's taken the piss out of has changed the name or something but basically it's it's still true right yeah and so you know that's that's that's all storytelling whether it's comedy or anything else it's got to be real it's got to be true it's got to have meaning ai i don't think is ever going to be at that point yeah where like you could say okay i'm gonna have it tell me write me a joke and i'm just gonna go say it and people are gonna laugh yeah i yeah i don't think you could

36:39Shane Gillis:do anything meaningful at least you know i don't think so i think you could crank out like children's cartoons like paw patrol if you were to do like you know like a children's animated show i've noticed as i've watched a good amount with my kids almost all those cartoons follow the exact same storyline where it's like you know an animal's lost it needs its mom and it's like you could i think it could like crank out slop like that but yeah i i just think it's good for like organizing it's like a super spell check where it's like it can go flag errors you know but yeah i i'm not worried about it i know so many people like it's going to become sentient and like realize it doesn't like us and kill us and it's like i think people have stopped saying that since i started

37:19Matt McCusker:using it yeah i feel like this like actually this is kind of crap exactly yeah sorry to interrupt

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38:56Kevin Ashton:That's code drenched to get$50 in lineups after you play your first$5 lineup. Prize picks. It's good to be right. Hey, real quick while I have you guys, I have some shows coming up and well, we have some good news and bad news. The good, well, depends on for me. The good news is I'll be in Cleveland and Pittsburgh this weekend, March 6, Cleveland, March 7, Pittsburgh, and I'm not fronting. I think both shows are going to sell out. So if you want to come, here's your CTA, your call to action.

39:29Shane Gillis:If you want to come to those shows and you want to come to those shows, I almost called it Clitzburg. That's crazy. Cleveland, Ohio or Pittsburgh.

39:37Kevin Ashton:Yeah, just come and get my tickets. I think there's a link in this video to get them. Pretty sick. And also after that, I'll be in St. Louis, Missouri, Indianapolis, St.

39:48Shane Gillis:Paul, Missouri, I guess that's MO, Missouri, Des Moines, Iowa, Phoenix, here's the big one guys all of them are selling pretty well god damn that phoenix celebrity

39:58Kevin Ashton:theater is it's not till april 17th so we have some time but that shows in the round and i actually enjoy performing in the round so if you want to see my butt for like good 10 second stretches while i do my thing and you know i'll turn around i'll show you my bulge at the celebrity theater as well it'll be button bulge all night at the celebrity theater just an angry little micro bulge. I'll wear some joggers that night so everyone gets their money's worth. They can all go, ha ha ha, look at that. It's barely sticking out.

40:29Shane Gillis:Guys, I'll be in Tucson, Arizona. Toronto is a big one. Two shows, again, not bragging, Nature of the Beast. Two shows, both have sold out in Toronto.

40:38Kevin Ashton:I'm thinking about adding a third. Canadians, I know I've said a lot of bad things about your country. I was just fucking kidding around. I love you guys. You guys love me more than all these bastards in fucking Phoenix, Arizona, apparently. So come on out to the shows. And then Chicago, of course, will be at the Riviera Theater. Probably going to add a second show there, hopefully, because that thing done, sold out May 26th. So whatever. Hopefully that makes sense to you guys. Go to mattmccusker.com. And, yeah, come to a show, man. We're having a good time. Also, I'll be doing Algonauts in Austin, Texas.

41:11Kevin Ashton:That's once a month I do that where me and Tim Butterly take people's cell phones, project their algorithm through Instagram, usually on the screen, and, you know, try to get a picture of, like, who is this person? What is the algorithm being sent to them or what is being sent to them through the algorithm? What does that say about them? What doesn't it say about them? Because you can't just judge someone on their algorithm. Or maybe you can. I don't know. Come out to that. That's at the Creek and Cave. So if you go to Creek and Cave ATX, you can get that. And last and I don't remember the saying.

41:40Last and cool enough.

