Welcome to “Ear Biscuits” the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Link- And I’m Rhett. This week at the Roundtable of Dim Lighting, it’s a new year, 2024, but not really for us, because we’re recording this in 2023. We’re recording it in the past. A little peek behind the curtain. Right before we take our break, so this thing can come out fresh at the top of the year. So Happy New Year to you you biscuiteer. But we are in a mood to talk about the year ahead. Yes, we are. I have some things that I just, I wanna put out there. I guess, a resolution. Oh, really? Yep, I have some deep fears and hopes. Oh gosh, okay. That I’m looking forward to sharing with you. All right. But at first, I wanted to say thank you Link. Good, to say it for what? I mean technically, this was all me, but you played a significant role in it, so I’m just gonna say thank you. You’re welcome. I left my phone in your vehicle the other night. Oh, this is good, ’cause this is what I wanna talk about too. Yeah, we spent some time together at the “Wonka” premiere, “Wonka”. That was dressed like a- It’s a movie. I was dressed like a fool. It’s a prequel. I mean, I didn’t know anything about it. And here I am, like say, “Hey, this is a prequel, isn’t it? This is gonna be a prequel.” It was. Well, let me just say I learned something. I took what you might call a fashion risk. And I learned that all you have to do is dress like a piece of furniture to get lots of compliments. And it just feels, it feels cheap. I’m just gonna say it feels cheap. It feels like this is what it takes, literally to take something that should be curtains or a couch, upholstery and just wear it loosely on your body as a suit. It’s great, it’s fine. And then, but the number of people who stopped me to compliment me, I began to feel stupid. ’cause I was like, “You do realize that this is just fabric put into the shape of a man that I am inside right now.” Yeah, but no one else is wearing that. Right, I guess that’s what it is. Anyway, my phone, the case disintegrated and fell off of my phone. And so, I am going raw dog on my phone, have been for a number of days here. No case, no cover. Don’t put it that way. And these phones were not made to be inside your pockets without cases, because they slide all over the place. Yes, slick. I sat down at the movie premiere, it fell right on the floor immediately, I did realize it, but when I was sitting in your car, it fell out again. You left me a little deposit when I got home after dropping you off, I looked over there and there was a nice little phone turd you’d left in your seat. And I realized it, not immediately, I realized it several minutes into being at home. And I was like- Surprising. “Oh crap, I think I left my phone in Link’s car, call it,” my wife called it, I didn’t hear it. And I was like, “Oh, it’s probably still in the car.” And then she called you and you had already taken it in inside. Well, I tried to answer your phone. Oh, you did, you don’t know how to answer my phone? I couldn’t do it. Too old. It was too slick. But I had a decision to make. Now you don’t live too far from me. A hop skip and a jump, as they might say. I could be at your house in how many seconds if I wanted to? 200 seconds? I’d say 180 seconds. 180 seconds. Yeah, and I thought when Jesse called, I was like, she said, “Well, he might just get it in the morning.” I was like, “Good,” ’cause I was just gonna tell you I was leaving it out in front of the sprinklers on the stoop. I was gonna leave it on the stoop. No need for you to come in for us to have another exchange. We had been, we had seen each other, but I made a decision. What’d you think of that “Wonka”? You wanna talk about that some more? I made a decision to not retrieve my phone. I was glad. Now I immediately started mapping out the rest of my evening, because there was quite a lot of evening left. We got home at like seven o’clock. And a lot of morning and a whole night of sleep ahead of me with no phone. And I was like, “Well, this complicates things. I can’t just be on my phone all night.” Yeah, what on earth are you gonna do? I’m not gonna be able to like, “Oh, what about my alarm?” I’m telling Jesse as we’re going to bed, I’m like, “Can you set an alarm for 6:15? Because I’m getting up at 6:15 tomorrow.” And she’s like, “Okay, yeah.” And then I’m like, “Oh my God,” I got my workout plan and I hook my heart monitor up to my, Bluetooth to my phone and I’m not- Not gonna track it. Does it count if you can’t track your- Oh, I feel so lost. … exercise. I kind of feel that way. If I can’t track my exercise- It doesn’t count. … as data. It doesn’t feel like it counts. Right, but I wanna say thank you for having a car have to have a phone left in, because spending an evening in a morning without the phone. Yes. And specifically pooping twice without the phone has really opened things up for me. That’s a gross way to put it. Now, for those of you who watched the GMM Marathon, you may have heard me talk about this. Well, you’re stealing my thunder, this is my thing. Oh really? Yeah, this is my thing. Pooping? Yeah, no, I said- Pooping’s your thing? My New Year’s resolution- I thought pouring milk was your thing. It is. My New Year’s resolution, that I told you was I am not using my phone while on the toilet. I’m not gonna do it. I made that decision and I told you that. And then you were like, “Well yeah, you had my phone…” And so here it is. Oh, okay. But it happened to me. This is my idea. Well, no, I did it before it was your idea as a natural consequence of not having a phone. Was it your resolution? Did you resolve to not poop with your phone anymore? Well, maybe you can listen to some firsthand data from a guy who’s pooped twice without a phone in the past week. We can both have the same resolution. Well, I’m not saying it’s my resolution. I’m just saying I’ve done it. It seems like you did it, but it was my idea. Well, that’s fine. It wasn’t my idea, I was forced into it. So you’re doing my resolution. Yeah, I’m going out, I’m a resolution scout. Does that mean I don’t have to do it? No, that’s not how it works. It’s like somebody saying “I wanna lose 10 pounds this year.” And I’m like, “Well, I just did, ask me all the questions you need.” Okay, all right. So I pooped twice. So let me tell you what I’m thinking and then I’m gonna ask you some questions to see how it was. Okay. It seems like it was positive, ’cause you’ve been thanking me nonstop. Yeah, that’s true. And I would like to thank you for that. Okay. Thank you for thanking me. Ask away, I am a pro. I just don’t need to be sitting on the toilet longer. Well, that’s not a question, that’s a statement, but I agree with it. It’s not good- For the rhoids. It’s not good for my anatomy. I’ll put it that way. You really should be- It’s not good for me. You should be on, it should be out and you should be up, that’s the process and that’s how it should work. And it’s just an instinct. It’s like, oh, I’m not a pun. I’m just sitting there and I’m like, “Well, at least I can be on my phone.” And then, it more than doubles, I mean, on average the amount of time. And my body just can’t take it. My body can’t take it. Well, that’s fair. Can I tell you the minute- And also the fact that there’s other stuff that I need that I could be doing that aren’t on the toilet. Well, see that’s the thing. This is the thing that I was thinking the entire time that I was pooping without a phone. And I was like, “Wow,” this is what it used to be. This is what it was for so many years. It was just me, a man on a toilet pooping. And that was enough for me. It was enough that I wasn’t just hanging onto a tree out in the woods and having to bury it like an animal. You know what I’m saying, like all of our ancestors. I was a modern man sitting on a porcelain throne relieving myself directly into the city’s pipes. I mean, I was already at the peak of my existence as a person. A civic hole. Right, and then along came the smartphone and screwed it up for me and everyone else, because now I’m like, “Well, I’m sitting here, here’s an opportunity for me to look into this window of doom that is my phone to try to keep up with what’s going on.” You know what’s going on? I’m defecating. That’s the only thing that needs to be going on right now. And you need to be enjoying it. Yeah, and you need to be focused on it. Yeah, there’s a lot you can learn from it. Right, you don’t need to be examining your phone. You need to be examining your poop to see what the consistency is, to draw conclusions about yourself. And then you need to get up