Three New Influencers

This week, Nick, Dick, and Paul dive deep into how bad social media is for you. They talk about everything from how it's changed social events like the US Open to how it can cause hemorrhoids. They also explain their Media of the Week, where the guys talk about some of their favorite pieces of media they've been consuming. All this and so much more on the first episode of The Nick, Dick and Paul Show!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Nick, Dick and Poul Show. I'm Nick Bilton.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I am star of screen and stage costello.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
I'm a star of neither Polkadrowski.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
And on this week's episode, we're gonna be talking about
what are we talking about?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Tennis?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Tennis and hamorrhoids? Well and social media in social media
and not in that order, and the difference between grass
and Clay.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Why am I explaining? Are you gonna? Are you gonna?

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Now?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Tell me?

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Just ran the random guy?

Speaker 2 (00:43):
R you know? Wait a minute, you don't know this story,
Robert Altman, the player, the first shot, the long single
tracking shot, and the player. You don't know it?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Do you know the player?

Speaker 1 (00:53):
I don't think I saw the player.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Oh my god, you know what, forget it. This was
a horrible idea.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
That's right where it's terrible. I don't watch a lot
of movies. I like to read the scripts and things
like that.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
You should go research. In fact, I insist that after
this you read it. You writing movies. You're a movie right, No.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
But I like reading scripts. I've had this whole conversation
with Paul, like if I'm watched it's hard to study
a movie when you watch it because the director and
the actor. But when you're reading a script, you can
study how it's written, and so on and so forth.
So I read a lot of scripts for movies and
I don't end up watching them.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
How do you know how the thing is going to
be shot? Then? When you write it like a shooting
a cinematography instruction, like the camera pans back, I've heard.
Do you know what happens when the camera pans back?

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Or do you say that I heard these things happen,
I haven't actually seen.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
I always supposed to be talking about hemorrhoids.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Hold on, let me ask you a question. Yeah, do
you know what a smash cut is? I do know what.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
I love a smash I love a match cut. A
match cut is the best cut cut.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
I don't know what a match cut is.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
A match cut is when you're you close in on
pol Kadrowski's face and we match cut to Polkadrowski, uh
ten years early, and we pulled back and he is homeless,
living in an encampment.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Beforeward can beg you the direction?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Really?

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Ten years from now? The podcast failed so badly.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
So you say you don't, but you have to have
seen these things to know what I've seen.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
I've seen. I have seen a few films.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
You just prefer not to watch them. You prefer to
read them.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
I prefer to read them.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
All right, Okay, we all have our problems.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
I'm glad we've established this move. Let's move on, Paul.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
I want to talk about hemorrhoids. You don't, Yes, I do.
You sent a study to us about social media and hemorrhoids.
Can you can?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
You?

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Can you tell us what it was about?

Speaker 3 (02:36):
So the gist of that one was that because people
get so comfortable now in the bathroom because they bring
their phones in with them, which is why phones are
now I think I read this somewhere with it. They're
among the most bacteria infested things in your lives.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Are you serious?

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:52):
They're absolutely gross. If you want to get a decent
sample of every single bacteria in your life, bring that in,
get it swabbed. That's your phone.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Sure, you're sitting it down on a table in a restaurant,
you're putting it on the seat and the on the plane,
bringing into the restaurant, or bringing in the bathroom.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Everyone bring it into the bathroom.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Of course, I can't speak from more than narrow experience.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
But I'm gonna go with yes, like, gotta be close
to one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
It's kind of crazy because what are you gonna.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Do hand it to the person seated, nothing at the restaurant,
the rest I gotta go.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, there's nothing that everyone brings it. You don't bring
like a plate into the bathroom with you don't there's
nothing that people bring.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
You don't. Yeah, that's fair.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
I mean to the point of it was that people
in the restrooms with phones, they get very comfortable there
and they're like, well, I'm here, I might as well
do something.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
I was I might as well post that amazing photo
I took yesterday and like como or in order.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
To evacuate my vows, no matter how long it takes.
And that's actually, as it turns out, if you're a
lower GI guy, that's actually a bad thing spending that
long on that kind of And so as a result,
the study was really like compelling. It said that that's
leading to this outbreak of hemorrhoid's because people are getting
so comfortable in bathrooms that they're like, you know what,

(04:11):
screw it, I'll take it if it takes an hour.
It takes an hour. And that turns out physiologically.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
We're not supposed to sit.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
On like I get another half hour, Joe Rogan to.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Before I get out of here, Maybe find something else
to do, and don't just sit here and hope something happens.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
So, in short, every aspect of social media's bad for us.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
I think that's a reasonable extrapolation. But I mean the
idea that it's had these crazy and really insidious side
effects that people don't expect, Like people are spending too
long in restrooms, and it's not just because it's making
your phone bacteria infested, but it's literally leading to.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
I think I remember in twenty ten Bizstone saying to me,
what if someday we spend too long in the bathroom? Yeah,
and you like, and that's the time we thought he
was crazy, But.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Turns out he's the future.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Turns out one day.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
This stonecomma futurists.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, one day there will be a paper about this.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
I have a question for you, predictable when you when you.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Don't don't do that?

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Don't know when did you realize it? You know, like, no,
when did you realize.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
It was Tuesday?

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Like, when did you realize social media was back?

Speaker 2 (05:21):
I didn't realize a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Like I remember I was at the New York Times
and I was writing about Twitter and Facebook and everything,
and I got into a big argument with the editor
in chief, who was like, it's the worst thing in
the world, and I was like, it's the greatest thing ever.
It's going to give everyone a voice. I sounded like,
you know, a fucking loser. But but I wrote this
whole thing, and I argued for it.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
And then wait a minute, I think I said that, yeah, yeah,
you did. Wait a minute. Yeah, that was met so familiar.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
We all said it. And then and then it was
like a few years. It was like twenty twenty. I
think it was COVID where I was like, oh, it's
it's it's really bad for society.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
Are you serious it took you that long?

Speaker 1 (06:04):
No, because there was still good things. There were like
still things that I thought were good, Like there was
you know these me too movement, Like Me Too Movement
arguably could not have happened without social media.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
I think.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
I think Black Lives Matter and all those other things
absolutely could. I mean, we saw that in the nineteen sixties.
But but Me Too, I think was a specific kind
of thing like, and it did. I think it was
one of the few fur better. But twenty twenty was
really well. I was like, oh god, this is horrific.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
I mean, you need to get with the program. When
it was for you, oh way earlier. I mean it
was obvious just in terms of my own behavior.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
I was in terms of my own behavior, yeah, yeah, no, no.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
I mean I was distracted. You was like, I could
see elements of addictions, like has someone responded to this
as someone retreateds?