41:44Kevin Ashton:Guys, I'm tired. Last and most importantly, Noble Bomb. I'll be in Philadelphia March 16th. I'm just visiting family. Figured I'd strut my stuff on the old flagship stage that is Helium, Philadelphia. I'm going to get some of my friends, and we're all going to try newish material, stuff we're working on. It'll be fun. Come out. It'll be St. Paddy's Day weekend. You can get drunk if that's what you feel you must do. And if you're trying really hard not to be drunk, well, try to hold out. Come to the show. Be sober. You know? Be fun. learn how to be fun while sober or get fucking hammered on St.

42:22Kevin Ashton:Paddy's Day. It's really up to you. All of these, I'm laying out choices. That's all I'm doing. I'm not trying to coerce you. I'm not trying to manipulate you. I'm just giving you choices. Do whatever you want. Love you guys. Back to the show. Pardon the interruption. Pardon the interruption. This is Sean Gardini. I just wanted to let you guys know that I'll be in Salt Lake City, Utah at Wise Guys Comedy Club March 27th and 28th with Nate Marshall so please come see that show if you'd like and I'll be at the Comet in Cincinnati not Comet Ping Pong just the Comet in Cincinnati on May 22nd and 23rd so please come to those that was a little joke there but I'd like I'd really like to see you guys at the show so please come if you can tickets are at SeanGardini.com and we also have Optimum Noctis at the Creek in the Cave in Austin, Texas.

43:18Kevin Ashton:Me, Nate Marshall, and LaMare Lee every first and third Tuesday of the month. So thank you very much for your time. Pardon the interruption. Enjoy the rest of the show.

43:29Shane Gillis:But yeah, and the other thing too is like I saw you talking about, God, who was it? Mozart, that fake letter. Oh, yeah, yeah. Where like all of his songs would come to him like in this, yeah he'd be in a great mood and they would just start to finish they would come and all he had to do was kind of write them out yeah and how that was everyone believed that was like oh for sure

43:48Matt McCusker:but it's literally fake guy worked his ass off probably like you do like just yeah i mean maybe once in a while you're stuck at a red light and you like get the seed of an idea that's quite a good idea sure i don't know you but i'm guessing like most of the comedy you write you're like sitting there like thinking about it and like making a little bit better and a little bit how great creators create they just work yeah there's talent and all that stuff it's not like anybody could be mozart sure but even mozart had to be like writing things down crossing them out he has to play something listen to it now that's good that's not good that's how everybody does it

44:27Shane Gillis:yeah that's that's kind of a you know what you come to discover it's like it really is like you know if you want to do something cool in any capacity usually it's just like you have to trade your time like you have to trade tons of time and just deal with stuff that like sucks yeah so bad and just keep plotting through yeah whereas i do think there's yet there's a thought where it's like i can just link into the ai feed it prompts and it's like i don't i don't think it's going to

44:51Matt McCusker:produce that's why it sucks to be like on a deadline or in a hurry yeah because you kind of need the luxury to be like yeah i spent a week on this but it sucks and i don't want to but i'm gonna have to start over yeah you know and so if you if you don't have that luxury you've got to go with the thing that sucks right yeah true that so so about the book we got the

45:11Shane Gillis:story of stories where'd you when'd you kind of like you know because you were talking about things what made you what prompted you to switch to thinking about stories oh well it's like

45:23Matt McCusker:i was so we talk about smartphones and like this year about 90 of the people in the world in the world own a smartphone okay and that's like 15 of those people are like us in advanced economies we maybe had computers before that tvs and telephones and all that stuff but the other like 75 of people they never had any of that stuff so you've gone from like not owning a telephone you know watching a tv that 10 other families watch on the corner of the street to having a smartphone in your pocket yes so the beginning of the story of stories was like well what does that mean like how does that change things and you know the way it changes things is this is the first time in human history

46:08Shane Gillis:when anybody can tell stories to anybody right if you have a good story like you can put it on the

46:16Matt McCusker:internet on facebook or whatever and if people start sharing it like very quickly like it can kind of go all the way around the world. That's never been true. Like, you know, storytelling started about a million years ago because we invented fire.