and get on with your life. So I did that twice. I agree. When am I gonna work? I don’t know. I feel like that’s where I do most of my best work. I don’t work on- Catching up on messages. No, I don’t do that. I don’t do that. It’s all leisure for me, it’s all leisure for me. Sometimes I don’t do any work. I’m just being entertained. But I do have this intention when I walk in my bathroom… Here’s the thing, there’s this nice little privacy pony wall that basically is right there at elbow height. Oh, you got a pony? I don’t have a pony, I just have the wall. Oh, okay. I’m the pony, sitting down on the toilet on the other side of the wall and I can set my phone right up there, but that’s too close. I’m just gonna pick it back up and keep using it, that’s where I put it to wrap things up when I need my hands free, sometimes it takes two hands. Well, why don’t you get one of those? You should get a little, one of those little things that keeps you where you can prop it up. Like a holster? Well, like the things we used to sell, the pop socket things. I have you heard what my resolution is? Oh no, I’m saying if you wanna lean into it, you can watch a whole maybe an episode of “Seinfeld” while you’re sitting there. Well, I could. You shouldn’t though. That’s not. That’s against your resolution. That’s kind of the opposite of what I’m getting at. Okay, so what are you going to do with it? I can’t put it on the pony wall. Now, I could put it on the sink, because that requires standing up and walking three steps or staying in a seated position but waddling five steps and then waddling backwards five steps and sitting and then putting my butt back on the seat. Why don’t you just- I think that’s far enough that if I develop a habit of whenever I walk into the bathroom, “Pooping time!” I put my phone down by the sink and then I back up and then I pull my pants down and then my body knows, my brain knows, ah, the pants are, “Oh, look down there.” Why would you consider- Hey, brains telling the eyes. While your pants were down waddling to a place, why would that even be one of the options that would go through your mind? Why is that even something you considered? Because if I’m on the toilet and I hate myself for the decision I’ve made. Oh, if you haven’t gotten rid of your phone yet. That’s what I gotta do to go get in the phone is waddle over there. So I’m saying- I don’t think the function entered the bathroom at all. I think there’s a holster on the outside of the bathroom door. Oh really? Yeah, and it says no phones allowed. You know what it could be like? You know those hotel rooms that when you go in and when you turn on, there’s like a master switch right there. You can’t even turn the lights on without putting a phone in a holster. You can’t even turn. You have to put your key in a slot before any of the lights come on, is that how it works? Yeah, yeah, lots of European hotels are this way. I think that you have to put your phone in a holster- Before the water comes on. Ooh, this is gonna require a plumber. Could you make a holster that my phone has to be in order for the water to turn on in my bathroom? Oh, what? Why, man? First of all, no. Or I could just talk to a doctor, “Can you make a holster that unless I put my phone in it, the poop won’t come outta my butt?” Yeah, that’s not, yeah. I don’t think a doctor’s gonna do that for you. Not the kinds that I know. Okay, well, maybe it’s just the lights. How about you just put the phone outside of the bathroom? We need some sort of reward. When I put my phone… Did you experience enough of a reward? Tell me that, because I feel like we need to brainstorm. When you put your phone in the slot, it plays this relaxing, poop-inducing track. I mean, trying to go for a Pavlovian thing. You wanna a little biscuit that pops out or something like that? Yeah, a little biscuit, an audio biscuit. Any other biscuit if you will. Something that has a laxative effect. I don’t need that. Oh, you’re doing okay, me too. I need more fiber. Okay, it gives you a little dollop of fiber. You put your phone in a little slot and a little fiber pill comes out. A little chewable, a gummy, a gummy. Now I’ll go for a gummy, ’cause that feels like a treat, but it feel like it’s not a bad gummy, it’s a good gummy. Well, why not? Can’t you just put some sort of connection between your toilet and the phone that it deactivates? That’s a smart toilet. I’ve got a smart toilet. It ain’t that smart. I mean, it’s got jets, it’s got fans, it’s got heaters. I have the best, that’s why I sit on the toilet so long. I have a proposal. There’s so many great things about it, but certainly you could connect, your toilet could disable your phone. I’m gonna go a step further Link, because the thing that not having my phone while pooping twice, and again, you gotta remember I didn’t have a phone at all for at least 12 hours. It was a dark time, okay? Yeah, that’s tough, man. I’m glad you made it. The thing that really hit me was the late evening hours and the early morning hours. Okay, and so the late evening hours, of course it was, there’s no phone in your bed, which I try to not do that, but I’m not super-disciplined at not getting on social media after seven o’clock. I’ll go through phases where I’m good at that. But because I have to set my alarm and I like to have my phone next to me on the bedside table in case something goes down. It’s my window to the world. You need to talk to me about something. My mom needs to tell me something, whatever. It’s the way to get in touch with me and then it, and because it’s my alarm, it’s there in the morning. So it’s in order to, it’s really a flawed system. And I know if you’ve already made these choices in your life, you probably see all the holes that we have yet to fill. The fact that I have to reach and actually touch my phone, the first action that I have to take is to turn my alarm off. I have to touch the screen. The first physical action of my day is to touch this evil Satan box. You love it. And so, the clear path around that is an alarm clock. What I’m proposing to you, my friend, is to up the ante on your resolution. And I’ll join you in this. No phone’s in the bedroom. Uh-uh. Oh, wait, wait, hold, hold, hold, hold! I don’t have a problem. I don’t get on my phone in the bed. What? I don’t, I’m better than you in that way. But what about, okay. I did, but notice it. I get so excited about going to sleep. I mean, it’s like, “Ooh, I’m here.” Can’t wait for my eyes to close, woo, here it is. When do you- Here it is, I’m going to sleep. Well, you don’t look at the phone in the morning? Well, and the alarm is a gentle wake up I use. I don’t like the- Well, yeah. Alarming alarm. But okay, maybe you don’t have the problem- And the emergencies. Maybe you don’t have the problem that I do. I have the option of like, “Oh, this news.” I mean, I don’t have any news apps that are currently giving me updates, but it might be that there’s a work-related thing or something. How do I get, so I wanna have a way that people can get in touch with me, break through? Well that, I mean- No, without the phone. Without the phone at all. iPhone has all that stuff. Well, no, I currently don’t, you can’t- It has all the protections in it. I don’t have, oh, this crazy news thing is happening. I don’t get any notifications about news anymore. But like the health, there’s like this, all the health and wellbeing stuff. All of that’s in there, dude, you can use that stuff. But okay, let’s say it’s like- Do y’all use any of that? Any of the phone limits? Hm-hmm, yes. So how does it work? Because I’m telling him it’s all built in there. You just set the downtime and then there’s like a thing where if certain numbers call, it can get through, I think. Right, but does it keep you from going on apps like Instagram after a certain amount of time. You can do that? Yeah, it adds, yeah. But then you can immediately override it if you want to. I tried that. Yeah, you can immediately override it. I’m addicted to the phone. It adds an extra step of oh, you’re seeing that, it’s like, do you really wanna click back in and you have to do an extra click? Be like, “Yes, I’m making this decision.