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Like, what the fuck?

Speaker 3 (06:47):
What do I care?

Speaker 2 (06:48):
What do I care?

Speaker 3 (06:48):
What a bunch of randoms in their house? Yeah, think
of something that I said on the fly that I
don't give a rat's ass about. This is ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Paul hated Twitter in two thousand and five, the year
before it was That's right, I was.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
I was an early hater, like preemptively said, do you
know what, one day there's going to be mass text
messaging and I'm not gonna like it. Right, No, it's
just like I just saw it in my own behad
I didn't like. I didn't like that. It's the same
reason why and me, you and I have talked about
this about television. We've both done a ton of like
CNBC and other things. And one of the reasons why
I stopped doing it because I realized, I don't watch it.

(07:22):
I don't like the people who watch it, and most
of the people who watch it are like middle aged
males in their basements with their pants down around their ankles,
like I don't want.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
To don't talk about deck like that, right, And.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
It's like I said, you know, this doesn't there's nothing
about this I like, and so I don't like performing
for these people. Well, the exact same logic applies, but
even worse with much of social media, like I don't
know who any of these people are, what do I
care what they think about anything about what I say?
And that in turn leads to all these like completely
ridiculous behaviors.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
It's also I think that you, the the algorithms have
gotten so good at understanding us that we that that
we we can't win. And I always have the line
like from War Games, which I did see, by the way,
didn't just read the script.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
The only way to the only way to win is
not to blay.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
And I think, uh that, like, can you imagine being
a fucking teenager with this stuff? I mean you have kids, yeah,
you know, yours are not you're my kids are older,
but just terrific.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Oh no, watching it this fomo stuff where they're constantly
seeing other people doing things, and so you never in
your own moment. You're always thinking, oh wow, I could
be over here doing this or someone else is doing this,
and everyone's really good at making you feel as if
there's something else I.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Could be doing, you could still use it.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
They do, do they are?

Speaker 1 (08:40):
They just as drawn in.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
I think they're a little more aware because we were
relatively slow and letting them do it. But all that,
all that that led to was like anger where they're like,
you guys are you guys are bastards? My all my
friends are using social media and you won't let me
and it fucked up my life. And I'm like, oh
well great, this goes either way, right, you screwed up
my life because you use it or because you don't
use it. It doesn't make any difference. The thing that
I find back to your point about algorithms, and this

(09:04):
was the line I forget where I just saw it
recently that so much of this stuff is predicated on
building businesses for like anger, entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
People wait, what do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, it's absolutely the case, but this has been a
slow evolution. It didn't start that way. It's absolutely it's
absolutely the case. I know exactly referring to, but I
just want to set this up. It's absolutely the case
that when you go on to X now and this
is not again, this is not today versus yesterday or
this administration for this administration, it's been a slow evolution

(09:39):
the algorithm. It's absolutely the case that it's an anger machine.
You go on there and you start reading, and it's
so hyper political and so algorithmically driven around all the
people who think this. You will now see what they
think about it. You just get angry the longer you're
on there.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
And but the flip the other side of that is
is that are the entrepreneur right, So that creates so
we've now got to market all these people who are
inflamed and angry. So you get anger entrepreneurs who want
to build businesses around keeping you inflame, using the algorithm,
piggybacking on top of this to say whatever it is
that will keep you inflame, because that's good business. And
so anger and conflict entrepreneurs have found this really fertile

(10:19):
market in social media.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
PS. It's not just right or left. They're anger entrepreneurs.
They're anger entrepreneurs for everybody, for everybody, for sports.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
I mean because and the literature is really clear that
that kind of inflammation leads to engagement. People If they
feel kind of like, eh, I saw it being it,
maybe feel kind of a different they don't come back.
But if people are made angry even more than if
they're made happy, they'll return.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
It's actually not a coincidence that two of what you
could call the anger entrepreneurs for sports on ESPN, Paul
Feinbaum for football and Steven A. Smith for lots of things,
also are considering political runs.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Right, Oh are they really?

Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah? Yeah, But it's the same. It's the same motivation.
You realize that I can ride, I can ride that right.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
They have no nuanced opinion. Everything is like, this guy's
a jerk, These people are great, he should be fired yesterday.
There's no nuance. They're like, well, if if they had
actually made the field goal, they would have won. No,
you know, it's all they're horrible. He's great, You're this
one's stupid. You know, it's all. It's it's all black
and white.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Do you guys think that it go like, is there
an end to this or is it.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Just this is just the death of the universe?

Speaker 1 (11:30):
No, like does a generation does the next generation come
along and be like this doesn't make me feel good?
I don't I'm the only way to win is not
to play the game? Or is this just like it's
just the most inflamed people in society. You're going to
continue to come.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
But there's no sign of that.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
There's no sign of that. While there are some people,
well I agree, there are some people who now realize, hey,
you got to get off social media. You know, it's
the Sam Harris Is of the world there. It is
all also the case that when you walk through Soho
in Manhattan on a Saturday.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Watch people walk into lamp posts.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
There there are your nine influencers deep walking down the street,
and you know, some you're like, who who is this
person shooting this for? You know, here I am on
Crosby Street, crossing the cobblestones, looking looking longingly over my
shoulder with this particular Prada bag in my hand. Yeah,

(12:30):
what are you doing? But there are fifty of them?

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah, and for them everything is content. Everything literally everything
is content. I mean it's I was watching I was
at a thing last week.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
That's a great, great point. Yeah, everything is everything is
I was.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Watching people not just film a race I was in,
but people film the people filming. So it literally it
gets It's like a stack, right, it's a stack content
for social media where you're filming and then filming the
people who are filming, and then because you'll see that,
and with influencers where it's like all these influencers are
taking pictures of some famous Tokyo intersection. Well now there's
people who like to take pictures of the people who

(13:06):
are standing in the middle of the intersection, filming the intersection.
So it becomes me out, No, it's really it's it's
a fascinating human behavior. But there's I can't see how
it extinguishes itself.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
One of my favorites is And then there's the I mean,
there's the everything to me as content as an influencer,
and then there's the what I'm shooting and portraying versus
what's really going on. And I realized we've I realized
we've always known this, but it's now extreme. So, for example,
as at a restaurant, in Brooklyn. This is now six

(13:42):
seven months ago, and there's a man and a woman
younger men and a woman maybe late twenties, at table
next to me, and they get their food and the
cameras come out, and I, you know, look across the
table and I laughingly say, Instagram eats first. You know,
they take their sure but that's not the and they're

(14:02):
they you know, they take the shots of the food,
and they've got each got cocktails and they're drinking the
cocktail but they're not eating the food. And they've got
like four plates. Then they switch these two plates for
these other two plates, start filming, you know, get the
wide angle shot of me and the person across from me,
get the shot of just the food, get the then
they put those aside, continue to drink, don't eat the food.