46:30Kevin Ashton:Yeah.

46:31Matt McCusker:So we invented fire and about the similar time, alcohol, drugs and cooking. So you're sitting around a fire. What else is there to do after you've eaten some food, gotten drunk, gotten high? Right. You start shooting the shit. So that's how language happened. Right. language didn't give us stories stories gave us language so you know you're a million years ago like you're long way human ancestors and you only know how to like you know say oh there's a piner over there or let's have sex right you've got a few kind of barky sound but gradually you've got to use sound because you can't see because it's firelight so gradually over a long period of time you know you evolve to get good at talking yeah about tomorrow or something you remember or like where the stars maybe came from or whatever right so storytelling is what made us human right and at that time like it was like you could talk to like five guys you know your buddies around the fire right but then you get like maybe drawing like you can draw on the wall of a cave or something people can see it like even after you die then you get stuff like singing so it makes it really easy to remember a story and then of course you know writing printing all the way through to like smartphones and ai it's it's stories all the way down right so the minute i was like what the fuck does it mean that everyone's got a smartphone you know i kind of went backwards i guess down the rabbit hole and ended up with well it's all stories you know the way to tell the story of what's happening now everyone's arguing about whether this is true or that is true or this conspiracy theory or whatever that's really being enabled by smartphones right it's all storytelling storytelling is deep in our brains because it evolved with us yeah um so that's where the story of stories came from i mean this is like i'm kind of a slow thinker i like have to read fucking everything and it takes ages for it to like you know settle in and like make sense and i chase squirrels i got a rabbit hole so i wake up in the morning like how did i get here but the point was like what does it mean about the smartphones basically yeah and then one thing leads to another you end up with the story of stories because that's the only way i figured

48:41Shane Gillis:out how to answer the question so what did what did you uh what in terms of like a prescriptive i guess or if you have one uh-huh what do you think the answer to that question is in terms of like where it'll go or like how do you handle yourself in a world where like you have a million people telling you a million stories and especially with like the deep fake stuff and you know it's

48:59Matt McCusker:coming down the pipe i mean i i think there's a couple i i i can't really do prescriptions like i but but what i what i think is um we've got to understand that stories are really integral to how we think about the world like some people think of stories they're like oh i've read a book i saw a movie right yeah but yeah stand-up comedy is storytelling right this conversation is storytelling right most of what we do is storytelling one way or another yeah the thing

49:23Shane Gillis:i'm sorry the thing from the book that really you know i think is cool is the uh kind of the idea of like you know how your majority oh i guess maybe the whole entire thing of your identity is literally just you telling stories or continuing stories like the person you are and to be and it's like you know you're you were saying too like how you're all your cells basically die yeah except for your eyeballs and like the just a little bit of the lizard part of your brain yeah like a couple of little that's crazy that's the only thing over your whole lifetime that lives the entire the cells don't die just you have your original eyeballs and your little like lizard stem of your brain everything else dies comes back again and again it's all made of food so and i i do get that because there's like okay that's fair so like your physical form is actually kind of coming and going and you're the thing that's actually sustained is a story you're telling yourself the only caveat is that there is a form like a shape to your physical cells and stuff that's the one thing that does well actually no it doesn't because then you grow and you i mean you went blown looking like this man actually i came out exactly came out 192 pounds like no that's fair that's yeah okay yeah so and then you can also alter your form so yeah i'm wrong so that is kind of cool to think of like i was like reading it last night kind of first of all bugging out about people's telling stories a million years ago over fire which is just like like just like groaning noises to each other and uh how that becomes basically you know that's that's evolved into where like literally that's how you experience yourself is who you are through stories and the thing that i really like too is like stories being vehicles of like shame and glory delivery systems where it's like you tell and it happens all the time the news is like the number one thing where it's like it's a giant shame mostly a shame apparatus where it's like this person piece of shit they suck and it's you know and you're listening you're like