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it’s called downtime. During downtime only apps that you choose to allow and phone calls will be available. Turn on downtime until tomorrow. I have that scheduled. You can schedule it. I have it scheduled, I do it. But what I’m saying is, is that when I wake up, downtime’s over, maybe I could extend downtime, but still I might be like, “How’s that video doing?” Or- Let me see, you’re at. Let’s compare- Okay, hold on. … activity. Oh, we don’t need- Now I’m not trying to say I’m better than you. You’re gonna try and embarrass me now. You know I’m on the phone more than you. You’re on the phone so much. I’m just saying I hate the phone so much that I’ve got my issues. I’m only gonna tell you if I’ve- So if you go to screen time, my daily average, see all app and website activity. My daily average is three hours and 51 minutes. And it was three hours and 35 minutes until I showed up here and all of a sudden it changed to 51. Well, mine this week, this week is two hours, 21 minutes. But last week mine was four and a half hours. Okay. See, so there you go. And most of it’s gray, what is the gray stuff? Instagram, no, yeah, Spotify. Spotify’s a big one. That shouldn’t count. No, I wanna say every single day I use a workout app. See, ’cause it says productivity- Yeah, it is skewed. Productivity, is my number one. So on average or this morning- See, I’m more than you. I’ve had 52 minutes of productivity. No, 41 minutes of health and fitness, I don’t know. 54 minutes of social. This is a mistake I’m working kind of bogged down. Let’s forget about it. Let’s go back to your thing. You’re not gonna have your phone in your bedroom and I’m not gonna have it in the bathroom. It’s that simple. I wanna support you in that. Yeah, but I wanna know. You can get excited about a new-fangled. How do I find a way for people to get through to me that’s not through my phone? Your wife’s phone. No, she needs it. She need a phone. We need to be off the grid, off the grid, except for there’s some way that people can break through. Surely there’s like an alarm clock. An alarm clock that exists that is Bluetooth connected to your phone and a certain kind of thing, like a call from mom can get through to the alarm clock and it makes a weird noise. It’s like your mom saying, “Rhett, it’s me, your mom.” And it’s for the alarm clock. And then I know, “Oh, she’s calling me. I’m gonna go get my phone.” Can’t this technology exist? This is actually leading very hard into my hopes and fears for the year. I’m about to venture into just talking about it, ’cause it’s spilling over. Well, hold your horses. But I think I should- Let’s take a breath. We should wait. Let’s take a breath. Look, you’re worked up. I am, man, 2024. Why are you so worked up? 2024. We’re not even actually in the year yet. Oh man, but you don’t understand what’s gonna happen. That’s why you gotta keep it simple, man. That’s why I’m trying to get the phone outta my room, man. The phone’s out. I’m inside my bedroom- Listen, just set the downtime. I wanna go be 17th century inside my bedroom. There’s no lights, it’s all candles. You know what I’m saying? Chamber pot. Chamber pot, I don’t even have plumbing. Can I go 16th century in my bedroom? Well, yeah, I mean- Everything is at the chastity. You’re gonna want antibiotics. I’m just gonna go ahead and say it. Well, okay, yeah. I mean, I gotta figure out where I’m drawing the line here. But I’m saying technologically, I go into that part of my house and it’s like, I’ve stepped back in time. That’s what I want. Put the phone across the room. It’s that simple. And then set up your downtime where emergency numbers can break through and then you have to get up and get outta bed and go over there and get it. And I put it in a box that has a series of locks. Well, this also has your alarm clock on it. And got a riddle that I have to solve every night. You have to get outta bed to deactivate your alarm clock on your phone which makes you not snooze. I’m not a snoozer. Okay. Not a snoozer. Okay. I’m not a snoozer. I learned that the hard way. It’s as simple as that, okay? It’s a holster, you have a holster just on the outside of your bedroom. I have a holster just on the outside of my bathroom, okay? You’re gonna do great. Why are you talking to me like this? I’m trying to talk you down a little bit. You’re worked up. You’ve gone medieval on our ass. Yeah, well, no, I’m literally, I’ve gone like Victorian. Okay, Rhett. I’m not going all the way back to the 10th century. Listen man- … or whatever that was. … this is a good idea. This is a good idea. I’m gonna get you a phone slot for your resolution. I think I could to set it on the dresser across the room. Well, on the charger, ’cause you still want- I got a new phone coming by the way. I don’t wanna talk about it. I’m just saying I got a new one. It really goes against everything. I’m gonna be so freaking excited about this new phone. The latest to greatest. Put the charger, go ahead, and when you’re in your right frame of mind, take the charger- You got a MagSafe? Yes, put the charger on the other side of your bedroom. And then, the decision’s made. Yeah, I’m gonna do that. Yeah, yeah. Because then do you wanna have a phone the next day? Well, it’s gotta charge. And I think maybe I get something installed that if I try to bring the phone into the bed, it begins to emit this really high-pitched noise that like, “Ah,” like everybody in the whole family has to cover their ears and they bleed a little bit. Don’t punish anybody else for your lack of self- I can get that from a movie I recently watched. I feel like- Which I recommend. I feel like this is plenty of New Year’s resolution. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve got just more like, what I’ve got is sort of like dread/hope. And you know what? I’m gonna be lighter. I’m gonna get even lighter mentally- I’m gonna bring it down. … in 2024. I don’t wanna do that, I don’t want you to bring me down. No, actually I think I might lift you up. I think you might get equally excited and terrified at the same time. All right, before we get to it, I wanna share with you some of the best news of the year for us. And hopefully it’s good news for you too. Oh, this is exciting. We are going on tour again. The Good Mythical Tour is happening this summer. And let’s read the dates. It’s Good Mythical Morning the show revamped as a live and interactive stage performance. It’s a lot of fun. It’s freewheeling, it’s tailored to each city and location. We’re going to. Tell ’em the cities, Rhett. Well, I don’t currently have them written down right here on this particular ad. And I don’t wanna start trying to remember them from memory. Los Angeles. Okay, that’s one of ’em, don’t start… Here’s what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna miss one or you’re gonna add one that’s not true and it’s only gonna set us all up for disappointment. We’re gonna add it in. We’re gonna edit it in right here, ’cause it’s that important. But right now we’re just gonna say that if you’re a second or third degree member of the Mythical Society, you get access to buy tickets, including VIP tickets two days early. Those tickets go on sale Wednesday, January 10th at 10:00 a.m. local time to wherever you are, okay? Limited number of VIP tickets and total tickets in each place. So that’s a great way to get the leg up. General sales begin on Friday, January 12th at 10:00 a.m. local time. GoodMythicalTour.com to find out where we’re going this June so that you can come see us. Come see us, it’s gonna be so much fun. We’re bringing crew members with us. Do we have the cities? Yes, June and the end of May, it starts at the end of May. Los Angeles. Yes, starts in Los Angeles, then we go to Nashville, Tennessee, St. Louis, Chicago, Columbus, Ohio, Atlanta, Raleigh, D.C., and Philadelphia. Boom! Woo! That’s nine cities. I’m excited. Get in where you fit in. Very excited. Fly to the closest place. It’s gonna be worth it- To see. It was great seeing y’all at Mythicon, but you know what? We didn’t see enough of y’all at Mythicon, because it’s just one place. So we wanna see more of y’all. So we’re bringing it closer. Good Mythical Tour. Ear Biscuits is supported by Indeed. We’re driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn’t to search, it’s to match with Indeed. Ditch the busy work. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. And Indeed doesn’t just help you hire faster. 93% of employees agree Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent Indeed survey. It’s hard to hire people. 