(14:24):
They after a while, after the check and get up
and leave. I was like, oh, it's way worse than
I thought. Instagram doesn't eat, just eat first, Instagram.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
Don't and you don't eat Yeah, oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah probably yeah, they're probably on GLP ones. What are
you kidding me? This is Italian food. I can't eat.
I can't eat this stuff, but I do have to
have a content, but I need content and I'm alsot.
But also I'm down fifteen pounds in the last five days.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
That's really interesting.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
What was it to happen with you at the US
Open with influencers?

Speaker 2 (15:20):
You were going to tell the tennis tournament. So I
had the good fortune to go to a number of
tennis tournaments this year and they're super fun to watch.
And the French Open, I would say, is the most
tennessee even over. How how is one thing I'm gonna
all right, give me a second to define tennis balls
and tennis rackets? Okay, fair question. You got Wimbledon. First

(15:44):
of all, forget the Australian Open. Can't go to Australian Open.
That's like it was like, I don't know, not far, No.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
It's as far away.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
Also like that golf tournament where everyone gets drunk and
hopes for a home in one Phoenix.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Australians drink while they're drinking. Yeah, so you know, first
of all, it's far it's hardcourt, so you're like, well,
I can go to the US Open and see hardcore
and it's the first one of the years, so they're
kind of like they're all injured and Wan and start interrupt.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Is there a difference in play when you're on a
hard court versus grass? And things like that?

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Stop, I'm not a sports person.

Speaker 4 (16:19):
I don't even know aply not even don't even know
what kind of ball they Yeah, I'm serious, but use.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
A square ball from Australia around the rest of the earth.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Look, it's a serious question. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
This is a ridiculous question. Of course it's different. It's
a what what do you think could be the like,
bounce the ball on concrete, then bounce it on grass?

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Know how to hit a ball? You know how to
hit a ball, doesn't matter what it bounces on.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
I don't even know where you Yeah, you know what?
Can we get another? Who can we get in this podcast?
I don't even know the difference keeping someone in here
seen a couple of movies like I should have.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Sorry, can you talk about things being more Tennessee than
are Tennis?

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Well that was okay, That wasn't where I was going
to go with Tennessee. But first of all, Clay so
Clay Friends, Open, Grass, Wimbledon. There are others obviously for
all these, but from the majors, Clay Friends Open grass,
Wimbledon hardcourt, US the French Open is the most Tennessee.
Although Wimbledon people would disagree with me because no food

(17:19):
and beverage in the stadium. Okay, it's all tennis. It's
all business in the in the stadium. Wimbledon people are now,
you know, popping champagne and the popping bottles in the
in the in center court. I mean still very sort
of you know, I got to wear whites and all
that stuff and blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
But tennis is still the main show.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Tennis is still the main show. US Open. There are
no there are now no quiet moments between games. Ads
on the big screen and the video boards and the
blah blah blah behind the you know, the Cadillac logos
on the on the net, ads all over the place,
between points between sets, between matches, between matches, the like

(17:58):
like big New sick, like there would be at an
NBA basketball game or the Super Bowl or whatever. However,
in the stands at the US Open, it's now lots
and lots of people photographing themselves or their influencer friend
being photographed. Like you said, people photographing the photo photographers.

(18:20):
It's all that in the stands here I am during
the Alcoraz match.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
In fact, there was a shot I think I even
saw one of them where someone was doing it got
pinged by the ball while he was doing a selfie
watching the ball.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
It's amazing to take one for the team for the ground.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
That's though a terrific content there were. I had the
good fortune to be at one of the fourth round
matches at center court at the US Open in good
seats and could see that four of the six or
eight people in a in a section near the near
the umpire's chair, maybe three or four rows back, so

(18:58):
center court, four rows back, super expensive seats. We're all
facing up towards the photograph during.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Points, which is astonishing.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
I mean, it's like, do the players get pissed? Do
they get annoyed? Like is it distracted?

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Djokovic got Yes, it gets noisy, like they don't like
if it's if it's really obvious that people are shuffling
around or talking about whatever. It's more like that if
you're not going to face me, and it's just they
don't care about that, care about the stuff that it's
just inverted, like the event is just a background for
what I'm doing right right, it's my, it's my.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
That's the big change at the that I noticed that
the US open the event is a backdrop to me
being at the event for all my people who will
love that, who will be envious of the fact that
I'm here, But no filming me, filming me?

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Which is which is? And that's the key is you
just hit it's the fomo. It's all it is about.
Is about making the people who aren't there feel like
ship that they're not the right.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
Which is like you know, evolutionarily wired into people. Right
people want to feel like I'm leading a tribe. This
is all goes back to like ancient human behaviors like
so it's the reason why it's hard to shake this
is because we the people that we evolved from that
are are just at ances. We're all really good at
these because otherwise they wouldn't have made it, because you

(20:21):
had to be a member of a tribe. If you
were some weirdo that wasn't able to fit in in
your twenty person tribe and you were ostracized, you died, right,
So those genes fell out of the gene pool. So
if you were good at fitting into a tribe. You
were good at like making people feel like you had
influence and importance. You survived, and so that the instincts
that led to that this.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Is fucking depressing, thank you.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
No, So we're like, you know, so the descendants of influencers.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Some that we we're only here because Orc somewhere downriver
in the Nile had a million followers.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Right up and down the river. He was well known.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
That was saying you said the other day that like
that you had this realization that we are that you
had to have survived in the wilderness one hundred thousand
years ago. You had to be a sociopath because you
had to be willing to eat your own baby and
like kill your you know, your brother because you were
hungry and eat him.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
And like we're the descendants of the bad guys in
Mad Max.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
So we're the descendants not only of the influencer bad guys, right,
because that's what you needed to That's why I have
like no optimism that we walk away from this stuff
and say, oh, you know what, this is all.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
This was all a really bad idea. You're walking away
from like three hundred thousand years of this bad idea.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
It's like when Stephen Pinker wrote The Better Angels of
Our Nature, I was like, Yeah, that's not that's not happening.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
It's not gonna work.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
That's not what's gonna happening.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
That I think.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
That's even more insidious is that people people feel more
sort of economic fragility in the sense that like, I
don't know where jobs are changing. People keep telling me
AI is taking jobs, and so more and more people
have this idea that I can monetize myself, I can
sell myself in lots of different ways. Well, that's true,