51:10Matt McCusker:yeah i hate that guy that's no gray right it's like you're a hero or you're a villain yeah And that's a story-shaped brain. So you've got to understand that's not how the world actually is. Everybody's kind of like a bit good and a bit bad. And some people are really quite bad and some people are really quite good. But we think in terms of heroes and villains just because all that stuff around the fireside. Because we're shooting the shit around the fireside getting high. Well, we're the heroes. Those guys over there, they're the villains. That's just how the brain works. So understanding that is one thing.

51:43Matt McCusker:like your your understanding of the world is like 99.9 based on stories that you have heard yeah and most of those stories were based on stories that the person who told you the story had heard and so on very little what we know we know through our eyes and ears and so on right yeah we told it that's unique about humans so you've got to be really i think just like you might think about the food that you eat right you kind of got to be a little bit picky about what stories you expose yourself to yeah but also then like don't just take him at face value you know especially if it's something you want to believe yeah like if someone tells you your hero as a hero you might that might be the best time to be like well i'm going to think about that a little bit harder because there may be another angle here you know and and this is a challenge like because the story of stories kind of the first wave of it is this one person can tell stories to five people to now everybody can tell stories to everybody right that's kind of we're at the end of that first wave but what we're seeing now is like is this story real right is this because because throughout human history like you know you look at this painting like we know that's a painting we know that's not actually a naked woman sitting right there right but as we move into this world of like ever increasing screen revolution so it looks more and more three-dimensional ever better the AI, deep fake technology, we're going to reach a point sometime soon when you actually can't tell.

53:05Matt McCusker:Yeah. Are you looking out of a window kind of thing or are you being told a story? Like how real is it? How fake is it? And that critical thinking that we already need to be like, is someone bullshitting me right now? Sure. It's got to get a lot sharper.

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56:32Shane Gillis:Yeah, that's going to be real. I was like thinking about that a lot, especially with the Epstein files, because I think that is going to follow whatever the next election, like the presidential election. I think that's going to be weaponized to try to take either people trying to take their opponents down with that, which is like, okay, fair enough. But then it's like we'll be in a place now where you can be accused of horrible stuff as a politician. There could be a video and you'd be like, that's a deep fake.

56:57Matt McCusker:You see that already, right? Yeah. I mean, there was not the longer like I think Syria was accused of gassing its population or something. And like there was a video. It's like, oh, yeah, that's all AI. you know yeah that's that's a it's bullshit but it's common and yeah i mean obviously people in epstein i mean you know raping kids is bad those people suck they should all go to jail i'm totally for that but yeah i mean just on the story of story side of it the epstein files exist because of email yeah and there's so much like like you know this like priest police brutality stuff that we hear about now like that's not new but you get to see video of it like right now there's like 10 smartphones pointing at it and they're on the internet like immediately yeah so there's good and bad with this new technology we're getting this paper trail like are the epstein emails fake we kind of know they're not right because they just they look real right and there's so many of them so but at some point yeah you're going to be showing a cell phone video what happens now like look what this you know this person did it's going to be bs yeah i saw i saw a video of a

57:58Shane Gillis:bombing recently where like literally the cars just like flew up in the air and i was like damn it was in like the middle east and it's like 10 people like this is ai not true and it's like

58:07Matt McCusker:yeah fuck that's kind of weird you could generally find some expert online now though like who can explain that can get it this is or isn't real yeah well i think i know um yeah i think netflix

58:17Shane Gillis:has a thing where they they actually screen if you give them something they'll run it through a filter to determine how much ai is in it and if there's too much ai they're like we can't use this