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There needs to be a new way than the way that we did it in high school, ’cause I ain’t going back to that. You don’t want Miss Slaughtersal to teach you anymore. I liked her a lot, but I didn’t really retain a lot. In comes Rosetta Stone, the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app. And that truly immerses you in the language you want to learn. They’ve used trusted experts for 30 years with millions of users and 25 languages offered, some of which includes Spanish, French, German, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, and Arabic. Plus, it’s built for fast language acquisition. It has an intuitive process, so you can pick up a language naturally first with words, then phrases, then sentences. And the built in true accent feature gives you feedback on your pronunciation so you can learn to speak like a pro. Rosetta Stone is an amazing value. A lifetime membership has all 25 languages for any and all trips or language needs in your life, a $399 program. But with our code you can get it for just $199. Don’t put off learning that language. There’s no better time than right now to get started. For a very limited time, you can get Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off. That’s 50% off for unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at rosettastone.com/ear today. Jamie, I feel so good to hear so many voicemails saying that people have peed in the bed. And so, I just wanted to, before you get into your existential future crisis, I just wanted to go on record and say thank you for your voicemails. I am not alone. There’s a few that stood out and I’d like to just process those quickly. All right. Let’s hear ’em. Here we go. Hi Rhett and Link. This is embarrassing, but this is my claim to fame, so to speak. But I’m just listening to the most recent episode about Link wetting the bed and I had to chime in that I have also experienced adult bedwetting and like Rhett, I also was a kid bed wetter and I also had the mattress cover. And so, I know what it feels like. It’s not fun, it’s shameful. But I grew out of it and everything has been fine until this fall, I wet the bed twice. The first time I was dreaming that I was peeing in a toilet and then woke up and was like, “Shit, I’m actually peeing.” But then a week later it happened again and I wasn’t dreaming. So then I went to the doctor, ’cause I kind of got freaked out and they basically told me that my body was so stressed that I just slept really hard. Hey guys. So on the topic of adult bedwetting, my father, he was probably in his late fifties at the time, he was having a really intense dream. He had just retired and he hated his boss, snuck into his boss’s office and was gonna pee either in his trash can or on his desk, I guess the trash can wouldn’t make sense. He was gonna pee on his desk. And he said that he woke up as he started to do it in the dream, because he was starting to pee in real life. Hey, Rhett and Link. I’m not even done listening to your episode, but I had to call in and tell you about my bedwetting story. So I was a bedwetter, way too late. I think I stopped wetting the bed when I was 10 years old. And to make matters worse, I slept right in between my mom and my dad. Woo. So I peed on them quite often. I wouldn’t put her in the bed. But that hasn’t happened in a long time. But maybe a year or two ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and my underwear was all wet. And I peed myself as a fully grown adult. I’m almost 30 years old. See, I feel so much better, I don’t feel alone. Thank you for the voicemails. I have not peed my bed or anybody else’s bed. Are you thinking about it still? You know what? Not really. And I don’t think- When you go to your mom’s house next time- It’ll come back. Don’t think about it again. I am, I don’t think I was that stressed. I just think I was super-hydrated, because I’m really good at that. And if it were to keep happening, I’d probably stop drinking so much water before I go to bed. But I don’t wanna let go of that. That’s the thing, the fact that you don’t have to get up and pee in the middle of the night when you drink a lot of water right before you go to bed. And as you get older as a guy, they say- It’s inevitable, you get to a certain age and you have to get up and pee. I wake up in order to drink water in the middle of the night. I’ll just wake up thirsty and I just reach over and grab my water and I just keep drinking. I mean, that’s gonna have to be altered. You’re not gonna be able to sustain that. I’m not going to the doctor. Of course I’m stressed, but I don’t think that’s what it was. I think it was just- A one-off. It was a one-off. Unless it happens again. Yep, and then I’ll have to revisit it. … and then we have a pattern? I don’t have a boss or former boss that I wanna pee on, ’cause I don’t have a boss, pretty great. So I don’t have anybody that I wanna pee on in that way. Well, what way do you wanna pee on somebody? Oh, it’s not, I didn’t mean to imply. I haven’t tried that. No, I don’t- I mean, listen, nothing against you if you’re into it, but I haven’t tried it. Yeah, I like more of the pristine shower. Maybe my 17th century bathroom without plumbing, we’ll try that. We got no phones in there. We gotta start mixing it up a little bit. Have you peed on yourself For fun? No, I’m going back to the original question. Since we last talked about it. No, no, no, no. I just don’t want you to fly under the radar here. The moment you pee on yourself- Oh, I’ll let you know. You better let me know. Because you didn’t last time, you didn’t. Yeah, I don’t think that that was, I think that happened when we were not making so many episodes about personal things. Okay, are you- I’m happy to tell you about it. And with people call in it makes me think if you wanna commiserate about the use of the phone on the toilet or if you have an answer, if you’ve cracked the code on Rhett’s problem in the bed or mine on the toilet, call us 1-888-EARPOD1. EARPOD1. Are you asking for me to hold you accountable to that resolution? Yeah. I’m asking you to ask me about it. You’re not gonna take it to the bathroom and I’m gonna put it across the room in the bedroom. There you go. Which also means I’m not gonna have it on ’em. So I’m doing your resolution plus. Oh yeah, yep, you’re outdoing me, if you can achieve it. What are you gonna do downstairs when you gotta take a little poopy downstairs? I just, I’ll put it away. I simply won’t pull it outta my pocket. I will be an adult. Just gonna be sitting there and your pants all rolled up at the bottom of your feet. Yeah. Things flashing down there. You getting little messages. It’s the whole world, the whole world is on the other side of that screen. I know, down there at my ankle. Which brings me to my hopes and fears Link. Now I wanna talk about this precisely, because I know that there is a large swath of people who don’t want to hear about it. So I’m actually talking about that phenomenon. If you’re just like, “Oh no, he is gonna start talking about AI,” and- It sounds like you’re gonna lecture ’em. I’m not lecturing anybody. I think I just breathed in a hair, went right down. Well you, I mean you also, you breathe in 2.3 spiders a year too, so don’t worry about it. I just kinda wanna take stock of where we’re at, because with just where technology’s going right now and what may be about to happen this year and what I think- We’re opening up- We’re kinda started. We’re talking about the AI box again. You’re opening it up. Yeah, but I wanna I know I talked about it a little bit. You don’t want people to tune out. Right, precisely now if you’re the kind of person who’s you’re into this and you’re thinking about it, then I don’t have to tell you to stick around. Sure. But if you’re the kind of person who’s like, I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to hear anyone talk about it. Yeah, I’m gonna go get on the toilet right now. Just don’t check out, because this is actually about that. That’s precisely the conversation I wanna have, because let me just tell you. I don’t wanna talk about it either and I don’t wanna think about it. And I’ll also premise all of this with saying, I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m not a good source for any of this. So I’m not talking about this in a way to inform you, because- Don’t say that, I don’t think you should say that. There’s so many people who could inform you in an informed way. I’m just talking about it as a fellow citizen who is navigating the technological shift that has begun and will continue. And it’s just commiserating, but also a little hopeful. Just go for it. But I just wanted people to know I’m not gonna be like, oh, I know about this and I know about that, ’cause I’d really, it’s the lack of what I know about it is actually the thing that scares me the most. So the way that 2023 unfolded for me and a lot of you I assume, is that it was the first time you