(22:13):
it's happening, right, But my point is it's like so
one of the drivings. So it's not just that we're
adapted to do this kind of thing. It's that there
are economic pressures that make people feel like this is
something that they need to do or they can do
even if everything else falls away. You know, this will
be my way out, this will be my way out. Right,
Hence the rise of like only fans and so all
of these different services that allow you to monetize your

(22:36):
time in ways that no one would have expected because
of this sense that I don't know, I don't have
a twenty year career in mind anymore, I don't know where.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
So as AI takes more jobs, it means more influencers.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Means way more and vastly more and more influencers of influencers, right,
because it's all going to get stacked. This idea that
will for absolutely one of the next generations of influencers
will be someone who isn't who only tracks influence, right,
It'll be it all keeps getting nested more and more.
It's not just somebody who's built a giant audience like
mister Beast. It'll be someone who's an influencer who monitors

(23:09):
what influencers are doing, and then influencers follow them. It's
just gonna be come all the way down.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
It's like the E Hollywood Show, but for influencers. Yeah, right,
but lots of them, but lots of them. And there's
also you see the thing recently about the the AI
actress that just got signed by an.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Age yea on one of the trade services.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Which seems a little like a little nonsense because I
don't think it's going to survive. But you're going to
see more of that too, oh of course.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
But there's just this this cost collapse right, the cost
of doing all this stuff is so it's essentially free
for practical purposes, and so free is always compelling versus
a costly content provider, an actor, podcast host.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
I mean, you've even got I think I read this
correctly the other day, that you've got like meta and
open AI saying we're going to have a you know,
we're going to have a set of reels that are
just you know, AI reels. Yeah, we're gonna have a
and the and they're going to create them and or
ais will create them for us to watch, but you
know it's also for their AIS to watch so they

(24:14):
can learn more about.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
But that's why I think people get really like there
is this more video just term of people use all
the time AI slop, this idea that everything's going to
get there's this wave of crappy AI stuff that's coming
on social media and everywhere else. Like a huge fraction
of what's on social media is just AI generated. I
get all of that, but I actually think that's kind
of a mistaken way to think about things. I actually
think that, and I think I sent this to you

(24:37):
guys the other day, But there's Electronic Arts was acquired
in a large transaction is going to be by silver
Lake and so others.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
But one of the reasons is five billion dollars under
fifty billion dollars. But who's counting, who's counting? That's twenty
billion of it. It's finance with debt, right, It's just
debt that you put back.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
On their balance. Yeah, yeah, their problem.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah. And then afterwards you go, why did you idiots
take on twenty billion dollar? Is it debt? Huh? Yeah?
Can you fix that?

Speaker 3 (25:02):
Can you fix that?

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (25:03):
But under the head what I thought was really interesting.
Lukashaw Bloomberg has some great stuff out over the last
while talking about the dynamics of the gaming market, where
this was the stat that blew mind. There's been a
doubling in the number of games on Steam, which is
one of the big game hosting platforms, just since twenty twenty.
There hasn't been a doubling in the number of people
who play games. There's been a double in the number
of games. So then you ask yourself, Okay, why is
that happening. Well, it's not because you know, more venture

(25:26):
money is flowing in. It's because it's gotten cheap and
easy to do games. Now, the reason why it's getting
cheaper and easier is because of tools like AI, and
the games are actually really really good. They're really good games,
so getting high ratings some places like Metacritic and others.
And so the point is worrying about all this crappy
AI stuff is kind of like a good problem to

(25:47):
have because it's easy to say, oh, well, no one
will use that as crappy. What's coming is lots of
really cheap good stuff. And the really cheap good stuff
is what's going to cause you know, the concept, the
really big consequence is going forward as evidence Electronic Arts
owns like FIFA and a host of other franchises, and
they can't make it work because they're facing this tsunami

(26:08):
of actually really good games that in part are facilitated
by people using AI tools and frameworks.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
It's just getting too So what's happening? I think. I
think what I'm hearing Paul saying is EA is wisely
seeing the writing on the wall, and Okay, this isn't
going to stop. The doubling on Steam is going to
be tripling, is going to be quadrupling, is going to
be quintupling. Those games will be getting better and better

(26:34):
and my ability to create the next year's fit will
be halved and then thirded and then quartered.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
And then even if I do the return, I'll get
on that it's going to be falling off, falling off,
flowing off. So this is we flatter My point is
we flatter ourselves by thinking the problem is AI slapped.
That's not the problem for the next few years. The
problem is going to be the EA problem, which is,
oh my god, there's an incredible amount of really good
stuff being produced and I can't My business isn't viable.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
I can't. I can't fight my way through.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
But don't you think that there's still you still need
a human being as a face for video games? You don't,
because no, I don't know who who made any video game? Right,
But when I don't watch movies.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
No, you wouldn't say that though, So that's you saying that.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Industry is very sumer of video games.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
The industry's very stars.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Oh you mean, like the people to play, they.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Know who creates stuff, they know who the engineers are.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
The job.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Maybe maybe this, maybe this will prove the point. So Okay,
when Charlie Kirk got shot, there were like thousands and
thousands of books quote unquote books that ended up on
Amazon Kindle by the end of the day, right that
we're all created by AI. And I'm sure some of
them are probably pretty decent, like they you know, they
take everything and and his history of his life and

(27:51):
and what happened in the events and and so on.
I'm sure that. But no one read them because there's
no there's no author behind them. And so I guess
the question is, is.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
I disagree with the part of that sense.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
Why do you so no one.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Didn't read them because there was no author behind them,
that's what. Because there's too many and they don't care
that much.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
So how do you in the if that is the case,
if it continues to quarter and half and so on
and so forth, and there's it's everywhere, how do you
define what you what? What I what I'm going to consume?
How do I decide which book I'm going to read?
And so on and so forth?

Speaker 3 (28:24):
From a viability standpoint, I don't think that's not that's
not the problem.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
What's the problem.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
The problem is that all of these industries are going
to get crushed. They're going to get crushed because consumers
don't care as much as producers would like to think
they do, and the costs are collapsing. The volume is
going to soar and it's not going to be AI
slop anymore. That's we we've gotten through. This has actually
been the good period where it's mostly crap. The EA
story is telling you that going forward, the problem isn't

(28:50):
going to be crap. It's going to be scorched earth.
Then it's going to be viable to produce most of
the things that we've we've rely in books, movies, television,
legal briefs like pick your pick. All of this stuff
is not as going to go from being slopped to
being very very very good, which is going to make
it unviable to actually be in that business. That's the problem.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
But if you have let's just take TV for a second, right,
If you have AI creating amazing TV games, TV games, Sorry.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
That sounds great. What is a TV game?