58:26Matt McCusker:i was watching a video yesterday it was like some guy who was like cheating at like speed running you know like video game yeah yeah so like they video themselves but like they'd analyzed like the mouse movement and they realized that the mouse hand was like kind of superimposed and it wasn't really there really yeah so i mean that stuff's already happening this is a scandal why why is nobody hearing about this oh it's i mean youtube man tells you everything you need to know but there's there's again good and bad right you can use this technology for like cheating but there's another guy who can use the technology to tell that you're cheating yeah yeah it's true

58:57Shane Gillis:And that's what I wonder, too, because, again, with the, you know, if we go into a realm of just, like, political deep fakes, you don't know what's real, what's not. It's, like, literally genuinely impossible to tell. I wonder if, you know, because there is, like, a desire for, like, the truth, like, especially with the Epstein stuff or whatever's going on. Like, I want to know exactly what happened. But then it's, like, I wonder if people want that kind of access to the truth, if there's going to be some tradeoff where it's, like, all right, we're all going to, like, divulge everything about each other.

59:24Shane Gillis:like you know live we're all on camera 24 7 that way we have like we have the truth if we need it i think everyone would be like nobody i'm all right on instagram filters are there for a reason

59:35Matt McCusker:right you know face tune nobody wants they want they want to make you think that's what yeah it's real but yeah there's i mean there's never any proof of anything right there's only evidence yeah and we have to be you know we already are because our brains are built this way but we have to be smart and awake about is this evidence real does this evidence add up to the story someone's trying to tell me why are they trying to tell me this story because the other thing like if anybody's ever telling you a story even like in conversation like they whether they realize they've got an agenda it's not like neutral or objective they're like they want to get a second date or they want to make you laugh or they want to impress you or they don't want you to find out what you did what they did or something right yeah always that's not a bad thing that's just the way of the world so you've got to be kind of on to like is this bullshit yeah and that's no for

1:00:23Shane Gillis:sure and it's it's hard you know that's kind of a hard thing to do because i feel like a huge part of that is like taking yourself out of the equation as much as possible because it's usually like what what version of this makes me look the best and it's like well said yeah that's i think that's what happened you know it's hard to like be aware enough to not do that but even with like the again with the epstein stuff it's like like you said obviously child rapists are horrible horrible horrible things should be punished you know beyond even whatever they get but then the thing i've saw is like it becomes very almost i don't know if trendy is the word to be like to ramp it up to the point where it's like we're now controlled and people like i'm sure of this by pedophiles entirely who are like eating kids and it's like and again if there's proof of that it's like obviously punish that person but the thing i worry about is like you do get a charge like whenever you talk about something like somebody being bad makes you feel good in some way where you're like that guy's a piece of shit and i you know it's like how much of it is like you know like if they're a fucking pedophilist cannibalistic pedophiles obviously fucking punish them but it's like a what if that's not as true as you think and like what is that weird ego charge you're getting being like these fucking pieces and like they're in control of the entire world it's like maybe heroes and villains again yeah yeah that's the one kind of thing that i get a little hit in it but it's it sucks it's like what are you sticking off it's like no not at all like again if you catch somebody doing that like do whatever you have to do but it's like when you there's like a there's this thing where you ruminate on it endlessly where you're like what are you what are you getting out of that or it's like it's kind of sick on both i think it's

1:02:01Matt McCusker:storytelling again like because like you know you've got the pizzagate thing like blood sucking hillary clinton or whatever that was about like that's a story that's like a movie like good conspiracy theories are kind of like good movies right or the other way around right real life even with these heinous crimes the other thing about the epstein files is kind of how tacky it is you know these people are like cheesy they're kind of cringy it's not like a an action movie or yes it's like you know it's what they're doing is horrible and and but but also like they're just like having these tacky kind of email exchanges.

1:02:38Matt McCusker:Really?

1:02:38Shane Gillis:Yeah. That's the one thing too, how dorky it all was. Oh, I'm addicted to JE.

1:02:43Matt McCusker:I miss my J.

1:02:44Shane Gillis:Hey, that guy stood right there. Really?

1:02:46Matt McCusker:Seriously? Oh, shit. Sorry.