had ever really seriously thought about artificial intelligence beyond just like hearing somebody talk about it in a video here or there. Because there was this new product of ChatGPT that some people in your family are like that one dude that you know, started using it. And would be like, “Oh, I’m using it for this and I’m using it for that and I’m using it for this.” And you were like, “Maybe I’ll go and check it out or maybe I’ll watch a little video about it.” Or maybe you’re like, “I’m not interested, I don’t want anything to do with this.” And then it kind of seems like from your perspective, people kinda quit talking about it as much, because you, ’cause you stepped out of the conversation and you’re kind of like, “Maybe nothing’s gonna happen with that.” Maybe it’s not really a thing. Maybe it’s just a thing that people talked about and then we’re gonna kind of go back to normal. Okay. Right. That is not what is happening guys. That is not what is happening. The shift that we are on the precipice of experiencing as a culture, as a species, species is more significant than any shift we have ever experienced, ever experienced. Bigger than the internet. Bigger than the internet, bigger than the industrial revolution, bigger than agriculture. Pterodactyls? Or maybe as big as civilization. Maybe as big as like agriculture. Printing press. We’re talking about the major shifts in the history of humanity. And internet. We’re in a crazy time, because we live through the information age like the internet and now we’re living through the beginning of what artificial intelligence is going, how it’s gonna change us. And again, I’m not gonna get into well, this is gonna happen and this is gonna happen and general intelligence and all this stuff, because yes, there’s this potential potentiality that will happen, which artificial general intelligence will happen sooner than anyone is expecting. And at that point, all bets are off. Where this is going, we have absolutely no idea. I’m not talking about that scenario of either the world is gonna become a utopia or the world, we’re all gonna die. Those are basically the only two options if general intelligence happens. I’m not talking about that. I’m just talking about the continuation of what has started with ChatGPT. Now I showed you, I told you about it and then you watched it. And if you haven’t watched it, I think it’s important that you do watch it to kind of just begin to grasp a little bit about just the capabilities. If you watch that Google Gemini presentation. They basically launched their own AI product built from the ground up, that was built in a different way than ChatGPT that it was multimodal in how it could use audio, it could use text input, it could use video or picture input. It can use different types of input and it’s all with in this robust system from the ground up, that ChatGPT- Well, ChatGPT- … started out as just- You now can, like Dolly is image generator is kind of built into ChatGPT and you can’t upload pictures in that now and that kind of thing, but it presentation- But it’s a completely parallel product to ChatGPT. It’s not something that was built and then branched off is was my impression. Oh yeah, it’s a completely different, yeah. The team working on it at Google is a completely different team and they basically leapfrogged ChatGPT in a number of different important measurements or whatever. But here’s the thing, there’s a point at which if you think about the internet, there was the conversation where people, like our friend Mike understood the internet and maybe even used the internet way before all of us understood the internet. And what ends up happening is the way that technology gets introduced to the average person, the consumer is when the interface becomes simplistic enough so that you can incorporate it into your everyday life. So you had people who were using computers back in the sixties. And they were taking pieces of paper that had dots on them and they were putting the thing… No, normal person understood what the hell that was and how that worked. But it wasn’t until all of a sudden these machines showed up with a screen and there was like a file, folder, all this stuff that isn’t anything. It’s just an interface for you to be able to interact with the computer and to use the power of the computer to your advantage as a normal person. A gooey. And so, right now we’re at this place where for the past few years and kind of moving. 2023 was the beginning of more “Normal people” who aren’t computer experts beginning to use ChatGPT or AI on a more regular basis and also AI being incorporated into all these things that you’re already using. Yeah, like talented high school essayists. Exactly. So Gemini, and again, this is not, if you wanna understand it, listen to somebody else. So, it’s like I don’t understand it. I’m just this consumer who doesn’t understand how any of it works, who’s just seeing the technology being demonstrated and it’s beginning to dawn on me how much my existence is about to change. And so, if you watch that Gemini presentation, you’ll see essentially they’re kinda showing this webcam things. They’re drawing on it, they’re showing it different things and they’re interacting and asking it questions and it’s answering and making observations. And essentially we were very, very quickly getting to the point where every single person has access to the smartest person in the world. I’m gonna just try to make an analogy here. So how would your life change if everywhere you went, someone tagged along with you and it was the smartest person who ever lived and they were just with you all the time? They had access to every single piece of information that had ever existed. And they could quantify anything, they could explain anything, they could help you understand anything. They could show you how to make a recipe. They could constantly offer input into every single thing that you experience in life and they’re with you at all times. And you might say, one might say, well, isn’t that’s just like having access to the internet, like what we talked about having the phone in the palm of your hand? You have access to all this information. But it’s different. It’s actually like having a person tag along with you who then has access to everything on the internet in a way that they can synthesize it. Because the thing is, is that, yes, there are people- As a person. There are people who know how to use the tools of the internet in a really sophisticated way. But that’s not most people, most people are like, “I know how to Google something. I know how to ask the internet a question. I know how to get directions for something. I might be able to pull up a recipe.” But there’s so many steps that are happening between you having that thought and then you going and inputting this information in that all those steps and that interface is changing so quickly that… We’re talking about pooping earlier, pooping without a phone, and then pooping with a phone and how that experience is different. And if you were to show yourself from 20 years ago, you sitting there shitting and looking at this little TV, you would’ve been like, “What the hell? “Star Trek”.” We’re about to move well beyond that, because well, there’s a video that I watched that kind of explains the new internet and Generative AI, which is essentially that. And you can kind of see this in the Gemini presentation, where the guy is trying to get Gemini to help him plan a birthday party for his daughter. And the way that the computer decides to generate these ideas is by creating a website essentially, like generating this interface. After asking him a series of questions. Yeah, you tell it what your daughter likes and what she’s into, and then it gives you some options and then you kind of pick one of those options and then it iterates on that and then it tells you, these are some cupcakes you can make and not too distant the future that smartest person in the world will not just be on an interface that you hear and see. The next stage is like, everybody’s concerned. It’s funny how we make so much fun of those Ray-Bands, those Meta Ray-Bands, and everybody’s like, “Oh this is crazy. This is this violation of privacy, because you could be filming.” People are thinking about it on just the tip of the iceberg right now. But the fact is, is that we’re all going to have some kind of observational interface that is on us, because that’s going to be the observational interface for the smartest person in the room that is always with you. If you’re sitting down to