Speaker 1 (29:22):
I'm sure it will exist. Actually, that's a whole separate.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Interacted to CD ROMs. You know, these interactive CITs. I've
heard they're going to be huge.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Now there is a whole thing that there's a whole
theory in Hollywood that people think that that video games
and TV or film are going to kind of meld.
And you'll say, but I think with AI it's it's estentially,
But put that aside for one second. So we you
there's a film that Dick wants to talk about that
he watched, right, But if he just watched it, that's
like him talking telling us about the dream he had

(29:50):
last night and we didn't if we didn't see it.
If it's like individualized, So aren't there going to be
at the same time, you know, uh, these kind of
these mediums that we are all going to consume together.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
No, you don't think so.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
No, Like I totally disagree. No, take a look at
the TV ratings. A top rated show today would have
been canceled thirty years ago, right, that's how that's how
in relative terms that its ratings are. So that's because
of this complete fractioning of the audience. Right, the audience
is still out there, but they're watching ten thousand things,
so a thing that's successful to.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
They're watching micro dramas, they're watching YouTube, They're watching ninety
thousand different things on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
So this goes to your point though, But a shared experience,
there's no shared experience as a matter of fact, the
audience is so dispersed that everything out there today would
have been canceled thirty years ago.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Right, And it's I mean this sort of follows obviously,
but it's why the political spectrum in the US is
so you know, black, and you know, it's so polarized
now because I'm getting my own. It used to be
we all watched Walter Cronkite at six pm and then
everyone had the same information. Right now, it's what are

(31:00):
you talking about? That's not true?

Speaker 3 (31:02):
You know, I got this dude, there's a cast.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
There's this dude over here that just you know that
says that you're crazy and those things are all not true.
And I mean it's sort of obviously follows, and it's
just getting worse right.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
When, which goes back to this point that no, I
don't think there will be shared experiences at all. As
a matter of fact, that I think that will look,
we'll look back with some.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Strongness, but if you but okay, look at Spotify, for example,
the top you know, the top ten. Remember the numbers.
It's forty six million songs have zero listens, oh yeah,
and the top ten have billions of listens. And they
do think we need those. And if you look at
concerts like I mean, think about you know, go look

(31:43):
through any newspaper. Anytime a new invention comes along, they're like, oh,
people will never leave with their house again, the phone,
the phonograph, that, this, that, and the other. We have
concerts that have a million people like so we still
want that shared experience. This is what I think that.
This is where I think that the you know, we
I've kids that are in ten and on a weekend,
we're like, what the fuck are we going to do

(32:03):
this weekend? And we tried like is there a movie?

Speaker 2 (32:05):
You say that to you in your ten years old?
What the fuck are we going to do this week
this weekend?

Speaker 1 (32:09):
And they say, daddy, stop swearing. But they want to
go to the movies. They want that experience.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Like the way I took this all right, hard left,
hard left turn.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah, well that'll be the sound bite.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
They want that experience of an of of going to
a thing. And so I just don't think I hear
what you're saying. But I just don't believe that that
all collective experience is vanished.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
That's not it's not what that's a false dichotomy.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
I mean, it's not Yeah, he's not saying all he's
saying it's becoming more. It's the dispersed part is a dispersion.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
It's the part that matters that periodically that people will
go to mass events is kind of short of it. Yeah,
that's it's the rarity of the mass event that makes
them viable. People want them because it's like, well, Taylor
Swift may not be touring again for another.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Yeah that Bryan's and University of Michigan STA I'm going
to say going to see Yeah, I'm going to that.
But then those hundred and ten thousand people don't go
home and watch the same TV show. They don't go
home and watch Seinfeld anymore. They go home and like,
this person's watching you know, you know, she's your daddy,
and this person's watching them you know micro you know, And.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
Even if they're watching the same thing, they're not necessarily
been watching it at the same time. Yeah, right, this
is my favorite. It is like people I'll talk to
couples who are watching the same show and I'm like, oh,
how did you Oh, he's watching it in the morning.
I watched Yeah, Because they don't even have to have
like time synchronized.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
I'm watching under the covers while he's snoring.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
So no, I don't think that's the way it's going
to play it at all. And the data suggests that's
exactly what's happening, is that everything's becoming flatten distributed, not
time synchronized, and the events are the rarity, not there's
those aren't the cultural the cultural touchstones anymore.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
But you'll still go to a tennis game.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Yeah, Can I say a couple more things about the
interesting thing about the tennis this last year? Of course? Yeah,
here's here's two more interesting things. One, can I just
go please, I want you to interrupt me regularly.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
No, I just I just have to go back to
the to the to the grass versus.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Clay versus hardcore?

Speaker 1 (34:06):
Is hardcore? Isn't like I know Sinner is the best player?

Speaker 2 (34:10):
Right? Alcoraz is now number one?

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (34:12):
So let's just take Alcarez. Is Alcoraz as good on
all three of those they play?

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Very sorry, Paul's rolling his eyes. What listen, let me
reframe my answer before Paul the polymath yells at me
and gives me a statistic about Alcoraz's ability to hit
return winners on the three different services correct, they play.
The three services play to your strengths, to a player's strengths,

(34:42):
very very differently. Serve speed works better on you know,
on grass, where the ball skids off the grass and
it's faster. Clay slows the ball down, so it's there's
less serve and volley you're playing these long baseline rallies
where the you know, the ball is going slow enough
to be able to be speedy, serves can be returned, etcetera, etcetera.

(35:04):
So generally speaking, the three surfaces tend to result in
very very different semi finals, quarterfinals matches in this world though,
now where Center and Alcarez seem to be so much
better than everybody else. It's kind of like the I
don't know whatever I want to call it, the Federer
Nadal area of its going to be in the finals

(35:25):
in all three of them. But the three surfaces are
very very different.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
They're very different. But the weird thing is is those
players are the dominant players on all the surfaces, which
is historically really unusual, right, And so what's interesting is
you're seeing this now for the first time in a
couple of sports, for the first time actually in cycling,
in cycling. Historically, there was people who are really good
at multi day stage races like the Tour de France,
and there are people who really good at one day

(35:50):
races like Perry Rubey, you know where you go banging
along on cobbles and whatever else, and those two people,
those two groups of people were very different for in
the current era. What's really interesting is that the same riders,
or at least a couple of the same riders, are
now dominant in both types of in both types of events.
There are dominant in multi day stage races and dominant
in single day races in exactly the same way as