1:02:48Shane Gillis:Sorry, that guy. But like, what the fuck? I've been making fun of JE withdrawals.

1:02:52Matt McCusker:As soon as I heard it, I was like, oh, man. Have you looked in the Epstein files for yourself? I have not, no. Oh, I have. I'm not in there. I never knew the guy or anything, but like he was hanging around MIT when I was. So like, you know, there's plenty of people who are like, they never met him, but like he loves science stuff. There's a list of like, you know, names or people presenting at something. But yeah, I was very pleased.

1:03:13Shane Gillis:I don't think I was on his radar. Thank God.

1:03:15Matt McCusker:That was the other thing for the guys.

1:03:16Shane Gillis:Again, there's - Comedians came out very well. They did. Thank God. Thank God. But yeah, that's the, yeah, that's the one thing where it's like, you're totally right. Where, you know, it's like, we have to, recognizing how deeply stories kind of alter your reality. Yeah. It's like one thing to be like, let me sit back. Let me take a breath, especially I know myself as I have my own biases. Like if I read a thing and I'm starting to get pissed, I have to like train myself to be like, relax. Or I'll feel myself. I'll be reading an article and I'm like, this better not be fucking true. And I'll start like trying to right away, pick it apart automatically.

1:03:53Matt McCusker:That's emotion, right? That's emotion and truth. That's that thing. It's like, oh, I'm feeling something here.

1:03:58Shane Gillis:Yep. That's really good to know. But it's hard not to be like, fuck, yeah. that's possibly what yeah i'm gonna fucking share this i'm gonna comment i'm not actually

1:04:06Matt McCusker:gonna like read the article because i just saw the headline yeah yeah well that's and that's my

1:04:09Shane Gillis:thing too though with on the flip side of the conspiracy stuff it's like you have some people to be like if something even sounds outlandish they go well this is a crazy it's like it could be true too i don't know but it's like i you know i don't know either way could totally that only thing about the island of pedophiles was out 10 years ago and everyone's like you're out of your fucking mind and it was true yeah so it's like you know that that's the one thing where i try to just like stay as neutral as possible where i'm not like you know hoping it's true or hoping it's not or it's like maybe it is maybe like you know you mentioned covet in the book that was the that was a great example of like you know because again like i my family was just kind of like whatever we'll just live life as we see fit and it seemed fine and then you'd hear people like their half their family would die and it was like it was crazy you know it's kind of nuts yeah and that's

1:04:56Matt McCusker:that's the thing about stories that like really serious is like it changes how we behave like you know if you believe the Loch Ness monster is real like it doesn't really matter you know it's not there's not a dinosaur in a Scottish lake but like you're not hurting anybody believing it you're not hurting yourself by believing it but the minute you're like you know I don't know Jewish people are like pedophiles sucking blood I'm gonna like you know go go yell at a mosque or like I'm not gonna take the COVID vaccine.

1:05:22Shane Gillis:You just did Josh's Instagram.

1:05:25Matt McCusker:Oh, right.

1:05:27Shane Gillis:It was just that like word stuff. Yeah, I know.

1:05:29Matt McCusker:And that's, that's the, uh, if you hurt yourself or somebody else, that's a bad story.

1:05:34Shane Gillis:Yeah. And especially, yeah, exactly. And especially again, it's like just the awareness of being like, what are the odds that like, you know, I am the one who's like the good one. I'm the good guy and everyone else is the bad guy, you know? And it's like, again, it's such a case by case basis where it's like i could confidently look at jeffrey epstein you go yeah i'm good compared to that guy you know but it's like when you start like grouping in thousands and hundreds of thousands of people and being like i know what they're all about you know it gets kind of this is

1:06:04Matt McCusker:this is the identity being the story you tell yourself right like yeah the fact that jeffrey epstein is this heinous pedophile yeah and god knows what else like you know bribing black men whatever the hell he was doing that doesn't change who you are like one inch yeah you're not a better person because he was an asshole right just like you're not you know not you're more of an asshole because like there's some other dude who's like you know that's a depressingly low bar i'll tell