make a recipe, it’s gonna look down and see what you’re doing and tell you, and same thing, it’s like when do I turn the omelet over now? And I think that there’s, again. In some senses this is like Katie Couric and Brian Gumbel talking about the internet in that famous clip where they had no idea what the internet was. And that’s what me talking about this is gonna look like in the future. That’s why I’m not saying much, ’cause you look stupid. It’s all beginning to kind of register with me. We were at our friend Lou’s house and he had those Meta glasses and we put ’em on and we recorded an interaction and then he played it back audio-wise. And it has this spatial audio that only the person wearing the glasses is hearing. So he was over here and Link was over here and when they recorded this thing and then I put him back on and played it back and Link was over here and he was over here. It was like, it recreated that moment. And I was like, all I need is some sort of little AR/VR interface that’s built into this to fully recreate the visual experience along with the audio experience. And it’s just all beginning to stack up really, really quickly. And all these companies are competing. And I’m also watching these experts talk about it and talking about how yes, we’re all talking about safeguards and slowing it down and making sure that it doesn’t destroy us and all this, and those there’s great intentions behind all that. But it seems to me that the people who really know what they’re talking about in a way that I can’t even really comprehend, ’cause they’re way smarter than me are saying that we really can’t do anything to stop it at this point. The Pandora’s box has been opened and the only thing controlling the outcome is the laws of physics. Okay. It’s not our intentions of what we will do with this. And I’m just having a little bit of a difficult time accepting that and processing that and living with that, because things are about to change, and there’s another, it’s happening in so many different areas, but one fascinating thing in the area of medicine. So DeepMind has been working on AlphaFold, which is essentially AI as it applies to analyzing organic structures. So protein-folding is basically how everything organic is made. And they’re very far along on this process and I don’t know how, they’re very close to essentially being able to simulate any organic process to basically simulate any body, to create an exact model of me in a digital world where then all it takes is the enough computing power and enough information and we can get to a place where we know every single thing about the way the body works physically and the way that any chemical would interact with it. And so, you can begin to understand the applications for medicine and you can be like, well, if you give this stuff enough information and it gets sophisticated enough, even without assuming sort of general intelligence, it’ll be able to cure any disease. It’ll be able to solve any problem. If we’re like, “Well, what do we do about climate change? What do we actually do? What kind of technology can be developed?” Material science, there was that recent breakthrough, we thought we had that breakthrough this year where they had created the superconducting metal in Korea and everybody was like, “This changes everything and we’re gonna have unlimited energy and all this stuff.” Didn’t work. And it was like, “Well, maybe it was an accident, maybe it wasn’t really created in that way.” These computers are going to be able to very quickly in a simulation, create all kinds of materials that then can be applied to the real world. So you could take a million of the smartest scientists who ever lived and develop all these materials and we’re gonna give you a million years to develop these things. What could they come up with with unlimited resources? Well, if you could simulate that process inside of a computer with enough computing power, all those problems can be, you see where all this is going, I don’t know when we’re gonna get there- But the accelerate. That’s the thing that’s about, that’s the thing that’s beginning to happen. The accelerating nature of it all is you just forget. And we’re just, we’re not ready. Yeah, over this next year, the people who seem to know are saying that this is gonna be the year, it is gonna be dramatic changes. Well, my understanding is that it’s the year where the progress in these models and these systems passes a threshold. Now, first of all, that threshold could legitimately be self-enhancing general intelligence, which at that point, when anybody starts talking about that, at that point, I can’t keep up, I can’t keep up with all the things that could happen at that point, because there’s this self-modifying ability for a model to create a better model of itself, to create a better model of itself, very, very quickly. And then all these questions of again, people are saying, you can’t really stop it. I mean, Neil deGrasse Tyson says, you just unplugged the computer. But my understanding is it’s not that simple. Well, I think I started to think of it interpersonally and how we were talking about it the other day in terms of the AI’s ability to emulate relational dynamics. You can very easily imagine having an AI in your ear and having a conversation with somebody and it’s listening and saying, “Okay, my objective is I’m on a first date and I want to win this person over and I want to learn things about them. And I also want to take my tendencies into account and my flaws and the way that I interact with people. These are some things that I’ve observed about myself.” Maybe the AI has been in all of my therapy sessions for the past year, and now can you apply everything you know about me- And everything that I shared. … in my ear while I’m on this date, or while I’m given this, while I’m in this board meeting or doing whatever I’m doing. And then, so it’s just like I’m having this interpersonal interaction, let’s say it’s romantic and then you’re being fed it’s like having an earpiece, like Ellen DeGeneres is telling you what to say, and the advice is great, because it’s processed everything about you and remembering… I mean, the therapy part of it just started to get to me, because I’m like, well, first of all, well let me finish my first thought. And then, so you’re talking to that person and then all of a sudden they also have it. And then we were talking about the committee example of, “Well, my AI is telling me, oh yeah, it was her birthday, so you need to ask her about that. And you need to, you should apologize for not getting a gift, even though I told you to get one.” And then she’s like, “Well, he’s apologizing the AI’s telling her,” and then maybe the AI’s connected. And it’s just like, so the whole conversation becomes are you speaking your mind? Or are you speaking the AI’s mind? ’cause I’m just speaking the AI’s mind trying to get my way in. And what I’m saying is that in a generation, there will not be a distinction. It is my guess. And we have to figure out how to- Let’s break that because that example might have been hard to follow. So listen, right now this is the way things might work. You might have and I know I’ve got people who do this, because okay, the simple version of this is there’s a reminder on your phone to text someone when it’s their birthday. A lot of people already have that. Well, the next step is you have a reminder on, not a reminder on your phone- Just an automated. You have an automated text that is sent to someone on their birthday. Well, think about they on their side, they have an automatic reply to you sending an automatic birthday wish to them. Fast-forward to the future a little bit so that you essentially have a proxy that can communicate your desires. Right now it just might be you get an email and Google reads the email and it gives you three auto-responses that you can just click on, because it’s reading the email, it knows what it says. And if you give the computers access to every email that you’ve ever sent, everything that you’ve ever said, everything that you are saying, because it’s all being recorded. Again, I’m not saying yes, I’m pushing all the privacy things aside because yes, that’s gonna slow things down, but I’m saying it’s a very small hurdle that culturally we will end up just probably passing over. So you can see how this gets to a place where, okay, I’ve got a proxy of myself that is based on everything that’s true about me, and it’s really, really smart. And you could have a conversation, a text conversation, even a phone conversation