(36:11):
Center and Skinner, Center, Center, Center and one of them,
one of them, Center, Skinner and Alchoraiz are dominant on
all surfaces and tennis.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Why is this so? That's so my He's going to
sign a paper, he read a paper, he wrote one.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
That's right, I actually read and bro one he did no,
it neither.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
No.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
So it's the argument is it's better training techniques and
the sharing of best practices that people historically didn't realize.
Here's what a really good player on clay or grass
or hard surfaces or cobbles that many of the things
were treated is almost in a superstitious way that oh,
I can't beat Raphael.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
I just can't.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
So I talked myself out of it right away. And
so there's this there's yet again, much like in a
there's this flattening going on where it's like all of
these former hierarchies of being dominant on clay, man I
was bad on hardcore, it's being dominant in one day races,
man I was going to fall apart in the tour.
These are falling away because they're being revealed as superstitions.
And that might be good because now all of a

(37:16):
sudden there's more competition in all these things, but it's
also kind of flattens everything because it's like it used
to be there were these wacky Spanish dudes who were
really good, like on clay in Paris, and then you
never saw them again for the rest of the ye, right,
But now these guys never win anything because they can't
win it all anymore because the top players are better,
better across all surfaces. And this leads to this kind

(37:38):
of like, oh, it's those two guys again, right, It's
not like, oh, you know when I go to Wimbledon,
there's going to be something different, or if I watch
the Tour de France, there's going to be different people,
or if I go to this different social medium that
it's going to be different artists. No, it's the same
people everywhere, which is one of the reasons why to
take it right back to the original point that the
reason why this dominance emerges at the top of Spotify
is because there's this incredible convergence of it tension on

(38:00):
these people who are really good at Taylor Swift's really
good at social media, she's really good at creating.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Hooky soft forming, she's good at performing.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
So these people are all rising to this level where
they become dominant and everything else just sort of falls away.
But everyone else is fighting for scraps at the edges.
Right There's there's tons o them doing it. But that's
the thing that's really interesting, is this flattening and kind
of homogenizing of everything.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
I'll say one more thing about tennis my observation this
last year, which is that people psychologically have a hard
time thinking about reality in a way that's different from
the way they used to think about reality. And here's
the example I give you at Wimbledon this year they
went to all automatic judges. So the fault serving faults,

(38:45):
you know, the balls out or hit the ball along
on a shot, it's called out. That is no longer
people standing at the line looking there and judging whether
it's interrupt That's still true. At the French Open it's
humans and the US Open it's cameras and you know,
machines and they the cameras call it or the camera

(39:07):
calls it and then it makes a sound, you know,
it makes a human sound out like someone yelled it
out in the court. No that it makes it sound.
Look it's a human yelling at because people want to
feel like, oh, it's still being called it was called out.
Here's the no, here's the the point I want to make.
Even though it's the machine doing it now and it's
automated and using cameras, after the call is made, they

(39:31):
still show the replay on the on the video monitor,
like with the animated ball landing outside the line and
you know, and where it landed and then and then
like out and people when they see the replay go,
oh wait, the machine is the one that made the

(39:52):
video that called it out. It wasn't gonna be different then,
like but they still have this like it was called out,
but baby was in. Let's see the replay, Like what,
let me tell you how the replay is this. People
go literally from the whole crowd, Oh it was so close, Like.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
That's really interesting, honest.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
The umpire auto now the umpire basically keeps presses buttons
on the machine and keeps score and resets them. I
think they look, I'm sure they're was there an umpire listening?
They're like, I do wait more than that. Okay, you
know they go dirty, love, you know, quiet, please, thank you.
That's about that.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
Yeah, but it's that's a really so they're actually applauding
the simulation of the real thing.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yeah. Well, and also that it came true, like what
the thing called was actually the right call. Like it's
every time going to be what the machine called. The
machine is making the movie.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yeah, it's not going to randomize it and say, oh,
I'm going to prove myself wrong.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah, oh I called that went in, but it was out.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
You're actually you're making I know you've suggested this so
many times that we should I should read because I'm
sure you've read that. David Foster Wallace on tennis you're
actually making me want to read it.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
It's tremendous, it's good, but it's also immediately it's vestigial,
like the game has changed so much since he wrote
his famous essay string Theory and wrote one about who
is it? Michael Chang? I think, and these players were
wouldn't have survived in today's game. Yeah, right, So the
game has changed a lot since because he was a
college player, David Foster Wallas and then he wrote about

(41:23):
Michael Chang, who was this American sort of power but
they were called power baseliners, guys who standed to back
the court and whack the living crap and.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Just the ball, just rip the ball from the back.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
But those guys didn't come forward, they wouldn't go to
the net and play. And again back to this idea
of the flattening of the sport. Everybody does everything, no
one sits at the back, and the Michael Chang's don't
exist because you can't sit at the back and just
whack it. You also have to be able to sprint
to the net and do a drop shot.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Center and Elkarez are both the hardest hitting you know,
two of the harder hitting guys from the baseline, but
also remarkable coming forward and playing servant Volley. Right, so.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Should we do a media of the week. We want
to start this thing where we do like a media.
But you had something you wanted to.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Talk about, Well, it'll be my book. Well I saw,
and you have a book you want to talk about too, Yeah,
but I just won't shut up about it.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, well that's probably a whole episode.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
Okay, I'll still talk.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Let's let's let's hear it.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
I saw one battle after another, and first of all,
you will be pleased to know it's at least loosely
maybe more than loosely based on I saw Benshon's Vineland. Yeah. Yeah,
and it's if Paul Thomas Anderson. I keep on to say,
like anytime it's three names, I almost always interject some

(43:00):
other person's name is the middle, almost said Paul Wes Anderson. Anyway,
Paul Thomas Anderson, there will be blood and boogie knights
and yea many many, many many other filmmaker. Yeah, and
it's it's awesome and the acting is awesome. I mean,
Sean Penn will certainly be nominated for Best Supporting Actor

(43:23):
and without having seen any of the other films that
may or may not come out the rest of the year.
I mean, he'll be He's exceptional, and as is Benicio
del Toro and DiCaprio and the rest is great. Is
a great movie, and the cinematography is amazing. It is long,
is long, It's very long. Yeah, I remember one of

(43:45):
my favorites, one of my favorite Yeah, one of my
favorite reviews of the book One hundred Years of Solitude
was I couldn't help thinking whether thirty eight Years of
Solitude might have been a lot better.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
One of my favorite books.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
By the way. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's two hours
and forty five minutes, but it's very fast moving. Really,
there's not a lot of you know, now, let's there's
not a lot of let's pause to go reflect on these,
you know, the villain's origin story, like, it's it's fast moving,
it's and it's well shot. And the books, the book's fantastic,

(44:24):
great Stoner book stuff. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's not
it's very it's very closely a ligne to I would
say the book, I don't know how much he would
say he based on Vineland, but it's it's right there.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
I read that. Did Paul Wes Anderson optioned the book?