1:06:29Shane Gillis:you what i don't do i don't you know roast kids and eat them and you know what yeah that's that is kind of a sad thing to get a charge on we're like what a piece of any story where like you're

1:06:39Matt McCusker:the hero someone else is the villain i mean it always makes me laugh like you know you're you're an eagles fan right you're like every time you go to a football game like the ref makes a call and if it's for your team the ref is awesome like the first time i watched a football game like i'd only just come to us i didn't understand football very well but i was like in a in a bar it was a snowball game like it was patriots versus oakland and like brady had like what looked like a fumble yeah and they said oh no his hand was it was a tuck rule game and then you know patriots went on to win the super bowl for the first time ever and like boston like yeah that's that was great refereeing right there that was exactly the rest of the world like fuck that you know but you know damn well if that'd been the eagles quarterback if that'd been donovan mcnab yeah that would have

1:07:28Shane Gillis:been a great call exactly if you know it's totally true you'd be like no actually yeah that's Totally fair.

1:07:34Matt McCusker:It's heroes and villains every time.

1:07:36Shane Gillis:Yeah. Especially the big thing too is like, you know, in a marriage, it's like I can easily spin a yarn in my head where my wife is completely out to ruin my entire life, hates me, is genuinely evil. And then literally 10 minutes go by and I was like, I was being kind of a dick. I should apologize. I needed a sandwich. Yeah.

1:07:58Matt McCusker:It's also like post-breakup, right? Like your friends are like, oh, she was, yeah. you know and her friends like he was an ass and it's like you know yeah anytime anytime you're the hero everyone else is the villain and you're really sure about that that's probably when the

1:08:10Shane Gillis:the alarm bells need to ring yeah so that'll be an interesting you know uh i'll be curious to see how people uh you know what they do internally to kind of navigate the landscape because i i do feel like people are starting to catch on and like relax and not get as triggers even like 10 years ago people you know we were like hitting each other with trash can lids in the streets and Like it was people were pretty inflamed about like political storytelling and, you know, who's the good guys and bad guys on that side. I like to think a lot of the younger people I talk to, like, you know, early 20s, almost take like an ironic kind of stance towards a lot of the political like getting heated.

1:08:47Shane Gillis:Yeah. In general, I don't know if you've ever there's a there's a there's a like a Instagram video genre called rage bait where just like young 20 year olds will walk up to a, you know, about like 56 year old guy. I'm like, what's up, pussy? and it's like and they're filming it with metaglasses and this guy is like yeah i have to fight you now and they're almost just making fun of this whole idea that like anyone can be triggered by words to like that that's that's especially a thing in the south there's like science on this

1:09:14Matt McCusker:like i forget what they call it but like southern guys are raised like if anybody like looks at you funny yeah that's like that's fighting talk right whereas in like other parts of the u.s it's like i don't give a shit quite so much so some of that again is the stories you get told about who you're

1:09:29Shane Gillis:supposed to be yeah yeah even on like the east coast i remember like you know people i remember i was in tulsa recently and i'm you know i'm at i'm at the bar and we're hanging out after the show and there was this kid who had come to the show and he's you know he's just hammered he's talking to me and it was just like this black dude sitting at the bar and he reached over grabbed the dude's head and went ah and shook his head and i was just like this guy's gonna fucking punch you in the face because it's like you know if i were to do that to just like a random black dude in philly they would i i 100 i think 99.9 they would fight me like yeah it's literally like you just can't do that and this guy and i was like oh and i like he started almost like interceding on his behalf like he's and the guy was like oh he's just having fun man and i was like and you know it's not even if it was a white guy it's a similar thing but it's kind of like how are you not fighting right i couldn't understand it i was like i would assume you'd

1:10:22Matt McCusker:be fighting but there i mean there are chill people in philly too right there are but it's

1:10:25Shane Gillis:not that many you know that if that had been a bar that someone grabbed someone's head and shook it violently like that in philadelphia and again just regardless of race it would have been i would have said a 80 chance of some sort of at least verbal it would have been 100 chance of verbal altercation where it's like what the fuck are you doing yeah my money that age group too oh yeah talking like 50 60 maybe 20 was probably a fighter like he probably could have like killed the guy he just was like he's having a good time i tell you if you're in a situation

1:10:54Matt McCusker:where it gets confrontational and there's one guy who's like really chill.