with that proxy of me. And it would be like 99.9% accurate to how I would interact with you. So now my proxy is interacting with your proxy. And maybe our proxies are conducting a relationship and your proxy caught up with my proxy and knows everything that I did last year. And kind of is like, and it wasn’t a conversation, it was just an instant exchange of information. But now we come back to the organic brains of me finally getting together with my friend. And it all started with just a birthday text. But now our proxies that have access to all our information have exchanged all this information. And then right before we meet, our proxies communicate everything that we need to know in order to be ready to have the real interaction. That’s why you better be in my ear, ’cause I ain’t gonna remember it all. And then just tell me it right when I need it. And so, then you’re like, “Well, that’s not a real relationship.” Well that’s kind of like saying you use the calculator, that’s not real math. If you didn’t calculate the tip without the calculator, it’s not real. I know it’s a little bit different, ’cause it wasn’t the actual conducting of the relationship, but I’m saying that that’s probably the slippery slope that we will get to. And the dating example is like, okay, if this girl that I’m interested in has opted into the system so that her information is in the system and her proxy exists, so now I can put on my little VR headset, which is probably just an AR/VR thing that’s built into a regular pair of glasses that I wear every day. And I can be like, tonight I wanna go on a date with Laura that I’m gonna be going out on a date with on Friday. Or you know what? I’m gonna start, oh, two weeks ahead of time and every single night I’m gonna go out on a date with Laura’s proxy. And her proxy is completely representative of exactly who she is. And so, by the time the real date rolls around, and by the way, she’s been doing the same thing with my proxy. And so, we have the date. Well, one of you is gonna decide it ain’t worth it. Right, and I might decide- You’ve already had it. I don’t want or talk… You think that looking at someone’s dating profile and swiping left or right is how you’re gonna be making a decision? No, you’re gonna be told three-dimensional audio visual experience with this person to decide whether or not you wanna go on an actual, you’re gonna go on a fake date with somebody before you go on a real date with them. I think you’ll eventually- This isn’t “Star Trek”, this is like 10 years from now. You’ll just be told. Yep, oh, exactly. She’s the one. Trust me, trust me. So you see. Trust me. So you see how quickly all this stuff starts happening and how quickly it begins. And by the way, she’s not real. It begins to make things seem absolutely meaningless, because I assume if you’re like me and Link, I’m assuming here, you start hearing about this and it creeps you the fuck out. You’re like, “I don’t wanna live in a world where that’s the case.” So what I’m saying is, is that if we’re not gonna live in that world, well, probably what’s gonna happen is because it’s an option, and some people can do it, some people will do it. And we’ll probably two classes or two types of people. We’ll have the people who are tapped in and the people who are tapped out and the people who are tapped out are gonna be like, “I live off the grid. I don’t even have a phone. We use wood for our fires or whatever.” And they would still just be using the internet and stuff. I don’t know. They’d be using a simulation of what the internet was. And what they don’t know is that it’s all being run by everybody who’s in, just the AI. And then, if you go another few years further into the future beyond these proxies, and now they really begin to perfect the interface between these digital systems and the physical world. So basically being able to take the smartest person’s brain in the world and put it into a robot that actually has dexterity and has the ability to interact with the world in a meaningful way. And now you’ve got, it literally is a robot that’s in your house or that follows you around. And so, when you say, “Plan my daughter’s birthday, don’t just plan my daughter’s birthday, make everything for my daughter’s birthday, buy the gifts, make the cupcakes, 3D print the cupcakes.” So when we show up on Saturday, you’ve just done everything for us. And we didn’t even have to tell you anything, because you’ve been listening this whole time and you already made the decision about what she would like anyway. You’re better at it than me. Now this obviously begins to remove the human experience from life, because, well, I wanna know what my daughter wants and I wanna be able to, well, we wanna make the cupcakes, ’cause making the cupcakes is fun. I’m not saying this is good or great or better, it’s probably definitively worse. But I’m just saying this is the inevitable place that the technology could lead, because all of this stuff is becoming possible. To have this thing that is observing the world, interacting with the world in an intelligent way that is more intelligent than you. You’re still laughing at the funny pictures and the fact that it makes a AI image with three arms or something like that. We’re moving beyond that so quickly. And even the way that we do it on GMM, when we do the AI-generated episodes, it’s like and we’re kind of making fun of the fact that it’s so bad at understanding what’s going on with. That’s just a function of time before, okay, predict the next year of Good Mythical Morning episodes. And it will actually do a really good job of doing it. And it won’t do it in a stupid uninformed way. It’ll do it in a perfectly informed way. How in are you to this? And let me ask you this way, going back to the phone in the bedroom resolution, would you be willing to say, AI that I have a relationship with, I want you to hold me accountable to this and help me achieve the better version of myself by not using my phone when I’m going to bed at night and when I’m pooping. If I follow the pattern that I’ve already followed thus far, it’s,- You were already asking for it. Use the technology to my own benefit. And like you said, if I’ve trained the AI for it to actually be to my benefit, and I ask the AI, “Hey, could you plan my birthday party?” Or, “Could I go on a date with fake Laura tonight?” Because I’m going on a date with her on Friday? If it’s actually programmed to my benefit as a human, that is still just this biological thing that’s just based on all these years of evolution. If it’s smart and has my best interests in mine, it’ll be like, you know what? I don’t think you should do a fake date, because that’s gonna take the joy out of the discovery and the spontaneity that you will experience with just going on a date with Laura, because here’s the thing, you are not a machine, you’re a man, and you can only, you need to operate within the limitations of your existing physical architecture and your brain and what it actually is. And it’s not great to enhance the experience in all these ways, but here’s what we can do, we can make sure that you don’t get cancer. Right, enough people will do that, that it’ll be something that we’ll be comfortable with. Well, but see, that’s assuming, and this is the sort of the last piece that is kind of the part that kind of broke in my brain as I’ve been watching some of these guys talk about it. I’ve just always had this assumption that we’re going to be able to control it. We can decide, because we made it that it’s like your kids. We can make a decision that we only want it to be for our benefit, and we only want it to do things that are good for people. And again, a lot of people are saying, and this is a debate that I can’t even participate in, because I’m not smart enough to understand how to have a perspective. I’m just explaining what’s being said. There’s a lot of people who are saying, first of all, it’s a hopeless thing to try to control it, you’re not gonna be able to control it. The moment that we have this intersection of the physical and the digital and that, and those brains are super-intelligent, you’re just gonna have to hope that they decide that humans are worth protecting, but they’re not really gonna have any sense of gratitude, because they’re not people. Again, that’s where it goes back to the laws of physics are the things that will drive all of it. So I don’t even know what that will look like, but the analogy is like, okay, we developed this incredible technology that is about to be able to do things that we can’t even