Speaker 2 (44:40):
You're gonna do it, You're gonna make me start? This
is don't start on the Hollywood actually miology.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
I think it actually was optioned.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
I don't know what that even means. Did he option
the book.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
Paid for it, as opposed to saying I read this
and it made me think of this.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Oh yeah, right, okay, yeah, okay, that's a very good explanation.
By the way, he just paid to say. Look, I'm
this is basically Pineland the movie. Okay.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
I think that was the book that he wrote. He
won the National Book Critics Award, and he went into
hiding because he didn't want to collect the awards, so
he ran to Mexico and was hiding at dis pension.
He was hiding in Mexico, and then he didn't like
being in Mexico, so he went and hit in northern
California and he said, well, screw it, I have to
write a book now. So I think he wrote Vineland
while he was in hiding from the National Book Critics.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
That's amazing. I haven't read Vineland.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Oh it's great, it's great.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
It's like Zoyd Wheeler, zoid Wheeler Zoid Wheeler is the
hero if you will.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
Yeah, it's like if The Big Lebowski was a spy movie.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yes, yeah, it's actually good. Another good. Great. You should
write little summaries for on like rotten Tomaico or tweet things, yeah,
or tweet things.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Was there something? Was it like a uniquely different film
or was it just.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
You know, I would never see your tweet because the
algorithm would surface it because it have to say, like,
you know, it's like he was a spy movie and
also you're asshole.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
That's right. Yeah, that's right without.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
A mental finger emoji.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah, some political hashtags, right, yeah, it would be perfect.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Right yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Wait, so was there something? Was it just a good
movie or was there something that was like the wasat
not enough?

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Like I just am.

Speaker 4 (46:16):
Curious, like the media of the week, I know, but
it's not that's media. That is there's something about it
that that you were like, yeah, it was good for example,
well I liked it for example, I saw Sinners.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Did you see Sinners yet? Or no? I don't like
horror movies.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
It's not a horror movie.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
I like a horror movie.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
I only made it through the first fifteen minutes.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Oh, my god, the music horror movie. Guy like Somethin's
going to get stabbed in the throat and I don't
want to see that.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
I don't think I made it to the horror part.
Is there horror in the first fifteen minutes. I wasn't
closer to the.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
First the first act almost never horror in the first
fifteen minutes.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
You got to build, I got to draw to make
you care for.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
I hate horror too, but but Center Centers the musical
numbers were phenomenal. It was like, unlike anything I've ever
seen before.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
Is that what you were looking for from me? The
musical numbers? I thought you're looking for like a political
but if there was a.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Cool way, they shut it with a smash no match cuts,
smash cuts and match cuts. And yeah, it was shot
very very well.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
There there are a couple scenes in the movie where
you I don't normally pay attention to, Oh, that's remarkably
shot and it's actually making building the tension, and there
are a few points in the movie where you're like,
this is like I'm getting more stressed out just from
the cinematography, which is which was great. I mean the
points in the movie where it's trying to build a tension,
and the filmmaking, not the character action does it.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
I'm excited to see it.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Have you seen it?

Speaker 1 (47:41):
You're not going to five minutes?

Speaker 3 (47:43):
I want to make it through.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah you will. It's great.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Really, Yeah, it's so hard. I've tried.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
You know.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
You can go watch a movie like noon. You have
to go at like nine pm, and you're like, it's midnight.
I'm tired noon. What do I have to do between
noon and three?

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Watch movie? That's all I and not tweet. I do
a lot of not tweeting.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
My niece I asked her if she saw Doune and
she said she was like, yeah, I watched. I watched
the fifteen minute version. I was like, what, watch the
fifteen minute version. She's like, oh, they cut them someone
someone will download and cut them up and put them
make them into fifteen little short clips on TikTok.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
That's what I watched.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
And that's how So that's what you could do with
a Paul wes Anderson movie.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
No, you got to you can go see the movie.
It's any it's an easy it's an easy start.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
I meant to watch a movie the other day, but
I didn't that's true.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
I did.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
I had a plan it just did you like downloaded
and then just forgot to play. Yeah did you even
make it to the television? No?

Speaker 3 (48:46):
Then I started playing back ovin Yeah you know how
that happens.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Yeah, I do. Let's talk about his book?

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Should we do?

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Should we?

Speaker 3 (48:54):
Should we talk about the book or you want to,
I'll talk, But I'm just going to say, like, yep,
it'd be great to get a sometimes. So the book
that I've been like want obnoxiously pushing it on people.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
You're usually here's a book and pass you know full
if you don't like it, see yuh, But this one
you're yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
And it's for me. This is Stephen Kaye's book on immortality.
And what I liked about it is I'm not a
big fan of these big history like Gunstorms and Steel,
the Jared Diamond stuff, these big history books that oh,
that's how the universe works, because usually it's just not
how the universe works. But this book, what I liked
about it was he has this really compelling explanation for

(49:34):
why most of the fucked upitness of humans in terms
of why did he do that? Why are people acting
this way? And a lot of it under the hood,
dating back three hundred thousand years. Is this doomed quest
to live forever, and it takes four different forms, he
argues in the book. There's the don't die version, which
we are all seeing all over again. And he wrote
this before Brian Johnson started doing his don't die movement.

(49:55):
So there's the don't die version. There's the biological immortality version,
which is we can just fix everything. There's the well,
I'll just transfer my intelligence.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
So as we go through, the don't die version is
here's all the stuff you need to do to not
even decay.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
Right, to not even decay.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
And the biological one is don't worry. We got a
new arm for you. In the left, well, no, we'll
fix stuff. Yeah, so we'll fix We've got a new
liver for you. We got to figure it out. We're
going to figure out how to fix your heart, right, And.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Then the book is split up into these four quadrant
these four.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
Quad and then the next piece is that it's fine,
bodies are just you know, useless vessels, so we'll transfer
your intelligence to something else. And that's taken various forms
over history, which is including like being reborn as someone
else one of the you know, the notions behind sort
of the Egyptian mummies and what have you. So, so
that's the third version is and then our current iteration