1:10:57Shane Gillis:Yeah. Yeah, true.

1:11:00Matt McCusker:He's like the MMA guy.

1:11:03Shane Gillis:Yeah, you know, I'm not trying to be racist, obviously, and black people will fight you if you touch it. Well, actually, no, that's kind of true, though. If you touch their heads, they spaz. So I stand by the statement. It doesn't sound good. I do that too. I don't, because people touch my face, I don't like that at all. I'm from London. Like, yeah, fuck off. Yeah, you can't touch my head. But that was, that is, yeah, I don't know. That was just something that I remember that made me laugh because I remember I like interceded on a level where the guy was like, don't worry about it. Relax, man.

1:11:28Shane Gillis:Like you don't need to do all this. And I was like, all right, well.

1:11:30Matt McCusker:Maybe your set had made that guy so chill.

1:11:34Shane Gillis:I don't think that guy wasn't at the show. I don't think he was just a chill. He might've been the chillest guy, but I think it is just like, and I was asking people from there and they were like, yeah, man, like, you know, we just, we fuck around. No one's that wound up around here in Tulsa, like to that extent. And I was like, well, that's a lot different. I'm not used to that. So, but yeah, man. So what else? You got the book. When's the book coming out? Tuesday. Tuesday.

1:11:57Matt McCusker:March 3rd. Yeah.

1:11:58Shane Gillis:Big day. Okay. So we'll hold this. We'll hold this. We'll have this come out maybe day of, dude. We'll see. Appreciate it. That'll be nice. And what do you guys? So what's on the horizon now, man? So, you know, you kind of, what are you looking to do? Because I had you pegged as like a complete technologist kind of in terms of like, not some, I thought you were like a diehard computer guy. and you're more of just like a curious kind of where will things go guy yeah so where do you think yourself could you predict where yourself where you're gonna go i hope not what's your

1:12:30Matt McCusker:what's your plan every few years like i'm amazed at like what's going on and i kind of like that but like i'm working on a new book nice um you know i'm promoting this book i've got into calisthenics and there we go you know my planche and all that stuff bloody hard so yeah it's me i am I, you know, trying to get my kids to pay me attention now that they're in their 20s? What's that like?

1:12:54Shane Gillis:I have a three and five-year-old. I can't even imagine them not. Yeah, they can't either.

1:12:58Matt McCusker:Like I said to my daughter when she was 12, you know, when you turn 13, you want to hang out with me anymore. She said, no, daddy, I'll never be like that. And like, yeah, you get a text once in a while, which is great. It means they're independent. They're doing their own thing. True, true. I mean, they're very impressed that like I'm coming on here.

1:13:12Shane Gillis:Yeah.

1:13:12Matt McCusker:Like two of my three kids. Two of my three. I said, I've been invited on this thing. I don't know what it is. I'm like, oh my god two of my three kids have met shane nice one of them has a picture the one from philly she sent me a picture oh yeah so i'm like oh okay you know so my kids will be in touch with me about this so thank you nice that's all like for once they're impressed oh they're gonna call you the book coming out doesn't matter but oh you you know oh yeah they're on that you met matt oh my god that's so cool yeah that's awesome thank you well dude thank you for coming the book's called

1:13:42Shane Gillis:the story of stories uh kevin ashton appreciate you thanks for having me all right i'm about to piss my pants watch new episodes of matt and shane's secret podcast on spotify do it