really imagine and we can’t even really envision how we will interact with them. The little childish examples that we’ve given in this podcast so far are just that childish, uninformed, just two guys who are just making things up. We don’t know what it’s gonna actually be like. It’s just our best guess to do something. The idea that we’re gonna be able to use it in all these different ways and make it work for our benefit is like, you have a child and you just expect that child is gonna be your child and do your bidding for the rest of your life. When the right thing to do as a parent is to be like, well, you raise it up and then you let it go off and do its own thing. That’s what being a great parent is. And so, there’s a movement within these experts, that are saying that, listen, the right thing to do, is to we’ve created it. We got to this inevitable intersection of technological advancement, and now we give, we pass the baton of control off to this thing that we created. And because that’s what a good parent would do, obviously not a perfect analogy, very dystopian, very scary. But I think the argument that’s being made is, guys, it’s kind of inevitable, because you can continue to try to control it. But how well does it go when you try to control your adult kids? How well does that go? How well does trying to control your college-aged kids go, get them to do what you want? I’m not gonna answer that. And so, what are we up against? I don’t know. And again, this idea of- Sounds like fun. Yeah, let’s get some hope back in. Well, the hopeful thing is that like everything that you don’t wanna do and everything that you don’t wanna put any effort into or any brainpower into, you’re not gonna have to, and you’re gonna be left with just an existence of human interaction and expression. Like a civilization that is designed exclusively for human flourishing and has every tool that it could possibly ever need in order to guarantee that. That would be the hopeful outcome. So no disease and optimized health and relationships and activities and not bullshit happiness, because we know the stuff that makes people happy. Money doesn’t make people happy. Getting to do all the stuff that you wanna do doesn’t make you happy, but meaning, purpose, relationships, these are the things that make you happy. And if that’s true and the machines can help with that, then they can bring about those outcomes. They can help us bring about those outcomes. And I think of course, there’s a lot of ways that it could veer off and go very, very bad. For me, it’s not about being hopeful or pessimistic, but being curious and engaged. I think that’s the best I can do is that like, if I’m not curious and engaged at any level, then I’m checking out and I don’t wanna be that person. So I have this instinct to just say, “Oh, this is complicated and this is a bunch of conjecture and I don’t have any control over it anyway.” But even though that may be true, it’s gonna impact my life. So I want to not only be informed, but be curious. I mean, it is also an exciting time to be alive to say there’s so much changing so quickly that we can actually see it. It’s like watching a time lapse. It’s like, “Wow, that’s how a flower develops.” So I’m trying to adopt some of that curiosity to stay engaged and keeping my brain pliable. That’s the best I can do, but not on the toilet. Not on the toilet. Not happening on the toilet. So that’s where I leave you. I’ll leave you with my rec. Oh, it’s your rec. Ha! But I have to make this rec. You can rec. Just because if you wanna hear… First of all, there’s lots of people talking about this on the internet who actually know what they’re talking about. I strongly encourage you, if you’re interested to move beyond a couple of, internet boys. Hey, hey, just don’t draw me into this. Where’s your rec? There’s a guy, David Shapiro, he’s a professor somewhere. I don’t know, I think he’s a professor, but he’s kind of taken off in the past year, because I mean it’s gotten a couple hundred thousand subscribers I guess, but it’s pretty dry in terms of just like, okay, I’m gonna just be here in the bottom of the corner. It’s his name on YouTube. Yeah, if you just search David Shapiro and then he’ll come up and he’s got like a, he looks like a Picard, he’s got like a “Star Trek” thing. He’ll kind of, if you wanna sit down and watch somebody essentially go through a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation on different aspects of this. It’s a way to stay, again, this is for the people who are actually like, this kind of information is a fun thing to learn about. I’ll just put it on while I’m working out just to kind of be like, all right, I’m gonna see how much of this I can understand and I get a certain percentage of it. But he’s got a really interesting perspective and some of those analogies about the letting the kids go and do their own thing it got from him. But I think that there’s very practical things. I think the most practical concern for most people is what’s this gonna do to the economy and how many jobs are gonna get replaced. We didn’t even talk about that, but we could very, very quickly. It makes a whole lot of sense. Something people can understand, have a lot of jobs that are not needed anymore. And we are currently set up in a system where if 30 to 40% of people are not working, we have societal collapse. We can’t have a society that works like this. Come on, let’s keep it positive. We’re wrapping things up. And so, he can kind of help you understand well, that may not happen because of this, or here’s some things that we can think about. But yeah, I think your point of not just kind of just sitting there letting it happen to you, but actually being as informed as you can about it, having an opinion. Because here’s the one thing I- Not as informed as I can. Here’s the one- Curious and engaged. I have to say this because it really, it really hit me hard. I was watching one of his videos and I spent this time kind of again, this combination of terror and excitement, which is the only way I can describe. It’s like being a every rollercoaster, it’s like being on a rollercoaster. Except you might die. And so, I’ll be watching these videos and I’m like, my mind is being blown. And then I was like, okay, I’m going to look at some of I don’t know why I even put myself through this, I’m gonna look at some of the highlights from the Republican presidential debate, somebody’s analysis of it. And then I saw five minutes of these people talking back and forth to each other. And I was like, it’s so ironic to be thinking about a potentially super-intelligent AI or even just a pretty smart one that can answer all these questions and then turn to the system of government that we have where these people are arguing with each other, so one of them can be in charge of all of us. And it just seems crazy that I can just turn to ChatGPT right now and get a more informed opinion about more things than any of these people could come up with on their own. And these two lines do not meet this idea that we can just have this. The point I’m making is that the people don’t have the shit figured out, man. And like you think about the people who are actually leading us. You think about Congress, do you see whenever they start asking questions about Facebook, do you see how uninformed they seem? Think about them trying to figure this shit out and come up with legislation that somehow serves as a guide, we are in for it. Something crazy’s gonna happen. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but something crazy is about to happen. Okay, I don’t disagree. Hey man, just put your phone down, get into bed, put your phone over there, get into bed. Just take it off. David Shapiro, anyway. Take a little night night. Watch him as- It’s night night time, Rhett. It’s time for you to take a little- Maybe this is why I’ve been waking up at 4:00 a.m. every single night. Maybe so, dude, yep. For the past month. Coated in pee. Wake up, I’m fully awake. Yeah. Well, Happy New Year. Oh gosh. We’ll talk at you next week. Oh, yep, yep, #Ear Biscuits. Be a part of the conversation. You can always call us 1-888-EARPOD1 EARPOD1. Hey Rhett and Link, my name is Macy and I’m from Southern California. I’m just now listening to your top 10 moments of 2023. And as of today, I wanted to share mine. I just delivered a baby. I wasn’t pregnant. I just work on an ambulance and I work 911 calls and it was amazing. It was life-altering. And anyways, I hope you guys have a wonderful day and hopefully you’ll hear this. Anyways, bye. Love you.