(50:44):
of that is I'll just.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Transfer to upload you.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
We'll upload you to an AI or whatever else and
you can continue forever. And then the fourth version is
is that you'll just develop, you'll have a legacy. It
does none of these things actually matter, but you'll have
a legacy, which is you'll be like Achilles, you'll establish
you'll be talked about with veneration for thousands of years
because of all of the influences.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
By the way, that's my favorite one, because there must
be ten thousand let's just say a thousand. There must
be a thousand people in the world right now who
think and if I do X, I'll be talked about
for thousands of years.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
Thousand years. Here's say most of the years.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Here's what will happen. Eighty years from now, people will
go who like that? Like that? And that snap of
a finger, it's over.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
Well, these cites the stat in the book that there's
some like does he just's like seventy years later, pretty
much uniformly, everyone's forgotten yes, it's about a seventy year.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
Does he argue how does he does he argue for
these things? Does he just it's just this historical look
at like this is what's happened in the future, and
this is what's going to happen.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
So it's a look at how these things are drivers
of all these human behaviors, from religion everything to tech
utopianism to the rise of the medicalization of of human
life where we're constantly trying to treat things and as
a result, people spend more lives living with morbidity, meaning
that you're ill for well, our live spans are longer,
but we spend twenty the last twenty years ill like

(52:10):
this mortality versus morbidity paradox. So he talks about each
of these pieces as drivers of it, as Doomed attempts
to quest after him, and it's been a driver of
human behavior for three hundred thousand years, and it's really compelling.
It's just a wonderful book on that.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Does he have any theories on like what's next and
how it's.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
It's going to proceed? All four will persist, as a
matter of fact, it'll probably get jumbled, but we'll have
religious versions of AI uploads of people who want to
also have a legacy. So they're all like everything they're
doing to mash up, there'll be a mashup of all
of these things going forward.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
I feel like the legacy, going back to that has
always been the worst problem with Silicon Valley because it's
the thing that they all care about more than anything.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
Like, yeah, and as Paul said, they forget about. You're
going to be forgotten about after seventy years. It's don't
matter which one of you.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
Was best selling author plumber, it's going to be the
same sny years.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Yeah, So but I just found it like, for the
first time someone had really captured all of these moving
parts and put it together in a way where it's like, yeah,
I completely see how a. And this is the point
he makes over and over that it was adaptive. It
was super important to have that, and to have that
as in our evolutionary quiver, that you could actually fall back. Oh,

(53:25):
this is why we're all together because we all believe
in these things. We're all believe in this, the the
the immortality of the soul, or we all believe in this.
That gave you a common experience that allowed you to
cohere with other groups. And this is and he's really
not really good at showing how something that was highly
adaptive for most of human history not so much.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Now I'm going to talk about my book.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
You have a book.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
No, I was going we were too immediately media the week.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
I didn't even know if you like reading we have
like this, let's wrap it up.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Let's wrap it up on your media the week.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
I have a couple. But this is the big closing.
I'm going to ask you, guys, which one you want
to hear about this this week? Mark Ronson's new book
called Night People, which is about about DJing in the
nineteen nineties. I did not think I was going to
like it.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
I loved it the DJ Mark Ronson, the DJ Mark Ronson,
all right.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Or I just reread No Country for All Men? But
I've read the book and I read the script at
the same time, because I was really fair.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
They're the same.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
They're exactly the same.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
If you asked when the Coen Brothers were asked like
how do you write the script, they basically say something,
you know the Coen Brothers is basically some point, Well,
I said it the typewriter and he held the book.
He held the book spine open.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
It was so I always had heard this, but when
reading the script and reading the book at the same time,
it was I mean, well, what's fascinating. So then I
started researching. It turns out that Corn McCarthy wanted to
be a screenwriter too, even though he's the greatest living
writer of the last fifty years, I would argue. And
he wrote No Country for All meant as a script,

(54:54):
took it to Hollywood. They said this is garbage. No
one wanted it. So then he went back and wrote
it a the book, and then the com Brothers came
along and then wrote it.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
As the script.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
But said, my Cormick McCarthy story, I was sitting. I
was sitting beside it at the Santa Fe Institute. Well,
actually I went in and there was an empty seat
beside him, and I was like, that's Cormick McCarthy. I
have to sit beside him. So I sat down beside
McCarthy at the seminar. Didn't say anything though, because I'm like, well,
what do you say anyone? I mean, I you know,
I like your books. I would like punch me in
the face if I said, And so I sat there,
and I sat there, and I sat there, and I

(55:22):
was finally figured out what I was going to say,
and I went like this, and he got up and
went to the restaurant. That's the best.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
He's like, probably in the face something I.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Was about to talk to me. I gotta leave.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
All right, we can do a whole episode on No
Country for all Man. We should one of my favorite books,
Slash and movies, but talk about Mark Ronson's book.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
I So, I was.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
I just I was.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
I lived in the nineties, you know, in New York.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Good, all right, you know what I thought, You're going
to have something more compelling, of more compelling. Driver. Well,
I read it because I was also alive in the nineties.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Regularly, we both have legs.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
And arms in the head, all right, come on.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
I just I don't know why I ended up reading.
I just I really don't like non fiction books and
I only really read fiction. But I was like, oh,
I'm interested in this time. And I have to say,
phenomenal writer. I was really impressed with his writing. He
tells a story, he he's self referential, but also it's
great anecdotes. And who would have thought I would be

(56:32):
interested in a book on djaying. But he gets into
this it's it's a very personal story. I think at
the end of the day he didn't press on it
as much. But what I took away from it was
it's really a story about him and his mother, who
was a socialite, and him growing up and he's like
has panic attacks and things like that, and he feels
this control over djaying and the music. And he remembers

(56:55):
the first time he got to pick a song for
his dad at a party and and what that was like.
It was just there was a really fun, compelling and
it also like took me back to the nineties in
New York.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
Yeah, I was gonna say, Hey, Also, I've heard him
speak on this subject and he's always like, really, you
know when he when he when he talks about look
DJing now versus DJing in New York and nineties, he's
like the nineties nineties in New York.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Well, he has this opening where like and it's just
the kind of this anecdotal opening, like where you go
you follow someone and they and they're at a club,
they're at a house party, and they picked some song
off their Spotify playlist, and then he compares that to
what it was like in the nineties and you're lugging
up records and yeah and finding lugging vityl and yeah,
and it's it's a really not just plugging in your

(57:37):
USB and exactly well, I think that concludes our first
episode of our first recorded episode of the Nick Dick
and Poll Show.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
There are the lost episodes, what the lost episodes?

Speaker 2 (57:50):
The early years, early when there was a fourth There
was Nick.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Phil who was who was the first influencer rock.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
And the that you reference work the first influence or
locked the loved up and down the Nile. There he
was crossing the aisle the nile, looking longingly over his
shoulder with.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
A trying to carve quickly.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
I'll get a picture of this, all right, guys, that's
a wrap.